The next few day Lydia was consumed by anxiety although she tried not to show it. She was irritable, clumsy and jumped every time a door slammed or a locker shut. However, she had managed to convince Stiles that she didn't need to be watched over every hour after he had followed her into the girl's room by accident. She had finally found some solace during her free period when everyone else in the pack was dispersed and trapped in other classes. She had claimed one of the outside tables as her own and had spread her books out so no one else could sit. The rest of the outdoor eating area was fairly clear but she just wanted the precaution. She had managed to finish both her math assignment and start on an essay about whether or not The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was a feminist novel before Malia came sauntering up just as the bell rang for lunch.
Lydia had her nose in the Anne Bronte book, the kind that smelled like an old bookstore, with delicate gold details around the border and a spine that split at the bottom from poor care and multiple owners. While most of the rest of the class had gotten the new copies, there weren't enough and Lydia happily took the copy with some character to it. "Pleasure reading?" Malia asked over Lydia's shoulder, which made her jump and slice her finger on the corner of the page. Malia only laughed and plunked herself down on the bench across from Lydia, carelessly shoving her books away.
"It's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," Lydia said as if that was supposed to mean something to Malia. Without taking her eyes off the page Lydia scribbled a few words down on her paper in pristine printing, while putting pressure on her paper cut with a napkin she had in her bag.
"Never heard of it, apparently pretty dangerous though." Lydia rolled her eyes, but said nothing. Malia picked up one of Lydia's textbooks as if it was soaking wet. "Latin?" she asked. "Why bother? It's dead."
"Yes, but how many times has Latin come up in anything to do with the supernatural?" Lydia whispered as she grabbed the book from Malia and stuffed it in her bag.
"I don't know, it all just looks like gibberish to me," Malia shrugged. "You should eat something, not that there is much room." Malia gestured to Lydia's use of books as a barbed wire fence.
"Not hungry," Lydia grumbled without looking at her.
"Did you eat breakfast?" Malia rolled her eyes when Lydia refused to answer and left to get herself something to eat. There was a good possibility for Malia to get distracted for a while and Lydia took the opportunity to get her attention back onto Anne Bronte's words but as soon as her fingertips grazed her pencil Stiles plopped himself down beside her, followed by Scott on the other side. Stiles reached over and smacked Lydia's book shut as if it had insulted him and folded her papers up into a hurried pile. The gush of air from the pages excited Lydia's hair into a burst of temporary liveliness and she frantically flattened it.
"Lunch is not for studying, free periods and class is time for studying but lunch, lunch is the time for strictly eating and pleasant discussion that won't elevate my heart rate and make me consider eating Prozac like M&M's," Stiles spit out all in one breath. Scott let out an exasperated breath and took a bite of the lone apple he had in front of him.
"If it's strictly for eating, where is your food?" Lydia asked annoyed.
"Oh, I'm not hungry," Stiles answered.
"He's just rattled because Theo's gone AWOL, nobody has seen him since Eichen," Scott said with little interest.
"Is that really surprising?" asked Lydia.
"Exactly, he isn't part of the pack and-" Suddenly Scott's attention was snapped by the familiar growling sounds coming from the doors of the cafeteria, his eyes shot over to Malia mumbling vicious curse words and holding onto her tray so tightly her very apparent claws had cut right through the plastic. Malia threw her tray on the ground and bolted over to a table just a few over from theirs, her eyes alarmingly blue. She was headed towards a boy Scott knew she had never spoken to before and yet she looked at him as if he had taken everything away from her. Scott's worried expression translated to Lydia and Stiles when they turned around to see what he was looking at. "Shit, she's going right for him," Stiles breathed.
"Who is that?" Lydia asked.
"Why are you here?" Malia barked, her voice echoed up to shake the leaves of the tree that draped across the table. The boy's head shot up as if her voice had plunged right into his spine. He face was like a poorly drawn animation, with teeth etched this way and that and lines that creased the edges of his eyes when his mouthed moved upwards, he was a bit rough but completely harmless.
"Me?" the boy asked innocently. "I'm a student here."
"You shouldn't be here!" There was a deep seeded hatred that seemed to burn through Malia's skin so apparent it could have been an instance of bioluminescence. It was an emotion that not even the best actress could ever replicate, but it wasn't towards the boy. Lydia felt Stiles tense next to her, his jaw clenched and set oddly as he watched.
The boy was startled but seemed to take it as a joke instead of an actual threat. He said something that Lydia couldn't hear and his words made Malia get closer. The boy suddenly changed his disposition when her clenched fist collided with his cheekbone, flailing his neck backwards like a sunflower in the wind. "Shit," Stiles breathed, he and Scott jumped up in sync and ran towards Malia, but Liam who had seen it happening from the window as a crowd began to form made it to her first and pushed her away from the boy. She fought against Liam's hold on her, she moved like a starving cat on the hunt, graceful yet determined but Liam threw her to the ground away from the boy who bolted as soon as he got the chance.
Scott, Lydia and Stiles reached them and attempted to block the sight of Malia's claws and fangs from the group of excited teenagers eager to see a fight. Malia looked up at them, her sharp collarbone almost poking through her skin as she gasped in small breaths of air. She caught Scott's glare, the glare of an alpha and suddenly all the hostility she carried dissipated, just like that as if he had cleansed it right out of her, but it was replaced by something much worse; fear. Lydia tried to reach out to Malia to help her up but Malia flinched away from the touch and pushed herself up. She was barely on her feet for a second before she ran without a look back. She was too fast for Lydia to even attempt to catch up with her so she didn't even try.
"What the hell?" Stiles hissed, rubbing his head in disbelief.
"Liam come with me, we've got to find her in case she tries to attack anyone else," Scott said sternly. "You guys go find Kira and Hayden and make sure they are okay. Whatever just happened was not Malia." Stiles and Lydia nodded in response and watched Scott and Liam leave the school with a wake of confused students behind who in the normal teenage response were either brushing off the incident or reviewing the video of Malia's outburst they had gotten on their phone.
Stiles pulled Lydia back over to their table. "I think it's best if we all just get out of here, between what happened with you and Malia two days ago and now this people are going to be suspicious," he whispered.
"No one saw Malia and I," said Lydia, shoving her books and papers haphazardly into her bag.
"Not that we know of, but we can't risk anything else happening so you go get Hayden and I'll get Kira and we will meet out at the jeep."
Lydia begrudgingly agreed and they went their separate ways. Lydia readjusted her bag nervously and set out to one of the chemistry labs, which she was pretty sure Hayden had right after lunch. The bell was going to ring soon and she figured it would be easier to find her going into the classroom than somewhere in the halls. Lydia hadn't gotten much sleep at all in the past week and the mirror that morning unfortunately reflected back the ugly purple bags she couldn't even cover up with makeup no matter how hard she tried. That day her tiredness came in both forms, physical and mental. Her body was sluggish, it needed rest and yet her mind was telling her to run for miles to burn the worries and anxiety right out. The dream she had had about Malia hadn't been the only one predicting the downfall of someone and each night she woke up startled and spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, wiping tears from her cheeks and spending a great deal of time at the window trying to distract herself with imagining who else in Beacon Hills was awake. It was all fruitless conflicting thoughts, begging to sleep and yet too afraid to see anything that materialized when her eyes were closed. The night before it was someone she didn't know, another girl who instead the man and woman had killed with a bullet straight through her temple. Lydia woke up to blood dripping from her nose and her pajamas stuck to her like second skin from sweat. She couldn't tell if it was real or not or if Hayley Knight was really another supernatural creature in Beacon Hills. Lydia had never heard the name before, but that didn't mean anything. Dreams and visions weren't new to her, in the scheme of things they were but given what she was they couldn't be stopped. It was as if her mind would be ripped from reality, warped and mangled until spotty pictures would appear. They weren't clear, but like a picture half developed death played out in front of her in all forms. Mocking her with visions of things she couldn't control, of voices screaming with skin prickling anguish belonging to people too far from saving. There was a hatred that came with who she was, it scared her that she didn't know how it worked. There was no algorithm or equation she could solved to have answers, there was no textbook or encyclopedia on the inner workings of a banshee. She was completely alone in finding those answers, but she would because Eichen House had ignited a flame inside of her.
The bell rung for the next period just as Lydia arrived at the door of the chemistry lab. But as the halls began to clear and students filed into the classroom, Hayden was nowhere to be seen. Lydia began to get nervous, she had seen Hayden that morning so she knew she was at school. Lydia took out her phone and quickly dialed Hayden's number, her anxiety increased with each unanswered ring until the tone clicked with a connection.
"Hayden, where are you?" Lydia blurted before Hayden had time to say anything.
"I'm in the bathroom. Lydia, something is wrong. I-I can't control my transformation."
"I'll be right there."
Lydia burst into the bathroom, at first sight it appeared deserted except for the last stall door that was locked and heavy breathing filled with panic came from behind it. "Hayden?" Slowly the locked shifted with a subtle click and the door creaked open. Lydia tried to smile through the caution she took as she held the door open and took in Hayden in the same condition Malia was in although Hayden's eyes had the colour of sallow skin embedded with amber. There was a distance in those eyes as she took a step back and bumped into the pipes of the toilet. Hayden was breathing all wrong, she had begun to gasp like the oxygen was suddenly sucked out of the room at the sight of Lydia. Her teeth had sharpened dangerously and her claws dug deeply into her palm as she tried to control the fear that even without the ability to detect chemo-signals Lydia could tell was radiating from Hayden.
"Why can't I control it?" Hayden's voice was strained as she tried to reign herself in but fear seemed to become its own entity in that moment, distant from her conscious and it played with her like a puppet on a string. A ghostly hypodermic of adrenaline jabbed into Hayden's heart and emptied itself instantly, she felt cornered in the stall by Lydia and with fear in the driver's seat the non-human part, the primal part of Hayden emerged as she reached out with her claws fully accentuated for Lydia, who tried to avoid the attack but Hayden managed to shallowly slice open the skin on Lydia's shoulder.
Lydia slammed the door trapping Hayden in the stall, ignoring the scratches on her arm that only bled slightly. "Hayden!" Lydia cried. "This isn't you, we don't know what's happening but something is affecting supernatural creatures." Lydia tensed as she put all her strength into keeping the barrier between her and Hayden in place. "It's Lydia! I'm not going to hurt you, I need you to try and calm down and we will figure this out together.
"Lydia!" It was an anguished cry that made Lydia's skin crawl. Hayden was fighting against her own thoughts, which Lydia knew all too well.
"Hayden, this is going to sound stupid but I need you to try it. Focus on me, on my voice." The door shook and Lydia planted her feet harder. "There is nothing to be afraid of right now, in this room nothing will hurt you. Focus Hayden and tell me four things you can see." A growl emanated from Hayden but the resistance lessened a bit on the door, she had turned towards another wall in her restraint and began to claw. "Hayden, four things you can see, name them off for me."
"Tile!" Hayden cried against barred teeth.
"Okay good, three more."
"Toilet…lock…and a hook."
Lydia took a deep breath and spoke again a bit softer. "Now tell me three things you can feel."
The growling had stopped but her breathing was still ragged. "The toilet paper, the bricks on the wall and…the paint on the bricks." Hayden could feel the fear in her chest that had taken over dissipate, she thought it had wanted to protect her but she wasn't in any danger and somewhere in her mind she knew that.
"Okay, two things you can smell," Lydia said breathlessly through the door.
Hayden took a deep breath in through her nose, not caring that it was a bathroom stall she was in. "Your coconut shampoo and cleaning products."
Lydia relaxed at the stillness from behind the door. "Good Hayden, last one. Just one thing you can hear."
Now that her ears had stopped ringing and the internal screaming match had ceased Hayden felt silence float calmly around her or she would have had her stomach not dropped at the frantic sound of Lydia's heartbeat coming from right outside the stall door, which had been torn up with claw marks that would be hard to explain to the next person in there. "Your heartbeat," she sighed with uneasiness.
"How are you feeling?" Lydia asked.
"I'm okay now…I'm fine."
Lydia slowly opened the door and stepped back to allow Hayden out and the first thing she noticed were the scratches on Lydia's shoulder that dampened her top with speckles of blood. Lydia saw her looking and covered it with her hand. "I'm okay too," she said with a warm smile. "We need to get out of here though before something else happens. What just happened to you happened to Malia earlier but she took off and now Liam and Scott are out looking for her. Stiles and Kira are waiting for us." Hayden's attention was on her hands, where her claws still protruded prominently. "Let's go and keep your hands in your pockets," Lydia said as she guided Hayden out of the washroom and out to the back parking lot.
"What the hell took you so long?" Stiles shouted as he sprang from the jeep. He glanced down at his watch, "it's been half an hour. If Kira hadn't fallen asleep I would have come and found you, but I was stuck out here losing my mind. You know a text would have been great, just a little 'hey Stiles, I'm fine but it might be a few minutes', how hard is that?"
"We had a situation," Lydia hissed under her breath. She gestured for Hayden to get in the car and pulled Stiles aside slightly, who in his frenzied state gripped her shoulder and moved her hair aside to expose the scratches in Lydia skin.
"Are you okay? What happened?"
"I'm fine, but when I found Hayden she was transformed. Not fully, but she was just like Malia, aggressive and acting on what looked like fear. She's fine now but she wasn't able to control herself and her claws are still out. She can't get them to go back. I managed to calm her down, she had really worked herself up but she's okay."
Stiles sighed and ran his thumb gently along the scratches, examining them. "Kira's fine, she said nothing abnormal has happened to her. Except that she was up all night finishing a history project, hence the backseat nap."
"Do you think it is just the werewolves then?"
"Are you forgetting your episode?"
"I don't think what happened to me is related to Malia and Hayden. I think there is more than one thing at large right now."
Stiles threw up his hands in frustration. "Of course there is, because it's not hard enough battling other supernatural creatures but now you are all going after each other and here I am human with no healing ability-"
"I don't have healing ability."
"No super speed-"
"Kira and I don't have that either."
"No powers for defence."
"You have the bat."
"Yes, thank you Lydia I do have the bat. No one appreciates the bat." A soft fluttering vibration put Stiles' back pocket into motion. "It's Scott," he announced examining the text. "They found Malia she's at the place that used to be her den."
Stiles ran to the jeep with Lydia on his heels, there was a bit of a sputter but it started easily enough. Kira had woken up and was fully alert in the backseat beside Hayden. "They found her?" she asked.
Stiles went to answer but his phone burst to life, it was his dad. "Oh please God, don't have him tell us Malia murdered someone. That is the last thing we need right now," Stiles mumbled as he set the phone on the dash and turned it on speaker.
"Stiles, where are you?" Sheriff Stilinski's voice boomed through the phone. "I've gotten reports of a coyote running rampant downtown, do you know anything about that."
"Shockingly, I just might."
"Is she okay, what's going on?"
"We aren't sure," Lydia said. "We are headed to them right now, Scott and Liam are with her." Lydia hesitated before she spoke again. "Sheriff, did you get a call for a body last night. Hayley Knight."
There was silence for a minute as everyone in the car stared intently at Lydia. "Y-yes," said the sheriff. "But her death was ruled as a suicide, she was found at the bottom of the church on Oriole Street with a-"
"A gunshot to the temple," Lydia finished.
"Yes, Lydia what do you know?"
"It wasn't a suicide."
"The gun was in her hand, only her fingerprints are on it and there are no suspects."
"Her finger pulled the trigger but it wasn't her idea to pick it up."