Chapter 2 - The Choices We Make

"Found her!" Piper announced as she stopped flipping through the Book of Shadows.

"Good, I was starting to lose hope." Paige said and walked over to her sister's side to take a look at what the Book had to say about this new demon.

"Wait, I thought you said she looked completely ordinary. How'd you find her then?" Phoebe asked from the sofa she was sitting in.

"Well, demon who looks like a human is easy enough to recognize amongst all the other disgusting, repulsing creatures in the Book, don't you think?" Piper smirked.

"Okay, what does it say?" Leo asked his wife.

"Ciara, powerful demon, used to be the right hand of the Source, has Vampires' and Shapeshifting abilities, trained by the Alchemist in brewing potions, joins alliance only with the mighty and powerful... Cliché." Piper read in the boring tone of voice.

"Cliché?!" Paige raised her eyebrows, her eyes still focused on the page in the Book. "I don't mean to burst your bubble but when have you ever met a demon who is a Demon, a Vampire, an Alchemist and a Shapeshifter?"

Piper pulled a face. "Yeah, maybe you're right." she agreed and turned to her husband. "Maybe you should go and check if the Elders know anything that we don't."

"Okay, I'll be back as soon as possible. You guys stick together, this one isn't as easy as we thought she'd be." Leo said, kissing his wife shortly on the lips and orbed out.

"Phoebe?" Paige looked apologetically at her sister.

"Oh no, I sense you're gonna say something I won't like." Phoebe moaned.

"We need Cole for this and I think you should be the one to call him this time. You owe it to him." Paige said.

"Couldn't agree more!" Piper grinned, relieved that she was not the one to call her angry demonic ex bother-in-law.

"He's in the office." Paige said and held out a phone for Phoebe to take.

Phoebe let out a frustrated sigh but argued none. She knew her sisters were right, although she did not like it. She took the phone carefully, as if it might bite her head off, and dialed Cole's number.

"Turner." Cole answered the phone.
"Hey Cole, it's me." Phoebe said in a quiet tone of voice. "Look, we've been attacked by a demon named Ciara. I'll understand if you don't wanna come down here again, but at least fill me in on the phone. Do you know anything about her?"

"Ciara?" Cole straightened in a chair. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah so if you would just fill me in..." Phoebe asked carefully.

"No, I'll be right there." Cole said and hung up the phone.

Phoebe looked dumbfounded but before she could tell any of her sisters what happened, Cole shimmered in. Phoebe immediately shifted her gaze from him to Piper.

Leo orbed in but when he saw Cole, he decided not to talk. He knew that the Elders couldn't be as well informed as the one hundred and twenty year-old demon.

"Ciara used to be the right hand of the Source, just like me. We even worked together for awhile, if you can call it that." Cole said and took a deep breath. Knowing him as well as she did, Phoebe immediately noticed something in the way he spoke that he was trying to conceal but she knew better than to interrupt him. "Later, when the war between the Source and the Vampires became official, she chose the wrong side. When the first Vampire Queen was murdered, the Source sent dozens of Bounty Hunters after her, but they never found her. She appeared to have vanished into the thin air. Nobody has seen her since." he said.

"Well, I'd definitely say I saw her today." Piper said. "She asked me where the Charmed Ones were and didn't seem too eager to fight. She just threw a potion at me and vanished."

Cole smirked. "That sounds like Ciara. Just like the Seers, the Seductresses and certain other demons, she finds killing too messy and won't do it unless she has no other alternative."

"A demon who doesn't like killing... Interesting!" Paige said rather sarcastically.

"Yes, but what was she doing here today?" Phoebe asked worriedly. "She had no clue who we were or how we looked like..."

"What exactly did she say, Piper?" Cole asked slowly, fearing the answer.

"She asked me where the Charmed Ones were, though she didn't look particularly interested..." Piper said, trying to remember every single detail and ignore the kicks in the kidney her baby was giving her.

"Anything else?" Cole asked.

"Yes, something about..." she paused "Something about Louisiana and she mentioned a year and... She said something about the power and passion."

Cole's heart sank. "Passion is just an abbreviation of power." he quoted "Is that what she said?"

"Yes, that's exactly what she said." Piper gave him a suspicious look.

"And then I assume that the year was 1926?" Cole raised his eyebrows.

"Wait, how do you know all that?" Paige asked quickly.

Cole closed his eyes regretfully. "I'm sorry." he whispered.

"Cole?" Phoebe spoke slowly. Although he gave no sign of it, Phoebe knew he heard her. She approached him slowly and placed the palm on her hand on his cheek. She knew how to read him even when he didn't want her to. "Talk to me." she whispered.

Cole backed off, acting as if she had burnt him. It hurt him endlessly to be close to her and to not be able to touch her the way he wanted to. It hurt more than anything else ever did and he knew that at that moment, his heartache was the last thing they all needed.

"She wasn't actually attacking you at all, it was nothing but a bluff." he spoke when he returned to his senses. "In fact, I doubt she is even interested in any of you. She just wanted to get to me, to find out if I were still alive."

"What makes you so sure?" Leo asked.

"Can't you see? She didn't even know what the Charmed Ones looked like, she didn't know one of them was pregnant. And then, she says two lines and all of sudden throws a potion? Doesn't it all seem a little too obvious to you? She didn't care, she knew it wouldn't work. She just needed the time to slip me a message." Cole said.

Phoebe knew the look in his eyes. He was trying to be a new person, he was trying to ignore his past but it all kept coming back to him. He had the same look in his eyes when The Brotherhood surfaced. "And the message was '1926, Louisiana'?" she asked quietly.

"Yes." Cole answered. "Please, don't ask more."

"Okay." Piper said only to break the silence that followed Cole's last sentence. "But we aren't letting you go meet her anywhere alone. You're not looking for her on your own. The last thing we need is to nearly lose you again like we did the last time. Remember that?"

"I remember, but this is different. This is just her and I can handle her." Cole said simply.

Phoebe stood up from the chair she sat in only few seconds ago. "What if it's a trap? What if she lures you into bunch of demons? Don't forget that you are officially dead and I'd prefer it stay that way."

Cole shook his head, still looking at one spot on the floor he picked. "She is alone. I know her. She wouldn't get me into a trap. It's not who she is."

"She is a demon. It's in demonic nature to ambush, to betray. You should know." Phoebe said, her voice begging him to understand.

"I do know, but it's not in her own nature." Cole replied.

Phoebe frowned. "Didn't you just say that she betrayed the Source?"

"It's different." Cole sighed. He wasn't in the best mood and Phoebe wasn't helping. He knew that if she kept it up, he might say something he'd regret later.

"How is it different?" Phoebe kept firing questions at him.

"She would never betray me." Cole replied and it finally hit Phoebe - they must have been romantically involved. She closed her eyes and sat back into the chair. Of course, she had seen many demons involved in what they called relationships, only she never imagined Cole being in one before he met her. She felt like everything she and Cole have been through crush down in front of her eyes.

She took a deep breath. "Okay, go." she said simply.

"Wait, what?" Piper widened her eyes. "Didn't we just agree on keeping him safe?"

"He trusts her and we have to trust him. I remember that once I asked you guys to do the same - trust the one I love." she said, purposely picking the words to describe her pain to Cole.

Cole walked over to Phoebe, took her hand and led her out the room. Once he was sure they couldn't be overheard, he looked into Phoebe's eyes and smiled slightly.

"I don't love her. You know that." he whispered.

Phoebe felt the tears burning her eyes, but she knew she must be stronger than that. She wouldn't break in front of her ex husband only because he used to be with some other woman before he met her.

"I don't know anything anymore." she replied. "Look, just go and find this Ciara and talk to her."

"I don't love her." Cole repeated.

"I don't care." Phoebe replied while staring deep into his eyes.

"Yes Phoebe, you do." he whispered. "You do because it's our past that's at stake here. You don't care because of the present - I know you don't love me anymore. But you do care because you don't want to feel like everything we've been through was just a lie and it wasn't."

"Did you love her?" Phoebe whispered vulnerably.

Cole shook his head. "No, I never did. I was a demon before I met you, I didn't even know what love feels like. There was only passion that I could feel for women."

"And she loved you?" Phoebe asked.

Cole broke the eye contact. "Yes, but she wanted me to love her back and because she knew that all I could offer her is passion, she broke it off."

"Just go." Phoebe begged him.

"I will but I want to know if you trust me first." Cole said while trying to make her look at him again. "Do you, Phoebe?" he asked as he leaned his forehead against hers.

"I always did." Phoebe replied and gently pressed her lips against his own before she could detain herself. She needed to feel that she was still in his heart. For as selfish as it was, even though she had moved on, she didn't know how to live without Cole loving her. She needed him to love her even if she was the one who was dating others now.

Cole felt his heart pounding in his chest, screaming at him to keep kissing Phoebe but he didn't. After only a second-long kiss where their lips barely touched, he broke it off and stepped back. He smiled gently at Phoebe who still had her eyes closed and shimmered out.

"Is it just me or did I just see you kiss Cole?" Leo asked with a grin when he stepped into the hall.

"Yeah but it's not what it looks like." Phoebe said quickly.

"Isn't it?" Leo smiled. "It looked like a kiss - and it was a kiss, wasn't it?"

"Well yeah, but..." Phoebe started.

"Say no more." Leo cut her off. "I'll see you later, I have to go to a meeting with the Elders. I'll be back soon."

Phoebe nodded. "Oh and Leo, if you have time after that... Go check up on Cole, just to make sure it wasn't a trap."

Leo smiled. "Of course."

"Thank you." Phoebe said gratefully and headed back to the attic.

P

Cole shimmered into the living room of an old fashioned house. He glanced around. The house was exactly the way it had been the last time he was there - clean, warm and inviting. He realized that he never before even took a good look around; Belthazor wasn't really interested in the looks of anything.

Suddenly, he heard another shimmer behind him, but he didn't have to turn around to know who it was. He felt the woman lean against his back and wrap her arms around his waist. "I knew you'd come." she said in a low and hopelessly seductive voice.

"I came to hear what you wanted, not to have fun." Cole replied as he grabbed her by the wrists and backed away from her. He suddenly realized that Belthazor was far more interested in Ciara than he was. He didn't even find her attractive.

"You know what I want, Belthazor." she said and pulled him into a luring kiss which Cole broke off almost immediately. He could still feel the taste of Phoebe's lips on his own and he wouldn't trade that for the world. "What's the matter?"

"You cannot just appear here after eighty years and pretend like no time has passed." Cole said a little angrily.

"Oh, I know the time has passed, but I wanna make it up to you, Belthazor..." she said quickly.

"That is not who I am anymore. Surely you have heard the rumors..." Cole said impatiently.

"That you have fallen for a witch?" she asked curiously. "Yes, but I don't believe that. You said it yourself - you are a demon. Demons cannot love."

"I was wrong." Cole said, stepping out of her reach again. "I am half-human and that witch has awoken my human side and my ability to love."

"So love me." she said, acting as if everything was simple. "You used to want me, now you can love me too."

"I can't, Ciara. Phoebe is the only one I care about, the only one I can ever love." Cole said, desperate to explain to her everything he was feeling.

She eyed him up and down. "You've changed, Belthazor." she said in a surprised tone "For the worse, unfortunately."

"No, I've changed for the better. Literally." Cole said slowly. "I work for the good side now, I'm not evil anymore."

Ciara laughed. She had the kind of laugh that made the hairs on the back of one's neck. "You can never be good, Belthazor." she whispered. Then, while approaching him, she looked at him with concern. "What had that witch done to you?"

Cole smiled. "She made me fall for her. Only a purely good soul could do it. And loving someone good turns you good yourself after awhile."

"You cannot be good. It is not who you are." she hissed.

"It's not about who we are, Ciara. It's about the choices we make." Cole whispered and shimmered out with a smirk on his face.