Up in the heavens, quite a while after Ezra had sent messages to Terrence using his multi-plane telepathy, the half-demon witch's image began to flicker, causing Katherine to become distressed. "Father!" she shouted to her father, who was now some distance away, talking to a brown robed Elder.
The man orbed from the spot where he stood to beside his daughter, sensing the urgency in her voice. "What's wrong?"
"Look at the boy - he's flickering!"
"Then history is being repaired - he'll soon be returned home." The adult male angel was relieved that everything would soon be back to the way it was before evil had interfered that time. Looking back to where he'd just orbed from, he saw his Elder friend looking over at them with the hood of his brown robes still pulled up over his head. That Elder had been telling Katherine's father that his last premonition had shown Ezra disappearing from the heavens after the demon in the Old West had been vanquished.
Ezra looked sad all of a sudden. "But, I want to stay here with you," he whined, like a small child who'd been told he couldn't have some ice cream.
Katherine looked alarmed. "This place is beginning to affect him - he is already so attached that he doesn't want to leave."
It was annoying how the Whitelighter girl and her father kept talking about Ezra in the third person. "I thought they might permit me to become a Whitelighter, since it seemed hopeless for history to be repaired. With Chris who knows where and me out of the picture, there are no witches in the Old West to repair history."
"See, Father - this is what I said would happen if things were kept from them. They don't realize how important THEY are to the Earth plane and any who come here start desiring to stay where it is so peaceful. He has lost all hope of the remaining witches repairing what was broken." Katherine began to cry softly at Ezra's despair, even though she didn't sense him having it any longer. Having broken her Whitelighter programming a long time ago, Katherine had learned to show negative emotions on the outside like she'd been able to before she'd died.
"Son, you HAVE to go back soon - there are still more innocents to protect and demons to vanquish," explained the male Whitelighter, pulling Katherine to him so he could comfort her while she was upset.
"I'm surprised you even permitted me here - surely you know I'm a half-demon," reminded Ezra, as he looked down at himself, still flickering.
Another male Whitelighter, dressed in long white robes, approached the group after suddenly appearing, to explain something to the temporarily deceased boy. "Yer also a good witch an' a lovin' brother an' son. We ain't gonna throw ya out jus' 'cause ya've got a bit of demon blood in ya." The Whitelighter noticed the hooded Elder in the distance watching him, and wondered if they'd met before somewhere.
"You look identical to one of the gunslingers in that history book," commented Ezra, instantly recognizing the Whitelighter newcomer.
"I come from the Old West, but not from the town in that book. Some men looked awful similar ta each other in those days." The boy was getting a bit too close to the truth, so Michael Tanner decided he'd better leave before he said something he shouldn't. "I hope ya can go back soon - ya don't belong here - not yet anyway." Michael noticed the hooded Elder in the distance nod his head in agreement and wondered if that Elder was part of the Elder team that was responsible for ensuring the safety of the prophesied 'Charmed Seven.'
'Please don't look in my direction,' requested the Elder in a soft and very familiar voice into Michael's head.
Michael looked away quickly, not wanting to get into further trouble with his superiors, even if that one was an old friend.
"When I really die, will I become one of you?" asked Ezra, causing the southern-accented Whitelighter to remember he was still there. The thought of being a Whitelighter after his death sounded good to Ezra. Then he'd be able to orb between places, heal people when they got hurt, and be able to help future good witches.
"Ya think I'm an oracle or somethin'?" snapped Michael, annoyed that the boy thought he was a fountain of knowledge with all the answers. He wished he was a little more respected up in the heavens, where he currently was, and had a more important role than just an assistant to Senior Whitelighters. The reason Michael wasn't so respected there anymore, was that the other Whitelighters and Elders all knew about his attempts as a ghost to reveal the prophecy to the witches - something that the Whitelighters and Elders had been instructed not to do. Disobeying the rules of the Elders was extremely disrespectful and the first sign that a Whitelighter couldn't be trusted to stay on the side of good.
"I'm sorry, Sir. I just wondered - it would be desirable for me to continue to assist others after my death."
"Looks like they fixed things, Good luck fer the future." 'And look out fer my son fer me,' added Michael in his mind, briefly forgetting that Ezra was telepathic. Surprisingly, the hooded Elder, who was still stood in the distance, didn't send an angry response to Michael's accidental silent plea - maybe he felt sorry for Michael being so far away from his son, so would overlook the mistake. Then Michael remembered that the Elder was a father himself and didn't get to see his own children very often as his job kept him away from his family in Heaven for long amounts of time.
Ezra had started flickering faster while he'd been talking to Michael, and after Michael finished talking, Ezra disappeared from the heavens, wondering who the Whitelighter's son back on Earth was. He would try to protect the man's son, as he would with any person who needed protecting - if only Ezra knew who the Whitelighter's offspring was.
"I knew they'd get him back eventually," said the very familiar voice of the Elder who'd been in the distance, from where he now stood beside Michael. When the Elder noticed the sudden movement from his old friend, he realized he had startled the Whitelighter. "Sorry, Vin...Michael, I didn't mean to make you jump." The Elder then took down his hood to reveal that he was the angel of peacekeeper Chris Larabee. He couldn't reveal himself when the half-demon witch was there as Ezra might've noticed then that the Elder looked quite similar to the witch Chris Larabee. That would make the boy very suspicious.
"That's okay, Cowboy. It's great ta see ya again." Michael was glad that Chris had finally revealed himself - the Texan had been longing to talk with his old friend again soon.
Chris smiled. "It's been a long time, hasn't it? I thought I'd never see you again after I heard what happened when you tried to orb to your wife."
Being reminded of past events, Michael suddenly felt sad. "I may've been changed back ta my old self, which I'm grateful fer, but I'll never forgive the Elders fer keepin' me away from my family. I could've protected 'Chelle an' her friends if I'd been there ta help them 'gainst the warlocks."
"I have to go now. I'll see you again soon." Being an Elder, Chris couldn't take sides with his troubled Whitelighter friend against the other Elders - even if THEY were the source of Michael's troubles. He would speak to the other Elders about Michael Tanner though - they had to help the Whitelighter before he got himself into more danger. Elder Chris orbed away, leaving Michael with Katherine and her father, Shaun.
"What did I miss while I was on a dangerous mission in the Underworld?" asked Michael Tanner as he turned to Katherine and her father, Shaun.
Katherine grinned and then answered the resurrected Whitelighter's question. "Not much, just the boy learning to use his multi-plane telepathy."
"Is that a witch or demonic power?"
"His telepathic powers are his witch ones; the mind-control and other powers are all demonic. Welcome home, Michael." Katherine threw her arms around the Texan Whitelighter, pleased to see him back in the heavens.
Michael struggled to get free. "Careful, ya'll squash ma halo." He heard the Elder Chris Larabee, who still stood watching him, laughing loudly at his attempt at humor. The angels didn't really have halos - that was just a myth created by people on earth who didn't know angels really existed.
CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P
Meanwhile, in Four Corners, the demon had finally been vanquished.
After opening the hip flask and quickly throwing the potion at the demon, the witches had said the vanquishing spell together to get rid of the evil that had been threatening their very existence. Then the demon had disappeared with a loud bang.
"How do we know our brothers will be restored?" asked Josiah, worried that history was still un-repaired because of their presence there.
"I'm hoping that their Ezra is just hurt, and not dead," said Chris, who'd been wondering the same thing as Josiah. "If he died, we'll have to travel further back and stop him being killed - and my head hurts so much with how confusing it is traveling back and forth in time."
"Maybe, I can do something about that," suggested Nathan as he stepped toward Chris to heal the young man's headache.
"I don't think that will stop me being disorientated by all this time-travel, Nate. Thanks anyway. We should be leaving now."
Before anyone could agree with Chris, two more people were added to their group: the half-demon witch, Ezra, dressed in his own clothes, and their youngest witch brother, JD.
"What the —," began Chris, before avoiding the use of a swearword in front of young ears.
"Wow, where are we?" asked JD in amazement. "How did I get here? What's going on? I was sleeping in my room and now I'm here."
"This location is the town of Four Corners in the Old West, John," explained Ezra, forgetting that his brother preferred being addressed by his initials. Then Ezra carefully thought about what to say next to his baby brother - he didn't want to upset the little boy by telling him about being killed.
Coming to Ezra's rescue, Chris began to tell JD an explanation that wouldn't upset the little boy. "You must've been sent here by the Elders to visit us so we would know we'd woken you up. You were put in a very deep sleep and we had to wake you from here. Ezra was put in one too, but he was here before he fell asleep."
"Like in 'Sleeping Beauty'?" asked JD. "Why did you have to come all the way here to do it? Did a cowboy make me fall asleep so you had to come after him?" Having no knowledge of the history book and Chris's premonitions, JD had no idea what the witches were doing in the cowboy town.
"Yes, that's right, Son," agreed Josiah, liking JD's theory better than what had really happened.
"I wanna go home to our mom and dad and Vin."
Walking over to the boy and lifting him up, Josiah set JD at his hip. "We're going home now, JD."
Blue and white orbs suddenly appeared in front of JD and Josiah. Terri Greer was left standing there as the orbs vanished. "I have been sent here from the Elders of this time to warn you. If you return to your present at the wrong hour, you will meet your past selves and cause terrible damage to your futures."
"That is a very sensible precaution, Miss," said Ezra, realizing that they could've easily gone back home to before when they'd time-traveled instead of after. Then they would have undone the repairs they'd performed on history. "When do you suggest would be the correct time for us to journey to?"
"I will telepathically tell you the correct time, Ezra, and then you will communicate it the same way to each of your brothers here. No evil can learn of that time if it is said that way. Once you have said your time-travel reversal spell, the spell will read your minds and learn where to send you."
"We already got rid of the evil here," reminded Chris, having picked up on evil being mentioned by the Whitelighter, "are you saying there's more evil around?" He was worried because he thought they had secured their futures now that the Time-changer demon was gone.
"Yes, there is still some evil here, but there's a lot less than in your time. It is possible that they might be listening to me to hear where and when the witches from the future will return to, so they can leave a message for future demons to plan an ambush for that precise time. The demons here aren't powerful enough to cause you harm and they can't time-travel, so they are not a threat to you unless they know when and where you are going forward to."
"You mean they've been watching us?"
"Possibly, but it is more likely that they have detected a lot of good magic in this time," explained Terri. "Evil knows that there are very few good witches here, so will most likely have guessed that all the good witches they can sense at present must be from the future."
"We can't go yet - we don't know what's happened to their Ezra," reminded Chris, concerned that the peacekeeper Ezra could be on the brink of death.
"Aren't I living proof that he hasn't gone away?" asked the teenage half-demon witch Ezra, being careful not to say anything that would alarm their witch baby-brother.
"Nate, can you try and quickly find him and check he's gonna be okay? We'll meet you back home."
"Sure, I have my own way to get back," agreed Nathan, not letting on how he'd traveled to the Old West. The Whitelighter had a good idea where the peacekeeper Ezra would be, so he could orb directly there.
"Thanks, Nate. Just be careful you don't inadvertently change something." It would be too easy for Nathan to accidentally cause a change in the past that would affect the time where they were returning to.
"I will - I have powers to help me make sure I don't harm anything," said Nathan enigmatically. Then he orbed away to find the Old West peacekeeper Ezra Standish.
"Ready to go home, boys?" asked Chris, anxious to get home to their waiting parents. He received nods from them all. "We're ready, Terri."
Terri sent the precise time for the witches to return to, to Ezra's mind and then Ezra telepathically told it to his witch brothers. Chris let Ezra into his usually inaccessible mind, but only long enough for the boy to send him the time that Terri had stated.
"I don't suppose any of you can recite the spell from memory to take us home?" asked Ezra, with the words of the spell clear in his mind.
"I'm better at remembering images than spells, Ezra," said Chris, taking out his copy of the spell that had magically transferred from his first disguise to his second.
"My memory isn't always that great," said Josiah as he took out his own copy. "Thanks to a voice from above, I have my own copy." He smiled appreciatively at Ezra, relieved that his brother had been returned to them. "JD, you can read from my copy."
"Yay, I love saying spells!" exclaimed the little boy excitedly.
Then they all recited the spell together; "Carry us now from the Old West, to the date and time of our minds' request, return us home without delay, to our home in our present-day."
Then the brothers were enveloped by strong winds and carried swiftly away from the town. Terri smiled and orbed back up to the Old West heavens.
CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P
Nathan orbed directly into his old clinic in the Old West, again invisible so he couldn't be seen.
"Tell me what happened again, Ezra?" asked the Old West form of Nathan, who was standing by the bed that Old West Ezra Standish was lying on.
"A huge naked man with no hair and gray skin knocked me down," explained Ezra.
"Ya banged yer head bad this time, didn' ya?"
Whitelighter Nathan suppressed a chuckle, remembering how often peacekeeper Ezra Standish had ended up in his clinic with some kind of injury - including concussion. In that time, Nathan wouldn't have believed Ezra's account of the creature that had attacked him, and would've put it down to the man suffering from a concussion and having hallucinations as a result.
"But there really was a naked man; I envisioned him with my own eyes, and these eyes never lie, Mr. Jackson."
The Whitelighter walked over to Ezra and put a hand over the man's heart, checking to see if he was in any danger. The angelic form of Nathan sensed that his peacekeeper friend was going to be fine after a day or two of rest in the clinic, so the witch descendant Ezra wouldn't cease to exist like witch JD had.
"That's strange," commented Ezra, startling the Whitelighter when he looked right at him.
Nathan, the Old West healer, was doing some tidying up in the room and didn't look toward his patient upon hearing his comment. "What is, Ezra?"
"I felt an unusual warmth come over me just then."
"I better check yer not gettin' a fever." Old West Nathan turned around, walked over to his friend, and began to examine him.
The Whitelighter was about to orb out of the room, when Ezra spoke again. "I may have found the future Mrs. Standish, Nathan. She's presently staying in town for our friends' wedding."
"What's her name?"
"Jessie Jane Cheshire - she's from a well respected family, and is very hard-working, besides having a caring nature. Her family are distantly related to the Wells family."
The healer grinned. "She sounds jus' perfect for you, Ezra. Yer much better now and as long as ya rest plenty, ya'll be back to yer old self by JD's wedding day."
Then, Nathan the Whitelighter orbed up to the heavens of that time - they had already agreed that they'd send him to his own present once he'd orbed there.
CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P - CH7P
While Vin slept in his bed at the Potter household, Gloria and Terrence sat on JD's bed, wondering how their sons were doing in the Old West. There was no way for them to tell if anyone else had vanished unless Gloria went around the bedrooms touching things the boys had previously touched. She was scared to do that, fearing that she'd then see more of her sons dying.
"Darling," began Terrence as he held his wife close, "think of how many times the boys have successfully won against evil in the past - they'll win this time as well, I promise."
"If they had succeeded, I'd have my sons back here now, wouldn't I?" replied the man's wife, who'd been hoping her youngest would have appeared back in the room by then. It was the early hours of Thursday morning, and a long time since Chris, Ezra and even Josiah had left to travel back in time.
Terrence didn't have a chance to reply before several voices were heard in the passage outside the room. Both witches rushed out of the bedroom, recognizing their sons' voices.
"That was fun, can we do it again?" asked JD, as he jumped from Josiah's hip to the upstairs passageway's floor.
"I don't think so, JD," answered Josiah in a gentle voice. "Mother and Father won't want us going so far away any time soon."
Vin woke up upon hearing his half-brother's loud voice and then rocketed into the passage. He ran to JD and wrapped his arms tightly around the boy. "Yer back, I missed ya so much."
"I missed you too, Vin," said JD, sounding puzzled, and struggling to get free from his brother's tight grip. "But I was jus' sleeping an' I don't see you when I'm sleeping. I was only away from here for a few minutes after I waked up."
"Ya died, JD," said Vin, saying what none of the other brothers had. "Ya weren't jus' sleepin'."
"No, I didn't die. I only went to sleep, Vin."
Gloria ran to JD and scooped him up into her arms. Then she held him so their faces were close, and planted a gentle kiss on her son's forehead. "Welcome home, Dear."
"I missed you, Mama," slipped out of the boy's mouth before JD could stop it.
"I missed you too, Son," returned Gloria, almost in tears at the boy calling her what he'd called his real mom - she knew that JD really meant it.
"We can have our party now everyone's back," shouted Vin joyfully. "Ya did kill the demon, didn' ya?"
"Yes, we got him," answered Nathan, who'd just orbed onto the stairs from the present-day heavens. "The warlocks who gave him orders have gone as well. What's more, Chris has talked me into dressin' up for your party." The Whitelighter grinned, waiting for cheers from the two youngest sons.
"Yay!" cheered Vin and JD as one, glad that the friendly family Whitelighter would join in the costume party.
"Any chance we can have dinner now, Mom?" asked Chris, after his stomach had complained about not being fed for hours or maybe even centuries.
"I'll get some TV dinners out of the freezer and put them in for everyone," answered Gloria, glad to be useful - she hadn't been able to help while her sons had been away. "There'll be just enough time for you to tell us what happened in the Old West." None of the family members left behind had felt hungry, so the previous evening's dinner had been wasted.
'Omitting certain unpleasant details though,' said Ezra telepathically to Terrence.
'Of course, Son. I'm so glad to have you all back,' sent back Terrence.
"You two!" said Gloria sternly, intuitively knowing that they were talking inside their heads. "You know I hate it when you talk that way."
"Ezra was just telling me something, Dear," said Terrence meekly.
"Guys, I have to see the Elders now - I'll see you later," said Nathan, before orbing away.
Gloria started walking along the passage to the stairs.
"Let me help you get dinner ready," said Terrence helpfully, before following his wife downstairs to the kitchen, leaving the five witch brothers together.
Vin ran to Chris and hugged his leg. "Hey Chris," he greeted, glad to see his favorite brother again.
"Hey Vin. You okay?" Chris knew that Vin must've been worried about his brothers while they were away - especially JD, who he'd been close to for all his younger brother's life.
Vin nodded with a smile. "The cartoons weren't much fun without JD; but I knew ya'd all be back soon. I felt a bit tired waitin', so I had a nap. I knew ya'd wake me up when ya got here."
"I wish I always had your confidence." Chris knew that Vin had been more worried than he would let on - it was always his way because of him being a half-Whitelighter and not being very good at expressing negative emotions on the outside.
"Did ya see my fore-dad?"
"I think you mean forefather, Master Tanner," replied Ezra. "I personally didn't get the opportunity to see anyone as I was put into a deep sleep not long after my arrival there with Chris." Suddenly, Ezra had the idea that Vin was the son of the southern-accented Whitelighter that he'd met in the heavens, although they all thought that particular Tanner parent had disappeared forever after being killed by a Darklighter. Ezra decided not to tell Vin that he might have met his real father while he'd been dead - it would open a can of worms that maybe wasn't meant to be opened. Maybe the Whitelighter would come and visit Vin some time.
Vin looked alarmed. "Ya mean ya got killed in the Old West, Ez?"
'Please, Vin, don't say such things around your younger brother,' sent Ezra to Vin's mind.
"Sorry, ya did only get put inta a deep sleep." Vin didn't understand why he suddenly felt the urge to pretend that Ezra hadn't been killed.
Ezra looked puzzled - he'd only meant to telepathically ask Vin to watch what he said to their youngest brother, JD.
Josiah smiled, knowing that Ezra had his mind-control power back and had used it on Vin to stop him telling JD the alarming truth and upsetting the little boy.
"I saw your forefather, Vin - he seemed like a good man," said Chris. Then he walked towards the stairs, feeling the need to sit down comfortably downstairs. "Let's tell our parents about our adventures downstairs, shall we?"
Everyone agreed and followed their brother downstairs, where they sat and talked with their parents while their late dinner, or perhaps early breakfast, was cooking.
To be continued...