Bite Me

Paige sighed at her younger, and secretly favourite, nephew,

'For a moment, let me take a spider's form,

But when I wish it, return me to the norm.' She instantly shrunk into the shape of a spider and began to scuttle towards Chris. His face turned a pale shade of green.

'Urgh! Jesus, Paige, turn back now! Paige! I'm telling you, I will squash you.' Paige reappeared giggling.

'What was that for?' Chris demanded indignantly.

'Well, for fun, for one.' Paige smiled, 'And, to teach you a lesson.'

Chris narrowed his eyes sarcastically at his aunt, 'I pity your sons.'

Paige smiled, 'and I pity your parents but that is by the by. The point, my dearest, darling nephew is that you are afraid of spiders and why?'

Chris huffed, 'because an evil spidery demon thing kidnapped my mother and poisoned me.'

'But you only know that because you've been told. You don't remember it.'

'Right.'

'That doesn't mean your fear's not valid.' Paige's voice turned serious, 'who else could that have been in the attic but Wyatt? Who else is so protective of their family? Well, maybe Piper... Chris you can't remember that episode but it's still shaped who you are. It's still a part of you. Wyatt's past might have been forgotten but it hasn't been erased. Barbas proved that.'

Chris looked down, guiltily.

'So no more tormenting your brother, okay?' Paige smiled.

'Fine.' Chris said. 'But just so you know, I'll be taking it out on your sons. And another thing, you shouldn't cast spells like that - they're too likely to backfire. Next time, no need to actually take the form of a spider, you can just show me a picture of one or something.'

'Agreed.' Paige winked at her nephew.

Melinda sat in the middle of Tyler's classroom. She had found his school diary and was flicking through it. Timetables, lesson plans, registers. Tears trickled down her cheeks, 'where did you go?' She whispered. She flicked onto the next page, a piece of paper fell to the floor. She picked it up and read it and as she did the past year seemed to fall into place.

'Hey, you want me to show you something?' Piper asked Milton, stirring a pot of soup.

'Sure.' He stood up obligingly and walked over to the kitchen table.

'You see that list there?' Piper nodded to a piece of paper above the kitchen sink. 'It's a list of ingredients. And you see that cupboard there? It's a cupboard of ingredients. And you see this soup here?' She grinned. 'It's a potion.'

Milton's eyes widened. Then he laughed, 'do you have a black hat and a broomstick too?' Piper smiled.

'So, er, I wanted to ask you something.' Milton started cautiously.

'Sure, anything.' Piper looked Milton in the eyes, promisingly.

'I wanted to ask you to tell me some stuff, y'know about me, my life. Maybe my childhood.'

'Well, sure, what do you want to know?'

'I don't know... Was I a good baby or did I scream all the time? Did I strop as a teenager? Was I jealous of Chris and Melinda?'

'Nuh, uh. Never jealous. You used to just go up to them and put your arms around them all the time. And they got so fed up of it, it was like, enough hugs already. Although there was this one time... but then Grams took the rivalry out of you and Chris and put it into me, Paige and Phoebe instead. After that, it never seemed like much of a problem.' She laughed and added some burdoch root to her potion.

Milton scratched his head, 'are things never not magical in this house?'

She sighed, 'it takes some getting used to, huh.'

'A little bit. Anyway, tell me more.'

'Er, okay. You didn't strop much as a teenager but when you did, all hell would break loose. I mean, your the most powerful witch in the world so... God, I don't miss those days. You were mostly a good baby but you had your moments... conjuring a fire-breathing dragon out of the TV, that was a tricky one. And then there was-'

Melinda dashed into the kitchen and slammed a slip of paper onto the table. Piper and Milton looked at her shocked.

'This is it. It's all here.' Melinda looked at her mother and brother meaningfully.

'It's the prophecy that Tyler was talking about.'

Piper ran her eyes over the slip of paper, 'while angels serve and demons fight...'

'What does this mean?' Piper asked.

'It means that Wyatt sacrificed his life to defeat Corben.'

'Who's Corben?' Milton asked.

'Corben is the demonic manifestation of all humanity's sins. He's the ultimate evil.'

Milton was sick of people saying that he'd sacrificed his life while he was still there. Piper seemed to be thinking the same thing, 'but he's not dead,' she said.

'No,' Melinda looked at Wyatt cautiously. 'Something must have changed.'

'Well, maybe you just understood the poem wrong.' Milton offered.

'Or Wyatt did.' Melinda said.

'Where did you get this?' Piper asked.

'In Tyler's old diary.'

'Tyler knew?' Piper whispered.

'I guess that's why he left.' Milton looked from mother to daughter, feeling suddenly out in the cold again. He didn't understand how to write spells or make potions, he didn't understand what the prophecy meant and he didn't understand what was going on in this family.

CHANGES! Just some notes on changes I've made in previous chapters.

It's all in 'Death Becomes Them', i think. I've changed any refs to Tyler in the Amazon - he was never there (I changed my mind about how and when it all went down). I now make a vague ref. to the underworld instead.

Tyler explains the prophecy to Wyatt a little more fully. And, most importantly, the Dark Son is the manifestation of humanity's evil, rather than wielding it as a weapon.

I've also been more economical with my use of Wyatt's name and stuck a reference to the school journal in the conversation between Sebastian and Tyler. These changes don't affect the plot, they just keep a little continuity.

Sorry to confuse anybody. It's just neater this way. I guess I should really be sure i've got it right before I post.