Hi, so Season 6 and we are over the halfway mark for this story. As you see we are halfway through and someone else is making his appearance, I might have to give Billie's Dad a happier ending than what he got on the show because the truth is that he is so good to write and his relationship with Paige is so devious. Hands down Zankou was the best thing about Season 7 (we will not mention the cop that shall not be mentioned or whatever the f was being done with Daryl) so I am loving that I have brought him in early.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

Also Zankou and Cole have never met in this story. I don't know if it's more to do with their human sides but I am choosing to believe that while they have heard about each other they have not seen each other face to face in human form.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

Please Read and Review.

We will cover quite a bit in the last fifteen chapters that are Season 6 and Season 7, Season 8 is probably only going to be two chapters if that.

Also if I did make Paige/Zankou a thing how would that sit with you?

In case it was not clear. I DESPISE THE ELDERS, LIKE ALL OF THEM, EVEN THE ONE WHO TRIED TO HELP LEO. I JUST...BIGGEST BUNCH OF HYPOCRITES ON TV.

Hope that was nice and clear.

I have gone a little into the background of Zankou and I have used Jarrod the 'Mummy' guy as the main villain mainly because he is old enough and maybe because he was what Cole described as legendary. Plus I always thought he and his witch were quite evil.

Mother Of Invention

Chapter 17-Evil In The Night

Paige in an effort to find herself both with Zan and without gets involved with a feud, may or may not sell her soul and nearly gets herself killed in Camelot. Billie wants to know what the hell is going on.

Richard was a distraction.

That was a kind way of putting it if Paige was being honest. Richard was more than a distraction, Richard was an annoyance.

Zan was liberating.

He was also a demon.

She was ninety nine percent sure of that. She was ninety nine percent sure that he was a demon.

She was also ninety nine percent sure that she was in love with him.

The problem was she had nobody to talk about it with.

Phoebe was the obvious choice but things between Phoebe and Cole, the new job and the club. Piper weighed down with whatever separation or divorce or whatever she and Leo were going through and also being a single mother had allowed with grudging thanks and much disapproval Cole to run the club on the busy weekends. As it turned out Cole had several connections over a lifetime of worlds as a demon and he was more than happy to use them.

This had come to fruition when Snow Patrol had come to play and Billie had gone into transports of delight and had been unable to do anything other than sit in her chair at the bar and rock side to side and Paige had for once had a perfectly behaved daughter who was so desperate to go to the concert that she would have done anything.

So yeah Phoebe was the obvious choice and yet she could not bring herself to speak to her sister about loving a demon. There had always been the underlying acknowledgement in that relationship that Cole had been ready to get out of the life. That Phoebe had helped him and that had inevitably endeared him to Piper and Prue. The fact that she was ninety percent sure Zan was not going to chance led to a conundrum the likes of which she could not speak to either sister about.

And the problem was everything with him was so…so…good.

And it was.

Brushing aside the sex which was so mind-blowingly fantastic there were several times afterwards where she couldn't speak and she would be left legs wide open slightly wide eyed staring at the ceiling having experienced an orgasm so intense she felt like she was a teenager again, there were several other things that made her feel like she was in the best relationship of her entire life.

He was dangerous and dynamic and yet gentle and kind. He saw inside her soul. She knew it was bad to be this badly in love with someone so early, for all she knew it was a spell that was making her act this way but she didn't know how to stay away from him. She didn't know how to keep Billie away from him and so when she got her soul back and she finally kicked Richard to the curb (and Phoebe finally managed to get her empath shit under control) she found that she was going over to his apartment and letting herself in.

"Are you a demon?" she asked as she saw him in the kitchen bare feet on the kitchen as he poured wine.

"Nice question to ask the man your seeing darling"

"And yet you don't seem freaked out by me asking"

"Why?" he said turning around and putting the wine on the table. "Does it matter? I thought you knew"

She dropped her bag on the floor.

"Can I orb out?"

There was no beating around the bush with him. They had both been dancing around each other for so long when it came to that and she had not the time and certainly not the patience to continue to do so.

"I am not some kind of monster of course you can—"

"So you're the civilised demon then?"

"I am the demon who fathered your child. And you are the witch who is the mother of my child"

So there it was, out in the open, badly, baldly out in the open and they both stared at each other. There was so much to say and yet she didn't even know where to begin. She thought that she always knew what was going to happen, thought that she always knew what was going to happen and yet when the time came…

"Are you here to kill me and my sisters"

"No"

"Oh cause your that kind of demon?"

"My name is Zankou" he said quietly. "Zan works, are you having a drink or not?"

"Not"

"Okay" he said sitting down and taking the glass of red in his own hand. He twirled his finger around the rim for a second and then nodded as if he was thinking through something in his head and wondering how to phrase it.

"I didn't come here to kill you or your sisters" he said finally. "I wont lie killing the Charmed One's is a caveat all demons crave but the reality is I am not a stupid demon. You don't get to where I have been without some sense"

"Are you like Cole?"

"You mean half human?"

"Yes"

"Yes. Most of us are. We weren't born. Some demons can be but most are made. I was made in Ancient Egypt in the first wave of civilization. I am the first demon Paige. I am the first"

"Thought the Source was the first"

He cracked a laugh at that as if what she had said was genuinely amusing to him.

"That's what they all think" he said quietly. "I don't…I don't want ultimate power. The Source knows or knew as the case may be that I could take it from him or her at any given moment, they also knew that I was too powerful to be defeated. You think the Source was unstoppable? It's not arrogance when I say Paige that I am indestructible because I am."

"How did you become…" she gestured and he sighed and she noticed something flicker across his face. An emotion she had never seen before. Sadness.

"I had a family once. Child, wife, baby on the way. It was a boy. Billie would have been his little sister or maybe not. Had my boys lived things would have been very different. I would have grown old and died naturally, the way things were supposed to be. Back then…back then I was a slave, I don't know how much history you learnt but back then all of my kind were in slavery to the Pharoh's. And when I say total slavery I mean total slavery. It wasn't as glamourous as it is portrayed now on TV in those history channels. Dying wasn't your decision, living wasn't your decision, your bodies weren't yours, your children weren't yours and you excepted it. It was as normal as the sun rising in the morning and setting at night. But somehow my wife and I made it work. Until he came—"

Here his face convulsed into a pulsating fury that she didn't understand and yet somehow she did. This was not a story that came with a happy ending attached. This was not a story that came with any kind of ending that she would want to hear.

And yet somehow she could not stop listening.

"My master died and his son came back from distant lands. Jarrod his name was—"

"The Mummy—"

"Yeah. He was the second. He was already with Iris then, already with her. Witches, the Elders, they were established back then I found, maybe there was evil in the world but a human form turned evil? That was a thing the Elders never thought was possible. Iris was an evil witch in love with a mortal man and she wanted to make him immortal. Poor fool never knew what the burden was. He thought it would be glorious, they would live like Kings forever and ever amen."

He spat on the floor.

"He did…experiments…well they both did I suppose. Experiments on people, spells, potions, anything to see if they could achieve their goals and slaves…well…" here he shook his head and she felt vaguely sick at the tale and where she knew it was going.

"Slaves were dispensable"

Now he looked dark and dangerous, twisted and evil she thought. He was still hot but he looked dangerous.

"He came for my wife first. She was pregnant with our second baby and…" his face contorted again and she felt sick. "I saw what was left of them both at the end" he shook his head and she felt the pulse of pure rage, or pure magical rage crash through the air and she hoped against hope that she was the only person who was alerted to this even though she knew that she would not be.

"I saw what was done…her body mutilated and split open and my baby…" his jaw twisted to the side painfully. "And Jarrod said…well…she's just a slave my love. Plenty more fish in the sea. And she laughed."

Paige felt like she was going to be sick.

"And…"

"My son? He was next. He was seven. I fought like hell to save him…but they had magic and I had…nothing. He died screaming for me as I fought against magic on my knees begging them to stop. Iris thought it was funny."

Paige closed her eyes on the onslaught of images.

"I don't know how I became a demon" he said quietly. "I just remember praying to whatever and whoever was out there that if they gave me the power to stop them I would. And then I did. I couldn't defeat them. But I trapped her to an eternity of agony and suffering. I know that in turn it killed a lot of witches and to some extent I am sorry for that…mostly. But with every painful transformation, with every battle for her space in a body—I caused her indescribable agony and for that I do not, never will and certainly shall not apologise. That bitch deserved to burn for what she did."

Dimly she heard her phone go off. She ignored it.

"And then?"

"I retreated to the Underworld. I was the first of my kind…I was taught about the Elders and I knew enough to know that anyone who claims they are thinking of the good of others while stripping them of their choices could not rule me. They know who I am but they do not approach. I think they know I could destroy them. You think the Titans are what they feared…think again"

She did not know what to quite make of that either.

"And me?"

"I didn't…I was lonely" he said quietly. "I transformed into younger forms all the time. I thought that company might help the loneliness. Bal—or I suppose it is Cole now—he will tell you the loneliness is what cripples you, so upon occasion I went up. Sometimes I was an old man, sometimes I was a teenager, sometimes I was a little boy."

He shrugged and Paige was honestly not sure how she felt about that.

"And Billie?"

"Paige you were a pretty girl who was looking for danger. Don't ask me why the fates decided that we would have a child together, but we did. I certainly wasn't looking for fatherhood. Maybe it's one of those things that had you adopted by a family instead of jumping around the system. Maybe it is one of those things that saved Cole from becoming the new source. Maybe it's why the Elders didn't know you existed. They like to think that they control the world and in reality they don't control shit"

Paige filed that away for another day.

"So what does this mean?"

"Darling it was never my intention to father a child, but I have and you and I cannot pretend that I didn't. There is a threat on the horizon, a new great something in the air. The Elders will not stand for a half demon child so close to the Charmed Ones…should I remind you how they are around Wyatt. You can sit there and pretend all you want but they are going to come for our daughter soon and you know it. All I want and all I ask is that you allow me to help you, get to know her, get to know you. Because while I am genuinely apathetic about stuff like this I think you and I bring out the best and the worst in each other."

She didn't know what to say to that but Zankou moved forwards and she didn't move away.

"Paige" he said in that patient but yet molten way that had her core melting.

"I can promise you exactly one thing. I am not going to hurt you or our daughter. I am feared in the Underworld perhaps, I am feared by the Elders most definitely. I am apathetic to anything but my own desires and I desire you and our daughter and I know that your sisters have to live in order for that to happen. Believe it or not I don't enjoy fucking up the Grand Design. No demon does. The Elders on the other hand…"

He trailed off and Paige considered this.

For her he was telling her something that she already knew. She knew what the Elders were. She knew the monsters that they were. She couldn't like them even though she tried. They had torn her away from her real family and while she loved her adoptive parents beyond words thanks the Elders she had not formed a relationship with either her father, her mother or her sister all of them dead now.

"I don't know what to say"

"Hey I am not going anywhere" he said with a lazy shrug. "I can wait. Providing your sisters don't try to kill me in the meantime"

Paige nodded feeling a little dazed with knowledge.

Zankou twisted his head to the side and sniffed.

"Whitelighter" he said casually. "Your brother in law just orbed outside the door with one of your sisters. I imagine my little rage set off a few alarms. They're here to hunt for the demon I imagine"

She nodded just as there was a knock at the door.

"Should I freeze?"

"No. Give me a second"

She walked to the door and opened it.

"One moment" she said and then she slammed it in Piper's face and when she turned he was there. For a second they looked at each other and then he kissed her slamming her up against the wall of the door and she kissed him back tongues mingling and she wanted nothing more to do than to drink him in and eat him and never let him go, to have him take her to the floor of her kitchen hard.

For a second they stood there kissing and then breathing with each other and then she turned and wrenched the door open.

"Sorry" Piper said looking at the two of them. "Paige we have a problem"

"Oh?"

"Yes…our map lit up like magic a few minutes ago"

She heard Zankou snort behind her and she had to bite down hard on her already swollen lip.

"Oh?"

"We need you"

"Oh"

"You go" Zankou said quietly. "I am gonna be right here waiting"

She couldn't look back at him but she nodded and despite all her wanting to do was stay she wrenched herself away from him and out into the night knowing full well that she had just been snogging the evil that her sisters were no doubt under orders to vanquish.

And there you go, I hope you enjoyed. I quite liked humanising Zankou.

Next Chapter-Paige goes to the one person who might know about demons. Cole. And Chris shocks them all when his past as a half witch, half whitelighter and the truth of why he is here is reviled.