*It goes without saying that Teen Wolf – the story and all related characters – belong to the writers, cast and crew of the show. I claim no ownership or association to the TV series titled Teen Wolf. This was written by a fan solely for the enjoyment of other fans.*
QUICK WORD FROM DAYSTORM – "Feathers & Fangs" is dedicated to The City of Books.
I couldn't possibly begin without crediting where it's due, and this fic would have been forgotten in some dusty folder ages ago if Book hadn't pushed me to write. To keep writing. To never give up on this story. He's been my biggest and most consistent supporter. "Feathers & Fangs" is dedicated to The City of Books and it feels only right that it is.
A note: Like all my fanfictions, I hate following the canon timeline. This story has been placed in season 5 (senior year) and includes Liam, Kira and Malia. However the Dread Doctors, Theo and the events occurring in the fifth season will not happen in F&F. I've made my own monsters, my own consequence . . . my own plot.
I would also like to credit The City of Books for making the icon for this story. (You thought I'd forget, didn't you? haha)
Happy reading!
Day
Prologue
We are like butterflies who flutter for a day, and think its forever.
– Carl Sagan
The voices wouldn't leave him alone.
Neither would the nightmares.
Scott McCall had drawn the drapes before going to bed in an effort to shut out the moonlight, but even though his room was pitch dark he remained conscious of that huge white moon painting everything on the other side of his window with the stark, eerie light that made him feel so uneasy.
He hated full moons.
He loved full moons.
A wildness lived in him, and it stirred to brilliant life on nights such as this. Drawn to the surface of his skin by the siren pull of that silver shine. Once a monster howling for release, Scott made peace with his wolf and had since learned that the night of the full moon was not something he needed to fear. He could bask in the thrill of power without tipping the scales into madness.
The clock on his nightstand warned that it was just past three in the morning. The hot, sandpapery feel of his eyes confirmed the time as accurate. He needed to try and find a few more hours of sleep, but the whisper of voices in his head – echoes of nightmares twisting like smoke inside of him – pricked at his resolve. His heart thudded, beating so that a fine sheen of sweat slicked his skin.
Surrendering to the hot rush of adrenalin spiking his blood, Scott pushed back the covers and slid from his bed. Snatching a discarded t-shirt from the floor, he pulled it on. A wrinkled mess over his lean, muscled frame. He had no need for light to show him the way to the kitchen, his feet soundless on the upstairs hall carpet. Steps sure on the stairs, not even a creak to betray his presence.
He didn't want to wake his mother.
In the kitchen, though, he switched on the light over the stove so that he wouldn't burn himself.
Scott collected the items he needed, still quiet as a ghost in the silent house. He warmed a pan of milk. Stirringly slowly so that it wouldn't stick to the bottom, and then emptied a can of tomato soup in the pot.
In the silence of the house, with no other sounds to distract him, Scott found it difficult to keep his mind quiet. He could feel his wolf bristling, hackles raised in agitation and it was hard to keep that part of himself calm.
What? he wanted to ask it. What's wrong?
Pointless. He could scream until he strangled on his own voice and the wolf would never answer him. It was baser instinct. A fleeting impression of something there, just beneath his dominant consciousness. But the wolf wasn't alive, and it didn't want anything. Didn't really know anything. It was the same basic urge that made him eat when he was hungry; and it was like asking his stomach what it wanted. Stomach didn't care. Stomach couldn't care.
His soup was ready.
Scott switched off the burner and poured the steaming orange liquid into a large mug. He put the pan in the sink, ran a little water over it and then picked up his mug to carry it back to his room. If he was going to be staying up, he might as well get a little homework done. Three in the morning and it felt like he was the only one in the world awake.
He started up to his room, the hairs on his arms tingling with the disquieting sensation that he was being watched.
An icy breath whispered over the back of his neck and he paused; one bare foot on the top landing, the other still down flat on the last step. Scott glanced quickly down the way he'd come. Of course there was nothing but as his gaze moved across the familiar front entry with its little table for keys and the hooks on the wall where they hung their coats . . . there was someone there.
Somebody was standing right there at the bottom of the stairs.
Scott's dark eyes lit vivid red – Alpha red – an outward manifestation of his authority and power.
He slipped down the steps, predatorily silent now and scanned the room. Kitchen to the right, where the stove light cut sharp blue shadows over the floor. Living room was dark and quiet. His wolf eyes showing him nothing out of the usual. A car hissed down the street outside, headlights beaming in through the living room window to slide over the far wall.
He listened carefully, straining his inhuman senses. For just second Scott thought maybe he could hear a heavy rasp, like a quick-drawn breath but then nothing. No sounds anywhere in the house. Was he imagining an invisible presence? A few years ago that would have been a ridiculous thing for him to think: that there was some ghost following him around the house. But now? With all the things he'd seen?
Or else paranoia was setting in. It seemed that the longer the pack went without a catastrophe the more he braced for one. He'd conditioned himself to expect attacks.
Shivering, Scott hurried back up the stairs. Unnerved and actually a little afraid.
He rushed up those steps the way he used to escape from the basement when he was a kid. Like there was something right behind him and Scott honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd been so freaked out by a feeling. But of course there was nothing there, and he wasn't just a kid anymore.
His head full of the scent of cream, tomato paste and salt he was a little surprised to find he still held the soup mug. Lemon and rosemary tickled the inside of his nose, wholly unexpected and familiar. It stopped him where he stood. The smell was not the soup, but the scent of skin. One that had no business being in his house; had no business being anywhere.
He breathed deeply, surprised to find that the smell came from upstairs and was as strong as perfume; so powerful it burned the inside of his sensitive nose, making his eyes sting and water.
Scott knew that scent. Knew it intimately.
Bright yellow lemon and fragrant rosemary wafted enticingly, solid and real. This – this wasn't some faint impression. It wasn't a feeling. The scent a complex combination of molecules which danced on the air; a roadmap for anyone with the sensibility to detect those invisible signals. Each combination unique as a fingerprint.
It couldn't be her. Scott felt the weight in his chest as a physical pain, his heart aching with hope and fear. He breathed deeply, struggling to locate a direction. The source of that heartbreakingly familiar smell.
Moonlight came from his room, spilling silver light out into the hall.
He was sure he'd left his curtains closed.
Holding his breath so that he wouldn't have to taste any more of that lemony aroma, he peeked into his moonlit bedroom. Saw the curtains billowing, ballooning out from his open window. Cool air swirling inside.
Scott's mug crashed to the floor, landing unbroken but splattering his legs with warm soup.
"Hello, Scott . . ."
XxXxXx
The voices wouldn't leave her alone.
Neither would the nightmares.
Lydia Martin rolled onto her back, blinking drowsily in the bright dark. She left her curtains open when she went to bed, and pale moonlight bathed her room in an ethereal shine. A harmlessly beautiful bit of magic, yet she couldn't shake the uneasiness that threaded through her emotions. She couldn't sleep.
The bright green display of her clock-radio boldly proclaimed the time at 3:33.
The witching hour, Lydia thought with wry amusement. A tremor of foreboding prickling over her skin. There were stories concerning this exact minute of the early morning, where it was still so dark. Stories of ghosts and demons and terrifying superstitions. Three thirty-three a.m. was supposed to be where the veil between worlds was thinnest and things, awful things, sometimes broke through.
Ridiculous.
And yet, who was she to doubt?
Lydia was the girl with the power to overhear the dead talk, and if she paid close enough attention might even make sense of what they were saying. She was the girl who, every now and again, could make the dead talk to her. It was madness, but one she learned to accept was real.
Lydia had lived her whole life with the understanding that the world was a sensible place, ruled by a specific set of laws. Science. Mathematics. No magic or mysticism. As a child it would comfort her, knowing that there were answers to her questions. That the world was a place to be discovered, to be observed and understood. There was nothing to be afraid of.
Growing up she would wrap herself in that certainty, wearing it like plate armor. When her parents fought and yelled, she would hide behind the only power she had. Her mind was her weapon. Understanding was a form of control, and she very much needed to feel as if she was in control of something. Her earlier years too confusing to make sense of what was happening as her family slowly collapsed, she found her own foundation and built a fortress on top of it.
Lydia breathed deeply and squeezed her burning eyes closed. Her hair a fan of crimson on the pillow. Body aching with tiredness, though she was warm under her heavy sheets. She turned herself over in bed, hoping the change in position would help her get comfortable. Why couldn't she sleep? Her mind churned with thoughts like white noise.
Lydia could hear the wind passing over her house, rattling at the windows like it was trying to get inside. Such an unsettling thought to have, especially on a night like this where the very darkness seemed to breathe with unseen life. She could talk to the dead, but it was still frightening to imagine she wasn't alone in this moonlight dark. Were there shadows moving over her walls? A face at her window, peering through the glass? Were there voices on the wind, whispering words best left unheard?
There was just this feeling of wrongness. Such a poignant sensation she could almost taste it on her tongue. Like ashes and dirt. It was the taste of the grave and she hated it with the soul-deep horror of one not yet dead, passing too close to those who would drag her screaming into the blackness.
Lydia sat bolt upright, panic catching in her throat so that strangled on it. Choking at her inability to breath past this terror. Her sheets fell away, folding around her waist. She pressed her trembling hand to her chest, trying to quell the sudden race of her heart beating too fast. Her head spun with a whirl of dizziness. Red hair tumbling, framing a heart-shaped face bleached white now with fear.
There were shadows. She was right. A liquid black coil of shadows moving over the cream wallpaper across from her bed. Too substantial to be only displaced moonlight, they weren't true shadows but a solid presence in her room. Dozens of them moving like the wind but too heavy to be gaseous. They were like paint or ink as deep as the night. Moving with intention and purpose, rather than pushed along by some other force and Lydia felt a moment of terror so profound she lay back down in her bed, huddling under her comforter. Mindlessly defaulting to the childish belief: if she couldn't see it, it could not see her . . .
The problem was that she could see them. She could hear them.
She felt them like a cold damp against her skin.
I'm a banshee, she grasped at the only protection she had. They can talk all they want but they can't touch me.
The dead had no power over the living.
Lydia dared to peek again, green eyes pale in the stark moonlight. The shadow moved, slithering over her walls to boil at the door to her adjoining bathroom. The door was open by only a crack, and it was just this strip of black. So dark she couldn't make out the shapes of her sink, her mirror. Fear made what she glimpsed through that little opening ominous and menacing. As if what was on the other side was not her bathroom but a place filled with monsters.
The boiling shadows slipped soundlessly into the bathroom opening, congealing into something far more substantial than liquid. A figure solidified there, just out of Lydia's sight, and it moved.
"Who's there?" Lydia demanded of the darkness. Heart pounding in alarm.
The door creaked, swinging slowly wider.
Lydia was shaking, pale fingers clutching her sheets. A warm sweat slicked down the centre of her back, chilling her to the bone. Her bathroom was black on black. The door swung wide open she should have been able to see inside but there was nothing in there. Nothing at all.
"I said who's there?"
Out of the nothing stepped the figure of a girl, oak tresses curling softly around a pale face. "Hello, Lydia."
"Allison . . ."
XxXxXx
The voices wouldn't leave her alone.
Neither would the nightmares.
Kira Yukimura brushed leaves out of her hair, irritated at the cling of wet branches and the way her shoes slurped in the soft earth. It'd been raining earlier in the day; a violent storm that seemed to break directly over the town. Her head still rang from the cracks of thunder so deep they'd rattled her bones.
She wasn't afraid of thunderstorms.
But there had been something foul in that rain and it drove her inside the house.
She couldn't say exactly why, but she hadn't wanted to feel the rain on her skin or in her hair. She hadn't wanted to smell the wet grass. See the asphalt glossy under her shoes. No part of her wanted to be out in that deluge.
There are voices in this storm, Kira, her mother told her. Ghosts in the rain.
Kira didn't know if she believed in ghosts, but she knew of spirits and those could be deadly. Spirits were forces of nature, rather than a consciousness. Spirits like the one that lived inside her. A pulse of energy that sparkled and danced through her blood, twining around her heart and sometimes, just sometimes, whispering words she needed to hear.
But her fox was special. It was a part of her; never separate.
These were different. Angry. Vengeful.
Ghosts? Maybe.
Kira didn't understand what had drawn her out of bed so late at night, to slink through the mist-shrouded forest outside of Beacon Hills. She hadn't brought a jacket with her, and her arms prickled with chills in the damp. There were shadows in the fog; a presence stalking her as if it meant to hurt her but never coming close enough for her to see.
It was just an impression of movement. Something darting through the trees. She couldn't help but think she was being baited. How was a mystery, but they'd lured her out of the house and were now herding her in a direction that she did not trust. Kira had never been this way before. She was too far outside of town.
At first she thought she was going to the Nematon stump, but she was miles beyond that now.
What kept Kira going despite the icy fist closing around her heart was the uncertain assurance that she was not helpless. She could defend herself . . . yes, of course she could . . .
Defend herself against what? That was the question.
Her razor-edged katana lay cool against the length of her arm, where she held it. The blade vibrating with a reassuring and familiar hum. Her skin soaking in that invisible power. Her body thirsty for it. Gorging on what amounted to lightning in her hands.
Kira's katana was her tail. Her first kitsune tail. It was all the power in the world to her, and she guarded it jealously. It was the only thing she'd brought with her when she left home, not even needing to remember to take it. She would never leave without it.
The darkness pressed closer, covering the trees in a shroud. Like ink splashed in her eyes; for just a moment she was blind. Panic coursed hot, like poison in her blood and Kira swung her sword around. Bringing it forward in a stiff defensiveness. Too frightened to relax her body into the easy position she'd been taught.
"Who's there?"
There were voices. Whispers.
And then silence.
The shushing of the wind through the leaves, a canopy of branches over her head. The forest smelled of damp earth, living wood and rain. Kira shivered, fear urging her to withdraw but there was nowhere to go. She was far, far from home.
"Stay away from me." Kira forced strength into her quavering voice, locking her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.
Was it getting colder? A chill rippled up her spine, pooling at the base of her scalp and it felt so much like foreboding. Some sense she possessed recognizing a threat she hadn't yet seen.
It was definitely colder. Her breath escaped in a plume of steam from between slightly parted lips, and the warmth of her blood seemed stolen away. Her mother was right; there were ghosts in the rain.
Kira tilted her head back, breathing in the icy night and peered through the net of branches to the spot of clear white winking in and out. The moon was full. The skies clear, devoid of cloud or the heavy mist which seemed to blanket this eerie forest.
There was someone out there.
She could see him.
Not a shadow, but a solid form moving swiftly through the trees. Darting as if it meant to keep out of sight, but too clumsy to manage it. Without pausing to consider the wisdom in pursuing this mysterious figure in the fog, Kira followed after him.
She was fast. Her body moving like lightning; quick and rippling power. Trusting her fox to guide her steps, giving up a measure of control to the spirit inside her. She flew through the forest. Silent as a ghost, her feet finding solid purchase with scarcely a need to look down. It freed her attention to focus on the black mass racing away from her. He would duck in and out of the shifting white fog, so that he seemed to disappear and reappear further out.
An unsettling illusion, it was like he wasn't really there.
Kira chasing phantoms through the darkness . . .