Chapter 20

"I keep the wolf from the door, but he calls me up, calls me on the phone. Tells me all the ways he's gonna mess me up; steal all my children if I don't pay the ransom. But I'll never see them again if I squeal to the cops."

Everything seemed to go in slow motion as Carmen watched Jackson die. She watched Scott's mother try in vain to pump his chest to start his lungs up again and watched a completely hysterical Lydia attempt to give him mouth-to-mouth. It was like she was caught in a dream. But it didn't turn into a nightmare until she heard Sheriff Stilinski's voice.

"Stiles!? STILES!? WHERE THE HELL IS MY SON!?"

Her heart stopped. Jackson may have been dead, but Stiles was gone. Her best friend was missing. She started to hyperventilate and her mind was racing with all the things that could have happened to him. There was no way he had run off. Somebody had to have taken him. Somebody had to have been holding him somewhere. "Hey, hey...look at me...look at me..." Isaac's voice called out to her. She could feel his hands on her shoulders and he was looking in her eyes, trying to calm her down. "We're going to find him." He nodded at her, making sure that she nodded with him. "We're going to find him." He repeated softly, knowing how close she was to Stiles.

"Team to the locker room now!" Coach Finstock yelled to everybody out on the field. They made a beeline for the gym building, but when Carmen tried to follow in after them he held his arm out to her. "Boys' locker room, Iver."

"Um...and why should that matter?" She needed to get in there to talk to Scott and Isaac, and she needed to talk to Sheriff Stilinski about Stiles. She was getting into the locker room. She tried to sidestep Finstock, but he was a lot faster than she had anticipated.

"Because there are boys in there and you clearly aren't a boy, Iver. Obviously."

"Female sports reporters have been going into men's locker rooms for a couple of decades now. I think we've established the fact that a lot of non-boys can go into the boys' locker room. And in case they feel the need for a little indecent exposure, then I think they know what towels are." She grit her teeth and rolled her eyes, looking up at him. His mouth fell open and he pushed the door open for her. Had she pushed him? She didn't even touch him to do it. That had never happened before. Maybe some people were more easily manipulated than others. When she walked into the room every guy stared at her but she stood her ground and coughed awkwardly. She peered around the lockers to try and find Isaac and Scott, and she saw them talking to each other. In jeans. Without their shirts on. She cleared her throat and once they both looked up and saw her they scrambled to clothe themselves. "Seriously? I'm not a prude." She rolled her eyes, making Isaac form a smirk on his face.

"Definitely not a prude." He chuckled, shaking his head. She sent him daggers with her eyes and he backed off a little bit. Sheriff Stilinski ran up to them with his notebook in hand and he looked as overwhelmed as was humanly possible. His only son was missing and he had a dead teenager to take care of. It was a lot to handle.

"I, um...I have to meet with the medical examiner about what happened to Jackson and I sent out an APB on Stiles. I found his Jeep in the parking lot, so...um, that means that...well, I don't really know what it means." She knew that feeling all too well. He was trying to force himself to not fear for the worst. "But if he answers anything, email, phone, anything—"

"Then we'll call you." Isaac's voice was quiet and Carmen could tell that he was thinking about something by the look on his face. He saw how much Mr. Stilinski loved his son. He had longed to feel something like that for so long and now he never could. She trailed her fingers down and they met with his hand. "Thanks." He mumbled to her as he could feel his anxiety begin to dissolve.

The locker room started to clear out so Isaac walked her to the corner where they could talk in private. "What's up?" She asked him, trying to seem as nonchalant as possible. It wasn't working very well.

"We never...um, got the chance to talk about what happened the other night." He played with her hands and looked around nervously like he was thinking about saying something but was afraid to do it.

"We were in a bit of a compromising situation, in case you hadn't noticed." She raised an eyebrow at him. He wanted to talk about this now? There had to have been something else on his mind.

"I'm sorry." He blurted out suddenly, tightening his lips together. "I...I'm sorry that I stopped you from going to help Stiles and Scott. It was selfish of me and I shouldn't have broken the key in the lock. I just didn't want you to get hurt and I didn't know what else I could do."

She nodded slowly and bit down on her bottom lip. "I'm sorry, too. It would have probably been a lot better if I hadn't been so stubborn about it, and I...I don't hate you, Isaac. I shouldn't have said it the way I did. I shouldn't have said it at all." She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and looked down at her feet. Before she could look up at his reaction he had his arms around her, hugging her tightly. She laughed quietly and hugged him back, nestling her face in his shoulder.

"So...we're um, we're okay now, right?" He asked, pressing his forehead against hers.

"Yeah, we are." She thought it was funny that even with the reassurance of an apology he didn't think it meant reconciliation. It was like he was always unsure of things that were sure, like he was always expecting things to fall apart. They walked back to Scott, and were surprised to see that he had already ripped the door off Stiles's locker. He handed Isaac one of Stiles's gym shoes while he took a shirt.

"Wait, we're gonna find him by scent?" Isaac asked, getting a disgusted look on his face when he breathed in the smell of the shoe. Scott nodded and pressed the shirt to his face, getting a good read on his best friend's scent. "But how come you get a shirt and I get a shoe?"

"Thank God I'm not a werewolf." Carmen blew hot air out of her mouth, shaking her head. She could already smell what was coming from the shoe and she wasn't even holding it. She couldn't imagine what it smelled like to them.

Scott heard somebody walk in and instinctively he moved himself of Isaac and Carmen as he turned around to face Derek and somebody he thought was long gone forever. Peter Hale. "Holy shit." His eyes widened and he had to blink a few times like he thought it was just a hallucination.

"Derek, now why didn't you make her part of your pack instead of those ridiculous children?" Peter said, pointing straight at Carmen. She could feel some sort of arrogance and connivery radiating off him...it was almost repulsive. "Could you imagine having an alpha human werewolf with her pathokinesis? The possibilities could be endless, Derek!" He was absolutely fascinated with Carmen's presence. He had never seen anything like her before.

"How do you—" She could feel Isaac's shoulder pressing into her like he wanted her to stand behind him, but she wasn't going to cower like a little girl.

"There's only one explanation for the scent of the field behind my childhood home being in this room right now. It's something that I've longed to smell for years. There is only one explanation for it, and that's you, my dear." Of course. To allow targets to be easier manipulated she gave off a scent that would have attracted them to her. It's the reason why Scott thought she smelled like Allison when he met her, or the reason why she actually smelled like she thought she did whenever Isaac was around. Her scent was anything that anybody wanted it to be.

"We're not here to talk about her, Peter." Derek growled, walking closer to the group of teenagers. "We're here to talk about Jackson."

"Um...who is he?" Carmen and Isaac asked at the same time, looking to Scott for some help.

"Peter. He's Derek's uncle. A little while back he tried to kill us all then we set him on fire and Derek slashed his throat." Scott rattled off, sort of like he was tired of hearing the story himself.

Isaac nodded and swallowed a lump in his throat. "Well...that's good know." Peter raised his hand up as a greeting and it only worked to make matters more painfully uncomfortable.

"How is he even alive?" They had killed Peter and buried him underneath the floorboards of the Hale house. He was dead. They made sure of it. There was no way he was back. It was impossible.

"Look, that's not important." Derek sighed heavily, shaking his head like he didn't believe it either. "The short version of it is that he knows how to stop Jackson. Maybe even save him."

"Well then you're a little late for the party." Carmen said, sharing a glance with the two werewolves next to her. "Jackson's dead." Shock covered Peter's and Derek's faces like they were almost scared that Jackson was dead instead of being thankful because the kanima was gone. "Somehow you two don't look as relieved as we are about this."

"That's because we aren't." Peter shook his head, moving closer to them. Their first instinct was to back away, and he raised his hands up in apology. "If Jackson is dead, he's dead because Gerard wanted him to be. And Gerard always has a plan."

"Haven't you ever heard the expression, kill two birds with one stone?"

Just remembering those words sent shivers down Isaac's spine. Gerard had toyed with him to get him on the field on purpose. He knew that threatening Carmen would have gotten him angry and would have gotten him to retaliate. And somehow he had known that Carmen would have followed Isaac into the locker room to make sure that he was safe. He did it all so that it would be easier to kill both of them at the same time.

"It'll just be a lot easier to talk on the way to the house." Derek said, ushering them all out of the door. This may have been the end of Gerard's plan for Jackson, but it wasn't the end of his plan for himself.

"I don't like him." Isaac mumbled into his girlfriend's ear as they walked towards Derek's car. "Stay away from him."

"I can protect myself. You know, if it wasn't already completely obvious." She rolled her eyes, sliding in next to him on the black leather seats. Scott sat in the passenger seat while Derek drove, which meant that Peter would have to sit on the other side of her. "And I don't think you remember, but telling me to stay away from somebody doesn't usually work." She smirked.

"That's different." Isaac mumbled under his breath as Peter got into the car with them. "And I'm not him." He didn't know if it was because Derek was his Alpha or not, but the inherent distrust of Peter had already been planted in his body and he didn't seem apt to grow out of it too soon.

"So Carmen, is it?" Peter asked her, attempting to make conversation with the young girl while the car shifted into gear and began the drive to the Hale house. She nodded unsurely and found herself gripping onto Isaac's knee. "Your parents must be incredibly proud of your gift. Pathokinetics being so rare in this world—"

"My parents are dead." She cut him off abruptly, staring straight ahead at the road. She wasn't in the mood to talk about such a sensitive subject with somebody she barely even knew. She didn't even talk to Isaac about her parents. Peter opened his mouth to resume the conversation but he bit on his tongue when he noticed Isaac staring him down. "House fire." She replied simply, making him lean back in deep thought. There was something in her words that provoked curiosity within him. House fire or arson? Just like his family. He knew of a trigger-happy Argent who loved to set things on fire. Carmen didn't know who killed her parents, but Peter did.

As Peter thought about the reason the Argents wanted Carmen's family dead, she was thinking about the context of Peter's words. What did he mean when he said that pathokinetics were "rare"? She thought there had to be at least a million other people with her ability. She didn't consider herself special because she wasn't. She was alpha human, same like all the others. No different. No more powerful. She was the same.

She didn't trust Peter and she knew that if Derek hated him then he was bound to be nothing but bad news. But he knew something about her that she didn't. And she was determined to find out.

This chapter's song was "A Wolf At The Door" by Radiohead.

By now ya'll have probably realized that I have a huuuuge thing for writing backstories and Carmen's back story behind her family/ability is going to be a huge tie-in with the last chapters of this fic and leading into the sequel. SPEAKING OF WHICH, I've already made a cover image for the sequel and I'm excited for you guys to see it when it comes out! :)