CHAPTER TWELVE
VOID
Connor groaned deep in his throat when his phone rang and he saw his mother's name on the screen. But given her recent fascination with Jessie and her destiny, Connor knew he had to take the call, "Yes, mother?"
"Something is about to happen at the hospital," she rushed out. "Jessica's beau – that Isaac fella – is going to get hurt and she's going to try and give him her blood. It'll kill him, and ruin her. You need to stop her, and help her face this Nogitsune. You need to be there for her, Connor. You need to help her heal, she's going to die soon enough if she doesn't at least try."
Connor sighed deep in his chest, knowing things were only going to get worse.
Kira was still standing outside as night fell when she heard something above her. She looked up towards the roof, seeing a large black electrical wire whipping and flailing in the air, dropping down towards her. She breathed, "Oh my god," just as it began it's descent for her.
The wire thrashed and danced in front of her as she dodged it. An ambulance approached from the side just as the wire smacked into it's windshield. The driver swerved into a fire hydrant, water spraying out of it, flooding the parking lot's asphalt.
Isaac and Allison pulled up in her blue Mazda, getting out just as Kira shouted, "Get back! Everyone, get back!"
The ambulance driver stepped out, his foot splashing into the water and electricity driving through his body. He fell limp onto the ground, twitching.
Isaac pushed Allison away from the water as he noticed the danger, but the puddle approached him and enveloped his feet and he was electrocuted, falling into the water with a thumb, completely still.
A car honked as it drove through the water in all the confusion, stopping just at the edge when the car skidded. A woman stepped out right into the water and suffered the same fate.
Scott, Derek, Jessie and Georgie just arrived to the scene as Connor came to the other side from his car. Jessie noticed Isaac's body, "Isaac!" and made to run to him but froze when she heard Connor shout at her.
"No, Jessie! It'll kill him!"
She felt her body go stiff and cold. Her eyes glazed over and Scott looked at her in concern. In his haste to stop her, Connor didn't see how close he was to the growing flood of water and he stepped in, shouting out in pain and falling to his stomach and face. Jessie snapped out of her frozen reverie and called out, "Connor!" Without preamble, she leaped over the water as if flying, with no effort, until she was besides Connor's body. She dragged him into the safe dry street and flustered over his unconscious form. With his hearing, Scott heard her mumble to herself, "I can't lose anyone else."
He watched as she lifted her wrist to her mouth and bit into the skin, blood dripping down her chin. She pinched Connor's cheeks until his lips opened and pressed her open wound to his mouth, letting a few drops of blood fall onto his tongue. Scott watched her lick the excess blood from her arm and saw no wound there anymore. That and her face going unmarked by the frayed electrical wire told him that she healed much faster than anything he'd ever seen.
Scott didn't notice the black wire whipping around until Kira caught it. She felt power, felt confidence, and wrapped her bare hand around the sparking broken end of it, absorbing the electricity. The hospital lights and sign flickered, eventually staying out just as people evacuated onto the street and yelled and screamed at the scene. Kira didn't notice her mother staring at her with wide eyes as she filed out with the crowd.
Derek had bent at Isaac's side, putting a finger to his neck, listening intently, "Isaac? He's not breathing!" He looked over to the Alpha, "Scott! He's not breathing!"
Scott felt heavy in the morning. He didn't want to wake up and his body felt like lead when he finally dragged himself out of bed. Derek's last words to him last night rang through his head.
You have to tell Stilinski. You have to tell him what's really wrong with Stiles.
He didn't even get to figure out what was wrong with Jessie. She left soon after Connor woke up, as if he hadn't just been electrocuted. Scott watched them disappear before he helped the EMTs and nurses wheel in Isaac and the others injured into the hospital. He would flinch when he remembered the ugly burn scars crawling up Isaac's neck and arms.
Eventually, he found himself walking into the kitchen where his mother sat at the table with a cup of coffee that looked like it had gone cold. "Any news?"
She shook her head, "They're still looking for him. It's past the 48 hour mark, but I guess if anyone's going to be missing two days and turn up just fine, it's Stiles."
"What about Isaac?" Scott asked her.
She stood up, dumping her coffee, "Maybe we should go by the hospital before school."
They got to the hospital soon. And technically without permission, Melissa used her key card to let themselves into Isaac's room. Inside, Scott was surprised to see Jessie sitting on a chair next to Isaac. Scott lightly touched her shoulder, jolting her, "Hey, how long have you been here?"
She shrugged, "I don't know. A while. I don't really sleep anymore so it's not like I'm missing anything."
"How did you get the nurses to let you in?" Melissa asked curiously, her eyebrows cinching together. "You're technically not family."
"Just another perk of being a vampire," Jessie hinted. "Powers of persuasion."
"All right," Melissa nodded, accepting these things in stride. "Don't stay too long. You have school soon."
Melissa let herself out to go to work. Scott and Jessie looked at Isaac. He laid on the bed, comatose, his face and arms scarred with raised flesh and black marks from his suffering. The machines around him beeped monotonously and Jessie felt bile rising in her throat, but never escaping.
"He should be healing by now," Jessie thought out loud.
Scott's mind flashed to what he'd seen her do with Connor, "Back outside, when Connor was hurt, I thought I saw you..."
"Feed him some of my blood?" Jessie finished for him. "Yeah, I did. Vampire blood heals mortal wounds." She heaved a sigh, "Connor came to warn me not to try it with Isaac."
"Why don't you?" Scott asked her. "Then he'd probably be fine."
"Vampire blood is poisonous to werewolves, Scott," she revealed. "It wouldn't kill him, but it would stop his enhanced healing, his enhanced senses, his enhanced strength. For centuries werewolves hunted down vampires because they thought our blood would be a lycanthropy cure. It's never been proven, but that's the reason popular culture believes there's some feud between vampires and werewolves."
Scott stayed quiet, moving to stare at Isaac's still form again. Jessie was still staring at Isaac's burnt up face, she hadn't taken her eyes off of him. She felt completely hopeless, "I am suddenly this super powerful being, my blood can heal any human, I can heal any injury almost instantly, I am faster, stronger, I can even compel people – but I can't help Isaac."
Scott couldn't help it but he felt his stomach drop at her tone as she spoke about Isaac. To distract himself, he reached forward and grasped Isaac's arms. Jessie watched as he concentrated and grunted in discomfort as black veins crawled up his skin. Eventually, he couldn't take it anymore and pulled away, "It won't heal him, but it helps with the pain." He paused, glancing out the side of his eye line towards Jessie, "Being back, does it mean you came back for Isaac?"
"You mean, do I still love him?" Jessie guessed, sighing after. "Part of me will always love Isaac, Scott. Just like part of you will always belong to Allison. But it's different now. And honestly, I don't feel much of anything anymore." Before he could intervene, she continued, "We need to focus on Stiles. On what's inside of him. On getting it out."
"I'm working on it," Scott promised her.
She stood up from her seat and looked at him, her eyes still glowing bright cobalt blue, "Let me help."
Jessie trailed after Scott while Kira talked to them about what she'd read about the kitsune spirits, "...The thing is, in all of the stories, kitsune are tricksters. They're mischievous. They don't really get caught up in right or wrong or even understand it."
"What's that mean?" Scott asked, totally perturbed. "It's just doing this for the hell of it?"
"No, there was something else I found," Kira stated, hesitantly. "If you somehow offend a Nogitsune, it can react pretty badly."
"How do you offend a Nogitsune?" Scott pondered.
"Who knows?" Jessie shrugged sardonically. "But if it's hurting people and possible doing worse things? Someone really offended it."
Georgie stood numbly at her locker. She couldn't believe what it had come to. She had just found Stiles only for him to disappear again. And it was revealed that he was possessed by a dark kitsune spirit out for blood just for kicks. It seemed like her world was coming unraveled around her and she couldn't do anything to keep all the pieces together.
She pulled out some of the books she needed, hearing whispers around her. She wondered if they were whispering about her. Oh the poor girl, her boyfriend is crazy. Her boyfriend is missing. She slammed her locker shut, startling some people next to her. But she didn't care. She shouldered her bag and walked off to class, wondering if Stiles would just show up. She wondered if she would ever really get him back.
She wondered if it was really him that took her virginity the night he disappeared.
Scott had to go to class so Jessie roamed the halls, thinking it was pitiful that no one enforced truancy anymore. The security was pathetic ever since Peter as the Alpha trapped them all inside of the school for a night.
She flinched when she heard a high pitched whistle. It pulsed in her ears and she knew it was an emitter – one of Argent's emitters. She raced to follow the sound, finding herself in the basement, walking back to the boiler room. She stopped cold when she saw Stiles' back. She felt her hands form into fists as Stiles slowly turned around.
His eyes widened when he saw her, holding his hands up defensively, one of them holding the emitter, "Okay, I know what you are thinking, but it's me. I swear to god, it's me."
Before she could really consider it she heard a growl behind her. She whipped around to see Aiden and Ethan changing and gunning for Stiles. Purely on instinct, she threw her hands up, "No!" and a blue energy force surged out of her palms. Ethan and Aiden slammed into it, it throwing their bodies back onto the floor. Scott walked over them, holding his hands up as if in peace.
"Jessie, it's okay," Scott eased in. "Is it Stiles?"
"I think so," she answered him, letting her arms fall to her sides, and the force field fell with them.
"I swear it's me," Stiles insisted. "I don't know where I've been the last two days or what I've been doing, but this is me. I promise."
"Do you know what happened at the hospital?" Jessie asked him, her mind flashing to Isaac's burnt body laying in the hospital bed.
"I know more than that," Stiles told them, pulling a back out and spreading out a paper map on the table. "You see this? It's a blueprint of the hospital's electrical wiring. You see all these markings in red?"
"Yes, we see," Jessie told him a little stiffly.
"That's my handwriting," he revealed. "I know I did this. I caused the accident. And everything in this bag, it's all stuff that could be part of something bigger."
They all looked inside, seeing tools and other dangerous looking things. Ethan pulled up a sharp saw, "What the hell have you been up to?"
"I think something worse," Stile spoke gravely. "A lot worse."
They began pulling out various tools and wires and pieces of metal. Aiden tilted his head, "What the hell were you doing? Building a Terminator?"
Stiles paused, "Thank you for that."
"Guys, I found a map," Jessie told them, spreading it out on the table. "It's highlighted the cross country trail. If it's the same as I remember."
"That's the Tate car, where Malia's family died," Scott jabbed a finger on the map.
"You mean that's where her father put the steel-jawed traps," Aiden growled.
Stiles felt like his chest was compressing, "Guys, the cross country team is going out there now. Georgie is going out there now!"
Georgie planted the tippy toe of her sneakers in the dirt besides some of the other cross country girls. She saw that Scott, Stiles and Isaac were no where to be found, and honestly she didn't expect them to just show up like the last few nights hadn't happened. Stiles was still MIA. Isaac was still out of commission. And Scott was... well, she didn't want to think about why he was missing practice. At least she had Kira by her side.
When Coach blew his whistle though, Kira ran off with this supernatural speed. Sometimes, Georgie hated being a witch. She was embedded into this supernatural world without the perks of enhanced reflexes or speed. By any other standards, she was a weak human. Only she could cast some small-time spells and spit smoke out of her hands.
She ran as fast as she could while pacing herself, her feet making fast crunching noises as she crushed the leaves under her. Suddenly, she felt a gust of wind as the twins and Scott all ran past her. "Scott?" She saw them flagging some of the runners down. She ran faster to see what was wrong, feeling this hot lead lump fall in the pit of her stomach. "Scott!"
Before she could get any farther, she felt someone tackle her from behind. She struggled under them, kicking and flailing to get them off of her as they turned her body around. "Geez, Georgie, it's me! Stiles!" She gaped up at her boyfriend, finally calming down.
"Stiles?" she asked, unsure if this was just a wistful daydream or not. She couldn't really tell what was real anymore.
"It's really me, babe," he whispered, running his hands over her sides as he stood up and helped her to her feet. "Are you okay? We gotta get out of here, there's something here."
"What?" she asked as the other runners and Coach coming up behind her skidded to a stop when Scott, the twins, Jessie and Stiles all yelled for them to stop.
Stiles return was a sure shock to the others, even Coach, but before they could do anything the spaz started rummaging through the dirt and the leaves looking for something. His hands found something round and metal, pulling up a metal circle that was part of some chain. Everyone watched warily as he started pulling at the chain, following it until he got to the end. It was attached to nothing.
"Congratulations, Stilinski," Coach sarcastically jeered. "You found a length of chain. Can somebody now please tell me what the hell's going on?"
Jessie noticed it a half-second earlier than Scott as the Coach walked closer to a trip wire above the ground. "Coach!" Scott tried to warn but Jessie acted quicker and stepped in front of the Coach just as the man walked through the wire and an arrow went whizzing through the air, hitting her in the back just under her right shoulder blade.
Screams erupted through the runners as she 'fell' putting on a show of pain. She heard Scott cry out her name and come to her side. She heard someone call out that they were calling an ambulance and Jessie inwardly cursed herself. She spoke lowly as the twins and Stiles came over to her other side, only so Scott could hear, "Cancel the ambulance. I'll heal instantly if you just pull the damn thing out."
"That won't look weird," Stiles quipped.
"Then just carry me out of here," Jessie insisted. "I can't be seen in a hospital with no injuries when supposedly I was stabbed with an arrow."
Scott debated the options and then decided she was right and picked her up with a groan for show.
"What are you doing, McCall?" Coach shrieked.
"We can't wait for an ambulance," Scott sort of told the truth. "I'm taking her to the hospital myself."
Coach looked like he wanted to argue but he wasn't heard as the twins, Stiles and Georgie followed after Jessie and Scott. He carried her back to the school, hiding behind a building so he could set her down.
"Pull it out," she told him, showing him her back.
She didn't even flinch when he yanked out the arrow just as some kids and the new history teacher were running passed them, yelling for people to get out of the way. The group instantly followed after them to where the school buses were parked, some kids getting evacuated out of and away from the buses. They watched as the Sheriff and his new deputy, Jordan, arrived, the younger man strapping up in a bomb squad suit and going in.
Jessie trained her ears on their conversation, hearing Jordan keep his breath steady as he worked. She then heard his voice speak to the Sheriff over their radios, "It's not a bomb, sir, but there is something in the box."
They watched as the young deputy walked to the front of the buss and slapped a metal name plate that should have been on Sheriff Stilinski's desk back at the station.
Jessie gasped under her breath, but sharp enough for the wolves to hear.
"What is it?" Scott asked her.
"There's no bomb here, it's at the station—the police station," she told them, making her way through the crowd. Once Stiles, Jessie, Scott and Georgie were out of eye lines they raced to Stiles jeep and sped out of there, seeing a hoard of Sheriff vehicles racing with them. They had arrived at the police station just as an explosion went off in the building, shattering the windows.
If Jessie were still Jessie she would have felt her heart stop at all the suffering inside as she followed Stiles and Scott inside. She heard the Sheriff speaking loudly and clearly into a radio, "Get me an ambulance here, at the sheriff's station. We've got an explosion. We got multiple officers down. Multiple officers down."
Georgie nearly began to cry at the sight of disarray and strewn bodies, some dead, some writhing in pain.
Jessie stopped when she heard Chris Argent's voice groan, "Derek. Derek."
She raced over to find them right outside where the blast must have originated in the sheriff's private office. "Derek!?"
The werewolf groaned as she sped to his side, "I'm okay."
"He saved my life," Chris said as if in a daze.
Jessie looked at his back and saw shards of glass stuck in nearly every square inch of it and gasped, "Oh my god."
"Can't you," Chris groaned, "give him your blood? Heal him?"
"My blood is poisonous to wolves, Chris," she told him. "It wouldn't help."
"Go help the others," Derek told her. "I'll be okay."
She took his word for it and joined Scott and Stiles by one very bad off officer. Stiles was grappling, "Can you do something? Take his pain? Anything to make it easier?"
"I can do you one better," Jessie whispered, looking around before biting into her wrist until it bled. She let droplets of it fall into the officers mouth before licking the skin closed. She looked out the window and saw it was starting to get dark, "The Oni will be coming again."
"We gotta get Stiles out of here," Scott said.
"You guys go ahead," Jessie told them. "I'll keep healing people here and meet you. Georgie, go with them, they may need your kind of healing since I can't heal Scott."
Georgie nodded and followed the boys out of the station to the parking lot. It had gotten dark and started raining heavily as they got the animal clinic. "Why are we here?"
"It's protected like my house with mountain ash," Scott answered her, rushing out of the car just as the Oni appeared in puffs of smoke. "Get inside!" he shouted.
Georgie pushed Stiles towards the back entrance, "Get inside, I'll hold them off."
"What?" Stiles gaped at her. "You can't take them on."
"Just get inside," she shouted at him, turning towards the Oni. Scott had transformed into his wolf self and started slashing at them and dodging their sword strikes. Georgie threw out her hands and smoke flew out of her palms, smashing into the masked ninjas. They disappeared in the hail of blackness, all of their swords clanging to the ground to be pelted by falling water.
She shouted towards Scott, "That's only temporary! We need to get inside!"
They rushed inside, neither Scott nor Georgie seeing Stiles' hands clasp around two of the swords left behind. Once inside Scott began to speak, "Okay, the mountain ash will hold them off but they can get through eventually, we know that."
Suddenly, a sword launched itself through Scott's back, causing him to grunt in pain and Georgie to scream, seeing Stiles holding the hilt of the sword, "Does it hurt? You should have done your reading, Scott. See, a Nogitsune feeds off of chaos, strife, and pain. You took it from Isaac, the dying cops. All that pain. You took it all. Now, give it to me."
He shoved the sword deeper, Scott gasping in pain. Georgie cried out, "What are you doing!? Stiles, you have to take control."
The Nogitsune smirked at her, shoving Scott with some inhuman strength towards the wall. The werewolf groaned and fell to the ground, out of commission. Void Stiles picked up the other sword, advancing towards Georgie. He grabbed her throat and held her against the wall before she could do anything. She couldn't risk hurting Stiles by using her powers.
"You stupid girl, do you actually think you can get through to him?" Void Stiles taunted her. "You're nothing to him. You're just a placeholder until Lydia returns his feelings."
"You're lying!" she hissed, finding hard to breathe.
"Am I?" he tutted, shaking his head. "You know it in your heart. You know he'll never love you, and you'll never save him." He paused, some sadistic smile on his face, "But hurting you will hurt him." With that said, he brandished the sword and stabbed her through the abdomen. She bent forward, screaming out in pain as the blade sliced through her body. Tears blurred her vision as the Nogitsune leaned forward and whispered in her ear, "And just to answer the question, I'm sure has been on your mind—yes, it was me that night."
She flinched away from him in horror as he pushed the blade in further. Scott watched from behind them, finally finding the strength to rip the sword out of himself, "Stop."
"You really have to learn, boys and girls," Void Stiles laughed. "You really have to learn not to trust a fox. They're tricksters. They'll fool you. They'll fool everyone."
"Not everyone," Deaton's voice appeared to the side of them just as the vet stabbed a syringe into the side of Void Stiles' neck. He pushed the plunger immediately, warranting a muted grunt from Void Stiles as he fell to the floor.
"What was that? A cure?" Scott asked.
"The fox is poisoned, but it's not dead," Deaton answered. "Not yet."
Georgie fell to the ground onto her back, blood started to drip out of her mouth. Scott clamored to his knees next to her, grabbing her hand and taking away her pain, as much as he could, "Hold on, Georgie. I'm so sorry."
Dun dun dun... stay tuned.
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