Author's Note: Okay, so here's my attempt at chapter twooooo! Is everyone super excited? I tried to make the transition suitably Strange and Off, but please tell me if it isn't. Also tell me what'cha think about Erica's voice, because I'm still iffy about that. Enjoyyyyy.
Shout Out: Shout out to Choas Babe. High fiiiiive.
Disclaimer: Don't own anything, peace out.
The wires sent little shocks down Erica's arms, making her muscles jump and flinch. She had never remembered a seizure after she had one, but she'd seen the video her classmates had taken as they laughed, she'd seen how her limbs flinched and jerked like a raggedy doll's, stuck outside the window of a moving car by a careless child. Panic made her breathing erratic, her chest tight, pain lancing through every sense she had known before, making every sense the Bite had given her a hinder instead of a help. She could hear Stiles' heartbeat racing through the air even before he was pushed down the stairs and dragged to his feet. She couldn't hear Gerard talking over the sound, though she could hear Stiles' throw away bravo comments faintly, like they were whispered in her ears. She lost track of time, tears building in her eyes, sounds crowding her ears. She lost feeling in her limbs for a while, jumping muscles becoming a thing that was happening across ages of space and time.
Gerard beat Stiles, which was one of the most difficult things Erica had ever been forced to watch in her life. It was just like in the woods, screaming at Allison, begging her to stop shooting Boyd and let them go. It was also a little bit like watching her mother slowly lose patience with her fits, with her medicine and the bills and the hospital visits, until the woman wanted nothing at all to do with her. Every time Gerard hit Stiles Erica screamed behind her gag and beside her Boyd flinched, struggling to get free and help him. Boyd liked Stiles, Erica knew that without needing to be told, because in class when Stiles mouthed off, or griped at Coach, or flailed his arms Boyd would swallow a chuckle and grin quietly to himself. The only thing that kept them from tearing apart their bindings and ripping the old man apart was the electricity jolting, stinging with each movement of the wires wrapped around the rope on their wrists. Erica was crying, tears and sweat sticking her hair to her face by the time Gerard vanished back upstairs. She had no clue why he was gone, but he was and Stiles was staggering to his feet, hand clutching his ribs, blood welling up in the scrape on his cheek and Erica's world narrowed down to him.
Stiles reached up to grab at the wires around the rope and she tried to tell him, tried to say no or stop or hide under the staircase and when they're distracted get out of here. She'd crushed on Stiles for ages, had always imagined him swooping in to save her from the teasing, and she didn't want him here, hurt and bleeding, reaching to help her. But the tape over her mouth muffled her cry and his fingers curled around the wires, tugging at them, until they shocked them all. Boyd cried out, Stiles drew back, and Erica cried. Tears blurred her vision, but even over the accelerated thumping of Stiles' heart she could hear his muttered curses. She blinked and blinked, but her vision stated blurry and vague.
The ceiling creaked and Erica tried to focus her hearing, tried to figure out the size of the person walking above their head, but she couldn't. All she could hear was Boyd's gagged panting, the hitching noises caught in her own throat, and the thump of Stiles' heart. The most she could do when she concentrated was hear Boyd's heart too, lurching with every shock, and under that her own, a near duplicate to his. Boyd tried to say something, his worse a hoarse groan from a throat torn from screaming so much not even their super healing could fix it, but Erica could only catch a couple words under the gag.
"Stiles," she caught, "Gerard- hide- weapon- help- Allison."
There was more creaking, more footsteps pattering above their heads. Someone's voice, too deep to be Allison, too young to be Gerard. Everything in Erica's head was confined and dizzy, tinted puke brown-green, the color of pain. She tasted blood and bile in the back of her mouth, which was the taste of seizures and panic. She focused on Stiles and Boyd to keep from losing it completely.
She focused every sense she had, sight, smell, sound, touch, to ignore the sensation of taste. She cataloged every injury on Stiles' body, the scraped raw skin on his left side, reaching all the way up his temple. That would last for weeks, she knew, because Stiles was human, so breakable and tiny and easily killed. There was a cut on his lip, dripping blood down his bruised chin, with grit and dirt smeared into it. There were bags under his eyes, she noticed, and his arms drooped at his sides when he looked at them. He smelt of sweat and grass, like adrenaline and panic and fear, like anger, and under it all was his usual scent, the hormone-sweet stench she'd learned to associate with teenage boys and the page musk of books and the chemical tang that she knew was Adderall. When the sight and smell of Stiles didn't distract her fully she focused on the brush of Boyd's leg against hers, the heat of his hip touching hers. She reached for the feeling of him in her head, the feeling that used to echo with Derek's rage and Isaac's uncertainty, but now just felt like Boyd's fear and pain.
"Wish," Stiles muttered suddenly. She glanced at him, eyes stinging with tears, and he reached out to fist his hand in her shirt. She could feel his knuckles brush her stomach, fabric between his skin and hers. It felt like a lifetime ago that she would have killed to have his hand curled in the material of her shirt. The ceiling creaked, footsteps sounded. "Goblins," he said, which made Erica blink and brought her up short.
Goblins, she thought. What the hell is a goblin? She stared at Stiles, the creaking and footsteps above them coming closer to the basement door. Desperation curled in her stomach like sour milk. Stiles swayed toward them, the grip he had on her shirt pulling her and jarring the wires. It shocked her, but they weren't touching skin and so the jolt didn't travel to him. She tried not to cry out and realized abruptly Stiles' had a hand fisted in Boyd's shirt too. He looked at them both, expression suddenly serious. Erica had only ever seen that expression on Stiles' face twice, once after the pool when he was dripping and calling the kanima an abomination and after that when they had threatened Lydia's life. Her whole body went tense with anxiety.
"Am I pack," Stiles asked quietly. Erica blinked at him, suddenly confused. She tried to say what but the tape stopped her, turning the word into just another garble of syllables stuck in her throat. She stared at Stiles, trying to understand, and realized that the space in her head where Boyd was, where the pack had been, was changing. It felt strange, like an itch, and through it she could feel an echo of Boyd's emotions. In front of them Stiles twitched, a coiling bundle of energy building in his body.
Erica could have sworn the shadows behind him rippled, but she blinked and they were normal. Stiles repeated his question desperately, fingers tightening around their shirts as he spoke. He was practically begging them when he said, "You need to accept me as pack for this to work."
For what to work, Erica wanted to scream. There were no windows, one door, several hunters walking around above their heads and Stiles all of a sudden had a plan? That he needed to be pack to make work? What the hell was going on? Boyd tried to say something, but she only caught three words. Pack, something, and lightly. She glanced between Stiles' face and what she could see of Boyd's, feeling like there was another conversation going on above her head.
"I have a way out of here," Stiles promised, while she cried and panted behind her gag. He didn't continue immediately and Erica made the same noise her mother made at her as a child whenever she'd kick her shoes and shuffle her feet, a scoffing kind of hurry up noise. "But you need to accept me as pack. Please," he said, shaking them just the tiniest bit, "just- nod if you agree!"
The basement door clicked open. Erica's head jerked up, jolting electricity through her, and she blinked furiously as she tried to see. Stiles' heartbeat kicked up a notch in her ears and the quivering itchy feeling of the pack space in her head flinched as well. There was a figure in the doorway, too small to be one of the hunters, all curves and tumbling hair and delicate hands. Allison. Erica's heart raced to join Stiles' and she felt dirt beneath her palms, tasted blood and heard the twang of the bow as the arrow flew through the air. She flinched, the wires jolted her and Stiles hissed his question again, his face inches from Erica's, just as she had always wished it would be.
Out of the corner of her eye she watched Boyd nod hesitantly. The pack space in her head whirled and she nodded, jerking her head up and down, hair sticking to the sweat on her neck, to the tears on her face. She didn't give a damn how the electricity spiked at her nerves, because if Stiles had a plan to get away from Allison and her crazy grandfather she was on board one hundred percent.
"I wish the goblins would come and take you away, right now," Stiles whispered, breath ghosting across her cheek.
What? Erica stared at him, at his lips and the trek of the blood and the bruise tucked underneath his scrape and the way his throat moved when he swallowed. Nothing happened except that Allison took a step down the stairs and beside her Boyd flinched like he'd been shot again and Erica's gut coiled with hatred and fear, the same feelings she'd felt in Scott's bedroom.
"Stiles," Allison said, quietly. Erica couldn't figure out the tone of her voice, but she hated her for saying Stiles' name like that. She felt something new in her head, in the space slotted beside her awareness of Boyd, and that made the surge of possessiveness over the beaten up boy feel right. The last sight she saw was the movement of Allison's hand flying to her face and then the world was plunged in darkness as the lights blew out and the shadows went wild. A sound filled the air, too low to be heard even by her improved ears, but it rattled through her bones, shifted down her spine. She tried to scream, to jerk back, to kick and to fight, because there were shapes inside those shadows, but she couldn't. The little shapes laughed, chortling and giggling and cackling like something out of Courage the Cowardly Dog as they raced toward her and before she could do anything they were grabbing her with their tiny clawed hand and hauling her down. Beside her Boyd howled, the sound stirring her wolf, the piece of her the Bite had made, all courage and flair, brave and strong, and she tried to howl back through her gag.
The creatures came closer and Stiles' heartbeat echoed in her head; she could feel his panic, his momentary elation at his plan working. He was in the space in her head beside Boyd, for one brilliant second power surged, but then claws grabbed her, tearing at her skin. She heard the fabric of her pants tearing, flickers of pain dotting her legs as the things climbed her. One of the claws caught her cheek as it climbed up and then, for a second, her hands were free. Then darkness swallowed her, the claws gripping her shoving her back and Erica fell. She fell for what felt like days, in a breathless atmosphere that reminded her a bit too forcefully of the gaps in her memory left behind by her epilepsy fits.
She hit the stone on her side after a period of time that seemed to last a decade, head smacking and the impact bruising her shoulder. She was gasping through her nose, gagging on the breath caught in her throat behind the tape, and her claws came out for a second, scraping against the stone. She felt Boyd hit the floor next to her, his knee smacking into her arm, his arm smacking into her head. Boyd was on his feet before she was, his body hunched over hers like he had in the woods, to protect her. Warmth settled into her ribs at that, which helped focus enough to calm down, but she pushed him back anyway. The burns around her wrist were already starting to fade, she noticed, but then Boyd pushed back, curving over her again and she'd have enough. She ripped the piece of tape off of her mouth and shoved him back so she could look at him.
He had the same wounds she did, holes in his clothes were the arrows had pierced, blood staining the fabric. His wrists were rubbed raw, blood caked against the cuffs of his jacket sleeves, but he stood tall and his fingers flexed as they stared at each other. The space inside her head, that had held Boyd since the day he accepted the Bite, that know held Stiles too, was throbbing with their presence.
"Stop that," she snapped, relief flooding her body, loosening her spine. "I can protect myself you know."
"Erica," Boyd said. His piece of tape was dangling from one white knuckled grip. His voice was tight and she found she couldn't look away from him, fear spiking through her. "Where are we?"
The walls were uneven brick and wood, curving around to make the room one giant circle. They were sitting in a circle indentation in the ground, which meant that there wasn't anywhere to put their backs safely. Erica scrambled up to stand next to Boyd, pressing her back against his as she took in the rest of the room. There was some kind of decoration shelf that spanned the wall to her left which curled around in the shape of a ribbon at head height and under that was a chair. It was the weirdest chair Erica had ever seen, which threw her off because she had been to IKEA with her mother when she was ten and had always thought she'd never see a weirder chair than theirs, but there it was. It was a circular too, the back of it curling around the arms. It looked like it was made out of horn and stone, with rings around the back bit that hung shimmering drapes. It was a huge chair, big enough to fit two people easily, and it was raised above the rest of the room by three stone steps.
"What the hell," she hissed. She twisted around to take in the rest of the room and found that there was one door and more than six windows of all shapes pressed into the walls, letting in the light from outside. There were a few candles perched in holders that stuck out from the wall, but none of them were lit; all of the lighting in the room came from the windows. Outside the windows she could see a sky, but she could have sworn that the sky had never looked like that. It drifted, the blue color slipping into the darkest indigo she'd ever seen for a second, the white clouds darkening into gray and then back again. Her breathing started to pick up, her heartbeat thundering in her ears. The room smelt strange, a mixture of things she only half recognized. There was something spicy in the air, like an old woman's cupboard was taken down and spilled across the floor, and the air tingled with something that tasted like summer and winter mixed together. And underneath that, tingling at the edge of her senses and lingering like the taste of morning breath in the back of her throat was something that was almost familiar; vanilla and feathers and dust.
She couldn't smell Stiles or see him and when she concentrated she couldn't hear his heartbeat. Wherever they were, Stiles wasn't.
"Boyd," she said, her claws pressing out of her fingertips. She felt the change take over her face, jaw cracking as her fangs slid out, and she hunched forward into the fighting position Derek had first taught them.
"I know," he growled back. She could feel him hunch into the fighting position at her back too, but his heartbeat was steadier than hers in her head. He was worried, but it wasn't like Boyd to panic. Gerard was gone, that was a good thing. They could handle whatever this place was gone as long as they weren't tied up.
An egg flew out of nowhere and hit Erica in the shoulder. She yelped, her shift sliding off in her surprise, and another egg smacked into her hip. She whirled around, trying to spot who was throwing them, but only ended up getting another egg to the face for her troubles. Boyd seemed to be having similar problems, staggering back against her and swiping at his face, yolk dripping from his claws. He had kept the shift better than she had, but he had taken to being a werewolf better than she had anyway.
"What the fuck," Boyd growled. The shadows giggled and another egg flew through the air, catching Boyd on the neck.
"You lot are just a waste of eggs," someone said. Erica pulled the shift to her and whirled around to face the voice, only to find there was a man sitting in the chair. Though she wasn't sure man and sitting were the right words.
"Who the hell-" she tried to say, but another egg hit her face. She sputtered, tasting yolk, and felt a momentary flare of panic through her chest. Can werewolves get salmonella, she wondered. Why didn't Derek teach us this stuff?
"Do stop that," the man said, waving his hand around in a fashion that reminded Erica a lot of Stiles. "It stopped being funny by the fifth egg." The shadows groaned their disappointment. Erica blinked at them and they skittered around, darting close by as they raced to the next niche in the wall. The man sighed, a theatrical thing, and said, "do behave, we have guests."
The shadows turned into little creatures, green and gray, with clawed hands. They were all shapes and sizes, some of them having wings and some of them having hats, but all of them had beady little glowing red eyes. They reminded her of Derek's alpha eyes, how they shown and glinted in the darkness, and unease shivered down her spine. She swallowed as the little creatures filled the room, crawling over the uneven walls and plopping down to perch in the windowsills around them. There were too many to count properly, but Erica would bet money on there being more than fifty of them.
"Goblins," Boyd said, repeating Stiles earlier words. Her stomach dropped and settled somewhere around her ankles. Goosebumps broke out all over her skin, such a sharp difference from the sweat that still clung to her that she shivered.
I wish the goblins would come and take you away, right now. That's what Stiles had whispered and apparently, if she had to guess, that's what had happened. She turned to face the man sprawled across the chair, meeting his amused mismatched eyes with her own.
"I hate to tell you this," she said, throwing bravo in his face just as Stiles had done to Gerard, "but the whole eighties thing went out of style years ago."
The man shrugged. His hair was white blond and completely out of control, like a rocker's from her mother's era, and there were some kind of wing-like make-up around his eyes. One of his eyes was brown and one was blue. When he smiled she could have sworn there was a hint of fang about his teeth.
Erica could have sworn she'd seem him somewhere before. Out of the corner of her eye or maybe in a dream. But any dream with that smile would have been a nightmare. Her entire life was a nightmare, though, wasn't it? Werewolves and hunters and giant lizards, but her life had been a nightmare before that, the teasing and the epilepsy and the silence that answers when she calls her mother's name. What was one nightmare traded out for another, she figured, the same thought she'd had when Derek had offered the Bite.
"Time moves strangely here," the strange man tossed back at her. He kicked a leg over the arm of the chair, his pants black and skin tight, which made the v-neck of his open poet's shirt drag down even further. He wore a necklace shaped like a wishbone, brown with a golden circle center. Erica eyed in curiously, her hands curling into fists until her claws dug tightly into the meat of her palms.
"Where's Stiles?"
"You might want to change back," the man said. He didn't seem to notice or care when Boyd growled at him, rolling his eyes instead. Erica had never seen someone so unafraid of a werewolf before; even Gerard's heart raced when they growled and howled. But the man in front of them had a steady heartbeat, that echoed a little bit through the floor beneath their feet. There was something strange about his heartbeat though, something she could only barely detect, even when she focused completely on the sound. It was like his heartbeat had a twin, another matching perfectly to the sound, but further away.
"My subjects dislike werewolves," the man continued, distracting her from his heartbeat. "It would benefit you if you would drop your wolfy features and pretend at being human. Otherwise they might steal more of the egg from their precious chickens and put them to use when I'm too bored to tell them to stop."
"Who the fuck are you," Boyd said. His werewolf features slipped away slowly and she followed his example reluctantly. Boyd looked like he was ready to calmly rip someone's head off, Erica thought, and she completely agreed. If one more egg hit her body…
"I'm the Goblin King," he said, with a flourish and a grin that reminded Erica of the hyeanas of the Lion King. She hoped he couldn't hear her heartbeat, because that movie had always terrified her a little and her heart raced at the toothy dangerous way he smiled. "And you're in the Castle Beyond the Goblin City."
Capitals implied, Erica wondered sarcastically. It was something Stiles would have said, throw sarcasm back in the man's face. Which reminded her…
"Where is Stiles," she demanded. The goblins around her giggled like the demonic little brats she was coming to realize they were. The egg smeared in her hair, her jacket, and her shirt was drying already.
The Goblin Kind sighed. "He's running my Labyrinth," he explained, looking bored by the whole thing. Erica felt her eyebrows raise at his abuse of the implied capital and underneath that confusion.
"Why would he do that? Why are we here?"
"Because you were wished away and unless your little human pack member can make it through my Labyrinth in thirteen hours you will be mine." He gestured at a clock that stuck out from the wall, round with cogs and gears protruding behind it. Erica eyed the minute hand on it, which was just past the thirteen and inching slowly toward the one. When she glanced back the Goblin King was eyeing them curiously, leaning on one arm over the side of the chair.
"Would you like a way to watch him," he asked. It was almost a polite question, but there was a slight edge of mockery behind it. Eric gritted her teeth and together she and Boyd nodded their heads. The Goblin King scoffed, his lips curling into a smirk.
"Say please," he taunted.
Erica shared a look with Boyd and saw her anger, her fear, and her hope reflected out of his eyes. Stiles had wished them away because he knew it would work, so logically she mused that he knew about the stakes. If Stiles thought he could win, Erica believed in him. They'd be out of this hellhole freak-zone soon enough, so playing nice couldn't be so bad.
"Pretty please with a cherry on top," Boyd deadpanned. She resisted the urge to snort.
"And don't forget the whipped cream," she added sarcastically.
An egg sailed through the air and hit her on the shoulder. The goblins erupted into laughter that rang in her ears and she winced at their volume, at the painful pitch of their humor. The Goblin King smirked at them and twisted his wrist. Out of nowhere a crystal orb appeared, balanced in the palm of his hand. He flicked his wrist and it sailed through the air, much like the eggs before it, and Erica and Boyd flinched out of the way, both hitting the sides of the circular indent in the ground hard.
"See," the Goblin Kind said over the outrageous din of his minions' laughter. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"
Erica and Boyd whirled around to snarl at the Goblin King, but a voice cut through the air, slightly tinny and far away, and caused them to whirl around to stare at the air behind them. There was a wall of glass between them and the door and reflected on its surface was a landscape of sand and dust, a spare spattering of vine-like plants poking through the ground at random intervals. There were several stone fountains from what they could see and in the very center of the glass stood Stiles.
"Ow," Stiles yelped, flinching back from a little glimmering winged thing. "You goddamn little piece of shit!"
"Children these days," the Goblin King drawled from behind them. He sounded amused and bored all at once. Erica didn't tear her eyes off of Stiles to look at him, wouldn't give him the satisfaction. "Such language, such anger. It's such a pity."
"Fuck you," Boyd drawled. Erica shot him a grin, but the white-hot flare of happiness slid away quickly as Stiles cried out in pain again and staggered back. Boyd flinched next to her and leaned closer to the wall of glass, eyes narrowing. "What the hell are those things?"
"Mean little stingers," a goblin answered, cackling. Its voice was hoarse, but somehow childish. It was like a child had spent hours upon hours screaming only to turn around and crack a joke the second it was done. The sound made her stomach roll, like the sound of Gerard's laughter had.
"Faeries," their king corrected dully.
"Aren't fairies supposed to be nice and shit, like little people who grant wishes?"
For some reason Erica could not fathom Boyd's statement sent the Goblin King and his subjects into a fit of laughter that lasted minutes. She hunched her shoulders against the noise and focused on Stiles through the glass.