Chapter 6

At night, she's too afraid to go to sleep because she knows that the dreams will come back. They always do; variations of the same theme.

She's killed them all dozens of times over – Isaac, Scott, Derek and his family, Lydia, the twins, her father and Stiles and Scott's mum. Kate is standing next to her and egging her on, telling her what a good job she's doing, praising her for becoming such a good hunter, for helping to keep the town safe by killing the monsters and those who stood with them. And the Allison in the dream loves it, loves the thrill of the hunt and pleasure of the kill, soaking the compliments up with a pleased little smile while her weapons are dripping blood.

The dream when she kills Peter is the worst, though.

Because Kate isn't in the dream. There's no one telling Allison to hunt and kill, it's all her, on her own, and she puts a round of wolfsbane bullets in Peter's chest and watches his veins turn black as he writhes in pain on the bloodstained floor before she pours gasoline all over him and sets him on fire.

She wakes with her heart pounding like a battle drum. It's barely three in the morning and she doesn't want to go back to sleep, because the mere idea of another dream like that is almost unbearable.

The apartment is dark, and when she peers inside of her father's bedroom, he's fast asleep. She thinks about waking him, telling him about the dreams, but he'd want the whole story. If he knew what she and the others had done to find the Nemeton, he'd feel guilty and she can't bear the thought of him looking at her like he's responsible for what she's becoming.


Deucalion opens the door in a white tank top and soft grey work-out pants, but his eyes are sharp and awake and he gives no indication that she interrupted his sleep, nor any surprise that she showed up at this time at night.

"Can we do some hand-to-hand sparring? I can't sleep, I just need some distraction."

Deucalion doesn't question the lie, but his smile has a sharp edge. "Are you quite sure that's the kind of distraction you came here for in the middle of the night?"

It's not like she hasn't thought about it, about coming up here and letting him strip her bare and press her down with his body as he fucks the last echoes of the dream out of her. But there's a part of her that wants to punish herself for her dream self's behavior, a part that craves pain and violence, and she's reluctant to get those things mixed up.

"Not tonight," she says firmly, and he shrugs.

"Suit yourself."

Going hand-to-hand against him is as ineffective as it was five months ago when they started out, but by now she knows better than to throw everything into the first attack, remembering his advice to stall for time. She ducks and evades and tries to slow him down as much as she can until she gets too tired, the strain of the fighting and the lack of sleep taking their toll, and her defense becomes sloppy.

He knocks her down with less force than he'd normally use, and she doesn't bother getting up again, rolling on her back and staring at the ceiling until she starts seeing imaginary patterns on the white.

Deucalion stands over her. "Are you ready to talk now?"

The words spill from her mouth easily, and she lets them, tired of trying to hold it all inside, piling up all her anxiety and her fears because she's scared of what would happen if she let anyone know. She's been doing that for so long now, and it hasn't made it better, so what does she have to lose?

"Deaton said it would change us. The surrogate sacrifice." When Deucalion is frowning at her, she realizes that Scott probably never told him what they did the night of the lunar eclipse before Scott went out to meet Deucalion. She gives him a quick rundown of what happened, watching his frown deepen, confusion replaced by disapproval.

"He said it would always be there, like a darkness around our hearts. And he was right. I can feel it. And I'm scared of it, every day, that it might just... take over. That the darkness becomes me, and turns me into someone like Gerard or Kate and I won't be able to do anything about it."

Deucalion's lip curls in distaste. "Good old Alan. He never changes. Never short of a helpful piece of advice. Except of course, it rarely ever helps anyone because he's so cryptic about it and you don't figure out what he means until it's too late."

"Don't," she says sharply. "He was helping us when we needed him, while you and your pack were out there terrorizing Derek and Scott and Scott's mum and killing Erica and Boyd and toying with Lydia and Danny. He might be a little vague, but you don't get to pass judgment on him."

He pulls back. As long as she's been coming to him, neither of them have mentioned that it wasn't all that long ago that they were enemies, an unspoken rule she has now broken. For a moment, she thinks that she may have gone too far, and she bites her tongue to force herself not to try and apologize. He doesn't deserve an apology, not over this, not when she meant every word she said.

His tone is considerably colder than before. "Very well. You're right, of course. Just keep in mind that I never pretended to be anything but what I am. I never claimed to be the good guy. Unlike your friend Dr. Deaton."

"He's not my friend," she snaps. "I don't even like him all that much."

The vehemence of her protest seems to surprise him. It surprises her, too. She has no particularly strong feelings for Deaton one way or the other. In a backwards way, what she's trying to say is that sure, maybe she was defending Deaton just now. Maybe she hasn't forgiven and will never quite forgive Deucalion for his actions when he and his pack came into town. But at the end of the day, she's still here with him now; it's him she's been coming to for help all this time, not Deaton, not Scott, not anyone else.

Perhaps Deucalion hears what she doesn't say, because his expression softens. "I'm sure he meant well. What I meant to say was, he was being very vague about that darkness that dangerous little experiment of his supposedly left in you and I don't think it's necessarily what you think it is."

"I can feel it, though. It makes me want to–" Her voice breaks. "You don't know the kind of things it makes me want to do sometimes," she whispers, as if saying it louder would make it more real.

He reaches out to take her right hand, and she lets him even though part of her wants to pull back and refuse the comfort. Their fingers enlace, and suddenly, his claws come out, sharp against the back of her hand, almost but not quite breaking the skin. When she tries to pull away, the pressure increases, little drops of blood seeping to the surface. She looks up and meets his red-eyed stare, and realizes it's not about comfort at all.

"What kinds of things? Kill me? Kill Scott? Kill them all? Slash their throats and rip out their hearts and bathe in their blood until all you see is red and you're the last one standing?" He tightens his hold a little more until the pain makes her wince. "You think I don't know what that feels like? You think I don't feel it?"

He lets go and she pulls her hand away, five neat little wounds on the back. Rubbing her left palm against it, she wipes the blood off and winces at the sting.

"It's what loss does to people. When something precious is taken from you and you want to lash out at the world because there is no way of getting it back. I hate to break it to you, Allison, but that has nothing to do with whatever darkness Alan says the sacrifice left inside of you."

"If that's not it, then what?"

"I wouldn't know." He shrugs. "I'd tell you to ask Alan, if I thought there was any hope of getting a straight answer out of that man. If I had to harbor a guess, I'd say what it does is feed your fears of turning into a killer, your self-doubts, the way you keep second-guessing yourself. Or perhaps the self-destructive streak that makes you seek out the company of a man who, as you've just so fittingly mentioned, was terrorizing your friends not too long ago."

Despite his glib tone, she knows he's serious. While she's willing to consider the merit of his first suggestion – that perhaps her dreams are not so much premonitions about the person she's becoming as they are manifestations of her self-doubts – she knows that he's off about the latter. If anything, he's been the only one who's been able to keep her darkness at bay. It's part of why she came to him in the first place; why she keeps coming back.

She doesn't tell him that. His earlier statement about not claiming to be anything but the villain still echoes in her mind, and she doesn't think he's ready to hear her admit that coming to him is quite possibly the furthest from self-destruction she's been in a long time.


Unsurprisingly, telling her friends is much harder than telling Deucalion was, the expectations of friendship weighting her down because she knows she should have come to them first, months ago. It seems too little, too late now, but it's all she can offer.

Seated at the McCall's kitchen table with everyone gathered around her, she can't even look Isaac in the face when she describes her dreams.

"Deucalion says –"

"Wait a moment," Stiles interrupts her. "Deucalion? As in 'Death, Destroyer of Worlds, Demon Wolf' Deucalion? That Deucalion? Since when are you discussing things with him before you even tell your friends? That is us, FYI. Actually, no, since when are you talking to him at all? It's bad enough that Scott and Derek didn't kill him when they could, now you're what - sitting together over a cup of tea, sharing funny little anecdotes about the Nemeton?" He's worked himself up to a full-blown rage, his tone rising and his hands flailing in a way Allison is sure is meant to be reproachful.

She winces and admits, "I've been training with him."

All eyes at the table are on her, and Stiles gapes at her. "You've been– "

Before he can return to his rant, Scott quietly cuts him off. "Do you trust him?" There's no accusation in the question, not in the way he's looking at her.

Allison's mind flashes back to the time she spent with Deucalion in the past few months – trading banter about his cooking skills in the elevator, the way he checks her wounds after their fights, the heat he makes flare up inside of her with a single touch, his calm insistence that she's nothing like Gerard and Kate.

"Yeah," she says softly, surprising herself as much as the others, possibly more. "I do."

Scott nods. "That's enough for me."