A/N: Hey, who's in the mood for some hurt/comfort? =D

Chapter Six

The ride to Derek's place passes entirely in silence, which seems to unnerve Chris a little, since he's never seen Stiles so quiet, not even after his father was injured and in the hospital. It takes about fifteen minutes to get there. He pulls his car into a space and puts it in park. Stiles doesn't move for a long minute. He's just staring at that dark empty space between their car and the door. It's only about fifty feet. Surely he can walk fifty feet. But he feels frozen, numb. He just stares at the warm lights of the apartment building and doesn't move. After a minute, Chris clears his throat and says, "I'll walk you inside."

"What? Oh. Oh," Stiles says, somewhat jerkily. "Okay." He undoes his seat belt and climbs out of the car. His neck cranes around for a minute as he searches for possible threats, and he waits until Chris has come around the car before he starts towards the door to the apartment building. He has a key, but has to fumble for a minute before he can let them in. He stares at his shaking hands like they belong to somebody else.

Derek's apartment is down a short hallway, which Stiles doesn't like. He feels squeezed and claustrophobic, but makes it to the door all right. He lets himself into Derek's apartment and takes a quick glance around. Derek is sitting on the sofa, sketching. Scott and Allison are at the kitchen table, working on their homework. Lydia is tucked in a ball on one of the bean bag chairs, reading a thick book. The knowledge that at least some of his pack are all right brings a wave of relief so intense that he's almost dizzy with it.

Their heads all snap up as he comes in, and their normal friendly greeting immediately turns into a buzz of concern, because they can smell him, smell the fear and the blood and the disinfectant. They can also smell Chris, who's coming in behind him, and Allison's puzzled, "Uh, hi Dad?" somehow rings through the rest of their babble of words.

Stiles decides that he's done. He can't do this right now, can't handle it. He feels small and scared. He feels like he's suffocating. He just wants to know that he's safe. They can deal with everything else later, and if it freaks his pack out to see him freak out, for once they're just going to have to deal. He marches over to Derek and takes him by the wrist, tugging the puzzled wolf off the sofa and into the corner of the room. Derek protests verbally but not physically as Stiles makes him sit down and then promptly crawls into his lap and curls up there. "What . . .?" Derek says, and then Stiles presses his cheek against Derek's shoulder and listens to his heartbeat, to the reassuring thump-thump that means he's safe and protected.

Derek, for his part, swallows down his immediate panic over whatever has gone wrong. He needs to hold himself together for the pack, and more importantly for Stiles. Needs to be able to try to sort out what's going on. Needs to keep his own heart rate slow and steady because that's what Stiles needs right now. He keeps his own voice carefully even when he speaks. "Somebody open the windows. Just crank the heat if it starts to get cold in here." They don't need Stiles' claustrophobia setting in along with everything else. Derek wraps his arms around Stiles, but he does it slowly, cautiously, looking for any sign that it's unwelcome. It's alarming enough that he needs to look. He hadn't known Stiles had been hurt, had been frightened, had needed help. He should have known.

"What happened?" He directs the question at Chris, but his tone is stone flat.

Chris gives him a little nod as Allison trots over to open the windows. "I don't know a lot of detail. He showed up at my place about an hour ago, bleeding from a couple of wounds on his abdomen. He didn't say a lot, just that he had been ambushed. I patched him up and brought him back here."

Upon this news, Scott jogs over to Stiles. His friend has curled up into a ball, but Scott manages to get him to unbend a little so he can take a look. The two slashes on his stomach look a lot less terrible now that they're cleaned and stitched, but they still look bad. "What made these?" he asks.

"Claws, I think," Chris says, "but I'm not sure."

"Why didn't we know?" Derek asks, almost to himself, and buries his nose in Stiles' hair. He's both taking comfort in Stiles' scent and also looking for anything foreign, anything that might help them identify whatever attacked him. There's nothing, though, not really. Argent, blood, the medical smells of a well-treated injury, dirt from where Stiles fell at least once. "Stiles? What happened?" he asks, mumbling the question into Stiles' hair.

Stiles hears the question, understands it, and tries to answer it. But just thinking about the events of the past few hours make another wave of panic sweep over him. He gives his head a little shake and curls back into the protective ball.

"Okay. Okay." Derek curls tighter around Stiles and takes a deep breath. He looks at everyone else and reminds himself that he did act like an alpha once upon a time. "We need to know what happened. Scott, Allison, go with Chris back to the house and track Stiles' steps backwards. Scott, you go shifted. That way even if there isn't a blood trail, you can still follow his path. Allison, I want you armed to the fucking teeth." Derek closes his eyes and tries to think. It's difficult. He can't feel Stiles except the body in his arms. How had he missed that slipping away? Stiles is his alpha and his partner, his mate, the cornerstone of his life. A bond like that shouldn't just quietly dissolve. He clings to Stiles a little tighter and swallows. "Call and check in. We can't trust the pack bond. We should have known something was wrong. We should have been able to help him." Derek reminds himself that he doesn't have time to freak out. Stiles needs him to hold it together. "Lydia, call the others and make sure they're okay."

Scott and Allison have been listening intently to this, and everyone nods when Derek stops talking. "Let me grab my shoes," Scott says, but then Stiles stirs slightly, coming back to life.

"Don't leave," he whispers, the words muffled in Derek's shoulder, but easily audible to the wolves in the room.

Scott freezes and looks to Derek for further instruction, but he already knows he's not leaving. They do need to know what happened, Derek's right about that, but none of them are walking away from their alpha when he sounds like that. Allison, whose hearing isn't as good as Scott's, takes her cue from him and stops moving towards the door.

Derek sighs a little, partially in relief that Stiles is still at least following their conversation. "Okay. They'll stay. Can you tell me what . . ." he starts to ask, but then cuts the question off. He doesn't want to lose ground. He knows all about horrific events and shutting down. "Never mind. Can I have the others look around before they come over?" he asks, hoping that the fact that the rest of the pack isn't here will help skirt around Stiles' need to keep them close.

Stiles is quiet for a few moments, long enough that the others are starting to get uncomfortable. He draws himself in, tries to focus. The others have to be all right. He hasn't been able to feel that anything's wrong – but that thought makes him shrink back in, remembering his run through the forest, the terror building as nobody came to his aid. "Are they all right?" he asks.

Lydia looks over from where she's been on the phone, and speaks in a soothing tone. "They're fine, Stiles. They went over to Boyd's after school to help him with his younger brothers. Erica says they were just about to leave anyway."

"Okay." Stiles tries to hold it together for another few seconds. "The Jeep. It's still at the grocery store." He's not sure if that's relevant, if it helps at all, but it's the limit of what he can manage at the moment.

Derek rubs a hand in slow circles between Stiles' shoulders. "That's good. It gives us both a starting and an ending place. Do you have the keys?" He wishes that he was better at just talking. It would help fill the silence, which he knows Stiles hates so much.

Again, it takes Stiles a few moments to respond, but he's coming together now, re-ordering the world the way it's supposed to be. "Yeah." A pause. "I didn't have time to unlock the door."

So he was attacked at the car. In the damned grocery store parking lot. That took balls. Derek files all this away. "Okay. Give the keys to Chris, and then Boyd or Isaac can drive it over here."

Stiles fishes in his pockets and somehow manages to extract the keys without crawling out of Derek's lap, but he gives a slight hiss of pain as the wounds on his stomach pull. He grits his teeth against the inevitable wave of nausea and panic, then tosses the keys to Chris, who catches them neatly in one hand. "Is that the sound of me being nominated to go pick up your other pack members?" Chris asks, arching his eyebrows at Derek.

"It would be appreciated," Derek replies. He doesn't bother to point out what an act of trust this is.

Chris doesn't mention it, either. Instead, he says, "This new pack member . . . Boyd? I don't know where he lives."

"I'll program the address into your GPS," Allison says hastily, holding her hand out for her father's phone, which he gives to her.

"I'll call the others and let them know that Mr. Argent is going to come get them," Lydia adds, since none of the three of them are stupid enough to get into a car with Chris Argent if they haven't been told that it's okay.

Derek isn't paying much attention to what the others are doing at the moment. He trusts them to sort out the details. He's got other things to deal with. He'd like to say that he thought out his actions, that lowering Stiles' pain level would put more distance between Stiles and his panic threshold. But really, it's a more visceral reaction than that. Stiles made that pained noise, and that, Derek can fix because Stiles is right there. Even if he can't make anything else right, he can take away the pain.

So without even thinking, he slides one hand up underneath Stiles' shirt to rest against the bare skin of his side, a few fingers splaying out over the tape and gauze bandages. He exhales, and when he breathes in again, he pulls in the pain with the breath, in through where they touch skin-to-skin. It burns and screams as it twists through his veins. But the further it moves into him, the more his body heals and quiets until it's gone.

Stiles relaxes, going limp almost abruptly, listening to the noise of Chris leaving the apartment and Lydia on the phone, telling the others the bare bones of what had happened. He opens one eye and looks up at Derek. "My phone was in the car." He licks his lips nervously. "I went back to get it when I realized I had forgotten it in my bag. It . . ." He skips over the attack itself, shying away from that memory. "I ran, and hid in the woods. And . . . and waited. But . . . nobody came." He's not trying to hurt Derek, just trying to explain. "I don't understand why."

Derek curls around Stiles, his nose and lips pressed into the teenager's hair again. "We didn't know. I didn't know. I am so, so sorry." He knows that he's clinging, but can't help it. He could have lost Stiles. He wouldn't have been able to handle that. He would have been done. "I just didn't know."

"Yeah, I know." Stiles is quiet for a minute. He had always told himself that he could handle every day because he had the pack. Because no matter what happened to him, they would keep him safe. If he got lost or trapped or injured, they would find him. But the pack isn't all he has. They're not the ones who found him when Peter had left him for dead. He stirs a little and says, "I want my dad. Can . . . can you call him?"

As far as Derek is concerned, Stiles can have whatever he wants. "Yeah. Sure." He lets go of Stiles with one hand and pulls his phone out. That's when he realizes that his hands are shaking. It's making it hard to work the phone.

The others are all quietly watching, trying not to stare but really not having much else to do. "Want me to give him a ring?" Scott asks, his voice falsely cheerful.

Derek just drops his phone on the carpet and nods. "Please," he says, and wraps himself back around Stiles.

Stiles listens to Scott on the phone, which turns out to be a very short conversation. "Hey, Mr. Stilinski, could you, uh, come over to Derek's? We sort of need your help with something. Uh, sooner would be better. Thanks." Then he hangs up. Stiles is feeling slightly giddy now, almost dizzy, from the sudden lack of pain. The endorphins are still doing their job, but have no pain to contend with.

"I think I'm kinda high," he says fuzzily, into Derek's shoulder.

Derek makes a sort of amused and affirmative noise and rubs his cheek against the top of Stiles' head. After a moment, it occurs to him that he shouldn't fall into the same silence that he was hoping Stiles would pull out of earlier. He knows that he's prone to it. He barely spoke for a long time after the fire. "Enjoy it. It'll help you relax."

"Yeah." Stiles wonders if his speech is as slurred as it sounds like to him. "Chris didn't have any local anesthetics. So he said he could either knock me out or do it cold."

Derek makes a small, distressed noise at this news and pulls his knees up a bit, somehow cradling Stiles closer to him.

"Jesus Christ," Scott says quietly. He knows that Stiles wouldn't have let Chris knock him out, but either way is dangerous. He makes a mental note to somehow get something for the Argents to use next time, even if it's to patch up some hunter that they don't even know. He reaches out for Allison's hand and curls his fingers around hers gratefully when she takes it.

Stiles rubs one hand over his face. "Time's it?"

"It's about six," Lydia tells him.

He frowns. "I didn't get anything for dinner," he says stupidly.

"We can order takeout tonight," Scott says quickly. Then it hits him that Sheriff Stilinski is going to be here and Stiles hates it when his dad eats crappy, greasy food. He wracks his brain for a solution that will keep Stiles from worrying. "Oh!" A light bulb comes on. A very welcome light bulb. "There's that new sub shop we found a month or so ago. They deliver, and their stuff wasn't really greasy. They had salads, too. Even Lydia liked it, so it should be okay for your dad."

Stiles blinks at him, then says, "Don't let him get that Italian sub with the salami and smear it in salad dressing and try to call it healthy. He does that."

"Got it," Allison says, with a nod and an amused smile. The ongoing war on Papa Stilinski's cholesterol.

Stiles is quiet for a minute. "It wasn't a person," he says. "But it wasn't a wolf, either. I don't know what it was."

"There's no scent left on you," Derek adds. "Maybe Chris wiped it out when he patched you up." If Chris had been thinking like a wolf, he would have pulled Stiles' shirt off and bagged it for them to try to pull a scent from, but clearly he hadn't been thinking that way. Stiles' clothes around the injuries are saturated with the scent of blood, but mostly the disinfectant which burns the nose and every other scent away. Derek doesn't hold it against Chris. He had most likely saved Stiles' life while Derek sat at home, oblivious.

"No," Stiles says. "No, it had no scent." He looks up at Derek, suddenly feeling calm and crystalline clear. He doesn't know where the feeling comes from. Maybe the panic is finally fading. "I had no idea it was there. I didn't hear it or smell it or see it coming. It was just suddenly there."

Derek forces himself to uncurl some, since Stiles seems to be evening out. Just because he wants to cling and clutch doesn't mean that's what Stiles wants. "That's not possible. Things don't just appear." He says it in a way that suggests not that he thinks Stiles is wrong or crazy, but that he would like to know when the rules of the universe suddenly changed against them. First he gets sick, then he loses his connection to Stiles, which is enough to shake his foundation. And now this.

"Why are you letting me go?" Stiles asks, his tone somewhat confused. "Don't let me go."

Derek just curls right back up, sparing a thought for how high Stiles obviously was. No other prompting was needed. "I'm not leaving you alone. Not until we fix this."

There's a sharp rapping on the door and Scott opens it to reveal an extremely worried-looking Sheriff Stilinski. Scott stands back to let him in, and he pauses when he catches sight of Stiles and Derek cuddled up in the corner. "What in the hell . . .?"

"Dad," Stiles says, and reaches out to him without leaving Derek's embrace.

Derek looks up at the man, his expression flat even though his body language is clearly upset, his cheek still pressed to Stiles' hair. Sheriff Stilinski takes all this in, then sits down next to them. He manages to get an arm around both their shoulders so Stiles is somehow squished in between them, although he has to pull them out of the corner some in order to do so. Stiles doesn't mind. For him, there's no safer place in the world than between these two men. Derek goes stiff and immovable for a moment and then suddenly melts, much like Stiles had melted against him. It's been a long time since anyone older than himself that he had any respect or affection for has laid hands on him, let alone offered him a hug. For a few moments, he had simply forgotten how to react.

"So, anyone want to tell me what's going on?" Stilinski asks, wondering how to carefully shift this puppy pile before he pulls a muscle or his foot falls asleep.

"He was hurt," Derek says, somewhere into Stilinski's jacket. "We should have gone to help him and we didn't."

Scott sighs. He and Derek may not be friends, but they are pack. Derek is Stiles' lupa and he can respect that. So he can't really just stand around and watch Derek beat himself up. "Not that version. That version makes it sound like we did it voluntarily, and that's stupid, because we all know that we would never do that to Stiles." Someone had to say it. Derek is apparently done being a competent alpha stand-in and has proceeded onto being an emotional train wreck. "Something attacked Stiles in the grocery store parking lot. We don't know what. We still don't have a lot of details because Stiles isn't ready to tell us. But he got away and went into the woods, and waited for us to come help him. Except we didn't." It hurts to have to say that. "Because we didn't know anything was wrong. We should have known, but we didn't. So when no help came, he went to Mr. Argent's house, because he was closest person who knows anything about this kind of stuff. Mr. Argent patched him up and brought him here."

Stilinski's arms tighten around his son for a moment. "And physically, he's going to be all right?" he asks, wanting to get that out of the way first.

Allison nods, even though she hasn't seen the wounds. "My dad knows what he can handle. He would have dragged Stiles to the ER even if Stiles didn't like it, if he thought it was bad enough."

"It wouldn't hurt to have my mom keep an eye on things, but it looked okay to me," Scott adds.

Stiles looks up and says somewhat blearily, "He said I would have to come back in a couple days to take the stitches out. He's not sure how fast it'll heal."

"Stitches?" Stilinski's brow furrows. "Stiles, I'm not sure – "

"We can have my mom take a look at him," Scott interrupts hastily, before Sheriff Stilinski's concern can damage Stiles' calm. "Really. I looked already. Mr. Argent took good care of him."

"Well," Stilinski says. "All right. Where are the others?"

"They were going to pick up Stiles' Jeep and then check out the area before they came here," Lydia says. "I told them to stay together and not to leave the parking lot. We'll see if they can figure anything out."

"I'm sorry I'm useless," Stiles mumbles into his father's shoulder.

Scott rolls his eyes a little. "You're hurt and higher than a kite. It isn't your job to be useful right now." He looks at the Sheriff as if to confirm that this was the right thing to say.

He gives a little nod in response. "Don't even worry about it," he says. "We're going to take care of this, so you just try to relax and not worry about anything."

There's quiet for a moment while Derek holds Stiles and leans into Sheriff Stilinski. "I don't know why we couldn't tell something was wrong. Not even now, and he's right here."

"It must have something to do with the same sorcerer that made you sick," Lydia says. She seems determined to work through the problem logically. "He can obviously do magic that affect werewolves. I don't know why he's after us, but the most likely explanation is that he's done some sort of spell that's having an adverse effect on the pack bond."

Derek gives a shudder. "I can't . . . I can't do this. Not again."

"We'll work it out," Allison says, with confidence in her voice. "I mean, my dad will help, and tracking down evil is what he does."

Stiles gives a little nod. It's suddenly setting in that this is something that someone did to him. That it's not natural, or some strange event that just happened to have occurred. Somebody looked at his pack and started thinking about what they could do to hurt them. They used Derek's illness as a way to lure out the alpha. That was why the sorcerer hadn't objected to him taking the doll. It was just a piece in a larger game. "Son of a bitch," he mutters.

Derek's teeth clench together tight enough to creak. He has Stiles pulled against him and turns his face further into Stilinski's jacket. He knows that he's the adult of his pack, even if Stiles is the alpha, and that he should pull his shit together, but he just can't. Not when someone else is offering shelter and he wasn't even given a choice about whether or not to accept it. It was just suddenly there. Stilinski hadn't offered him a hug. He was giving one whether Derek liked it or not. And every time he thinks he's okay, it crashes in that someone is trying to take his pack away from him again.

The others start talking about magic and monsters, and Lydia is quoting from the bestiary while Allison starts looking through the directory of different hunters and their methods that she's been putting together ever since the alpha hunters hit town. Both Stiles and Derek let the conversation wash around them. Sheriff Stilinski gradually manages to pull them out of the corner so he can sit down properly and no longer have a stitch in his side.

The door to the apartment bangs open about twenty minutes later and the other three pack members come in, all of them confused and concerned, and in Erica's case, angry about being that way. "Okay, what the fuck is going, holy fuck, Stiles," she cuts herself off and immediately drops to her knees beside her alpha, taking his chin between his hands. "Are you okay?"

Stiles manages a weak smile, feeling like he's doing a lot better than he was earlier. "I've had better days," he says.

Scott gives a quick summary of what happened, and Allison goes over some of their theories, just to bring everyone up to speed. Erica makes several profane comments, but Boyd is quiet as usual, and Isaac is just watching. He's caught on to the way both Stiles and Derek are basically cuddled into Sheriff Stilinski's lap. Stiles isn't so surprising. He's a tactile person, and close to both his father and Derek. But Derek doing the same? In Isaac's mental scale of one to complete meltdown, Derek is edging pretty close to the top. He scratches at his eyebrows. "Half of us need therapy."

"Only half?" Lydia remarks dryly.

"Never mind that," Erica says, impatient. "We didn't find shit. Nobody has touched the Jeep, and we didn't smell anything or see anything unusual. All we saw were Stiles' tracks heading out of the parking lot and behind the store, and since you told us not to leave the lot, we didn't follow them."

"If it had mass enough to hurt, it should have a scent," Derek says. This is clearly bothering him on a deep and fundamental level.

"Look, Fido, all I'm saying is that it didn't," Erica says.

"Screw you, Lassie," Derek snaps back, but he's not really angry, and the others are relieved to see him show a little life.

"It . . . wasn't there." Stiles looks up. "I couldn't see it. It was like . . ." He hesitates. "You know how the invisibility cloak looked in the Harry Potter movies? I mean, when he first puts it on, and they're doing the CG so you can see how it works? That's what it looked like."

"Purposefully giving us nothing to track," Allison says.

"Good thing I put all of the bestiary in the computer," Lydia says, tapping away at her phone. "Stiles, what else can you remember?"

Stiles closes his eyes and forces himself to think back. He feels panic starts to shake his body, but grimly holds it at bay. "Not a good sense of smell, or hearing. I hid. It couldn't find me when I hid. It had to look. Moved in a spiral pattern, so it's smart, or the intelligence directing it is smart."

Allison speaks up and says, "It couldn't see very well, either. If it was working a spiral search pattern, it's almost like it was waiting to run right into you. And it doesn't sound animal. It had to search for you, so it couldn't track your movement. Most predators track moving things really well."

For the first time since arriving at the apartment, Stiles manages a real smile. "Give me some credit here," he says. "I dodged off the path right after I went over a hill. It didn't see me leave the path, so that's why it couldn't track me." He swallows hard and says, "Maybe I was really clever, had you thought of that?"

Allison holds her hands up in surrender, obviously amused. "My mistake." Then she grows more serious. "I wasn't sure if you had made it to the woods before it caught you. Hiding in a parking lot is really hard. I've tried." Her shoulders slump. "I'm still right about the sense of hearing and smell. Name me one predator that doesn't have at least one or the other."

"Maybe it has some sort of magical signature," Scott says. "I can ask Dr. Deaton – "

"No," Stiles says. His voice comes out sharp and sudden. Even he looks a little surprised at his own vehemence.

Stilinski takes a quick look at his son, concerned about the knee-jerk reaction. Everyone else just looks confused, particularly Scott, whose shoulders tense and tighten. "Why not? None of us know anything about magic."

Stiles doesn't want to have this conversation. He feels far too fragile to handle it if Scott decides to get angry. But he's brought it up, and he can't get away from it now. He wonders if he can get away with 'because I said so'. "I don't trust him," he says.

"What do you mean, you don't trust him?" Scott asks. It comes out hot and upset before he can even think.

Derek turns to face him and growls, low and full of potential threat. It happens with as little thought as Scott's outburst had had, but with more effect. He doesn't shift at all, aside from the glow of his eyes, but he doesn't need to. Boyd and Isaac look down almost immediately, resisting the urge to shift and tuck their tails between their legs. Erica isn't far behind, although she curls towards Stiles, not Derek. He untangles a hand from Stiles to run it over her hair, because this really has nothing to do with her and the others. This was about Scott not knowing that this is a bad time to get snippy with his alpha.

Scott automatically, instinctively takes a step back, taken off guard by Derek's response. But then his fists curl loosely at his sides and his shoulders straighten into a posture of challenge. Derek isn't his alpha, and he's not going to roll over for him. "Look, you asshole – "

"Both of you stop it." Sheriff Stilinski might not be a wolf, but his voice comes out firm and authoritative, clearly a man who's used to being obeyed. "Fighting with each other is the last thing any of you should be doing right now."

Derek tenses, clearly not liking the disapproval in the man's voice, but he can't stop himself from trying to protect Stiles, either. "Don't yell at him. Not now." It does come out more like an order than anything else, but some of the glow fades from his eyes. He doesn't want Scott to roll over. He just wants to make sure that Scott doesn't upset Stiles.

Scott's gaze flicks from Derek to Stiles, then he shoves his hands in his pockets and says, "Yeah. Sorry, Stiles."

Stiles shakes his head a little. "I should have told you. When he saw that doll that was making Derek sick, he . . . he knew too much about it. I know he's your boss and that you like him, but . . . he's involved in this somehow. I don't know how yet, but I can feel it."

"But . . ." Scott flounders, upset and uncertain. He's not stupid enough to tell Stiles that he's wrong, but he's worked for Dr. Deaton for years, and he's sure that he's a good person.

"We don't have to talk about this now," Allison says, curling her fingers around Scott's. "It can keep until we're not keyed up."

Scott glances at her and then nods, once again grateful for her and her ability to talk him down from emotional ledges just by breathing near him. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

"Well, one thing is clear," Lydia says, looking up. "This thing was magic. It's called a 'sending'. It's not actually intelligent in and of itself – it's like a three-dimensional projection of the sorcerer that wields it. Because of that, it doesn't have a lot of physical mass, and doesn't hold to one shape. Its senses are severely limited, but it's fast, and can do plenty of damage."

"How long do they last, and how do you stop them?" Allison immediately volleys back.

"How long they last, and how solid they are, depends on the strength of the sorcerer casting them," Lydia says, tapping her screen to scroll through the information in the bestiary. "It's a complex spell to cast. It says the average lasts about a minute, but sendings have been present for an hour or more, and theoretically there's no limit on how long they could last."

Stiles stirs slightly. "This was no minute monster," he says. He struggles to try to time things. "How long do you guys think my best flat-out sprint is?"

"I dunno. Maybe five minutes?" Scott says, which is considerably longer than it used to be.

"Yeah, maybe," Stiles says. "It chased me that whole time, and then there was another good five minutes or so in the forest while it looked around for me, and it didn't show any signs that it was going away any time soon."

"Any way to protect against them?" Derek asks.

"Well, the problem is that because they're not technically there unless the sender wants them to be, they can dodge attacks pretty easily," Lydia says. "Like if you shot at one, it would just phase out and the bullets would go right through where it had been. I'm guessing you could stop one with mountain ash, though. That stuff seems to be a pretty good general block against witchcraft nastiness."

When it becomes clear that they aren't going to solve all their problems this very moment, the pack decides to order dinner and watch some television to try to distract themselves. It doesn't go too badly, although Stiles is still quiet and withdrawn, which is strange in and of itself. Derek is edgy, but the rest of them start to relax after a little while, and eventually, Stiles drifts off to sleep.