Chapter 9 of 12
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“Yeah, that is definitely the guy I saw,” Chris nodded grimly at the picture Phoebe showed him. “Why isn’t this on the book? His human face would have been useful.”
“I changed my mind many times about that,” Phoebe grimaced. “I put it there then I took it away.”
“So what do we do now?” Paige asked.
“For starters you need to find a way to extinguish him from existence,” Gideon said. “As vanquishing him to hell doesn’t seem to be enough.”
“And vanquishing him is hard enough,” Piper huffed.
“But we have the advantage here,” Leo said. “He doesn’t know we are on to him, even if he’s heard of Chris he must think he was successful in covering his tracks because in all his investigations Chris has made it clear that he is looking for who is after Wyatt but that he doesn’t know who is.”
“Meaning that as long as we don’t tip him off he’ll keep to his schedule and we have time,” Chris nodded.
“He might still be in hell for all we know,” Victor said. “I mean, he only kidnaps Wyatt in how long?”
“Seven months,” Chris said.
“Seven months is a lot of time,” Piper nodded. “He might still be figuring out how to come back and maybe we can stop him from coming back.”
Chris rubbed his chin, “I might look into my demonic contacts to see if there is talk about any demon coming back.”
“Won’t that tip him off?” Phoebe asked.
“Shouldn’t,” Chris said pensively. “I’ve asked that before. Some of the demons you did vanquish in the future are ones that had been vanquished or banished and managed to come back. If he gets tipped off by that then he is already on his guard because of my snooping.”
“We could also find out more about that ritual in case we have to undo it,” Paige offered and the others nodded in agreement. Better safe than sorry.
Paige found Phoebe staring blankly at her computer screen in the room they shared. She pulled another chair next to the desk and asked.
“Are you okay?”
Truth be told, she had deliberately come looking for Phoebe to know how she was feeling with this whole Cole business.
“Oh, yeah,” Phoebe said with unusual sarcasm for her. “My whole family is going to get slaughtered and the whole world is going to go to hell because one lunatic can’t just let go of me. I’m dandy!”
“You said that right,” Paige said firmly. “Because of one lunatic not because of you. Cole is at fault here not you.”
Phoebe looked at her and smiled sadly. She sighed deeply and said sadly.
“But he was right. If Wyatt had been the only one to survive I probably would have stayed by his side. Even him being evil.”
“But Chris survived and you had to choose between you nephews, and you chose to continue our family’s fight. Chris saved you. Chris is saving us all,” Paige tried to comfort her. “And this time we’ll make sure Cole can never come back.”
“He also miscalculated,” came a voice from the door and both girls startled and looked at Chris who slowly came in sitting on one of the beds. “That ritual was for Wyatt to go against everything he learned from us, but Cole forgot that his sense of family was learned here. He might have chosen 16 as an age because Wyatt would be at the same time old enough to cause damage and young enough to still need a mother, but Wyatt didn’t want family once he turned. One of his first actions was kicking us out, and we were lucky that he must have been in the first stages of becoming evil and didn’t really try to kill us, just threatened. He said we were holding him back. Cole’s plan wouldn’t have worked because he didn’t understand what is being a Halliwell, what we are taught. He thought that what we were taught was just all that good philosophy but I learned that family comes first here. That’s something I was taught by our family. And when Cole’s magic erased the values he learned as Halliwell he erased that as well.”
“Which just proves that as much as he always proclaimed to love me he never really knew me,” Phoebe said sadly.
Looking at his aunt Chris decided to go against his self imposed rules. He got up, walked to her, kneeled down and hugged her remembering all the times she had done the same to him.
“But he also wasn’t your soul mate. Dad always said that we may have many loves in our lives but only one person is our soul mate. Mum was his, and I know my Uncle was yours. You just have to be patient.”
Phoebe smiled gratefully and reveled in the embrace. She did try to get some information though, “And that Uncle doesn’t happen to have a name?”
Chris pulled back and glared at her, “Nice try.”
“Oh. Come on,” Phoebe whined. “You said yourself, we’re soul mates. So why waste time with other boyfriends?”
“Because other boyfriends teach you what you need to make your relationship with your soul mate work. Besides, if you know who he is you’ll never know if you stayed with him because you knew you’d end up with him or because you chose being with him,” Chris said seriously. “He being your soul mate does not mean that your relationship will be easy and without doubts. Look at my parents,” he finished giving her a knowing look.
Phoebe nodded reluctantly seeing the logic behind his reasoning. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t curious.
“When I get my hands on him,” Piper hissed furiously as she briskly turned the pages of a book, “He’ll wish he never left hell. No, he wasn’t satisfied with destroying my sister. That wasn’t enough! He had to go and mess with my son and slaughter the rest of my family! We’ll find a way to finish him off for good and hopefully it will be very painful!”
Leo looked at her worriedly, he couldn’t deny, he was fuming himself and wanted nothing more to cause Cole a whole world of pain for what he did to Wyatt, Chris and everyone else that had been his family and he had met through Chris’s memory. But Piper, oohh, Piper had been hating Cole for a long while and now she was downright scary.
Victor and Gideon had left a while ago and Piper and Leo, unable to just settle down no matter how late it was, decided to start looking at the many demonology books they had borrowed from Magic School throughout the last couple of months to see if they had some idea. They were at the dining room table an while Leo had sat down to read calmly Piper was standing over a book that was laid on the table.
He decided to get up and walk behind her. He gently wrapped his arm around her and rested his chin on her shoulder, “We’ll stop him. For good this time. I promise. I will not let him hurt our boys or the rest of our family,” he finished putting his hand possessively over Piper’s belly and thinking of his youngest son. No matter how much they changed everything Leo felt a pang at the knowledge that Chris would be marked for life. He might go back to a world where what he lived through never happened but the fact that he had already lived through it wouldn’t be erased.
Piper looked down at her belly and fiddled with Leo’s fingers, “We’ll help him get over all that happened, won’t we?” she asked in a whisper.
“Yes,” Leo said firmly, “And he’ll have so many good memories when he goes back that all that he lived will just feel like a horrible nightmare that can’t hurt him anymore.”
Piper was watching them sleep from the door. She didn’t know if he had always had nightmares, she’d have to ask her father, or if last night’s events prompted the nightmares but the fact is that Chris must have obviously had a restless night because when she went to wake Wyatt up she almost had a heart attack at finding his crib empty. She ran out to get whoever was in the house, which she knew was only Chris because both her sisters had let her know yesterday that they would be leaving for work very early and Leo had been called Up There right before she woke, actually he woke her to let her know. When she entered Chris’s room she found both her son’s sound asleep. Wyatt curled up next to Chris who had unconsciously wrapped a protective hand around the baby. That had happened before. That first day they found out and Chris spent so much time unconscious. After her dad had dropped Wyatt he had orbed to Chris many times, and sure enough when they followed to get the little boy they had found Chris thrashing around.
That day Chris’s sleep had been unnatural due to the fact he was recovering. When he wasn’t thrashing he was just laying there, stiff as a board. Today no, Chris was on his side and he had his legs folded towards his body and Piper was amazed at how someone so tall could occupy so little space on the bed. She felt a pang at that not knowing if this was just how Chris had always slept or if this was brought from the years of not having proper places to sleep.
At that moment Wyatt decided to take his thumb out of his mouth and smacked his brother’s nose when waving his little fist around to get better positioned. Piper had to stifle a giggle as Chris gave a snort and brought his own hand up swatting at his nose as if to chase away a fly, neither of them rising up. She decided to let them rest. Chris would be going into the Underworld and he needed a clear head for that. She left her boys knowing they both were in good hands and went downstairs to get breakfast ready for the three of them and maybe Leo if he came back in time.
“Good morning,” Piper said from the stove as Chris entered the kitchen quite awake and carrying Wyatt. He had obviously changed and freshened up and had also changed Wyatt.
“Morning,” he said as he put Wyatt on his high chairs. “Where’s everyone?”
“Paige and Phoebe have left and Leo had to go Up There.”
“They probably want to discuss the whole Cole issue, Gideon must have told them,” Chris said and when Piper huffed he added, “I know you’re not the Elders biggest fan but they are extremely old and knowledgeable. They might have some idea we don’t.”
“Says the half-Elder,” she muttered and Chris smiled briefly. Blue orbs formed as Piper was bringing the bowl with scrambled eggs to the table and without missing a beat Leo sat on the chair next to the one she was taking and took the bowl before he even fully materialized.
“Any news,” Chris asked as he poured himself some milk.
“They were discussing ways to boost the power of three in order to completely eliminate Cole,” Leo said.
“Is that possible?” Piper asked.
“Well, we’ll have to test but they think we might be able to channel a power of six.”
“Uh?” Chris asked bewildered.
Leo smiled, with Chris’s knowledge of demons and the future it was a rare ocasion when Leo could tell him something he didn’t know. He enjoyed the feeling, “The Power of Three is formed by three descendants of Melinda Warren. They don’t necessarily have to be sisters or from the same generation. It’s just that until the Charmed Ones there never had been more than one or two descendants at a time. So right now if we find a way to channel Wyatt’s and the baby’s magic,” he said pointing at Piper’s belly. “Adding yourself we have six descendants. Even though you and the baby are technically the same person right now you are physically two different people. But the problem is neither the baby nor Wyatt can chant a spell. So Piper has to be able to channel both her and the baby and we have to find a way for someone to channel Wyatt.”
“But that would put Wyatt in danger,” Piper fretted.
“If we can make this happen on our turf and on our schedule Wyatt would be in less danger than if Cole stays loose,” Leo argued.
“And how do we do that?” Chris asked trying to dissipate a possible argument on something that was still a theory.
“No idea,” Leo nodded and Chris banged his head on the table.