Chapter eight: This town is fucked up, man
Scott and I ran out of the woods, towards the edge of the preserve. Lord and behold, Derek had left with his car. Great.
"We don't have enough time to find him whilst running." Scott said.
I nodded. "True, but wh-" My eyes widened as he gave me a pleading look. "No. No way."
But I'd already made up my mind, and Scott knew it, as he smirked at me.
Once Scott claimed that we were close to Chris, we landed. Landed meaning that I dropped him from ten feet up in the air and then landed myself.
"That was for making me carry you." I said when he groaned in pain. "Now where is he?" Scott stuck his nose up in the air, sniffing it. The plain idiocy of it made me shake my head.
"This way." he said, running towards a parking lot of a grocery store about a hundred yards away. I let out a sigh, retracted my wings and ran after him.
~o~
We were crouching behind a parked car, discussing how we'd approach him.
"I'll do it." Scott said and I scoffed.
"Yeah sure, let the werewolf go talk to the hunter." I whispered.
"Fair point." he nodded. "But your families don't go together that well either."
I sighed. "True. But I'm still not letting you do it." I stood up and walked towards Chris' car. He was standing behind it, loading in groceries.
Not wanting to startle him, I cleared my throat. "Mister Argent?" His head shot up, and he had a gun pointing at me within a second. I held my hands up in the air, showing I had nothing on me.
"Easy with the gun, dude. You're going to give someone a heart attack one day."
He let out a sigh and lowered his gun, but he was still glaring at me. "What do you want?"
"Just a little bit of help." I lowered my hands. "There's an Alpha pack in town. They kidnapped Cora, Derek's sister, and Boyd, his beta. They kept them out of the full moon for months and now they're out here, in Beacon Hills, ready to tear apart anyone that they cross paths with."
"And why would I care about anyone related to Derek?" he asked. "I don't even know Cora, or this kid Boyd. I don't even know his last name."
I shrugged. "And neither do I. I don't even know one tenth of the population of Beacon Hills. Doesn't mean I want them ripped apart by werewolves!"
Chris let out a sigh. "Look, Lora, th-"
"Lorraine." I interrupted.
"Fine. Lorraine. I watched my grandfather brainwash my daughter. Almost turn her into a killer."
"You're welcome, by the way." I said. She'd been a killer if it hadn't been for me and he knew it. So he nodded and thanked me, briefly.
"But that world decimated mine. My wife, father, sister. My entire family. You should know how that feels. Why would I ever want to step into that world again?"
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. "Because you can't just step out of it. And even if you think you have, you haven't. Because you know it's out there. You know that there's people out there who don't know, people who need to be protected. Because if you like it or not, that's what our families are all about. Protecting people. We just do it in different ways." I sighed. "I'm not asking you to come with us if you don't want to. I just need supplies."
We looked at each other in silence for a while. A silence that was interrupted by my phone vibrating. I clenched my teeth and took it out. Pictures from Stiles. First, of the body Lydia had found. Then, a man and a female standing crying over a bodybag that was about to be put into an ambulance. I turned my phone around and showed the picture to Chris.
"You can't just walk away from this."
Chris' jaw clenched and I knew he'd made his decision. He was going to help us.
Now came the tricky part. The actual plan. We met up with Derek and Isaac, and started explaining it.
Chris and I had figured since we could likely not catch Boyd, and definitely not kill him, we'd had to contain him. Best place being the boiler room at the school. (Which, as Isaac had pointed out, had no windows and one big steel door) We'd use ultrasonic emitters to drive him towards the school, from which point we'd lead him to the boiler room.
All I had to do was fly half a mile, place an emitter, and fly another half a mile, place an emitter, and so on. That would've been very simple, hadn't it been for a very unwanted interruption.
"You're blaming this on yourself, right?"
I clenched my jaw shut and turned around to face Peter. "Piss off."
"It's not your fault, you know. That Allison kid shouldn't have broken the line of mountain ash." he was slowly walking towards me.
I squinted my eyes at him. "How'd you know? Oh wait, I don't care. Piss off!" I pushed the button on top of the emitter, turning it on.
"I've always wondered why your family, lovely people as they are, bother so much. So what if Boyd and Cora kill a few homeless people? It's the Alpha pack you should be worrying about."
"Who says I can't do both? And by the way, we've already caught Cora" I spread my wings, ready to take off, when Peter grabbed me by the wrist.
"Believe it or not, but I actually care about some people. And I don't want Derek to join their pack." I pulled myself loose and flew up into the air. I had no intent on chit chatting with Peter, I'd already wasted enough time on him.
~o~
Everything was set. Isaac stood outside of the school, Derek inside. I was on the roof, Scott and Chris were… on their way. Okay, so mabye not everything was set. But it was good enough and we were running out of time. How I knew? Well the maniac werewolf jumping onto the roof of the school was a big hint.
He were about as surprised to see me as I was to see them, which… gave neither of us an advantage really.
"Come on then!" I yelled, spreading my wings. When he charged for me, I ran towards the edge of the roof and jumped off, onto one of the school buses. Then, I flew up and away a few feet. Which was a good thing, considering I heard him jump onto the bus just as I jumped off. He then jumped after me, but I just flew back, so he landed on the ground.
"Fly up!" someone yelled. I hesitated, but the shot up a good distance into the air. It was then that arrows started being fired towards Boyd, creating loud whistle sounds and flashes of light at his feet. I turned around, expecting Chris to be standing there. Instead, it was Allison. She stopped firing for a second so Boyd could start running away,conveniently, into the school. As soon as they went through the door opening, Isaac jumped out of the darkness and locked it.
"Don't tell my dad." Allison said, after which she ran away, leaving me and Isaac looking at each other in slight confusion.
"Will we?" Isaac asked me. I sighed and shook my head. No, we wouldn't. I then looked up at the sky. The sun would come out in round and about ten minutes. If everything went according to plan, Derek and Scott would've locked Boyd up in the boiler room by now, and Chris would be gathering the emitters in the woods. Now all we had to do was wait for sunrise. Which was what we had to do now. Wait.
Of course, my phone just had to start going off again.
~o~
I practically ran into the hospital, where Stiles and Melissa were waiting for me. Stiles' eyes were watery and Melissa looked worried.
"What happened?" I asked as I walked towards them. They didn't say anything, Stiles just took my hand and guided me through the hallways, following Melissa. "Are you alright?" I whispered to him. Not only could I now see that he'd been crying, his grip on my hand was worringly tight.
"I'm fine." he whispered as we stopped in front of a door labelled 'morgue'. This couldn't be good. We walked inside, where two bodies lied, covered by a blue sheet, on metallic tables. Melissa stood next to one of them, about to take off the sheet when she hesitated.
"I'm sorry, but did she...?" she looked from Stiles to me.
Stiles shook his head. "No, well yes, but she can't remember."
"Remember what?" I asked, looking at them with a frown. Melissa let out a sigh and took the sheet off the body, revealing a now very pale blonde girl. My heart sank to my stomach as the pieces fell together. It was Heather.
"I'm so sorry." I whispered, my voice shaky. Which wouldn't usually be considered weird, but my voice didn't get shaky easily. Something was wrong. I squeezed Stiles' hand lightly before pulling myself loose from his grasp. I walked to the body, inspecting it.
"Her throat was cut, her head smashed in, and she was also strangled." Melissa
pointed at a bruising line above the slash in Heather's throat. Just looking at the girl made me nauseous. Which I thought I could handle, even though it was odd. Then I started gagging.
"Woah, okay, okay." Melissa quickly covered up the body and walked me away from it. "Sorry, I thought you could handle…"
"I can!" I sighed. "Or I could… I just…" I looked over at the two bodies again. "The other body, does it have the same injuries?"
"Yeah, it does." Stiles said. "And there's more."
I frowned. "More bodies?"
Stiles shook his head. "No, more connections. The guy, he had a purity ring. You said Heather didn't want to be a seventeen-year-old virgin, an-"
"I did?" I asked. Man I was drunk.
"Yeah, you talked to her friends that night." he said, waving it off. "Anyway, now there's another girl missing. She and her girlfriend were camping in the woods-"
"I know." I internally cursed myself for not thinking more of the girl's disappearance, focusing too much on Boyd. "Cora paid their camping spot a little visit. But the girl was gone by then." I looked up as Stiles. "She a virgin too?" Stiles nodded.
"Stiles said something about a threefold death." Melissa said. "That mean anything to you?"
"Blow to the head, slash in the throat, suffocated by garotte." I recited. "It's a sacrificing ritual. Maybe that's why I feel like throwing up." I shook my head when they frowned at me. "They died before their time. I should've done something about it."
"Well, I don't know about you, but keeping track of all the deaths in a town like this seems like way too much pressure for a teenager." Melissa patted me on the back. "Let's get you two out of here."
~o~
I'd just taken a shower when I walked into Stiles' room, drying my hair with a towel. What I hadn't expected to find was a big pinboard with newspaper articles, pictures, and different coloured threads pinned to it.
"Stiles, what the hell are you doing?" I asked. Stiles was standing next to the board, using a red piece of string to connect two articles. He looked up at me, back to the board, and then to me.
"Oh, yeah, I'm trying to figure out if anything else like this has happened before." he gestured at the board. "Sacrifices, alpha packs…" He frowned, so I assumed an idea popped up in his mind. "Could they be doing sacrifices to grow more powerful?"
"I…" I frowned. "Don't know. It's possible. If they found out a way to do that, maybe using an object to channel power from the sacrifice to themselves. But in that case they probably did it before and…" I walked over to the board and looked at it. Several newspaper articels that could be about a threefold death, all across the country. Pieces of red and orange string were scattered across the board, two rolls of blue and green string were left untouched on the floor.
Stiles noticed my looking at them. "Green means solved, orange means working on it, red means that I don't have a clue." he sighed. "I mostly use red. Oh and I-"
"Just like blue, yeah I know." I chuckled. "That's a pretty good system you've got here."
Stiles scratched the back of his neck. "Yeah, I got it from dad. So, any further thoughts?" He looked at me, and I could just tell he was anticipating something.
"I... " I frowned and turned my head to the board. "Try to track where the pack has been, and see if there's a pattern with the sacrifices?" I turned my head again and saw Stiles smiling at me. I smiled back, but then let out a scoff. "You're testing me? Me?"
"Just wanted to see what you'd suggest." he said innocently.
I shook my head. "Idiot."
Stiles put his arm over my shoulder. "Nah, you love me."
I frowned. "Was that a question?"
"Maybe."
I smiled and leaned my head against his shoulder. "The answer's yes."
We stood there for a moment in silence, staring at the board in front of us. Then, Stiles suddenly tensed up.
"What?" I asked.
"What if it's not connected?" Stiles said. He removed his hand from my shoulder and stepped closer to the board, as if he could understand it better when close to it. "What if… there's someone else out there? You said yourself, the Alpha pack is incredibly strong, they, they take over their Beta's powers. Why would they need the sacrifices?" He shook his head.
I nodded. "Fair point. But that begs the question, because if the Alpha pack isn't doing it..." I crouched down to level with a picture on the bottom of the board. It was a picture of Heather, as I'd seen her in the morgue. "Then who is killing these people?"
~o~
I hurried through the school corridors. I'd just changed into my clothes for PE when Stiles texted me to come to the boys' changing room. When I got there, I immediately took notice of two things: Dozens of shirtless guys who didn't seem fazed with me coming into the room, and Stiles' talking.
"You know who else is a virgin? Me! I'm a virgin, okay? And this now means that the lack of sexual experience is now literally a threat to my life!"
I walked towards Stiles, who was standing behind the door of Danny's locker, so he couldn't see me. Danny was standing in front of me, but he didn't say anything when he noticed me putting my finger to my lips.
"Then why don't you ask Lorraine?" Scott said, obviously not taking it serious. At that moment, Danny shut his locker and walked away. The sound of the locker closing made Stiles look around, which gave me the perfect timing.
"Yeah Stiles, why didn't you just say you wanted to have sex?"
"Woah!" Stiles yelled, stumbling back. "Lora! You… came faster than I expected."
"Only if you do your job right." I said, patting him on his shoulder as I walked past him, towards Scott. "What happened?"
Scott sighed. "There was this client at the clinic last night. After his appointment he just disappeared, leaving his car and dog. Stiles thinks he's dead."
I nodded. "Probably." I then winced as the now familiar sound of ringing echoed through my ears. Only now it was louder than it'd ever been. I felt someone keeping me from falling down, but since I'd closed my eyes I didn't know who. And as quick as it'd come, the ringing was gone. I found myself sitting on the floor, with Stiles, Scott, and Isaac (I don't know where the hell he'd come from) looking at me in worry.
"Scratch the probably." I said, pulling myself up. "He's dead."
Stiles opened his mouth to say something, but Coach beat him to it. "Alright! For all the lacrosse players in here: No, cross-country is not optional. I don't want you all turning into a bunch of fat-" he stopped as he spotted me. "Hield, what are you doing here?"
I shrugged. "Making sure Stillinski keeps going, even though he's so unfit, he can barely run up the stairs?"
Coach tilted his head and pointed a finger at me. "You, I like you. You can stay." He grinned before leaving the room.
"You okay?" Isaac asked, frowning ever so slightly at me.
"Fine." I muttered. Most people were leaving the room, following coach outside. "Let's go."
~o~
Everyone was standing in one big group, ready to go. The cross country was in an area just outside of the school, near the woods. I was standing at the back of the group, next to Stiles. In the left front corner of the group was Isaac, tying his shoelaces. Two older guys, who were so alike that they must've been twins, walked up to him. Isaac's head shot up, and I frowned as I watched the three. They didn't say or do anything, but there seemed to be some sort of tension hanging around them.
"Who are they?" I asked Stiles, pointing at the twins. He looked over and then back at me.
"The Alpha twins." he said, sounding indifferent. When I stared at him with wide eyes, his mouth fell open. "Oh. You didn't know about the Alpha twins, did you? Ah…"
"How the fu-" I was interrupted by Coach's whistle, which signalled the start of the run. The twins shot forward, already way ahead of the rest of the group. Soon, Isaac shot up and went a after them.
"Let's go!" I yelled, then pulled Stiles after me. It soon became evident that he wouldn't be able to keep up. Isaac and the twins were nowhere to be seen within one minute, and soon Scott followed. "Stiles…" I looked back at him. His face was red, he was panting so hard I thought he might fall down on the spot. I sighed. "Nevermind." We were ahead of the group, so we continued in a slower pace. I just hoped that Scott and Isaac could handle themselves.
We turned around a sharp corner which led to a path that went as good as straight ahead for a decent mile. Which begged the question: Where were Isaac, Scott, and the twins?
Stiles stopped, and I figured he noticed too. "Lora…"
I nodded. "I know. Where are they?"
He shook his head. "No, not that." There was a shaking in his voice that made me turn around in concern. He pointed to the side of the path. There was a body bound to a tree. The guy's neck was bleeding, the blood still trickling down his chest a bit. I didn't need to look at it any longer to know that he'd been another sacrifice. How? Well that fucking nausea came up again, this time even worse than the last.
Stiles had seen it coming, and he'd already put his hands on my shoulders, keeping me from swaying.
I tried to pull myself loose. "I'm fine."
Even though I couldn't see him, I was sure Stiles rolled his eyes. "Yeah sure."
I sighed. "Call you dad."
It didn't take long for the others to catch up with us. Which ensued the usual "holy fucking fuck there's a fucking dead body lets all scream and stare at it" drama.
Lucky for us, it didn't take very long for the sheriff and his deputies to show up either.
"Alright, clear the area, before anyone tramples the evidence!" the sheriff said as he walked up to us. "You guys okay?"
Meanwhile, Stiles updated his dad on the situation. "Look dad, it's the same injuries. Threefold death."
"Yes, I can see that, so why don't you two go and be teenagers?" he gently pushed us away from the scene, after which he and the other deputies cleared the area. Stiles and I let out a collective sigh before walking away, when we were joined by Scott and Isaac.
"Let me guess:" I sighed. "You got into a fight with the twins?"
Isaac winced. "Jup."
I shook my head and let out a bitter laugh. "Those fuckers are going to pay for that shit."
"But did you see the looks on their faces?" Stiles asked, frowning at us. "They were just as surprised as we were."
Isaac stopped and frowned. "No, they looked like they knew exactly what had happened." They looked at me and Scott for help.
I shrugged. "I didn't seem them."
"Yeah, and neither did I." Scott said, shaking his head. "Look, I don't know, okay?"
"I don't- Scott! Am I the only one here that's noticing the non-werewolfiness of these murders?" Stiles looked at the three of us in despair.
Isaac scoffed. "So the second they turn up people start dying and that's just a coincidence?"
"It might be!" Stiles said, turning to me and Scott. "Come on…"
Scott shrugged. "Like I said, I don't know. Isaac's got a good point. I mean, human sacrifices?"
Stiles' jaw fell open. "Scott, your eyes are like two yellow glowsticks, you've got hair that grows out of your cheeks, and then somehow grows back again," he held his hands up to his cheeks, "and if I were to stab you right now, it would just magically heal, but you're trying to tell me you've got a problem grasping the concept of human sacrifices?" he exclaimed.
Scott turned to Isaac, his mouth hanging slightly open. "He's got a good point too."
Isaac shook his head. "I don't care. They killed that guy and they killed the girl that saved me. And now I'm going to kill them." he stalked off, but I ran after him.
"Isaac!" I put my hand on his shoulder. "Don't. I know you're angry, and if they're the ones who did this, they can't get away with it. But you're being irrational. Two werewolves, who are Alpha's, mind you, against one Beta." I let out a sigh as Isaac visibly relaxed. "Good. Now-" I winced as the ringing came back to my ears. "Shit."
"Lora?" Stiles ran up to us. "Lora, what's wrong?"
As soon as the ringing had come, it left. I shook my head. "Nothing. It's fine now." But I somehow knew that that wasn't the case. Someone had died.
"You sure?" he asked, his eyes scanning me from head to toe as if that would give him more certainty. I just nodded again. "Okay, good… how about we go to the library?"
I nodded at that. With all the human sacrifices and the Alpha pack, my schoolwork was… only just enough. Stiles was helping me but he also had his hands full trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
I turned to Isaac. "The twins now know that you're easily wound up now, they might try to do it again."
He tensed up again. "And I'm just supposed to let them?"
I smirked. "Fuck no. Just giving you a heads up so you have more time to come up with a plan." I patted him on the back. "Give 'em hell, kid." After that, Stiles and I headed for the library. It was when we arrived that Lydia called out for help.
A/N: There we go! Chapter eight. I do like this chapter more than the last few, and I like the ones that are coming up even more.
Speaking of which, I've been very busy with school and work lately. I suck at time management so I haven't had the chance to write all that much. Usually I write a few chapters ahead and keep it that way, but I haven't even finished the next one. The point of all this is that I might be a day late with uploading the new chapters, or there might come a week where I can't upload at all.
But I'm trying, that's for certain :)
As always, thank you al so so much for reading, and I'll see you in the next chapter!
~Lilly
