Chapter Twenty: Blood Magic

"Does Derek know anything about it?" Stiles asked as they entered the building. His steps were purposeful. Alex recognized it at the confidence he rarely showed. It was an attractive look for him. The muscles in his neck rippled as he discretely worked the tension out of it but moving his head side to side. His jawline had become more pronounce and masculine and she followed his new sharp lines down to his arms. The muscles there rippled too as he curled and uncurled his fingers.

Now she was staring at his fingers and was surprised to find a warmth unfurling in her lower belly.

Her eyes drifted back up to his face and her cheeks heated when their eyes met.

She'd been caught ogling him - and the bastard was smirking at her.

"He saw something once." She coughed out, stumbling over the comment as her blush deepened.

What the fuck was happening right now?

She shook off the sudden and overwhelming attraction that had slammed into her and tried to focus on something other that her flaming cheeks.

"But we never spoke about it." She finished, gaining control of her voice.

Stiles remained unusually quiet as they entered the dimly lit loft. She pulled the heavy metal door closed behind them, ushering Stiles inside.

"You're back." Derek surprised both of them, emerging from the darkness like he'd been waiting for her. She and Stiles had both started at the sound of his voice and Alex noticed how Stiles had slightly pushed her behind him. "You brought Stiles."

He hadn't been expecting that. He'd been waiting for just her.

"He insisted." Alex shrugged, sliding away from Stiles' broad shoulder, blushing again when she imagined running her fingers over the corded muscles. She shook her head to clear the image. "Where's Isaac?"

"Safe."

"Is your default setting, 'vague'?" She inquired with one quirked brow and arms crossed over her chest. Alex didn't bother waiting for a response before rounding on Stiles with the same expression. "Alright. You've safely seen me to my front door. I'm alive and home. Feel free to vacate the premises."

Please, before the next unwanted fantasy assaults me, she thought.

Stiles wasn't looking at her. She wasn't even sure that he'd heard her due to the death glare on his face that was directed at Derek. Alex's expression melted to one of confusion as she watched Stiles stare down Derek.

"You knew what was happening to her and you never brought it up? You never asked her about it - you never mentioned it to Scott or I?" Stiles' voice was inhuman. It rivalled Scott or Derek's when they got mad. It was scary - so unlike the Stiles she was accustomed to, even with their recent separation. She felt a shiver shoot down her spine.

He stepped forward, threateningly and Alex wedged herself in front of Stiles before he made a dire mistake. Provoking Derek never went well. She wrapped her hand around Stiles forearm and pushed away another loud thought about how well his training with Scott this summer had gone.

Enough.

What was he doing? Derek was an alpha. You didn't threaten the alpha unless you had a death wish. Or, if you were a smart ass teenage girl with little left to live for and no sense of self preservation.

Stiles stepped away from her and the protection she was trying to offer him. Wrenching his arm out of her grasp and advancing another step towards the Alpha. Derek stepped forward once in a counter move and a sliver of light illuminated his face in the otherwise dark apartment. It made him look eery and malevolent.

"I'm not her keeper." Responded Derek, disinterestedly. "It's not my job to consult you and Dr. Watson about her."

"Okay." Stiles' voice was rising as he became even more confrontational. "Then what is your job?" The question was rhetorical. "Running around a high school and preaching about the 'gift of the bite'?"

"I'm doing what I have to." Derek said, eyes flashing. Stiles wasn't taking the warning. "Alex is a big girl. More than capable of asking for help if she needs it. She obviously didn't come to you for a reason. So why would I?"

"What you have to do?" Stiles asked, repeating Derek. "No. What you have to do is let someone know when the teenage boarder living in your house scratches herself into a bloody pulp at night."

Derek's shoulders relaxed slightly and the murderous look on his face softened to distaste. He was obviously considering something Stiles had said. Stiles's body immediately relaxed and Alex could she his tightly wound shoulders release all the tension he'd been vibrating with.

"You know something." Stiles accused, his hard stare melting into one of disbelief. "You know why Peter wanted her."

Alex stepped back from Stiles for two reasons. The first was because of Stiles' undisputed accusation. Her eyes flicked manically between both men. Derek wasn't denying Stiles and Stiles always saw things that no one else did. The second was because as dire as all of this was, she found herself undoubtedly attracted to Stiles fucking Stilinski, and at the minute that realization felt suffocating.

Alex felt ill.

Out of control.

And like she wanted a drink.

"What does Peter have to do with this?" Derek was genuinely confused, that much was clear from his face.

Stiles sighed, obviously seeing the same honestly that was hard to conceal on ones face when you truly had no idea what was going on.

"Okay." Stiles nodded, "You may not know all the details, but you know something - and you're going to tell us."

Alex watched the exchange hesitantly. She'd never talked to Derek about Peter and his interest in her. After Derek had stolen his power; Alex, Stiles and Scott thought it might be best to allow him to keep believing that he wanted Scott in his pack.

What was the use in letting Derek in on the relative secret that Alex was valuable to his uncle? The evidence that Derek could be fully trusted was inconclusive - or non-existent. If Peter wanted her for something sinister, it was only logical to believe that the new Alpha may find her valuable as well.

However, after having lived with him for an entire summer, Alex couldn't help but feel that despite her effort not to - she had subconsciously place some trust in Derek Hale.

And so she explained.

"Peter never wanted Scott in his pack." Alex admitted, dropping into the nearest east, exhausted from the days events. "He wanted me."

Alex was getting really good at explaining her hallucinations. Every time she had to explain it to someone new, she got better at explaining the intricacies of it and worried less about how crazy she might sound. She'd done this speech a few times now and was well on her way to perfecting it.

So much for a well kept secret, she thought bitterly.

"It sounds like blood magic." Derek said, after Alex had finished her speech. Derek had listened intently, but had given nothing away on his face about what he thought about the whole thing. Derek could always be counted on for his tremendous poker face.

Alex thought idly about inviting him to Vegas with her when this was all over - assuming they survived. They deserved some good luck.

"I actually did some research on that." Stiles piped up for the first time since she'd started talking. He spoke exclusively to Derek. "She'd remember something like that happening to her."

Derek paced back and forth in front of them, his eyes dark as the wheels in his mind spun. "That could be what the waking nightmares are - repressed memories. Bubbling to the surface. Trying to get out." His brow furrowed as he turned his eyes on her, examining. She felt exposed by his intense stare but held his steady gaze despite her discomfort.

She was relieved when he turned away from her.

"Repressed memories?" Stiles questioned, pulling out his phone and tapping purposefully on its screen searching for something. "So, the blood magic - it was done when she was young. That's really the only way it sticks." His eyes lifted from his phone and landed on Alex's confused face and then flicked back to Derek. "You don't think Argent-?" Stiles cut himself off.

"If he pissed off the right coven, he might not have had a choice." Derek replied, seeming to know what Stiles was implying with his unfinished thought.

"A punishment." Stiles said, tapping out something on his phone before putting it back in his pocket.

"Can someone tell me what the fuck you two are talking about?" Alex demanded, crossing her arms over her chest. They were talking about her like she wasn't literally right in front of them. Normally, she could keep her voice steady when she was scared or confused but Stiles could hear the hysteria rising in her voice and the panic shining in her eyes.

Derek stopped his pacing to regard her carefully. He had momentarily forgotten she was there and before she could question his hasty movements, he was halfway to the kitchen. He pulled the good bottle of whiskey she kept in the third cupboard on the left and a tumbler. He set both down in front of her with his mouth set in a tight line.

She poured three fingers of the liquor and downed it in one gulp. She set it back on the table and poured another one.

"How do you even know anything about what Derek's talking about?" She questioned Stiles after a moment of tense silence.

Stiles took a deep breath in and exhaled slowly. "Just because we stopped talking, doesn't mean I stopped trying to figure out what was going on." He regarded her with a charming vulnerability in his eyes and then let a small, barely there smile tilt his mouth.

Her chest felt tight.

She downed another glass of top shelf whiskey.

"Tell me." Her voice was rough and scratchy as the drink burned a fiery pathway down her throat and Stiles launched into his findings.

"Remember when you told me about the waking nightmare in the library? The book you found. The spot of blood and how it was all in Latin?"

Alex nodded.

"That was the first clue. Most every English word is derived from Latin - that's why Wiccan's use it exclusively for their incantations - it's straightforward, you know? No room for error in wording." His hands moved erratically as he explained all the research he'd done over the summer. "You mentioned one word you kept seeing in the book - sanguine. Or something similar. It's Latin for blood. I think the book you saw in the library that night was the book that contained whatever spell was used on you."

"You honestly think that someone put a spell on me?" Alex asked. She hadn't really given this whole thing very much thought. With everything else going on in all of their lives, her mental torture had kind of taken a backseat. Besides, Alex and tried and true method of handling her own problems in life - pretending they didn't exist and running as far and as fast as she could from them. Now they were saying that on top of everything already going on, there were a bunch of witches who had fucked with her when she was kid?

"It would hardly be the strangest thing to happen this week." He responded. "I talked to Deaton and he said that blood magic was very different based on: geographical location, Coven and the age of said Coven. Some Coven's consider blood magic as anything as simple as using a drop of blood in a poison or smearing it it while reciting an incantation. But those are rookie witches."

"Are you telling me we might be dealing with major league witches, here?" Alex deadpanned. Despite the joke she had a strange feeling like she was too big for her chest as she watched Stiles list of everything he'd researched and all of the intel he'd gathered for her.

He was kind of radiant in that moment, in her eyes.

"There are three Covens dating back to the fifteen hundreds that have a unique history with blood magic. Blood magic in Wiccan history has been known to be a lot more than a drop. The witches that actually had any power knew it to be a taboo magic. Something that no witch who valued her life would touch." Stiles was solemn as he spoke, and Derek's face was just as long as if the two knew something that Alex didn't. "It's a blood letting magic."

"I obviously don't understand the severity of the situation." Alex said, attempting to maintain a semblance of humour. "You both look like someone just chopped a puppy into pieces."

"Blood letting is a traditional Wiccan practice. Something that has not been widely accepted by the Wiccans themselves because of the danger it threatens to both witch and victim." Stiles explained, "Blood magic is essentially draining the victim of all their blood and keeping the body alive with necromancy. After spelling the drained blood from the victim the witches then transfuse it back into the body."

"Necromancy?" Alex questioned, her brain on overload. "They controlled my dead newborn body and my dad didn't kill every last one of them?" She sighed and ran her hands through her hair.

She was finding it extremely hard to wrap her head around the events of today and that was probably why she felt dizzy.

"The actual transfusion process is a medical procedure." Stiles continued, ignoring her commentary. "It's sophisticated and supernatural! I mean, it's actually kind of cool when you think about it - to take two baseline different things and combine them like that-" Stiles stopped when both Derek and Alex snapped their heads in his direction with matching glares. "Sorry. Anyway, most people don't survive but Deaton said that those who did suffered strange side effects."

"Scratching?" Alex deadpanned.

"Worse." Said Stiles, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth and awkwardly playing with his fingers. "The victims often fell into a fugue state, like, completely black out and slit open major arteries. According to Deaton the objective behind the scratching and eventual slitting of thighs and other shit was to get the spelled blood out of their veins." He swallowed. "All of it."

"So, all of these victims, they remembered what happened to them?" Alex asked, pouring her fourth glass of whiskey and basically unhinging her jaw to consume it." She fingered her ring dagger unconsciously and hissed when she nicked her finger on the blade.

She furrowed her brow. She must be tired - she had cut herself on one of her daggers since she was a preteen.

"As far as I know." Stiles supplied, raising a brow at her injury. The question was clear in his eyes.

She couldn't believe he knew this much on the subject. Alex had never encountered a situation where she'd had to research any kind of blood magic. She'd had to hunt witches before but they'd been 'second string' witches. Nothing like what Stiles was describing; witches who would invent some terrifying hybrid between magic and medical science. That was some shit she didn't wanna fuck with.

"I've repressed my memories of my brush with magical fuckery so is that why I only scratch as opposed to slicing myself into thinly cut ribbons?" Alex asked, pouring yet another glass. Her head was starting to get fuzzy and her fingers were going numb so she set her ring dagger on the table and took a deep breath.

"You don't sound convinced." Stiles said, looking her in the eye. "I get that. It sounds insane. But less insane than everything else we've been through?"

"It might explain why the Alpha call seemed to have affected you tonight." Derek said, speaking for the first time in what felt like hours. "If this happened to you, which seems likely, the question is: what did they do to your blood before they transfused it back into your body?"

Alex stilled. She hadn't even thought that far ahead.

Not like these assholes gave her a wide gap to process anything.

Had the Alpha call even really affected her? She couldn't really recall much about the fight or Derek's Hail Mary entrance. The men standing in front of her sure seemed to think that it had. So what? Had they infused her with wolf blood?

"I did more research-"

"Obviously."

Stiles cut Derek with a silent glare.

"I've narrowed it down to three Covens that practice this specific blood magic." Stiles continued, "There's one in Scotland, one in Russia and that last is in South America."

The atmosphere in the loft was dark. The sun had gone down hours ago, the space was chilly and the lights from below cast an eery light over the hard edges of the loft. Alex felt a shiver run down her spine and reached for another glass of whiskey.

When had she drank half the bottle?

A memory struck her after she was able to focus on Stiles words and she sat up from her slouched position. "My family went on a trip to Scotland when I was two or three." She recalled.

Stiles had a look on his face that clearly said they'd just slid the last piece of the puzzle into place. His fingers itched as if they were waiting to be clacking away on his laptop.

"You can't seriously think that my dad would have kept that from me." Alex said to Stiles, seeing the look on his face and that he truly believed that something was done to her in her childhood on a family trip to Scotland. Another sad thought crossed her mind. "He would have killed me if I'd truly been tampered with by the supernatural."

"You can't seriously think that your mom and dad went to Scotland just for some quality family bonding time." Stiles said with a look that clearly said he knew she wasn't that stupid, but her head was foggy and her gaze was blurring around the edges and she wanted to cry. "They went on a job - pissed off a coven of ridiculous and probably suicidal witches and you were the one that paid the price."

"Okay, Smartass," Alex slurred over the words slightly, "If you've got it all figured out, what the fuck did those bitches do to my blood?"

"They put something in it that Peter wanted."

.

Later that night as Alex laid in her bed she stared up unseeing at the ceiling. Her mind was reeling. When Stiles left, he'd pulled her into a long hug. It had been like he was trying, without words to tell her that everything would be fine. She had been drunk by that point and very emotionally drained so she'd melted deep into the hug, revealing in the smell that always seemed to cling to Stiles skin. A familiar smell that had wrapped her up in its own hug.

She may have let out a contented sigh and he may have stiffened beneath her as her breath rolled over the nape of his neck.

Alex had seen a lot of impossible things in her short life - she'd even done some of those impossible things herself. But this, everything Stiles had told her last night, was hard to wrap her brain around. Stiles had spoken with such conviction about he had researched throughout the summer. Everything that had happened to her since moving to Beacon Hills was connected. The waking nightmares, the actual nightmares, the scratching, the blood, Peter Hale . . .

Stiles wanted to solve her puzzle.

Alex could clearly see the need to fix everything burning in his warm brown eyes and it was evident, now that he hadn't given up on his research that he wasn't going to stop now. Alex almost didn't even want to know. She was fine with living the rest of her life rubbing salve into reopened wounds and dreaming of blood.

As much as the path of least resistance sounded like a breath of fresh air, she knew that her repressed memories would keep manifesting themselves as these horrible premonitions until eventually she would remember the details of her run in with the Scottish Coven. With that knowledge it wouldn't be long until she blacked out and took a butcher knife to her femoral artery.

She wondered if Scott would tell Allison. Alex had asked Stiles before he'd left if Scott knew what was going on and Stiles had told her that Scott only knew the cliff notes version as he'd been too busy sneaking around with Allison behind their parents backs.

She'd realized that they hadn't broken up. They were sneaking around behind her parents back - which would lead to dire consequence for Scott if they found out. It was uncharacteristic enough that they had let him live in the first place.

It was then that she knew why Allison had helped Scott and Stiles with the Isaac problem. It had nothing to do with her, or with seeing the right side of things. It only had to do with Scott and teenage hormones.

Lizard men.

Sister drama.

Magical blood curses.

Teenage werewolves.

Stiles Stilinski.

If the universe had anything else to throw at her, it was going to have to wait.

.

Hey guys,

I'm really digging the response to this story. I know I fell off the grid for a while and it's nice to see that people still fuck with this!

I'd really appreciate some comments on my chapters just because it's so nice to hear from you guys and to get a read on where you think the story is going. So, don't be shy - drop me a message, comment on what you think is going on. I'm teetering on whether or not to so a sequel to this. I have a few idea's rattling around in my mind but I can't decide if I should or not.

So, drop me a line!