Legacy: Cradle of Faith
by Lady Dawson
Chapter Four: Drowning Away Sorrows
Brooke sat on Susan's bed flipping through the Book of Shadows while Connor lingered behind her, peering over her shoulder. "No, that's not him," he said for what felt like the millionth time to the telepath. "Keep turning, I'll let you know when it's him."
Susan wasn't paying much attention to them. She was on the phone, talking to her brother, who had called just a few minutes ago, a concerned expression on her face. "Yeah, we're working on it," she answered as Brooke looked up, slightly irritated.
"You know, you should really index this thing sometimes," she informed the witchlighter. "The vanquishing could be cut in half if you put an index in the back of this thing. Or does it go in the front?" she mused. Susan made a face at her, ignoring her.
"Okay, we'll be careful. Peter doesn't know anything about this, does he?" she asked, the anxiety in her voice evident. "All right, well, if at all possible, could you mind keeping it that way? The last thing that we need is more trouble than we've got." She nodded, looking relieved. "All right, little brother, I'll talk to you later. Yeah, say hi to Patty for me. Bye." She flipped her cell closed, looking over at Brooke, looking annoyed. "We can't put an index in there, because the book changes stuff on its own all the time. Just last week, it put in two pages worth of various prophecies about upcoming apocalypses."
"How nice of the Book to be thoughtful about warning us about stuff that's going to destroy the world," Brooke complained. Susan shot her a look. "I know, I know, they're probably going to come in handy someday. What did Bobby want? Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, except for the fact that some street prophecy just broke into his house and alerted him about a witch who is going to kill an innocent tonight." Susan sighed as she sat down on the bed. "He said that she'll bear the Mark of the Knights."
"McKnight," Connor said and she nodded. "So I don't get it. If you guys knew about this in my future . . .why didn't you stop it?"
"Maybe we didn't," Susan answered thoughtfully. "The future changes all the time, Connor. Maybe something happened that caused Bobby not to get the message to us the first time. We're just gonna have to make sure that we change yours. Nobody should have to grow up on the battlefield." She gave him a small, affectionate smile and he smiled back, sitting down next to her.
"Well . . . just in case, you should probably update the section on Greek mythology," Connor suggested. Susan stared at him and Brooke glanced up in bewilderment. "It's gonna come in handy in a few years."
"I'll keep that in mind," she said dryly. Connor grinned at her and she frowned. "You know, I don't believe that you told us your last name."
"I know," he said innocently. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Susan opened her mouth to argue when Brooke let out an exclamation.
"Ew! Gross!" She was looking down at one of the pages in the Book in disgust. "Is this your guy?"
Connor looked. "Yep. That's him."
"Seriously needs to work on his skin tone," Brooke grumbled. The picture had a very grotesque demon with skin made out of molten lava. At least, that was her best guess as to what it was. "Okay, Ramnes is an Upper Level demon who emerges from his hidden lair every hundred years to find a worthy candidate to bear his child. Fortunately, all the mothers before haven't been strong enough to carry the baby to term."
"Guess he's never impregnated a witch before," Connor guessed. "Does it have a vanquishing potion?"
"Yep, but how are we gonna find Daddy?"
"We'll work on that later. First things first, we should make the potion and then try and find Faith. At least that way we'll be prepared if we can't stop her from killing this guy and Ramnes shows up." Susan picked up the Book and headed to the kitchen as Wyatt was hanging up his phone.
"Did you find anything out?" Brooke asked as she walked over to him, wrapping her arms around him.
"Yeah," Wyatt answered, looking distracted. "I talked to Mom and she did hire a Faith McKnight as a bartender today at P3. So I'm thinking we should head over there and keep an eye on things, see what we can find out."
"Okay, why don't you and Brooke do that while Connor and I stay here and work on the potion?" Susan suggested. "We can catch up with you guys later." Wyatt hesitated, looking nervously between his girlfriend and her best friend. "What? What's with the look?"
"Well . . ." Wyatt looked down. "I asked Mom if Chris could meet us there and she said he wasn't working tonight. She hasn't seen him since this morning, when he left for one of his finals."
Connor looked worried as Susan bit her lip, her eyes narrowed in apprehension. "Okay . . . where could he possibly be?" she asked, frowning as she set the Book down on the table. "It's not like Chris to lie about working and then just disappear."
"Maybe he forgot which day he worked and then went to hang out with some friends after one of his finals," Brooke suggested.
"On a school night right before finals?" Susan pointed out.
"Right." Brooke looked worriedly at Wyatt. "Maybe we should start a search party."
"Sounds like a good idea," Wyatt agreed as Connor looked panicked.
"Hello?! People, do I need to remind you that we have less than twelve hours before Faith is going to be impregnated with Ramnes' demonic spawn?" Connor looked at them desperately. "Look, I care about Chris too, but this can wait. And I assure you, he's perfectly fine in the future."
"Yes, but it's like Susan said, the future could have changed," Brooke pointed out smugly. Connor pierced his lips together as Susan closed her eyes, releasing a clap of thunder overhead, causing everyone to jump.
"Was that really necessary?" Brooke muttered, her hand going to her heart as it felt as though she had run a mile.
"Apparently," Susan grumbled. "Look, here's what we're going to do. We'll leave a note here and at your place, telling Chris what we're doing. You guys call his cell and a couple friends on your way to P3. If he still doesn't answer, then when we get there, Connor and I will deal with Faith while you guys go and look for him."
"I agree," Wyatt said, nodding. "Come on, we'll take my car."
Susan watched them go before turning to Connor. "Come on," she said as she bent down, searching the cabinets for a pot to cook the potion in. "We've got a potion. Can you get the ingredients out of the cabinets?" she asked, pointing to where the ingredients were."
"Sure."
--
"Okay, just out of curiosity, how exactly are we going to track this Faith down?" Brooke wanted to know as she climbed out of his car, heading towards the entrance to P3. Normally, they would've waited patiently in line, but this was an emergency, so they took the back entrance. "I mean, your mom doesn't even know she's a witch, right? So we're just supposed to go around asking, 'Hey, are you a crazy psycho who's going to give birth to the future Source of All Evil?'"
"Oh, jeez," Wyatt grumbled, running his hands through his blond hair. "Look, we'll find her, all right? And my guess is that that'd be here right there," he said, nodding to a dark-haired girl serving drinks.
"How do you figure?"
"Well, for one, she's the only bartender I don't recognise," Wyatt said with a shrug. "And for another . . . look at the necklace." Brooke looked and saw that she was wearing a Celtic necklace around her neck, glinting in the weak light. "I'd say that we've found Miss McKnight." He glanced at his phone for the hundredth time. "Hey, why don't you go ahead and keep an eye on her. I'm gonna give Chris another call, see if he answers this time."
"Sure, but if he hasn't picked up for the first hundred times, what makes you think he'll pick up for a hundred and one?"
Brooke gave him a smile as she walked past him to the bar and got Faith's attention, ordering a drink. Wyatt shook his head. "Man, I love that girl," he murmured as he put the phone to his ear, waiting for the receiving end to pick up when he heard it.
Chris's ring tone coming from somewhere within the club. Frowning slightly, he kept the phone ringing as he moved towards the sound, trying to focus it out as it was drowned out by the music. "Come on, Chris, where are you?" he muttered, trying to track him with telepathy, but as usual when he didn't want to be found, Chris was blocking him.
Brooke suddenly appeared next to him, her hand slipping into his. "Your brother's here," she said, nodding towards the bar. Wyatt looked and saw that Chris was downing himself in a large cup of alcohol. "And from the looks of him, I'd say that that's his fourth of fifth one."
Letting out a sigh, Wyatt shook his head. "Great," he said, throwing his head back. "When Susan and Connor get here, things are going to get ugly. There is no way that I'm going to be able to keep a drunk Chris from getting into some kind of confrontation. It's a good thing Ethan's not here."
"Don't jinx it," Brooke ordered as he headed towards Chris. She suddenly stilled. "Wyatt . . ."
"What?"
She looked around, a worried look crossing her face. "I don't know, but I just thought I heard something . . . him," she said, nodding indiscreetly at a young man that had a hostile appearance floating around him. Wyatt looked at him, then towards his girlfriend. "He's watching Faith, making sure that she doesn't hook up with anybody. He's thinking about hurting her."
Swallowing, Wyatt looked towards the man that Brooke had indicated. "So maybe Faith didn't exactly kill him on purpose," he said slowly. "Maybe she was just trying to protect herself." Brooke nodded anxiously as they looked towards Faith. "Okay, divide and conquer. You keep and eye on Faith and her stalker, I'll take care of Chris."
"Okay." Brooke wandered over to a spot at the bar as Wyatt cast a wary glance towards the man before heading over to his brother.
"Hey, little brother," he greeted with his arms folded across his chest, glaring down at Chris. "Fancy meeting you here. I must really be losing it, because, funny, I didn't think that you were of legal age."
"Go away, Wyatt," Chris grumbled.
"And Mom's gonna kill you when she finds out that you've been drinking in her club," Wyatt added. Chris chose not to respond to this. "But first things first, I'm gonna take you home. Come on, buddy, let's go," he said, trying to get hold of Chris, who shoved him back.
"Get off me, Wyatt!" he hissed at him with blazing green eyes. "I don't need your help! Just leave me alone!"
"What is your problem?" Wyatt snapped, well aware that they were causing spectators. "Just because you're having a few problems doesn't mean that you can drown your sorrows away! Let me give you a hint, Christopher, it doesn't make them go away! It just makes you feel the pain more when you finally feel again."
"Whatever," Chris sneered. "I'm not the one who's with a girl screwing around behind your back. Oh, wait a minute, I was," he mused. "But you're the one who's pretending like everything's fine."
"All right, that's enough," Wyatt snapped, grabbing hold of Chris's arms and hauling him to his feet. "We're going outside, Chris, now. Move your feet!" he ordered. Whether it was the punch line about Brooke or not, he was getting sick of Chris's attitude really fast.
When they were finally outside, Wyatt pulled him towards the car. "Okay, I'm not going to yell at you right now, because I know perfectly well that you won't remember this in the morning. What I am gonna do is I'm going to take you home and let this wear off. Let's just . . . find a safe place to orb," he sighed as he let his brother away towards an alley.
"You're making this all too easy, boy," a drawl came towards them and Wyatt spun around to see the same man Brooke had pointed out earlier right behind them.
With a gun in his hand.
Pointed directly at his brother.
It took all of Wyatt's willpower to stay calm and push his brother behind him. He heard Chris collapse onto the ground, unable to support himself, before vomiting on the ground.
"What do you want?" Wyatt demanded, placing himself between his brother and the gun.
"Well, I saw him looking at my girl earlier," the man replied, menace in his voice. "And nobody looks at my girl and gets away with it. Nobody."