Chapter Twenty-Nine: My Turn
Alex would have liked to think that she could have kept her balance without the help from Claudia, but it was hardly the case. The ridiculous heels she was wearing kept sinking into the wet Earth beyond the wards of the mansion. Claudia held tight to her forearm and kept walking straight along the walkway towards the pyre. There were large stone monuments that flanked them on either side and Alex wondered how many of these archaic rituals had happened here before.
Alex breathed in deeply, despite the circumstance of her first steps outside in months she almost smiled at the familiar press of the humidity.
The fresh air she'd been starving for filled her lungs with an cooling shock that oddly soothed her. The moon bathed everything in an ethereal glow and she could see her breath exhaling and cooling in the wind, becoming opaque and curling around her face.
A crow, or raven or some kind of bird called out in the distance sounding like a cry of mourning.
At least someone was mourning her, she thought bitterly.
It must have rained recently because the hem of her perfect dress was becoming caked in mud, dragging behind her like it wanted to be here even less than she did. As they walked closer to the pyre, torches lining the walkway roared to life as if they were expecting her and she tried not to jump in surprise every time another one exploded in flames.
"Where is Peter?" Alex asked, focusing on walking on her toes to avoid sinking into the deep mud and losing a shoe - this was embarrassing enough, but to die without a shoe?
Incomprehensible.
"I expect he will be here soon." Was Claudia's answer.
In all honestly, Alex hadn't expected one at all, seeing as her eyes got perceptibly bigger and panicked the closer they got to the pyre. Claudia was the Grim Reaper, leading Alex to her untimely death and yet all Alex could feel for the young witch was pity.
Neither of them had asked for this.
A cold breeze licked at her skin and sent goosebumps erupting in it's wake. Her nipples peaked beneath the thin dress and though she barely had time to care, she hated that Peter might notice. He had put her on display for a number of reasons, but the most prevalent one, as far as Alex could tell, was simply humiliating her.
The two young women came to a halt and Claudia stepped away from Alex's arm to fiddle with a few things on a pedestal to the left. There were papers and vials filled with herbs and to Alex's absolute horror, a rope. Claudia clenched it in her hands and turned to Alex with silent tears running down her face.
Alex nodded and continued forward towards the pyre.
No more words were needed and there wasn't much use for tears either.
The pyre was built impressively, tall and looming. There were massive tree trunks making up its base and it stretched to the sky with progressively smaller trunks, then branches, and leaves leading to a small wooden plank which was meant for her to stand on. Alex thought to abandon her shoes for her climb but knew that Peter was particular, if her wardrobe any other day of the week had anything to say about it.
She used the heel to wedge in-between branches and give herself some stability. Her hands pulled at the branches so sturdy in her ascent she marvelled at how well the pyre had been built. The wood scratched at her hands, splinters of wood etching themselves into her skin, yet she continued her steep climb. The farther she went the louder Claudia's cries became and it didn't make any scientific sense. She'd made a real friend, someone who was crying for her as she climbed to her death.
A log shifted under the weight of her leg and she stifled a surprised gasp, placing more weight in her upper body and attempting to displace the burden before the whole thing collapsed on her. She lifted her legs to find a better place to push up from, waiting until the loud croaking and groaning from the Pyre subsided.
She reached the top with a muffled sigh of relief and grimaced when she spotted Peter coming down from the house. He was sauntering with a causal air of arrogance that made her blood boil and she thought maybe her anger alone might set the pyre alight. He was wearing another one of his black suits, like he was just coming for a casual dinner and his smile was joyous, like the cat that got the cream.
It felt like it took years for him to finally reach the wood at the base of the Pyre.
When he did, his form rippled and vibrated, his fine tailored suit falling in ribbons at his feet until finally his wolf form stood, as tall and as proud as she had ever seen. His eyes trained solely on her and his chiselled, inhuman jaw poised in the same smirk she wouldn't ever forget, on wolf or man.
His ascent up the pyre was lightening fast, though his hind legs displaced a few logs along the way. Astonishingly, its structure remained intact. Sooner than she would have liked he was standing before her, jaw open and growling at the moon and his fur covered body trembling with the force of it. If she had the wherewithal to cover her ears, she might have considered it.
Her eyes were closed, thinking of peaceful things, of whatever was next, what ever was waiting for her on the other side of life and when she opened them she was met with Peter's human snarl and his naked body hunched over hers.
"You look ravishing." His teeth glinted in the moonlight, a silent promise of how they might look ripping into the soft flesh of her neck.
"I was expecting, 'you look good enough to eat'." She managed to choke out, the quip falling flat as her body trembled and her eyes filled with tears. She had hoped to keep them at bay, especially while Peter was in such close quarters - the last thing she wanted was for him to have the satisfaction of seeing her cry.
However, in the face of her own mortality her pride had apparently taken a back seat.
"All in due time." His smile and demeanour were peaceful, meaning Alex's hopelessness and despair doubled, a crushing weight baring down on her.
This was it.
All of this life.
All of this learning, and growing, and changing.
It would be gone in a few moments when the moon reached it's peak and Claudia read her spell.
"I really am sorry, you know?" Peter's voice startled her out of her thoughts and she wobbled on the small piece of shared wood. "You're almost too pretty to kill."
"Almost." She agreed, staring as defiantly as her body would allow.
His wicked smirk deepened as his eyes tracked the single silent tear that fell over her cheek.
The moon light became almost too hard to look at, like the glare of the sun. The fluttering images burning bright behind her eyelids were memories of the last few months, the happiest memories she could recall.
Allison, Derek, Scott . . . Stiles.
Stiles' face was etched into the back of her eyelids like the light had burned them, branded him into her skin.
The moon was at it's peak and her skin felt like it was going to crawl off of her body with the combined power of the magic and the curse than ran through her veins.
"Thank you, for this gift." Peter whispered, his jaw elongating and his canines reaching far beyond what they should. The sight was terrifying, but Alex remained still, closing her eyes against the sight once more.
She wanted to see Stiles smiling behind her closed eyes.
A scream ripped out of the darkness below and the graze of Peter's teeth against her jugular disappeared at the sound. Alex's eyes snapped open and her body curved at a terrifying angle over the edge of the pyre. Claudia was screaming and she was bent over in pain.
Alex reached out to her new friend uselessly, her hand dangling in open air.
A shadow from beyond the stone pillars emerged and what resembled an arrow shot again, finding it's mark deep in Claudia's belly.
Alex was screaming, incoherent. Gasps of anguish and rage.
"NO!" She collapsed onto the wood, her hand hanging in the billowing wind as if to touch the witch, to save her. Several blurred shapes were making their way up the side of the pyre as she screamed. "CLAUDIA!"
The scream died in her throat as two figures darted over her, up and above the peak of the pyre with inhuman speed. Peter's howl of anger echoed in her head when he was knocked, violently off the tower of wood. A shadowed figure followed his descent to the ground while another sat, perched on his haunches beside her.
"Alex? Alex! It's me, it's Scott. We're here." It didn't make sense. Scott was here? That must have meant that it hadn't been Claudia screaming in pain, they would have never hurt an innocent. "Are you okay? Please, look at me! Talk to me!"
"Claudia!" It was a whine, a horrible throaty sob that hurt scraping out of her throat. "Not Claudia."
Scott scooped her into her arms, carefully and then leaped off the ledge of the pyre.
The sensation of falling, or flying. Her stomach in her throat.
The hard impact of the ground made her teeth rattle and she felt like this had happened before.
A dream, she realized. She'd had this one before.
In her dream, Claudia was never dying with two arrows sticking out of her. Her body laying limply on he ground and blood coming from her mouth as she coughed an explanation. Alex writhed out of Scott's arms, dropping to the wet ground with a thump. She scrambled to her feet and flung herself towards Claudia with a sharp cry.
"NO!" Suddenly, without warning the pyre caught fire. Great flames reaching up into the night with a fervour that didn't make sense. Even a fire already lit beneath the wood wouldn't have caught so fast.
Claudia's face was alight with the flames of the fire, the heat of the great flames burned against her skin and made her eyes water as she gazed upon Claudia's broken and bruised body.
Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and a wheezing cough rattled her lungs. Her eyes shone with tears and yet there was a clear smile on her face. Alex knew what it meant - she was happy for Alex, happy that she got to keep her life despite loosing her own.
"Alex, please!" A familiar voice broke through the roar of the flames and her own blood rushing through her ears. She looked up through bleary eyes and saw Allison brandishing a bow with a tear steaming down the fine curve of her cheek and Stiles, who looked beaten and bruised by his own right.
"Get away!" Alex cried, curving her body over Claudia's like a shield. "This is a dream! Get away from us!"
Stiles let out a desperate cry and sank to his knees with his hands extending in some sort of offering. Allison was openly crying and her bow dropped to the ground.
"This is a dream!" She cried again, looking through angry tears as Scott helped a limping Derek to stand before them. The fire blazed a great heat, it felt like her tears might evaporate as hot steam on her face before they even had a chance to fall. "Get away from us!"
"-s'not a dream." Came the frail voice of her only friend. "Promise."
Claudia gazed up at her from the ground, her hazel eyes glimmering like a beautiful glass mosaic, the arrow wounds in her chest and stomach blossoming red like she'd spilt a fine red wine from Peter's table. Alex's hand caressed her face, their bodies intertwined in Alex's desperate need to get to her. She was draped over her friend, crying uselessly as Claudia tried to smile.
"Find my sister." She croaked, blood spluttering from her mouth and coating Alex's face. "You'd - you'd die for me - my - my - my turn."
Her eyes lost focus, the only light coming from the fire now and Alex wailed. She screamed for the only person to care, to understand - she screamed at the top of her lungs and fell uselessly beside her dead friend.
The fire blazing beside them began to unfurl, covering a larger circumference. Long tendrils of flame reached around them angrily like it was a physical manifestation of Alex's devastation.
As the fire whipped around them Alex sprung to her feet. Her dress was blood soaked and torn and her shoes had long since fallen off as she faced off against her friends. Never even in her dreams had this happened and she was so full of anger, hate and resentment that it didn't matter if this was dream or reality. She couldn't tell which was which, all she knew in that moment was anger.
"YOU KILLED HER!" She screamed, charging at the nearest person.
Derek fell back, his previous injury impeding him. Alex clawed at his face, her nails coming away bloody and caked with strips of his skin. He was trying to talk to her, she realized but it didn't matter. Her arms raked into his flesh, his arms, face, torso, and legs. She was wild and her body was moving without her consent. She was screaming and trying to push his face into the fire only to be pulled back by a pair of strong arms and a whisper in her ear that it wasn't a dream.
"Please, please!" It was a cry, desperate and pleading. "Alex, please - SEE ME!"
She turned at the command, the voice filling her mind - the smell of him and the contentment she felt with him that she had come to rely on. The hands splayed on her arms, so real - more real than in her dreams. She turned her head and found the eyes that had been so reassuring in her dreams but had never had the same hue they had now. Her perfect brown, whiskey bliss.
"Stiles?" There was blood in her mouth and pain in her heart, but there was a spark of hope nestled somewhere between.
"Yes - yes." His shuttered breath fanned over her face. "It's real. I"m here - we're here."
"Claudia!" She wailed, going limp in his arms. Even if this was a dream, it was too good to keep fighting - she just wanted to fall asleep in Stiles' arms one more time.
.
She awoke with a blaze of pain in her hands and her neck. Her eyes flew open, expecting to be in the Mansion, her beautiful gilded cage.
What she actually woke up to was Stiles peering down at her, happiness and anger in his eyes.
"Water." He demanded, handing her a plastic glass. When she couldn't move her arms, he tilted it to her mouth. "You're at Ms. McKenna's." He explained.
"Why?" Her voice didn't even sound like it was hers.
"Magical injury - magical solution?" He supplied, putting the cup back on the beside table.
"Is this real?" She croaked out, testing her fingers and toes and relaxing only when they shifted against the fabric of the plaid bedspread.
"Yes." He sighed. "This is real. You were gone for six months. Just - just gone. We found you, before Peter -"
"Claudia?"
Stiles cast his eyes downward, playing with the hem of her bedspread. "I'm sorry."
Alex closed her eyes, willing the pain away.
"She didn't know." Stiles said, a quiet monotone. "Allison saw her casting a spell - she thought what all of us did and she reacted."
Alex cringed at the mention of her sisters name.
"She was innocent." She couldn't even look at him.
"We didn't know! We'd been trying -"
"Why didn't you come?" Her voice was so small she hardly recognized it and despite his constant reassurance she still didn't want to believe that this wasn't one of Peter's tricks. Stiles let out a noise of discontent, it worked it's way up his throat and it startled her.
"We tried - I woke up the morning you left and I knew something was wrong." His hands tried to find hers beneath the duvet. "You were just gone - I found out that Peter was resurrected. Lydia did it and then Scott, Allison and Derek were here. We tried to find you. We went to the witches and vampires, werewolves and anything else we could find. No one could trace you!" He was crying now, fat tears making damp spots on the fabric of her bed. "Lydia could hear you, she tried her best - she could feel the witch and the magic in your blood. We were here - we just needed the perfect moment when you weren't inside the wards!"
"My parents -"
"Your parents didn't give a fuck!" He shouted, running an aggravated hand through his hair. "We tried. You have to believe me when I say that! Wondering where you were, what happened - it was torture!" He stood up and flipped his chair with anger. "I thought you'd left me! When I saw you standing there that night up on that fucking death plank - why were you wearing that? Why did you look like that? What did he do to you?!"
His anger was clear in his stance, his limbs taught with stress and the prominent veins in his forehead and neck.
"It doesn't matter." She said quietly. "What matters is that Claudia is dead and she was the only one - the only - Oh God! The one who -" Her sobs overtook her body then, wracking her limbs with pain and shocking her joints with the severity.
Stiles watched with his own barely contained sobs - he had never seen her look so broken. Peter Hale had broken the love of his life.
Meredith came in and shoved a vile tasting concoction down Alex's throat effectively stilling her flailing limbs and luring her into a dreamless slumber.
