Chris eyed the bag nervously.
Well, you'd eye a bag nervously, too, if its owner was a witch-Whitelighter/demon-Darklighter, who just so happened to have a homicidal, power-hungry maniac demon of a father planning to murder her.
He took a step forward and picked it up. He still hadn't gotten used to the idea that such a small bag could be so damned heavy, and he nearly dropped it. Again. Eryn was gonna be so pissed off when she got back. He just hoped she didn't have anything valuable and fragile in there.
He took a deep breath, and tried as hard as he could to project goodness towards the bag. "I'm a friend of Eryn's," he murmured, hoping that that would nullify any curses, hexes, or spells that she had put on the bag so people couldn't open it. He took a hold of the clasp...
"Just open the bag already, will ya?" Wyatt asked, annoyed. Chris shot him a murderous look.
"Will you shut up? I'm trying to make sure I won't get incinerated by anything she could've put on the bag..."
"Well, try to make sure you won't get incinerated quickly!" Wyatt retorted.
"Shut. UP!" Chris growled at him, then turned his attention back to the bag. He grabbed a hold of the smooth metal clasp and flipped it up. For a moment it didn't move, then, as if it had been on time delay, it flicked upwards and the bag opened. Chris let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding in relief, then frowned slightly.
"Well, that was easier than expected," he told Wyatt. "A little...too easy, to tell the truth." Wyatt arched an eyebrow.
"Maybe she figured she would always have her bag on her," he suggested. He shrugged. "Who knows, who cares? It's open now: see what's in there."
Chris looked in the bag. "Um...well, her clothes. And some other stuff. And...a book."
"A book?"
"Yes, a book. It's really little, though, about the size of one of those pocket dictionaries. Couldn't be a Book of Shadows or anything."
Wyatt sighed. "Grab it out, anyway. It might be a book on the Pen-Ultimae or something..." Chris nodded.
"Okay..." He reached into the bag to grab the book...and he couldn't reach it. He frowned and reached further into the bag. The book was still where it had been, but his hand...Chris felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
"What's wrong, why aren't you getting the book?" Wyatt asked him impatiently
"Let's just say it's a bit further away then I thought it was," he replied. He withdrew his hand, frowning a little.
"Uh...could you please explain?" Wyatt asked. Chris set the bag down on the floor and turned to him.
"Well, I think...I think she has put a spell on this bag. A spell to expand its capacity."
Wyatt arched an eyebrow. "Are you serious?" he asked. Chris nodded. "How big is it?" In reply, the younger Halliwell picked up the bag and turned it upside down.
A deluge of objects came tumbling from the mouth of the bag...clothes, shoes, smaller bags, boxes, potion bottles...and the Book. Chris and Wyatt stared at it.
Eryn's Book was roughly the same size as their own Book of Shadows, but it was almost one-and-a-half times as thick. It was bound in well-worn black leather, with an ornate silver triquetra adorning the front cover. An elaborate silver clasp, covered with a tracery of Celtic knotwork, kept the Book closed.
"It looked smaller when it was in the bag," Chris commented finally. Wyatt nodded slowly.
"I'll bet it did," he replied, eyeing the Book. He glanced at his younger brother. "So, read any good books lately?" Chris glared at him.
"No. No way. I went through her bag, so that means you get to read the Book."
"But I thought you liked reading other people's Books...y'know, see the different spells and potions and things," Wyatt said hopefully, his dark hazel eyes meeting Chris' lighter ones. Chris gave him a small, grim smile and pointed at the Book.
"Now, Wyatt," he said, and the tone of his voice told Wyatt that he would brook no argument.
Wyatt shot him a dirty look. : Wimp, : he thought in Chris' general direction as he walked over to the Book.
"I heard that," Chris grumbled at him.
"You were meant to hear that, bro," Wyatt told him before focussing his attention on the Book. He lifted his foot and gingerly nudged it. Nothing happened. He nudged it again, a little harder. Still nothing. Taking a deep breath, he reached down and picked it up, letting it out in a relieved sigh when nothing happened. He walked over to the sofa and sat down. He looked at it for a moment.
"You gonna open it or not?" Chris asked, walking over to sit on the arm of the sofa. Wyatt frowned slightly.
"I guess..." His voice trailed off. Chris reached over and clapped him on the shoulder.
"Don't worry. If you die, I'll avenge you," he told him cheerfully. Wyatt arched an eyebrow.
"Exactly how do you avenge my death if the thing that killed me was a book?"
Chris smirked and looked at the Book.
"Would you prefer to have all your pages ripped out, or be burned, or be sunk in the sea?" he asked it politely. Wyatt laughed, then frowned slightly as the Book seemed to shiver in his grip. Chris looked at him closely. "What's up?"
"The Book...I think it understood you or something."
Chris arched an eyebrow. "Okay...and the sky is purple. Wyatt, it's a book for chrissake's. Sure, it's a Book of Shadows, but it is still a book, an inanimate object. It can't understand human talk!" Wyatt rolled his eyes.
"I know, I know, it just...it felt like it shivered with fear or something." Chris snorted.
"Oh, yes, the Book shivered with fear...look, you know how you said it understood me or something...let's just say it was the 'or something', all right?"
Wyatt sighed. "All right." He laid his fingers gently on the clasp, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, then quickly undid it and threw the Book open. He waited. After a moment with nothing happening, he slowly opened one eye. The Book was lying innocently on his lap, opened to the first page, which had a beautiful inscription of the Wiccan Rede on it. He glanced at his brother, a grin on his face.
"I'm fi-ine, I'm fi-ine," he said in a sing-song voice. Chris just rolled his eyes at him.
"That's great, Wy, but do you reckon you could, oh, I dunno, maybe start looking for entries on the Pen-Ulitmae or the glowy-arm-thingy? Because you may be fine, but Eryn might not be."
Wyatt arched an eyebrow. "You've certainly had a change of heart. What happened to the 'I don't care about her, I just wanted her out of the house,' trip you were on, huh?"
Chris winced as his earlier words, yelled at Wyatt when his then-furious older sibling had asked if he cared that he had just effectively kicked their Dad's charge out of the house. "That was when I still hated her guts."
"You don't now?" Wyatt asked.
"Not so much."
"Well, I guess that's an improvement..." Wyatt muttered, turning his attention back to the Book. He gently touched the worn page, then began to slowly flip through it.
----
For fifteen minutes, there was total silence as the brothers scanned the pages of the Book for any signs of the Pen-Ultimae or the deal-thing, then Wyatt stopped flicking through the pages, his eyes widening in shock at the sight before him. He and Chris stared at the page, then at each other.
"Well, I guess we've found our Pen-Ultimae reference," Chris said softly.
"Um...yeah, I think we may have," Wyatt agreed. "In fact..." he went on, flicking through the pages following the initial double-page entry, "...I think we may have found our comprehensive chapter-slash-guidebook on the Pen-Ultimae."
"Okay. All right. Good. Let's get started reading this..." Chris began.
"...Because the sooner we finish, the sooner we can help Eryn," Wyatt finished for him. Chris glared at him.
"I hate it when you do that."
Wyatt just rolled his eyes at him and shifted the Book to where they could both see it. "Just read, okay?"
Chris nodded, his eyes beginning to flick over the lines of the entry as Wyatt began reading the second page. After a few paragraphs, Chris stopped reading and poked Wyatt in the shoulder.
"Wyatt..."
There was no reply: his brother was too busy reading the book. He poked him again.
"Wyatt..."
"Hm...?" Wyatt asked distractedly.
"Wyatt!" Chris said insistently, poking him harder. Wyatt turned to him furiously.
"Ow! Stop poking me! What is it?"
Chris waved his hand at the Book. "This contradicts everything we've read about the Pen-Ultimae."
"Yeah, and it confirms everything Eryn told us," Wyatt replied, stretching slightly. "What's the problem?"
"It's just...how is it possible that such a powerful demonic clan has been out there for all this time, and we don't even know about it? And why haven't they made a bid for power? They're certainly powerful enough...hell, it says so right here," he said, stabbing a finger at the Book. Wyatt nodded.
"Yeah, and it says right here..." he pointed to a line of text on his page, "...that they're waiting until they have combined all the bloods - or powers - of all the powerful corporeal beings before they make their move."
Chris shrugged. "They have. Ardariaen's got all the powers of all the powerful demonic beings..."
"Chris, I said corporeal, not demonic," Wyatt interrupted.
"So?"
"So, Ardariaen isn't the one with all the bloods of the powerful corporeal beings. But he did contribute to the person who does."
Chris nodded slowly. "Eryn."
"Yeah. The only problem is, she's not on their side. She's good. So that's a bit of a problem for the Pen-Ultimae. I guess they figured everyone in the family would be evil. Bit of a misjudgment on their part, really..."
"So that's why?" Chris interrupted.
"That's why what?"
"That's why Ardariaen wants to kill her? So he will have all the powers of the powerful corporeal beings?"
Wyatt grinned. "See, I knew you weren't slow! Yeah, that's it. Once she's dead, and he's got her powers, he can make a bid for domination of the Underworld and Above-lands."
Chris sat silently for a second, absorbing the information, then nodded. "Okay. Well, this information..." he ran his fingers over the pages "...could help us stop Ardariaen and help Eryn, so we should keep going."
Wyatt nodded, and the two of them bent over the Book again. After a few minutes, Chris stopped and glared at Wyatt.
"I am not slow!" he said indignantly. His older brother looked up from the Book and stared at him for a few seconds, then shook his head and went back to reading.
"I'm not!" Chris insisted, but Wyatt just nodded and laughed.
"Sure, Chris. Of course you're not. Now, let's just get focussed on reading, huh?"
Chris nodded grudgingly, grumbling under his breath.
"I am not slow."
----
"Nothing. Nada. Zilch," Wyatt announced flatly half an hour later. He and Chris had trawled through the entire entry on the Pen-Ultimae in Eryn's book...all twenty-seven pages of it.
"'The Demons of the Pen-Ultimae clan are possessed of a strength and a power that no Demon or Witch can hope to match...each generation is stronger than the generation preceding, three-fold...' " Chris quoted grimly. The two brothers looked at each other.
"We're screwed," they said at the same time. Wyatt sighed and rested his chin on his hand.
"Tell me about it," he grumbled. "There's no spell, no vanquishing potion, other demons we can get to attack them for us..."
Chris stood up and stretched. "There's got to be a way to beat them," he said, walking over to their own Book of Shadows and flicking through the pages. "Maybe if we combined some vanquishing potions for some upper-level demons together, we could..."
"Blow ourselves up," Wyatt said. "Or end up with a totally inert potion that wouldn't hurt a gremlin."
"Stop using chemistry terms in magic," Chris told him. Wyatt just rolled his eyes.
"It was the best term to describe it. But anyway, back to the problem at hand...maybe we should be looking for something else. Maybe we're getting too stuck on looking for the Pen-Ultimae. Maybe we should start looking for the oath-thing, or the minions he had." Chris arched an eyebrow at him. "What, you got a better idea?"
Chris walked back over to the sofa and sat down, and they began to - again - flick through the pages. Occasionally, they'd see something that looked promising, but invariably turned out to be nothing.
----
An hour lately, Chris was lying flat on his back on the sofa, staring up at the ceiling, while Wyatt continued to look through Eryn's Book of Shadows.
"Y'know, you could help me with this," Wyatt told Chris. "Instead of me feeling like my arms about to drop off, you could have helped out, and..."
"...we'd both feel like our arms were about to drop off," Chris finished, his eyes never leaving the ceiling. "Stop being such a sissy."
Wyatt waited a moment, then subtly flicked his fingers at his brother. The younger boy suddenly flipped off the sofa and landed on his butt on the floor.
"Ow, geez, what was that for?" Chris asked, getting gingerly to his feet. Wyatt arched an eyebrow.
"Do you really wanna get chucked out a window again?" he asked pointedly. Chris wrinkled his nose slightly and sat down beside him.
"Um, no, not really." His older brother grinned and flicked another page, then stopped.
"Oh, look, the arm...glowy...thingy," Wyatt said, pointing to a page in the book, and more to the point, at the illustration of two people, their hands clasped in front of them, a glowing blue light emanating from their arms. Chris craned his neck around to look over at the book, and for a moment the two of them read the entry in silence. Wyatt finished first and leaned back with a sigh.
"That's not much help...it just says that it's a kind of blood oath. And we already know about them."
Chris frowned slightly. "Hang on a minute..." he grabbed the book from Wyatt and re-read a line of the entry. "Look, check it out: '...The deal-makers are bound to do exactly as they have sworn to. The terms of the bargain must be spelt out, to the letter, elst there may be loopholes one may exploit to nullify the deal...'"
Wyatt frowned. "Like I said, not much help. I mean, Eryn's terms were she would go with him if he promised to not harm us, or allow any of his minions to harm us. And the moment she dies..." he pointed to the end of the entry, "...it's null and void, and he can kill us at his leisure." Chris shrugged.
"Yeah, well, she never said she'd stay with him once she went, did she?"