part8

The First Son

Part 8: The Premonition

�� "Dad, I can do it! Dad, look!"

�� Leo shrugged off his blanket and sat up in bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He watched as his son came into the room, juggling three unlit candles with his mind. He gaped as he circled them around the room, performing magnificent loop-de-loops and barrel rolls.

�� "How did you...?" Leo stammered.

�� "And look, look what else I can do!" He halted the candles in front of Leo's face, leaving them hovering in mid air. He shaped his hand like a gun and closed one as if to aim. He pulled his finger back quickly to shoot, and the first candle's wick exploded into a flame. One by one he set them afire, then blew on the tip of his finger. "Isn't it great?"

�� His father snuffed the candles out before they singed his eyebrows. "I....well, it was fast. Now what else can you do?"

�� Rueben dazzled his father as he disappeared in front of his eyes, becoming invisible almost as quickly as a demon could blink away. Leo jumped as he felt a poke in his back. Turning around, he noticed three small balls of fire bobbing precariously in the air. A whisper of a giggle escaped Rueben's nonexistent lips as he threw the flames at his door. The mahogany surface exploded with a bang, sending Leo and Rueben flying backwards.

�� Leo opened his eyes and winced as he got up off the smashed desk chair. Rueben, now visible after he had lost his concentration, stirred from his landing place on a pile of dirty clothes.

�� "Unh..." he grunted as his dad lifted him to his feet, wiping away the ashes from his face.

�� "You pack quite a punch for a little guy," Leo said. He dusted off his own clothes and glanced at the door. The large hole in the center smoldered slightly, a small could of smoke rising from the cinders. "This might just work after all."

�� "Well, I'd hope so. He was up all night working just for you." Prue's head appeared through the hole in the door. She wrinkled her nose and blew out the last remaining flicker of fire. She passed through the blocked entrance as though there was nothing in her way. She ruffled Rueben's hair and looked up at Leo. "So what do you think? Is he ready?"

�� Leo scratched his chin. "He's certainly getting there."

�� Prue smiled. "Great! Now we just need to find the vanquish and we're all set."

�� "Wait," Leo grabbed her arm as she turned to leave. "What vanquish? They never said anything about a vanquish."

�� Her smile vanished. "But Krista... she said we needed a vanquish, a whole coven of witches, the ingredients... Something isn't right."

�� Leo's eyes widened and he pushed past her. He forced opened the ruined door and yelled as he ran up the attic steps. "The book!"

***

�� Piper paced the length of her bedroom slowly, gingerly. The doctor said that it was best to get up and walk after childbirth. She grunted in frustration as she gripped the walls for support. Phoebe and Paige watched her and grimaced, each contemplating the enormous amounts of pain that their sister had gone through. They hadn't heard a word escape Piper's lips since Leo had left the previous night with Rueben. He hadn't called or even orbed in to let them know what was going on, so the tension between the three of them had grown exponentially overnight.

�� "Piper, maybe you should sit down now, honey," Paige suggested timidly from her seat. Piper glared back at her and Paige lowered her head. "Or not."

�� The aggravated woman kicked the drywall viciously, causing a dent in the wall and a cut on her foot. She cursed under her breath and sat down on the bed to check the damage. Phoebe got up and went to her, attempting to calm her down.

�� "Sweetie, what did that wall ever do to you?" Phoebe smiled cautiously at Piper, but it wasn't returned as genuinely. Phoebe dabbed at the blood that formed a pea-sized bubble around her sister's toe with a tissue, biting her lip to keep from shouting obscenities at Piper. "Um, do you think we should call Leo now? Maybe he could heal this and then bring us up to date on the search."

�� Piper became still, thinking. She relaxed after moment and nodded. "Fine."

�� Phoebe, encouraged by the single syllable answer, kissed her sister on the cheek and began calling Leo's name loudly... but not too loudly.

�� "Don't worry about it, Piper," Paige said. "He'll have this all figured out when he gets here."

***

�� Leo flipped through the pages frantically, unsure of what he was searching for. He stopped at the Lonyu page, and stared at her picture silently. Prue paced two feet above the ground, her skirt dragging on the wood floor. She bit her lip anxiously as Leo paused at the page. "What is it? Did you find something?"

�� Leo squinted at the picture in the Book of Shadows a minute longer before motioning for Prue to come over. "Look at this, here." He pointed to the eyes of the witch, deep gray and bottomless with pure hatred. Her white hair was streaked with single strands of red, and her frail features seemed to come alive with a prowess that shook Leo's tenacity away from him. "Do you recognize the eyes? And here, the streaks in her hair. Who do they remind you of?"

�� Prue hung her head in shame. "Krista."

�� "Yeah, Krista. That bitch." He slammed the book closed and stormed down the stairs, calling over his shoulder. "You're going to tell me everything you know about her. When you met her, how you met her, what she did when she wasn't with you. And you're going to tell me fast. We don't have much time."

�� Prue floated down after him, cursing her own stupidity. She should have known, she should have recognized the small things, the signs. It just wasn't right. She had brought this monster into her family's lives, and now she had to help them get rid of her. She followed Leo into Rueben's room, where they found him zipping objects around at high speeds. Leo caught a baseball glove in the air before it hit him in the head, and threw it to the ground.

�� "Come on, Cap. We've got to get back to Mom. There's a few things that we need to tell her." He grabbed his son around the waist and carried him as though he weighed nothing at all. He glanced over at Prue and thought for a second. "Is there any way that you could come with us?"

�� Prue shook her head. "Not really... I'm sorry."

�� "Don't be," Leo replied. "You couldn't have known." He turned and orbed away, leaving Prue alone to worry.

***

��"Ahh! Get out! Get out!"

�� Leo slammed the bathroom door shut behind him to drown out Phoebe's screams. He had, unfortunately, orbed in a haste, forgetting to check where he was going first. He and Rueben had appeared in the bathroom at the same time that Phoebe happened to be occupying the toilet.

�� "Sorry! Sorry, I didn't think anyone would be in there!" Leo set Rueben down on the bed next to Piper, who seemed absolutely livid.

�� "Of course you didn't? Why on earth would think that there would ever be anyone in a public bathroom?" Phoebe cried out from the bathroom. The room was quiet for a few moments until she flushed, then ran the water from the tap and came out, drying her hands on a paper towel. "Now, what do you think you are doing, orbing into a room without checking it first?"

�� "I thought it would be best, since Rueben is completely destroying the house with his newly harnessed powers, and now that we know who Lonyu really is."

�� Piper glanced up, momentarily forgetting her anger, replacing it with confusion and curiosity. "What do you mean, 'really is'? She's a witch who had my baby, simple as that."

�� Leo shook his head. "No, it's not as simple as that. Lonyu is really Krista, that woman Prue brought home to 'help' us prepare. All that time she was leading us on a wild goose chase. At least we have a little help from the Elders so we can figure all this mess out."

�� "So Prue brought a baby-killer into our house?" Paige stood up and narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

�� "No, that's not it at all," Leo answered. "She didn't know who she was until the same time I did. We all just took her to be the helpless victim in all of this. None of us could have known, it's no one's fault."

�� Phoebe sat down next to her sister, pushing Rueben off the bed. Irritated, he lifted her up, holding her in the air just below the ceiling.

�� "Rueben, no!" Leo reached for Phoebe's arm and attempted to pull her down, but Rueben's hold was too strong for him. "Put her down now!"

�� He dropped her on the bed, causing her to land nearly on top of Piper. His mother glared at him, but smiled when she realized how much he had progressed over night. "Save that for the witch, okay?" He nodded in reply and jumped back on the bed.

Phoebe rubbed her knuckles on top of his head, laughing. "Only you could get away with that, Squirt."

Leo brushed a bead of sweat off his brow and got back to business. "Alright, I'm going back to talk to Prue, and when I come back, maybe he'll have a little more than sparks to show us." He turned to go, but Rueben grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back.

"Wait, what's that?" he yanked the makeshift baby blanket from his father's pocket, feeling the soft flannel under his fingers. Before the delicate texture could register in his mind, a wave of visions overcame him, so fast and in such great detail that it sent him flying backwards, off the bed and onto the floor. He lay motionless for a moment, breathing heavily. Paige, who was the closest, ran to him and helped him sit upright before she asked him if he was okay.

"I'm okay... I think." He� rubbed the back of his head gingerly and stood up, aided by his aunt and his father. Piper took his hand from Paige and let him sit down next to her. Phoebe cleared a spot for him, moving herself to sit in a chair by the wall.

"What did you see, Rueben? I know you saw something." Phoebe prodded at him, hoping that he had seen something in his first premonition that she had not.

He furrowed his thin brows and scrunched up his nose. "I don't know, exactly. It was so much and so fast... I know there was a cabin, in the woods, somewhere far away from San Francisco. I saw a woman, an old woman. She had a baby in her arms, and she was about to throw her in a fire pit, with this big fire burning around it. I heard the baby cry... I remember now. She cried and the woman laughed. Dad, I saw her. I saw my sister with that witch!"

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