Disclaimer: Teen Wolf characters are not mine.
A/N: So sorry! This chapter has been long overdue! Anyways, this one is a bit more...canon? Is that the right word? It kind of touches on the relationship between Henry and AJ, which I think was completely lost in the actual show (Seriously. Has Malia even mentioned her "dad" more than once?). Ok. That's all. Author rant over. Actually no, not over. Teen Wolf doesn't come back until July. JULY! How are we supposed to last that long? I'm already waiting for Sherlock. How can they do this to us? Ok. Now my rant is over.
There was no terse command to get up from Derek, which meant I slept late into the morning. When I finally did drag myself out of bed, it was only because my stomach hurt, and I could smell the food that Derek was making. I recognized the pain easily. Unfortunately, it was one I was intimately acquainted to—hunger.
I slogged through my morning routine and picked through the cache of still new clothing. I didn't care what they looked like. I just pulled the stiff, crusty jeans off and the new, soft pair on. My shirt followed, landing in the growing heap of dirty clothes, and I snagged a new one out of the shopping bags. Without the weird flashes of heat, I was back to being cold again, and Derek's old hoodie went over the shirt. Then I dragged myself out of the room, dreading having to drink the horrible protein shake again.
It was ready for me by the time I slumped my way into the kitchen. Derek was making himself some new version of eggs, putting cheese and some little pieces of sausage onto a flat egg pancake before folding it in half. I slipped onto the stool, eying my shake with distaste. Instead of drinking it, I watched Derek cook. His egg-taco-looking-thing smelled great, which only served to remind me that my breakfast did not.
My stomach pinched painfully at the scent of meat, and I reached out, downing the protein shake before I could think better of it. Derek levered the egg thing onto his plate and turned away from the stove, forearms anchored on the counter as he cut the egg pancake into neat, bite size pieces. He ate slowly, ignoring me, and I watched him with hooded eyes.
When there were only three or four bites left, he set the fork across the edge of the plate and slid the whole thing over to me. I gazed down at the morsels. They were probably barely warm now, but at the same time, I didn't care. I was tired of liquid breakfasts.
The plate was empty in a matter of seconds. I chewed as slowly as I could make myself, trying to force myself to savor the taste. It didn't work. The food settled in my stomach, and suddenly it felt heavy. It was a good feeling, though, and the hunger pains had long since left.
"What do you want for breakfast tomorrow?" Derek startled me, both with his question and the subject matter. I had briefly entertained the notion that he'd had forgotten our deal. Four days of protein shakes, and I got to choose the fifth breakfast. With everything going on, it would have been easy for him to just drop the extraneous details.
Extraneous: irrelevant or unrelated to the subject being dealt with. One of the words I had to know for my English quiz today. I winced, realizing that I'd meant to study yesterday, but it hadn't happened. That was okay. I could just study in the library before class. Lydia would help me.
"Breakfast?" Derek prompted. He was waiting for an answer. I'd gotten sidetracked.
The possibilities flitted through my mind, one after another. There were so many options, it was unbelievable. Finally I settled on what was probably my newest favorite thing. "Twinkies," I said firmly, pleased at my own decisiveness and the prospect of more creamy, spongy goodness.
"You're not having Twinkies for breakfast," Derek stated sardonically, bringing my excitement crashing down. What? He'd clearly said that I could choose what I wanted for breakfast. And I knew exactly what I wanted.
"You said I—"
"I said you could choose, but Twinkies aren't food. You aren't having them for breakfast."
I was pissed. "You said I could choose what I wanted. Well, I want Twinkies." I didn't understand his problem. He'd said I could choose.
Derek stared me down, unrelenting. He'd lied. He'd said I could choose, but now he was going back on his word. For some reason that hurt. Part of me wanted to push the matter, but the other part of me knew that Derek was only letting me stay here temporarily. I didn't need to make more problems, especially when the future fallout from the fight was still looming over me.
I slid off the stool. "Eggs are fine," I mumbled, heading for the door.
The drive was silent as usual. I was frustrated and feeling a little bit stupid for allowing myself to get so expectant. I'd known this was a temporary situation, but I'd forgotten. This was a wake up call.
Even though I was late to school, I still went to the library, following Lydia's scent. She looked fine, more or less, when I found her. Tired, maybe, as she stared down at a textbook spread in front of her. I could tell she wasn't really reading it. Sliding into the chair next to her, I listened to the rapid beating of her heart. It was faster than normal, which meant she was scared or stressed about something.
"Are you okay?" I asked finally, not sure what else to do.
Her gaze snapped up to mine, and she looked startled. "What?" she demanded. I hesitated then repeated my question. Her startled look faded, replaced by cool indifference. "I'm fine," she said lightly, but her heart rate said otherwise. I wondered if this was one of those times where we all lied about how we were really doing. I even wondered if I should parrot her "not healthy to hold things in" words back to her. But maybe now was not the time. Besides, I had something else I wanted to know.
"What were you doing at the warehouse? How did you know we were there?" I asked, changing topics.
She shook her head. "I didn't. I was in my room, studying, and I heard this...this terrible breathing sound. I tried to ignore it, but next thing I knew, I was at the warehouse, and Derek was grabbing my arm and telling me to leave. But I couldn't, and I don't know why."
"Why did you scream?" The ghoul had just dropped into the bus when I'd run up the steps. That meant that Lydia had screamed before it had found her. It wasn't a regular scream, and it had somehow broken through my bloodlust and rage, which begged the question of why, or even how, she'd done it in the first place.
Lydia stared out over my shoulder, unblinking. "It was too loud," she said faintly. "The breathing, it was just...too loud."
The bell rang, startling the both of us. Lydia stood quickly, sweeping her books up and walking out. I stared after her, more confused than when I'd started the conversation. And I'd missed the quiz in English. Crap.
The day passed sluggishly. I kept my head down, spoke very little, and generally wished I was anywhere else but school. Most of my classes dragged on uneventfully. I didn't mind. There was a kind of comfort in the dull mediocrity that was public education. I didn't want to be there and neither did anyone else.
We ran again in P.E. I didn't push myself, didn't keep pace with Kira. I just jogged along in the middle of the shambling horde, and Coach kept giving me dark looks every time the group chugged slowly past him. At the end of the run, he snagged my shoulder. "Disappointed," he muttered under his breath. To me, he said, "Don't forget. Detention starts right after school in Mr. Nelson's classroom." Then he stalked away, still muttering about wasted potential and glaring at his clipboard.
I changed out of my shorts and dragged myself to detention. I didn't know what it was yet, but I gathered that it was probably punitive in some manner.
I was right. And it was so much worse than I imagined. There were only three of us, sitting in the classroom, and for two hours we did just that—sit. It was a substitute teacher who ran it. He leaned back in the swivel chair and propped his feet on the desk, crossing his arms over his paunchy stomach and closing his eyes. Anytime any of us moved or talked, the teacher would open his eyes and glare. Sometimes he would threaten more detention. I wanted to die.
When he released us at five, I was the first one out the door, and I practically ran outside. I paused after bursting out the door, taking huge breaths of air that weren't contaminated by body odor and the reek of Pot.
I was well acquainted with the smell of marijuana. As a coyote, when I'd first noticed the unfamiliar smell, I'd traced it to the source. There were two men camped out in the woods, guarding a little patch of green leaves. They'd stunk—both the leaves and the men—and the men had taken shots at me when I'd come to investigate. I'd repaid the favor by waiting until they were away to steal their food and urinate all over their sleeping bags.
One of the boys in detention had smelled like Pot, and I wondered if that was why he was in detention in the first place. After clearing my nostrils of the offending odor, I looked around. Derek was waiting for me, arms crossed, leaning against the hood of his car. When he saw me, he shoved off and went to the driver side. I pulled the strap of my backpack higher and walked over.
When we got home, I was itching for a run. I took the stairs two at a time, having gained a couple hours worth of edgy restlessness in detention. I stripped out of my jeans and pulled on some shorts, somewhat elated at the prospect of feeling the air on my face and the ground against my feet. But Derek had to go and ruin that too.
I started to edge by him, heading towards the door, but he stopped me with a hand on my chest. I glared, but it had no affect on him. "Peter's coming over. Said he found something about the ghouls." I narrowed my eyes, not the least bit interested in Peter and maybe only two seconds away from forcibly removing his hand.
Derek might have known what I was thinking, because he dropped his hand. The unspoken threat was still there, though. "Stay close. The ghouls are still out there, and we don't know how many there are."
I was still miffed about the whole Twinkie thing, so I set my jaw stubbornly. I could stay close, close-ish, and still run. I would be gone and back before Derek even knew it. Before he could even stop you, the little voice niggled. Then, as if leaving no wiggle room, Derek shook his head. "Stay...close..." he ground out. God, he was a freaking mind reader.
I scowled, but ducked my head in an affirmative. Derek walked off, looking grim, and I chewed my bottom lip, trying to figure out what I was going to do now. In the end, I went back to my room and grabbed my history book. Of all the subjects, history had the most catch-up required. I knew very little, and there was apparently a couple hundred years of things to cover. After procuring the book, I went outside.
If I couldn't go running, the closest thing I could get was sitting on the steps in the sunlight. I plopped down, book on my lap. It was warm, and everything was quiet. Once again, I realized just how much I liked staying with Derek. It was better, so much better, than staying at Eichen House. Than staying with my own father, even.
That thought hit me in the stomach, and I felt a pang of...regret, sadness? I didn't know. It was something, and I didn't like it. To take my mind off my father's betrayal, I opened the book to the appropriate chapter and started reading.
The sun soaked into my skin, and I found it harder and harder to stay focused on crazy men throwing tea off boats. My eyes slid shut, and I leaned the side of my head against the cool metal of the railing. I could stay like this forever, I decided.
Before I knew it, something nudged my foot. "I know history can be dull sometimes, but it's not supposed to put you to sleep." Peter. I opened my eyes with a yawn, not realizing I'd fallen asleep. Peter was standing a few steps below me, my history book in his hand and a bemused expression on his face. The book must have slipped out of my hands when I'd fallen asleep.
I blinked at him, still disorientated with sleep. "Go inside," he told me with twitch of his chin up the stairs. Almost instantly, I was overcome with the desire to do anything but go inside. Peter tilted his head at me with a resigned sigh, like I was a small, willful child. Stilinski sighed at Stiles like that a lot. "Go inside," he repeated. "You'll want to hear what I have to say." I didn't. I really didn't. But he had my book, and I really had nothing else to do. I scowled at him but clambered to my feet and went up the stairs. Peter smirked, knowing he'd won, and followed me up.
Peter didn't give me back my book until he was sliding the loft door shut behind us. I snatched it from his hand and sulked to couch, tossing the book onto the coffee table. Derek came down the winding stairs, and the three of us met in the living room. We sat, Derek and I on the couch with Peter on the chair facing us. Peter pulled out a laptop, opening it and spinning the screen to face us.
"Ghouls consume human flesh," he said, with no further introduction. "The empty graves at the cemetery were probably either resurrected corpses or lunch. That being said, ghouls are relatively weak and easy to kill in their beta form."
I thought back to the ghouls I'd fought. They hadn't been too hard to kill, but I knew they weren't weak. "At least ghouls are until they—the closest word to the Arabic lore is convert… So they convert human flesh somehow and then eat it," Peter clarified. "All the research I've found is a little gray in that area." He glanced between Derek and I when we both bristled a little. "I take it you've experienced it first hand?"
"The saliva," Derek said after a moment. I rubbed my forearm, remembering the awful pain. "Tissue exposed to the saliva becomes necrotic."
Peter shrugged, unconcerned. "The victim has to be alive while they are 'converted.' Once that happens, the ghouls consume the flesh and take on the secondary form. It takes months to mature, but they're basically quicker, stronger, and faster healing."
I thought about all the ghouls we'd seen. They were all dead except for that one big one. Derek's slash marks on its back had been mere lines when I'd seen it. Fast healing. And it was strong, I knew that personally. So that one was in secondary form, then. The rest didn't matter. They were dead.
Peter studied Derek's grim expression with slight amusement. "Do you want the good news or the bad news?" he asked playfully. When neither of us said anything, he huffed almost petulantly. "The good news is that ghouls are territorial. There's no way there is more than one in secondary form." He fell silent, waiting.
"And the bad news?" Derek growled, when it became clear Peter was going to wait until someone asked.
"It's nearly invincible," Peter said. All his manipulation and game-playing was done. He was dead serious. "Ghouls are apex predators, and the longer they live, the stronger they get. You need to be careful."
I scanned the ancient documents on the laptop screen. The ghouls apparently locked onto certain prey—the supernatural kind. Ghouls got stronger the stronger their prey was. I leaned back, looking down at my shoes and I tried to work through what that meant for us. Twice now the ghouls had targeted us. Or…
"They're after us," I murmured quietly. Peter and Derek went quiet, and I looked up. "They're after us. Or Lydia. Maybe both," I conceded. "The stronger the prey, the stronger they become."
Peter stared at me, calculating and pensive. Then he closed the laptop and stood abruptly, taking it with him. "Don't go anywhere alone," he said sharply, pinning me in place with his gaze the same way Derek so often did. I squirmed a little bit, not liking the pressure, and then I nodded, wondering if that's what he was waiting for. It seemed to appease him, and he walked quickly out of the loft.
I snagged my book off the table, glancing over at Derek's contemplative, blank face.
He remained still for a long moment before twisting to look at me. "Keep an eye on Lydia at school." It wasn't a request, but it also wasn't the demanding tone that Peter had taken. I nodded, already having made up my mind to do just that. I wondered if keeping an eye on Lydia merited skipping detention.
As if knowing my thoughts, Derek gave a half grin. "How was detention today?"
I scowled. "Sucked," I grumbled.
Derek snorted. "Good. Maybe that will help you think before you act." I wrinkled my nose at him, but it was different. This kind of talking wasn't heavy. It was kind of playful, even. I wasn't used to it, but I didn't dislike it. I grinned, suddenly happy.
My phone rang, and I answered without really checking the screen to see who it was. "AJ," I said by way of greeting.
"Hey, kiddo." It was my father. I froze, my grin fading. My stomach twisted painfully, like someone had just kicked me. How did he even get this number? God. What was I supposed to say? Silence stretched on. "I...I was just calling to see, um, to see how you were doing." Henry sounded just as nervous as I felt. My mouth went dry, and all my words left me.
"I'm...good," I said after an awkward pause. Derek was looking at me, and I knew he could hear every single word of this trainwreck conversation, so I turned away, unable to take his watchful eyes.
"Good. That's good," Henry murmured. "Eichen House called and informed me that you had checked out. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Sheriff Stilinski said he found you a place to stay."
That was it. No asking if I needed help, no invitation to move back. He was just trying to make himself feel better. My chest ached, and I didn't even know why. I wanted to hit something, badly. But I wasn't even angry this time. My fist clenched, and my throat got all thick and prickly.
"Yeah," I said, unwilling and unable to say more.
He let out a sigh of relief. A sigh. A freaking sigh. "I'm glad. Well, I have to go. Lots of stuff to do. I'll call you again sometime soon?"
"Yeah." It was the only thing I could squeeze out of my thick throat. He hung up, and I was left holding the phone up to my ear with an ache in my chest. "If you need anything, I'm just a phone call away." That's what Sheriff Stilinksi had told me when he'd dropped me off with Derek. My own father had said nothing of the kind. Just an ambiguous "call you later."
Derek stood up, not making a big deal over the conversation. He left the room, which I appreciated since I wanted to simultaneously hit something or maybe even cry.
Cry. Where had that come from? I very much so did not want to cry. Yet my eyes were prickling and my chest hurt. God, emotions sucked.
My phone rang again, and I checked to see who it was this time. Stiles. "What?" I ground out, my voice still thick and gravely.
There was a moment of silence. Then, "My dad gave your dad your cell phone number. I just wanted to give you a heads up."
"Yeah, got it." The pain in those clipped words was evident, but I didn't know how to make my voice change. I wasn't in control. What else is new? I thought bitterly.
Another long pause. "Sorry," Stiles said quietly, strangely serious. He knew. He knew Henry had just called. He could hear it in my voice. Why couldn't he have warned me sooner? And why the heck was my chest hurting? I was over my dad. He had betrayed me, and now this? I didn't need him. Didn't need anyone.
Stiles hung up since there was nothing else to say. I brought the phone down away from my ear, staring at it. Then my fist clenched tightly, and I flung it away with all my might.
Derek appeared in the doorway, reaching out and plucking the phone out of the air easily before it shattered against the wall. He didn't berate me or say anything. He just tucked it into his jacket pocket. "Let's go," he said.
I stared at him, chest heaving, hands shaking. He stared back, solid and unyielding. "Let's go," he prompted again, and then he walked out.
I followed, feeling lost and not knowing what else to do.
