Chapter 30: The Liar II
"Is that even a language?"
"How are we supposed to figure out what this thing is?"
Joe huffed from where she laid propped up in the passenger seat of her own car with the door open. "Guys!" The boys had her laptop out on the hood with Gerard Argent's thumb drive connected. "Guys! Let me see!"
"Maybe it's in code or something," Stiles mused and she saw him scroll through whatever format the bestiary came in. He had asked her before if she knew what a bestiary was, obviously to prove some sort of point to Scott.
"Guys!" Joe yelled and Stiles rolled his eyes before putting the laptop into her line of vision. The venom still affected her — apparently it had taken Stiles almost three hours before he could get up again and he'd only been exposed through the skin, not blood like Joe. Scott had carried her out from the pool and laid her in the car while she waited to regain some sort of feeling in her body. The crusted blood around her nose itched and it was pure torture not being able to scratch it.
She squinted at the screen, Stiles was holding it a bit too close, but it looked familiar. "It's a form of Latin."
"A form?" Scott asked and she saw him briefly in the corner of her eye. "There's more than one Latin?"
"Scott, I love you, but you need to take school more seriously," Stiles said, saving Joe the breath. He asked Joe: "Can you translate it?"
"Give me internet, a couple of days and a gallon of coffee, then maybe," Joe answered, still squinting at the text. Language was not her best subject. Not classical Latin, a lot of the letters were unrecognizable. Old Latin maybe? "There's no pictures?"
"It's called a kanima."
Both boys straightened up as Derek approached from behind the car. Joe only saw him in the side mirror. He flexed his hands, only recently regaining his mobility, and was flanked by a partially dry Erica. At least her hair frizzed after being wet, Joe thought, as her makeup still looked pristine somehow. Unfair.
"You knew the whole time." Stiles sounded disappointed.
"No," Derek clarified and Joe strained her eyes trying to keep him in her line of sight. "Only when it was confused by its own reflection."
One of the glass shattering noises during the fight had been a mirror. Scott looked contemplative. "It doesn't know what it is."
"Or who."
Stiles snapped. "What else do you know?"
"Just stories, rumors."
"South American," Joe piped up. Her fingers were starting to tingle briefly, but no movement yet. "Kanaima, Caribbean folklore. Vengeance spirit." Stiles and Scott gave her confused expressions. "Guys, this is literally what I do for a living." Ignoring their open mouths, she continued. "It's supposed to be this spirit that possesses people and causes them to turn into deadly animals." She swallowed thickly. "Anthropologists believe the myth comes from using some sort of snake poison to get into a frenzied trance."
"I think it's a bit more than a frenzied trance, Joe," Stiles bit out and rubbed his still damp hair irritably.
"Yeah, well, obviously," Joe murmured and tried to turn in her seat to no avail, she felt like an idiot talking to the side mirror. "Snake part checks out though."
In every myth, there's a sandgrain of truth...
"It's like us?" Scott asked Derek.
"A shapeshifter, yes," Derek confirmed from somewhere out of sight. "But it's- it's not right. It's like a-"
"An abomination," Stiles concluded and Joe recalled Professor Kane. Some did not turn into what was expected. She had thought that meant they did not go full wolf, not that they went full snake-monster instead. Joe assumed Derek nodded or gave some other non-verbal confirmation of Stiles' words as she couldn't see any of them!
Scott stepped forward and blocked Joe's view of the mirror. "Derek? We need to work together on this. Maybe even tell the Argents."
"You trust them?" Derek's voice was flat and Joe squirmed further to turn around.
"Nobody trusts anyone!" Scott snapped and disappeared from view as well. "That's the problem. While we're here, arguing about who's on what side, there's something scarier, stronger and faster than any of us, and it's killing people and we still don't even know anything about it!"
Derek practically growled and Joe strained every square inch of muscle she could reach, trying to see them. "I know one thing. When I find it, I'm gonna kill it."
Joe swallowed. Blue eyes. Killer of innocent. She squeezed her core trying to turn around to actually look at Derek bef-
"Uaa!"
Joe's shriek broke the tense silence following Derek's proclamation as she toppled over from the passenger seat. The asphalt came full speed towards her face before it stopped abruptly. It went in reverse as Derek, judging by the smell and the sound of an annoyed sigh, tilted her back up in the seat by the collar of her jacket.
"Sorry." She gave him a tight apologetic smile through her wet coils of hair laying across her face when her head was against the headrest again. He did not actually roll his eyes, but it looked like a close call.
"You okay?" Derek seemed very aware of the audience as he studied her face, focusing on the blood around her nose and mouth.
Joe tried to smile and not just lose herself in his eyes, which at the moment were very much not blue. "I'd shrug and say yes, but you know..."
He brushed away her wayward curls from her face, his touch leaving a fiery trail in his wake. The gesture also sent butterflies scattering in her imagined stomach, almost like phantom pain. "You are without a doubt the most frustrating person I have ever met."
His dark tone contrasted his gentle behavior and he shook his head in silent defeat before disappearing.
"Uh, here." Erica popped up next and she gave Joe a nondescript look of displeasure. She laid the shotgun awkwardly across Joe's body, looked like she wanted to say something, but changed her mind and left.
"Thank you!" Joe called after the pair of them, mostly directed at Erica. That left her alone with Scott and Stiles, both looking a little worse for wear. Both also looking a bit disturbed.
"You really weren't kidding ab-"
"Shh!" Joe and Scott both hissed at Stiles. Unless Derek pulled another superspeed-stunt, he was probably well within hearing distance.
Stiles shrank down and whispered: "Sorry!"
"How're you feeling?" Scott knelt down to Joe's eye level as Stiles returned to the laptop, twisting his head almost upside down to see if the letters made more sense then.
With some effort, Joe wiggled her fingers. "I don't think I should be driving."
"I'll take you home. I gotta pick up Mom from work. She got a last-minute call to cover a shift," Scott said, but did not look like he was in a hurry to leave as he leaned his head against the doorframe. He sighed. "You ever get the feeling that no matter how fast you are, you can't be everywhere at once?"
"You've always been there when we needed you the most," Joe said and relished the small smile that came on Scott's face. "I for one really appreciate all this life-saving you've been doing. Great work. Keep it up." She tried to give him a thumbs up.
"Yeah, well..." Scott's face darkened again. "You've saved more lives than me." He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "If the kanima doesn't know who it is, how are we gonna find it? How are we gonna stop it before it goes after someone else?"
Joe wiggled her finger in his direction in a 'there-there'-motion. "You're sixteen, Scott. This kanima-thing's not really your responsibility."
No, thought Joe as Scott only shrugged, it's mine.
It took almost five hours before Joe could walk again. Scott carried her up the stairs to her room and put her in bed like an invalid. Gradually, the movement spread from her fingers to her arms, her upper body and then legs. By the end, she sat up and massaged her shins. Pins and needles pricked and scratched for another hour before she could finally stumble into the bathroom to pee. She knew Scott would have helped if she asked, but she would rather ask Derek than him at the moment.
The scratches on her stomach were shallow. Thin red welts, already scabbed and healing. She would have to keep an eye on them, in case they were infected, but they hardly hurt when she prodded the red tissue. Wonder if Derek felt that.
The stack of ungraded assignments waited for her and she went downstairs to make a large cup of coffee, put in extra creamer because she deserved it and went upstairs to work while the rest of the house slept. It had been a while since her last all-nighter, not that she felt she was running on a surplus of sleep anyway.
Professor Kane taught her students what psychological marks folklore leaves on a society. How it affects human behavior and where it originated. The kanaima-legend was much like the werewolf-ones, because neither was restricted to a specific region or tribe. Almost every country in Europe had some sort of werewolf-myth, and the same was true for the kanaima for South America. It was a known legend to both the indigenous people living in the Amazon jungle as well as the natives on the Caribbean islands.
Joe had never done much research on the topic herself, but she knew she had read a paper from one of the grad-students where they explored how different cultures incorporate folklore to explain recreational use of narcotics. If she recalled correctly, people seeking vengeance would invite the kanaima-spirit into their body by using hallucinatory drugs.
Was the kanima simply a werewolf with an opioid addiction?
It was impossible to sort fact from fiction anymore. The world had been a lot simpler when she believed all of the folklore to be superstitious bullshit stemming from a need to tell stories for their own sanity. Now she knew some of it to be real, but not all of it.
Neither Derek or Jimmy had mentioned making a pact with the Devil to become a werewolf and that was one of the most popular myths of them all, probably spurred on as an excuse for the church to burn people they didn't like back in the 12th century. Like they still did in less enlightened parts of the world. Joe considered that thought. If all the things that lurk in the shadows actually existed, maybe those so-called less enlightened had the right idea after all?
Joe had agreed to take the bestiary with her to Berkeley the next day, hoping maybe someone in the history department could translate it. It certainly beat the idea Stiles proposed on how Joe should seduce Derek to gather intelligence. Despite all the moral issues, Joe doubted Derek would fall for it if she was to suddenly show up on his doorstep with a flirty smile and a lot of questions. No, Berkeley was the better option.
She stuck to the heavy trafficated I-5, still reluctantly impressed with the Ford's performance lately. Professor Kane was in her office and perked up when Joe appeared with the stack of graded papers. When Joe was on leave, Professor Kane had done all the work herself.
"Ah, Miss Delgado, excellent!" Professor Kane said and flipped through the stack. "Alphabetic order, yes, truly wonderful. Please, have a seat, I do wish to speak to you."
That was a turn of events, Joe thought and slid down into the chair. She was supposed to be meeting Professor Walker in a few minutes. "Everything okay, Professor?"
"Yes, yes, yes," the Professor said while searching through her crowded desk for something. "Ah! Yes, this is the midterm test. Can you look over the questions and give me your feedback by the end of tomorrow? I apologize for the short notice, but things have been hectic around here."
"Uh, sure." Joe put the handwritten test questions into her backpack. "Was that all?"
"Um, no," Professor Kane admitted and took off her glasses. She used her long silk scarf to clean them, the slick fabric squeaking against the glass. The scarf reflected the red sheen of her knitted dress that had a definite look of homemade. "Sarah tells me you have moderated your research paper. While I do consider the workings of the law enforcement somewhat mundane, I can understand that was what you wanted." No one but Professor Kane could refer to six mysterious deaths as mundane. "I have followed the news regarding Beacon Hills. Do you mind me asking, just how many werewolves are there in the town now?"
Trap, Joe's mind screamed at her.
"Not sure," Joe said and that was an honest answer. It was either five or six, depending how you looked at it. "Why do you ask?"
"Hm? Oh, no reason. Nothing important, at least. Just got a telephone from an old friend, that's all." Professor Kane's gaze was focused out the window instead of Joe. Professor Kane was a lot of things, but she was seldom elusive. "Yes, well, thank you, Miss Delgado. Don't let me keep you, I know Sarah is a stickler for rigid routines and thinks punctuality is next to godliness, or she would have, if she was not such an agnostic."
"Actually, Professor, I have a question." Joe ignored Professor Kane's attempt of dismissal. "Earlier, you mentioned that Roman emperor who tried to make an army of..." Joe swallowed, but the word was not coming out of her mouth. "Remember? You mentioned that some turned into something unexpected. What...what could cause something like that?"
Professor Kane sighed deeply. "You certainly don't go for the easy questions. The easy answer, however, is emotional issues. It can cause the actual shapeshifting to go wrong. Deep-rooted identity issues, maybe following trauma such as abuse or-"
"Bullying?"
"Certainly, that would be a classic example. Whether it's looks or behavior, bullying is typically focused on some aspect of the 'self', and given enough time, the 'self' will be cause of objective hostility as well." Professor Kane tilted her head and Joe was reminded that this woman was considered one of the best in her field worldwide. Not to be underestimated. "This does not exactly fit the pattern of your earlier line of questions. Did something happen?"
Joe shrugged, not wanting to discuss the kanima, and got up from the chair to avoid looking at Professor Kane. "Not sure. I'm gonna be late for Professor Walker. I'll e-mail you the midterm comments."
She ended up only being five minutes late and unabashedly used Professor Kane as an excuse. Professor Walker, looking striking in a pair of immaculate gray slacks and a silk shirt, rolled her eyes. "That woman considers time as imaginary as her folklore. Do you have your logbook?"
Joe had, but did not disclose that she had scribbled all the entries in this morning. Professor Kane had never required her to keep a log of anything. Joe was reprimanded for failing to secure interviews with the Beacon County Sheriff's Department. Professor Walker did not consider the fact that police were too busy investigating new murders as mitigating circumstances.
"Your theories are decent, but you need more 'flesh on the bone'," Professor Walker said as she handed the logbook back. "Back up your claims with facts. Thank you, you may leave."
Treading carefully around the campus, in case Alex and 'Maddy' were still strolling around, Joe made her way to the history department. She had taken a few classes there, as her field of cultural sociology was closely related to some historical events. The main difference was that where historians were concerned with what happened, sociologists looked at the why.
"Archaic Latin," said the first available TA she came across for the Ancient History intro course. He barely glanced at her laptop. "Original alphabet. Very niche."
Archaic was just a fancy way of saying 'old'. So it was just Old Latin. Joe questioned the means of translating it.
"When's the manuscript from?" asked the TA and sighed when she could not answer. "Then it's near impossible unless you've actively studied it. Depending on the year it dates from, it could have been written either from right to left, left to right, or alternating between those two directions. Also, in the oldest texts, they didn't differentiate between the g- and k-sound. Before A the letter K was used for these sounds, before O or V, Q was used, and C was used elsewhere. The letter G was later added to the alphabet to distinguish these sounds."
"What?" asked Joe and the TA sighed once more. In conclusion, she needed a linguist. Berkeley did not have a linguistics-department. Joe left the building feeling both disappointed and slightly patronized.
Before heading home, she made a quick detour to the library. As much info that was available on the internet, it was really Eurocentric and she could only find a few anecdotes about the kanaima. Berkeley, being in California, had a pretty decent section on Latin American culture. The texts were in Spanish, but that should not pose much problem for Joe who'd grown up with most of her extended family conversing only in Spanish. For some reason, Scott had never learnt in fluently like Joe had even though both his parents were of Hispanic descent.
Cross-referencing the search words in the library database, Joe found some promising texts.
'Kanaimà, a term which refers both to a practice and the practitioners, is a form of mystical assault that ritually requires the extensive physical maiming of its victims...'
Joe flipped ahead, skipping all the colonial bullshit that always accompanied indigenous legends. Missionaries had been the first to write down the stories passed down by mouth for generations and usually added their own commentary into the mix.
"... as spirits of vengeance, the Kanaimà attack and kill their victims in retaliation for some injustice. In order to accomplish their goal, Kanaimà will possess the bodies of animals or people. In such possessed form the host becomes enraged, wild, and will violently attack it's victims..." Joe read aloud in Spanish, stumbling over the old grammar styles. "...the Guayana are vague on the nature of such possesion, but have a proverb: 'Si no muere, se vuelve loco'..." Joe furrowed her brows and whispered under her breath in English: "If he does not die, he goes crazy."
Could possession mean bite in this instance?
Joe moved onto another book. "Carib people seeking revenge for a slain relative, sometimes invited the Kanaimà spirit into themselves. This was considered a justified form of blood-revenge, permittable by law, as the Kanaimà will only choose murderers as its victims."
The last sentence stuck in Joe's mind and even though she kept reading, it was futile. It will only choose murderers as its victims. She replayed last night's events at the pool. Scott had a theory that the kanima was after Stiles because he witnessed the events at the mechanic's garage, but that theory rubbed Joe the wrong way from the start. If the kanima worried about witnesses, it would have killed Stiles at the garage. If the Carib legend was true however, the kanima had been after Derek, not Stiles.
Blue eyes. Signs of a killer. And even if that part was highly exaggerated by Professor Kane, although Joe could not see why Professor Kane would lie about that, Derek had killed Peter Hale. Did the kanima care that it had techically been a form of vengance itself? If you kill a murderer, the number stays the same.
And Jimmy had no lost love for Derek Hale. Now she just needed to find the idiot before Derek did.
Somehow, Joe found herself in front of the underground entrance to the Beacon Railroad Depot. She should have told Scott what she was doing, but then he'd ask why and she did not really know why herself. It felt...right? Joe shuddered at the soppy mentality. She blamed Aunt Mel for putting that whole 'our family are healers'-grill into Joe's head. Joe just didn't want anyone to die.
Anyone.
Steeling herself and checking quickly if she suddenly had erupted warts around her nose or if her hair had leapt completely out of her half-bun hairstyle, she pushed the door open and went downstairs. Her steps echoed as she made no effort to be quiet and not surprisingly, Derek's voice rang out when she pushed the second door open to the underground warehouse.
"No shotgun this time?
He'd probably heard her since she parked her car up on street level. Shadows flickered among the subway carts, but she could not see him. Instead, she just held her palms up to the empty place in front of her to show that she was indeed unarmed.
Because she'd been expecting him to suddenly appear out of the shadows, she didn't jump when he did just that. He wrenched off some thick leather gloves and effectively halted her from going further down to where she guessed their main base of operation was. No sign of his betas, but that didn't mean they weren't around.
"No shotgun," Joe confirmed and folded her arms awkwardly. She stopped instinctively at a respectable distance from him, before his smell got too pungent. "Can we talk?"
Derek raised his eyebrows in quiet amusement and crossed his arms slowly over his chest. "Now?"
"What, you're busy?" she shot back and his face went back to blank nothingness.
Something moved behind him, on the floor, but Derek must have caught her looking as he took a step to the side, his broad shoulders filling her line of vision. He cocked his head towards his right and led her into one of the carts. She leaned against one of the seats while he did the same against the doorway, effectively blocking her escape route.
Joe took a deep breath, regretted it when her brain clouded with Derek-ness, and stared hard at the floor to regain her train of thoughts. She tried to find a way to start. "I, uh, did some research on the kanima."
Derek said nothing and when she looked up at him, he only nodded to make her go on.
"Based on what I found," Joe wrung her hands together, "while taking into consideration that some things are exaggerated, it might seem like the vengeance part of the myth holds true. Not sure about the spirit part, because those old missionaries used the word spirit for practically anything and everything."
Still no response, just quiet contemplation from Derek. No flared nostrils, no tightened muscles, just a general sense of alertness. She licked her lips, nerves filling her system like buzzing bees.
"Um, also, if you analyze what happened last night...I think, or, uh, I believe the kanima was after you." Joe could not look at him, so she focused on her hands instead, rubbing them like they were going numb from the paralytic venom again. "The, uh, book said that the kanima only went after murderers." She mumbled the last word, but imagined a guy with super-hearing would catch it anyway. She stuttered on, trying to explain. "And, you, uh, Peter, uh..."
"Revenging my sister does not count as a murder," Derek said in a low voice, laced with anger. "By our law, it's justice."
"That's not how the law works," Joe mumbled, but realized just then that when he said 'our law', he was not talking about the US Consitution. She sighed and flexed her hand to stop wringing them. "Anyway, just, be careful?"
Without looking up, she heard him shift in the doorway. His voice came darker still, but not angry, not...exactly. "You're worried about me, Joe?"
"I know what blue eyes mean, Derek!" Joe blurted out, unable to take the tension. She looked up to find him flexing his jaw. "So, just...please?"
Derek said nothing, but now it looked like he was too vexed to get words out.
"I don't know the details, okay, I don't know what it means for you," Joe babbled on to fill the uncomfortable silence. "But you had blue eyes way before Peter, and I don't think Peter would classify as innocent anyway, not that I'm sure what supernatural court of justice determines or coined that term, but I would guess it's something related to the soul or something else and-"
"Who told you?" Derek cut her off. His anger must have drifted so far over that it had returned to neutral, flat, dead even. "Did you find Carter?"
"No," said Joe, and even if she did, she wouldn't tell Derek about it. She noticed Derek's eyes narrowing and scoffed. "Stop sensing me! I'm not lying!"
"I know," he said with infuriating calm, if she could call it that. She would have preferred him visibly angry. Pinching the bridge of his nose, rolling his eyes or curling his lip — he was just cold. "Scott knows you're here?"
"No." Joe hugged herself, as if Derek's chill rubbed off on her. "I can't say that I don't care about it." She let the sentence drift off, not wanting to anger him further by saying it out loud. "But I'm willing to hear your side of the story," her voice dwindled to nothing, "if you'd tell me."
He stayed quiet for so long that Joe wondered if he had heard her at all. When he finally answered, his voice was hollow. "It's not what you think."
"I don't know what I think, Derek," Joe said and pushed off from the seat with a sigh when it became apparent Derek was still his usual esoteric self. "Just be careful."
If he was touched by her outright concern, she did not know, but he sighed and released the immobile stance. He stuffed the leather gloves into his back pocket, already sounding defeated. "Is there anything I can say or do to make you stay out of this?"
"You really need me to answer that?"
They held each other's stares for several seconds before Derek looked away with a growling sigh. "Guess not."
He moved away from the doorway to let her pass, but not far enough for comfort. Joe tried to hold her breath, but of course his arm shot out to grab her. He leaned close to her, either for dramatic effect or because he did not want his super hearing betas to overhear it. Joe barely heard it herself with her head swimming full of dopamine.
"If you find Carter, let me know."
His husky voice was in between a whisper and an order. In a daze, she nodded, knowing she had absolutely no intention of doing that.
Can you believe it? Chapter 30! Some kind of short and sweet moments in this chapter that I hoped felt in-character for both Joe and Derek.
So close to reaching 200 reviews for this story, which is insane! Thank you guys so much :) I can't wait to hear what you think of this chapter, so please leave a review!
Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it. Stay safe, guys!