Through Hell
PenPatronus
Chapter One
One for All, All for Stiles

Stiles couldn't stand up anymore. His ankles rolled and his full weight fell on the two girls supporting him. He felt Allison tighten her grip around his waist, heard Lydia's strained breaths in his ear. A mud puddle on the forest floor went in and out of focus. "Stiles!" Allison gasped on his left. "Stiles, no!" The teen's right knee, bare beneath the hem of his cross country uniform, landed in the puddle and splashed mud across Lydia's nude heels.

Lydia squeaked and fell with Stiles as he collapsed in stages: knees, ankles, butt, left hip, his shoulder landing against Lydia's stomach, his cheek above her heart. "Oh no, no, Stiles," she gasped, "it's just a little further. I can see the mouth of the cave."

"Liar," Stiles whispered. He licked his pale lips and hugged the gashes that stretched halfway around his body from his bellybutton to his spine. It was dusk, a dark dusk. What started as a sprinkle had snowballed into a storm with thunder so loud that the three friends could barely hear each other speak.

Allison positioned her body above Stiles to keep the rain out of his face. "Stiles, listen to me. Scott and the others will find us soon. You just have to hang on a little longer."

Right on cue, a wolf howl echoed through the woods. "Derek…" Stiles whispered.

Lydia wiped her strawberry blonde hair out of her face. "You can recognize him by his roar?"

"I can recognize all of their howls," said Stiles. "I heard Cora right before you two found me. She sounded off, though. I think she's hurt…" Stiles frowned up at the girls. His eyes drooped like a sleepy infant's. "Am I – Am I hurt?"

Lydia stroked his cheek. "It isn't bad." Her voice trembled despite her best efforts. "That girl werewolf, the Alpha, she attacked you during the race, remember? You and Boyd."

"Boyd's dead," Stiles whispered. His eyes widened in terror. "She killed him. Oh God, Scott, Derek…"

"They can take care of themselves," Allison reminded him. "Stiles, you have to get up. I know these woods – the cave is only a hundred yards away."

"Can't." Stiles' blood dyed the mud puddle red.

"You have to," Allison urged him. "Stiles, we can't carry you." Liquid rolled down Stiles' cheeks. Whether it was rainwater or teardrops, the girls didn't know. "Stiles, get up – get up now!"

Lydia took a deep breath and tried another tactic. "Stiles?" Her thumb moved from his cheek to his chin to his lips. "Stiles, I'm scared. I need your help." His chocolate eyes fixed on hers. "I need you." And then, as gentle as a butterfly landing on a flower, Lydia pressed her warm, cranberry-colored lips against his cold, white mouth.

The kiss woke him up like a shot of adrenaline. He stared into Lydia's eyes but spoke to Allison, "Only a hundred yards?"

"Yes."

"If I pass out, I want you to go to the cave without me."

"Stiles—"

"Please, Allison."

Another wolf howl interrupted them. It was louder, closer. The girls looked expectedly at Stiles. "Was that Scott?" Allison asked.

Stiles shook his head.

"Isaac?"

"I don't think so…" Stiles took a deep breath and pushed himself up into a sitting position. "I don't recognize it. It must be—"

"One of the Alphas," Lydia whispered, terrified.

Derek howled so loud at the rising half-moon that his own eardrums popped. He didn't care if he drew every Alpha in the state to him. Boyd was dead, Cora was injured and the rain had washed away all traces of Stiles.

The Alpha resisted the urge to punch his fist right through the nearest tree. Injuring himself wouldn't save Stiles. Howling wouldn't save Stiles. Wishing he could go back in time and get to his friends before Kali did wouldn't save Stiles.

"Where are you?" Derek growled to the wind. He remembered, then, a conversation he had with his father when he was barely a teenager. A conversation about how werewolves had twice as many senses as other animals, three times as many as men. Derek knelt on the grassy knoll between the cross country race path and the woods. Derek shut his eyes and pictured Stiles' face in his mind's eye. He flipped through the teen's facial expressions like the pages of a book: amused, innocent, suspicious, curious, etc. until he landed on "terrified." Derek exhaled the scent of Boyd's blood and inhaled what he imagined as Stiles' fear.

A minute passed. Three more followed it. And then, as elusive as an itch he couldn't scratch, the scent went from imaginary to real. Without opening his eyes, without feeling the rain on his skin, Derek began to run.

"Scott," Isaac huffed, "Scott, wait."

Scott McCall dug his running shoes into the soggy leaves layering the forest floor and slid to a stop. "What is it?" he asked his pack-mate. His eyes flashed yellow as he looked around for their enemies.

Isaac jogged closer to Scott and pointed at the line where his sleeveless shirt overlapped his red shorts. Scott's gaze followed and he noticed the crimson splatter blossoming from his bellybutton. "What the hell?" Scott peeled his shirt up and discovered a tear in his skin stretching from his stomach, around his right side to his spine. It bled, slightly, and stung.

"How did you get that?" Isaac asked. "Your shirt isn't even torn."

"I…" Scott scoured his memory. He hadn't brushed against any bushes in the woods or bumped anything metal during the cross country meet. The beta expected to get slashed good when he caught up to the Alphas who killed Boyd and did who-knew-what with Stiles. He'd return the beating, of course, but none of that had happened yet. He and Isaac had been searching for an hour. Undoubtedly their teammates were already back on the bus and returning to the school.

Isaac's eyebrows creased in concern. "Doesn't hurt, does it?"

"No, it's just weird. I don't remember—"

A pair of howls interrupted their thoughts and made their hair stand on end. One came from behind them, the other in front. Scott and Isaac took off at a dead sprint without another word.

The cave that Stiles, Allison and Lydia found was littered with cigarette butts and empty beer cans. Allison studied the charred logs of wood leftover from a campfire, and decided that no one had been there in at least a month. The girls helped Stiles sit against the wall. The stone ceiling hung low but at least it was dry and slightly warmer than outside.

Stiles' blank stare and uncharacteristic silence unnerved Allison more than the claw wounds across his body. She rolled his shirt up under his armpit gently wiped the blood off of his right side. The heat hit her, then. Radiating heat rolling off of Stiles' skin. He already had a fever. All Allison and Lydia had were their dead cell phones and waterlogged purses.

"Stiles?" Allison pinched his chin between her thumb and forefinger. "Stay awake, all right?"

Stiles frowned at her. "Scott… Derek… are they ok?"

Allison forced a smile. "Of course they are. And they're coming for us. Any minute now they're going to –"

"Allison!" Lydia called. "You should come see this." The teen stood in the very back of the cave and stared down at a half-open wooden box. Allison looked over her shoulder and couldn't help but gasp. The box contained knives, thick ropes, black clothes, wire, garrotes and a half-dozen containers labeled in Latin. "Wolf's bane," Lydia whispered, interpreting the first tub. The second was labeled "Mistletoe."

"Oh my god," Allison whispered. "The killer – the killer's been here."

Lydia forced her fear back down her throat. "This is the Darach's lair."

Chris Argent dialed his daughter's cell phone number for the eighth time and for the eighth time he got her voicemail. He tried Lydia's number, then Stiles' and then, finally, took a deep breath and called Scott McCall.

Two rings later a voice gasped, "Mom, I can't talk right now. My friends are in trouble."

Chris stood up so fast that he knocked over his chair. "This is Chris Argent, Scott, what's going on?"

"Mr. Argent?" Chris heard the rain and thunder behind Scott's voice as he continued. "Mr. Argent, the Alphas attacked Boyd and Stiles during the cross country meet. Stiles survived and we think he, Allison and Lydia are somewhere in the woods."

Chris' boots were already tied. He put on his leather jacket and retrieved his car keys. "Keep the GPS on your phone on, Scott, I'll be there as soon as I can. You find my daughter, you hear me? You find Allison."

"I'm trying – Isaac, Isaac what?" Chris heard Scott struggle with the cell phone for a long moment, and then another voice spoke.

"Mr. Argent? It's Isaac Lahey. Have you ever heard of a werewolf getting wounded by, well, nothing?"

Chris locked his apartment door behind him and took the steps down two at a time. "What do you mean?"

"Scott has this long gash across his body that turned up out of the blue. He says it's fine but I know he's not running as fast as usual. Nothing has touched him but he's bleeding and it's getting worse."

Chris thought about it as he jogged to his truck. "I've heard of something similar – werewolves feeling sympathetic pain in the same place where a packmate was hurt. It's a rare phenomena, usually only seen in families."

"So…" Isaac took a deep breath. "So he's feeling someone else's pain. I doubt it's Cora's, they're not close. Derek and I are fine. Could it happen between a werewolf and someone who isn't a shape-shifter? Someone he's just as close to… like Stiles?"

Chris' throat tightened. "Or Allison."

Derek was so focused on Stiles' scent that he didn't sense the other presence until it was directly behind him. Lightning flashed, illuminating the entire forest. Derek pivoted, claws out and ripping downward, at the figure. It was too fast for him, or he was too distracted. The figure grabbed his wrist before he made contact.

"Why can't you ever just say 'hello'?" Peter Hale asked.

Derek pulled his hand back and stepped away from his uncle. "What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded, his voice up an octave or two.

"Cora called me. She said you needed help finding your friends." Peter braided his fingers behind his back and stood with his feet shoulder-length apart. His trench coat was just as rain soaked as Derek's leather jacket. "So, here I am."

Derek's expression shifted from shock to suspicion. "I'm sorry, but when did you ever give enough of a damn about my pack to put yourself in danger?"

"I'm turning over a new leaf." Peter smiled patiently. "I'm here to help, Derek. Do you want my help or not?"

In the cave, Allison spun away from the Darach's supply crate and knelt beside Stiles. "Lydia, help me, we have to get him out of here."

"And go where?" Lydia demanded. "There's a pack of Alpha werewolves hunting us!"

"So we should just wait here for an evil Druid to find us?"

"You said yourself that no one has been here for a month. Stiles has lost a lot of blood - he won't survive another hike through the rain." Lydia pointed into the mess of rope and containers of Wolf's bane. "At least here we have weapons, supplies. This might be the best place to make a stand until the others find us."

"Make a stand?" Allison yanked on her soaked, shoulder-length hair and then wrapped her fist around it. "Lydia, this is a death trap! What if—"

"She's right," Stiles suddenly croaked. He slowly rotated his head so that he could see both girls. "She's right, Allison. We need to – to use that stuff." He winced and hugged his wounded side. His skin turned another shade paler. "Put mountain ash around us… M-Maybe weaponize the Wolf's bane. You know, put it in a bucket above the cave entrance… Pull a rope and 'whoosh…'" Stiles mimed a waterfall. "Shower anyone who tries to – to come in…" The teen's voice drifted off into deep, desperate breaths. He was too exhausted to prop up his own head and when it fell to the side, his body followed. He collapsed onto the cave floor with a miserable groan.

"Stiles!"

Stiles' eyes rolled back into his skull and he passed out.

The girls' backs were turned and they took no notice of the knife in the Darach's crate that began to move. Seemingly on its own, the knife dipped itself into a jar of penny-sized bits of mistletoe, then floated up to the ceiling where it hovered like a storm cloud.

Isaac Lahey's long, lean legs were a blur of motion that left a rolling wave of mud in his wake. It took all of Scott's strength to keep up. The pair didn't stop running until a cave came into view. Isaac put on the brakes and Scott nearly ran into his back. "Let's rest in here," Isaac said. "Make sure that wound doesn't get infected or something."

"We don't have time for that," Scott spit out through gasps of air. "Stiles—"

"You're no good to Stiles if you pass out, Scott." A flash of lightning helped the peeking moonlight illuminate the inside of the cave. Isaac led the way.

Three steps later, Isaac's shoe landed on a wide piece of sturdy wood partially camouflaged in the dusty ground. It must have straddled a log or rock or something, because stepping on the front part of the board caused the back half to snap up into the air. The catapult launched a cloud of purple dust at the werewolf. Isaac realized what was happening too late, and he inhaled the ground Wolf's bane. So strong was the dose that he fell instantly unconscious. He would've cracked the back of his head on the ground if Scott hadn't dove through the mouth of the cave and caught him.

"Isaac!" Scott yelled. "What the—"

"Scott?" said a new voice.

The werewolf froze. "Allison?"

Two shadows at the back of the cave began to move. Allison entered the light first, followed by Lydia. "Oh, thank God!" Allison dashed over to Scott and wrapped her arms around him. "You found us."

Scott winced when her arms pressed against his wound, but he said nothing about it. "Did you – did you just bomb us with Wolf's bane?" He shifted Isaac's body into a comfortable position on his back and stood up.

"I'm sorry, it wasn't meant for you. Lydia had the idea. Inspired, right? She found the same type of Wolf's bane that Peter made her use on Derek."

"He'll be ok, won't he?" Lydia squeaked. She poked Isaac's side with her toe.

"Found it - what the hell is this place? And where's Stiles?" Scott asked.

The girls' faces fell. "He's behind that crate," Allison said, pointing back over her shoulder. "Scott… We can't wake him up."

Deucalion leaned against an oak tree and lit a cigarette. "Well?" he said to his twin Alphas. "Give me some good news, boys."

"It's working," Ethan reported. "The humans found the cave, and we shepherded Lahey and McCall to it, too." Deucalion's face remained blank, neutral. The Twins exchanged anxious glances. "Kali's guarding the grenades… We know that Dora crawled back to Derek's loft to lick her wounds…"

Deucalion sighed and took a long drag from his cigarette. "And?"

Both twins gulped. "A-And…?"

"What about Derek?" Deucalion bellowed. "This entire endeavor is fruitless if we don't get Hale into that cave. I want him found, you hear me? I want him—"

A new deeper, guarded voice interrupted the Alpha's rant. "Now, now, Deuc. You have to be patient with teenagers." A cloaked figure emerged from the other side of the oak tree and stood between Deucalion and the Twins. He lifted his thick black hood and let it fall back on his neck.

Gerard's pale face looked silver in the moonlight, but his eyes were a fierce green. He stood straight and tall, chin up and hands steady. "You'll catch more werewolves with honey than with threats," the elderly Argent said to Deucalion. "Have I taught you nothing, son?"

To Be Continued