Chapter 2

"Go, go, go!" Stiles yelled as Scott put the jeep into reverse wheel turning wildly as he backed blindly down the center of the small road. "Lights, Scott, damn it turn on the head lights!" It came to no surprise to Stiles that instead of turning on the headlights his friend hit the brakes, throwing Stiles backwards against his seat.

"Where the hell did you learn how to drive?" Stiles yelped as he watched Scott crank the wheel almost all the way around before hitting the gas causing the jeep to spin, the sound of everything in the back sliding across the metal floor as well as Stiles' gasp of pain as he ended up inches from sitting on Scott's lap filling the air.

Scott managed to clip not only a cement parking divider, but a no smoking sign, and sent the jeep into a two wheeled turn as he drove out of the parking lot. The trees were a blur of ghostly figures flashing by, wooden fingers reaching out briefly as they were temporary brought to life by the flash of the head lights. Either that or he had just wondered into a Tim Burton movie Stiles thought. Stiles' frantic panting settled into a more normal rhythm as they neared the main road.

"Pull over."

"What? Why?" Scott looked at Stiles in shock, reaching out to check the bloody fabric of the torn shirt. "This is not the time to be stopping on the side of the road. We need to get you looked at."

"Yeah, the way you're driving the only way someone's gonna be looking at me is when they pry my lifeless body out of the tangled remains of my jeep. You are not driving my jeep. How did you manage to pass your driver's test? You are a freaking maniac on the road. Do you have any homicidal tendencies that you haven't told me about? God, no wonder your mom doesn't let you drive anywhere."

"Shut up," Scott huffed, eyes still locked on the blood as Stiles let out an alarmed "Shit!" The park road was ending, the ninety degree turn onto the main road just a few feet ahead of the barreling jeep.

Stiles made a wild grab for the 'oh shit' bar as Scott swerved onto the main road almost clipping welcome sign before over compensating and bouncing across the two lane road.

"Damn, Scott, be careful with her." The words had barely left his mouth when Scott overshot the next turn and ran the tires along the edge of the asphalt. The back tire gave out with a muffled pop followed by the flopping of rubber. "No, no, no," whimpered Stiles as Scott pulled the jeep over to the side of the road. "My baby, you killed my baby."

"Don't be such a drama queen. It's just a flat tire. I can change it in no time." With a soothing smile and a quick pat on the shoulder, Scott hopped out of the jeep. "Stay in here," he ordered before shutting the door with a little more force than Stiles was happy with his baby being subjected too.

Closing his eyes Stiles let his head drop back. Images of the fight in the forest flicker flashed behind his lids. The skin around the bite wound started to itch and pull and Stiles pressed his elbow into his side in an attempt to ease his discomfort shifting back and forth in his seat.

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Outside the car Scott ratcheted the jack a couple of times before it slipped from under the jeep sending the jeep bouncing down onto three tires while Stiles clutched his side. Rolling his eyes Stiles watched in the rearview mirror as Scott jacked the jeep up again only to have the jack slip after the fourth crank to come bouncing down again. "My best friend is a fucking moron."

Stiles was out of the car before Scott even had time replace the fallen jack checking for damage to his precious blue jeep. Except for the flat tire the jeep seemed in good shape.

"Watch it. Do you even know how to change a tire?" Scott shrugged his shoulders and set the jack back up. Stiles watched as Scott fumbled to place the iron into the jack for a few minutes before stepping in to help. "Have you ever changed a tire? Move over."

Within minutes Stiles had the jeep hoisted up. "You need to let me do the rest. I'm surprised your side isn't hurting more."

As if mentioning it reminded his body it was wounded, Stiles side gave a twitch. His side felt tingly as if a low level of electricity was being constantly run through him. Without thinking he rubbed the bite. Instead of the heated skin and sticky wetness he expected, his fingers encountered a thin raised tear on his side. Pulling his shirt up he examined the wound. "Wasn't this bigger? This was totally a huge bite." Stiles wiggled his fingers at Scott through the blood stained tear in his shirt.

Scott stooped to get a closer look at the long scratch using the sleeve of his shirt to wipe off some of the blood to get a better look, ignoring Stiles' gripping about 'lack of sanitary habit'. "It was dark; maybe we just saw shadows and thought the worst."

"But I felt its teeth tear into me. I though he was going to take a chunk out of me."

Shaking his head, Scott poorly hid his smile. "I think you were terrified out there. You said it yourself there hasn't been wolves here in sixty years. This doesn't even look like a bite; it just looks like a bad scratch. Are you sure there was a wolf? Maybe you just got the shit scared out of you by some poor lost poodle and then you screamed like a girl."

"Dude, there is no way that I could mistake THAT for a poodle. It was gigantic with huge red eyes. I got bit and then I fought it off, I didn't just make this up." Stiles gestured to his torn and bloodied shirt to underscore his point.

"I'm not saying you are making it up, I'm just saying that maybe you are not remembering it the way it really happened. I mean, Dude, listen to yourself. Do you really think that you could fight off a wolf?"

Stiles' fingers clinched around the tire iron as his mind whirled over the night's events. "Maybe I'm just that badass."

He laughed it off as a joke but each moment was etched clearly in his mind, a stop-action animation of the attack, the feel of the teeth piercing his side, and the glowing red eyes that stared at him through the trees. He remembered it all with a detail that could not be imagined but he couldn't explain away the lack of a wound on his side.

"Scott, something really weird just happened tonight."

His friend snorted as he picked up the old tire and returned it to the back of the jeep. "Yeah, we found a body out in the woods. You have to admit that it is the weirdest thing that has ever happened to us."

Stiles nodded still deep in thought. "We better get home before my dad or your mom finds that we were out this late or out in the woods near an active crime scene." The drive to Scott's house was strangely quiet for Stiles. He didn't talk, caught instead in a constant loop of the evenings events. Before he knew it the jeep was parked in Scott's driveway as if it had steered itself.

"Do you want me to patch that up?" Scott asked as he propped himself up on the door frame. Stiles didn't say anything in response, just smiled and shook his head as he leaned over to close the door. A flip of his wrist in farewell and he was driving off toward home.

His skin seemed to simmer as he drove a warm sensation that became hotter by the moment. It wasn't a burn because there was no pain, just tingling warmth that spread up and down his body, making the muscles under his skin flicker miniature twitches that danced up and down his arms and legs.

Pulling into his drive, Stiles managed to get himself out of the jeep and into the house without any problems, making a bee-line for the shower. He didn't even take time to strip out of his clothes, just stood under the spray at the hottest setting his body could stand and let the water and steam envelope him, hiding him away from the outside world.

Half way through the shower he shucked the jeans and ripped shirt letting them fall in a wet heap on the tile floor. His skin felt like he was sun-burned, tight and hot under the jets of water. Turning the water cooler he tried to sooth the sensation but the feeling of heat only seemed to intensify. He could feel each individual globule as it struck his skin, rolled down the plains of his body to where it formed beads that created a slow pull of tension before dropping to the tile below. Unable to take the sensations anymore Stiles stepped out of the shower and toweled off.

His image in the mirror was blurry with condensation, rivulets of water cutting his reflection in to long lean pieces. The wound was still an angry red laceration running down the side of his rib cage. Around it the skin was starting to turn a dark shade of purplish blue. Seeing that it had stopped bleeding, Stiles bypassed the dressing and pulled an old T-shirt over his head and let himself crash into the bed.

He ran, head down, lunging through the undergrowth, clawed feed digging into the soft earth sending up cool scents into the night air. The wind ruffled the ruff along his neck and shoulders, tickling the finer hairs of his ears, making them twitch and turn. In the distance he could hear the call of the others, their lonely howls filling him with longing and need. But there was an undercurrent of taint to the call, darkness that to which he refused to be drawn. He ran away from the sound of their calls until his paws where sore and red. The air brought a new scent to his nose that raised the hackles at his neck. The taint was stronger, its scent like sickness on the wind. Red eyes glowed from the depths of the trees, eyes that called for him to obey, to submit and be ruled. Stiles snarled, fangs glinting in the light of the full moon and sending a spray of foam outward. Turning graceful legs, he ran through the woods away from the one that demanded his submission, refusing the call to bare stomach and neck to his will, to the darkness of the one that called to him.

"Stiles wake up." His dad's strong hand on his shoulder woke him up from the tangle of his dream and he was moving, throwing himself back and away from the threat and landing in a snarl of sheets and blankets on the floor before his mind cleared itself from its sleep fogged state. "I've been calling you for the last five minutes. You are going to be late if you don't get a move on." His dad smiled down at him in his knot of sheets. "Some dream huh?"

"Yeah," Stiles mumbled as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. His dad was out the door and half way down the stairs before he remembered the events of the night before. Rushing to his feet, barely missing hitting his head against the open closet door and careening into the foot of his bed, Stiles rushed to the bathroom to check the wound from the night before.

He stood shirtless in front of the mirror, mouth agape as he stared at the dark purple bruise that covered his side. There was no sign of the bite mark or the long scratch that it had evolved into during the drive home with Scott. All was left was the bruise that was fading to a sickly green as he watched it in the mirror.

"Oh. Shit."

"Scott's here." Stiles jumped into gear at the sound of his father's voice calling up the stairs. Grabbing the nearest shirt he pulled it over his head as he snagged some jeans and his shoes as the tumbled out of the room and down the stairs. He was hopping on one leg as he pulled on the jeans as he rounded the corner to the kitchen to find Scott and his dad sitting at the breakfast table.

It was a fairly normal scene except that today was the morning after 'the event' as Stiles would now call it and Scott was an idiot of immense proportions.

"How's your side?" His best friend asked completely missing the frantic head shake and flapping arm motions.

"What happen to your side son?" Caring blue eyes looked up from behind a sip of hot coffee. Stiles didn't have a chance to respond before Scott was answering in his chipper 'I'm a morning person' voice.

"He thought he was bit by a wolf last night when we were out at the preserve but it was just a mangy dog and it ended up only being a scratch. You should have seen him run." Scott's happy smile slowly fell off his face as he looked from Stiles' head lowered in defeat and disbelief and the sheriff's tensing body. "OOPS?"

"Why were you two at the preserve last night? Stiles let his body collapse into the nearest chair as he heard his dad's sheriff voice in that question. Scott never stood a chance. Between his complete lack of lying skills and his dad's awesome interrogation skills Scott had spilled every last secrete of the night before to Stiles' horror. He tried kicking him under the table as his idiot best friend went into detail about them practically tripping over the body and Stiles' escape from the mangy dog. His father ignored the jumping coffee cups and focused on Scott, pulling every last iota of information from his head.

By the time his dad had finished Stiles had his head down on the table wishing just slightly that it was a guillotine and it would all be over before his dad got hold of him. "You have practice today?"

Not the threat to life and laptop he was expecting. "Yes."

"I want you to come straight home after practice, both of you. I am going to have some more questions for you two." The sheriff put his mug in the sink and gathered his keys and file folders. Pausing in the hallway he threw over his shoulder to Stiles, "And son, you and I will be having a talk later tonight about your curfew hours."

"I don't have a curfew."

"You do now."