A/N: short and sweet.
Denny stared at the document in her hand. She didn't know whether she wanted to laugh maniacally or cry in rage. As she tried so hard to sever her connections to her overbearing family more connections were uncovered. Why? Why was she drowning in the Halliwell tradition of tragedy? Everything just seemed to drag her back to the only destiny she had; death. Finding Bonnie was just another reminder.
It was so odd to think that this condition existed, especially since it was in such an unexpected place. Denny loved her grandpa Victor; he was amazing and understood what she was going through. Heck, he was the one who encouraged her to look at going to school out of state. Still, Victor was mortal or at least they had always thought so. Somewhere further back in his ancestry witches had sired his bloodline, it was just so long ago that the blood passed down to him had completely diminished any relation to the witches to be able to inherit any powers.
"Emily Bennett's family were originally slaves; that's how she's related to Victor," Payton was telling them; Denny was still staring off, not fully paying attention to her surroundings. "His family must have owned them and one of the men got a slave girl pregnant; she must have been a descendant of Ayana, and her children took the slave owner's last name of Bennett."
"Yet another interesting piece of family history we've learned on this vacation," Denny muttered. "My mother will just love this," she added with a sarcastic bite.
Payton and Phyl shared a look; each concerned with the growing bitterness they had seen in their favorite cousin and best friend. The twins were still reeling from her announcement earlier; the fact that Denny had been accepted to school in Virginia and wouldn't be coming home meant that the three best friends would be separated for the first time in their lives. Nothing they had seen or heard could explain why Denny was so angry with her mother or wanted to get as far away from their family and they were worried that there was more to the story.
"So Denny spills some blood and you speak in creepy Latin and Bonnie is back from the grave," Damien said in snarky disbelief. "Let's get this show on the road then," slapping his hands together and oozing a kind of hot sexual awkwardness.
"No creepy Latin necessary," Phyl informed them. "We just need some candles, a kind of token that belonged to Bonnie and an athame."
"A what," Matt asked.
"It's a ceremonial tool," Denny told him from where she stood in the other corner of the room. Normally she would have hit on him, dousing each word in sexual innuendo but the current turn of events had taken all of the fight out of her. "I have one in our supply bag. I'll go get it," she fled the room and everyone looked after her.
"Is it me or is she kind of being a downer," Caroline asked. "Shouldn't we be happy about being able to summon Bonnie?"
"Denny is kind of going through some weird family stuff right now," Phyl offered quietly. "She hasn't been herself," she looked toward Stefan, who offered her a small smile. It had been so easy to talk to him the night before and she wondered if she would have time to get to know him better during this entire mess. It's not like it was of any use, she thought. It wasn't like anything was going to come from this complication.
Denny walked back in heaving a black duffle bag that she unceremoniously dumped on the floor. "Here it is."
Phyl sighed while Payton groaned. Denny was not going to make this any easier on them and they got to unpacking the essentials when Phyl grabbed Payton's arm all of a sudden. "Someone's coming."
Denny looked to her cousins, suddenly full of concern. "Hide," she yelled to the others. "Get out of the way!"
Elena and Caroline backed up next to an old Armoire while the boys looked in disbelief. Caroline reached out and pulled Matt back just in time for dark black specks of light to come floating up from the floor boards.
"Darklighters," Denny yelled and two male darklighters took shape wearing black clothing and holding crossbows. She immediately froze them and ordered her cousins to leave.
"We're not going anywhere," Phyl said and called for a crossbow, orbing from their enemies hands into her own just as they unfroze and shot one in the heart while her sister threw the other one across the room with her telekinesis.
Denny threw out her hands and the last darklighter blew up in midair, raining little pieces of his leather trench coat before magically disappearing. "I love it when they clean up after themselves."
"What were they," Elena asked and came out from her hiding place.
"Darklighters," Payton answered. "They're kind of like anti-whitelighters. There are a couple of different types; some hunt whitelighters down to keep them from protecting witches, or they hunt humans who are on the path to becoming future whitelighters and sometimes they even impregnate mortals to increase evil's population as well as to give them an identity in our world."
"And," Drenny added, "their arrows are poisonous to whitelighters," smacking her cousins at the same time.
"Ow! What was that for?" Phyl rubbed the spot on her upper arm where Denny hit her.
"When I tell you to leave, you leave nimrod! You two could have gotten yourselves killed!"
"We had it under control," Payton told her. "Besides, we had them out numbered."
"Just wait until I tell your mother about this," Denny said and blazed out.
"What? Denny!" Phyl tried to sense her while Payton yelled in frustration.
"Okay," Damon said. "More freaky teleportation, except instead of bright blue stars we see a bright pink cloudy haze."
"It's called blazing," Payton told them. "She didn't go far. She's outside. We should go talk to her," she told her sister.
"Maybe not," Phyl disagreed and turned to the others. "Matt, would you go talk to her? She won't want to speak to us right now and she seems to respond to you."
"Sure," the blond responded and went to go do what he could.
Payton furrowed her brow and gave Phyl a half smile. "What are you up to?"
"Nothing," she sang her denial. "Just trying to give her some space."
