Chapter 23: The Full Moon
Sheriff Stilinski rubbed his face tiredly and reviewed the notes from the deputy working the front desk. Occasionally he glanced up at Joe, who sat perched on the edge of the chair in front of his desk. Her nervous face did not seem to give him any consolation and he tiredly returned to the document a few seconds later. Eventually, he put it down and leaned back in his chair. He did not look like he had slept for a few days.
"Let me get this straight," he started and Joe nodded to show she was paying attention. "Jimmy Carter, a 23-year-old man, has moved out of his apartment without letting his parents know and they have a," he glanced at the paper in front of him again, "contract to leave him alone."
"Yeah."
"And he was last seen at the Hale house when Kate Argent tried to kill herself?"
"Yep."
"Your theory is that he ran when the FBI showed up due to his," he referenced his notes once more, "paranoid nature, correct?"
"Correct."
"He cleaned out his apartment and left without letting you know?"
"Exactly."
"No indication of foul play?"
"Well, th-"
"Yes or no, Joe?" Sheriff Stilinski demanded and rubbed a hand over his tired face again. "I'm sorry, Joe, but a grown man leaving town is not against the law. If the locks were broken on his place or if you saw something happen at the Hale house I might be able to do something, but...it sucks, but it's not a crime. Or a missing person case."
"But what if something did happen to him?" she protested all the while the Sheriff was rising from his chair and opening the door for her. "And I just didn't see it? I was kinda busy at the moment, remember?"
"Look, kid, people got their own way of dealing with things. Maybe this Carter-guy just needed a fresh start. Give it some time, I'm sure you'll hear from him soon enough," Sheriff Stilinski said and Joe frowned at the obvious sympathy he was showing her. When she raised her voice to protest again, he held his hand up: "You know I got another dead body on my hands, right? I'll leave your file on my desk and look into it again later if there's time, but I can't prioritize it right now. You get that, right?"
"I do, but..." she faltered when he gave a pointed nod towards the door. "Thanks, Sheriff."
He followed her out the doorway, placing his hat onto his head, when a deputy came rushing down towards them from a nearby desk. The deputy shoved a fax into the Sheriff's hands. "Coroner's office just ID'd the body. Oscar Lahey."
"The cemetery manager?" Sheriff Stilinski asked as he scanned the file. He realized his mistake at Joe's small gasp. Grimacing, he shooed the deputy away with an order to get a car ready and forced Joe to walk towards the front desk again. "I know that look, McCall. Forget what you just heard."
"You think there's a connection between the grave robbery and the murder?" Joe asked incredulously, unable to help herself even as the Sheriff forcibly steered her to the front doors. "How did he die? Could it have been the same one who attacked that girl on the lacrosse field?"
It was the closest she could come to outright asking if it looked like a werewolf had done it.
"Not details open for public," the Sheriff said through gritted teeth. "No more questions, Joe."
"But it is a murder?" Joe asked, as the Sheriff hadn't corrected her. He groaned and it was all the confirmation she needed.
They reached the front doors and the Sheriff gently shoved her outside. "Go home, McCall."
She did no such thing of course. Instead she headed straight for the coffee shop where she knew they had free Wi-Fi, ordered her usual and searched for Oscar Lahey. The picture that came up was dated, but it looked like the man she had seen at the cemetery. Square face and a thick neck, like an aging athlete. Beacon Hills-local, it looked like. Used to coach the Beacon Hills High swimming team.
Beacon Hills High...the years overlapped with Jimmy's high school years. Not that Jimmy seemed like the kind of guy who would even try out for the swimming team, but there could still be a motive here somewhere.
A shadow fell over her, but she did not even have to look up. Her nose told her everything she needed. "Hey, Derek," she said and focused on her reading without looking at him. "'Sup?"
"Joe," he said in a way of greeting. He was apparently not sitting down, but did take off his sunglasses. "Thought you were at Berkeley on Mondays?"
"Can you at least try to hide the fact that you're following me?" Joe muttered, still engrossed in the reading. She had tried to cross-reference Oscar Lahey's name with Jimmy's. "Stalking's not a good look on you."
"What were you doing at the Sheriff's station?"
She rolled her eyes. "Subtle, Derek." The Beacon Post must have been tipped the ID as they changed their headline to 'Former Beacon Hills High Swim Coach Found Dead'. "I was reporting Jimmy as missing if you must know."
"Really," said Derek and twisted the laptop towards him so he could see the screen. Oscar Lahey's photo glared at him and he in turn glared at her. "What the hell are you doing, Joe?"
"Trying to prevent the Argents from finding Jimmy first," Joe hissed and tore the laptop back.
Derek scoffed. "And you think the cops can find him?"
"Well, you're absolutely no help at all, so..." Joe shut the laptop to give him her full attention. "You said that blue eyes are different for...your kind, right? Scott said the Omega had yellow eyes." At the mention of blue eyes, Derek's expression shifted from annoyed to that calm rage she was so accustomed to. Undeterred, she continued: "So it's not about status. Red for Alphas, yellow for Betas and Omegas apparently. So what's different?"
"Let it go, Joe," Derek mumbled and squared his shoulders. His bright eyes scanned the coffee shop, as if looking for threats or escape routes. "I need you to do me a favor."
That was new. Joe raised her eyebrows automatically and tried to subtly breathe through her nose to confirm this was in fact Derek Hale in front of her and not some robot copycat. "Okay?"
"Stay home tonight." His jaw tensed when she threw her head back in despair. "I mean it, Joe. Full moon. It's not safe."
"Safe from what?" she whispered, even if they were the only people in the coffee shop near the tables. The early morning rush consisted of nothing but takeaways apparently. She cocked her eyebrow at him. "From you?" Apparently that was such a stupid question it did not warrant any other response than a curled lip from Derek Hale. "Or from the guy you emphatically told me not to worry about a few days ago?"
At his continued silence, she threw her hands up. "You can't run around in secrecy and then expect me to jump when you say so, Derek! I saw someone with blue eyes in the backyard and you're telling me to stay away, but you won't even tell me why!"
Derek's fingers squeezed around the back of the chair he clutched. He took a deep breath, but judging from his flexing muscles it did little to calm him down.
"You keep saying I should trust you, but you're not giving me a whole lot reason why."
She forced herself to stare back when he put his bright eyes onto her again. "Because we're-"
"If you say mates I will throw up on you."
He snapped his mouth shut and his nostrils flared.
Joe gave him some time to garner any sort of response, but the only result was him squeezing so hard the upholstery of the chair ripped.
"Did Jimmy kill the swim team coach?"
"I don't know." Derek's voice was reduced to a low growl.
"Could he have?"
"I don't know, Joe!" he snapped and that finally caught the attention of the baristas. His jaw flexed and unflexed as he regarded the employees now obviously whispering if they should intervene. "Go home and stay home tonight, Joe. Please."
As the barista with an assistant manager-sign came towards them, Derek tore his sunglasses on and stalked out without another word.
"You okay, miss?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Joe muttered and stuffed her laptop into her backpack again. "Can I get that in a to-go cup please?"
Go home, stay home, get out, get in, leave — argh! Derek was nowhere to be seen when she stomped out of the shop, but that did obviously not mean he wasn't there. She gave the finger in all general directions in case he was watching, and then apologized awkwardly to the woman delivering mail a few feet away.
Full moon her ass! Scott hadn't seemed worried about it, so why should she cower inside her house just because Derek Hale told her to? The anger made her start her car almost too quickly as it gave a noise of disapproval, but she got it into gear and shot out onto the highway as soon as possible. She needed answers. Neutral, objective answers.
"Josefina! Sarah told me you were still undecided-"
"Yeah, hi," Joe said after forcing her way into Professor Kane's office. She dumped down into the armchair and stared her former professor down. "I got questions."
Professor Kane pushed her glasses up and the large tome in front of her to the side. "Is something amiss, Miss Delgado?"
"Yes! People are still dying and I can't sort fact from fiction no matter how many books or papers I read!" Joe snapped and leaned forwards to rest her elbows on the armrests. "And the only ones who seem to know anything about anything either won't talk to me or can't be trusted to tell the truth."
If Professor Kane seemed pertubed at her outburst, she took it surprisingly well. She held up her hand to have Joe wait a minute and then rose to lock the office door. When she sat back down, she smiled. "I suppose I owe you some answers."
"Thank you," Joe said stiffly, some of the fire dwindling down. Finally, the chance to talk to someone who had no agenda or reason to lie. "First: What's an Alpha?"
"Ah, not an easy question there, I'm afraid." Professor Kane steepled her fingers together in a way that indicated a longer lecture coming. "In many ways, the Alpha is the leader of a pack. A pack makes a wolf stronger, literally. The more Betas, the stronger the Alpha. Powers vary, but some are able to completely shapeshift into a wolf — or some version of it. Their Roar is said to break through chains and-"
"Okay, I'll settle for the condensed version," Joe said to interrupt. "Next question: what does blue eyes mean?"
Professor Kane shifted a bit. Short answers were not her forte. She smacked her lips: "The Alphas have red eyes. Betas and Omegas have a golden yellow." Joe almost rolled her eyes, this much she knew. "And blue are the most special of all. A werewolf's eyes turn from gold to blue after killing an innocent."
Her insides turned prickly and numb at the same time. "What?"
"It's not a process that I have been able to have described to me. Something about a change in the soul. No matter the motive, it would seem. What matters is the innocence of the victim."
Derek killed someone? Someone innocent? She hardly believed his uncle to be counted in that category. Joe blinked and sat back in the chair, not hearing the longer explanation of where Professor Kane first came across this phenomena. So, whoever was in her backyard, was a killer? Was Jimmy one?
"What if...what if someone who was an Alpha with red eyes lost his Alpha-status?" She didn't even know why she asked that question. By the way things were going, she worried if anyone had actually died that night.
"Their eyes would revert back to the original color, either yellow or blue," Professor Kane said simply, miffed of being interrupted again. Her voice came even sharper now. "Any more pressing concerns, Miss Delgado?"
Leaning forwards with her face in her hands, Joe took a deep breath and steeled herself. "Tell me about mates."
"Mates?" repeated Professor Kane with a short laugh, all terseness gone. "Oh, that is the stuff of romance novels, big hype in the 17th century I believe." She laughed further at Joe's expression. "It's a myth, Miss Delgado! A legend. Sure, some young and hopelessly in love werewolves will refer to their partners as their 'mate', but what the romance novels — and you I assume — are referring to is something called true mates."
"Meant to be, connected by their very souls, unable to resist the attraction. Ah, it is a beautiful tale, no? A werewolf fairy tale of two werewolves bound together by the moon itself. I've read about it, it's referenced in the odd text here and there, but never been able to confirm an actual case. I mean, pure mathematics can prove it impossible. Think about it, the number of werewolves in the world is maybe a few thousand at most. What are the odds of two of them being meant for each other?"
Joe stared a bit as the Professor tore down a house of cards Joe did not even build. "What do you mean?"
"Well, that's part of the legend, Miss Delgado. A true mate connection can only be felt between two already turned werewolves." The Professor smiled a wistful smile as she still enjoyed the joke. "And there simply aren't enough of them in the world for it to be statistically plausible. Maybe every hundred years or so, if you tweaked the numbers a bit."
Back in her car, Joe turned on a CD she hadn't played since the breakup with Alex. Numb, angry, embarassed — all of the above, she took the back roads to Berkeley, almost hoping Derek would show up so she could give him a piece of her mind. She knew it was bullshit from the get-go. She knew it! So why was she feeling so betrayed?
Crushing it down in favor of singing along to the soppy tune, she drove steadily back to Beacon Hills. By now it was darkening quickly and she could see the full moon reflected in her rearview mirror.
"Go home. Stay home. I can't protect you," she mimicked in a sardonic voice in the privacy of her own car. So, at least that myth was busted wide open! That left the question of why Derek seemed so obsessed with her? Maybe he was just losing his mind after all the stuff he'd been through. Maybe he was just nuts.
On almost the same stretch of road where he had intercepted her from the deer herd — God, that felt like a different life — her car began to sputter. Old cars make funny noises, Joe knew that, so she reduced her speed gently, hoping maybe it was just a certain gear that caused some friction or whatever.
It increased in volume and now the Ford jerked violently ahead. She smelled smoke. "Shit!"
Joe slammed down the brakes and the car wheezed into a stop. Swearing and cursing without stopping to catch her breath, Joe jumped out and saw a black plume of smoke coming from the hood. The hot metal burned her fingers when she popped it and she backed away when the interior spewed out more thick, black smoke.
Coughing and waving her hand to clear the air, she tried to see if anything was actually on fire. In the light of the full moon, everything looked pitch black to her. Something had caused something to overheat, but she did not know shit about cars. It seemed fine just this morning, though! It wasn't that long ago she had her oil changed, was it?
The deserted road stretched on endlessly in either direction. Joe popped her head into the car to turn on the emergency lights, and they blinked on and off with an even tandem. Chances of a car passing by were pretty slim though.
"Son of a bitch," she cursed again and wrestled with her pants to get the stupid, thick Nokia up from the pocket. Her insurance did not cover road assistance, so she tried Stiles first. At least he knew something about cars and the Jeep should be strong enough to tow her to the nearest garage in any case. It went straight to voice mail.
"Soooon of a biiiitch," she sang under her breath and dialled Scott instead. Those two were usually not far apart. Her breath came out in dispersed white fog and she stuffed her free hand under her phone arm to keep her fingers warm. "Pick up, Scott, pick up, pick up, pick- Scott?"
His voice came in a whisper: "This really isn't a good time."
Before she could answer, she heard another voice in the background with Scott saying: "Is that Joe?"
"Is that Derek?" she spat and paced in front of her car, too angry to hold still. "Put him on!"
She barely heard Derek demand the same of Scott from his side, before Derek's voice came clear through the speaker: "Joe?"
"Did you do something to my car?!" she asked and did small bends in her knees to keep moving so the cold wouldn't creep in. Her car was fine this morning, then Derek found her and asked her to go home, and now her car wasn't working. Easy logic! No answer, but she heard his hitched breath. "Derek?! Did - you - do - something - to - my - goddamn - CAR?"
A flock of nightbirds flew up at her outburst.
"No! What's going on? Where are you?"
"I swear to God, Derek, you are such a-" She bit in a deragotary term and laughed bitterly, not acknowleding his answer. "'Cause if you did something to make me stay home or whatever, that plan backfired completely!"
"Joe!" Derek interrupted her shaky voice. "Where are you?"
"I'm somewhere between Berkeley and Beacon Hills!" Joe threw her hand out even though he had no way of seeing it. "Right around where you nearly forced me off the road! And it's freezing out here, so tell me what you did and how I can fix it so I can actually go home, asshole!"
He seemed to suppress a growl on the other side of the line. She heard Scott ask something and Derek tell him to shut up before he addressed Joe with thinly veiled impatience: "What's wrong with your car, exactly?"
"Ugh!" Joe let out a grunt and went back to study the car. "I don't know! It started making these noises-"
"What kind of noises?"
"A funny noise!"
Derek fought to stay calm, she could imagine him pinching the bridge of his nose. "What - kind - of - noise?"
"This sort of ack-ack-ack," she mimicked her car, "and then I smelled smoke, so I stopped and everything was reeking and-"
"Can you check the carburetor?"
"Carburetor," Joe repeated under her breath and tried to make heads and tails of the twisted and blackened machinery. "Carburetor, I've heard about that. Can you describe it?"
"It should be on the main engine."
"Is that the one that has like these three dots- don't groan at me! I don't know about cars!" Joe yelled into the phone and she could imagine Derek's tired and disappointed look. "Okay, fine, I'm just gonna call triple A."
"Get in your car and lock the doors!"
"I get bad reception inside, I just gotta call-"
"Are you serious? It's a full moon! Get in and lock the doors, now!"
"It's still smoking! What if the car blows up or somet..."
Joe shut her mouth and put the phone to her shoulder. She swore she heard something in the dark woods. The light from the full moon only seemed to make the shadows even deeper and she took a tentative step towards the noise. "Hello?"
Dead quiet, but she felt watched.
"Is there someone there?"
The muffled voice of Derek's shouting: "Joe! JOE!"
Something definitely rustled inside the bushes.
She squinted, hoping to make her night vision sharper, and at the same time be on the lookout for glowing blue eyes. How bad was the full moon exactly? A vivid image of Derek scratching up their doorframe made her pause before going any further. If it could make a born werewolf lose control, how much chance would, say, Jimmy stand-
A twig snapped and Joe froze.
She could hear her own heartbeat now, how it went faster and harder. Okay. Okay, no sudden movements. If it was Jimmy, she could help him. He had to know she wanted to help him.
Now she only had to make her body move. Something that proved harder in practice than theory. Deep breath.
Gently, so slow her muscles ached with effort, she took another step towards the sound and brushed away a branch. She held her breath, ready to scream or choke it in.
A deer — a perfectly ordinary, not panicked, not dangerous deer — stared back at her with big unblinking eyes and Joe let out a slow breath. She supported herself on a nearby tree trunk, head swimming from lack of oxygen. The animal did not seem to consider her a threat and kept chewing on whatever leaves it had found. Joe should be in awe just to be this close to it, but she just wanted to go home and sleep for a few days now.
The deer raised its big ears, rotating them towards the side, and Joe followed suit. It was almost the sound of-
"AAAAAIIIH!" she screamed as something big crashed out of the forest and threw itself at her. Her shriek could cut glass and she flailed wildly against the beast as they tumbled down onto the forest ground. Kicking, squirming, shouting.
Only the flash of red eyes made her pause long enough to get a coherent thought through. Derek!
"Are you okay, are you hurt?" he yelled, somehow flipping them both to a stand. The words came guttural and animalistic through his morped face. He held her with both hands, clutching at her upper arms, scanning both their surroundings and her at the same time.
"How in the hell?" she half-whispered, staring at the endless area of darkened woods in the direction he came from. His breathing came hard and fast. "Did you run here?"
With some apparent effort, his face went back to normal, a transformation Joe hardly believed even when seeing it in real-time. Ears, nose, mouth back to the chiseled face she knew best. Eyes still glowing red though, searching wildly throughout the night.
"You heard something?" he asked, putting those glowing eyes at her.
"A deer!" Joe gestured weakly in the direction of the deer that had bolted when Derek came bounding through the woods. "Jesus Christ, Derek!"
"A deer?" Derek repeated and Joe took advantage of his confusion to shake loose his grip. She brushed off her dirt-covered pants and began picking dead leaves out of her hair. "Are you sure? You screamed..."
"Because of you, asshole!" Joe half-shouted into the night. She still could not comprehend the distance he must have covered and the time it took. "Where's Scott?"
"Back at the Lahey house," Derek answered. The adrenaline must still have been running high, as he took long deep breaths to calm himself.
Joe knew the address from her earlier search and the fact did nothing to quell her reluctant fascination with the speed he must have achieved on foot.
"Jesus Christ," she repeated and trudged back towards the blinking lights of her car.
Derek followed with rushed movements. He wrenched off his leather jacket and handed it to her without a word before bending over to look at the still simmering inner workings of the old Ford. The blinking emergency lights displayed Derek's muscles on and off, even further emphasized by the sweaty t-shirt clinging to his skin.
"You said it was fine this morning?" Derek asked after a while. He must see perfectly in the dark to be able to deduce anything out of the blackened mess. Occasionally he glanced up at the full moon and Joe got the impression he was in a hurry. "You drove to Berkeley with this?"
"Yeah, obviously," Joe said with a shrug. She held the leather jacket folded in front of her, not admitting an inch of how the saturated scent of Derek calmed her nerves a bit.
"It's a wonder you even got this far," Derek muttered, bent inside and twisted something hard. "The coolant cap is twisted into the radiator tube." That was probably not what he said, but Joe did not really pay attention. He stood straight again and frowned at the sight. "This is the original engine? 99-model?"
"I never changed it."
"It's a miracle it's even running at all," he muttered and Joe just rolled her eyes. "Hang on." Something must have caught his eye as he bent back in. He came back up with a blackened piece of paper that he handed her.
It was a simple message. 'LEAVE ME ALONE'
Joe let the note fall down to reveal Derek's raised eyebrow. "Look familiar?"
"It's Jimmy's handwriting," she conceded reluctantly. "You mean he did this? When I was at Berkeley?"
Derek shrugged and wiped his oily hands onto his t-shirt, causing it to ride up and reveal the impressive set of abs Joe had seen a few times before already. She cleared her throat and pointedly looked elsewhere, holding the jacket out to him.
"Put it on, you're cold," he said and slammed the hood down again.
Joe made a face. "I am not!"
"Your breathing's shortened, your heartbeat's increased and you're shivering," Derek said matter-of-factly as he stalked over to the driver's side. He looked straight at her with an open expression. "You're cold."
She mimed his words back at him, rolled her eyes and shrugged on the leather jacket. Only because she might get cold, not because she was. Apparently Derek was planning to drive and she stomped over to the passenger side of her own car. Apart from Scott, she rarely had anyone in the seat and she had to shift away a heavy load of discarded notebooks, water bottles and empty sandwich wrappers.
"Hurry up, we don't have much time."
"Time for what?" Joe bit out and dumped into the seat. At least the car smelled mostly of her, but with the jacket and Derek's close proximity it was getting increasingly hard to keep a clear mind. "What's going on?"
Derek had leaned forward while he started the car, glancing at the still rising moon. "It's almost full. Come on!"
"Okay, okay," she snapped back and buckled her seatbelt. "Is it Scott?" Derek had been with him when she called, but... "What was he doing at the Lahey house?"
"He..." Derek forced the car into a higher gear than it accepted and he groaned. "You need a new car!"
"Oh, okay, let me just buy one with my imaginary trust fund!" Joe made a face at his scowl.
He thumped the steering wheel when the car still refused to go at a speed he deemed reasonable. "At least change the engine!"
"What part of imaginary trust fund didn't you get?" Joe spat and decided to spell it out slowly. "I can't afford it!" No response except his usual flared nostrils in case of suppressed anger. "What's the rush? You need to get back to your castle before midnight or something?"
"No, I need to get to the police station before Isaac Lahey kills someone!"
A little Halloween-update for you :)
Hope you enjoyed, thank you for reading and please leave a review if you liked the chapter!
Also, I have a question: What kind of shoes does Derek wear? It's, uh, important for plot purposes later on. In some of the episodes it looks like sneakers and in others like dress shoes? I would have imagined like more boots-like footwear, but...Anyone have anymore info on that, please let me know!
Happy Halloween, stay safe and healthy all of you!
Edit: Re-uploading this chapter as I got messages it doesn't show...hope this works!