Nononononono
Lydia's hands skimmed helplessly over the blood on his shirt, on his jeans, and still spilling out the hole in his stomach. A puddle of red was forming on the floor, under where he was curled around the wound, in a loose fetal position. His eyes were closed, skin deathly pale.
Her breathing sped, crescendoed, nearing hyperventilation. This was bad.
Why did you take it out?
He should have left it in. Like the beast just a few yards from the door, heaving its last growling breaths. An arrow stuck his chest, just above the heart. Blood loss hadn't been what killed him, just the inability to heal vital organs in time.
He'd been hit while in wolf form, human features twisted and marred into a thick uncaring mask. Something cruelty violence killing had carried him further from humanity than Lydia had ever seen in a wolf.
Lydia moved her gaze back to the boy on the floor under her helpless hands.
Stiles open your eyes
He wasn't moving. He hadn't even been able to say her name before hitting the floor. The pool of blood was growing in area, spreading spreading spreading—
Her breath sped up and hitched and choked and she struggled to see beyond the building pressure, the pain behind her eyes.
Have to stop the scream.
How? What could save him? Lydia didn't have to be a banshee to know that his wound was almost guaranteed to be fatal.
Unless...
On her hands and knees she dragged herself across the floor, streaking the wood with red. Out the door across the yard to where the wolf now lay still, huddled at the foot of a tree.
His fangs were still visible.
Searching hands found a rock, bigger than her fist, heavier than her head. One, two blows to his jaw and she held a tooth in her hand. An unnaturally large and sharp canine.
Good for biting.
She crawled back to him, back to Stiles. Braced her knees against his back. Pulled up his shirt with one hand, almost numb with cold, baring the ugly bloody tear in his stomach.
Her other hand still clutched the wolf tooth in white clumsy fingers. Lydia positioned it over the soft tissue above his hip, poised to slice through skin and tissue and muscle.
As she slid the tooth in, her hand convulsed, fear almost overcoming her determination. She almost pulled up, yanked it out.
He didn't even flinch at the new wound, the false bite she was simulating. If he breathed at all, it was too shallow for her to tell.
She pulled the tooth out, too, for if this didn't work, he was already gone.
Blood leaked almost sluggishly from this wound, slow and reluctant.
ScreamscreamscreamNO—
Lydia bit down on her lip, clenching her teeth until she felt her own blood start to flow. Wait have to wait please Stiles wake up
She moved around his still body to sit by his head. His face was still warm to the touch. She brushed her fingers over his cheek, feeling the blessed heat set her numbed skin on fire.
If her fingers are freezing, then his skin is cooler than it feels.
What color were his eyes? She hadn't thought to check the werewolf's eyes, glowing gold or blue or redredred it has to be red is where the power is
She strained her memory to remember only a few minutes back—the pain in her head made it almost impossible to focus. His—the wolf's—eyes were half closed, rolled back in near death or full death...barely any spark left in his mutated body...must have just been turned within a few months by the Alpha pack, running wild through Beacon Hills, or maybe further by now…
But he had to have killed. Scarred from battle as he was, he had at least killed some humans, because—
Because.
The waves emanating off him tasted of death. Not just of his own, but of the innocents he had taken, like the ones she felt every day.
And then she knew for sure, the color sparking dully under his half closed lids was a pure icy unnatural—
Blue.
There hadn't ever been any hope, then. The tooth she'd torn from his head had never held any power to turn. To heal wounds.
The pool of Stiles's blood had reached a diameter longer than his entire body. Her knees were soaked from kneeling in it. When she lifted her palm from the floor, it left a handprint—an island in the sea of red—until the flood rushed in. Blood filled the little empty space and covered any sign that her hand had ever been there.
As she watched it, watched his blood erase her handprint, something came undone in her head. The pressure in her brain amplified until it roared in her ears, and all her practiced restraint snapped into splinters.
She screamed.
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Screaming was not like she remembered. Before everything, before a chance encounter, a bite, had awoken the banshee inside her, screaming was like...speaking. Singing. Just a little louder and it took a little more energy.
Now her scream was an all-consuming creature in and of itself, clawing its way up her throat, raking against her vocal cords. Blinding and deafening her, she lost all control and sensibility with just the singular unfocused thought hurtshurtshurtsHURTS
Then it was over. She didn't know how much time had passed. Her throat was simultaneously dry and on fire. The pain in her skull was dim now by comparison. Her eyes could focus again.
Stiles had not moved.
Her fingers traced a shaky path down his cheek, leaving a sticky trail. A drunken line playing connect-the-dots with the moles on his jaw.
Usually by now he would be taking her face in his hands, thumbs stroking gently across her cheeks. Are you okay. Did you see anything.
Nothing.
Lydia, look at me.
Look—at his deep brown eyes that definitely aren't dead or empty.
Did I break anything?
Just your personal record.
I want to lie down now.
I can make you some soup…
No, I don't want any. Come with me.
Tears streamed silently down her face. Wind gusted through the open door, chilling the moisture on her cheeks into icy rivulets.
I'm cold, Stiles.
We don't have any more blankets.
Then warm me up yourself.
She stretched out on the floor. Her cheek rested on the floor, in the cooling pool of blood. She could have lapped it up with her tongue, if she'd tried.
Her hair spilled over her shoulder, falling into the mess. She scooted closer, hand searching for some warmth still left in him.
She ended up curled into a ball, tucked against his torso, her eyes level with his lips. She studied them. Parted slightly. White. Dry. Chapped, a little.
He would press them against her forehead, against her eyelids, and then, when she let him, against her own lips.
She leaned in toward them, ducking her head to let his still lips touch her forehead.
Her skin warmed slightly. Like there was an echo of life inside his mouth.
One bloodstained hand reached up to hold his head there, against hers. The blood had dried on her palm, leaving no marks behind where she touched him.
Please don't leave. I need
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She went somewhere.
Without moving.
She drifted.
Fugue state.
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He wasn't warm anymore.
She was curled up against a cold corpse.
I should move.
I can't.
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Dark.
It was dark out. The night—the next—she didn't know.
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Cold.
It was an intense cold. Numbing her body one portion of a time, icicles creeping around her heart.
She shivered. She couldn't stop.
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Quiet.
It was so quiet. No sound except her own breath ghosting in and out.
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And something else.
Droning. Humming. Buzzing.
Wings?
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An insect's wings.
The fly was back.
An unseasonable fly—shouldn't it have frozen by now?
It landed on his cheek. Stepped around. Could it taste the death? Lydia was almost sure it could.
She could hear it.
Like the whispers that led her toward dead bodies, that told her what to draw, they weren't words exactly.
She knew, though. Knew it to be testing this body, poking at it, sinking into disappointment.
A fly.
She lifted her head. Blood dripped sticky from her hair, her scalp, bathing her in streaks, rivulets, of red.
It...turned to her. Its many eyes all seemed to whisper in unison as they locked with hers. She regarded it, listening to the whispers. The banshee squirmed inside her, uncomfortable.
Bad.
Other.
Dangerous.
Powerful.
It tasted like death. Reeked of it.
Pressure pulsed against her skull, a dull warning.
She ignored it.
She held its gaze, listening to what it asked. Said. Not a question, not an order, something in between the two. An offer. An invitation. A proposal.
Light bloomed in her blank brain. The whispers grew, insistent, until her ears rang. There was hope. A way out.
Her dream flashed before her eyes—the tree stump, the fireflies around her, the dead body rising, lumbering on unsteady sinister legs. Stilted. Jarring. Reanimated.
Her dry unfeeling lips parted, quivering with cold and shock. When she spoke, for the first time since the scream, her voice was thin, stringlike. It broke on the first syllable.
"Yes."
It twitched one wing. Pleasure? Excitement?
She was certain the banshee's wail already building inside her would soon rush past her lips and show her the consequences of what she was about to do.
"Save him."
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