Part two; Lose your dnim

Stiles jolted awake, panting for breath. He'd had a nightmare. Again. Ever since becoming a surrogate sacrifice for his Dad, he'd been plagued by constant night terrors, panic attacks, the works.

He would do it again though, if it meant keeping his Dad safe and alive.

"Stiles?" He heard a sleepy voice mutter. "Stiles, what's wrong?" Seraphina sat up next to him, placing her head on his shoulder. She was like a living breathing hot water bottle, always driving away the cold darkness with a warm light. Concern was shining in her eyes as she rubbed his arm.

"I was just dreaming." He muttered. He hated seeing her worried. As much as she tried to help, the darkness was always there, waiting. Sometimes, if he concentrated hard enough, he could see it swirling around the edges of his vision. "It was weird, it was like a dream within a dream." He didn't turn around to look at her. He didn't want her to see the heavy bags under his eyes.

"Like a nightmare?" She saw right through him anyway.

He turned around, smiling wryly. Then he blinked.

There was something... off about her appearance. Something different.

Her shook his head. It was probably just his imagination.

He placed his hand on hers, trying to console her as she consoled him. He couldn't remember her showing up at his house, he realized. "Wait a second, what are you doing here?"

His bedroom door creaked open. He started to get up to close it.

"Stiles where are you going?" He felt her place a hand on his shoulder, trying to hold him back.

"I'm just gonna close the door." He reassured her, trying to get up.

"Stiles, just go back to sleep." She muttered, still attempting to get him to lay down.

"No, no, I should close it." He told her, placing his hand back on hers before getting up.

Don't let them in.

"Don't worry about it." She whispered, clenching the material of his shirt tightly in her hand. her grip strong for someone with hands as small and dainty as hers.

"What if someone comes in?"

Don't let them in.

"Like who?" She asked him as he began to approach the door. Then her tone changed. "Just go back to sleep, Stiles."

Don't let them in.

He shook his head, already feeling the cold presence of dread seeping into his bones, into his heart. "What if they get in?"

"What if who gets in?"

He got closer to the door, feeling the darkness pulsate with each step.

Don't let them in.

"Stiles?" She sounded afraid now. "Just leave it please?"

He should have comforted her, but he knew that above all else he had to close the door.

"Stiles?!"

He lifted his hand to grasp to doorknob.

"Stiles, come back to bed!" Why didn't she want him to close the door? They could get in.

DON'T LET THEM IN.

"Stiles!" She screamed. "Please, don't go in there!"

Both of her eyes were black. Not one black and one brown. They were completely void of colour.

He opened the door and took a step for wards.

DON'T LET THEM IN.

"Please Stiles, don't!" She begged.

He took a step forwards and heard nothing but wind.

There was a silhouette on the ground, a stadium light illuminating the clearing and revealing it to be the Nematon.

The clearing was flooding with light.

"This is a dream." Stiles muttered. "This is just a dream!"

He couldn't feel the wind, he couldn't feel anything.

"This is just a dream, get it out of your head, Stiles!" He yelled. "This is just a dream, so wake up, Stiles!" He clutched his hair in his hands. "WAKE UP!"

His eyes slid open to reveal his bedroom, light sifting through his windows. It was just a dream.

Then his door opened. He felt an irrational jolt of fear, before seeing his father standing on the other side, a cup of coffee in hand.

"Hey, time to get up kiddo. Get your but to school."

"And you couldn't wake up?" Scott asked him as they walked down the steps at school.

"Nope." He shook his head. "And it was beyond terrifying." He told his best friend. "You ever hear of sleep paralysis?"

"Do I want to?"

Stiles sighed, before explaining. "Well, d'you ever have a dream where you want to wake up, but you can't move or talk?"

"Yeah." Scott nodded. "Yeah, I've had that."

"It happens because during REM sleep, your body is basically paralised. It's called muscle Antonia, that way, if you start dreaming about running, you don't actually start running in your bed." He wondered if Scott was having dreams within dreams as well. Maybe Allison was too?

Maybe he wasn't the only one that felt like he was losing his mind?

"Yeah, that makes sense." Scott nodded his head.

"And sometimes your mind can wake up before your body does. So for the split second you're actually aware that your body's paralised."

"And that's the terrifying part?"

"It turns your dream into a nightmare." Stiles deadpanned. "You can feel like your falling, like you're being strangled, or in my case, like you're at the center of a grove of magical trees where human sacrifices took place."

"You think it means something?" Scott asked him as they pushed their way into the side entrance of the school.

"What if what we did that night, what if it's still affecting us?"

"Post traumatic stress?" Scott questioned.

"Something." Stiles shook his head.

They entered a classroom and sat down.

"And you wanna know what scares me the most?" Stiles asked his friend.

Scott turned around in his seat to look at him. "What?"

DON'T LET THEM IN!

"I'm not even sure that this is real."

Stiles woke up screaming.

. . . . .

I trotted off to school, feeling the warm buzz of contentment flow under my skin. The Darach and the Alphas were gone, the sun was shining, the sky was blue. All was well.

...Or not.

Scott was running like he was being chased, but he kept looking down, as if it was something on the floor.

Was he running from his shadow?

"Scott?" I called, jogging up to him as he raced down the stairs. He didn't notice me. "Scott?" I caught up to him and grabbed him by the strap on his backpack. He startled at the sudden touch, as if he hadn't noticed me at all. "Hey, are you okay?" I asked him.

"Scott?" Stiles' voice called out, as the boy in walked over to us. I couldn't hold back a smile, which he returned, before he glanced back to his best friend. "You okay, buddy?"

"Yeah." The other boy nodded, panting as if he was out of breath. "I'm okay."

"You don't look alright." I frowned. "Neither of you do, actually."

Stiles' expression grew sheepish when he looked back at me, before facing Scott again. "You've been seeing things too, haven't you?"

Too?! Stiles was seeing things?!

"How d'you know?" Scott asked him searchingly, before glancing behind me and Stiles.

"Because it's been happening to all three of you." Came the voice of Lydia Martin, resident Banshee.

"This is because of the sacrifice, isn't it?" I asked them, directing my eyes first at Stiles, then Allison, then Scott. They all nodded. "Alright, spill it." I demanded, throwing my arms out. "Let's hear what you've all been seeing then."

Scott went first, as we all headed towards the doors. "I keep thinking I've turned. I keep seeing myself with claws or red eyes in my reflections and in the shadows. Just now it looked like I had turned in the mega Alpha, like Peter had."

Stiles pitched in next. "I keep having nightmares, I've got sleep paralysis and I don't know when I'm dreaming or not." I felt his fingers curl around mine, even as he looked straight ahead. "Also, I'm finding it hard to read, it's like the words keep floating off of the pages."

"And how about you, Allison?" Lydia chirped.

The huntress took a deep breath. "I keep seeing visions of my Aunt Kate." She admitted.

We approached the doors as Lydia pushed through them. "Well look at who is no longer the crazy one."

"Are you referring to your naked hike through the woods?" I asked. "Or the breakdown you had in class a few days ago?"

Stiles let out a snort as Allison gave me a reprimanding look, before she turned back to her best friend. "We are not crazy."

The strawberry blonde, turned back to them. "Hallucinating? Sleep paralysis? Yeah, you guys are fine." She drawled.

"Yeah." I smiled smiled at her, "They're just a paranoid delusionist, a psychotic ghost whisperer and a dyslexic schizophrenic. Nothing weird at all."

The three went silent at that, glancing at each other.

"Well we did die and come back to life." Scott offered. "That's gotta have some side affects, right?"

The bell rang.

"Keep an eye on each other, alright?" Stiles told the other two, before leading me off to the history class I shared with him and Scott. "And Lydia, stop enjoying this so much."

I chuckled, before Stiles nudged me with his shoulder.

"Hey, that goes for you too, Bright eyes."

We made our way to History class, heading for the cluster of free seats. I sat down next to Scott, who was sitting next to Stiles.

"Morning, everyone." I looked up to glance at the teacher, a not very tall man, with almond shaped eyes. Asian. "My name is Mr Yukimura and I'll be taking over for your previous History teacher."

Ah, the one who was ritually sacrificed.

"My family and I moved here three weeks ago, I'm sure by now you all know my daughter, Kira." He addressed us. "Or, you might not, seeing as though she's never mentioned anyone from school. Or brought home a friend, for that matter."

I heard a quiet groan from the back of the class, followed by a bang that signified someone had just face planted on the desk. We all turned around to look at the poor girl.

I jolted in my seat, feeling a familiar sensation wash over me. I wasn't the only trickster in the room.

"Either way, there she is." Her father pointed.

She slowly raised her head, peeking out at us shyly. Giving us all an awkward smile as the class began to chitter.

I sucked in a shaky breath. It was definitely her, but her Dad wasn't a trickster, so she must have inherited it from her mother. I glanced back at Mr Yukimura who was giving me a startled look.

Ignore it, I should just ignore it.

Scott was still glancing at her, I realized. The wolf had a crush. Then his head began to tilt downwards, as he looked at his shadow on the floor again. He seemed enraptured by it.

I leaned over and flick his ear, snapping him out of whatever trance he had been in. "Wake up, Scotty boy." I whispered.

He gave me a sheepish grin. "Thanks."

I nodded, before turning my head to look at the board, only to see Stiles' hand laying on my desk. I gingerly place my hand in his, as it swallowed by small fingers, squeezing reassuringly.

He knew that I was more worried about them than I was letting on. As I should be. What if it didn't get better, but just got worse?

And then, there was whatever was going on between me and Stiles. We had agreed to just take it slow, let it all happen naturally, not wanting to get ahead of ourselves.

He squeezed my hand again, looking at me carefully. I smiled, before looking down to take notes.

We would all just have to hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

Later that day, when we approached our lockers preparing for next period, Scott was still trying to be optimistic.

"Maybe we need a little more time to get back to normal." He shrugged, smiling at Stiles.

"Yeah, try not to forget we hit the reset button on a supernatural beacon for supernatural creatures." Stiles replied dryly as he fiddle with his padlock. "There's a pretty big chance that everything is never going back to normal." He yanked his locker once again, before giving it a confused look.

"Stiles?" I murmured as he continued to stare at it. "Everything okay?"

He didn't answer me, as Scott slumped against the lockers in front of us. I glanced up at the other boy, before my eyes flew wide open.

"Scott, your eyes!" I exclaimed, whisper yelling quietly.

"What about them?" He questioned as Stiles looked up.

"They're starting to glow!" Stiles told him fervently, looking around to see if anyone else had noticed.

"What, you mean like right now?" The true Alpha seemed bewildered.

"No Scott, five minutes into the future." I deadpanned, staring at him before throwing my arms out. "Yes, right now!"

"Scott, stop!" Stiles ordered him. "Stop it!"

Scott shook his head lethargically. "I can't. I can't" He brought his fingers up to cover his eyes.

Stiles glanced back down the hallway, before turning to his best friend. "Just keep your head down, look down. Come on." He grabbed Scott's head and brought it to his chest, trying -and failing- to be extremely inconspicuous.

"Wow, Stiles." I drawled. "Super subtle." I gave him a sarcastic thumbs up. "Nice going, Batman."

He rolled his eyes at me as he and Scott stumbled through the hallway, before dragging his best friend into an empty classroom, where the werewolf then proceeded to take off his jacket.

"Should I leave you two alone?" I asked, receiving no actual response.

Scott panted heavily as he began trying to get as far away from us as possible, his heavy breaths quickly turning into guttural snarls. "No, no!" He warned us when Stiles came forwards to help him. "Stay away from me."

"Scott," Stiles tried to reassure his friend. "it's okay."

Scott then almost collapsed on a desk, fighting hard for control. "I don't know what's gonna happen!"

I watched in silence as he raised a clawed hand, bringing it into a fist and drawing blood and he sliced open his palms to keep from hurting us. He roared in pain as blood began to roll down his arms. He slumped against a desk, looking sweaty and exhausted.

I crouched down in front of him, feeling mildly horrified.

"Pain makes you human." He informed me hoarsely.

"Scott, this isn't just in our heads," Stiles told him. "This is real. It's starting to get bad for me too."

I turned around to look at Stiles, half curious, half dreading finding out what was happening to him.

"I'm not just having nightmares," Stiles admitted, playing with his fingers. "I'm having these drams where I literally have to scream myself awake. And sometimes I'm not sure if I'm every actually waking up."

"What do you mean?" Scott voiced my question.

"You know how you can tell if you're dreaming?" Stiles asked us. "You can't read in dreams. Lately I've been having trouble reading, it's like I can't put the letters in order."

I frowned, leaning forwards to grab his shoulder. "What about right now?"

Stiles stood up, looking all around the classroom.

"I can't read a thing."

. . . . .

A little while after school finished, Stiles asked me if I wanted to go with him to the Sheriff's station to visit his Dad.

So, there we were, walking into his office whiles Stiles carried a vase full of flowers, apparently it was for his mom.

I had honestly felt touched that he wanted me to come with him.

I felt weird walking through the station, feeling a strange prickly sensation on my skin.

Bah, it was probably just my imagination.

"You know Dad," Stiles said, snapping me out of my thoughts. "last time we bought one of these to her grave it was stolen the same day? One hundred dollars down the drain."

I hadn't been able to visit my mom's grave since her funeral, it was back in Florida.

"Hey, Dad?" Stiles leaned forwards as I stepped around the desk, seeing the man crouched down on the floor, sifting through files.

He looked up upon hearing Stiles' voice.

"What are... what are you doing... down there?" Stiles asked him, a hint of a smile in his tone.

"Working." The Sheriff answered, still not noticing me. "And hey, somebody wants flowers that badly they can have 'em. It's the gesture."

"Hi Sheriff." I chirped, waving cheerfully when he did a double take.

"Oh." He rose to his feet. "Hello, Seraphina." He smiled. "What brings you here?"

"A blue jeep." I answered.

"Ah, so you came with Stiles." He lifted my wrists up, examining the paler than normal ring of skin on my arms, courtesy of the mistletoe soaked ropes from the root cellar. There were still a few faint scabs. "Good to see them healing nicely." He smiled.

I grinned back, looking over at his shoulder. I had healed it once we were out of the root cellar. He had been astonished to see the white glowing veins travel down my arm and climb up his, before surrounding the stab wound which healed in mere seconds. "You too."

He ruffled my hair fondly, before crouching back down. I guess you couldn't go through having the ceiling of an underground root cellar almost collapse on you as part of a ritual sacrifice without developing a close bond with that person.

"Hey Dad, what is all this?" Stiles asked, gesturing to all the boxes of files around the room.

"I've been looking over some old cases from a," He waved his hand around, looking for the right word. "more illuminated perspective, if you know what I mean."

Stiles picked up a random file and read from it. "Strange sighting of bipedal lizard man sprinting across freeway?"

"Kanima pile."

Stiles dropped the file, before crouching down in front of his father. "Dad, you're not going over your old cases, seeing if any of 'em have anything to do with the supernatural, are you?"

"I'll admit that the recent opening of my eyes to the greater mysteries of the universe has got me... reassessing." He then gestured to the files around him. "There are at least a hundred cases here where I can look at the details and I can ask myself, 'If I knew then, what I know now...'"

"Right, but are you sure you wanna go down that path?" Stiles asked him.

"Do I have a choice?" Came his Dad's reply.

"If you keep worrying about what you might have missed in the past," I piped up. "you might end up missing a lot more in the future."

They both gave me dry looks.

I rolled my eyes, before crouching down in front of Sheriff Stilinski. "Look, you can't do this to your self, it's unfair and unkind."

He sighed and bowed his head. "I know, but there's one case in particular that I can't get out of my head." He confessed, grabbing a file and standing up. "Eight years ago, when I was elected Sheriff of the county, my first official duty was to tell a man that, not only had his wife and two kids died in a car accident, but, as best we could tell, the body of his nine year old daughter had been ragged from the wreck by coyotes."

Sounds like a fun job.

Stiles leafed through the file, having taken it from his Dad. "Dragged as in dragged and eaten?"

The Sheriff paused, before answering. "We didn't find the car until three days after the crash. They had driven off the road into a pretty deep ravine. The two bodies that were in the car were covered in bites and slashes."

"So you're thinking, bites and claw marks... probably a werewolf attack?" Stiles asked.

"Maybe." The Sheriff nodded.

"But Coyotes are scavengers, they could made the bites and the slashes and then dragged the girl away to save her for winter." I told them. Coyotes were another kind of trickster spirit, with traces leading back to the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, the Coyote deity. The species was given it's trickster role due to the animals actual intelligence and adaptability.

"Absolutely." The Sheriff agreed. "But guess what night the accident occurred on?"

"The night of the full moon." Stiles told me, looking up.

"Yeah."

"Hey Dad, where are all these going?" Stiles gestured to the boxes. The ones that were all suposed to go to Agent McCall.

"Yeah." The Sheriff nodded. "We probably need to talk about that."

I took that as my cue to leave, stepping out of the room and closing the door behind me, leaving the Stilinski's to their private conversation.

I shivered slightly. The prickling feeling was back. There was definitely something weird in this place, and it was giving me the creeps.

I shrugged it off, before deciding to search for a vending machine. I felt like a Kit Kat. It took me a few minutes, but I eventually located one and procured my chocolaty snack, before I bumped into the one and only Agent Asswipe.

"Ugh." I groaned. "Not you." I saw him roll his eyes at me before I strode off, deciding I'd rather wait for Stiles outside his Dad's office then have a conversation with this guys.

"Are you always this rude?" I heard Agent Asswipe ask, following me.

"Only to the people I don't like." I took a bite of my Kit Kat, seeing a random Deputy give us an amused look.

"Should I be concerned about my son hanging around with people like you?"

I whirled around, surprised. "Oh, so now you care about him?"

"Excuse me?!" He raised his voice slightly. "Of course I care about him, I've always cared about him!"

"Really?" I raised an amused eyebrow, flipping on my bitch switch. I leaned forwards, getting in his face, before speaking with a silky tone. "Because from what I hear, you didn't care about him when people started getting killed, you didn't care when he got trapped in a building with a psychotic mass murderer, you didn't care when he got trapped in here with another psychotic mass murderer, one that turned out to be his classmate, you didn't even care when he and his best friend disappeared from a lacrosse field after another fellow classmate of theirs was killed there, only to show up hours later, badly injured." I took another step towards him, giving him a venomous grin. "In fact, you only came here to get the Sheriff fired."

The entire station had gone silent.

His nostrils flared, before he ground out. "I'm still his Dad."

"No," I shook my head condescendingly. "You're Scott's Father. You haven't been his Dad for, what, ten years?"

He didn't reply, only looked furious, which was fair really, he had just been verbally butchered by a sixteen year old girl in front of a bunch of people he already didn't like.

Thank God Scott and Stiles had given me the run down.

He glared at me for a long moment, before stalking off without a word, leaving me to grin wickedly, watching him walk away, verbally beaten down.

"That," I heard Stiles say as he came to stand next to me. "was awesome."

I nodded, still staring off in the direction Agent Asswipe had left in. "It was, wasn't it?" I turned to Stiles, smiling. "Come on, let's go."

We left, me waving at Sheriff Stilinski, trying to ignore the prickly sensation I could still feel under my skin.

. . . . .

"So uh, it's this way." Stiles told me, holding the vase of flowers and awkwardly gesturing through the grave stones.

I grabbed his hand, allowing him to guide me to his Mom.

I only took us about half a minute to get there.

I LOVING MEMORY OF

CLAUDIA STILINSKI

BELOVED MOTHER, WIFE AND DAUGHTER

WE WILL MEET AGAIN

It was a beautiful headstone, made of grey marble with plated gold lettering.

"Hi Mom." Stiles crouched down, placing the flowers down. "So this is Seraphina. She's my... I'm not too sure, actually." He glanced at me very quickly. "But uh, isn't she beautiful?" He smiled slightly. "So school's okay, Coach hates me slightly more though, but I'm no Greenburg. Dad says hello and we, well... We really miss you, Mom." He brushed some dirt off the gravestone, before standing up.

I understood why he didn't want to stay long. It was hard, talking to someone who would never talk back. It was even harder having to talk to a gravestone instead of their face.

We walked out in silence.

"Could you drop me off at home?" I asked. "I'm making dinner for me and Bobby tonight."

"Yeah, sure." He smiled, opening the passenger door for me.

He ran around to the other side, hopping in and starting the car.

"Hey, what music do you have?" I asked him, switching the radio on. Little Lion Man began to play.

"Oh here, I just change it." Stiles reached over, before I slapped his hand away.

"I'll have you know that I like Mumford and Sons, thank you very much." I scolded him. Then I noticed the look he was giving me. "What?"

He just smiled some more, taking my hand in his and braiding our fingers together.

. . . . .

"I don't know." Bobby told me through s mouthful of spaghetti. "There's something weird about that kid"

"Really?" I asked him dryly. "How so?"

"It's just, some of the stuff he does - do you know that the entire locker room once saw a fifty foot chain fall out of his locker?!" He asked me. "I'm not too sure I want you hanging around with guys like that."

"As opposed to hanging out with guys like Greenburg?"

He stared at me for a long moment. "Touche."

. . . . .

Guys! I'm so sorry I've been gone so long! But my Mom whisked me of to (Spanish) Comic Con!

It was so awesome! I cosplayed as Alice from the video game Alice Madness Returns.

And I ate a ton of ramen. And chips. And snowcones.

But anyway, I finally got to upload a new chapter! The day before I go back to school! And it's my Tumblr birthday.

Yaay! Bilinski is now their ship name! Bow down to Hurricane.'97! She is our Queen!

Review reviewing time!

lolsmileyface6; yeah, gotta love coach :)

. d m s; for some reason, every time I try to write your name it erases it, so I'm afraid that I'll have to do this from now on. I'm glad you like how I wrote the episode, I'm trying to do stuff with Phina that hasn't really been done before, so thank you!

Guest; Thank you!

AnimeHunter411; It's not really had a permanent affect, it was just the rush of power that turned his eyes from yellow to red.

Mackblair2001; thank you! :)

Edna; I'm glad you like my imagination, for some odd reason, most of the authority figures in my life disagree with you, and thank you very much!

Jazmine Cruz; I'm really glad you like the story, thank you: :D

Cooky Crumbla; Yeah, gotta love Coach.

Brester; Thank you very much :)

Hurricane.'97; Thank you for the birthday wish! Hope college is going wel, so glad you like the chapter,I get the feeling you'll like 3B (plus, we'll get to see Evan soooon!) :D Oh. My. God. BILINSKI! I LOOOOOOVE ITTTTTTT!

BlueEyedSalvatore; trust me, Coach is going to have numerous freak outs ;)

fmxc17; I'm glad you like the way I write my story, it's always lovely to hear :)

Rissa-channn; trust me, we're going to see a lot more of Bobby's overprotectivness ;D

Eya Silvers; 1) I'm so happy that you liked it, it's just that in all the other fanfics I've read they're either a sacrifice themselves or they just don't react to having drowned their friends, and it didn't seem right to me. So Phina had an actual himan reaction.

2)Thank you! I just can't imagine Phina going 'oh, it's cool bro, no harm done'. She holds grudges people, because she has issues.

3)Yes, the eyes. We're still not done with that subject ;)

4)Thank you, I just get the feeling that with Lydia, she just liked the idea for being loved for who she was, just being Lydia, not a superficial airhead or a make out toy. So yah, they'll be good friends.

5)Yep. She gets hit in the head a lot. And I like plot twist.

6)I know right?!

7)It was Isaac's eyes that went red, sorry if I didn't specify. Yeah! Girl power! She's taking control!

8)Batman! (I'm really surprised that I was he only author that actually made that connection)

9)Muahaha, Bow down to Papa Coach!

10)Poor Stiles

11)I am so mean to him

12)No, be Phina instead

13)It's my lucky number, actually ;)

14)Onto the fangirling then?

I thought about Stina, but Bilinski! It's perfect! Hehehehe, yes Void!Stiles and Phina... I have so many plans for them ;)

I hope your tests went well, and thank you for the super-special birthday present! I was so happy when I saw it, age twin!

.

So, that's it guys, hope you enjoyed it and I am so sorry for the long wait, but I really had no choice in the matter :|

Over and out,

Cat.