Disclaimer: If I owned the rights to anything you recognize that I have written about here, then I wouldn't be writing about it here. I'm pretty sure that makes sense...
Kyla wanted to take this opportunity to point out every element that a non-lethal shouting match should not include. An angry werewolf was definitely one of them. Given past history, Kyla was of the opinion that werewolves and shouting matches would be better off separated by a ten foot pole. Also highly stressed parents with their children in the vicinity. The last things to never add to a shouting match are guns. Giving guns to people who are already feeling violent has the tendency to end badly.
One gun was being held by Mr. Argent as he pointed it at Stiles's head. Or, the nogitsune's head she supposed. The other firearm was held by Sheriff Stillinski who was doing the fatherly thing and threatening to shoot the man who was threating to shoot the body of his son. The Sheriff, Argent, and the nogitsune were all shouting about weather they were going to shoot each other. The Sheriff and Argent both threatening as the nogitsune egged them on.
"Strife," Allison whispered in a horrified voice.
Kyla remembered Kira's mother saying that the nogitsune fed off of pain and strife and chaos. If that was the case then this was a full blown emotional feast. The last sunlight of the day bled out of the room leaving Derek's loft dark. Splotches of moonlight crept along the floor, making Kyla feel like she'd drunk several shots of espresso
Seizing her opportunity, Kyla stepped forwards. She had held off on attacking the way that Allison and Derek had in the hopes of keeping her full range of abilities hidden. What Argent had said about the queen being the most unpredictable piece on the board had been playing over in her head, so she had kept her abilities close to the vest. Now it was time to play a few cards.
"Stop," she ordered, using the same tone of authority that she had used with the twins to get them to halt their attack on Kincaid. Nothing happened. Probably because Argent, Stillinski, and the nogitsune weren't creatures affected by the moon. Derek on the other hand, being the only werewolf present had frozen in place. Kyla took a deep breath, drawing in the energy of the moonlight and infusing it in to her voice. "Stop!"
Derek nearly collapsed to the floor under the weight of the command. He barely kept his footing, his body trying to form someway of heading the command even though it hadn't been directed at him.
Argent and Stillinski fell immediately silent. Even the nogitsune seemed to be choking around his words before he managed to get anything out. "Well well," he said with a smirk. "So the little Nephilim had some tricks up her sleeve. But that's not all you are is it Kyla? Oh no," he shifted forward slightly. "You're something very special aren't you?" His face broke out in to an evil grin. "Little godling."
"Shut up,"Kyla ordered, still channeling power from the moonlight streaming in through the windows. She wasn't going to be able to keep it up forever though. She could feel her Strength runes burning along her arms as their power was used up to sustain the strain her body was being put under. A familiar tugging in her gut had picked up, signaling that Kyla was mostly sustaining her power usage by herself. Time was limited now.
The nogitsune was momentarily struck dumb. Stiles's body bent over towards the floor, making silent coughing and choking motions. Then he seemed to recover and straightened up. "A commendable effort Kyla," he said patronizingly. "But your daughter of Aphrodite Charm Speaking is no where near strong enough to control me for long."
Kyla felt a prickle of annoyance at the guess that she was a child of Aphrodite. It was mostly an inherited reaction that resulted in her mother's distaste for the love goddess. Kyla herself ha no real problem with her, and Piper was one of her best friends. Of course, what she could do did seem like Charm Speaking to anyone who didn't know otherwise, and the children of Aphrodite were the only known demigods with that gift. "This is exactly what you want isn't it?" she asked.
"We'll," the nogitsune tipped his head sideways. "Not exactly. I had hoped that Scott would be here. But I am glad you brought your guns, because you're not here to kill me," he turned to face the windows as five of the Oni appeared. "You're hear to protect me," the nogitsune slid behind Argent and Stillinski as both men immediately began to fire on the Oni.
Kyla, Derek, and Allison all spun around as three of the creatures appeared behind them. Derek's claws shot out and Allison held up her crossbow ready to fire. Kyla's bow appeared in her hands and her quiver dropped in to place along her spine. She loaded a silver arrow and drew it back. Screw non-lethal.
The next several minutes were nothing but a series of hurried images and sensations. It's easy to develop tunnel vision during a fight, especially for a demigods when all of their battle reflexes kick in to gear. Once adrenaline started hitting their systems, the part of their brains that were supposed to focus on details shut down.
She shot one of the Oni through the eye hole of it's mask and the creature had disappeared. Then she had received a large gash across the palm of her hand courtesy of one of the other Oni in retaliation, re-opening a scar from the battle of Manhattan. This caused her to drop her bow. The weapon disappeared before it could hit the ground and Kyla had quickly spun the charm bracelet on her right wrist. One of her familiar bronze hunting daggers appeared in her good hand and she prepared to launch back in to the fight, only o find that the Oni had gone.
Everyone seemed to be unhurt besides Derek who was bleeding from along gash that ran in a slight diagonal from his left shoulder towards his spine. the werewolf sank to the ground in one of the large puddles of moonlight to keep as still as possible until the bleeding had stopped. Argent went around Derek's back to check the depth of the wound and began to mop of blood from around it with a small square of fabric. Stillinski stood looking stressed and worried. A quick examination of the left revealed that Stiles had disappeared with the Oni.
Kira and Scott rushed in asking what had happened which the Sheriff explained as Kyla twisted a cloth around her hand. That particular injury had been obtained under special circumstances and hadn't healed well the first time. It reopened occasionally if she ad channeled a lot of power, and the Oni's sword had reopened it that evening. Kyla had tried healing it deliberately, but the best she could get was a shiny pink scar. All she could do at the moment was keep the blood from dripping all over Derek's floor. Though from what she'd heard, her blood wouldn't be the first to hit this particular selection of hardwood.
Everyone else began to depart for their own homes and Kyla made to follow them but Derek grabbed her uninjured hand. "You owe me some answers," he said it like a statement, but Kyla knew a demand when she heard one. It was time to start spilling. So she allowed Derek to tow her to a work table where he began to lay out a chess board. There wasn't a chair nearby, so Kyla hopped up to sit on the edge of the work surface. "Where do you want to start?" she asked cautiously.
"How about we start with you telling me what the hell you are?" Derek suggested. Intensity was layered through his voice It wasn't quite anger yet, but Kyla sensed that they might be headed in that direction.
She searched for a way to diffuse the situation a little and decided that she might as well start with some background. "Have you ever heard the about any of the ancient Greek Myths?" she asked. Derek opened his mouth heatedly but Kyla held up her hand. Blood was beginning to seep through the white of the cloth she had wrapped around it. "I promise I have a point. Explaining things will be easier if you have."
Derek nodded, looking at her through narrowed eyes. "I read some of them in school,' he admitted. "I had to read the Odyssey in tenth grade."
Kyla shuddered, image from her trip across the Sea of Monsters flashing behind her eyes. Among them where a smallish hydra wearing a Monster Donuts bib, skeletal sailors, the giant braces of Chribdis, a stampede of party ponies with paint ball guns and bear hats, Grover in a wedding dress, a golden coffin full of Titan bits, a hellhound eating scrambled eggs, and a gods awful letterman jacket version of the golden fleece. "do me a very small favor," she requested. "And please don't reference the Odyssey."
"What the hell is your point here?!" Derek demanded.
"I'm getting to it," Kyla snapped back at him. "It's just that all of this is awkward to explain, especially this next part," she took a deep breath as Derek watched her expectantly. "Okay," she said uncomfortably. "You know how in the myths most of the heroes were only so heroic because they were really the result of some god or goddess who had come down to Earth and well," she looked for the best way to phrase what she meant. "Hooked up with a mortal?"
Derek nodded slowly, the start of a conclusion starting to form in his hazel green eyes. "Well..." Kyla tried to keep going. Explaining demigod origins really was incredibly awkward to do in front of a hot guy. "Like you know almost all myths are true. And since the gods have been around for like a millennia now and old habits die kind of hard... people like me exist."
"So basically," Derek said after a moment of silence. "One of your parents is a Greek god? That's what the nogitsune called you a godling."
Kyla nodded and looked down at her lap where she was pressing against the gash in her left hand with the cloth in her right. "My mother," she filled in. He seemed to be taking this rather well. But then again, one more set of mythological creatures proved real couldn't really be all that shocking. "Artemis. Twin sister of Apollo, goddess of the hunt, the moon, and the patron of maidens."
Derek's eye brows furrowed slightly and he began to extract chess pieces from a box he had stored under the couch. "Hold on," he said. "I thought Artemis took some kind of vow never to have kids. That's what the whole maiden thing was about. And how can you be half angel and half goddess and still be part human?"
She sighed, and let the cloth unwind from her hand as the blood finally stopped seeping. "There was this big prophecy," she explained reluctantly.
"A half blood of the eldest gods,
shall reach sixteen against all odds.
And see the world in endless sleep,
a hero's sole, cursed blade shall reap.
A single choice shall end his days,
Olympus to preserve or raze.
The moon shall split the wicked scythe,
her blood the darkness will dived."
She quoted, and then sighed. "The oracle that predicted that prophecy is controlled by my Uncle Apollo. He told my mother about it first because of those lines at the end. Because it said that the moon would be instrumental in whatever would happen, Zeus granted my mother a loop-hole. One child after several millennia to help fulfill the prophecy."
"You were born as a tool," Derek realized, a feeling of rage on her behalf welling up in his stomach. A small buzz of a fly sounded momentarily in his ears before vanishing as a tiny flick of something brushed across his back. The anger intensified The Hales had been a close-knit and loving family. Children were cherished and protected fiercely until they could protect themselves. Being used as chess pieces in one big scheme was never in the cards. Unless you thought that way Peter did that was. Dimly he realized that he shouldn't be this angry. His eyes had almost turned blue and this wasn't even an injustice done to him.
Kyla simply shrugged as though she was used to it. She reached down and plucked a chess piece from the pile. "That's how it works. I was a queen on Stiles's chess board because I'm unpredictable to him. But to the Olympians, their demigod children are worth about as much as this," she showed the piece to him and Derek's anger built as he realized that it was a pawn. "My mother even picked a Shadowhunter to be my father on purpose," Kyla continued. "She was only allowed one child and she wanted me to be as powerful as possible. The ultimate huntress," she spread her arms. "I'm literally the mythical test tube baby."
"And this prophecy," Derek ground out between his teeth. "How exactly did that work out?"
"Not great," Kyla admitted. "But it could have been worse. My friend Percy Jackson son of Poseidon turned out to be the hero it referred to. he turned sixteen, which really was against the odds considering how things were going for a while. He defended Mt. Olympus and fought through a curse Morpheus placed to put everyone to sleep. The real hero of the day turned out to be a son of Hermes though. He really defeated Cronus in the end. After everything was over Percy made the gods promise to treat their children better so that was a plus."
"I meant the part about you," Derek clarified, through clenched teeth. He didn't understand how Kyla could talk about a battle, a war really like it was just something she had done one weekend. Of course the battle of Manhattan had actually pretty much only taken a three day weekend, but he didn't know that at the time.
"Oh," Kyla said. "I ended up doing alright. I got turned a Titan into a maple tree in central park. That was an experience," she held up her left hand, showing him the still open gash. "I have this for the prophesized part. I spilled my blood on Cronus's scythe. See, it had been reformed so that it was half celestial bronze and half steel. Two forces that weren't supposed to touch. My blood is pretty much the same way so it split the blade apart."
Derek took her hand by the wrist and examined it. "Why haven't you healed?"
She shrugged. "That blade was designed with the express intent of being sharp enough to cleave a soul from it's body and I deliberately cut my hand open with it. I'm not going to complain when the scar doesn't heal all the way. The scar will be reforming in a minute," she glance over his shoulder. With her sitting on the work table she was almost the same height as he was standing up. "Speaking of healing, I can jump start the one on your back if you want. Turn."
Derek obeyed the command and presented the cut on his back to her. He could feel that it had already begun to heal, but was interested to see what she would do. Derek felt cold fingers press against his back with Kyla's gashed palm over the cut. A rush of energy sped through him, like an injection of moonlight. He felt like a bolt of electricity was being pushed in to his body and then pulled out again. Channeling back through Kyla and then back through him. Then Kyla removed her hand. Derek could actually feel the tissue knitting back together.
He turned and Kyla held her hand back out to him, displaying a shining light pink scar. "I used energy from the moon to kick start my heeling, and then fed some of that energy in to you before stealing a bit of it back to heal my hand," she explained. "This is actually the most healed it's looked in a while."
Kyla waited for him to say something, but he didn't move or speak. He just continued to hold her newly healed hand, staring down at the puckered skin. After a moment, Kyla watched as his fingers began to trace over the lines of her palm with feather like touches, then flipped her hand over and traced the white scars from old runes.
His fingers left lines of warmth along her skin. Werewolves ran at a higher body temperature, and Kyla was nearly always cold. The warmth of Derek's hands radiated off of his skin and over hers as he switched to examining her other hand. Her fingers and hands seemed remarkably strong and pale in his.
Kyla looked up to see that Derek had switched to watching her. They just stared at each other. There are moments in life that always seem to contort themselves around the laws of time. Lasting for years and ending in milliseconds. This was one of them.
Derek dropped her hands and they fell back in to her lap as the door to his loft swung open and Peter walked in. He missed the feeling of her hands in his immediately and had to clench his hand to keep himself from knocking Peter unconscious and going back to where he had been a moment before. Instead, Derek took a step back and scooped the rest of the chess pieces on to the board. "What are you doing?" his uncle demanded walking up behind him. "More specifically why are you playing chess?"
"Back in his room, Stiles had a chess board with my name on one of the pieces," Derek explained tightly as he set the pieces in the right order to start a game. "If this is all a game to him, then I need to figure out the plays."
Peter hummed and turned his light blue eyes on Kyla. "And what are you here for? Moral support?"
Derek had to slam down hard on the urge to growl at his uncle to back the hell off. For some reason his emotions at the moment seemed harder to check. He forced himself to relax as he listened to the relaxed tempo of Kyla's heart. "Actually I was just answering a few questions Derek had for me," she said with a sweet innocence to her voice that was so perfect it had to be fake. He got the distinct impression that Kyla had used the comment to get under his uncle's skin by implying that Derek knew something abut what was going on that he didn't.
Peter huffed slightly, recognizing the play and trying not to acknowledge that the thought had irked him. "It's a little hard to predict plays when it's a game without rules."
With the feeling that he would probably regret asking Derek said, "What do you mean by that?"
Kyla had been observing Peter carefully. She knew how immortal creatures thought. After a while they got so old that human emotion and concepts fell away because they just didn't matter anymore. "He's saying that what we're up against is too old to play by human rules," she clarified. "Fighting against something that's been around for as long as this nogitsune probably has isn't like playing chess with a master. It's playing checkers with a four year old. They'll play any move to declare a win no matter what your rules are."
Surprisingly Peter nodded. "Exactly. This is a fox spirit. It chose to be human and supposedly that's something they can only do after about a hundred years." Derek continued setting his chess board and gave Peter an expression indicating that he should continue. Peter sighed as though he were being asked to dumb down something that should have already been painfully obvious. "If a kitsune is an annoying pain in the ass then a nogitsune, which is a dark kitsune, is a freaking disaster." He swept a black leather jacket off of the table beside Kyla and put it on. "Besides," he eyed the chess board once more. "Chess is Stiles's game. Not the game of a Japanese fox."
They both watched him go and Kyla hopped down to the floor with a sigh. "Dawn is almost here. I'd better get going. I need to catch a few more hours of sleep before I can deal with anything else today." Derek nodded, looking determined and strangely a little bit angry. Kyla took a step forwards, dismissing the anger. Following a sudden impulse she leaned up quickly and kissed him on the cheek above the line of black stubble along his jaw. Her hands were braced slightly on his shoulders for balance.
"You should get some sleep to," she advised, dropping down from her toes and taking a step back. "You look tired."
She turned, and was half way to the door when a blinding pain cracked across the back of her skull. Then everything went black.
Demigod and Shadowhunter dreams may both suck in their own right but they were also highly informative at times. While Kyla was unconscious her mind seemed to search out the details of everything that was going on in Beacon Hills while she was out. It was a fast paced jumble of images, but she still got the basic idea. No one had died but Lydia was missing. The actual Stiles was back but the evil one was gone. The twins, Isaac, and Derek had all been possessed by some weird nogitsune controlled fly which she guessed explained how she had ended up unconscious.
In other news, Lydia and Scott had figured out how to go inside Stiles's mind. Agent McCall had saved Stillinski's job, and Peter apparently had a daughter named Malia. Kyla hadn't known Peter for that long, and she didn't have all of the details on him yet, but she was fairly sure that that was probably going to turn in to something messy later. She also made a mental note to never tie an Argent to a chair for any reason as Chris had managed to break out of the chair possessed Derek had tied him to in about six seconds flat.
As strange as it was, Kyla woke up from being unconscious feeling rested and highly informed. The only downer was the throbbing pain emanating from her temple. She had decided against sitting up when the amount of movement required to break through the ropes that had tied her to a metal shelving unit in Derek's loft had made her nauseous.
After a few minutes she heard the muffled voices of Derek and Argent outside. She cracked her eyes open as the door rumbled. Derek walked in and his eyes immediately locked on her.
Put simply, Derek looked about how she felt. His eyes were blood shot and bleary with harsh red tear ducts. His shoulders were slumped and he was staggering. "It's okay," she mumbled, knowing that Derek could probably hear her without her trying to be that loud. Which was good considering her voice was cracking from the last several hours of disuse. "It wasn't you."
Derek's eyes didn't move from hers as he walked over to where she still lay on the floor. He picked her up off the ground ad began moving across the room. A tiny whimper came through her lips and she felt herself being tucked tightly in against Derek's chest. She could tell from his careful steps that he was checking each movement he made to keep from moving her.
She felt her body be moved to a bed and managed to tip her head sideways to put Derek's face in her frame of vision. He reached out and took her hand. Kyla felt pain slip though her fingers and her head began to clear. "Don't," she muttered. "I'll be fine. You don't need to-"
"Yeah I do," Derek insisted, his fingers tightening around hers, pulling the pain away for much longer than was smart and twice as long as was advisable.
When he withdrew his hand and made to stand up Kyla reached out closing her fingers around his elbow. "It wasn't you," she repeated. "It wasn't your fault."
She heard Derek sigh exhaustedly and felt his breath move her hair. He leaned farther toward her and Kyla moved her hand to his cheek. "It felt like it was me," he admitted. "Everything I did to Argent... it was everything I used to think about doing. After my family died all I wanted was to burn his down."
"Your using passed tense," Kyla pointed out to him gently. She had gone down a road like this one before with Jace. It wasn't about getting other people to forgive themselves. It was about getting them to realize that they didn't need forgiveness. "Wanted, not want. I know it felt like you were the real you while you were doing it but as far as Argent and I are concerned," she gave a little half shrug. "It wasn't really you. Just like Scott knows that the nogitsune version of Stiles isn't the real him."
Derek turned his head more in to her palm and Kyla opened her eyes the rest of the way to see that his eyes were shut. The werewolf looked like the definition of exhausted. "Come here," she said, shifting sideways on the bed with a considerable amount of personal effort. He looked at her as though she'd gone crazy but Kyla merely pulled the covers over her. "I'm half angel but you look half dead," she told him. "You need to sleep so lie down and sleep."
She shut her eyes and kept them closed as she felt Derek settle next to her on top of the covers. He gave off enough warmth to be considered a personal space heater and Kyla curled in to him, laying her dully aching head on his arm. "Kalinychta," She murmured tiredly. "Good night Derek." Then she let the blackness slip back in around her.
For the next few hours, she slept a dreamless sleep.
A/N: What did you guys think? I thought I filled in some good background for Kyla n this chapter. Plus I brought her and Derek a lot closer. I'm trying to develop the relationship a bit more naturally though. To me it seems like all of his relationships start really quickly and then blow up in his face. I wasn't sure about the extra prophecy lines, so tell me what you thought. I can always change them around. Review for me!xoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxxoxooxoxoxxooxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxxoxoxooxoxooxoxoxooooxooxoxoxxoxooxoooxxo