The Huntress

by TheLiteraryEscapist

The first installment in the Argent Chronicles. Follow Adrianna Argent, the demigod daughter of Kate Argent, as her mother's murder forces her to choose a side between the hunters she's always known and the wolves of Beacon Hills. Is she a friend, or a foe? Or, perhaps, neither? (Takes place during MTV's 'Teen Wolf' Season 2 and between the Lightning Thief and the Sea of Monsters.)

8. Chapter 8

8-Raving

A s the Sheriff peeled the wrapper off his hamburger, sinking his teeth into what should have been a juicy paddy with extra mayo, no onions and a crispy bun, he cringed when all he got instead was soggy, bland, lettuce and some sort of tofu concoction that should have been classified under the State's litany of deadly poisons.

Swallowing thickly, Sheriff Stilinski stared at the sacrilegious ruination of a perfect meal as he complained to his son. "Oh," He groaned mournfully, setting the burger down. "What the hell is this?"

"A veggie burger." Stiles informed him factually, sounding so much like a parent telling their child to eat all their carrots and peas, that the Sheriff took a moment to comprehend what his son had told him.

"Stiles," He sighed, stomach growling despite the terribly taste still clinging to his mouth. "I asked for a hamburger." He didn't add that it had been at least five hours since he'd last eaten; the kid had enough on his mind without worrying about him.

"Well, veggie is healthier." Stiles pointed out smartly. "We're being healthy." He reminded his father.

Reluctantly letting the subject drop, the Sheriff set aside his burger and popped open the lid to his fries and ketchup, only to discover celery and carrot sticks in the place of delightful junk food. "Oh, hell." He swore dispassionately. "Why are you trying to ruin my life?" He whined.

"I'm trying to extend your life, okay?" His son retorted sympathetically. "Could you just eat it, please?" He asked of him.

For a moment, the Sheriff considered braving the fibrous strands of celery and cardboard-like chunks of carrots, just to wipe the pleading expression off Stiles' face, but then his son continued talking, revealing what he really wanted and all thoughts of sacrificing his evening meal evaporated from the Sheriff's mind.

"And tell me what you found." Stiles inserted covertly, looking anywhere but at his father.

Pushing aside the food Stiles had brought him, Sheriff Stilinski shook his head ardently, repeating what he always did when Stiles overstepped his bounds into the Sheriff's work. "No, I'm not sharing confidential police work with a teenager." He paraphrased, pining his son where he sat with a determined stare.

Despite the fact that he couldn't roam around, Stiles' eyes did all the exploratory research for him, landing on the cork board behind the Sheriff and rapidly moving around at all the collected evidence and theories the elder Stilinski had thought of so far.

"Is that it on the board behind you?" Stiles wondered hopefully, greedily consuming all the information presented to him in clear view.

"Don't look at that." The Sheriff chastised sharply, ignoring his son's protesting groan as he tried to regain Stiles' attention. "Avert your eyes." He commanded, waving his hands around desperately.

"Okay." Stiles sighed, and the Sheriff finally leaned back in his chair, relieved that he'd managed to dodge a proverbial bullet.

"Hey!" He cried indignantly when he caught Stiles glancing back over at the board of suspects and victims.

"Just—it's just—" Stiles explained, as jittery and excited as he always got when the Sheriff allowed him to participate in police work. "I see arrows pointing at pictures." He finally managed to say, seemingly buzzing in his chair.

"Okay, okay, stop." Sheriff Stilinski gave in, lifting his arms in surrender to his only child. "Fine. I found something." He shared, finally garnering Stiles' interest for long enough to look away from the board.

"The mechanic and the couple who were murdered." He continued, smiling as Stiles hung onto his every word. "They all had something in common."

"All three?" Stiles butted in, too consumed in his own thought processes to bother with niceties. It had always been that way with him.

"Yeah." His father confirmed. "You know what I always say. One's an incident. Two's a coincidence." He listed, also finding that he was beginning to feel that adrenaline buzz at the base of his skull whenever he immersed himself in a case.

"Three's a pattern." Stiles finished for him.

"The mechanic, the husband, the wife—" The Sheriff counted off on his fingers. "All the same age. All twenty-four."

"Wait," Stiles stopped him from going on. "What about Mr. Lahey? I mean, Isaac's dad isn't anywhere near twenty-four." He pointed out exactly what the Sheriff was going to go over next.

"Which made me think that either 'A'," Sheriff Stilinski explained patiently. "Lahey's murder wasn't connected, or 'B', the ages were a coincidence, until I found this, which would be 'C'." He handed a manila folder over to Stiles, who hastily flipped it open and read the contents.

"Did you now that Isaac Lahey had an older brother named Camden?" The Sheriff questioned as Stiles' eyes flitted across the page.

"'Died in combat'?" His son quoted, not entirely sure he'd gotten his father's point.

"But if he were alive today," The Sheriff gently directed. "Take one guess as to how old he'd be."

Looking up from the report, Stiles gulped as his lips formed the number that had been a breakthrough for the Sheriff in connecting all four recent murders. "Twenty-four."

Getting up from his chair, the Sheriff placed his hands on his hips as he stared at the board he'd assembled. So many unanswered questions still remained, too many holes in his theories and not enough hard evidence to prove more than a handful. He had to admit, he needed Stiles' help.

"Now what if same age means same class?" Stiles voiced from where he'd migrated to stand beside his father. The sheriff covered his mouth with his hand as the idea brought a fresh spark of detective skills to life. "I mean, did you think of that?" Stiles wondered when the Sheriff had been silent for a while.

"Yeah, yeah." He muttered noncommittally. "Well, I would've." He tried to excuse. "I mean, I—look, I just got the Lahey's file two hours ago." The Sheriff embarrassingly admitted, trying to remember when his son had gotten better at the Sheriff's job than him.

"Two hours?" Stiles balked, his mouth agape. "Dad, people could be dying." He exclaimed frustratedly.

"Yeah, I'm aware of that. Thank you." The Sheriff grumbled sarcastically, still sore about not having thought of the idea himself.

"Same class." Stiles muttered, rolling the theory around in his incredible brain before rushing over to the Sheriff's desk and extracting files from within a drawer.

"Hey!" His father protested. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Same class." Stiles repeated, slamming a yearbook down onto the top of the desk. The Sheriff smirked, nodding his head as he knelt down to help his son take out the rest of the yearbooks and class reports.

"Okay, this is it." His son triumphantly exclaimed after flipping through nearly a dozen different files. "Class of two thousand six. They all went to Beacon Hills." He added as the Sheriff stood up and leaned closer to Stiles' in order to read over his shoulder.

"Including Isaac's brother." The Sheriff identified the yearbook photo of a boy that looked very familiar; the same hair colour, jaw structure, and eye colour as his brother.

"All right," Stiles thought out loud. "So what if they all knew each other, you know?" He proposed. "I mean, two of them were married, so maybe the all just hung out."

Sorting through another stack of papers, searching for something he'd seen before but dismissed, the Sheriff opened a folder and flipped through the loose pages until he stopped at the list of students in the two thousand six chemistry class.

His finger slammed into the paper as he underlined a name he'd become very familiar with, and then another, and another. "Well, they could have had the same classes together. They could've—" He tried to tell Stiles, only to be interrupted.

"What?" Stiles queried as he snatched the paper from his father's hands.

Breathing deeply, the Sheriff flexed his now empty fingers open and closed again, cracking the knuckles. "Same teacher." He finished shortly, already feeling his irritation seeping away as Stiles' eyes lit up.

"Harris." He supplied, scanning through the students' names faster than the Sheriff could keep up with. "They were all in his class?" Stiles asked.

"All four." The Sheriff confirmed grimly. "And I don't know how Mr. Lahey fits in, but this—kid," He fondly told Stiles as he connected the dots. "This is definitely a pattern."

"All right, give me the two thousand six yearbook." He held out his hand as Stiles passed him the open book. "These names, we need faces." Sheriff Stilinski realized as he leafed through the book, looking for names in alphabetical order.

"Which ones?" Stiles reflected, eager to help.

"Everyone in that chemistry class." The Sheriff gravely informed his son, pointing towards a picture of two of the already murdered students in Harris' chemistry class of two thousand six. "If the killer's not done killing—"

"One of them is next." Stiles concluded solemnly.

#-#-#-#-#

Stepping inside the Beacon Hills animal clinic, Isaac did not have high hopes for the new truce Scott had arranged with Derek. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that his alpha wanted to kill the Kanima; he didn't care if that meant killing Jackson or not, so long as it was dead.

"What's he doing here?" Scott demanded once they'd gotten through the door. Stiles was nowhere to be seen, which was a surprise as Scott was hardly ever seen without his partner in crime.

"I need him." Derek gruffly responded, no sentimentality or fondness present in his voice or body language. Isaac had long since begun to question whether Derek even cared about his betas or not.

Scott narrowed his eyes as he approached the gate separating the lobby from the inside of the clinic, and said, "I don't trust him."

"Yeah, well," Isaac interrupted, getting tired of being spoken of as though he wasn't right there. "He doesn't trust you either."

Pushing ahead of them both, Derek's irritation was prominent in the way his shoulders were set back and stiff. "You know what?" He asked them patronizingly. "And Derek really doesn't care." He mocked with his usual cruel, degrading humor. "Now where's the vet? Is he gonna help us or not?"

"That depends." A dark skinned man, probably in his late forties to fifties, with no hair and keen eyes told them from the other side of the gate. "Your friend, Jackson. Are we planning to kill him or save him?" He questioned.

A gust of wind seemed to ruffle through Isaac's hair but he paid it no mind. Ever since Adrianna had done—what she'd done to him, he'd been having trouble acclimating to sudden noises or shadows. It was like he'd regressed to before the bite, when he'd been afraid of anything that moved. Most of the time, he'd managed to hide it from Derek and himself, but now, it was impossible to ignore.

"Kill him." Derek supplied for the vet, confirming Isaac's earlier thought, at the same time as Scott replied,

"Save him."

Glancing between each other, Scott's brows furrowed in confusion as he shook his head. Clearly he was remembering his one and only stipulation to becoming a temporary member of Derek's pack. Clearly Derek didn't plan to adhere to said condition.

"Save him." Scott repeated, distrustfully scanning Derek's blank expression.

"Well," The vet interceded before things could get even more tense. "Which is it then; save him, or kill him?"

Scott kept his eyes trained on Derek, as Derek kept his stare on Scott, and so, neither of them noticed the huntress approaching from behind them until she was already less than a foot away.

"You're going to save Jackson," She told them resolutely. "And I'm going to help you do it."

Isaac had seen her when she'd passed by him, but he hadn't noticed when she'd gotten inside the clinic. Outside, he could see a distinct black SUV parked in the handicapped space and he wondered how she'd managed to sneak past three werewolves' hearing with hardly any effort.

As Derek snarled angrily, his eyes glowing red and his claws gleaming sharply, wrapping his large hand all the way around her throat and slamming her into the wall beside the door, Isaac's trail of thought snapped like a string pulled taut and he reacted on his first instinct, which was to harshly separate both of them as Adrianna choked and gagged, suspended three feet in the air.

"Isaac," Derek warned in a throaty growl. "Get out of my way." Even Scott didn't seem to mind the way Isaac's alpha had attacked the huntress.

Looking over his shoulder at Adrianna leaning heavily against the wall, clutching her throat gingerly, something in him prevented him from stepping away and allowing Derek to unleash what was left of his anger onto her. She looked so fragile when the moonlight outside hit her at that angle, casting ominous shadows over her clouded eyes and drawing out the paleness of her flesh.

"No," He answered, hardly even hesitating. "Didn't you hear what she just said? She wants to help us. At least let her explain herself before you gut her." Isaac tried to persuade, turning to meet Derek's furious and slightly startled expression.

"You're kidding me?" Derek caustically spat, the red fading from his irises as the feverish rage he'd been in subsided the longer Isaac blocked Adrianna from him. "She's attacked every one of us—she nearly killed you last night—and now, and you still want to protect her?" Shaking his head in disappointment, Derek turned his back on Isaac and stalked through the open gate and further into the back of the veterinary office.

Standing up fully, without the support of the wall holding her upright, Adrianna's shoulder brushed his as she stood next to him, facing off against Scott, who was nearly as skeptical as Derek. "If you so much as breathe in the wrong direction," He warned, begrudgingly stepping aside for her to follow after the vet, who'd disappeared inside. "I'll let Derek have you."

"Sounds fair enough." Adrianna agreed. Even when she was standing on the opposite side of the steel operating table than him, Isaac could feel his heart burning hot, like she was some kind of catalyst to a chemical reaction within him. He had to clench the edge of the table to prevent himself from becoming dizzy.

Leaning over, using the table as a support once the dark skinned man began sorting through glass jars in a wooden box and Adrianna unholstered a pistol, along with three different sized blades, leaving them on the counter top for everyone to see, Isaac found his curiosity growing. He couldn't stop himself from reaching out to touch one of the blades, eyeing Adrianna's gun next.

"Watch what you touch." Derek snapped, swatting his hand away roughly. He still hadn't forgiven him for preventing his revenge from being dished out. Isaac didn't mind. There was hardly a time when Derek wasn't mad at something or someone, this time it just happened to be him.

"So what are you?" He spoke up to pass the time, wary of Adrianna's unrelenting gaze on him as her fingers twitched at her side, desperate to grab hold of her weapons again. "Some kind of witch?"

Across from him, Adrianna made a sound that could have been a laugh crossed with a sharp inhalation. When the bald-headed man turned to glance at her, she raised her brows innocently, smirking in that devilish way of hers.

"No," The man informed him. "I'm a veterinarian."

Setting back the jar filled with purple looking flowers, the vet sighed heavily as he directed his attention between Derek and Scott. It was clear that they were the ones in charge of what happened here tonight and that Isaac and Adrianna were the tag-alongs.

"Unfortunately," He continued disappointedly. "I don't see anything here that's going to be an effective defense against a paralytic toxin." He shared, pushing the box further away and running a hand over his scalp.

"We're open to suggestions." Derek seemed to have restrained himself from his usual level of mocking sarcasm for the sake of maintaining the vet's cooperation.

Rubbing a hand over his lip, Isaac remembered something his brother had taught him a long time ago. 'A good defense is sometimes just as important as a good offense.'

"What about an effective offense?" He asked, looking around the room, searching for approval he didn't find.

"We already tried." Derek pointed out harshly. "I nearly took its head off and Argent emptied an entire clip into it. The thing just gets back up." He admitted.

"Not always." Adrianna calmly interceded. "I was able to slow it down quite a few times and you're forgetting that, for whatever strange reason, it's toxin hasn't worked on me or Lydia."

"Yeah, I wonder why that is?" Derek pretended to consider his options. "Maybe it's because you're not who or what you say you are." His voice rose and Isaac felt his muscles coiling in anticipation of a fight.

Instead, Adrianna simply smiled and shrugged off her jacket. "I never claimed to be anything, Derek." She corrected him, not at all fazed by his domineering expression. "I've let all of you believe what you've wanted to. Just because I never felt the need to inform you of the minute details of my life, doesn't mean I ever lied to you."

"Whatever." Derek came as close to admitting defeat as Isaac had ever seen, avoiding eye contact with Adrianna as he stared heatedly at the tabletop beneath his fingers.

"Has it shown any weaknesses?" Deaton interjected, picking off from where the conversation had veered off.

"One." Derek muttered angrily. "It can't swim."

"Does that go for Jackson as well?" The vet wondered, collecting as much information as he could from the ornery werewolf.

"No." Scott piped up. "He's the captain of the swim team."

Nodding his head thoughtfully, Deaton turned around and returned with a round, metal coin-like piece. It had a man sitting cross-legged in the center with swirls and tree branches encircling the edges.

"Essentially, you're trying to catch two people. A puppet and a puppeteer." He explained patiently, showing them one side of the coin and then the other. "One killed the husband, but the other had to take care of the wife. Do we know why?" He coached them into thinking.

"I don't think Jackson could do it." Scott theorized. "His mother died pregnant too, and she was maybe murdered. I think he couldn't let the same thing happen to someone else."

Adrianna was silent as she stared at her hands so Isaac took the momentary pause in the conversation as an opportunity to share his opinion. "How do you know it's not part of the rules?" He challenged. "The Kanima kills murderers. If Jackson kills the wife, then the baby dies too."

"Does that mean your father was a murderer?" Scott retorted, genuinely curious.

Isaac felt his chest tighten at the thought of his father. He hadn't even had time to grieve the man's death and yet, he knew he never would. "Wouldn't surprise me if he was." Isaac bitterly agreed, staring into the bright light positioned over the table, illuminating the coin, which now sat idle on the counter.

"Trust me, honey," Adrianna's voice was like a sudden thunderclap on a sunny afternoon. No one had been expecting her to speak after she'd been silent for so long. "Your father wasn't a murderer."

"How can you possibly know that?" Derek rebuked hostilely. "What is it that you've got going on between you and him that makes him want to protect you all the time?" He gestured between Isaac and Adrianna. "Did you hypnotize him or something?" Derek remarked callously.

Breaching the space separating her and Derek, Adrianna plunged her finger into his chest as her eyes grew cold and cruel. "I don't know, maybe you should ask my mother." She suggested defensively. "I hear you and her were close, that is, before the fire."

Baring his fangs, Derek roared furiously, throwing himself at her faster than Isaac could react. Thankfully, Adrianna could take care of herself. Her hand shot out with astounding speed, wrapping around Derek's throat and holding him at arm's length as he struggled to break free.

"Did I hit a nerve?" She prodded condescendingly, losing herself to violence as Isaac had seen her do so many times before. "How about you kill my family and we'll call it even?" Adrianna recommended to him, widening her eyes dramatically as Derek's claws sunk into the skin of her arm, drawing strangely coloured blood.

"Oh wait," She continued, not bothered by the pain in the least. Scott shuffled where he stood but Isaac place a hand over his shoulder, urging him to stay out of it. "You're uncle Peter already took care of that for you." Adrianna reminded him, her eyes turning glossy.

"Yeah, well," Derek gasped out as his veins engorged from lack of circulation. "You've still got a lot of family left. I'm sure I can settle the score."

"That's quite enough," The vet pronounced rather loudly as Adrianna's ire increased. "Don't you think?" He prompted once he'd garnered their attention.

Releasing her hold on Derek, Adrianna ignored the way he rubbed at his neck and turned her back on him, swaying her hips exaggeratedly as she stood beside Isaac. "Bad dog." She said to Derek as he continued to glare at her.

"Now," Deaton reminded them, as though they were children. "Why don't we all get along and focus on the task at hand. We have a murderer to catch, along with a Kanima we have no idea how to defeat."

His words seemed to sober them both as Adrianna's head hung low and Derek finally looked away from her. "Okay, hold on." He sighed, rubbing at his temples. "The book says they're bonded, right? What if the fear of water isn't coming from Jackson, but from the person controlling him?"

"Something that affects the Kanima, also affects it's master." Adrianna added, her voice suggesting that she wasn't asking, so much as telling them, as Deaton spread a black powder all around the perimeter of the coin he'd shown them earlier.

"Meaning what?" Isaac questioned her, inclining his head so that he wasn't quite as close to her as he'd barely noticed being.

Her hand slid down his shoulder, across his bicep and ended resting over his wrist. Isaac's fingers tingled upon contact and he flexed them, trying to regain full feeling, eliciting a pleased smirk from Adrianna and a frustrated huff from Derek.

"Meaning we can catch them." She told him, staring over at Derek before leaning closer to Isaac. He hardly even cared that she was using him to get back at Derek. The feeling of her hot breath fanning against his neck was so distracting, he barely even heard what Scott said next.

"Both of them." He realized, grinning happily.

Isaac furrowed his brow as Adrianna's shirt slid to the right, exposing an angry, red burn on her left shoulder. The skin looked pinched in two places, like she'd been stabbed with a giant, fiery fork, or perhaps stung by a double pronged insect.

He worried about her well-being as her weight against him increased with a temporary loss of balance. She'd gotten in deep, hunting and killing people like him, but the fact that she was there and not obediently following her grandfather's commands, meant she wasn't sure which side she wanted to be on.

"Adrianna," Deaton called before she could leave. "I was wondering if you'd be willing to share a sample of your blood with me. Purely for scientific purposes, of course." He reassured her as she appeared hesitant. "I want to try and isolate what makes you immune to the Kanima's paralytic toxin."

"Have at it Doc," She smiled, seemingly relieved that he'd asked for her blood and not something else. "How much do you need?"

"A small vial should be fine." The vet told her as she migrated to his side of the table and he led her out of the room, further into the clinic. "Just enough to prove a suspicion of mine."

Her head craned to glance his way before following after the vet. Whether she was human or not, Isaac knew there was good in her. That was something Derek would never understand. Adrianna was not her mother; not completely, at least.

#-#-#-#-#

After two whole years of being on the team, Stiles' lacrosse gear still didn't fit right. He supposed that it was because he never actually got to play, so the too-big shoulder pads and jersey never had the chance to be filled in by muscle. Unlike some, the miraculous gift of instant abs, wicked sharp claws, glowing eyes and the occasional homicidal tendency hadn't been given to him.

"Can anybody tell me where the hell Jackson is and why he missed morning practice?" Beacon Hill's Coach demanded, truly outraged that someone had diverged from his specific attendance instructions.

"I thought I told you to keep an eye on him?" Stiles whispered over to Scott, who was just as surprised by their Coach's announcement as he'd been.

"Stilinski!" Finstock pounced on the sound of his voice like a vulture looking for scraps. "Jackson?"

His eyes widened as the Coach, along with many of the other players, looked to him for an answer. "Sorry, Coach, I haven't seen him since the last time I saw him." He informed the man.

"Oh," The Coach remarked disbelievingly. "And when was that?"

"Last time I saw him—" Stiles thought it over as the words tumbled out of his lips unproctored. "Was definitely the time I saw him last." Beside him, Scott shook his head in embarrassment.

Finstock 's expression was one of utter confusion before he simply decided to change the topic, not bothering to try to understand or decode Stiles' words. "Yeah, again." He told the group. "Danny, tell Jackson no missing practice this close to championships, okay?" The spiky-haired Coach demanded.

"Sure, Coach." Danny agreed complacently.

"That goes for all of you." Coach Finstock reminded them harshly, already retreating back inside his shuttered office. "I should be coaching college." He complained before slamming the door behind him.

"Hey Danny," Stiles immediately voiced, his anticipation clear in his tone. As the other boy turned, face pinching in confusion, Stiles waggled his eyebrows to convey his meaning, only ending up frightening Danny, if the way he scooted further away was any indication.

Sighing, Stiles tried again to speak with Danny, this time with more luck. "Do you have any extra tickets you can sell me? Apparently they stopped selling last night."

"Sorry," Danny apologized, glancing at Scott for confirmation that he'd understood Stiles correctly. "But I only got two myself."

"What—" Stiles stopped himself from finishing his rather loud exclamation, lowering his voice to a near whisper. "Do you even have a date yet?"

"I'm working on it." The other boy supplied with a shrug.

"Okay, okay." Stiles began trying to coerce. "Hear me out. You give us the tickets and you devote your life to abstinence and just—" A hand enclosed around Stiles' shoulder and pulled him back. At the mere appearance of violence, Danny scuttled away, traitorously looking after his own backside before anyone else's, although Stiles had to give it to the guy, it wasn't like they were close friends.

"How do you two losers even survive?" Isaac wondered, releasing his hold over both Stiles and Scott who'd been suspended on either side of him.

Frowning, Scott turned his head to face Isaac as Stiles busied himself rubbing his sore shoulder. "What are we supposed to do?" He asked, gesturing at the crowded locker room. "No one's even selling."

Unfortunately, at that exact moment, two tickets exchanged hands between juniors. Stiles breathed deeply as Scott trailed off, demoralized. "Wait here, boys." Isaac instructed them, slipping past and clapping each of their chests as he approached the unlucky students.

"What is he gonna—" Scott let the question hang as Isaac shoved the boy who'd bought the tickets into a nearby locker.

"Ow." Stiles sympathized as Isaac slammed the boy's head into the already bent metal. "Oh, my—yup." He concluded. "That's excessive." An elbow to the kid's ribs made Stiles cringe. "That'll bruise." He commented.

There was a loud screeching as Isaac pushed the boy up off the ground by his jersey and then let him drop. "Ow." Scott muttered, his shoulders drawing up and his eyes darting around as though he was the one getting beaten up.

"Wow, okay." Stiles pronounced as Isaac bent the junior's arm at a painful angle before he finally accepted the outstretched tickets that'd been recently purchased.

Walking back over to Scott and Stiles, Isaac pushed the tickets into their outstretched hands. "Enjoy the show." Isaac told them before he continued to his own locker, oblivious to the stares and whispers directed his way.

Stiles was very, very glad that Scott had inadvertently gotten him onto the other side of the playing board because, under different circumstances, the poor junior cradling his arm and pressing an ice pack to his head, could have been him.

#-#-#-#-#

Wiping down the counter and discarding the empty Ketamine bottle he'd just given to Stiles and Scott in a syringe meant for Jackson Whittemore, Alan Deaton sighed heavily, watching the light illuminating dust particles throughout his lab.

He rolled a small, glass vial filled with Adrianna Argent's blood between his hands. Only a moment before, he'd taken a look at the blood under his microscope and what he'd found, although shocking based on it's proportion, was sadly, exactly what he'd been expecting.

The chime on his door announced someone's arrival, but the lack of audible footsteps told him it wasn't one of his usual customers. "Hello?" He called out, still blind to whomever had chosen to enter his clinic. "Who's there?"

"Do you mind letting me in, Doc?" A feminine voice filled with a gravelly lilt similar to her mother's, asked. Deaton smiled at Adrianna as he came out into the lobby. Swinging open the gate, not thinking much of the fact that she hadn't been able to get through without his help, Deaton led her into the back.

"I assume you're here for the results on the blood sample I took last night?" He stated with his back turned to her, sorting through a drawer he'd already arranged twice that day.

"Yes," Her confusion shone through in the way she hesitated in her reply. "And from your avoidance of me, I assume that you couldn't synthesize your little Kanima anti-venom." She mocked him, clearly not one to enjoy beating around the bush.

"You're correct." He admitted, gathering the courage to turn and place the vial of blood on the counter between them. "While I was attempting to do so, I found something else. Something I wanted to talk to you about."

"Does this have to do with—" She faltered, grasping the vial and staring at the black liquid somberly. "Can you explain what's been happening to me; why it's changed colour?"

"Yes." Alan nodded, pulling out a petri dish he'd used to store his findings in. "In fact, I think I can explain that and much more." He promised, sliding the dish across the table towards Adrianna.

Her fingers wrapped around the plastic container, lifting it and tilting the contents so that she could see them. "Have you been experiencing fatigue, trouble concentrating and emotional or physical instability?" He listed, trying to figure out how he was going to break the news to her.

Nodding along to his words, Adrianna's emerald green eyes locked onto his as she set the petri dish down with a soft thud. "What've you found, Deaton?" She whispered, suddenly afraid.

Clasping his hands together, Alan breathed in deeply before unscrewing the lid of the container before him and extracting a pinch of the powdery contents within. His spare hand reached over and opened Adrianna's palm so that he could gently give her the sample.

"Do you know what this is?" He asked as Adrianna stood back from her outstretched hand as though struck.

"I do." She breathed stiffly.

"While I was separating and narrowing down specific portions of your blood," He began to explain, warily watching the girl across from him as her lips pressed together so tightly, they appeared nearly white. "I came across a very familiar protein chain belonging to a species of flora."

Swallowing thickly, Deaton forced himself to continue as perspiration built up on his brow. "More specifically, it's scientific name is Aconitum Delphinieae." He shared tightly. "It goes by many names, aconite, monkshood, the Queen of poisons, blue rocket,"

"Wolf'sbane." Adrianna finished grimly, her hand clenching into a fist around the purple granulations he'd given her.

"Yes, that is one of the more common." Alan agreed sadly. "Growing up an Argent, I suppose you've heard that name quite often?"

Dismissing his attempts to tread lightly, Adrianna grit her teeth and went straight to the point. "So you found this in my blood?" Her jaw was clenched tightly and her aorta stood out on her neck.

"Ordinarily, I wouldn't have brought this to your attention. A small dose of a commonly used poison in a hunter; it's nothing out of the ordinary." Deaton's gaze flicked over to the back exit of the clinic.

Though he remained collected on the outside, he didn't know what to expect from the Argent standing before him and that was even more frightening than dealing with Gerard, whom he was very familiar with. It was also one of the reasons he'd suspected what had just been proven, for some time. If Adrianna scared him, she was certain to have at least concerned Gerard.

"Ordinarily?" She rhetorically pondered. "I'm not ordinary, Alan—tell me how much you found." Adrianna demanded, the rims of her eyes tinting red.

"Eighty." He voiced after some time spent deliberating his options. She was owed the truth, he'd come to realize, especially since he was sure she'd been lied to and manipulated from the start.

Brows furrowing, Adrianna leaned across the table to bring herself closer to him. "Parts per million?" She wondered, clearly having at least a basic knowledge of scientific measurements.

Shaking his head, Deaton stood the vial of blood upright on the counter and the blackness within caught the overhead light, appearing inky and unnatural. He'd only ever seen a case of wolf'sbane poisoning this bad, once before, and it had not ended well.

"Eighty percent." Alan corrected stonily, feeling his gut clenching as Adrianna's expression morphed away from it's confusion and towards horrified understanding.

She placed a hand over her lips and the digits shuddered where they lay. "There must be some kind of mistake." She struggled to grasp for an excuse. "How long would I have to be—exposed," Adrianna faltered on the word poisoned. "For it to get this bad?"

Running a hand over his bald head, Deaton grimaced as he mentally calculated a dosage that would have infected her bloodstream at such a rate, to have reached the proportions it had. "At least two to three weeks." He finally concluded, unable to stare at Adrianna for too long. "I'm sorry." He told her as he saw her come to accept the truth.

"How long do I have left?" She questioned clinically, detached, like the perfect soldier.

"A week, maybe less."

Her footing faltered and Deaton rushed around the table to help steady her. Leaning against both him and the counter, a cold sweat seemed to break out across her skin.

"If you need time to come to terms with this," He reminded her, guiding her to a nearby chair and setting her down. "We can always continue this conversation later."

"No," Adrianna denied, firmly shaking her head. "I must ask something else of you." She strained to say as blood leaked out of her nose.

"Anything." Deaton agreed, never one to turn away the sick or the dying, and she was both.

"Ever since," She broke off, sitting straighter and wiping her nose with the tissue Deaton provided her before bravely uttering what anyone else would not be brave enough to face. "Since my grandfather, Gerard, has been poisoning me and my strength fails me," Adrianna smiled, laughing in what Alan knew to be delayed shock.

"I need something to help," Her eyes pleaded with him as her hands closed around his. "Something that'll make me strong enough to help Scott and save Jackson."

"Adrianna," He sighed, torn between giving in and obstinately denying her request for her own safety. "The only thing that I can think of giving you would be adrenaline and, while it will temporarily increase your strength and stamina, it's guaranteed to shorten the time you have left because of the stress it'll put your body under."

"But it'll make me stronger?" Adrianna insisted, her gaze becoming hopeful, despite what he'd just told her.

"In theory," Deaton tried to make her understand but she was just as stubborn as her mother, he was learning quickly, and she didn't let him finish.

"Good." She resolutely decided. "Then I'll take it."

Standing up from the seat, Adrianna didn't let her stare wander from Deaton's for a very long time, until he felt his objections sliding away and being replaced by numb respect for the young huntress before him.

"Alright," He agreed, opening a nearby drawer and extracting several clear, glass bottles of pure epinephrine. "One injection of five cc's and no more." He stressed, handing her the bottles along with a sterilized needle. "Make sure you only use it when you really need it." He reminded her.

Smiling gratefully, Adrianna pocketed the adrenaline and needle before wrapping her arms around Alan's waist. "Thank you." She breathed into his lab coat before turning away.

"You know," He said before she could get too far. "I've never met a demigod from your specific parentage before." Deaton commented, recalling a time, long ago, when Kate had come to him with a young girl, in need of advice.

Facing him once more, Adrianna's eyes narrowed as she tried to puzzle out his words. "How do you know that?" She curiously asked him.

The right side of his lip pulled upwards in a conspiratorial smirk as he leaned against the door-frame just beyond the gate of ashwood in his clinic. "You're not the only one keeping secrets from Scott." He told her confidentially.

There was a strange gleam in her eyes as she nodded her head at him. It was the kind of emotion Deaton had only ever seen on desperate, dangerous people; people he hadn't seen in decades, but had a feeling would soon reappear to wreak havoc over Beacon Hills.

Adrianna had the same furious anger scorching in her steps and the same wide set of her shoulders that came with the responsibility of a task far too great for one person to accomplish alone.

"What will you do?" He asked her as her hand reached out to pull open the glass door of the clinic. "Now that you know the truth?"

She looked just like Kate, when her lips pulled back in such a feral smile and her irises betrayed her wicked intentions. "What I've always done," Adrianna's voice was tight with sorrow and pain, but it wasn't enough to soften her next words.

"Kill anyone who stands in my way."

#-#-#-#-#

"To the left. Hold your arm straighter. Don't hunch!" Allison's cousin instructed her, roughly jamming her palm between her shoulder blades and forcing Allison to stand to her full height.

"Much better." Adrianna approved, circling behind, around, and in front of Allison as she appraised her stance. "This time, you might be able to stay upright." She teased, lips curling at the end with good humor as Allison sighed heavily.

The gun was clumsy in her inexperienced hands. She felt like she might accidentally set it off if she breathed too deeply, but Adrianna had reassured her that the safety was on and her Argent genes should have been able to prevent her from completely failing at the task assigned to her.

No pressure, Allison thought to herself as she resisted the urge to stand with her legs closer together. The last time she'd done that, Adrianna had swiped her foot out and knocked Allison to the ground, lecturing her about the importance of proper stance, balance, and a whole bunch of other things Allison didn't really understand yet.

"Tell me again, why I have to do this?" Allison asked her cousin, her grip around the pistol tightening along with the knot in her chest. Deep down, she already knew why, but she wanted to hear it from Adrianna's lips before she jumped to any possibly dangerous conclusions.

"It's just a precaution." The younger girl reassured her, keeping her eyes fixed on Allison. "Gerard wants to make sure that if something goes wrong, you don't get hurt."

"But nothing's going to go wrong, right?" Allison uncertainly repeated what her father had told her when she'd asked him. Ever since her dad had taken her to the hospital and interrogated her about the Kanima, showing her the bodies of the latest victims, Allison had felt an uneasy stirring in her gut. It had yet to fade.

"Provided everyone does what they're supposed to," Adrianna's cold fingers pinched Allison's arm as the gun began to drop. "Everything should be fine." She finished, stepping back and gesturing towards the pistol.

"Now focus on the task at hand," Her cousin reprimanded her sternly, placing her hands on her hips. "Breath deeply for a few moments and try to acclimatize your body to the way the gun feels. Imagine that it's a part of you body—an extension of your hand." She instructed, sounding as though the words had been spoken to her once.

Allison wondered who had taught Adrianna how to become a hunter. She didn't have a father, that Allison was aware of, and, although it was possible that Kate had done the job, she'd been away on what Allison only now realized were international hunts for the majority of the past five or six years, leaving hardly any time to train her daughter. Perhaps it'd been Gerard, or maybe she'd even taught herself. Nothing could surprise Allison nowadays, at least, she thought so.

The crisp, clean-cut command her cousin barked at her next reminded her about what she was supposed to be doing. "Now line up your sights with the target and pull the trigger." She told her, raising an impatient brow as Allison delayed to complete her demand.

Breathing in deeply, just like whenever she was at the archery shooting range in her backyard, Allison's finger twitched over the trigger, not quite committing to firing, before she grit her teeth, breathed out and snapped her finger back over the metal crescent.

A sharp, ear-splitting bang echoed throughout the room and Allison's hearing buzzed and whined in complaint for a solid minute, by which time, Adrianna had already marched over to her side and smiled wide at the target on the opposite side of the storage room in the basement.

"Congratulations," Adrianna clapped her on the back. "You've actually hit the target."

Gathering the courage to look over at the wooden circle painted with different colour grids, Allison sighed heavily once she noticed where her bullet had landed. A hole the size of a coffee bean was shot through the circle three grids away from the edge and four grids away from the middle.

Not bad, she admitted to herself, but not what I wanted either.

"Relax, you did well. Not everyone gets the bull's eye right away." Adrianna consoled her, watching her crest-fallen expression with far-away eyes, like she wasn't all there. Since that afternoon, after school had gotten out, she'd been acting that way, but Allison couldn't figure out why. It was often hard to remember that she hardly knew her cousin, other than when she found it impossible to understand or decipher her moods.

"That's easy for you to say," Allison rebuffed, setting the gun down on the table behind them. "You can probably hit every target in the center, without even breaking a sweat."

Smirking arrogantly, Adrianna didn't deny Allison's statement. Hunching further, Allison found exhaustion and defeat playing at the back of her mind. She really didn't want to go to the party tonight, but she really didn't have a choice now that her father and grandfather were involved.

"I'll tell you a secret, Allison." Her cousin suddenly said, her back turned away from Allison as she kneeled down to pick up the empty bullet shells that littered the floor. "But only if you promise to do something for me first."

Curiosity growing, Allison nodded her head. "Okay," She hesitantly replied, unsure what her cousin was planning. "What do you want me to do?"

Standing up and dusting off her worn jeans, Adrianna clasped both of Allison's hands around her own. Something cold and round was pressed into Allison's fingers but Adrianna didn't allow her to pull away until she'd said what she wanted to.

"Don't trust Gerard." She breathed, as though afraid someone was listening in to their conversation.

Frowning, Allison separated her palms, revealing what she recognized to be a shotgun shell, the French fleur de Lise stamped onto the side. The tips of her fingers traced the flower as Adrianna's words bounced around inside her head.

"Why not?" Allison couldn't help bu wonder. From everything she'd seen and felt towards her grandfather, there had never been any distrust between them, nor was there any reason for there to be.

Moistening her lower lip with her tongue, Adrianna ran a hand through her hair as she debated something in her mind. "He's not what he seems, Allison." She finally settled on uttering. "Please, just—promise me?"

Her eyes pleaded with Allison to agree, to make an oath that her heart told her was wrong. Allison considered herself to be smart and capable, but not many other perceived her in such a way; not Scott, Adrianna, or even her father. Gerard treated her differently. He gave her tasks to complete, asked her questions and actually expected her to answer, and he trusted her with the family's secret before anyone else, aside from Kate, had.

Shaking her head, Allison shoved the chunky shell back into Adrianna's hands. "I can't do that," She pressed her lips together as she tried to explain herself, seeing the confusion painted on her cousin's face. "After Kate died," Allison swallowed as Adrianna's stare narrowed on her. "Well, I realized how important family is. Friends and relationships change all the time, but family is always there."

The hollows of Adrianna's cheeks seemed to pale considerably, casting shadows over her face and making her looked gaunt. Allison smiled apologetically and lightly reached out her hand to lay it across the other girl's shoulder. "I'm sorry," She apologized. "But I can't let myself doubt the only thing that's been solid and honest from the very start."

Her cousin gave a small, airy laugh then, and it was filled with a thousand different meanings that Allison couldn't grasp. The only thing she did understand, was that Adrianna was disappointed. Her stomach churned with guilt but her heart reared with anger. She bottled it up and saved it for later.

"It worked." Adrianna whispered bitterly to no one in particular. "His plan actually worked." Tears collected in her eyes and Allison felt a shot of concern as her cousin wobbled on her feet, nearly becoming hysterical. "I should have seen this coming." She muttered under her breath. "I should have seen this coming."

Grasping for anything that would return Adrianna to the way she'd been, Allison remembered the second part of the bargain Adrianna had struck with her. "What was the secret?" She asked her cousin, who abruptly breathed in deeply and straightened herself physically and emotionally.

"I can't tell you that." She croaked, her voice hoarse and thick. "You didn't promise so I can't tell you."

"Oh, come on," Allison teased, bumping her shoulder against Adrianna's like they'd grown up together and not like they'd met less than a month ago. "I want to know."

It seemed like Adrianna considered being stubborn and refusing to admit her secret, but then she cracked a grin and waved aside her reservations. "I suck at archery." She shared, her mood returning to it's light, inconsequential tone. "From what I hear, you're the best Argent to have tried their hand at it since anyone can remember." Adrianna complemented.

Blushing, Allison smiled and ducked her head. "Thanks."

Looking over at the clock, Adrianna rolled her eyes in dismay as she hurriedly slipped into her coat, which had been hanging over a long, rusty nail protruding from the wall while she'd been training Allison how to shoot.

"Come on," She waved for Allison to follow her through the door leading towards the landing of the basement, at the foot of the stairs leading down. "The briefing starts in five minutes."

As Allison trailed behind Adrianna all the way to the shut door and she watched her cousin insert the key that unlocked the deadbolt, lift the metal latch and twist a combination lock, she found herself wondering why the small, rather insignificant room used for weapons storage and target practice was so heavily fortified. The chain-link fence separating half of the room from the other seemed to shudder as the door was pulled open by Adrianna.

Stepping through, Allison took note that her father and grandfather, along with about a dozen men, were gathered around a square table layered in ammunition, maps, and weapons of different kinds. They didn't notice her entry as she half-turned when Adrianna neglected to follow in after her.

"Aren't you coming?" Allison whispered, not wanting to intrude or disturb the serious conversation her father and Gerard were having about the night's operation.

"Nah," Adrianna tried for nonchalance, waving her hand and wrinkling her nose at what she saw within the room. "I already know everything I need to. Gerard will explain more to you in a minute but I'll be meeting you at the club to help catch the Kanima."

Startled, she nodded her head, agreeing to what her cousin told her. "Oh, alright." Allison muttered, her eyes darting around the room as her grandfather looked up from the paper he'd been studying and smiled in greeting. "I'll see you then, I guess." She raised her brows for confirmation from Adrianna and received a delayed nod.

There was something tightly wound about Adrianna in that moment, that set off warning bells in Allison's head. She'd seen a look like that before and, although it had been on someone else's face, the two girls were so alike that Allison could directly translate the emotions Lydia had shared with her after being bitten by Peter, as the same emotions Adrianna was trying to hide from her.

She was frightened, maybe even terrified, but she was outraged too, just as Lydia had been when Allison had tried to treat her delicately. The longer Allison's gaze stayed over Adrianna, the more tense and indistinct her cousin's thoughts became, until there was nothing left but a blank slate of indifference.

"Good luck." Adrianna neutrally wished her, momentarily switching her keen vision away from Allison and towards Gerard. She didn't say any more, but her message was clear.

As Adrianna shut the door and Allison walked further into the briefing room, taking a seat on the rough, wooden staircase leading upstairs, she continued to think about her cousin's warning.

She'd asked her to promise not to trust Gerard, but at the time, Allison had found that she couldn't; more importantly, that she didn't want to. She still felt that, but the seed of doubt had been planted within her, and just like any slightly plausible idea, it remained at the back of Allison's mind, rattling and shaking the trust that had built itself between her and her grandfather until she really asked herself; Can I trust him?

Allison thought of the time he'd pressed his finger to her pulse and asked her question upon question. Or the order she knew came from him for her to be shown the bodies of the murdered couple. She remembered the fear that had spiked in her heart on each occasion and she knew, deep down in the place where she kept all the grim truths she'd ever learned about those she cared about, that Adrianna had a point.

But then, Gerard had also been the one to vouch for her for this mission. He'd been the one to integrate her into the family's tradition and he'd even arranged for her to begin training with his best hunter.

With a slight shake of her head and a whimsical, almost astonished smile, Allison swept away all her doubts and listened to her father as he explained how things would be accomplished while she did her part and searched for Jackson.

Everything's going to be alright, Allison felt the need to promise herself. She'd known all along that she, Scott, and Stiles couldn't handle something this dangerous by themselves.

Besides, Gerard was an old man. If he did turn out to be what Adrianna said he was, Allison was sure she could take care of it.

#-#-#-#-#

"Oh, shoot." Stiles complained as the heavy, garbage bag of mountain ash sagged in his grip. Scott felt his fingers twitch by their sides as he had to remind himself that he couldn't help Stiles; not this time.

"You okay?" He asked instead of offering his assistance.

Looking up from where he'd been focused on the stretched-out, slightly torn bag, Stiles furrowed his brow and lifted his shoulders in a shrug. "Yeah, why?" He replied.

Shuffling his muddy converse, Scott knew what his best friend was trying to do. It was what he always did when he wanted to avoid touchy-feely subjects. Still, he pressed on. "You just didn't say anything the whole way here." Scott pointed out, searching for an answer—a real answer—as covertly as he could.

"No, I'm fine." Stiles brushed off the unspoken questions, flattening the air between them. "Just grab the other bag." He grunted, straining to lift the bag he'd nearly broken on his first attempt to move the ash.

"I can't." Scott lamented apologetically. "Remember, Deaton said you have to do it alone."

Sighing heavily, Stiles waved his hands in the air as the full weight of his part in their plan hit him. "Okay," He told Scott, who was distracted by a familiar scent and barely listened to what his friend was telling him. "This plan is really starting to suck."

Tilting his head to the side and breathing in deeply, Scott looked around him for confirmation that who he thought the scent belonged to was actually there. Sure enough, a faint but distinct voice filtered into his ears and made his heart plummet.

"No." He tried to deny, feeling panic and confusion probing through his once logical, precise thoughts. "Not here, not now." Scott complained, concern for the girl who'd won over his heart forcing him to abandon Stiles to his task and rush inside the warehouse, crashing through sweaty, dancing bodies and squinting against the bright strobe lights as he peeked over heads from an unpopulated corner of the warehouse.

There, in the middle of the dance floor, standing awkwardly beside Matt, as she'd said she would be, was Allison. Her eyes caught Scott's as she pulled her yellow cardigan closer around her and her lips pressed into a thin line as she read his expression. He'd known all about the fake date with Matt, but he hadn't expected for her be at the rave where they were planning to drug Jackson.

"Matt, give me a second, okay?" She asked the brown-haired, geeky photographer that Scott was really starting to dislike—almost to the point that he knew Stiles did.

Weaving her way between people so that she could reach him, Scott felt his nerves shuddering and threatening to snap. She couldn't be here; Allison would only get hurt.

"What are you doing?" He forcefully demanded of her once she'd reached his side. The way she physically shrunk away from him, as though afraid, made him regret his tone for a moment.

Looking around her, Allison shook her head, clearly confused. "You told me to go out with him." She reminded him, slipping her hands into the pockets of her denim overalls.

A shadow flickered out of the corner of Scott's vision, migrating through the crowd and stealing away his attention. "Are you here alone?" He suddenly asked her, grabbing hold of Allison's arm and dragging her further away from the crowd.

"What?" She stepped back, baffled. "No, I came with Matt." She repeated, following Scott's gaze out towards the other moving bodies.

"Not Matt." He disagreed, momentarily taking his eyes away from the sea of partying kids and back onto Allison. "Is someone else here with you?"

"Relax, wolfie." A voice interrupted Allison before she could wrap her lips around her answer. "It's just me."

Spinning around, Scott came face to face with Adrianna Argent. Growling low in his throat, he swiped his hand out to rip his claws through her face. An instant before he could draw blood, a shiny, very sharp dagger came into contact with the palm of his hand, stabbing deep enough to hurt but leaving less than a few drops of blood to puddle in the crevices of his skin.

"Now, that's not very nice, Scott." She chastised him, oblivious to the nervous air that had settled around Allison, who was quietly studying the interaction between them. "I'm here to help you, remember."

Shaking his hand out by his side, eyes still glowing amber with his rage, Scott reluctantly took a step back. She was right, after all, but that didn't mean that he had to like it.

"What's going on?" Allison spoke up, even more lost than she'd been before.

Smiling lopsidedly, Adrianna's kohl lined eyes gave her a dangerous, cat-like appearance as she placed one of her hands on her right hip. "Didn't he tell you?" Scott found that Adrianna's honey-sweet, Cheshire grin was far scarier when her lips were blood red. "I've gone to the dogs."

Laughing at her own joke, Adrianna didn't appear bothered that Allison hadn't gotten her meaning. Scott shook his head and breathed a deep sigh to try to restrain himself from inflicting harm over the frustrating girl he now called an ally.

"She's helping us to catch the Kanima." He explained for Allison's sake, his heart beginning to pump faster as he remembered the main reason he was talking to Allison in the first place. "And I don't care about your date with Matt, it's just that you can't be here. We have a plan."

Furrowing her brows, a muscle in Allison's lip twitched in disbelief and shock. "You have a plan?" She repeated, something widening in her brown eyes; something like fear. "Okay, okay. My father and Gerard, they're coming here."

"What?" Scott retorted incredulously, taking a step away from her and glaring at Adrianna who simply shrugged her shoulders.

"Don't look at me," She informed him distantly, sniffing in disdain as he narrowed his gaze on her. "I'm not Gerard's only source of information, you know."

Frowning as realization hit him, Scott turned to look at Allison, who was avoiding his eyes, clutching her hands together in front of her. "What did you tell them?" He asked her.

"I—I told them." She admitted sheepishly, bending her knees back and forth and folding her cardigan around and around her clenched fist.

"Allison!" He barked, spreading his hands out wide in front of him and resisting the urge to punch a hole through something solid. He couldn't believe that out of all the people that could have betrayed him, namely a huntress with murderous tendencies and a clouded past, in the end, Allison was to blame.

"I—" She stuttered to reason with him as Adrianna's heart-rate spiked. "I had to tell them." She told him brokenly, biting her lip.

"Oh my god." He breathed, the full scope of what Allison had done hitting him at the exact same time it hit her cousin.

"They know it's Jackson." She finished for him, the copper and floral scent of her blood invading his nostrils as her fingernails made holes in her palms. "You told them who the Kanima was." Adrianna nearly growled, her eyes lighting up with green fire. "Do you have any idea what I had to go through, to keep that from them?" She snarled, baring her teeth and suddenly launching herself across the distance separating her from Allison, her arms outstretched to do damage.

Slamming Allison into the brick wall several feet behind them, Adrianna's fingernails dug into to other girl's shoulders as she pushed her cousin again and again into the solid structure, muttering something about pain and fire. Jumping between the two girls and wrapping his arms around Adrianna's waist as she thrashed and buckled her weight against him, Scott focused on keeping Allison safe from her cousin and not on the horrible disloyalty his girlfriend had just shown them.

"People are dying, Scott." Allison said in a small voice, swallowing thickly as Adrianna went still against him. Her quiet anger was more frightening than her boisterous rage as he smelt what felt to him like vengeance, brewing beneath the surface. "What am I supposed to do?" Allison meekly asked him, obviously shaken in more ways than one by what her cousin had done to her.

In her heart, he knew she'd had good intentions, but telling her grandfather was not the way to save Jackson or the people he was going after; it would just guarantee his death. "You're supposed to trust me." He indignantly told her, tired of fighting a battle he could see he wasn't going to win when there were lives at stake.

"I trust you more than anyone." Allison reassured him, clarity washing over her as she understood just what she'd done.

"We've—we had a plan." Scott muttered to himself, trying to go over the steps in his mind but finding that his brain was muddled and cloudy.

"So do they." She tried to excuse, desperately searching for a way to right her mistake.

"This isn't going to work." Scott found himself saying. He didn't quite know what he was referring to; their plan to catch the Kanima, or his secret relationship with Allison. At that moment, he didn't want to know.

"What do you want me to do?" Allison begged, her voice turning shrill. "Okay, I can—I can fix it." She chased after him as he begun to walk away from her, his hand still enclosed around one of Adrianna's arms. "Please, please Scott. Just tell me."

"You've done enough." Adrianna dourly snapped, whirling on her cousin and shrugging out of Scott's grip, rubbing her arm as though he'd bruised her. It surprised him as he remembered that she'd been able to withstand much more with barely any sign of injury, when she'd first arrived.

Torn between going back to comfort Allison and finding a way to deter her from following him, he grimaced as the music became unbearably loud for his enhanced hearing and he had to shout over the drums to hear his own words.

"Just stay out of the way." He told her, heading in the direction he knew Isaac and Erica would be looking for Jackson.

"Scott!" Allison cried once more, trying her best to follow him through the throngs of swaying people. "Scott, wait!"

His temper lashed out of his control as irritation and bitterness stung his tongue and spelled out words he'd never meant to say in such a caustic way. "Stay out of the way!" He boomed.

Allison stood still after that, among the hundreds of dancing forms, and her feet didn't move to go towards him. Scott couldn't help but thinking that he'd lost her forever. As her cousin, Adrianna walked beside him with purpose, he considered how strange it was that he'd swapped one Argent for another.

The question was, which Argent would he rather have on his side, Adrianna or Allison? Making that choice would surely be difficult, unfortunately, he feared it had already been made for him.

#-#-#-#-#

Her chest felt like it was on fire and her eyes were stinging worse than a splash of Hydra venom on an open wound. Adrianna's palms were sore and longing for a body part to wrap around and squeeze, preferably belonging to her traitorous cousin, although she was certain Scott would never let her go through with it.

Standing next to him as he brought out the syringe and showed it to Isaac, Adrianna had to fight the urge to snatch the shiny, metal contraption and thrust it into someone's neck. Breathing deeply, she shook her head to rid herself of as many violent thoughts she possibly could before tuning into Scott's conversation with the curly-haired beta.

"Why me?" Isaac asked, frowning in confusion as he hesitantly accepted the syringe from Scott. Twirling the device in his long, dexterous fingers, Isaac licked his lips uncertainly, his eyes flittering between Scott and Adrianna.

"Because I've got to make sure that Argent doesn't completely ruin the plan." Scott responded, nervous jitters clinging to his voice and making him speak faster than he normally did.

Isaac furrowed his brow, looking straight at Adrianna and bringing to light Scott's slight miscommunication. "Not her," He quickly corrected. "I mean Gerard and Chris."

"And before you open your mouth to accuse me of ratting your plan to my family," Adrianna spoke up defensively. "I didn't say a word."

Shaking his head, Isaac's light blue eyes met with Adrianna's and she saw, clear as day, that he believed her. "I didn't think it was you." He assured her, sounding more shy and withdrawn than she'd ever heard him.

Startled by the boy's honesty, Adrianna took a step back, her eyes wide and her lips parted in preparation for a witty rebuttal she no longer had use for. "Okay, look," Scott interrupted, clearly displeased by the time they'd wasted. "You better do it intravenously, which means in the vein." He unhelpfully instructed.

Averting her eyes from Isaac's, Adrianna suddenly found the syringe in front of her, in the very same boy's hands, to be a very interesting sight. Her cheeks felt hot and her stomach clenched unpleasantly the longer she felt Isaac's stare on her. "When you find him, you pull back on this plunger right here." Scott continued to tell them, pointing out the plunger he was referring to as Isaac finally looked away from Adrianna and towards the device he was holding.

"Administering the injection from the side of the neck or the shoulder would probably be the easiest to accomplish." Adrianna commented, glancing over at Scott as he nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, so you find a vein," Scott listed, sounding as though he was reassuring himself more than he was Isaac or Adrianna. "You jam it in there and you pull back on the trigger." He finished, looking around himself like he expected to see hunters swarming the warehouse any second.

"Be careful." Scott whispered to Isaac seriously and a pang went off in Adrianna's very alive, very wounded heart. It had been a very long time since someone had wondered about her safety, longer still since they'd told her about it.

"Oh," Isaac sarcastically expressed, his lips thinning with emotions that Adrianna was intimately familiar with—it was in fact, exactly what she was feeling at that moment—self commiseration and anger. "I doubt it'll even slightly hurt him."

"No," The other boy disagreed, shaking his head. "I mean you. I don't want you to get hurt." He said as though it were the simplest thing in the world, and not a random act of kindness Isaac had hardly been spared before.

There was a moment where Isaac's surprise was palpable to Adrianna, from the way his eyes widened, stretching to how his brows furrowed and his head tilted. She could feel it in the tips of her fingers and the stabbing pain that had been present in her heart since she'd been told exactly what Gerard had been doing to her since she'd come to Beacon Hills.

Placing an unusually delicate hand over Isaac's arm, Adrianna stepped between him and Scott. "Don't worry," She told the boy with a slightly crooked jaw. "I'll make sure he stays out of trouble."

Nodding in affirmation, Scott wasted no further time, rushing away to supposedly handle her uncle and grandfather. Although Adrianna knew he had no chance of doing that alone, or even if he had Derek and Boyd's help, she didn't feel the need to warn him of such as he disappeared through one of the many back doors in the warehouse turned club.

"Well, then." Adrianna pronounced, removing her hand from Isaac's sleeve as though the extended contact had stung her, when really she'd forgotten she was even touching him at all. "Hand over the syringe and I'll take it from here."

She prayed in vain that he didn't notice the way her heart was galloping in her chest, or the rush of warm, sticky sweet emotions she felt invading her senses and clouding her thoughts towards the blue-eyed beta.

Hiding the syringe behind his back, Isaac distanced himself from her, eyes narrowed in confusion as he tried to understand why she was deviating from the plan. "Um," He stuttered uncertainly as Adrianna lifted an impatient brow. "Scott told me to do it, remember?" He asked her, sounding as though he wasn't certain whether to stand his ground or hand over the syringe and give in.

Rolling her eyes as she expressed her exasperation, Adrianna placed a hand over her hip and began to tap her shoe against the concrete floors. "Isaac, Isaac, Isaac." She chastised lightly, taking advantage of his uncertainty and overpowering it with confidence she'd gained by experience. "You don't really think that Scott stands a chance against the rest of my family, do you?" She wondered condescendingly.

Circling him, giving him hardly more than a second to think over her words, Adrianna backed Isaac against a pillar and pressed one of her palms flat against his chest. "Scott doesn't know what he's doing, Isaac." She shared with him, forcing her gaze to be trustworthy and not devious. "He's in over his head. All of you are."

Stepping back, Adrianna lazily extracted one of her many knives from within the inside lining of her mother's jacket, twirling the blade in her hand and using it to pick at her cuticles. Isaac stared at the shiny surface, silent but obviously considering everything she did and said. It was one of the things she liked about him. He looked before leapt; at least, he usually did.

"Why don't you just let me handle this. I can take care of Jackson without killing him and your lives go back to normal." Adrianna coerced, lifting her eyes to meet Isaac's reserved stare. "You're just a kid. Scott said it himself, the Kanima could hurt you."

Pushing off of the pillar, Isaac advanced on her, his mood turning stormy. "You're my age, aren't you?" He rhetorically phrased. "How come you think that you can handle the Kanima, and I can't?" Isaac indignantly wondered.

Sighing heavily, Adrianna slipped the celestial bronze knife back inside her jacket and ran an anxious hand through her hair. "I don't think I can, I know I can." She corrected him, staring off into the crowd to avoid looking directly at Isaac, for fear that all her secrets would come tumbling from out of her lips.

"Can't you just give me a straight answer?" Isaac growled angrily, reaching out and wrapping his hands around her wrists. "Just this once, I want to know the truth. All of it." He pressed, shaking her so that she would meet his intense gaze.

Against her will, Adrianna felt her eyes begin to sting and knew without doubt that they were rimmed red. Still, she refused to cry so easily. "I can't tell you that." She held resolute to what she'd learned so many years ago. "You'll think I'm crazy."

"Me, the werewolf?" Isaac dubiously questioned, clearly not understanding how completely insane the truth would sound, even to him. "Try me." He prompted, still grasping for an answer she would not give him.

"Besides," Adrianna waved away his words as though they were nothing more than steam in the air. "The Kanima, at least, Jackson just before he becomes the Kanima, seems to be attracted to me." She nonchalantly admitted, severing their previous line of conversation in one clean strike.

"What?" His expression became one of thinly veiled anger and what could have been jealousy. It brought a sly smile to Adrianna's lips.

"Yeah, didn't I mention it?" She goaded, walking her index and middle fingers across Isaac's shoulders tauntingly. "Yesterday, just before Jackson went after Allison, I confronted him in the locker room showers. I tried to warn him about the danger he could be in if my family ever found out that he was the Kanima, but he seemed to have other ideas as to what we could do with our time."

Smirking as Isaac roughly shoved her away from him, refusing to meet her surprised gaze, Adrianna moistened her lips for a moment before backing off, intrigued by the unusual response he was having but not willing to risk igniting any more of his anger for the sake of her amusement. She hadn't expected him to care about her, but, it seemed she'd wormed her way deeper under the werewolf's skin than she'd realized.

"I thought that Erica would have told you all about it." She offhandedly remarked, her tone returning to it's normal lilt. "What matters is that I think I can distract the Kanima, Jackson—whoever he is when he's between personalities." Adrianna corrected herself gruffly. "Hopefully long enough to put him down."

"And what," A new voice spoke, approaching from out of the riotous crowd. "We just stand around and watch you take on an eight foot Kanima with claws, teeth, and a very dangerous tail, all by yourself?"

"Yes." Adrianna patronizingly retorted as she turned around to face the newcomer. "Erica, that's exactly what I want you to do."

Pushing himself in front of Erica, Isaac's palm lay flat across Adrianna's stomach as he simultaneously held her back and did his best to keep both of their attention's on him while only looking at the huntress behind him. "If this is your way of protecting me," He said, quickly glancing over at Erica as he started again. "If this is your way of protecting us, I appreciate the gesture, but it's not necessary. We're not the delicate humans you're used to. We can handle this." Isaac reassured her, the heat from his hand leeching into Adrianna's cold body and tickling her skin.

For a moment she had trouble concentrating. Trouble looking away from Isaac's determined yet gentle stare. She had trouble stopping herself from moving forward an inch, as though to breach the gap between them and do something foolish. Then, Adrianna remembered herself and, instead of doing any of the sappy, romantic, immature things that crossed her mind, she nodded mutely and handed the syringe back to Isaac.

"You're right." Adrianna reluctantly agreed, pulling an elastic off of her wrist and wrapping it through her hair so the curly tendrils no longer hung in and around her face. "But if any of you gets hurt—even so much as a paper cut—you're out. Do you understand me?" She asked the two betas before her.

Erica's chin bobbed as she crossed her arms in front of her, watching as Isaac did the same, lagging behind a moment before taking his hand away from Adrianna's torso. "So, you must be some big shot hunter in your family to want to take on a Kanima on your own." The blonde girl theorized, narrowing her eyes into near slits as she studied Adrianna.

Her lips twitched, wanting to rise into a smile but Adrianna didn't let it. Her hands slid behind her, lightly feeling the daggers she had tucked into her belt. "You could say that." She verified ambiguously.

"What happens if you get hurt, huh?" Erica challenged, widening her stance as though she was ready to pounce at a moment's notice. "What happens if you're not as strong as you say you are? What then?"

Fear lodged in Adrianna's throat and, even though she swallowed thickly soon after, the feeling didn't go away. "You don't have to concern yourself with that. It won't be a problem." She replied, thinking about all the times her stamina had waned and her strength had abandoned her during a fight. It had been stolen from her, leeched from her ounce by ounce until she hadn't a drop left.

"It's already been taken care of." Adrianna ominously breathed to herself as Isaac and Erica lead the way through the crowd, towards Jackson.

Retrieving her own needle from within her pocket, Adrianna pulled the cap off with her teeth and plunged the small dose of epinephrine straight into her heart. She gasped through rasping lungs and clenched, revitalized muscles, curling her toes in her boots and cracking her knuckles.

The needle fell out of her hand, clattering to the floor as it was lost within the horde of dancing, kicking, stomping feet. Adrianna set her sights on Jackson Whittemore and didn't look back, not even when she felt the cold fingers of death sliding down her spine, warning her of what was to come.

#-#-#-#-#

The bag was heavy, incredibly so, and Stiles was by no means a strong kid. Sure, he'd done plenty of spectacular, amazing, courageous things in his time, but none of them had ever involved physical strength.

Panting as he rounded the corner, his steel blue jeep in sight, Stiles puffed up his chest and continued to pour out the ash, feeling like a complete idiot. As the bag got lighter and lighter, and lighter still, instead of feeling relief, Stiles felt a pang of fear and panic set in.

I don't have enough, Stiles realized once the bag was nearly empty. In front of him was a very long, very daunting stretch of pavement he had yet to cover. As he shook out the plastic bag into his hand, his heart plummeted when all he got was a small handful of the black powder.

"Oh, no." He voiced his concern to the abandoned cars around him and the chilling, nearly winter air. Fishing his cellphone out of his back pocket, Stiles dialed a number he'd memorized a long time ago and impatiently waited for the voice of his best friend to bring reason and calm back to his shattered night.

"Scott, pick up." He pleaded with the electronic dial tone that told him to leave a message after the beep. "Pick up now. Look, I got like, fifty feet of ash left, and I'm out. Okay?" Stiles' voice pitched with frustration. "So you've got to get your wolf ass down here to help me because I don't know what to do."

Looking around himself, Stiles clenched the handful of ash that he still had tightly. He'd known from the start that this task was too big for him; too much pressure. He should never have accepted it. "And I'm just standing out here and I'm—" Stiles stuttered, nearly jumping a whole foot into the air as loud bangs and pops invaded the quiet.

"And I'm all alone and I'm hearing gunfire and werewolves, and I'm—and I'm standing here like a frickin' idiot all by myself," He complained, his voice turning hoarse with fear and anger. "With a handful of magic fairy dust; and I don't have enough. Okay?"

Shutting the flip-phone, Stiles licked his lips as he bounced on his toes. "Okay, come on, think." He told himself, urging the suddenly rusty gears in his brain to start moving. "Um, okay. He said you've got to believe. You need to believe." Stiles breathed as Deaton's advice came to mind.

"Come on, believe, Stiles." He tried to encourage. "Just, uh—picture it." Stiles grasped for something that sounded less like a stupid therapy session and more like a supernatural handbook to his problem.

"Just imagine it working, okay?" Stiles asked himself, slowly extending the palm of ash out to his side and preparing for an immense bout of disappointment. "Just—imagine." He repeated, closing his eyes as he began to walk across the distance between him and the line of ash where he'd started.

In his mind, Stiles tried to envision the ash coating the entire space in front of him. Loosening his fingers, Stiles felt the ash beginning to drain from his palm. He had to force himself not to think about how many steps he was taking; he knew there were too many for what he had left.

Sighing deeply and trying to think about the analogy Deaton had told him about golfing, he found himself stretching out his hand as the ash was now completely used. Stiles kept his eyes closed for another second, grimacing in anticipation as he slowly peeked beneath his lashes at what would no doubt be a forty foot distance of ash-less blacktop, instead of fifty.

What he saw, however, was one continuous, unbroken, blessfully intact line of ash. "Yes!" He cheered, his face lighting up with unprecedented joy.

Pulling his fist back, he could hardly believe his eyes, although he knew they were telling him the truth. Dancing around on the pavement, Stiles was so euphoric that he slid up onto the hood of a random, parked car. The alarm wailed throughout the ally, startling Stiles enough for him to dismount from the hood and take a few steps back.

Stretching out his hands as though to calm the vehicle, Stiles licked his lips, nodding his head as he surveyed his work. I did it, he acknowledged happily. Gunfire and angry snarls, along with howls of pain, stole away his moment of self-vindication and Stiles didn't need to be told twice to get out of the street before he became road kill in the shoot-out between the Argents and the werewolves of Beacon Hills.

#-#-#-#-#

She was infuriating in every way Isaac could imagine. Her appearance, her personality, even the way she danced was infuriating. Alright, he admitted to himself, she's not actually infuriating. What she really was, was something far more dangerous. Adrianna was captivating, addicting, and even a little bit poisonous to him. The worst part was, he didn't care.

Didn't care about his mild obsession. Didn't care about the after-effects. He didn't even care if a dose of her would end up killing him. He was too far gone. In the flashing lights of the dance floor around them, with people pressing in on him from every direction, closing him into a tiny, confined patch of free floor, Isaac felt, for the first time in forever, truly free of his past.

Adrianna came closer to him, swaying her hips to the beat of the music blaring overhead and even though Isaac knew she was only doing it to get closer to Jackson, he let himself imagine that it was just him and her. Erica wasn't closing in on the other side, wrapping her arms around Jackson's shoulders and letting her hands wander over the boy's chest; she wasn't even there.

The huntress, with her hair piled in a clumsy pony-tail and her eyes as dark as the shadows that wound around her every step, was the only person present aside from him. She wasn't sharing her attention with Jackson, sliding her hand over his chest and leaning in close to whisper nonsense into his hear; she was with Isaac, staring at him as she drew him nearer, fisting his shirt in her hand and radiating heat, for once, from her body to his.

Until it wasn't just her and him, and Isaac had to clench his fists and clamp his jaw shut to keep himself from doing something stupid and very painful to the boy who had his lips locked with Adrianna's. Jackson might have been the reason they were there, he might have been in desperate need of saving or, as Derek would have it, an execution, but he wasnot going to steal away Adrianna right from under Isaac's nose.

It was as though he'd lost his senses. Isaac watched as Jackson's hands slid along the inside of Adrianna's shirt, higher and higher until Isaac couldn't control himself any longer. With as much delicacy as he could scrounge up from the fragments of his logical mind, Isaac wound his arms around Adrianna's waist and pulled her towards him, out of Jackson's possessive clutches.

As Erica swiftly took Adrianna's place, Isaac ignored the huntress' annoyed glare and ducked his head into the crook of her long, swan-like neck. She tasted sweet and salty from the accumulation of sweat that was beading down her forehead, along with a certain perfume she'd never been without, before.

"Isaac," Adrianna whispered through clenched teeth, tensing as his lips found a tender spot on her shoulder. "What the hell are you doing?" She breathed raggedly, her fingernails digging into his biceps and warning him to stop. The effect the pinpricks of pain had on him was quite the opposite.

Growling low in his throat, Isaac pulled away from Adrianna's skin only to fervently crash his lips onto hers with a hunger that boiled in the pit of his stomach and seemed to be insatiable.

At first, Adrianna was unresponsive, even violent; biting down on his lower lip and slamming her foot into his toes; but then, it seemed like a switch had been flipped in her as, eventually, she kissed him back just as desperately.

He felt how torn she was about him—about all of them—and he could practically taste her anger as it scorched through her veins and lit her body on fire. There was sadness there too, on the tip of her tongue, hiding where no one could find it if they didn't push beneath the layers. It was so intense to him, that he felt it as his own.

Isaac wondered what the huntress could have gone through, to feel so hopeless and betrayed. This was more than simple high-school drama, this was serious, maybe even life-threatening.

As he separated from Adrianna to breathe, Isaac studied her features, committing them to memory. Her pupils were tiny black specks in the lush forest of her green irises. Her cheeks were flushed but the rest of her face was deathly pale, aside from her blood-red lips and charcoal lined eyes. She looked at him unlike anyone else ever had; as though he was a particularly difficult puzzle she was trying to solve and she'd only just realized that everything she thought she knew, was wrong about him.

Her chest rose and fell—they were so close that each inhale forced them to touch each other—and her hand reached out to trace the contours of his face, lingering over his left cheek, his lips, and then dropping down to his shoulder.

"I am in so much trouble." Adrianna whispered, almost to herself as the side of her lip twitched, either to smile or frown. Isaac never found out which, as less than a second later, Jackson dug his claws into Erica's arm and threw her to the floor.

Hissing, Jackson turned on them at the same time that Adrianna extricated herself from Isaac's arms, shiny knives already held tightly in her hands. "He belongs to me." The half-transformed Kanima threatened, clicking it's tongue menacingly.

"I don't know who you're talking about," Adrianna interjected, her armor already back in place and concealing what she felt and thought from Isaac. "But no one belongs to you. Got that?" She snapped, twisting the handles of her knives so the blades were in line with each of the rest of her arms.

With a throaty screech that chilled Isaac's blood and shuddered in his bones, the Kanima charged, slamming into Adrianna's shoulders and knocking her to the floor. Isaac's heart seemed to pause in it's beating as the huntress' figure was obscured from him. He feared that she'd been shredded beneath Jackson, that she hadn't been as strong as she'd promised.

Then, he heard the Kanima wail out in pain and Adrianna's knives glinted in the bursts of light around them, and he realized that, unlike the rest of them, Adrianna actually knew what she was doing.

Beside him, Erica limped to her feet, cradling her side. She moved to join the fight but Isaac stopped her, shaking his head sternly. "Give yourself time to heal." He pointed to her most likely broken ribs. "Remember what she said, you're out for now."

Flaring her nostrils in silent dispute, Erica glared at him as she stepped back. "You trust her too much." She told him roughly, stepping back so that she was nearly lost in the oblivious crowd that had yet to catch onto the battle going on right beside them.

Adrianna had her arms wrapped around Jackson's neck, holding him steady to the ground as she tried to gain the upper hand. Isaac had nearly forgotten that, not only was she pretty, but she was also very good at hurting people. Pulling the syringe out of his pocket, Isaac wove between the crowd as he tried to get to Adrianna before Jackson fully transformed.

Shoving people out of his way, Isaac's palms began to sweat as Jackson struggled against Adrianna, clawing into the flesh of her arms and drawing black blood from the wounds. Tripping over someone's foot, the syringe was thrown from Isaac's sticky hands, skidding across the floor a few feet before stopping.

Isaac crawled after the syringe, mindful that Jackson had finally broken free from Adrianna's restraint and was stalking away, towards his next target. His heart pounded in his ears as his fingers finally enclosed around the metal handle of the syringe and he didn't have time to check whether Adrianna was alright before going after Jackson.

As he launched himself forward, onto Jackson's shoulders, encircling the boy's neck and pressing the sharp tip of the syringe into the side of Jackson's neck and pulling back on the plunger, Isaac's tense muscles and thundering heartbeat didn't ease until the Kanima sagged in his grasp, unconscious.

His eyes met Adrianna's where she sat on the floor a little ways away, dusting herself off as she rose to her feet and smiling proudly once she approached him, taking part of the load and following after a strangely silent Erica, into a small storage closet at the back of the warehouse.

Isaac felt the adrenaline in his blood beginning to diminish, and with it, the unnatural focus and sharpened senses that had helped him to complete his part of the plan. He wondered how Adrianna could still stand, after everything, as they sat Jackson down on a wobbly chair and wrapped some abandoned cords and rope around the unconscious boy's form—just in case.

"Are you alright?" He asked her, reaching out to wipe away some of the sweat glittering on her brow.

She tensed but didn't move away from his touch. Nodding her head stiffly, Adrianna's hands brushed over her arms lightly, her fingers coming away stained with her oddly tinted blood.

There was a tremor in her fingers as she gazed at the wounds, and the stuttering of her movements as she tried and failed to remove her jacket, was enough for Isaac to understand that she was more effected than she'd let on.

He yearned to hold her close to him again, to feel the heat of her skin against his, but he knew that wouldn't be possible. There was a new distance between them now, that had nothing to do with which side they were on. Ripping off the bottom segment of his shirt and handing it to her, Isaac chose to respect the space between them as he allowed her to tend to her own wounds.

"I'm fine." Adrianna muttered, her jacket wrapped around her waist as she expertly dabbed and bandaged the wounds that Isaac now saw were not very deep.

"Really?" Erica voiced from where she was standing silently at the other side of the storage room. "Because I could have sworn that those cuts dug deep enough to graze bone."

Wrapping her arms around herself and then shaking the appendages out by her sides, Adrianna stood tall as she regarded Erica. She looked like a medieval warrior, with her wild, frizzy hair let loose from it's ponytail and the scraps of Isaac's shirt clinging, bloody, to her arms like sleeves. Isaac didn't even care, right then, that she was probably still lying to him and everyone else.

"You were mistaken." She chided as though Erica was a child. "Besides, I'm no werewolf. I can't heal like you guys can." Turning her head so the other girl couldn't see, Adrianna winked at Isaac.

He felt himself falling, just like Derek had warned him not to, and he found that he didn't want to do anything to stop it. He wanted to know everything about her, to claim every scar, wound, and broken piece of her thawing heart like it was his own.

She was like his own personal drug, like a brand of wolf'sbane bred specifically to ensnare and then kill him. Smiling back at her with a thousand possibilities and hopes flashing through his mind, Isaac finally understood why he'd been so attracted to her in the first place.

Adrianna was the only person that could ever understand him, the only woman who'd been bent and snapped and tortured in as many ways as he had, and, if he had any say in the matter, he'd never let anyone hurt her again; not her family or his pack—not even Derek.

In that moment, he'd have taken a bullet for her in less than a heartbeat.

The only question was, would she do the same?

#-#-#-#-#

He was staring at her and he wouldn't look away, not when Jackson groaned or twitched in his bonds, not when Erica tried to irately begin a conversation with him and him alone, and not even when Stiles came crashing through the door.

"Uh, no, no, no! Just me, it's just me." The spastic, nervous-wreck of a boy hastily told Erica as she pinned him to the wall by his throat. "Don't freak." He weakly muttered, glancing around at the rest of them for help.

Still, Isaac's eyes were on her. Adrianna shook off her discomfort and buried the fondness that had been growing for him in frustrating proportions as of late, to save Stiles' ass from being squashed.

"Erica, let him go." She commanded tiredly, pinching the bridge of her nose as a headache began to set in. "He smells that way because of the mountain ash."

As Erica stood back, releasing her weight from Stiles' neck, the boy nearly collapsed onto the floor, catching himself just before he looked like an even bigger fool. "How could you possibly know what he smells like to me?" Erica turned around to retort harshly. She'd been getting more and more agitated the longer she spent trying to win back Isaac's focus, only for him not to respond. It had only been a matter of time until she exploded.

Rolling her eyes, Adrianna raised her brows, silently asking Stiles if he was alright, before taking her time to reply to a furious Erica. "When you spend most of your childhood with a knife in your hand, as opposed to a doll or a soother, you tend to learn a thing or two about werewolves." She patronized as gently as she thought was safe.

Baring her fangs, Erica snarled in warning as her now fully healed side expanded and contracted with her heavy breathing. "Oh my god," Stiles interrupted what could have been a very serious altercation, seemingly without even noticing he'd done it. "I'd forgotten how scary you were."

Huffing out an amused laugh, Adrianna slapped her hand across Stiles' nearby shoulder. "You never cease to amaze me." She idly commented, following the boy's gaze as he gaped at the now blood-soaked rags clinging to each of her arms. "It's nothing." She assured him, stepping back, suddenly feeling self-conscious and way too vulnerable for her own liking.

Clearing his throat, Stiles did his best to look at anything other than Adrianna, which happened to be Jackson, as his sights landed over the tied-up teen and widened in surprise. "He okay?" Stiles asked uncertainly as the half-human, half-Kanima stirred.

"Well," Isaac spoke for the first time since he'd questioned Adrianna if she'd been alright, pushing off of the wall he'd been leaning on and approaching Jackson. "Let's find out." He finished, gripping Jackson's shoulder tightly as he pushed the boy back into his seat.

Adrianna's heart seemed to stop cold as Jackson's clawed, partly-scaled hand wrapped around Isaac's arm, his nails digging into the flesh of his arm as the not-quite Kanima twisted the werewolf's arm at an awkward angle.

"God," Isaac gasped, hunching over and following the movement of his arm in an attempt to stop it from breaking. It wouldn't work for long.

Blood began to dribble down Isaac's wrist, splattering onto the concrete beneath in as fast a rhythm as Adrianna's mind was racing. She felt frozen solid, her feet planted to the ground uselessly as she struggled to break free from her surprise and horror to help Isaac.

As bone began to splinter audibly and Isaac's grunting turned into a muted scream, Adrianna did the first thing she was able to. "Lupus et Dimissus!" She shouted, hardly even considering that the words she'd meant to speak in English, had come out in Latin.

Instantly, Jackson's grip over Isaac's arm slackened and the werewolf was released, left to stumble away from the not-so drugged Kanima and towards the group of startled onlookers.

"Okay, no one does anything like that again, okay?" Stiles loudly pronounced, obviously just as shaken by what had happened as the rest of them where. It reminded Adrianna that he was human—not some indestructible creature she had to worry about getting stabbed in the back by.

That was, until he turned on her, his eyes narrowed as he rested his hands on his hips. "And you," He pointed his chin at her in accusation. "What the hell did you say to him, huh?" Stiles exclaimed, throwing his arms out in his vexation. "What language was that, even?" He pressed.

"Look, I didn't even think it would work, alright." Adrianna hotly replied, unconsiously squaring her shoulders and drifting her hands closer to her belt, preparing for a fight. "I just knew that I didn't want Jackson to hurt Is—anyone," She corrected, her cheeks burning with embarassement as she was certain Isaac had caught onto her mistake.

"It just came out, okay?" She shrugged helplessly, running her inky, blood-stained fingers through her once clean hair. "I told him to release the wolf. How was I supposed to know he'd actually listen?" Her voice turned shrill and Stiles pressed his lips together, avoiding her heated gaze.

Frowning, she felt something sticky and warm clinging to her upper lip. A dagger of terror stabbed through her chest, stealing away her air as her fingers reached up to wipe away the tar-coloured blood dripping from her nose. "Dammit." She cursed, wiping away the substance on the back of her jeans only for more to replace it.

Hesitantly, as though afraid she might punch him at any moment, Stiles handed her a rag that'd been hanging over a rusty nail. Her eyes watered with appreciation as she accepted the rag, not caring that it was dirty as hell, and wiped at her nose as delicately as she dared.

She might have been dying, right then and there, and Adrianna wouldn't have been able to do a single thing about it. The daughter of death, she thought savagely, and I can't even tell when someone's been poisoning me.

"I thought the ketamine was supposed to put him out." Isaac grimaced, holding his injured arm close to his chest as it healed. Adrianna was grateful for the change in topic as she slowly built back the wall seperating her emotions from the world.

"Yeah, well," Stiles disputed unhappily. "Apparently this is all we're going to get. So let's just hope that whoever's controlling him just decided to show up tonight." He added morosely, running a hand over his closely-cropped hair.

"I'm here." Jackson gargled, his voice not sounding anything like it normally did. "I'm right here with you." His gravelly, hollow tone told them.

"Jackson," Stiles cautiously questioned, leaning down so he could be at eye-level with the teen. "Is that you?"

"It's not him." Adrianna found herself answering, holding herself together as shivers racked her frame.

"Us." Jackson confirmed her assumption, lolling his head to the side and opening his eyes to reveal a bright yellow iris encircling a black slit. "We're all here." He cryptically revealed.

Erica slowly backed away from Jackson and the others, stopping only when her back hit the wall. Isaac remained close to Stiles and her, whether out of bravery, loyalty, or stupidity, Adrianna didn't know, but she valued the effort none the less.

"Are you the one killing people?" Stiles continued to interrogate Jackson, who was apparently under the full control of his master now that they'd drugged the human part of him.

"We are the ones killing murderers." The master amended, snarling as Jackson's clumsy lips formed around the last word. He shuddered in his seat and Adrianna found herself wondering if the ropes and cables would hold him long enough to learn what they needed to.

Shaking his head and drawing closer, Stiles sat on his haunches as he pressed his fingers to his chin in thought. "So all the people you've killed so far—" He began to lay out.

"Deserved it." Jackson bit out before Stiles could finish.

"No," Adrianna breathed disappointedly, her hands trembling so severely that she had to tuck them close to her sides. "They didn't." Stiles didn't hear her, continuing to question the Kanima, but Isaac and Erica did. The latter narrowing her eyes on the back of Adrianna's skull as though to burn her secrets straight out of Adrianna's brain.

"See, we've got a little rule book that says you only go after murderers." Stiles casually brought up, trying to understand how kids barely older than them, could have been what the Kanima's master claimed they were if they had no criminal record or motive, as far as he was concerned. Adrianna admired his diligence to the law, but that didn't mean she agreed with it.

"Anything can break if enough pressure's applied." She said, drawing everyone's stares onto her. "Think about it," Adrianna told them, her brow rising of it's own accord. "Sooner or later, there's gonna be enough trust between the Kanima and his master that an incident like the pregnant woman won't ever happen again. He'll kill no matter who the victim is; innocent or not. It's just a matter of time."

"Okay, so right now," Stiles rephrased. "The people he's killing are all murderers, then?"

"All." Jackson interceded before Adrianna could give her two cents. "Each. Every one."

"You're really going to believe him?" She incredulously argued, spreading her arms wide, forgetting for a moment just how much blood she was losing now that the adrenaline was leeching out of her system. "The psycho going around orphaning babies and enslaving a possibly reasonable Kanima to his every beck and call. That guy?" Adrianna wondered, sticky, warm blood coating her wrists and dripping from her fingers.

"Do you have a better idea?" Erica parried grouchily.

"We don't have much choice," Stiles reminded them seriously. "Who did they murder?" He faced the Kanima and questioned, ignoring Adrianna's glare.

"Me." Jackson replied bitterly in the same unsettling voice.

"Wait, what?" Stiles reeled back, blindsided by the information. "What do you mean?"

"They murdered me." The master spoke through the Kanima, his vengeance crawling like a spider up Adrianna's spine and raising the hair on the back of her neck. "They murdered me."

Glancing between each other, Stiles, Isaac, and even Erica grudgingly ended up staring at Adrianna, who bristled under their judgment. "What?" She snapped defensively. "Why are all of you looking at me?"

"Because," Erica irritably admitted. "You're the only one of us that ever has a clue about what's going on."

"Well, sorry to disappoint you," She bowed mockingly. "But I'm not some medium that'll solve all your problems with a wave of my overgrown fingernails. All that I know about the Kanima comes from the Physiologus, which you guys stole."

"Okay, alright, settle down." Stiles interrupted jibberishly, his eyes remaining trained on the spot where Jackson was sitting. "More ketamine. The man needs ketamine." He informed them fearfully.

Her argument with Erica forgotten, Adrianna followed Stiles' line of sight all the way over to a very conscious, very mad Kanima. "Come on." The spastic boy insisted, waving his palm out for the drug from any one of them.

"We don't have any more." Isaac spoke up, never looking away from the slitted gaze of the Kanima as it trained it's sight on him.

"You used the whole bottle?" Stiles whined disbelievingly just as the Kanima roared, pulling it's arms out away from it's sides and snapping it's restraints with hardly any effort. "Um—okay, out, everybody out." He settled on saying, running straight for the door as the Kanima rose to it's feet, wicked sharp claws glittering ominously in the dim light as they dripped paralytic venom.

"I can take him." Adrianna refused to leave, withdrawing both her knives from her belt and biting her trembling lips until she tasted blood to keep them from giving away her weakness. "Go," She shouted to the others, standing directly in the Kanima's path. "I'll hold him off; stop him from killing someone else."

Stiles shrugged his shoulders, grabbing hold of Erica's arm and dragging her behind him. "Fine by me." He agreed, experiencing no qualms about saving his own skin.

That left Isaac standing in the doorway, watching her just as distrustfully as the Kanima was. "Go on," She pleaded with him, no longer able to hide the unsteadiness of her hands. "I can do this. I'm strong enough."

His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed thickly, the voices of his friends echoing in the background as they yelled at him to follow them and barricade the door. The longer Isaac refused to leave, the weaker Adrianna's resolve became and the thinner the Kanima's patience strung out.

"No," He finally said, glancing over at the black blood dripping ever more steadily from the widening wounds in her arms. "You're not."

Ordinarily, Adrianna would have been outraged by his lack of faith in her, but right then—with her mind muddled and fuzzy with exhaustion and her body surrendering to the poison running through her veins, killing her slowly but surely—Adrianna knew he was right.

She took one last look at the Kanima as it snarled at her with a mouthful of sharp, pointy teeth she already knew hurt like hell when they chomped down on you, and then used all the strength she'd saved to fight the creature, to flee from it. Adrianna crashed through the doorway, straight into Isaac's arms, and it was hardly a second after that that Stiles and Erica slammed the door shut, sliding a heavy looking metal shelf in front of the door to seal the Kanima within.

The creature slammed into the door but the combined weight of two werewolves, a weakened huntress, and a pale, spastic human was enough—on top of the barricade—to hold the door steady. As Adrianna breathed a sigh of relief, her muscles uncoiling and her lungs inhaling the scent of the beta wolf holding her closely to his chest, she wondered why she hadn't realized which side to chose sooner.

Even as the Kanima eventually broke free from it's temporary prison, pushing through the tin wall instead of the fortified door, Adrianna found that her mind stayed set on one thing.

He waited for me, She turned over and over again in her head. He waited for me after everything I've done to him; alone and against his friend's wishes.

"Thank you," Adrianna breathed into his neck, her sapped strength slowly returning to her the longer she leaned on Isaac for support. "For waiting." She added when he was silent for a while.

His heart beat beneath her fingers, steady and healthy, and she hardly needed to look up to know that he was smiling. "It was nothing." He tried to dismiss, but Adrianna wouldn't have it.

How many times has someone saved my life? She asked herself. The answer she came to was rather disheartening but at the same time, cemented her decision.

"No," Adrianna disagreed fervently. "It was something." Although her voice was barely louder than a whisper, between the two of them, it was as though she'd shouted at the top of her lungs.

For the first time in five years, Adrianna allowed herself to trust another person with no stipulations or conditions. She allowed herself to trust Isaac Lahey, hoping beyond all reason that she was right in doing so.

#-#-#-#-#

There were two bullets lodged in his right shoulder, another in the flesh of his thigh and a light graze across his chest where he'd just managed to avoid being Chris Argent's pin cushion. To say he was mad was an understatement.

Limping as fast as he could, Derek bit out a few choice curse words he knew would burn the ears of the kids he'd found himself surrounded with, before leaning against a nearby parked car to catch his breath.

For whatever unsettling, important reason that Derek had missed out on, the Argents had backed off their attack on him and Boyd—the latter of which he'd sent home only a little while ago. Scott was nowhere to be seen, so he was either inside, helping to drug and question Jackson, or he'd already been injured—maybe even killed—by the Argents.

Either way, Derek was on his own.

That was, at least, until the back door to the warehouse swung open to reveal Stiles, Erica, and Isaac—who had one arm slung around the shoulders of the only Argent he wasn't allowed to hurt right then, as though Adrianna had gotten on the wrong end of the Kanima's wrath.

Concern was the first thing he felt, which led to anger at being concerned in the first place, and ended there. Frowning, Derek hobbled away from the car, grimacing as he felt the wolf'sbane laced bullets digging deeper into his flesh with each unbalanced step.

"Hey, um," Stiles started, wringing his hands in front of himself uncomfortably as he noticed Derek's foul mood. "So we kind of lost Jackson inside" He sheepishly admitted as the older man's gaze drifted elsewhere.

Leaning most of her weight onto Isaac as the two of them came to a stop, it didn't surprise Derek at all when his beta hesitated near the line of mountain ash Stiles had been entrusted with pouring. What did surprise him, aside from the sight of Adrianna's tar-like blood oozing from half-bandaged wounds on her arms, was the huntress' reaction to the ash.

She shrunk away from the line, her expression one of startled panic as Isaac moved to reach out and gingerly press his hand against the invisible barrier the mountain ash had created. He was less than an inch away from touching the shield, which Derek knew would then became visible, glowing a thermal blue for as long as Isaac's body was in contact with it, until Adrianna stopped him.

Her inky fingers wound around Isaac's hand, pulling the appendage back to his side but not releasing her hold on it. Something troubling and suffocating layered itself inside Derek's lungs then, something like jealousy, as his beta squeezed the huntress' hand instead of pulling away.

"Careful." She whispered to him low enough for only someone with enhanced hearing to catch. "Trust me when I tell you, you don't want to do that. Gives you one hell of a headache afterwards." She shared in reference to the mountain ash barrier.

"Oh, my god. It's working." Stiles exclaimed, bringing Derek back to the present. "Oh this is—I did something!" He elatedly expressed, smiling ear to ear while Derek shook his head, trying to understand how Adrianna could possibly know what a mountain ash barrier felt like.

There was only one answer, he knew. She wasn't human. But then, she wasn't anything he'd ever heard about, either. Not a kitsune, were-creature, possessed human, rare spirit or forgotten legend.

Her eyes found his the longer he thought about it and maybe it was the nearly full moon overhead, or the black paint lining her eyes, but something inhuman surfaced within her a second before a howl pierced the night.

"Scott?" Derek wondered, tuning into the distinct pitch of the howl as he distantly recognized it. Even though it had been nearly half a year since Scott had last demonstrated that particular talent, Derek didn't think he'd ever forget the boy's first real howl and the screech that had come before it.

"What?" Stiles floundered to catch up with Derek, glancing around himself as though he'd see Scott rounding the corner any moment.

"Break it." Derek commanded as the howl's echo faded into nothing. He didn't have long before Scott was in real danger.

Shaking his head, Stiles stubbornly contested him. "What? No way."

"Fine," Derek grumbled, turning away from the only human among them and towards the enigma of a girl that was neither human, nor beast. "Adrianna?" He asked her, gesturing to the solid line of ash with his chin.

"I—" She stuttered, tightening her hold over Isaac's hand until her fingers turned white from blood loss. "I can't." Adrianna admitted; her level, slightly guarded heart-rate told him she wasn't lying.

He was one step closer to uncovering her secret but one step behind helping Scott. "Is it him?" Derek thought Adrianna asked him, her forest irises trained on him. "Is he the one meant to die tonight?"

"Okay, hold up." Stiles blurted, his tone holding authority Derek never thought would be present in the uncoordinated teen. "What's going on here? Is someone gonna die?"

Time felt like it was slipping between Derek's fingers, out of his reach. He felt his desperation growing as Stiles refused to help him save Scott. Throwing caution out the window, he bluntly answered the boy's question. "Scott's dying!" He shouted in an attempt to make Stiles understand.

Eyes widening in panic and surprise, Stiles seemed to tremble with nervous anticipation. "Okay, what? How do you know that?" He pressed Derek's last vestige of patience.

"Oh my god, Stiles," He complained. "I just know; break it!" Derek roared.

His movements wired and tense, Stiles hurried to reach down and push apart the line of mountain ash, breaking the barrier and allowing Derek to rush through to the back of the warehouse, following his sense of smell and his hearing to where he knew Scott to be.

Pushing open the rusted door of a nearby shed or storage room, Derek's reflexes were put to the test as he encountered yet another Argent waiting for him behind the door. Victoria swung a large kitchen knife at him and he ducked out of the way nearly a millisecond too late to avoid the gash in his side the blade would have inflicted, had he been any slower.

Across the room, on the floor, Derek spotted Scott along with the distinct scent of wolf'sbane in the air. Victoria had tried to poison Scott, the only thing she hadn't counted on, if her surprised expression was anything to go by, was that the werewolf she'd though to be a lone omega, had a pack of his own.

Snarling out the rage and envy he'd been forced to bottle up until then, Derek easily evaded Victoria's strikes and slashes, pushing her into a corner as he tried to break free and help Scott.

Despite her appearance, Allison's mother was much stronger than she looked, blocking and deflecting his blows with her blade and attacking in a clearly trained, experienced fashion as she lost the high ground but kept the element of surprise.

When she pinned his arm behind the door, raising her knife over his heart to plunge it into the pumping organ and kill him, Derek only saw two choices. He could take his chances and let her stab him—maybe he'd live if he was lucky—or he could fight back with what was available to him.

Derek had always been a creature of survival. He was a Hale after all, and Hales were especially good at preserving their own lives. It usually involved running and hiding, but this time, it meant sinking his teeth into Victoria Argent's shoulder and using her pain as a distraction in order to disarm her.

She didn't scream, although the gurgling in her throat was a clear sign that she wanted to, and when the knife was jerked out of her hand, clattering onto the cement floors, Derek could taste her defeat. Still, she fought him.

Lurching her empty hands against him, pushing, shoving, punching, and scratching, Victoria carved out enough room between them for her to escape off into the night. Derek didn't follow her.

Instead, he started over to Scott's side, kneeling down beside the boy and taking hold of his shoulders to try to wake him. Looking over at the vaporizer puffing purple smoke, Derek didn't need to smell it to know it was wolf'sbane, he felt it in the way his bones were heavier than normal and his eyesight became fuzzy and unclear.

Derek could have sworn that he'd smelled the very same type, perhaps the very same plant, before as he wrapped one of Scott's arms around his shoulders and lugged the nearly comatose boy out of harm's way.

Why does it smell so familiar? He asked himself, disregarding all the times he'd been shot or poisoned by an Argent with the same stuff. It had been more recent than that, perhaps only a few moments ago when he'd breathed in the scent. And then, it all fell into place.

The reason why Isaac was so obsessed with her, why she was bleeding black, and even why he'd felt himself seeing Kate in her place—and not just the familial resemblance—vivid dreams he'd never admit to anyone but himself.

Adrianna Argent wasn't their ally. She'd been poisoning them all from the start.

The only thing Derek couldn't figure out, was why exposure to wolf'sbane would be killing her as well. He needed to get his hands on the bestiary. Derek needed to find out what Adrianna was, before she finished what she'd started and killed them all.