The Huntress

by TheLiteraryEscapist

Beacon Hills is a city which literally draws the supernatural to it. Adrianna is the daughter no one knew Kate Argent had. Follow Adrianna Argent, a born hunter, lethal weapon, and struggling demigod as she tries to come to grips with her mother's murder. Will she follow the code or will she follow her heart?

10. Chapter 10

10-Fury

S he hadn't felt it, hadn't seen it coming, hadn't even been sick to her stomach or reduced to tears as the aftermath began to play out.

It had just happened, and for whatever reason Adrianna could not fathom, death had not whispered in her ear as it stole away Allison's mother's life.

Silence surrounded her, as though she'd been submerged in the pools of her family's sorrow. Adrianna did not feel sad. Burning rage filled her up, brimming in her newly solidified heart and spreading throughout her blood; pounding in her ears and setting her teeth on edge.

Her fists clenched tightly the longer she stood where she was, staring down at the cold, lifeless corps of Victoria Argent. Her red hair was duller than Adrianna remembered, but perhaps that was just because the colour paled in comparison to the blood staining her clothes where a knife had plunged through her chest.

Victoria had died like an Argent. Adrianna was certain that Gerard saw to that. The bite mark on her shoulder, still fresh and newly bandaged, proved the reason why such a measure was necessary. The only reason death would be required from a werewolf bite, was if it was inflicted by an alpha, Adrianna knew.

Which meant that Derek Hale had been the one to bite her.

Which meant that he'd been the one to inadvertently kill her.

Trembling slightly, her balance failing her as she reached out and grabbed hold of the gurney to steady herself, Adrianna breathed in the stench of death all around her. Allison had not stayed for more than a second, rushing out of the room a tearful, broken mess. Chris had soon followed with barely a backward glance.

It was only then, that she cared to remember that Gerard had stayed, as his stare burned holes into the back of her head and demanded the answers he so desired. The answers he would kill for, if need be.

"I assume that you knew this would happen," He began, calculated footsteps resonating through the empty, eerily quiet morgue. "No doubt death has already told you the fates of all your kin, even before they die."

Swallowing roughly, Adrianna closed her eyes as she felt hot, angry tears threatening to fall. "You know that's not how it works." She corrected lowly, restraining the desire to scream and yell at the man that was killing her. "I only know when death is near, not before."

"Ah yes," Gerard mocked as he approached her, joining her in watching the woman that had once been just as much the hunter as any of them. "I'd forgotten that even you, the daughter of a mythological god, have limitations."

"Really?" Adrianna retorted, her temper flaring as she spun on her toes to face Gerard. "I don't believe that for a second. If you didn't know that I had weaknesses, then how was it so easy for you to destroy me?" She pressed, her hands drifting to her knives as Gerard's eyes narrowed.

"Whatever do you mean, Adrianna?" He asked with false innocence, refusing to step back and relinquish some form of control in the situation, despite how close she'd gotten. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were accusing me of something."

Laughing bitterly, her throat scratching from the effort, Adrianna's fingernails curled into the meat of her palms, digging in as she held back the desire to break something on the old man's face. "I am accusing you." She fearlessly pronounced, tired of the lies and manipulations she'd had to endure since the death of her own mother. "I figured it out." Adrianna continued, her voice turning predatory as Gerard's brow rose, unimpressed with her display.

"Did you really think I wouldn't notice?" She remarked caustically, a snarl biting at the tip of her tongue. "I may be easily bent to your will but I am not stupid. I know what you've done to me, what you plan to do."

"Now, now Adrianna." Gerard attempted to console, as though she were nothing more than an attack dog nipping at it's owners hands in search of a missing meal. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. You made a bargain with me, do you not recall, and your task has not yet been completed. You cannot start a revolution against me until you've done what you promised you would." He patronized, a satisfied smile curling his lips. It set her blood on fire.

Roughly shoving him against the nearest wall—which happened to be the stainless steel wall lined with locked doors bolted shut, withholding dead bodies from sight—Adrianna's palm lay flat against Gerard's chest, her fingers fluttering over his pounding pulse.

"I know what I promised you." She bit out, her free hand migrating inside his coat, ever so gently delving within his pocket as his attention remained on her violent transgression. "But I also know that allowing you to poison me with wolf'sbane, perhaps for the remainder of my terribly short life, was not part of the deal." Adrianna revealed, her expression steely as her fingers closed around that which she was after.

"Finally," Gerard sighed, his anger boiling beneath the surface in a quiet rage that always spelled trouble. "You've figured it out. I feared that you'd die long before realizing the genius of my extermination."

Reeling back, her brows furrowed and her lips puckered in distress, Adrianna forced her eyes to well with tears—a task that was easier to accomplish than she'd have liked—as she backed away from the man that had raised her and now intended to kill her as soon as her uses were through.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a monster?" Adrianna spoke tightly as tears ripped across her cheeks and bile nipped at the base of her throat. Her hands trembled so she hid them in the pockets of her mother's jacket.

"Do you know what your greatest error was, Adrianna?" Gerard wondered instead, sweeping away her insult with barely a thought. "Your inability to remain emotionally unattached to the people you want to impress." He admitted, threading his fingers together and regarding her like a failed experiment. "It's what made it so easy to poison you in the first place. You wanted to believe that my intentions were pure, with such intensity, that you ignored all of the warnings along the way."

"Not all of them." Adrianna contested, her head bowed as she refused to meet her grandfather's demented gaze. "I saw what you were doing with Allison. I tried to tell her, to save her from you."

"But she didn't trust you," Gerard reminded her haughtily. "Did she?"

Shaking her head slightly, Adrianna emptied her fist inside her pocket before extracting both of her hands. "Killing me and replacing me with Allison," She leveled her verdant gaze onto Gerard's cloudy blue eyes, staring him down as the end played before her eyes. "It won't save you."

Pulling on the lapels of his overcoat to straighten out the fabric, Gerard stood tall to her challenge. "I wouldn't be so sure." He disagreed, something about his movements appearing younger and stronger than she remembered him being as he walked out of the morgue, leaving her alone with death.

"Well," Adrianna muttered once the door had sealed shut behind him, retrieving the stainless steel, ornate pill box from within her coat and squeezing it in her palm. "We'll just have to see about that."

He'd used her for sixteen years as nothing more than a mindless weapon built to destroy whatever he pointed her at. Now, it was time for a little payback. She and Scott had a plan. A foolproof plan, dare she say, that would use Gerard's supposed salvation against him.

#-#-#-#-#

It took nearly an hour to convince his father that Matt was at least a plausible suspect for the murders Harris had been charged with. The fact that his dad, once the Sheriff of Beacon Hills for over twenty years, trusted Scott more than he trusted Stiles—his own son—and that that was the real reason they were sifting through piles of evidence at the station, was something Stiles would rather not dwell on.

Jealously was a tricky thing. It sprung up on you when you least expected it. As it happened, Stiles had already gotten a lot of practice dealing with envy when it came to his best friend, Scott McCall. Whether it was strength, speed, appearance, popularity, lacrosse, or newest of all, trust, Stiles could put it behind him. He could understand.

That didn't mean he wasn't still upset, though, that his own father had kinda ditched him for Scott. However, the thrill of a good puzzle unraveling was more than enough to take his mind off of that fact for another while longer.

"I don't know, guys. I mean, look at this." The Sheriff pointed out despondently as the security footage from the hospital rolled by with barely any sign of Matt within the crowded halls of Beacon Hills Memorial. "There was a six-car pileup that night, the hospital was jammed." Stiles' dad noted, scratching the back of his neck like he did when he was running on fumes.

"All right, just keep going." Stiles encouraged, setting down a pamphlet filled with photocopies of evidence that had been collected at one of the crime scenes in favour of watching the hospital security tape. "Look, he had to have passed one of the cameras on that floor to get to Jessica, okay? He's gotta be on the footage somewhere." Stiles reminded them, nearly no sign that he'd been awake for almost twelve hours straight in his jumbled, excited movements.

Sighing heavily, the Sheriff continued to speed through the recording, his hand drifting over to a cup of coffee that had long been empty and trying to drink from it. "Oh, hold on, stop!" Scott's cry startled the Sheriff out of the hazy fog that had descended on him and forced Stiles to bite back a terrified shriek. "Did you see that? Scroll back." His best friend told them, pointing to something on the small screen.

As the Sheriff re-winded the tape, stopping and then allowing it to replay, Stiles saw what Scott had. "That's him!" He exclaimed triumphantly as a figure wearing dark clothes stomped through the ER hallways. "That's Matt!"

Biting his lip, Stiles' dad sat back in his chair. "All I see is the back of someone's head." He corrected, not convinced that it was the evil, controlling, stalking, creep they were after.

"Matt's head, yeah." Stiles assured his father with as much confidence as he could muster. It was enough to gain both Scott and the Sheriff's undivided, disbelieving attention. "I sit behind him in history." He defended, frowning slightly. "He's got a very distinct cranium, it's weird." Stiles pointed out as his father shook his head at his son's antics.

"Are you crazy?" The Sheriff demanded of Stiles, trying to remind him what was at stake here. If only his dad actually knew what was really at stake.

"All right, fine." Stiles relented, moving onto another tactic. "Then look at his jacket, huh? How many people do you know who wear black leather jackets?" He asked, raising his brows as he prepared for a victory.

"Millions," His dad flatly replied, proving that Stiles wasn't as awake as he thought he was. "Literally."

"Okay, can we scroll forward?" Scott interrupted, leaning between Stiles and his father as the spastic boy deflated. "There's gotta be a shot of him coming at one of the cameras."

Once more, the footage rolled past. Sick people were everywhere in the white, sterile halls. None of them the particular sicko that they were after. That was, until Stiles caught sight of the same baggy clothed scumbag they'd seen before. "Right there! Stop, stop!" He shouted, barely startling anyone now that they were fully invested in the footage. "See, there he is again." Stiles crowed as the tape rewound to show Matt stopped in the middle of a hallway, his back turned to the camera once more.

"You mean there's the back of his head again." The Sheriff grumbled dryly.

Never one to be totally perturbed by his father's lack of faith in him, Stiles ignored the Sheriff's comment. "Okay, but look." Stiles pressed as the security tape rolled on, showing Matt as a nurse approached him. "He's talking to someone."

All three of them leaned in closely as the nurse continued to speak with their could-be murderer. It was Scott that made the connection first, despite how many times Stiles had been forced to endure Melissa McCall's death stare after an unfortunate turn of events where Scott had left him to fend for himself against the woman.

"He's talking to my mom." Scott voiced, already fishing out his cellphone from within the back pocket of his jeans and dialing the number. Squinting at the screen, the Sheriff nodded his head in agreement, turning in Scott's direction as he and Stiles both waited for Melissa to pick up her phone.

"Mom," The shaggy haired werewolf spoke into the receiver. "I need you to do something for me." Scott began. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine." He reassured, clenching his fingers around the small device. "I just need you to identify someone for me that you might have seen at the hospital a few nights ago." Scott rambled as Stiles cringed, terrified that his friend would forget about his supernatural strength and snap the phone in two.

Finally loosening his hold over the cellphone, Melissa's words began to filter through the room as Scott placed his mother on speaker. "Scott, do you know how many people I deal with in a day?" She asked as the Sheriff began to sort through the papers dumped all over his desk, like he was looking for something specific.

"This one's sixteen." Scott told his mom, glancing over at the Sheriff for a moment before looking back at Stiles. "He's got dark hair, looks like a normal teenager."

"Yeah," Stiles added, pushing his way closer to Scott so he could try to speak into the phone. "He looks evil."

Pulling away the cellphone with a frown, Scott leaned against the desk with the phone evenly placed between the three of them. "Scott, I already talked to the police about this." His mother anxiously reminded him as Stiles tried to put a lid on his enthusiasm.

"Okay, mom," Scott spoke at the same time as he snapped a picture of Matt in the open yearbook the Sheriff had uncovered on his desk. "I'm gonna take a picture and send it to you." He told his mother, fingers flying over the small keyboard on his blackberry.

"Did you get it?" He questioned a moment later as Stiles held his breath and crossed his fingers. If Melissa couldn't place Matt at the hospital, it was unlikely that he could be convicted, or even brought in for questioning, with the remaining circumstantial evidence that was at the crime scenes.

"Yeah." Melissa responded after a tense second.

Harris could take the fall for the murders of four people he hadn't committed. It left a bitter taste in Stiles' mouth, no matter how badly the chemistry teacher had treated him.

"Do you recognize him?" Scott hurriedly wondered. "Do you remember him?"

Shutting his eyes, Stiles prayed for the first time in a very long while, that Melissa would say yes. He couldn't image, didn't want to imagine, what Matt would do if he was permitted to continue killing people that had ever done him wrong or looked at him funny.

"Yeah, I did." Melissa finally admitted and Stiles pumped his fists as a proud smile slipped over his father's lips. "I mean, I remember I stopped him because he was tracking mud in the hall." She expounded, sounding confused. "Scott, what's going on?" Melissa asked, but Stiles attention was already elsewhere.

"It's—It's nothing, mom." He vaguely heard Scott excuse before hanging up. "I'll explain later. I gotta go."

With not a moment to waste, the Sheriff slapped a report on top of the yearbook. "We've got shoe prints alongside the tire tracks at the trailer site." He shared, cautiously optimistic.

"And if they match," Stiles eagerly explained. "That puts Matt at the scene of three murders. The trailer, the hospital, and the rave." He listed off on his fingers.

Grinning, much like he used to before things had taken a turn for the worse, the Sheriff shook his head as he corrected Stiles. "Actually, four." He informed the two teens. "A credit card receipt for an oil change was signed by Matt at the garage where the mechanic was killed."

"When?" Stiles couldn't help asking as the pieces fell into place for an indisputable case against Matt.

"A couple of hours before you got there." His dad reminded Stiles of that night, watching the mechanic die beneath the car-lift, his first time experiencing the paralytic toxin of the Kanima. He shook it off and focused on the present.

"All right, dad." Stiles cracked his knuckles, nearly bouncing off the floor. "If one's an incident, two's a coincidence, and three's a pattern, what's four?" He questioned.

Standing up from his chair, the Sheriff seemed more like himself again. "Four's enough for a warrant. Scott, call your mom back, see how quick she can get her. If I can get an official ID, I can get a search warrant." He informed them with authority. "Stiles, go to the front desk. Tell them to let Scott's mom in when she gets here."

If he hadn't been in civilian clothes, no badge no gun, Stiles would have felt the need to call him sir and salute before dashing out of the room. "On it." He assured his dad, stepping out of the office.

As he made his way towards the front desk, his heart hammering in his ears and his thoughts racing a mile a minute, it took him longer than normal to notice that the deputy on duty had left her post.

"Hello?" Stiles called out warily, creeping forward so that he could look over the side of the desk and inspect the empty chair.

Blood, staining the deputy's shirt in the shape of claw marks and dripping onto the tile floors, was the first thing that registered to Stiles' usually keen, observant gaze. Next, was the missing gun in her holster and the click of said gun as it loaded a bullet in the chamber.

Turning, Stiles came face to face with Matt Daehler, the stolen pistol in his hands and madness gleaming in his eyes. Lifting his hands up in surrender, Stiles really wished he'd taken Peter up on his offer all those months ago, because a bit of werewolf strength and healing promised to come in handy.

Gulping, feeling saliva slowly migrating down his throat, Stiles clamped his mouth shut and followed Matt's silent command to move away from the desk. One wrong move could get him killed.

#-#-#-#-#

"Sweetheart." He called gently, watching as Allison sat on her bed with her legs crossed beneath her. She didn't look like much, the death of her mother scarred into her eyes, but Gerard knew that if he applied just enough pressure right where he needed to, she'd snap.

"I don't wanna talk." Allison muttered, her chin facing downwards and her eyes avoiding his. He didn't need to see those hazel, Argent eyes of hers to know that she was on the verge of crying; breaking. She was right where he wanted her.

"I understand." He feebly tried to console, the letter scratching his palms as he fingered the wax seal his family had been using for centuries. "I'm not sure if there's anything I can say. I won't pretend to know what you're going through." He shared, bowing his head in false respect of her pitiful mourning.

"Then leave." She spat unemotionally. Anger flared in his gut, demanding that she pay for her disrespect. Not even Adrianna, with all her faults and talents, had ever been able to get away unpunished for speaking to him the way Allison did.

Swallowing thickly, Gerard bottled up his indignant response and forced himself to remain calm. "Of course." He obliged her, turning to leave but stopping a moment later. "I just wanted to give you something from your mother. Partly because I couldn't help noticing that things have been kind of difficult between you two." He added, concealing his mirth when Allison finally looked up at him in interest. "But it can wait." Gerard assured her.

"What?" Allison began, clearing her throat as her voice came out gravelly. "What is it?"

She was curious but she was not determined, not yet. He'd soon fix that. "No, really sweetheart," He continued on his way out, playing with the unlit fuse that were her emotions. "It can wait. You get some rest."

"What is it?" Allison growled, stopping him just before he left the room. A smile pulled at his lips but he suppressed it. Matches, he found, were always better at catching fire to delicate situations. They worked slowly, heating up the fibers and molecules ever so slightly, that you barely even noticed when a flame caught.

"As you know," He told her, walking back inside the room and happily noting that Allison's gaze was no longer averted, staring at him unflinchingly as he spoke. "Your mother wrote a suicide note to explain away our difficult situation to the police." Gerard sat on the edge of her bed, pulling out a letter and holding it in his hands for Allison to see. "She wrote this note to explain it to you."

Her eyes were hungry and desperate as they absorbed the sight of the yellowed parchment in his crinkled hands. She wanted answers, closure, peace. Allison thought the letter would give her that. Gerard didn't not lead her to believe otherwise.

"If I give this to you," He waved the letter for emphasis. "You have to destroy it immediately. You burn it. You promise?" Gerard stipulated.

"Yes." She replied instantly, consumed by so much grief and misery that she'd do anything for a possible release. Allison was much like her cousin in that way. Very pliable once a weakness was found. The only difference was that Adrianna had far too few and Allison had far too many.

"I want you to know she asked me to read it." He added, holding the letter just out of Allison's grasp. "I told her I shouldn't, that it was private between the two of you, but she wanted my thoughts." He lied effortlessly, as though he were simply breathing—that too was a sort of lie.

"As I said before, I don't know what you're going through." Gerard repeated, making certain to use as much trivial emotion as he could muster. "I wasn't close to my own mother, but reading this made me sorry I hadn't tried to be. Because if this were my mother, if these words were written for me," He shook the letter, his voice tightening audibly. "I don't know how I could sit still until someone paid for her death."

Her eyes flitted about the room before landing back on the letter. Gerard would settle for that. She didn't need to see his eyes, the anger and plots swimming within them, to feel what he wanted her to.

"Any pity I'd have for Derek and his pack would be burned out by a white-hot desire for retribution," Gerard snarled, his hand nearly trembling from the force with which he held the parchment note. Victoria's last words to her daughter. "Or a kind of blood and destruction that would have Derek and his wolves howling, not for mercy, but for their own sweet deaths."

She looked at him then, doe-eyed and uncertain. He supplied her with support, knowledge, training, and family as he passed her the letter. Nodding his head in encouragement, Allison's ice cold fingers closed around the paper, holding it close to her with a delicacy that nearly forced a laugh from Gerard's lips.

Placing a hand over her shoulder, Gerard left Allison alone with the last memory of her mother. As he stood just outside her door, the smile he'd been trying to hold back finally splitting across his face, Gerard reached into the back of his pants and withdrew another letter, this one's seal already broken.

The paper crumpled in his palm as he dashed away what remained of Victoria Argent's last wishes for her daughter. She'd been weak, despite her momentary courage in taking her own life. In her letter, her real letter, she'd begged Allison to abandon the werewolves of Beacon Hills along with the life of a huntress.

Victoria had wanted a normal, human life for Allison but, as sweet and idealistic as the thought was, that just wouldn't bode well for all of Gerard's meticulous plans. He destroyed the letter, tossing it in a nearby toilet and watching as the blotting ink and parchment swirled the drain, disappearing forever.

Better Allison thought her mother was an Argent through and through, loyal to the family tradition and all that came with it, until the very end, than know what really happened.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, 'half a truth is often a great lie'.

Gerard hadn't fabricated the entire letter, after all.

Only the important parts.

#-#-#-#-#

The Sheriff was handcuffed to the bench near the jail, the deputies had already been taken care of, so all that was left was for Scott and Stiles to finish deleting the evidence and give him what he wanted.

"Deleted. And we're done." Stiles told him, unceremoniously pressing the keys necessary on the computer and standing back to watch him with narrowed eyes. "All right, so, Matt," He started sarcastically. "Since all the people you brutally murdered deserved it because they killed you first—whatever that means—I think we're good here, right?" He asked, walking out from behind the desk to join Scott beside the shredders.

"So I'll just get my dad and we'll go, you know?" He quipped saltily. "You continue on the whole vengeance thing. Enjoy the Kanima."

Lights shone into the office from a car as it parked near the station. Matt bit his lips in irritation as he casually swung the gun over at Scott. "Sound like your mom's here, McCall." He commented icily, pointing the two friends in the direction of the door as he stalked behind them, gun at the ready.

"Matt, don't do this." Scott begged worriedly. "When she comes to the door, I'll just tell her to leave. I'll tell her we didn't find anything." He tried to reassure him, only succeeding in angering him. "Please, Matt." Scott ground out as Matt's patience snapped.

"If you don't move—now," He threatened, pushing the barrel of the gun into McCall's back where the boy had stopped in the doorway. "I'm gonna kill Stiles first, and then your mom."

Breathing deeply, his shoulders rigid, Scott complied with Matt's demands, walking out of the office and towards the front door, his steps measured and light. He was afraid.

"Open it." Matt spat as Scott hesitated, his hand around the knob. Circling around Stiles, who he really saw no point in shooting aside from the persuasive uses, Matt leveled the gun on Scott.

"Please." Scott tried one more time, his anger barely concealed.

"Open the door." Matt commanded stiffly, with no more room for error.

Twisting the knob and pulling open the door, the vinyl blinds obscuring whoever was on the other side from view, Scott took a step back as a man Matt recognized as Derek Hale came into sight, standing in the doorway.

"Oh, thank god." Scott sighed, relief in his voice.

For one second, Matt was concerned that all of this, his plan for revenge, was over. That Derek would not only stop him, but kill him, for good this time. But, as he had expected, the Hale wasn't nearly prepared for such a thing, falling onto the floor, paralyzed, revealing the half-transformed Kanima behind him, venom dripping from it's claws.

Matt smirked as the hope drained out of Scott and Stiles once more. He really did love the agreement he and the Kanima had come to. It had made all his dreams come true. Now it was making other's nightmares into a reality.

#-#-#-#-#

This was a bad idea, Adrianna admitted to herself as her fingers tightened around the pin in her hands, jiggling it inside the lock until she heard the tell-tale click that told her she'd done her job well.

Scott's house was just as she remembered it being. Homey, large, decorated nicely, and filled with the scents of life. As she creeped down the hall into the kitchen from where she'd managed to unlock the back door, Adrianna found herself becoming more and more envious of the life and obvious love that Scott had with his mother.

Her icy fingertips brushed across one of the framed photos near the stairwell. Only a few weeks ago, Adrianna recalled crashing into them during her struggle with Isaac. Then, she hadn't taken the time to notice them, but now she did.

The first was of Scott as a child, shiny braces on his teeth and a grown out mop of hair covering his head and getting into his eyes. He was smiling. They were all smiling—his parents and him. She didn't have to ask to know that Melissa had divorced her husband. It was written in the pictures all around the house.

Slowly but surely, the dark haired man in a suit stopped appearing in the photos. It was just Melissa and Scott, different ages, different places, different expressions, but only them. Perhaps he did know a thing or two about loneliness, as it seemed that Stiles really was his only friend prior to the bite.

Just as she'd reached the bottom of the stairs, opening the drawer on an end table positioned at the base and pulling out a brand new, unused syringe filled with amber liquid from the back of her pant's waist, Adrianna heard footsteps resonating from upstairs along with muttered words.

Scott's mother, Adrianna guessed.

She hastily stashed away the immense syringe, knowing she wouldn't have time to hide herself. Adrianna quietly shut the drawer on the end table and took a few steps back towards the front door as Melissa McCall became visible at the top of the staircase.

A high-pitched, barely smothered scream echoed down the staircase as the elder McCall became aware of Adrianna's presence, the huntress' back turned as she attempted to flee the way she'd come, despite knowing it was futile.

"Stop right there!" The woman called from her vantage point, fear and a small amount of anger making themselves known in her voice.

Raising her hands above her head, Adrianna couldn't contain the smirk that slid across her lips. This was far too reminiscent of her time spent arrested by Stiles' father after she'd lead her first hunt in Beacon Hills. She could still recall in perfect clarity, the look on the sheriff's face when her grandfather had bailed her out with an irrefutable explanation. One far more convincing to the man than the actual truth.

"Sorry, I didn't think anyone was home." Adrianna informed the confused woman. She idly noticed that Melissa was wearing hospital scrubs, her black, curly hair hanging around her face in a frizzy halo. "I was looking for Scott," She explained further when she was certain Melissa wasn't going to pull a weapon on her. She doubted the McCall's even owned any firearms.

Frowning, her brows furrowing as she walked down the stairs, silent, Melissa stopped at the bottom, her hands on her hips as she regarded Adrianna from a few feet away.

"He's probably not home, right?" She continued on, mimicking the bubbly incoherence she'd witnessed several other people her age using when confronted with a nervous situation. "He gave me a key when we started working together on the chemistry project for mid-terms. I need his help to finish editing it. He won't answer his phone and I had nowhere else to go. God, I feel like such an idiot. I probably scared the life out of you." Adrianna ranted on, her lips beginning to numb from the speed of her words.

Startled back, Melissa blinked slowly before nodding her head, surprising Adrianna with how much she was able to understand of the muddled speech she'd spewed at her. "Yeah," The woman sighed tiredly, rubbing at her temples. "That sounds like Scott."

"You mean you understood all that?" Adrianna wondered, her expression no doubt betraying her shock.

With a breathy laugh, Melissa nodded her head, a bit of pride twinkling in her eyes. "My son's best friend is Stiles," She reminded Adrianna, grinning. "I've gotten used to having to decipher everything he says."

Licking her lips, Adrianna found herself nodding along to Melissa's words. She hated to admit it at a time like this, but she liked Scott's mom quite a bit. "Adrianna Argent," She suddenly felt the need to exclaim, holding out her hand for the older woman to shake. "I don't think we've met before."

"No, we haven't." Melissa agreed, wrapping her warm, calloused hands around Adrianna's. "Argent," She rolled the name over in her mouth. "I worked the last shift at the hospital. I'm so sorry about your loss." Melissa sympathetically told Adrianna, her spare hand reaching out to rub across Adrianna's shoulder.

It took a moment for the huntress to make sense of what Melissa was saying. Then, all at once, it hit her. She'd nearly forgotten in her haste to ensure her own survival, that Victoria Argent had just killed herself.

"Thanks." Adrianna croaked out, her throat suddenly tight. "We weren't exactly close but, family is family." She felt the need to share. For some reason, Adrianna felt she could trust Melissa. She could only imagine the life she would have had, if Kate had been more like Scott's mother.

"Regardless," The dark haired woman assured her, adjusting a purse Adrianna hadn't noticed was slung over her shoulder as she played with a set of car keys in her hands. "Losing your mother is never easy. I remember when I lost my mom. It was the hardest year of my life." She laughed, tears collecting in her eyes.

"Mrs. McCall," Adrianna gently begun.

"Melissa." She corrected, smiling. "You can call me Melissa."

Raising her brows, not quite sure how to phrase her next words, Adrianna started again. "Melissa, Victoria wasn't my mother," She told the other woman, who frowned at the knowledge. "She was Allison's mom; my aunt."

It took a moment before realization of the truth dawned on Melissa's features. Tilting her head to the side as though trying to look at her from a different angle, Melissa's tone became tighter and less trusting as she spoke next. "There aren't any more of you Argents that I don't know about, are there?"

Now it was Adrianna's turn to laugh; bitter and rough. "No," She admitted, bravely facing the facts that would tarnish any good opinion Melissa had formed of her. "Unfortunately not."

"Oh," The older woman muttered weakly, avoiding Adrianna's narrowed, green eyes. The eyes of her mother. "So that means," Melissa tentatively pieced together, her fingers shaking as she clenched them tightly around her keys.

"That Kate was my mother?" Adrianna could no longer stand the tension. The hatred simmering beneath the surface; the disgust. She was her mother's daughter but she was not responsible for Kate's actions. "Yes, she was." But even so, bravely accepting her mother, instead of condemning and denying her, proved differently.

She'd thought that coming outright with it would dissolve away the nervous air that was suffocating her from every angle. It didn't. If anything, it had made it worse. Melissa stared at her strangely, this time without daring to look away. Adrianna knew there to be fear in her eyes.

But then, as Melissa McCall stepped forth, her arms raised, and Adrianna's posture turned rigid as she prepared herself for whatever blow the older woman would deal out on her, something very unexpected happened.

Scott's mother hugged her. Tightly and comfortingly. Unlike any hug or gesture of affection that Adrianna had ever received in her short life. Tears pricked at her eyes, burning the lids she pressed closed in order to dam the oncoming flood.

"You poor kid." Melissa whispered, her motherly hands moving up and down across the expanse of Adrianna's shuddering back, her breaths ragged as she strained not to bawl like a baby.

A long moment later, Adrianna pulled away, subtly wiping under her eyes as Melissa regarded her. "You have no idea how long it's been," She tried to explain, her voice cracking over the words she'd never spoken. "My whole life, I've never," Adrianna stuttered, her voice turning nasally. "No one's ever—I've been by myself." She told the woman sadly.

"You're not alone anymore." Melissa reassured her, keeping a slight distance between them as she seemed to understand Adrianna's need for independence, or rather, her habit of it. "Scott's your friend and he and Stiles are a package deal, so you've got two pals for life there," She joked, pushing some of her wild hair out of her face. "And from what I hear, you and Lydia are pretty close."

"We are." Adrianna remembered the party, being poisoned and nearly dying. She wasn't so sure about that anymore. Something cold and heavy had come to life inside her after leaving the hospital, something filled with hate and vengeance. She could feel it in her bones. Somehow, Lydia had broken the rules. What was dead had not stayed dead.

"So you see," Scott's mom smiled in reassurance, breaking her away from her thoughts. "You're not alone."

Shaking her head, Adrianna bit her bottom lip. "But all those people, my friends," Adrianna hesitantly named. "They're just kids. They can't help me without getting caught in the crossfire; without choosing a side they don't want to."

"What are you talking about?" Melissa questioned, concern in her words. "Has something happened? Are you hurt—in some kind of trouble?" She pressed further, gripping onto Adrianna's arm as she tried to wave away the older woman's worry. "I mean it. You can trust me." Melissa assured her.

Looking deep into Melissa brown eyes, so like her son's, Adrianna found that she could trust her. Scott's mother was the perfect solution to Adrianna's problem. She was neutral. She didn't know about the supernatural world around her or any of the hunters navigating through it. Asking for her help wouldn't mean asking her to pick a side in a war she had no knowledge of.

"You could say that, yeah." Adrianna agreed, the crushing despair that'd been sitting on her chest alleviating somewhat. "And when the time comes, I'll tell you all about it."

The skin between her two eyebrows wrinkled as she frowned, but Melissa didn't dispute her again. Instead, she shrugged off Adrianna's cryptic message and began to walk towards the front door.

"You were looking for Scott, weren't you?" She called as she swung the door open, holding it there for Adrianna to pass. "I was just on my way to see him. He's at the sheriff's station with Stiles and his father. Want to come?" Melissa asked.

The corner of Adrianna's lips pulled up in a genuine smile. "I'd love to." She informed Melissa McCall, following her out of the house and into her used volvo.

Scott's mother was none the wiser of the real reason Adrianna had gone to her home, or the syringe she'd hidden there without her knowledge. After all, Adrianna reasoned, there are some thing better left a secret until the very end.

#-#-#-#-#

Rage.

Anger.

Loss so potent and sharp, that Allison could feel it stabbing her lungs and filling them with noxious fumes that would no doubt suffocate her the more she tried to breathe.

Her mother, Victoria Argent, was dead.

Suicide had been stamped in neat little red letters on the official police report her father had allowed her to see before coming home. Murder was stamped everywhere else.

The letter Gerard had given her only moment before, caught fire as she set a single match down onto a decorative dish she'd once used to hold stupid trinkets like earrings and notes for school.

It burned in her hand, first blackening around the edges before being consumed by the hot, orange flame. She set the mass of crumpled, fuming paper on the dish, watching as it was reduced to nothing more than a handful of grey ashes.

Derek Hale was responsible for this. For her mother's untimely death and for the bubbling hatred in her gut that would not be satiated by sitting still. She had to move; do something, anything to release the fire within her.

Everything felt wrong, her picture frames and the collection of seashells she'd brought with her from the time she'd lived on Long Island, nearly ten years ago. It was like they no longer belonged to her. Not this Allison. Not now.

She grabbed a crystal coaster engraved with the letter 'A' on it and threw it into a bin. The picture frames, pencils, shells, jewelry, and notes soon followed. Once her desk was clear of the memories she no longer wanted, Allison moved on.

All around her room, she destroyed whatever her hands touched. Ripping photographs, tearing down banners, sweeping aside the childish, vain objects that adorned the top of her dresser.

In her fury, Allison no longer cared about the person she'd once been. Sweetness and cordiality had been the things that had gotten her here. Love had destroyed her. Love for Scott, for her cousin, for her mother. It was a poison in her blood, pumping thick and hot and entirely inescapable to her.

She opened her closet, ripping the first black, utilitarian shirt she could find straight off the hangar and, pulling off her pajama top roughly, went in search of some jeans.

Darkness was the only thing that could define her now. She tied her hair back as her fingers found the familiar case of weapons she kept beneath her bed, pulling it out and onto her desk.

Snapping the cover open, Allison carefully plucked an arrowhead out of the suitcase, inspecting the stainless steel tip with cold precision. This would be her release, her revenge for what happened to her mother.

Lifting her crossbow and looking through the eyepiece, testing the trigger and imagining Derek at the other end of her twisted version of justice, Allison allowed herself to turn into the woman she'd always wanted to be—strong, powerful, capable—oblivious to the consequences.

#-#-#-#-#

His ears still rung from the dog whistle Deaton had used to wake him from whatever trance Peter and Lydia had managed to put him in before stealing part of his power. Derek could hardly believe that his uncle was still alive, let alone the fact that he was nowhere to be found.

If he didn't have other, more pressing matters to deal with, Derek would have begun the search party right away to find his fiendish, controlling, psychotic uncle. Unfortunately, he hadn't, and so he'd landed himself paralyzed from the neck down, again.

"This is the one controlling him?" Derek asked from his position on the Sheriff station's floor, staring up at Scott and Stiles as Matt Daehler aimed a gun at him, the Kanima close by and ready to heed it's master's next command at a moment's notice. "This kid?" He insisted, disbelief covering his embarrassment at permitting the Kanima to so easily incapacitate him.

"Well, Derek," Matt leaned down to address him, his expression pinched with madness. "Not everyone's lucky enough to be a big, bag werewolf." He revealed, basking in the moment of shocked silence that followed. "Oh, yeah, that's—that's right." He stuttered, waving the gun around carelessly. "I've learned a few things lately."

"Werewolves, hunters, half-bloods, Kanimas." Matt ticked off on his fingers, laughing hysterically as his red-rimmed eyes widened. "It's like a frickin' halloween party every full moon." He exclaimed tightly. "Except for you, Stiles. What do you turn into?" He pointed out, his gun moving wherever he looked.

"Abominable snowman." The teen sarcastically replied, obviously irritated at being singled out. "But, uh, it's more of a wintertime thing. You know, seasonal." He bit out just before the Kanima darted forward and sank it's claws into the back of the boy's neck.

"Hey!" Scott shouted, moving to help his friend as he collapsed, but standing still again as the gun pivoted towards him. With a harsh groan and a heavy impact, Stiles landed on top of Derek.

"You bitch." Stiles muttered angrily, paralyzed where he lay. Derek measured his breaths as he felt a gasket bursting on the tank he used to hold his rage. Soon enough, he'd loose it and rip the twerp's throat out.

"Get him off of me." Derek ground out between his clenched jaw, willing his body to jostle Stiles away but finding that nothing worked anymore.

"Oh, I don't know, Derek." Matt teased ruthlessly, enjoying every moment of his supremacy. "I think you two make a pretty good pair. It must kinda suck, though, to have all that power taken away from you with just a little cut to the back of the neck. I bet you're not used to feeling this helpless." He mocked.

Derek's vision tinged red as he tried to clench his fists, only for his body to remain perfectly still and uncooperative. "Still got some teeth." He reminded the arrogant teenager. "Why don't you get down here a little closer, huh?" Derek was certain by now that his eyes must have been glowing red but he didn't care. Not about the secret that everyone seemed to know, or about pissing off the pathetic kid that was using Jackson to kill innocent people. "We'll see how helpless I am."

He cared about justice and courage. Two things he couldn't dish out right then, no matter how hard he tried to get up and move, twitch his toe or curl his fingers.

"Yeah, bitch." Stiles repeated, just as uselessly paralyzed as Derek was but never one for making intimidating speeches. Derek would have rolled his eyes as he felt the urge to punch the idiotic spaz in the face, but right then, lights flared inside the office from a car parking in the lot outside.

"Is that her?" Matt wondered aloud, a vein on his forehead bulging outwards as his face coloured red. "Do what I tell you to and I won't hurt her." He warned Scott, gun aimed straight for the young beta. "I won't even let Jackson near her." Matt promised.

"Scott," Stiles called, his chest vibrating from the effort. "Don't trust him!"

Glancing over at the teen, Matt bent down and pulled Stiles off of Derek, clumsily allowing him to splay onto the floor as his boot pressed down over Stiles' chest. "This work better for ya?" Matt snarked as Derek heard rather than saw the boy's struggle for air, spluttering and gasping the more weight Matt applied.

"Okay, just stop!" Scott raised his hands as he stared at his best friend worriedly. "Stop!" He boomed once Matt refused to do so immediately.

Tilting his head, Matt grinned as he took advantage of the leverage he had on Scott. "Then do what I tell you to." Matt repeated seriously. Derek hoped that his newest beta didn't get himself killed by trusting a nut-job like the Kanima's master.

"Okay. Alright." Scott readily agreed, restraining himself from rushing over to help Stiles as his gaze wandered over to the Kanima. "Stop!" He shouted the longer Matt's foot stayed over Stiles' chest.

This time, Matt listened. "You take 'em in there." He told the Kanima in reference to Derek and Stiles. "You—" He told Scott, grasping the pistol with both hands "With me."

As he was dragged into the Sheriff's office, out of sight, Derek focused his hearing as he tried to make out what was happening. "Mom?" He overheard Scott saying once their footsteps halted at the front desk.

"You scared me," Melissa McCall told her son, fear in her voice. "Where is every—" She began to ask but never finished.

"Mom, just do what he says." Scott interrupted as Derek made out the distinct sound of his steady heartbeat along with Melissa's pounding one. "He promised he wouldn't hurt you." The boy finished and Derek didn't need to be there to know Matt had a gun on Scott.

"That's too bad," A different voice filtered into Derek's ears, causing him to stiffen and draw Stiles' attention over to him. "Because I was looking forward to a good bloodbath."

"What?" The younger Stilinski questioned, glancing between Derek and the door repeatedly as he tried to figure out why Derek had become so tense. "What do you hear?"

Sighing heavily, he tuned out the other's words as he appeased Stiles' curiosity. "Trouble," Derek shared just as a gunshot rung out, stabbing his tender eardrums as he grimaced in pain. "I hear trouble."

#-#-#-#-#

"You were?" Matt asked, his pulse pounding in his ears as he stared down the demigod before him. She was beautiful to him, captivating in the way a great white shark stole your breath away. He wasn't quite sure if he wanted to run away and hide, shoot her, or kiss her right there and then. "Because, I can deliver on that." He finished, mouth running dry as she stared him down without flinching.

"Oh honey," Adrianna drawled, her hands on her hips as she inconspicuously stood in front of Scott's mother, blocking her from his pistol's aim. "I don't doubt that you could force your little Kanima slave into wreaking some serious mayhem on this station, but what I'd really like to find out, is whether you could do it yourself; get your own two hands dirty for a change." She raised her brow in a silent challenge.

Matt knew from the memories that had invaded his mind through the bond he shared with the Kanima, that Adrianna had killed people before. Slaughtered werewolves and murderous supernatural creatures he could only read about in fantasy and mythology textbooks. It was part of the reason why he'd found himself liking her more and more, all the while feeling slightly terrified that she'd slash his throat open.

"Okay," He agreed after a moment, ignoring the look of horror that flashed across Melissa McCall's face upon his admission and choosing to remain staring at Adrianna. "I'll get my hands dirty."

The pistol felt heavier in his hands, somehow. Matt had inadvertently killed people using the bond between him and Jackson, but he'd only ever taken a life on his own once. He'd felt Jessica struggle and seen her weeping for mercy. He thought that this time around, it might be more educational, not to mention that it would prove how serious he was to his adversaries in Beacon Hills.

"Wait," Scott irritatingly spoke up, concern for his mother's safety ringing in his voice. "You promised you wouldn't hurt her." He complained, glancing between Adrianna and his mother as he realized the conflict in his statement. "I mean, you promised you wouldn't hurt my mom." He corrected, guiltily avoiding Adrianna's gaze as she narrowed her eyes at him.

"Well, I hate to say it," Matt conversationally began, glad to have regained Adrianna's attention as her laser-like stare landed on him once more. "But he's right." The shot rung out clear and loud, like a church bell on Sunday, as he squeezed the trigger and dug a bullet through Scott's stomach. "Unfortunately, I didn't say I wouldn't hurt you."

Yelling from where he'd forced Stiles to lock up the Sheriff could be heard in the hallway as Melissa paled, her eyes glued on her son as he fell to the floor, clutching his abdomen. "My baby," She breathed, too shocked to register her own fear.

"Back, back!" Matt shouted as Melissa tried to approach Scott's keeled over form. In the midst of the chaos, Adrianna stood as still as a statue, her trained gaze taking in all the dangers around her. Matt knew he'd have to take care of her next. Despite how much he didn't want to hurt her, he knew she'd have no qualms about hurting him.

"Mom, mom, stop," Scott grumbled, his voice rising in intensity and gaining strength the longer he talked. "Mom!" He finally managed to yell as Matt swung the pistol between Melissa and Adrianna, unsure which was the greater threat.

"Scott." His mother moaned, her eyes landing on Matt as she continued to step forwards. Hate burned in her brown irises. Hatred meant for him and him alone.

"I said get back!" He repeated, lifting the pistol on Melissa and holding it steady there. Adrianna's immobility he could handle, but Scott's mom was ready to make a move. She was too unpredictable to leave alone.

"Mom, do it." Scott begged as he grabbed hold of a nearby bench and began to pull himself to his feet. "Please, mom." He pressed on, struggling to stand.

Readjusting his grip on the pistol, Matt hesitantly took his eyes off the elder McCall as she heeded her son's warnings, glaring bitterly at him but not moving any further towards Scott or him. "Get up, McCall." He demanded, craning his neck to see all around the room.

"Matt?" The Sheriff's voice shouted from where he'd been handcuffed to a bench near the jail cell. "Matt, listen to me—" He tried to take control of the situation. Matt was so tired of people telling him what to do. He was the one with the gun for crying out loud, he should be the one telling them what to do.

"Shut—shut—shut up!" Matt managed to stutter out as his tongue turned to lead. "Everybody shut the hell up!" He screamed out in frustration. "Now, get up, or I shoot her next." Matt told Scott in a calmer tone as he aimed the gun at Melissa, only for Adrianna to stand in the way.

"I was not expecting that." He laughed under his breath, the pistol never wavering on it's new target. "You didn't strike me as the hero type."

Pushing away Melissa's concerned hands from her shoulders, Adrianna stood tall and resolute in front of Scott's mother, one eyebrow rising in amusement. "I think there's a lot you still don't know about me." She challenged as Scott quietly stood up. "But I think you know enough, to know that you really don't want to shoot me."

Matt thought about it for a moment. She was right, he didn't want to shoot her; to destroy such a perfect, rare specimen. But he also didn't want her ruining his chances at getting what he wanted.

"Okay, I'm up." Scott ended up deciding for him as he pressed a hand to the bloody bullet wound in his side and began to limp further inside the station. "No one needs to get hurt."

Smiling self-deprecatingly, Matt waved the gun at Adrianna as he gestured for her to follow Scott. "Next time." He whispered in her ear as she passed him. He expected her to shiver in revulsion or act out in anger, instead she was stoic and cold, not showing a single thought or emotion. It irked him.

Once they reached the jail, which was located near the back of the station, Matt slid open the bars and shoved Melissa behind them, shutting the door and locking it tightly with the key he'd gotten exactly where the Sheriff had told him it would be.

"Please," Melissa pleaded as she pressed her face between the bars. "He needs to see a doctor." She unnecessarily reminded him.

"You think so?" He incredulously bantered, scrunching his face in disbelief. She didn't know about any of it. Melissa thought her son was dying when he had never been in any real danger, at all.

"Hey, hey," The Sheriff growled as Matt took a step closer to Melissa, the gun lifting in his hand. "You listen to me!" He shouted defensively, quietening down as Scott held up a hand for silence.

"It's all right." He reassured his trembling mother. "I'm okay."

"No, honey," She contested him, tears staining her cheeks with makeup. "You're not okay."

Shaking his head, Scott pressed his lips together tightly as he seemed to try to think of something to ease his mother's worries. "It doesn't hurt, mom." He settled on saying.

From out of the corner of his eye, Matt took note that, although she was as silent as ever, Adrianna's emotions began to leak through the cracks in her shielding as her brows furrowed and her eyes watered.

"Because that's the adrenaline, okay?" Melissa bent her knees as she tried to claw through the bars to reach her son. It set off a light bulb in Matt's head. "Please, let me—let me just take a look at him, okay?" Melissa asked him, catching his eyes away from Adrianna. "I mean, I can help stop the bleeding." She uselessly begged, sniveling and whimpering pathetically.

It was ironic to Matt, that something so weak and soft could make a huntress, a demigod, as powerful as Adrianna long for her mother. "They have no idea, do they?" He questioned Scott, who then avoided his gaze.

"Please. Let me just take a quick look." Melissa continued to whine, "I—" She broke off suddenly and, turning around, Matt saw that it was because of Adrianna's shaking head.

"Shut up!" He roared when Melissa began crying, blubbering incoherently in quiet tones. "Lady, if you keep talking, I'm gonna put the next bullet through his head." Matt callously told her, tapping the gun against the metal bars of her prison.

"Enough." Adrianna lowly interrupted. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you'd lost your mind, Matt." She icily remarked, picking at her cuticles once he turned to watch her. "Give the woman a break and we'll talk like civilized human beings." She intoned and he couldn't hold back an amused snort.

Human beings, they were not. Him, he wasn't so sure.

"Back to the front, McCall." He commanded, stepping to the side of the door and waiting for the werewolf to pass. Only he didn't.

"After you." Scott insisted, staring at the gun distrustfully. Rolling his eyes, Matt shoved past the door into the hallway. As he turned on a dime to re-aim the pistol, just in case Scott had started to feel as heroic as Adrianna apparently was, he saw something strange.

Adrianna's arm withdrew from Scott's back pocket as she pushed between him to get ahead, next to Matt. It seemed Scott didn't notice, because he continued walking into the hallway as though nothing had happened. Staring at Adrianna quizzically, he was rewarded by a sly wink before the brunette dashed ahead inside the room he was leading them to.

Matt wondered what exactly had just happened, but the tell-tale ache in his side reminded him that he had more pressing matters to deal with. Focusing on what could have been mindless flirtation on Adrianna's part wasn't going to give him the answers he needed.

"The evidence is gone." Scott dumbly remarked, waving his arms around himself to emphasize the piles of shredded police reports. "Why don't you just go?"

Frowning, Matt blinked blurrily as he shook his head. "You—you think the evidence mattered that much, huh?" He questioned venomously. "No, no, I—I want the book." He finally admitted. After all the time he'd wasted on destroying piles upon piles of paper in the station and imprisoning Scott and Stiles' parents, he'd reached the moment of truth.

"What—what book?" Scott stuttered uncertainly, at a loss now that Matt had revealed his true intentions all along.

"The bestiary." He snapped back. Instantly, he felt Adrianna's glare burning holes into the side of his head. "Not just a few pages. I want the entire thing." He added as an afterthought. He didn't need Scott getting tricky with him and giving him what might as well be a pamphlet instead of the meaty catalog he'd asked for.

"I don't have it." McCall replied, his unwavering tone implying that he was being honest. "It's Gerard's. What do you want it for, anyway?" He wondered as Matt took into account the slight rise in Adrianna's brows.

"It's happened." She spoke incontrovertibly, her knuckles clenched tightly at her sides as though she had to stop herself from grabbing hold of him. "You've started changing."

"How the hell do you know that?" He angrily demanded, the gun lifting back into position against her chest as he crushed the small space that had separated them.

"Argent," Adrianna gestured to herself, unfazed by the weapon inches from her heart. "Remember. It's literally my job to know these things." She quipped.

"I need answers." Matt reminded himself aloud, changing his aim from her chest to her head. He wasn't sure if being a demigod meant she could heal like the other werewolves, but he was fairly certain that a bullet to the brain would be nearly impossible to recover from with the ability to heal or not. "Give 'em to me or I kill you and then get Jackson to hunt down and murder anyone you care about." He threatened.

The memories he'd gained from all the times Adrianna had tried to kill the Kanima, draining the life force out of Jackson but trading invaluable experience and knowledge in order to do so, told him that, despite her outward appearance, Adrianna had a soft spot for Derek's pack. He'd start with Scott, tell the Kanima to flay him alive in front of her, and then move onto Isaac—him he'd treat extra special; he might even throw in a decapitation—until he got to Erica and Boyd and ended at Derek.

He didn't care how long it took. He wouldn't stop until she told him what he wanted to hear.

And then, her expression became stormy, as though she could hear his death-ridden thoughts. With barely a moment's notice, she grabbed hold of his gun with one hand, snapping his elbow to the side with her other, and disarmed him in the blink of an eye.

Her hands wound around the gun familiarly, like she'd done it a thousand times before, as she held it at him unwaveringly. In his mind, he called out for help and just like always, the Kanima answered him.

In the doorway across the room, Jackson appeared, scales dancing across his skin and shiny venom clinging to his outstretched claws. It screeched out in warning the longer Adrianna held the pistol on Matt.

"Hey, hey, hey." Scott tried to intercede, lifting his hands to show he meant no harm. "What's going on? Who are you gonna kill and what do you need answers to?" He pronounced, horribly confused.

"Drop the gun." He ground out at Adrianna as the Kanima hissed impatiently. "I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself." Matt condescended as he felt his palms sweating. Helplessness had always been a weakness of his. It was one of the reasons he had never bothered to learn how to swim, even after what happened.

"Threaten me," She evenly spoke, tossing the gun into his startled hands. "Or the people I care about again," Adrianna made a threat of her own, staring at him with those fiery green eyes. "And no force in existence, not even the Kanima, will stop me."

Breathing in nervously through his nose, Matt forced a wobbly smile across his lips as he dismissed Jackson and squeezed the pistol in his hands to make sure it was real. "Noted." He assured her, a frightened tremble setting into his fingers as he began to realize how volatile the youngest Argent actually was.

"Like I said before," He continued, slowly untucking his shirt. "I want the bestiary because I need answers to this." Matt lifted the fabric so that his side was exposed along with the pulsing, expanding patch of scales that had begun to replace his flesh.

"Holy Hera," Adrianna exclaimed in astonishment as Matt hastily pulled down his shirt. "I hate to break it to you, Matt." She begun, only to rethink her words. "Actually, you totally deserve this and I don't actually care." Adrianna corrected callously.

"Just tell me what's happening to me!" He shouted out in frustration. Waving the gun around despite it's earlier failure to intimidate her.

"You've screwed yourself." She bluntly informed him. "Breaking the rules always has consequences. You forced the Kanima to kill innocent people who had never murdered anyone." Adrianna's tone changed, as though she had personal experience with breaking said rules or perhaps even killing innocent people. Matt wasn't sure he wanted to know which. "You tipped the scales out of balance. Now, the Kanima's gonna have it's ultimate revenge by turning you into the same creature of justice you abused so foolishly."

"I don't understand." Matt found himself replying as dread weighed on his shoulders. "What does that mean?"

"It means that for every action and decision," Adrianna stated logically. "There is an equal reaction and consequence. Equilibrium must be maintained, especially when it comes to the kind of bond you share with Jackson." She pointed out, the lack of sympathy in her tone made her words sharp and hard to swallow.

"I'm sorry, Matt." She smiled sadly, a twinge of remorse flickering in her eyes. "The Physiologus can't help you because there's nothing to help. This is the bond restoring the balance that you disregarded in favour of getting revenge."

"What?" He scrunched his face in disbelief and denial. "No. Could you just stop—stop speaking in riddles and tell me, plain and simple, why I've started growing scales." Matt ordered as his heart raced.

"You're turning into the Kanima." Adrianna supplied, shrugging her shoulders dispassionately as Matt's hope for some kind of cure shriveled up and died.

#-#-#-#-#

As he read over the text message one more time, his gaze lingering on the final request, Chris clutched the phone tightly before passing it over to Gerard. "He wants the bestiary." Chris spoke aloud for everyone to hear, despite the fact that Allison and Gerard were the only others present.

He was so used to having his wife barge in halfway through a briefing or strategy formulation, and having to act as an intermediary between Gerard and Adrianna when they disagreed on a tactic, that he didn't realize it wasn't necessary for him to do so anymore.

"That's not from Scott." Allison informed them, saving Chris from any more painful dwellings on his late wife, Victoria. "He wouldn't have texted me and he definitely wouldn't have mentioned Derek."

Glancing up from the small screen, Gerard set the phone down as he leaned against the table. "The Sheriff's station?" He wondered, analyzing the message he'd just read to the nth degree.

"If Derek's really there," Chris supplied. "I doubt it's willingly." He silently considered the possibility that Adrianna, who'd gone missing since she and Allison came to the hospital and learned of Victoria's death, was behind Derek's presence at the station. It wouldn't have been the first time Gerard worked behind his back, moving chess pieces he shouldn't have had access to in order to reach his final goal; whatever that happened to be.

"You think Jackson's there, too?" Allison questioned as she reinserted herself into the conversation. It was hard not to forget, for a moment, that she was there. Adrianna's presence was so much louder and more certain than Allison's wispy, inexperienced one. And yet, there was an anger that simmered beneath the surface in his daughter's gaze which matched Adrianna's temper exactly.

"Maybe." Chris couldn't find the conviction to entirely agree. "Maybe him and the one controlling him." He theorized.

"How many do they keep on in a night shift?" Gerard asked the more pressing question, steepling his fingers in front of him in a rare moment of absolute patience. It set off alarm bells in Chris' mind as he unrolled the schematics kept hidden in the drawers beneath the tabletop.

Pointing to the hallways he knew would be guarded on the Sheriff station's blue prints, Chris pressed his lips together as Allison helped him keep the large map spread out on the counter. "Since budget cuts, maybe four at the most." He considered thoughtfully. "My guess would be they're either dead or paralyzed by now." Chris added seriously.

Leaning back, Gerard's lips curved in satisfaction as he regarded the map. "This might just be the confluence of events we've been hoping for." He shared a brief insight into his thoughts. It hinted at blood and destruction.

"Confluence," Chris interrupted, his brows raised in a silent question he dared not ask. "Or conflagration?"

Eyes narrowing to hide away the answer, Gerard easily swept aside his son's question. "I'm open to both." He agreed, inadvertently confirming Chris' suspicions. If it were up to his father, Beacon Hills would be burned to the ground, everything and everyone dead.

"What do we do now?" Allison voiced from her side of the table, her fingers spread wide over the map, the tips turning white from the amount of pressure she was applying. Chris knew it irritated her when he and Gerard spoke in their own coded communication. She was so innocent and naive. She didn't know the truth about Gerard. He hoped she never would.

"Maybe you should tell us." Gerard surprised him by answering. "That authority falls to you now."

"Not at her age." Chris immediately refuted, his stare lingering on Gerard's frosty gaze. "Besides, Adrianna is next in line according to her experience level. She should be the one to take over." He attempted to assuage the situation.

"Allison's older than Adrianna. She's almost eighteen." Gerard reminded him, something conniving ringing in his voice. "She knows there's a difference between revenge and retribution. Don't you, Allison?" He pointedly demanded.

Licking her lips uncertainly, Allison's brow furrowed as she thought over her grandfather's proposal. Chris could see the doubt churning in her eyes and wriggling into her thoughts. Despite how it afflicted her, he prayed that it strengthened enough for her to relinquish the spark of rage he'd seen in her.

"Maybe dad's right." She eventually admitted, her voice tight but loud enough for all to hear. "Adrianna has had more training than me; she knows what she's doing. She always knows what she's doing." Allison ended in a quiet, partly aggravated tone. "Besides, she's been hunting for years. We can trust her to handle this—apathetically." She pronounced carefully.

To Chris, it was a relief to know that his daughter, even in her grief clouded haze, understood that she was compromised and unfit to accept the responsibility, or make the decisions, Gerard was suggesting she undertake. Unfortunately, it also meant that she was unstable enough to become susceptible to his father's meddling.

A pit settled into his stomach as Gerard spoke again, his words rumbling through the air, charged and dangerous. "Do you know with absolute certainty, that you can trust your cousin?" He forced her to reconsider. "You only just met her a few weeks ago. How can you so easily hand over the fate of your family's ancient tradition, to a person you barely know?" Gerard wondered as he circled the table, ending up standing behind Allison, his hands over her shoulders.

Chris stiffened where he was but made no move to intervene. He knew the delicacy of Gerard's attack on Allison. If he wasn't careful, his father might take away the last remainder of Chris' family. And yet, he couldn't allow himself to stand still and let Gerard corrupt Allison as he had Kate. It would be too cruel.

"Of course she can trust Adrianna," Chris replied in Allison's stead as his daughter mulled over her thoughts, biting her bottom lip uncertainly. "They've had each other's backs ever since she arrived in Beacon Hills. In the space of a few weeks, they've become like sisters. Right Allison?" He tried to remind her, to snap her out of whatever trance Gerard had placed her under, but her eyes refused to meet his as her fingers clenched on the tabletop and a part of him knew right then that she was lost to him.

"If they were so close, then where is she now?" Gerard supplanted, bitterness and raw greed making itself known in his over enunciated words. "The day when Allison needs her the most, the day when her mother dies, Adrianna is nowhere to be found." His fingers tightened their grip over Allison's shoulders as he leaned in close to her ear to speak his peace.

Frowning, Allison shrugged away, waving her hands around her as she shook her head. "She had other things to do, more important things." Allison seemed to try to excuse, her hazel orbs becoming glossy from unshed tears.

"More important than comforting her only cousin, whom she shares a sororal bond with, on the most devastating day of her life?" His father insisted, not moving to follow Allison as she distanced herself from them both. "You were there for Adrianna, when she lost Kate. Why doesn't she repay the favour?" He pressed and Chris closed his eyes to avoid seeing the skeptical look that flashed across Allison's features.

"She's probably with Scott." Allison whispered, her voice a fractured mess. "She's been helping us with the Kanima. Stopping the murders is—it's more important than anything else." She choked out, not believing her own words but uttering them out of a sense of duty.

"Alright," Gerard conceded, lifting his palms up in a gesture of surrender. Chris immediately became suspicious. His father never surrendered this easily. Never. "Since you seem so intent on defending Adrianna's tactless, disrespectful actions, why don't you answer—"

"Enough," Chris shouted as Allison fragile form began to tremble. She'd already endured so much, he couldn't permit her to endure this too. "That's enough." He repeated strictly, breaching the few steps between him and Allison to wrap an arm around her as she stood perfectly still and unresponsive, nearly hyperventilating.

"You're quite right," His father nodded his head, a tone of sickly sweet apology dripping from the admission. "I've taken it too far. If Allison wants to believe with blind commitment that her cousin is trustworthy, who am I to dispute her?" He sarcastically remarked.

Sighing heavily, Chris rubbed Allison's shoulders as her breathing leveled out. He glared at Gerard who simply stared back, his gaze steely and revealing none of his intentions. Chris wished, right then, for some way to know what his father had in store for them. Too often, he never saw Gerard's plans coming. It had been how he'd lost Kate.

"Wait," Allison rumbled, her throat scratchy and rough. "What were you going to ask me?" She demanded, her stance widening as though preparing for an impact.

Chris' ears rung and he took a step back, nearly stumbling out of surprise. "No, Allison," He persisted, reaching out to grab onto her again only to be swatted away dispassionately. "You don't know what you're getting into." He tried to advise her, but her angry stare told him she was too stubborn to listen.

"What was it?" She forcefully repeated, her words clipped and acidic as she wiped under her eyes to clear away the smudged mascara. Sadly, Chris knew from experience that Gerard never needed to be told more than twice.

"Answer one question, and you'll know without a doubt whether Adrianna is worthy of your trust." He began reverently, spreading his hands wide as though retelling a grand story. Allison clung to his every word, enthralled. Chris could barely breathe, the hole in his chest widening with each second that went by where his daughter drifted further and further away.

"If you know her so well, if you shared everything and kept no secrets from each other, than you will easily be able to provide me with the right answer." He drawled, prolonging Chris' agony and stretching Allison's patience. "Who is Adrianna Argent's father?" Gerard finally asked, his words ringing out in the quiet basement where the very girl in question had spent so many hours being punished using techniques Chris had once thought too brutal to be implemented in this century.

For a moment, Allison betrayed no reaction or emotion. She was statuesque and cold as granite. Then, all at once, her eyes slipped close and her features contorted into sorrowful acceptance as a tear rolled down her cheek. She bit her lips tightly as she shook her head in a silent answer to her grandfather's question.

"I don't know." She gasped out, eyes opening wide and aggrieved as her fists clenched tightly by her sides and her voice cracked with emotion. "She never told me. I don't know." Allison repeated breathily, as though speaking the words too loudly would burn her tongue.

"Then she hasn't been honest with you and you can't trust her," Gerard outwardly told her, his lips barely refraining from pulling back in a grin. "Can you?"

Allison's chin tilted downwards as she stared as her feet. Chris felt his heart plummeting as her features abruptly hardened. Her black smudged eyes seemed ominous and predatory as her expression became neutral, like polished marble, and her pointed nose tilted up along with her squared jawline.

"You're right." She agreed easily. Other than the slight rawness in her voice, there was no sign of the vulnerable girl so close to shattering into a million pieces that'd been there a moment before. "I can't trust Adrianna. I can't trust Scott or any of the werewolves in Beacon Hills." Allison pronounced certainly, defiance shining in her eyes as she stared Chris down, not even flinching when he silently pleaded with her to see reason.

"Very good." Gerard praised, clapping his hands together in celebration. "Now that I assume you've realized that the leadership role falls to you and you alone," He reminded her, gesturing for her to stand closer to the table, beside him. "I want you to make your decisions from a vantage point of strategy over emotion, and we'll follow your lead."

Glancing over at him, Allison took only a moment of consternation in which she regarded the maps in front of her before responding. "I want Derek dead." It wasn't a question; not an invitation, suggestion, or even a search for permission. It was a fact; an order.

"What about Scott?" Chris felt the need to speak up. His daughter looked at him then, her eyes hollow except for the hatred that burned within them. He hardly recognized her. What he did recognize, was the desire to please glittering madly in her every action. He'd seen it many times before in Kate and only once in Adrianna. Chris had never thought he'd see it in Allison.

"Scott's not the one who forced my mother to kill herself." Allison apathetically retorted, her words barbed and ready to inflict maximum damage.

Setting his hands against the tabletop, leaning so that he could maintain his balance and prevent himself from trying to run Gerard through with the first sharp object he could get his hands on, Chris shook his head as he disagreed with Allison's emotionally compromised decision. "He's not exactly an innocent bystander either." He reminded her, attempting to use facts to dissuade her in her volatile course of action. "You can't pick and choose—" Chris tried to explain, his fatherly tirade slashed apart as Allison swiftly interrupted him.

"But I can prioritize." She remarked caustically, narrowing her eyes and spitting out her words the way his sister had whenever she was angry. "And the priority right now, is Derek." Allison repeated once more.

"What about the others? Derek's pack?" Chris tried again, this time from a different angle. The Allison he'd raised wouldn't have dared to even think about harming anyone, let alone killing someone, even if that someone was Derek Hale.

Sighing from his position, Gerard pulled up a chair and collapsed into it. His skin appeared paler and his voice more tired as he spoke. Still, Chris didn't let his guard down. He'd seen plenty a victim that had fallen for his father's innocent old man act. He wouldn't be one of them.

"I'm afraid your father's right, Allison." Gerard gravely informed her, pulling back the sleeve on his left arm and reading his watch warily. "Derek's pack may be a problem when it comes to executing your plan. Particularly Isaac Lahey. The first to be bitten is always the strongest of the betas."

Face scrunching in confusion, Chris minutely shook his head as Gerard's gaze demanded he remain silent. He wouldn't. Not after what he'd just witnessed. It was clear to him now, what his father had wanted all along. He'd been infiltrating into Allison's life, gaining her trust and her respect, so that she could fulfill Kate's absence as his second in command.

Manipulating, threatening, bribing, and even callously using her mother's death to his advantage were all things Chris was certain he'd used. But lying straight to her face about something as simple and inexplicable as the reason why he'd want Isaac Lahey dead. That struck Chris as the hardest thing to ignore in that moment.

Unfortunately, just as he gathered the courage to part his lips, the words poised at the tip of his tongue, ready to be unleashed on his daughter to hopefully shake some sense into her, Allison spoke.

"If they try to protect him, them we kill them." She simply explained. Her apathy startled Chris. It was so unlike her. "All of them."

As she stood there, beginning to formulate a plan with Gerard, pointing out spots on the schematics of the Sheriff's station and tossing out duties along with corresponding hunter's names Chris hadn't known she'd been aware of, a frightening realization struck him.

He'd lost her.

In the space of a few minutes where he was too overcome by grief and shock to stop him, his father had stolen away Allison and turned her into a killer.

More frightening still, Chris wondered if the Allison he was seeing today—the cold, calculating huntress that resembled his sister more than she did his daughter—had always been a part of the shy, naive girl he'd taken for granted far too many times.

What have I done? Chris asked himself as he watched her innocence burn up and perish before his eyes in the fire that had engulfed her heart. All he could think of in that moment, was that he'd failed her. He'd failed them all; Victoria, Adrianna, Kate, and Allison.

He could only hope that there'd be a chance for him to redeem himself.

#-#-#-#-#

"You drowned, didn't you?" Adrianna interrupted Matt's rant as the pressure in her lungs increased and a migraine began at the base of her skull. "That's why you're afraid of water and why you thought killing all those kids was justified. You drowned." She realized, her hands trembling as a sudden chill scurried up her spine. Death was near, how near she wasn't certain, but close enough to be felt. It didn't bode well for them.

"How did you—" Matt began to ask, stopping himself mid-sentence as he smiled smugly, waving the gun in her direction teasingly. "I remember now. You figured that whole thing out." He gestured to her hands with the pistol, a droplet of sweat dribbling down his temple. "I guess it's only fair that you get some of my memories, seeing as I've been getting a whole lot of yours."

"No," She raised one brow in response to his sarcastic tone. "I haven't gotten any of your memories. I got Jackson's." Adrianna corrected him, pointing to her head with her index finger.

"But then," He stuttered, the pupils of his eyes widening until they nearly engulfed his iris. "How did you know I drowned?"

"Like I told you before, sugar," Adrianna condescendingly drawled, her anger making her playful. "There's a lot you still don't know about me. Maybe you should drop the gun, go one-on-one; find out what I'm really made of." She offered, winking as the Kanima snarled in the distance.

Swallowing thickly, Matt shuffled his feet as he seemed to carve out some more space between them. She smirked slyly knowing that it was out of fear of her. He might have had the Kanima but she was a weapon in and of herself. She could take his guard dog on in a moment's notice and she might even win. Flexing her fingers, she cracked her knuckles in anticipation of the bloodshed she'd expected since stepping into the station.

"I did—I did drown." Matt stuttered out, wiping at the sweat accumulating on his brow and pushing back his damp hair. "He shouldn't have let them drink." He paced the room, eyes wide open and hardly blinking. Adrianna felt lightheaded as every time he shut his eyes, she knew he was there again, drowning beneath the water. They were there, the both of them. Different memories, same fear.

"What—who?" Scott tried to keep up, failing miserably. "Matt, what do you mean?"

"Lahey!" Matt shouted at the top of his lungs, startling Adrianna out of her ruminations and jolting her into action. "He shouldn't have let them drink." He repeated, lower this time, just as Adrianna's hand reached out and her fingernails dug into the flesh of Matt's palm.

Swatting her gradually tightening fingers over his hand away like an unwanted fly, Matt pointed the gun at her forehead as his grayish orbs welled with angry tears. "No," He commanded harshly, his legs spread wide to brace himself. "You don't get to touch me. I'm not sharing that memory."

Breathing out exasperatedly, Adrianna pressed her lips together to keep herself from saying something that would only serve to boil the situation further. "You've seen what's been done to me, haven't you?" She questioned him, her tone soft but stern. "You know that I, of all people, have the best chance at understanding."

Shaking his head silently, Matt backed away until his spine collided with a nearby filing cabinet. "Understand what?" Scott's voice drifted over from the other side of the room. "Who was drinking? What's going on?" He demanded, utterly lost and confused.

"The swim team, you idiot!" Matt yelled out in frustration, his face turning beet red from the effort. Glancing back at Adrianna, who forced herself to remain quiet in order to allow him to consider her suggestion, Matt returned his attention to Scott as he began to explain the same memory he'd refused to share with her.

"I didn't know they'd just won state," He mumbled sadly, regret pitching his voice. "And Lahey, he was letting his favourites come over to have a couple drinks to celebrate. Who cares if they're seventeen, right?" Matt rhetorically asked, his hands shaking out by his sides as he continued.

Adrianna dared not interrupt, despite his blatant disregard of her offer. He was finally divulging information she could use against him. Scott, however, hadn't seemed to have gotten the memo. "Were you at Isaac's?" He lightly wondered, concern and the beginnings of wariness making themselves known in his curious brown eyes.

Nodding his head, Matt bit his lip as he turned his back on them, his shoulders shaking with each ragged inhale. "He had this first edition Spider-man, or was it Batman?" He easily went on, not caring that Scott had interrupted him. "And we were gonna make a trade. But then I'm over there and I hear music. Everyone's having a good time and I see Sean; he throws Jessica in the pool." Matt describes, his voice thick.

"And then," Matt continued, stuttering as he carelessly wiped at his eyes, the pistol nearing his face with the movement. "And then Bennet goes in and—"

"Bennet?" Scott piped up once more and Adrianna couldn't help but glare at him angrily. "What, the hunter?" He wondered, shrinking beneath her heated gaze.

"Shut up, Scott." Adrianna growled as Matt shook his head, ostensibly not even listening to them.

"And then Camden," He explained, his voice cracking with emotion. "Isaac's jarhead brother, he grabs me. He thinks it's funny." Matt laughed, gravelly and broken.

Shutting her eyes for a second, Adrianna allowed the memory of her grandfather holding her beneath the surface of the water to consume her. Her lungs burned, her eyes teared and her ears plugged. She knew what came next. "They threw you in." Adrianna muttered, reopening her eyes to stare at Matt. "Camden threw you in the pool and no one helped you because they didn't know you couldn't swim."

"I—I yelled at them," Matt divulged, nodding his head in affirmation. "I yelled that I can't swim, but nobody listens. I go under and I swallow water, and no one cares."

"But—" Scott pushed forward, between them, but the longer their stares remained focused on each other, the harder it became for Adrianna to keep track of the world around her. "That wasn't their fault. They didn't know."

"And I see these bodies underwater." Matt spoke and it was as though he was only telling her. It was just the two of them, stuck in their worst nightmares. "I—I see Jessica's got her hands down Sean's board shorts. Tucker's grabbing Kara. And I'm drowning. I'm dying, and they're laughing." He spat, vengeance gleaming in his watered gaze.

Shaking his head, Matt turned away from Adrianna, running a hand through his hair once more before leaning against the wall, as though he was physically draining himself by telling the story. "All of a sudden, I was just—" He muttered to the wall, voice cracking. "I'm lying by the pool and Lahey is right there, right above me, and he says—'You tell no one!'"

The gun trembled in his palm as his features compressed in agony. Adrianna heard the words in a different voice. The voice of a dead man. "This, this is your fault!" Matt shouted loudly, spittle spraying from his chapped lips. "You don't know how to swim? What little bastard doesn't know how to swim?"

Lights around her became distorted and blurry. Adrianna blinked to try to clear her vision. "You say nothing! You tell no one! No one!" Matt finished in a whisper as Adrianna's body swayed, unbalanced the longer her consciousness threatened to stay in the past.

"And I didn't. I didn't tell anyone." He informed them lowly, his tone racking shivers up Adrianna's spine. Behind Matt, barely concealed by the shadows in the room, stood a man in his mid-fifties. Hair turning gray, small spectacles perched on his crooked nose and blood gushing from an immense gash in his head. Somehow, despite never having met the man, Adrianna knew it was Isaac' father.

"I would see them at school, and they wouldn't even look at me." Matt carried on, oblivious to ghost behind him. In the back of her mind, Adrianna knew that it was because only she could see him. "I'd wake up in the middle of the night. I'd gasp for breath." He narrated as a trickle of cold sweat slid down the length of Adrianna's spine.

Measuring each shaky inhale, Adrianna bit her bottom lip, hard, in the hopes of returning herself to reality. She hadn't seen the dead in many years, back when she'd first started learning to control her powers. Wetness around her nose and eyes told her she was likely bleeding. It reminded her why she was here in the first place, experiencing so many strange things, not even aware that she was dying until a few days ago.

"And my parents, they thought I was an asthmatic. They—they—they—they," Matt tripped over his words, the fingers on his empty hand curling as though wanting to dig into something. "They even gave me an inhaler. They didn't know that every time I closed my eyes, I—I was drowning." He managed to complete.

Before her eyes, the apparition transformed, it's features regressing in age and severity until it was no longer Mr. Lahey standing there, his hollow eyes boring holes through her. Instead, the young couple Matt had killed next, took his place.

"You know about that little white light that they talk about?" Matt questioned idly, his tone becoming morose. "The one you see when you die? Well, I didn't see anything. Just darkness. Everything was dark."

The wails of a child shattered Adrianna's eardrums. She winced in pain as they reverberated around the room, like sonar waves bouncing away from anything they came into contact with, directing themselves back to her and Matt; the source.

"But then—" The Kanima's master growled, all of the sadness leaving his voice as it was replaced by twisted humour, maybe even pride. "Then came the Argent's funeral and everything changed. I was taking some photos and then, purely by accident," He laughed thickly, cruelly. "Lahey gets in one of the photos. I look down at the screen on my camera and I just had this unbelievable rage that fills up inside of me, and I just—I look at him and I—I wanna see him dead."

Faces changed in rapid succession. The mechanic, the hunter, the woman from the rave. Each and every one of Matt's kills. The people he'd forced the Kanima to slaughter and bend the rules for. Adrianna clenched her fists tightly as the next face became one she'd recognize anywhere.

Pressing his lips together to withhold a smile, Matt shook his head as though he still couldn't quite comprehend the truth. "And the next day," Matt swallowed, breathing in deeply as he seemed to overcome his instability. "He actually was."

Standing in the shadows, his curly hair matted with blood and his skin pale as snow, was Isaac Lahey. A dagger like pain shot through her heart and Adrianna stumbled as she beheld him. Warmth blossomed beneath her fingernails and for the first time, she glanced down at them only to notice that blood was caked beneath them. Matt's blood.

Isaac was his next target.

Adrianna knew he wouldn't stop there. He'd kill anyone that got in his way. It wasn't about revenge or justice anymore. It was about power.

"You know, Einstein was right." Matt pointed out brightly. "Imagination is more important than knowledge. It was like something out of Greek mythology. Like—like the furies coming down to punish Orestes." He ranted passionately.

Something inside of Adrianna snapped, like the final pebble that shattered the ice sheet covering a newly frozen lake. "You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" She dully registered him asking Scott. Anger simmered in the pit of her stomach, blazing in her eyes and freezing her burning fingertips with a frigid rage.

"Was—was he the guy who stabbed out his eyes?" Scott wondered as Adrianna's hands trembled by her sides, the temperature dropping in the room enough for both boy's foggy exhales to be seen.

"God, that's Oedipus, you dumbass!" Matt berated loudly, shaking the gun by his side as he seemed fond of doing. "The furies are deities of vengeance. Their tears ran of blood and they had snakes for hair. If there was a crime that had gone unpunished, the furies would do the punishing." He lectured.

Her chin tilted towards the floor, stray muddy blonde strands of hair falling in front of her down-turned face, Adrianna could no longer remain silent. "What do you know of the furies?" She spat beneath her breath as the power within her became nearly impossible to contain. The instinct to protect all those Matt would kill, overcoming her initial rage. "You learn from books and stolen memories. They do not always tell the whole truth."

Raising his brows, devoting his whole attention towards her in an instant, Matt seemed startled by her words. "I know all that I need to." He explained simply, as though speaking to a particularly unpredictable child. "Jackson is my fury. When I saw him the next night, it was like this bond had been cemented between the two of us and no one could separate us. Not even you." Matt grinned smugly, stepping away from her as he rounded closer to the windows lining the back wall of the office.

"Although I'll admit, you came this close." He pressed his index finger and thumb near each other, leaving a tiny space between them. "But in the end, Jackson knew who his real master was."

Closing her eyes, the faces of Matt's next targets burned themselves into her eyelids. She knew they weren't real—none of them had been killed yet—but that didn't mean their stares didn't feel any less intense, silently demanding she do something.

"I knew he had killed Lahey for me, and I knew he would do it again. So I went to Tucker's garage. I even paid for an oil change." Matt snorted in amusement as he went on with his story, intent on finishing it. "And guess what? He didn't even recognize me." He grunted, jaw clenched tightly as he presumably recalled the events.

As slowly as she could, Adrianna's hand migrated to the back of her pants, where she kept a spare set of knives. It had been foolish of Matt not to disarm her himself. His own pride had blinded him. He'd thought she was afraid of the gun and the Kanima. He'd thought wrong.

"So when he wasn't looking, I took a shot of him from my camera and in a few hours, he was dead." Madness twinkled in his gaze. Adrianna paced herself, waiting for the opportune moment. "So I took more pictures. All I had to do was take their picture, and Jackson would take their life." He nearly laughed, the air catching in his throat as he seemed to finally become aware of Adrianna's ignorance to his boasting.

"What are you doing?" He asked frantically. She didn't need to open her eyes to know he'd raised the gun on her. Scott's frightened breathing on her left did that for her. "Look at me, dammit. Open your eyes!" Matt commanded, the safety clicking off.

"Adrianna, do what he says." Scott tried to persuade her. If she'd been like him, she would have known that his heart was racing and fear was emanated off of him like a pungent cologne. "Matt, drop the gun. We can solve this peacefully. No one else has to get hurt." He attempted to placate.

Her lips pulled back in a wicked smirk. She knew she had Matt's undivided attention. It was time.

"You know, you were right about the furies. Partly right, anyway." Adrianna divulged, her arms loosely held behind her back as her fingers wrapped around the familiar leather wrapped handles on her knives. "The furies are weapons of vengeance. One in particular being more fond of it than the others."

She remembered her childhood. Remembered learning about all the myths and legends as the Argents tried to prepare her to fight and destroy them, only for her to meet them in person not long after and be utterly insignificant, having to start anew.

"But vengeance isn't their only purpose." Adrianna reminded Matt, pulling away her knives from their crossed holsters and concealing them by her sides. "They're judges, meant to maintain balance and justice."

Opening her eyes, Adrianna stared long and hard into Matt's slate grey eyes. She prepared herself, pulling her muscles taut and forcing strength into her shuddering bones without the help of an adrenaline shot. It was agony, but it was well worth it; to know that she was still just as capable as she'd been before coming to Beacon Hills and not the naive, weak and dying fool Gerard had taken her to be.

"They are not executioners." She snarled, pulling forth her knives and going in for the kill. Matt's eyes widened and his finger stuttered over the trigger in his surprise, giving her just enough time to slam into him before the first shots rung out.

Bang, bang, bang. The gun barked loudly, bullets flying past her head too fast for her to see. She dug her elbow into Matt's chest as she turned, slashing at his arms and lower abdomen before attempting to kick his legs out from under him. It would have worked, had she been able to complete the maneuver, and she wouldn't have had to worry about the Kanima at all.

A flare of blinding, white-spotted pain spread throughout her shoulder, burning cold and hot at the same time as Matt's aim finally pulled through with an on-target shot. The momentum of the bullet pulled her down to the floor, her outstretched leg never colliding with Matt's.

Grunting as all the air in her lungs was expelled with the impact, Adrianna didn't even have a second to recover before she was forced to roll over on her side in order to avoid the volley of gunfire heading her way. The lights shut off overhead, replaced by wailing sirens as the power was cut to the station. Something cold and awful shrunk in Adrianna's chest.

"Shit," She cursed angrily, sitting still only when she'd reached the cover of a nearby desk. Matt appeared just as confused as she was, hiding behind a chair as he crouched down across from where Scott was kneeling beneath a different desk.

"What is this?" Matt shouted over the blaring cacophony of shots and dizzying yellow lights, a shudder in his voice. "What's happening? What's going on?"

Shielding his eyes from the bright flashes, Scott shook his head as he answered through gritted teeth. "I don't know."

In a moment, the ear-ringing chaos halted long enough for dread to make itself known in Adrianna's heart. One by one, clang after clang signaling impact, metal canisters rolled across the room towards the disagreeing trio.

There was only a brief second for Adrianna to meet eyes with Scott, fear and uncertainty present in his gaze and hers, before gas came pouring out of the grenades.

Scott and Matt might not have known what was happening, but Adrianna did. Clutching her shoulder, applying consistent pressure on the wound in her shoulder seeping cold, blackened blood, she began to crawl across the room towards Scott before it was too late to get out.

The Argents were here and if her gut was right—that nagging, guilty, hollow feeling in her chest—than they had a new woman to lead them. Which meant, since Adrianna had not been a part of the assault, that the only remaining female Argent was in control now; that Allison was in control.

Or so she'd no doubt had been lead to believe by the man responsible for manipulating them all.

#-#-#-#-#

Her footsteps echoed across the solid concrete floors of the Sheriff's station. Her back felt cold now that her father wasn't there to protect her, watching her every move. Despite that, Allison had insisted on splitting up.

Crossbow held at the ready, her breathing measured and her palms sweating, Allison walked down one of the many long and narrow corridors in the building, searching for one thing and one thing only. Revenge.

Turning a corner, she came face to face with someone she wasn't expecting to meet so soon, although she knew it would have to happen eventually. Skidding to a stop in front of her, his arms waving about him as he tried to regain balance, a bright red stain nearly a foot in diameter marring his light green dress shirt, Scott McCall stuttered and floundered for words as he tried to comprehend her presence.

"Oh, sh—" He started to say in place of an apology, before his brows furrowed in realization. "Allison?" Scott asked her, eyes darting across every part of her as he took in her severely altered appearance.

She was dressed in black, her long curly hair flowing loosely around her shoulders. Her expression set in stone as her lips puckered and she raised her weapon away from the boy she'd loved with all her heart, not even a day ago. Now she had to remind herself not to lodge an arrow through his heart simply for being what he was.

"Where's Derek?" Allison harshly demanded, her tone clipped and business-like. She knew he could sense her anguish, her misery—every werewolf in the station probably could—but he didn't seem to understand it.

"What are you doing?" He questioned, lips pulled back as he shook his head, confused. Allison felt a sudden spike of irritation towards him. Why does he always have to be so clueless? She spitefully asked herself.

Instead, her lips formed around different words, perhaps slightly less aggressive but even more apathetic. "If you're not going to tell me," Allison carefully pronounced, her eyes narrowing in distaste. "Then get out of my way."

Sighing through his nose, Scott's brow pinched as he took a step forward, reaching out as though to touch her, hold her. "Allison," He began tenderly, delicately. It infuriated her.

"Where is he?" She growled, lowering her crossbow and holding it steady across from Scott's chest. Anger boiled in her eyes, consuming her every thought and action. There was no more room for sympathy, love, or loyalty. Her mother was dead, killed by a monster Allison intended to hunt down and destroy, leaving no trace of his existence.

Lifting his hands up in a surrendering, peaceful gesture, Scott swayed on his feet, either from shock or blood loss, Allison didn't know. Searching her heart, she was mildly surprised to find that in that moment, she honestly didn't care which.

"What happened?" His throat constricted but the words past through anyway, infecting the air between them with their poisonous concern.

Smiling with only her lips, insincerely and nearly mockingly, Allison bit the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from saying something she didn't want to. "Scott—" She choked, unable to continue before clearing her throat and steadying her resolve. "Scott, you need to stay away from me right now." Allison warned him, wary of the desire deep within her to simply break down and tell him everything. To trust him with the burden weighing on her shoulders, instead of carrying it herself. "I need to go." She realized, tears threatening to blur her vision.

The longer she stayed close to him, the more tempting it became to abandon her stupid crusade. She was just one girl, naive and barely trained, in a world of killers and literal nightmares come to life. What more could she do than kill, or be killed herself?

Pushing past him, Allison allowed herself to look back at Scott over her shoulder. "Just stay out of my way." She whispered under her breath, already taking off down the hallway towards the meeting point she and her father had agreed upon.

Scott's expression—the lost caramel eyes her aunt would have compared to that of a puppy, puckered lips betraying words left unsaid on the tip of his tongue, and the comprehension in his pinched brows—burned into Allison's memory. She was the cause of it, of his sadness and remorse.

Breathing in deeply, Allison focused on her pounding steps underfoot and navigating the oftentimes confusing maze that was the Sheriff's station, instead of the boy she'd left behind in the hall, standing alone.

Pulling open the door to the storage room and stepping inside, idly studying the rows upon rows of shelves, filled to the brim with boxes holding all kinds of evidence, Allison nearly didn't notice her father standing on the opposite side of the room.

It was only when his determined blue eyes met hers, fingers curled in a hand gesture that had become very familiar with her as of late, that she understood why he hadn't called out to her before, choosing to remain silent.

The Kanima was in here with them.

Moving forward in synchronized steps, Allison and her father slowly approached one of the many towering shelves. Deep within the aisle created between the two shelves came a low grating, hissing sound that affirmed her father's suspicion.

Fear grasped Allison's pulse as her heart hammered against her rib cage, threatening to break free and flop about on the concrete floors uselessly. Gripping onto her weapon with more force so as to stave the trembling in her fingers and the raggedness in her breathing, Allison nodded her head once her father gave the command to cover him as he advanced.

He seemed to sense her uneasiness as he approached the aisle. Turning his head ever so slightly to look at her, his lips pulled back in a reassuring smile, Chris didn't have the time to react defensively as the Kanima sprung onto him, crashing them both to the ground in a tangled heap of scale and cloth-covered limbs.

A terrified squeak slipped past Allison's whitened lips as a thousand different scenarios ran past her mind's eye. It could kill her so many ways, each bloody and painful. She didn't stand a chance against it. The crossbow wavered in her hands, nearly falling to the floor. Allison wanted to run away, to listen to the frightened, cowardly voice in her head telling her to abandon her father and save her own skin.

But then, her father's pained grunts rung out in the room, followed shortly by the Kanima's satisfied shrieks and hissing, and Allison remembered herself. She was a hunter—an Argent—and no matter the odds, she would fight against any creature spilling innocent blood.

Raising her crossbow and holding it in both hands, Allison aimed as surely as she could manage with her father and the Kanima struggling against each other, before taking her shot. Just like always, her aim was excellent and true, striking the Kanima through it's forehead with enough speed to topple it off of her father, and onto the ground nearby.

It poised readily on it's feet, a long and dangerous tail curling near it's body, at the ready in less than a moment's notice, as it reached up a clawed hand and probed the arrow embedded through it's skull.

Allison's blood, pumping hot and fast, nearly deafened her to the curious clicking noises the Kanima was making as it's fingers curled around the metal end of the arrow and slowly, deliberately, pulled.

Her head became light and her fingertips tingled unpleasantly as the creature removed the arrow, blood-stained tip and all, from where Allison had shot it between the eyes, releasing it to clatter across the floor between them.

It hissed loudly, as though boasting it's strength, before climbing over her seemingly unconscious father to scuttle towards her on all fours, looking very much like the lizard they'd all first assumed it to be.

With a loud crash, the crossbow fell from her slackened grasp and she wasted no more of her precious time gaping and submitting to her fear, before turning around and fleeing for her life.

Slamming into the door at the end of the hall, her feet nearly slipping on the tile beneath her, Allison easily turned the knob and pushed open the wooden barrier to reveal what appeared to be the garage of the station, police cruisers parked near the end while desks were littered across the cavernous space.

Running towards the closest desk and taking cover underneath it, Allison was painfully aware of how loud her breathing was as she waited for the Kanima to find her. Seconds felt like hours but soon enough, Allison heard the distinct hiss echoing throughout the room as the Kanima searched for her.

As it came closer, so close that she could hear it's wickedly sharp claws clacking across the floors and slicing into the hoods of police cars, Allison held her breath, hoping that it would simply give up and go away—that it would leave her alone.

She desperately wished her cousin was there so that she could be brave, instead of her. Allison didn't want to be brave, she wanted to be at peace. Although, according to her grandfather, there was no way to attain such a thing without the violence she was becoming scarily used to.

Closing her eyes and squeezing them shut until she saw stars and black spots, Allison clenched her hands around the daggers Adrianna hadn't yet taught her how to use to their full extent, as her thoughts stilled and her breathing leveled out.

Bravery didn't come easily to her. Not like it did to everyone else. And yet, she forced all traces of terror and fear out of her trembling limbs and watering eyes. Allison remembered something she'd learned years ago, in a different town, as a different girl than she was now.

She was afraid, yes, but Allison knew that bravery wasn't all everyone made it up to be. It didn't mean that a person had to be fearless. Being brave meant that a person acted in spite of their fear, with it spiking their blood and pounding in their ears as they accomplished what they set out to do.

And so, she rolled out from under the desk, her expression stormy and determined as she twirled her daggers in preparation. Climbing over the table top, landing on the ground, Allison took a running start as she rushed towards the Kanima, vaulting on top of one of the police cars and using it to throw herself into the air, towards the creature that paralyzed her insides and reduced her to a quivering, teary mess.

Her newly sharpened blade plunged into the right side of the Kanima's rib cage and even as it wound both hands around her throat, squeezing the air from her already constricted lungs, Allison found the strength to reach down and extract another knife from her boot, using her uncoordinated and still clumsy hands to stab the Kanima in it's scaly throat.

Green blood soaked her fingers, sticky and warm as she came to terms with the fact that she had no more weapons, staring hatefully at the Kanima as it lifted her off her toes, suspended in mid-air.

She gasped and choked, spluttering for even one breath as her feet kicked up and tried to aid her somehow. Narrowing it's slitted eyes, yellow and reptilian, the Kanima regarded her struggles for a moment before it screeched at her, slicing it's toxin-slick claws across the back of her neck and dropping her immobile body to the floor as it scurried away.

Allison tried her hardest to move, to twitch her foot or curl her fingers where they lay by her sides, but it was useless. Her own hair had billowed out and fallen in front of her face during the fall. She couldn't even use her own breath to move it, her lungs agonizingly wheezing in oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide as they too seemed to be at least partly paralyzed.

Staring at the ceiling directly above her, Allison felt rage bubble to life within every pore and every cell. It simmered quietly beneath the surface. A new part of her had been awakened. The part she'd never been allowed to embrace, until now.

The Argent part of her; the Hunter that'd been there all along.

Footsteps alerted her of his arrival before she saw him. They were slow and heavy, like he was taking his time basking in her vulnerability. If she'd been able to move, Allison would have picked herself up off the floor and dealt one of the nasty, brain-muddling right hooks Adrianna had just recently taught her how to properly form. As it was, she simply lied there, unable to do much more than seethe quietly as Matt Daehler crouched down beside her.

His cold, sweaty fingers brushed away the hair from across her face and their eyes met, brown on gray, as he smirked boastfully. "You should've given me a chance," Matt told her, his hand lingering on her skin longer than Allison was comfortable with. "Cause remember how I said I'm not the kind of guy who would say something like, 'well, if I can't have her, no one can.'" He deepened his voice theatrically as he repeated what he'd told her at Lydia's birthday party.

Allison felt fear rising to the surface once more as Matt's features contorted in fury, his skin tinging red as he appeared short on breath. "It's not totally true, because—Allison—" His throat vibrated with her name. It was possessive, threatening, and entirely psychotic. "If I can't have you, no one can!" Matt yelled, the veins in his neck and temples bulging from the effort.

Somehow, Allison's body became even more rigid and immovable, as though her terror was locking up the muscles that hadn't been totally paralyzed. Her breathing was nearly non-existent and her vision became blurry as pitiful tears threatened to fall across her cheeks and prove her weakness. Matt's eyes gleamed hatefully as he reached out his hand to stroke the side of her face. Allison knew she would have shuddered away from him, if she'd been able.

Instead, she merely sucked in a large breath of air and resolutely kept her gaze locked on the large, domed light hanging above her from the ceiling. A familiar screeching rung in her ears not a moment later and saved her from further torture.

Without a word, Matt fled, his steps hurried as the Kanima seemingly called for help. Once he'd left, the door slamming behind him, Allison allowed herself to breath fully. Despite her resolution to remain strong and brave, a few stray tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes, dripping along her skin and stopping in her hair.

Just when she'd begun to feel something in the very tips of her fingers, the idea forming that she might be able to reach her knives if she tried hard enough, another set of steps caught her by surprise as a man knelt beside her, his form large and shadowy.

A scream lodged itself in her throat and Allison had not the strength to stop it. If it hadn't been for the hand that wrapped around her lips, effectively silencing her from behind, she would drawn even more danger to herself.

"Shhh," A voice consoled from where the figure was molded to her back, supporting her aching spine off of the unforgiving concrete. "It's alright. You're safe now." Her father's voice, his hands and his movements.

Allison nearly cried out in relief as Chris Argent positioned himself so that she could see him, a finger to his lips as he signaled for quiet. He lifted her up onto his bent knee and wrapped her in his arms as he carried her away from the place where she'd learned how to overcome her fear with bravery.

She felt like a failure, like she was as utterly weak as she'd once been so many months ago when Peter Hale had locked them all in the school overnight. Then, Kate had trained her and siphoned some of her fear away with strength and precision.

Now, Allison didn't have anyone to do that for her. Gerard couldn't help her set aside something like this, Adrianna wasn't likely to want to if her loyalties where with who Allison thought they were, and her father was averse to her learning anything about hunting in the first place so it was only logical to assume that he wouldn't want any part in her becoming the permanent leader of the hunt.

She thought about Scott and Stiles, how they would react to seeing her like this—how one of them had already reacted—and she knew that they were not her allies in this. Her family, what remained of it at least, was all she had left in the world. Even they could not help her.

It was just her now, all by herself. One woman—one girl—against things she didn't even know existed a year ago.

One mission, one goal, one target.

Uphold the Argent code.

Avenge her mother.

Kill Derek Hale.

#-#-#-#-#

"Come on, come on, come on!" Melissa cheered as the Sheriff's pained grunts finally ceased, the bolt that'd once held his cuffs securely to the wall dangling unimpressively from his wrist. They smiled at each other, relief and concern obvious in both of their gazes. They had kids after all, they were parents.

Wrapping her hands around the prison's metal bars, pressing herself as close to them as she could, Melissa nodded her head as the Sheriff looked around him for the key to her cell.

In his distraction, he didn't notice the boy sneaking up behind him with a large, heavy looking paper weight in his hand. Melissa did. Her lips formed around words she wasn't even sure would be right or understandable. Her tongue felt too heavy in her mouth and pronouncing anything felt like a massive undertaking. She barely did more than squeak out a few unintelligible syllables before the metal object came crashing down on the back of Stilinski's head with a resounding clunk.

The Sheriff fell to the floor, limp and unconscious as Matt stood over him victoriously. Something about the way he smiled, that strange look in his eyes, told Melissa that there was more than what was on the surface with him. He had a reason for doing this. They always did. It was figuring out what that reason was, that would gain her the upper hand.

"Matt?" Melissa uncertainly started, her eyes still flittering between the collapsed Sheriff and the boy that was responsible for all the violence and bloodshed happening that night. "Matt, please, listen to me." She nearly begged, fresh tears smearing the already ruined makeup she'd applied before going to work the late shift at the hospital. "My son has been shot and I've heard other gunfire. I don't know what's happening, but can you please let me see my son?"

Narrowing his eyes, shaking his head in what appeared to be disbelief, Matt's lips rose in mocking humor as he approached her with a pistol still clutched in his hand. "How totally clueless are you people?" He wondered acidly, waving the gun near her face as he seemed to try to puzzle it out.

A strange sound, almost like the grunting of an animal, similar to a large dog or wild cat, echoed across the room. Melissa's brows furrowed as she noticed Matt's posture become rigid. Red pinpricks of light caught her attention and she looked behind Matt, towards the doorway of the room leading back to the front of the station.

Fear was instantly present, followed by confusion, and then even more fear. Her legs shook beneath her, threatening to stop supporting her and drop her onto the ground just like the Sheriff had been.

Standing in the doorway was not a man, no. He might have looked like a man—with two arms and legs, two ears and eyes, one mouth and nose—but Melissa knew that he was a monster.

It's eyes were red as rubies, shining viciously in the dim light of the station, and it's face was contorted in a gnashing growl as Melissa began to realize that it didn't just look like an animal; it was one.

Pointed teeth were bared as it snarled, loud and ferocious. It reminded Melissa of documentaries she'd seen on African lions and wild wolf packs. Claws seemed to extend out of it's fingernails, sharp as knives, glittering with the promise of blood yet to be spilled and flesh yet to be torn. The tips of it's ears were pointed and covered in wiry, brownish hair.

Though the man's face appeared not to be altered, aside from the strange wrinkles and contours that made themselves known when it finished it's roaring, Melissa could not think of it as a person. As a human male she might have passed on the street, or a child she could have sent her son to school with.

Animal. Beast. Monster. Those were the only words she could think of to describe it, the creature with the glowing eyes and sharpened fangs for teeth.

The wolfish man growled low in his throat, almost in warning, as he slowly distanced himself from the door frame, walking into the room and towards Melissa and Matt.

Her pulse flew through the roof the closer he—it—got. His fingers stretched wide by his sides and it didn't take much for Melissa to imagine red, viscous blood dripping from those claws. Matt backed away, his shoulders colliding with the bars of Melissa's prison as he soon realized he had no way to escape.

There was a very loud, very convincing part of her that demanded she close her eyes, huddle in the corner of her cell with her knees pulled close to her chest, and wait for the creature to leave—perhaps kill the boy outside and then abandon her to the safety of her cage.

A different part, the part that was a protective mother, told her to do as much as she possibly could to break free and protect the young man that had shot her son and quite obviously taken the wrong path in his life. But did that really mean he deserved such a grisly demise?

Before she had the chance to decide what she should do, which part of herself she should listen to, the half man—half animal she vaguely recognized as a fugitive the entire county had been after not even four months ago, lunged forwards at Matt.

A high-pitched, raspy scream emitted out of Melissa's throat, ripping past her vocal chords and shattering the still air around her as the creature landed on top of Matt and began to slash it's claws through anything it could reach.

The boy's expression was pinched in agony as his eyes shut tightly and he tried, without success, to push the mighty beast off of him. Melissa's knees kicked up one by one as her mind raced to try to find a way out of the prison. She only had a few seconds, she knew, before it would be too late.

In the back of her mind, she wondered if all those wild animal attacks that had been happening recently, weren't really caused by cougars and bears.

A bead of sweat dribbled down her temple, reminding her of the rapidly shortening space of time she had left to figure out how to save the boy that'd been her captor, not a moment ago. Blood began to seep out of a particularly deep gash on Matt's forearm, gathering in a small puddle beneath him that was getting bigger by the second.

Banging her hands against the bars, Melissa found her voice as she tried the last thing possible to save Matt's life. "Hey, get off of him!" She yelled with more courage than she felt. "You're killing him. Get off—"

Her next words were cut short as the wall to her right exploded in a sudden shower of rubble. Coughing to try to clear the dust from her lungs, Melissa felt a shiver run up her spine as she began to make out two figures among the destruction.

One was clearly human, a girl at that, moving with speed and skill that astounded Melissa by simply watching it. She kicked and ducked, rolled and dodged each of her attackers movements using the kind of gracefulness that Melissa remembered noticing ballerinas and gymnasts shared. A long, sharp blade held tightly in each hand, and an expression describable only as thunder itself, there was no doubt in Melissa's mind that there was a reason her blood sung with fear and dread.

The other was a different story entirely.

As frightening and intimidating as the girl was to behold, her attacker was worse; much worse. To start, it was easily double the girl's size, which in and of itself made Melissa wonder how the young woman managed to hold her own against it. Then, came the claws and fangs—the yellow, slitted eyes. The green, scaly skin extending out from it's hindquarters into what must have been an eight foot long tail.

Yes, a tail. Melissa admitted to herself shakily.

And if it's appearance and size weren't enough to short-circuit Melissa's barely functioning thoughts, the thing was hissing—like a snake. Shrieking and screeching inhumanely each time the girl managed to avoid it's deadly wrath or inflict damage of her own doing. The reptilian creature scuttled around as though it were trying to reach Matt, who was still lying beneath the other wolf creature, one arm extended out towards the scaled monster.

Melissa didn't even notice her breathing as it quickened and she nearly reached hyperventilation. Her eyes were stuck on the lizard, darting back and forth between the girl in brown leather—who still had her back to Melissa—and the hairy beast that had reluctantly abandoned Matt in favour of joining the fight against the reptile.

They slashed with claws and knives, yelling in human voices and roaring like animals. Blood was everywhere, some red, some not. Melissa barely realized that she was holding onto the bars of her cell with whitened knuckles as the only apparent human in the fight was thrown through the air, directly into the prison wall.

In her tight grip, the bars shuddered from the impact as the girl groaned beneath her, a few feet away. A black, tar-like substance began to accumulate on the floor where she sat, broken and bruised. Melissa felt a dagger pierce her already damaged heart as the girl rested the side of her head against the bars and offered Melissa the first real glance of her face that she'd gotten since her and the lizard had crashed through the wall.

Her skin was as pale as a sheet of parchment paper, brown hair dampened with sweat or blood and hanging in stringy clumps around her shoulders, and a cut that looked deep enough for stitches ripping across the right side of her temple. Melissa knew that there was more damage, too, by the way she cradled one of her arms to her side, however, that wasn't what startled her.

Damage, pain, youth, acrobatic and combative skills aside, what sent Melissa stumbling to her knees beside the girl, her hands reaching through the bars to lay flat against the young woman's arms, was the fact that she recognized her.

"Adrianna?" She found herself hesitantly demanding, her voice betraying the shock that had yet to wear off as it cracked and gargled. "What are you doing? What's going on?" Melissa wondered, cautiously wiping away some of the strange pitch clinging to the girl's split bottom lip.

The girl smiled, grimacing as it seemed to hurt, before shaking her head. "Trust me, Melissa," Adrianna replied, a note of warning in her normally expressive green eyes, which were now dulled by pain. "You don't want to know."

Clambering to her feet, using the metal bars as a support, Adrianna stood on wobbly feet as she relinquished her hold over the only thing keeping her from falling. "What does that mean?" Melissa found herself incapable of holding back. "Tell me the truth. What's happening? Where's Scott? Is he alright?" The questions kept coming like a volley of cannon-fire. She needed to know, to understand.

"Don't worry," Adrianna assured, the edge of her bright red lips pulling back in an amused smirk. "Your son's fine."

Pressing her lips together, unsatisfied by the lack of information, Melissa tried to reach out and keep Adrianna from rushing away to rejoin the battle going on behind them, but it was too late. Her fingers found empty air as the Argent girl backed away, watching Melissa the whole time.

"It's better this way, Miss McCall." She rephrased, and Melissa was glad she hadn't used Mrs. "You're not ready to know. Not yet." Adrianna muttered quietly. Her feet positioned themselves to turn as she stared once more into Melissa's eyes, her meaning conveying itself between them.

"Watch out!" A rough, concerned voice shouted above the din of clawing and crashing. It was too late to warn them; too late to save her from what was to come.

In front of Melissa, less than a meter away, the scaled beast pounced upon Adrianna's defenseless back. The Argent had barely a moment to turn her face and watch as the animal landed over top of her, smashing her into the bars separating them and forcing Melissa to take a large step back to avoid being dragged into the struggle.

Arms unconsciously coming up to shield her face as she stumbled several feet, landing on the floor in a tangled, frazzled heap, Melissa watched as Adrianna was shoved again and again into the bars, her expression pinching in a grimace as she growled deep in her throat, not dissimilar to the way the wolfish man had once done.

Remembering the presence of the other creature, Melissa found her eyes darting back and forth around the room, searching for someone or something that could save the young girl before her from a deadly fate.

Near the back of the room, the canine-like man was wrestling with Matt Daehler, the pistol locked between them as the stronger, less human of them began to gain the upper hand.

"Oh my god," Melissa found herself whispering, tears stinging her eyes and blood pumping through her ears, ringing loudly. "She's gonna die." There was no one to help Adrianna as inky blood poured from the widening gash on her temple and what appeared to be a gunshot wound in her shoulder.

Scott's mother didn't even have time to think about what it meant that Adrianna wasn't bleeding red, as horror crawled into her throat and blocked her airway. She was going to watch a murder, Melissa hesitantly realized. Right in front of her face. It was going to happen.

As the scaled reptile's claws slashed over and over onto Adrianna's exposed back, Melissa placed a trembling hand over her mouth to block out the pathetic, whimpering terror she didn't have the will to halt herself. Green eyes met her dark brown. They were not afraid. If anything, they were angry; enraged.

Melissa took in a shuddering breath as she realized that Adrianna Argent was not intimidated, nor frightened by the animal ripping her to shreds. She was furious. Strength unlike any Melissa had ever witnessed seemed to possess the girl in one long moment as Adrianna suddenly turned her body to face the lizard wanting her death.

Glinting in the overhead, fluorescent lighting, the knives Melissa had forgotten about held steady in Adrianna's hands as she ducked out of the way of the creature's next slash.

"Get off of me," Adrianna lowly warned the reptile as it lunged into her, pressing her back into the barred wall once more and taking hold of each of her arms, the shiny blades slowly hanging closer and closer to the creature's hide as Adrianna's entire body quivered from the effort. "You ugly, arrogant, cheating, no-good," She began to list, each word marking the shrinking distance between her sharpened daggers and the reptile's doom.

Suddenly, the creature's face contorted in anguish as it cried out, a force pulling it away from the Argent. Melissa glanced over at Adrianna's knives, only to find that they were still suspended some distance away from the reptile. Flipping over it's own back, using the momentum it had gained being lifted away, the reptile somersaulted in the air to face the new threat. It's tail whipping around the room.

Crouching near the ground, feet spread wide with one arm balancing his body, Scott's back faced Melissa as he stood between Adrianna and the lizard. Knives dropping to her sides and clattering onto the floor, the Argent sighed heavily as she collapsed to the floor, a new wound present on the side of her neck where the creature's tail had presumably sliced into her flesh.

"Iguana." Adrianna finished weakly as her shaking hands lifted up to her neck and applied pressure. Melissa would have rushed to her aid, perhaps slipped off her cardigan and used it as a makeshift bandage to stave the blackened blood pouring from the girl's neck, but right then, the lizard attacked once more, this time going for Scott.

Heart nearly leaping out of her chest, Melissa gasped harshly as a gunshot rung out in the room at the same time that Scott engaged the creature, darting this way and that faster than she could catch her breath. He dodged effortlessly, much like Adrianna once had, and landed several hits of his own on the beast's solid hide.

It wasn't until the animal hissed dangerously, scampering some distance away to regard it's new prey, that Melissa realized Scott wasn't alone in his fight against the lizard. On the opposite side of the room paced the hairy, inhuman man she'd seen battling Matt as his clawed hands clenched by his sides in anticipation. The gunned kidnapper was nowhere in sight, but Melissa didn't have time to worry.

All of a sudden, both Scott and the wolf-man charged the beast, cornering it near the far wall, but even so, the creature was far stronger than the both of them combined, pushing back and sending Scott sprawling towards her while his ally continued to barely evade the reptile's strong, concise movements.

Scott had his back to her as he kneeled on the floor. The blood-stain from the gunshot wound was still present on his side, the colour dull and already drying, as though the bleeding had somehow stopped.

"Oh, god, Scott?" Melissa couldn't help calling out, concern and dread clinging to her shattered voice. "Scott, are you okay?" She repeated as her son remained where he was, his countenance refusing to turn towards her. "Scott?" Melissa hesitantly wondered, cracking and trembling present in that one, simple word. A name she'd said so many times, she'd lost track. Now it felt different; foreign.

Slowly, as though he was uncertain, Scott's body twisted from where he was kneeling, so that the side of his face was visible to her. What she saw dropped a heavy boulder in her stomach and caused her heart to skip a beat.

It was Scott. It was her son with his long brown hair, tanned complexion, brown eyes and crooked jaw. But then, it wasn't.

His hair, although it had always been overgrown for her liking, seemed to be even longer still; less tamed and more wild and frizzy. Long, dark sideburns stretched beside his ears, all the way to his uneven jawline. His eyebrows were bushy and thick, appearing to be pointed and wispy near the ends, almost like wolf hair.

Scott's eyes were still brown and warm, still kind and loving, but there was something savage in them at that moment, as Melissa took note that his ears ended in a sharpened tip and his brow was furrowed and pinched in much the same way the other wolf-man's had been. When he parted his lips to speak, no sound coming out, sharpened fangs became visible to her.

Without even realizing it, her feet had taken her away from the bars, further into her cell. Trembling, frigid hands lifted up over her quivering lips as even more tears fell from her sore and puffy eyes. "No!" She moaned sadly, her knees lifting up helplessly as she shook her head, refusing to believe what she was seeing.

Air didn't mean a thing to her, she wasn't even sure she was breathing. Her son, her only child, was a monster—a beast. As the man still battling the other creature darted out of the room after the fleeing lizard and Scott—or the boy that looked like him with the strange hair, sharpened teeth, and nails—took hold of Adrianna, wrapping one of her arms over his shoulder, he left the room behind along with his mother.

Melissa felt as though the tears would never end that night, and the hiccuped, strangled breaths she was able to inhale only reminded her that her son wasn't human anymore, that he wasn't normal. He wasn't the boy she'd raised, consoled, mended, screamed at, cried with, lectured, and loved.

He was an animal now.

A wolf-man.

#-#-#-#-#

"What are you doing here?" Scott tactless whispered nearly an entire octave too loudly for Gerard's tastes. "It wasn't supposed to happen like this." The boy complained, re-adjusting his grip over Adrianna as her black blood soaked through his shirt and her head lolled across his shoulder, struggling for consciousness.

"Trust me," Gerard hissed, anger and frustration directed towards the two children that had so foolishly waited until the last moment to share vital information with him regarding the Kanima's master. "I'm aware of that." He snapped finitely.

"I've done everything that you've asked me." Scott reminded him, his arm winding around Adrianna's waist, the digits slick with his blood and hers. "I'm part of Derek's pack, I've given you all the information you wanted, I told you Matt was controlling Jackson—"

The petulant litany was grating to Gerard's ears. He held up a hand to silence the young werewolf. "Then leave him to us." He interrupted Scott mid-sentence. "Help your friends. Leave Matt and Jackson to me. Deal with your mother." Gerard informed him, his eyes sparkling when he noticed the look of surprise cast upon Scott's expression at the mentioning of his mother.

"Go on!" Gerard urged him, waving him past as Adrianna groaned, leaning heavily on Scott for support. "Take my granddaughter with you. She may not be welcome among her family anymore." He vaguely shared, pretending to care for her well-being as he stroked her sweaty forehead.

She was nothing more than a puppet to him. A rebellious, reckless, overly smart puppet that had threatened to cut her own strings far too many times for Gerard to trust her, but a puppet none the less. He'd be needing her soon, if all went to plan.

Beginning down the hallway at a pace that was hardly any slower than he would have been without Adrianna draped across his side, Scott abruptly stopped a few feet from Gerard, bending down to floor and retrieving something in his spare hand, holding it out to Gerard. "You dropped this." He offered as an explanation, handing over a shiny, round pillbox.

Footsteps echoed further down the corridor, their pattern that of a hunter. Gerard hastily accepted the box he'd been searching for all day, stowing it in the inside pocket of his suit. "Run!" He commanded Scott, forcing his normally booming voice to come out hushed.

Although everything was lining up exactly how he wanted it, Gerard couldn't afford to slip up and allow one of his hunters, perhaps even Chris or Allison, to witness the dealings he'd arranged with Scott McCall.

Nodding his head, Scott hurried away much faster than he had before, looking over his shoulder once before disappearing around the corner. It was then that Gerard allowed himself to smile.

Sauntering through the station, retracing the way he'd first come, swinging open the back door and climbing into the vehicle awaiting him with ease that did not match his age and condition, Gerard drove towards the river less than a mile away. It was the perfect place for a clean getaway. He knew the boy he was looking for would be there.

As he pulled up to the river, slowly rolling the car onto the wooden bridge passing over the still water, Gerard caught sight of a shadow running through his headlights. It stopped at the base of the bridge, seemingly realizing his malicious intent, before attempting to run away.

Pushing open his door and stepping out, Gerard nearly laughed as he slowly but deliberately hunted down the miserable, pathetic weakling that was the Kanima's master. It didn't take much to have Matt tripping over his own feet, fear of his impending fate and injuries sustained during his foolish endeavors at the sheriff's station working against him and slowing his reflexes.

Curling his fists into the fabric of Matt's jacket, Gerard easily pulled the boy along beside him, dragging him through the muddy silt of the riverbed and closer to his demise. He kicked and struggled, gargling and gasping each time his head went under, but he could not break free.

Gerard was strong now; stronger than he'd ever been, thanks to his naive granddaughter. He didn't need to strain himself as he pushed Matt's head beneath the dark, ominous water barely holding a current, nor did it bother him in any way when the young man began to struggle against him with increased vigor and panic.

Muscles bulging and smile growing, Gerard basked in the glory of his success as the boy beneath him began to slowly suffocate and drown, until eventually, Matt couldn't stop himself from inhaling, his jerky, uncoordinated movements halting in the fluid softening of death.

Releasing his hold on the body, Gerard stepped away from the river bank, watching as the lifeless corpse floated further into the water. Beneath the bridge, a reflection caught his attention. Looking more closely, he realized that the Kanima was crouched over top of the shiny, moistened rocks under the bridge, watching him just as distrustfully as he did it.

"No longer afraid of the water?" He asked the Kanima as it neared the river, glancing at it's own reflection curiously and then back at him.

Walking slowly, so as not to frighten the creature, Gerard approached the Kanima. "Well, you don't have to be afraid of anything, my friend." He assured it, pulling off his leather glove with his teeth and holding out his bare palm to the scaly avenger. "Especially me." He told the Kanima lightly, waiting for it to accept him as it's new master.

Gerard smiled as it hesitantly breached the gap between them, pressing it's roughly textured palm against his own. Good things would come of this union, he was sure. Not only would he survive his terminal diagnosis, but he would also be able to rid Beacon Hills of ever supernatural freak in it's midst.

Why stop there? A little voice in the back of his head wondered. With the Kanima under his command, he could be nearly unstoppable. Still, that wasn't enough for him.

He wanted to be invincible.

To his knowledge, there was only way he could attain such a standing.

Gerard needed the Kanima to reach it's full potential, but he needed Adrianna if he was going to be able to control it once it did so. It was time to play his last card against the rebellious demigod.

It was time for the endgame.