CHAPTER ONE:
"Don't go, don't leave me now
'Cause they say the best way out, is through."
"ungodly hour" - the fray
The sky above Beacon Hills was rapidly darkening. Liam looked up at the swirling gray and black storm clouds, already filling with trepidation for a bad day.
Not only was the impending night his third full moon, but it was also the first afternoon Scott was going to let him train.
Initially, he hadn't been worried. Liam knew that he had a strong athletic future for the rest of his school career, but the thought of training with experience werewolves and a weapon-wielding kitsune wasn't one that brought as much eagerness as it did anxiety.
Scott had told him on the night of his first full moon that focusing on something made the pull of the full moon less noticeable. That he needed an anchor. To keep him grounded.
After analyzing his pack's anchors, he found that nearly impossible. For Malia, it was her guilt of killing her family; for Derek, it was all his pent up anger; and for Scott, it was himself, because he anchor died.
Liam spent the entire morning thinking of his anchor - from the moment he was fully awake to when he got off the bus.
It was strange, thinking of something that would help him control his anger and newfound abilities. His group of friends had shrunk upon learning of Garrett and Violet's true nature, but he still had Mason. He still had the few friends who still contacted him from Davenforth.
He also had the McCall pack, although they weren't the best at showing it. Some people Liam didn't hold it against - Derek and Malia, for instance. They both seem incapable of accepting people right off the bat, like Scott and Kira did. Lydia was slightly better, less frigid, but still scary. Liam didn't take it personally, though - she seemed to be that way without noticing it herself.
Lastly, Stiles. Stilinski.
The disdain between the two was obvious, almost overwhelmingly so. Scott had filled him in on the gist of what happened last semester, and Liam paid enough attention to his therapist to spot all the familiar signs of trauma, but that didn't make it any easier to resist biting back at Stilinski's jabs at him.
For now, he would remain anchor-less. Pathetically so.
"Hey man, you free tonight?" Mason asked as they left fourth hour together. It was their longest class, and the last before fifth hour lunch, but it seemed to drag on almost treacherously slow today. Everything about it was painful - the scratch of the chalk; the grating nasal effect of Mr. Kavanagh's voice; the several hearts that pounded viciously; the different aromas throughout the classroom.
Liam would be lucky to make it out of school without attacking the nearest student at the rate his day was going at.
"Yo, dude, you listening?"
Liam snapped his attention back to Mason, who was eyeing him oddly. "Sorry, can't man, McCall's rounding the whole team up for an extra-long practice."
He listened to the sound of his own heart's uptick. God, was he a terrible friend.
Mason deflated beside, pouring salt into the wound.
It wasn't past him that Liam hadn't been spending the time with Mason he had before he got the Bite. It didn't help that the friends he thought he had were secretly assassins and Mason had no clue, unknowingly putting himself in danger as he continued to hang out with them.
"But, we could catch up this weekend?" Liam offered, hiking his backpack up higher, even though it felt like a feather compared to the boulders that it was a mere month ago. "Maybe order a pizza and marathon some Marvel movies? My parents are both working the night shifts."
Mason picked his head up, brightening at the proposition. "It's a date, man."
After making his plans with Mason, Liam coasted through the rest of his day. His lunch even had a little bit of taste to it, even through the school's pasta tasted like rubber and the milk was like drinking vomit.
He got off at his stop after school realizing that it definitely wasn't the worst day that he could've had on a full moon.
It doesn't even disturb him that he walks home from the bus after school and comes into an empty house. Not as much as it would have the day before.
With his parents' obscene work schedules, an empty house was hardly uncommon. By now Liam had developed a sense of being left alone; the hoard of takeout menus that steadily grew in a spare kitchen drawer proved just that.
While the situation wasn't ideal, he made the most of it. Played his music louder than his mother's limit; ate in his room; peed with the bathroom door open.
It was the little things that made it a little better.
As he climbed the long staircase to his bedroom, his empty house and tiny freedoms were the last thing on his mind. Instead, Liam was thinking about his restraints.
Ever since the chaotic night of his first full moon, Lydia and Scott's boss, Deaton, had been looking into better restraints, ever since Malia and Liam wrecked theirs.
Liam didn't know much about Deaton, and Stiles had flatly advised that he should keep it that way, because knowing more only made understanding it more hellish. But, apparently, the guy knew what he was doing, so no one ever argued with him.
That didn't make Liam any less reluctant at his newest idea.
Wolfsbane. Wolfsbane chains.
Liam had paid enough attention during the few pack meeting he's been to to know that the right amount of wolfsbane could end you. Any amount of wolfsbane was something to stay away from.
That didn't stop Lydia's researching and experimenting. She practically spent the entire month of February at the vet's, obsessively looking into different mixtures and ingredients that would dull the plant's lethal quality but still work in weakening his powers.
Secretly, he was terrified.
Liam knew there was no valid reason to be; maybe if anyone besides Lydia and Deaton were working on it, or if Scott hadn't seemed okay with the idea.
But recently, ever since Garrett kidnapped him and filled his heart with wolfsbane, Liam had been cautious about a lot of things, especially weapons that were involved with the lethal plant. He knew they wouldn't be even considering the idea at all if there was a chance he was going to die, but the boat rocked either way in a town like Beacon Hills. It just depended on what your luck was.
His thoughts ricocheted off the walls of his mind as he walked into his bedroom, distractedly tossing his backpack near the foot of his bed and hoping that he didn't send it sailing through his window.
More often than not, Liam ditched the thought of hanging around his room. Ever since his senses were given level-ups, he enjoyed being in other places that were soothing on all of five of them at once, like the kitchen for it's dim lighting and many familiar scents.
His room offered the opposite effect. It felt too stuffy with the dust he'd never bothered to take care of before, and the laundry that piled up because he had the time to spare for it. Even the comfort of his own bed was taunting, the frame of it squeaking from his tossing and turning. For the sake of his own sanity, Liam spent most nights curled up in his closet in a sleeping bag.
There were probably better ways to solve this, to adjust his life around the newfound annoyances, but it seemed petty to bother Scott with things like a squeaky bed and a dusty room when he had a deadpool on his hands.
That was why as soon as Liam had splashed cold water over his face and examined the dark bags under his eyes, he fled back downstairs, armed with only his phone and keys in his pockets.
As far as refuges go, the kitchen wasn't a bad one. Liam's mother, Melanie, had a thing for change, and usually redesigned whatever room in the house was bugging her every six months. It was an odd habit to grow up being around, but Liam found it oddly soothing, always having a change of scenery. It felt safe, routine. Like things were in constant motion.
For the moment, it was black and white, with bright colors popping up casually in different places - the rugs at the sink and refrigerator; the hand towels on the oven handle; the fruit bowl sitting on the white marble island.
Liam snatched an apple as he passed, biting into it hungrily. He immediately latched on to the of the fruit, savoring the juice as long as he could. Like the many smells of the kitchen, distracting his taste buds helped occasionally. Not much, but enough to make it bearable.
Just as he was hopping onto the counter, intent on just being and sitting, burying himself deep into the setting, his phone pinged.
As Liam predicted, it was Scott.
Scott was the only one of the pack who ever contacted him by text - besides Malia, but she had a thing for texting everybody, and he learned to just ignore the ones from her that didn't make any sense.
Meet at Derek's loft. Emergency pack meeting.
Liam stared until the words swam in front of him and his eyes stung.
When Scott first brought up the topic of pack meetings, Liam didn't know what to think. It sounded like a two hour long conversation on supernatural population issues in Beacon Hills. Somewhere in the back of his head, he'd known he wasn't being fair with writing it off that way, but he didn't see the point of bringing up every bad thing that was happening around them when everyone else already knew.
That didn't lessen his urgency to get the loft any.
Liam changed into a pair of shorts and his lacrosse sweatshirt, shoving into a pair of sneakers as he prepared to leave. He had enough sense to grab his keys and phone, knowing it will be hell on earth if he's gone for the entire night and his stepfather has no way to contact him.
The run to the Derek's apartment complex was a short one, as far as his jogs went. His increased stamina and speed was another advantage to the werewolf business that Liam found himself not minding, the older wolf's loft coming into view twice as quicker than it would've before.
By the time he made it inside, almost everyone was there, except Stiles and Malia.
"They're probably struggling to find their clothes as we speak," Lydia scoffed as Liam quietly took a seat on the far end of the couch.
"Lydia!" Kira hissed, flushing at the implication. The freshman didn't know why; it didn't escape him that Scott and Kira had probably done the same.
The alpha himself was off to the side, talking with Derek quietly. Liam would have attempted to tune in on any other day, but couldn't find the energy in himself to do so at that moment. Add in the fact that he was reluctant to use his wolf abilities on full moons, seeing how he found it hard to limit himself.
By their serious expressions, their topic of discussion couldn't be any good.
Liam slumped forward. He didn't know why he'd been hoping for anything other than bad news, the emergency pack meeting implying just that.
Stiles and Malia came tumbling through the door just as Scott and Derek broke apart, the junior moving to sit next to his girlfriend on the floor. Lydia shot the tardy couple and rumbled clothes an annoyed look as they went to sit next to the other couple on the floor.
"Can we just get on with it?" Lydia prompted in the momentary silence. "I was in the middle of working on the chains when your text so rudely interrupted me."
The reference to the project set Liam nerves on fire. He would be lying if he said a small part of him was hoping she couldn't figure them out, but it was Lydia. She was basically Einstein with a million credit cards and high heels.
Derek stood in front of the group, as grim looking as always. "There's another banshee," he announced, skipping all introduction. "And she's transferring to your school as a freshman."
All eyes jump to Liam, who looked out the windows, watching the ominous clouds darken in the sky. They'd been like that all day, as if wishing to torment him.
"Is that all we know about her?" Kira asked.
"There's not much to tell. I haven't even heard of her family - the Montgomerys'?"
At the name, Liam froze, time thickening in the air. The sound of his blood pumping through his veins rushed through his superbly attuned ears.
He hadn't heard that name in years. Not since seventh grade.
"They're another rich family on the other side of town," Lydia informed them, sounding casual. "Her dad owns at least half of the east coast. About two years ago there was this big scandal about him shipping his daughter off to Eichen House."
Stiles laughed mirthlessly. "Sure, why not?"
"What we need to focus on is why her name isn't on the list," Derek cut in, looking at them all evenly. Liam wondered if the older man was listening to the quickened drum of his heartbeat, debating whether or not to call him out on it.
"Maybe the Benefactor didn't know about her," Kira offered from under Scott's arm.
"But he knew about Meredith," Malia said bitterly. She'd been unsettled ever since the news of her late friend's suicide, but she hardly ruled it as that.
"Maybe there's something wrong with her," Stiles suggested, looking up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "She could have a mental disease that makes her less valuable. The people in Eichen are pretty troubled, you know."
"Stiles," Scott reprimanded. "She's a person. Not an antique lamp."
"And why would they have let her out if she was still crazy?" Lydia pointed out. "I doubt they'd let her loose after two years of keeping her locked up."
"Unless daddy Warbucks made a hefty bribe," Stiles argued. "Brunski is hardly one to pass up on money when he can get it."
"James wouldn't do that."
Liam wasn't aware he'd said anything until the other six heads in the room moved in his direction. His hand was currently burying his claws into the side of the couch. With a wince, he retracted his claws and prayed no one would notice the five holes punctured into the cushion.
"How do you know that?" Stiles queried. He made no attempt to hide his suspicion, even narrowing his eyes a little.
"Isaiah and I we were in the same school in seventh grade," Liam muttered in explanation. He looked at the muddy tips of his Nikes, not daring to make eye contact.
In actuality, their relationship went way beyond sharing the same school building. Not only had they ridden the same bus route for years, their fathers were close friends up until Liam's parents' nasty divorce three years ago.
That never affected him and Isaiah much. How could it? They knew everything about each other, from their zodiac signs to the way they chewed bubblegum. Their fathers' sudden division never strained that, if not deepened their relationship.
It was only torn apart by Isaiah's sudden disappearance a week before Halloween.
"And?" Lydia made a gesture with his hands to go on, as if he'd paused in the middle of giving the secrets to the universe.
"And what?" he snapped in return, feeling a rush of anger wash over him. He tried to will it away, but he wasn't good at that yet. It settled into his veins, pumping along to his speeding heartbeat. "We were friends and then she fell of the face of the fucking earth. End of story."
Scott slid up slowly from the ground, taking a cautious seat next to his beta. "Liam, calm down."
The alpha's hand on his shoulder helped a little, but the furious buzz didn't fade completely. He still felt it, lowly thumping with his pulse.
"Is there anything else you can tell us about her?" Scott asked quietly. His thumb dug soothing circles into Liam's shoulder.
The freshman blinked, frustrated at the tears making their way into the corner of his eyes. It'd been years since Liam had spared a glance to Isaiah's memory, and now that she had popped up again, the attention grabber she'd always been, every detail of her flooded him, dragging him under its current.
Her blonde hair, her startling blue/green eyes, and her naturally arched eyebrows that brought attention to the innocent wideness of her eyes. The plump of her pouty pink lips and the small gap between her two front teeth. At lunch, she loved to stick her milk straw between it and make funny faces until Liam was in hysterics.
God, he missed her so much.
What he remembered most were her hands, and the graceful way they moved. She loved using them: playing piano; picking petals off sunflowers; twisting the stems off apples; painting her long nails insanely bright and glittery colors. She especially loved to use them to draw, the long and pale digits usually flecked with paint or marker.
"She liked to draw," Liam choked out. His throat felt full and closed off, stuffed with cotton before it was brutally shrunk down twelve sizes. He coughed, putting a freshly clawed hand to his throat as if to paw the feeling away, but it helped none.
His vision blurred, his sight beginning to swim with black spots. It turned fuzzy around the edges, like someone framed it with frost. Choking and coughing and wheezing, sweat poured down his face as he crippled to the ground.
He missed her sososo much.
He didn't remember the hole she left when she vanished being this big, this gaping and painful. Oxygen fled from his lungs and his chest burned as he struggled for air, his mental picture of her dancing amongst the black spots in front of his eyes.
"Scott, I think he's having a panic attack?"
Who said that? And why the fuck were they screaming? Didn't they know the blood in his years was roaring loud enough for a million people?
Hands touched him. Pulled and mangled his body until he was looking up at moving version of the ceiling. Didn't they see it flying toward them, preparing to crush them at any moment?
Liam flinched, tried to scream in warning, fear and anxiety hurtling through his limbs at full force. He burned from the inside out, long blonde locks igniting the match that set his insides on fire.
"Liam. Liam, focus on the sound of my voice, bud."
"Liam! Fucking, breath dude!"
He didn't have time to tell the annoying duo of voices to fuck off before he passed out.
The attitude of her mother was as insufferable as her father's. Isaiah spent the night of her arrival back home locked in her room, playing her music so loud her head shook from underneath the bulky weight of her headphones.
Meaningless presents had greeted her on her bed, all stuff her naive younger self had pined for - a boy band poster, the newest Lady Gaga CD, Red Vines, the latest issues of Seventeen and Teen Vogue.
At first glance, she'd swiped all the useless shit into her still half-full garbage can and considered stomping into the kitchen and digging for a match.
Now, all Isaiah wanted was a yoyo and her sketch pad.
When her parents had shipped her off to Echen, they didn't give her anything but a bagful of toiletries and a change of clothes the orderlies immediately extracted and traded for regulated asylum wear. Because god forbid those mindless zombies have something that separated them from the others.
She didn't have a sheet of paper or stub of pencil.
That had to be the worst part of those horrid two years - no way of drawing, of putting what she saw, what she dreamed and felt, out in front of her. The best she could do was scratch the images in her brain on the wall with her haggard fingernails, which probably didn't help vouch for the idea that she wasn't crazy.
With a grunt, Isaiah stretched from where she was precariously balanced on her desk chair, reaching with her short arms to the small tub of kid toys she had stashed away on the shelf in her closet back in sixth grade, when they were no longer cool.
During that time, he'd asked why she didn't just throw them away if they weren't cool anymore.
"Because they might be cool again," she'd responded matter-of-factly before pushing the cubby-sized tub to the wall and jumping off her desk chair.
She wished for him now, because Liam would be able to get this damned box.
After the fifth try, she finally resorted to grabbing a hanger and pushing the stupid box forward until she could clutch it the edge of it in one hand.
With a triumphant cry, she turned and tossed the tub onto her bed from into her closet, jumping down from her chair.
It turned out, there were a lot of things uncool in the sixth grade.
Isaiah shuffled through slinkys, knotted piles of plastic bead necklaces, and the occasional clip on earring until she finally came across what she'd been looking for.
The Spider-Man picture on both sides of the red sphere was faded, peeling a little around the edges, but she could still read the yellow logo and make out the black netting of his suit.
Isaiah hooked her index finger through the small hoop at the end of the string and tested it out. She watched for a moment, watching the yoyo roll up and down at her command.
The images weren't as strong as they were at night, but they lasted a little longer.
The images of a boy, in a red shirt and denim overalls, toddling around a backyard gleefully with a bright red yoyo in his hand.
Isaiah shivered at his high laugh fell over her. It fell over her like a cold blanket of ice.
But the lady in the corner seemed completely at ease, even though she heard and felt it too.
Claudia crossed her dirty ankles and watched Isaiah closely.
"My son really liked yoyos," she commented wistfully. "Maybe we can bury him with one."