Disclaimer: I do NOT own any parts of Teen Wolf or its plot or characters. I do not own Derek Hale. However I do own Skylar McCall and some of the things that come along with her plot (Like Harv & Kelly's, etc.).
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The dream I have that night is vivid. So vivid, that when the blurry images begin to cloud my unconsciousness, I swear I can feel the dirt beneath my feet as I run through the forest. My legs feel like Jell-O and every ounce of my being wants to stop, but my heart is racing in fear. I know if I stop, he'll get me. But I don't know who he is. A tree root seems to spring up out of nowhere, catching my bare toes and sending me tumbling to the earth. My shaky hands wipe the dirt off and I push myself to my feet, the air slowing me down like I'm moving through syrup. My whole body is beginning to ache.
I can't let him get me, I think, only knowing that if he gets me, I'll die. The tree branches fly past my head as I go from a wickedly slow, dream-pace, to inhumanly fast. I can hear him moving through the forest, effortlessly catching up to me. Before I can even notice he's there, my ankle is punctured by a handful of sharp claws and I'm yanked to the dirt. My chest constricts as the air is knocked out of my lungs, and I quickly flip onto my back, my feet kicking the air as I come to realize he has disappeared. My eyes find my ankle, expecting it to be ripped apart and bleeding, but all I find is smooth, intact skin.
I sit back up, my lungs no longer aching. The forest is still and empty. Silent.
"Hello?" I call out, not realizing I should take this chance to run. My dreams are always strange like this—part of me knows it's all my imagination, and wants to see how it plays out, but another part of me is oblivious and has to play along. I simultaneously know nothing and everything, and in the end I usually die. I heard somewhere that it's not good to die in dreams, but mine have always been that way.
A low snarl sounds from the trees behind me, and I hesitantly turn around to face him. Two glowing red eyes stare back at me from the shadows, their brightness preventing me from being able to focus on any other feature of the being. I want to call out to him—to ask, "Who are you? Why are you chasing me?"—but I physically can't open my mouth to force the words out. But as the dream continues, it seems I don't have to ask. A ray from a sun I didn't know was present suddenly peeks through the tree tops, illuminating me and the small clearing in front of me. The creature slowly begins to crawl out from the darkness and into this light, my vision getting blurrier as he does so.
I'm waking up, I realize, feeling the weight return to my body as the image of the creature slowly fades, swirling back into the dark corners of my mind as reality comes back to me. My eyes snap open abruptly, the hazy picture of red eyes seemingly burned into my brain, swirling around like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. I stay in bed for a moment, waiting for my alarm to go off for school. Stiles and his stupid theories. My subconscious mind takes everything too seriously, turning his radical little joke into a nightmare.
Just as I'm beginning to trudge out of my cozy blankets, a thud from downstairs makes me jump. Mom shouldn't be home—and there's no way Scott's up this early. Three loud knocks on the front door make me frown. Who the hell is knocking at five thirty in the morning? I reluctantly pull back the blankets, a chill slithering down my spine due to the cold air. My hot feet meet the cool flooring as I make my way downstairs, hearing Scott's raspy voice shouting from the other side of the door as I get closer.
"Skylar? It's Scott! Let me in!" he yells, knocking three more times. The urgency of his tone has me quickening my pace and within seconds I'm swinging open the door to find my brother in only his pajama pants, wet and shivering in the freezing winter air. I pull him inside, cringing at the icy touch of his skin and slamming the door behind him.
"What the hell?" I sputter out, holding a finger up before he tries to explain what happened. I quickly head back to the laundry room and grab a towel from the linen closet. I go back and hand it to him, and he immediately begins drying himself off and snuggling it for warmth. "What happened?"
"Honestly . . ." he trails off, squeezing the water out of his shaggy hair. "I don't even know."
After a bit of interrogation, I found out I'm not the only one who had an interesting night—only Scott isn't entirely sure if he had a nightmare or a hallucination. Whichever it was, it led to him sleepwalking. Apparently, he faintly remembers jumping out of his window (somehow landing without a scratch) and sprinting through the woods, running away from some shadow-creature. I refrain from sharing that I also had a similar experience in my dream—I think both of us are just a bit shaken up from the other night in the woods. And we take Stiles' jokes too much to heart.
Even with my concern, I can't help but snicker when he tells me how he snapped out of it. He'd thought he was jumping off a cliff in an attempt to get away from the thing, but he ending up almost drowning in our neighbor's pool. I'd like to see him try to explain that one to our mother.
Mom wouldn't be surprised at the thought of us sleepwalking. Scott and I used to sleepwalk a lot as children, but usually it was just around the house. Once in a while one of us would end up in the neighbor's garden, but thankfully one of our parents always caught us before we tried to drown ourselves like he did just now. I can positively say that neither of us have ever tried to jump out of our second-floor windows and sprint full-speed into the woods whilst staying in a deep sleep. That's taking it to a whole new level, and I can't help but wonder if it has anything to do with his whole bite thing.
Not only has Scott had increased hearing, seeing, and smelling capabilities, but his reflexes are also insane—which we all experienced at practice the other day with Jackson. I thought maybe it was luck, but his skills haven't faded a bit in the last few days. On top of that, what worries me most is what he told me yesterday. After a long (long) one-sided conversation about how amazing it is to be going to the party with Allison tonight (I don't know how or why she said yes, but he's happy so I'm supporting it), he told me his wound is gone completely. He went to redress it and it just vanished in the span of a few hours. There isn't even a mark or a scar. It's like it never happened at all, and it's freaking me out a bit. It's biologically impossible for a wound of that severity to just up and disappear after only five days—especially not without at least a scar. I would've expected him to carry the mark of that bite for the rest of his life.
Who knows? I think. With all the weird things going on with him, he still might.
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Today is decision day for the entire lacrosse team. Today is their last day of try-outs, where Coach will confirm (or deny) their spots on the first line-up based on their overall performance this week. Scott is totally stressing over it, since this is his first year actually having half a shot of making it. Stiles on the other hand, has been off all week, acting weird—weirder than usual, I mean. He's always been a bit strange but what he's never been is closed off—not unless it's something gravely serious, anyway, hence why I'm worried. In the last five days, he's constantly made excuses to not see either of us apart from being at school and lacrosse practice. He just goes home and does God knows what. He's keeping something from us, and I don't have any type of inkling as to what it could be.
Scott hasn't noticed, though. He's been too preoccupied, partly with try-outs and partly with Allison. The kid's in way over his head, and usually I'd be concerned, but the perk of being Allison's friend too is that I know how she feels about him. They don't know each other well, but both of them are giddy in anticipation for the party (which she apologized profusely for lying to me about). She's been begging me all day to tell her what Scott likes in a girl: what she should wear, if she should put on a little more makeup than usual. I tried to explain that I don't really know what kind of girls he likes since he hasn't really ever had a girlfriend, but she didn't listen.
After school, Allison and I make our way outside to the field and up the bleachers to our regular spot. Before I can take my seat, I notice a frantic Stiles jogging over to me, leaping up the bleachers to my spot in (surprisingly) smooth motions. He grabs my arm without a word and tugs me back down with him, nearly causing me to fall several times. We stumble off of the bleachers and back onto the grass as he pulls me to the side of the field, keeping his voice low and secretive. "I need to talk to you for a second."
"It's about time," I say, making him furrow his eyebrows in confusion. "Seriously? You've barely said a word to us in days, Stiles."
"Yeah, right, sorry," he says quickly and insincerely, brushing it off. His hazel eyes dart up to Allison and then back down to me, as if confirming she won't be able to hear what he says next. "Where's Scott?"
I gape at him for a moment, but he's too busy scanning the field to notice. "What do you—you brought me all the way over here to ask where my brother is?"
"No!" he assures me, his hand twitching in anticipation as he pinches the bridge of his nose. What could he possibly be so worked up about? "I need to tell both of you something."
As if on cue, Scott comes out of the athletic exit in his uniform. Paying no attention to either of us, he stalks over to his bag and starts strapping his gear on for the scrimmage—the final day of practice, the one that counts. An hour from now he'll know for sure whether he's doomed to be a bench warmer for the rest of his high school career. I point a finger at him regretfully, and Stiles almost tears my arm right from its socket trying to drag me over there.
"Geez, Stiles," I mutter, snatching my arm back from his grasp. Once again, he pays no mind to it, his focus entirely on Scott.
"Scott!" he squeaks out as we approach him. "Wait up!"
"Guys, I'm playing the first elimination, can't it wait?"
"Just hold on, okay?" Stiles pants slightly, out of breath from all the running around trying to find us. "I overheard my dad on the phone. The fiber analysis came back from the lab in LA, they found animal hairs on the body from the woods!"
"Stiles, I gotta go," he replies, only half-listening to what our friend is saying. He shoves his day clothes back in his lacrosse bag before picking it up and jogging away onto the field.
"No! Scott! You're not gonna believe what the animal was!" Stiles tries to stop him. He gives a defeated sigh, turning to me. "It was a wolf."
"A wolf?" I echo, confused. "I thought you said there were no wolves here."
"Because that's what I thought," he replies, his voice sounding far-away despite him being right next to me. He glances at Scott who's getting in position on the field. "I'm not so sure anymore."
Leaving it at that vague statement, I go back to my seat next to Allison. Truthfully, I'm not sure what to make of this new piece of information. I was right, I suppose—it was that wolf that attacked the girl. It's not like it's a huge shocker, since we could only assume that's what the thing was. And plus, wolves are a highly migratory species, so just because they haven't been in California for sixty years doesn't mean it's impossible that they're back. This doesn't change the fact that I know deep down this wasn't any normal wolf. Something was wrong with it—normal wolves don't go around ripping young women in half and biting random people. A wolf like that sounds rabid, so even if it were true, it doesn't make sense that it wouldn't have hurt me or anyone else yet. Its moves that night seemed strangely calculated, like it knew what it was doing. Scott said the same thing—he doesn't think it meant to kill him. For whatever reason, it meant to leave that bite and nothing else.
The blow of Coach's whistle breaks me from my thoughts, the game beginning. The ball is passed to Scott almost instantaneously. Instead of freezing up in the heat of the moment like I thought he might, he seizes the opportunity to show off his skills and does some insane trick-shot. He front-flips over another player, running faster than I'd ever thought was humanly possible, and makes the goal without seeming like he even broke a sweat. A round of cheers erupts from the crowd, everyone sharing the same dumbfounded look at the boy who was invisible to the school just a week before.
"McCall! Get over here!" Coach yells, blowing his whistle incessantly to get my brother's attention. As Scott approaches him, he raises his voice again. "What in God's name was that?"
Scott must get him to quiet down a bit, because I can't hear the rest of the conversation. All I can see his Scott's shoulders a bit slack, and Coach looking pissed—but Coach always looks pissed, even when he's actually happy. A minute later he slaps a large hand on my brother's shoulder, loudly announcing his achievement of finally making first line. The entire crowd on the bleachers, including Allison and I, stand up to clap for him. Even the people who don't know him personally can figure out by the euphoric look on his face that this is something he's wanted for as long as he can remember. But in the crowd of happy faces, there's one that stands out—Stiles. He looks less than enthused, rushing back up to me with the same urgency as before.
"You're coming over after this game," he says with finality.
"Why?"
"Because I think something is wrong with Scott. Really wrong. And I need your help to prove it."
At that he scurries away again, leaving me with yet another vague statement that keeps my mind occupied for the rest of the scrimmage. Allison can tell I'm worried, hence her constant questions, but I can't answer any of them. I have no idea what's wrong with my brother or what Stiles thinks is wrong with my brother, but I do know it's serious. I don't tell her that, though.
The ride to Stiles' house is quiet. I try to ask a few questions when we first get in the Jeep but he's so scatterbrained that he simply can't answer. He stays silent for the ride, save for a little humming under his breath and the constant tap of his thumbs against the wheel. His driving is only slightly more reckless than usual, but we pull up in his driveway just fine so I don't complain. Wasting no time, he drags me up to his room without even letting me greet Mr. Stilinski, who is seated before a stack of paperwork at the dining table. He shuts his door and tosses his things on the floor, stumbling over to his cluttered desk and spastically trying to organize his thoughts into clear sentences.
"Jesus, Stiles," I murmur, glancing around his room. He smiles sheepishly, continuing his search. Pretty much every flat surface (that includes the floor) is littered with loose papers. He must have used an entire ink cartridge just on printing out the articles he was researching. Not only that, but he probably checked out two dozen library books. Multiple informational books are tossed about the room, each with different colored sticky notes peeking out of the pages. To top it all off, I can count at least eight empty energy drink cans on his desk and nightstand.
"Okay, so the past few days I've been researching, like nonstop, and I think I know what's wrong with him," he says after a moment, taking a large stack of pictures and articles from his printer and handing it to me.
In big bold font on the front page is LYCANTHROPY. I send him a wary glance and he gives me an encouraging nod, signalling me to keep going through the stack. He went highlighter happy throughout it, with various colors probably meaning different things to him. I focus on the things he deemed important, quirking an eyebrow at the key words: full moon, shapeshifter, silver, beast, wolf, monster.
"Stiles," I say after a second, setting the stack back down on his desk. He looks at me expectantly and I force out a small laugh. "This all has to do with werewolves."
"I—I know, but listen, okay? It's the only thing that makes sense." He holds a hand up, urging me to give him a chance. He plops down in his computer chair and I sit on his bed across from him.
"I thought you were joking the other day?" I shoot him a disbelieving look. "Stiles, werewolves aren't real. They're fictional. I know you have an overactive imagination but this is taking it a bit far. My brother—he's not a werewolf! Yes, he's been acting weird, but—"
"Uh, no." Stiles cuts me off, shaking his head furiously. His hazel eyes are frantic, begging me to believe him. "Weird doesn't even begin to describe it, Skylar. First, he—he somehow became amazing at lacrosse overnight. And you know how much he sucked. He was as bad as I am."
"And we've been practicing with him all month." I purse my lips. "He just got better."
"People don't get that good overnight," he answers, clearly frustrated with me. "But—but fine, say he did get better. What about his asthma? He hasn't used his inhaler once since we found it."
"Maybe his asthma is getting better," I suggest, not realizing how unrealistic it sounds until it's leaving my mouth. Then again, it sounds a lot more realistic than the possibility of him being a shapeshifter.
"It's not getting better, Skylar. It's gone," he says lowly. He has a point, but that doesn't mean his werewolf theory is correct. "Like his bite. That's gone, too. How do you explain that?"
"Okay, fine. That's weird, I'll admit. But there has to be some sort of logical explanation—"
"Like what?" he snaps. He looks at me expectantly when I can't come up with an answer. "See? Plus, his senses are heightened. His reflexes. His speed, his strength. And it all started with the bite."
"Look, Stiles. I get that this is all weird, but werewolves aren't real. They can't be. Do you realize how ridiculous you sound right now?"
Stiles looks down, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth. "You know why I told you first?" He takes my silence as his cue to continue. "Because you've always believed in me and my dumb theories. My dumb ideas. You always back me up, even if I'm wrong. Maybe it's just been to humor me, I don't know. But I appreciate it." He trails off, looking desperate. "I know I sound crazy—I feel crazy, Skylar. I just need someone to believe me right now."
"I'm sorry," I murmur, feeling bad for being so harsh. "But Stiles, how can you just ask me to believe something like this? Werewolves? I mean, how could they exist?"
"I don't know, but it's the only thing that makes sense," Stiles insists, sitting upright in his chair. He absentmindedly chews on the end of his pen. "I mean, the thing that bit him, it was a wolf right?"
"I mean, yeah." I hesitate with a slight shrug. Stiles latches onto that hesitation, curious.
"Spill," he demands. When I don't immediately let go of the bits of information I've been going over daily, nightly in my head, he sighs. "Nothing you say can sound any more ridiculous than what I've already said."
He's right, I realize. "It wasn't just any normal wolf," I begin, and he gestures for me to continue. "At one point, it was on its hind legs. And it was so big, Stiles, twice the size of me. It pushed me. Like, with its hand. And yeah. . . Its paws were more like hands. And it—"
I cut myself off, realizing how crazy I sound. Stiles is eating it up however, hope lacing every feature of his face. This is impossible. This is a coincidence.
"And it what, Sky?"
"It had glowing red eyes."
My friend practically jolts up in his seat, snatching the packet from earlier. He fans through the pages until he comes across an article, cheesily titled, "Wolf or Werewolf?" He grabs a blue highlighter and marks a few lines, handing it back for me to read. Large. Red eyes. Monster-like. Stiles and I are silent for a moment, him studying the ceiling while I study the paper.
"You believe me now?" Stiles mutters under his breath, still gnawing on his pen.
"I don't not believe you," I decide after a moment.
"Good, because Scott will be here any minute and we have to tell him he's a werewolf," Stiles murmurs so quickly that he probably thought I wouldn't be able to hear it.
"Stiles, are you kidding? He's gonna freak!" My eyes widen as I hear Mr. Stilinski let my brother in, right on cue. "He has to pick up Allison for the party in like an hour. This is just gonna piss him off."
"Maybe," Stiles admits. "But if we're right . . . tonight's the full moon."
Before I can answer, there's two short knocks on the bedroom door. Stiles lets Scott in, who looks surprised that I'm here too.
"Scott, you gotta see this," Stiles starts, shutting the door behind them. "I was up all night, reading websites, books, all this information."
"How much Adderall have you had today?" Scott jokes, looking at the mess that is Stiles' room in utter disbelief.
"A lot," Stiles admits, shaking his head slightly and blinking a few times. "It doesn't matter. We need you to listen."
We. When did I agree to this?
"Is this about the body?" he asks, sitting down on Stiles' bed. "Did they find out who did it?"
"No, they're still questioning people. Even Derek Hale."
At that, my stomach drops. Maybe my feeling was wrong, I think. My intuition is famously accurate, but it certainly isn't perfect. I had a feeling he had something to do with all of this—all of it—but not that he was a killer.
"The guy in the woods that we saw the other day?" Scott asks, scrunching his nose. I didn't tell either of them about seeing him at work earlier this week.
"Guys, off task," I interrupt. Stiles nods gratefully, clearing his throat.
"What then?" he asks, suddenly seeming in a hurry.
"Remember the joke from the other day?" Stiles lets out a humorless laugh. "Not a joke anymore. The wolf, the bite in the woods. I started doing all this reading—do you even know why a wolf howls?"
"Should I?" Scott shrugs.
"It's a signal, okay? When a wolf's alone it howls to signal its location to the rest of its pack," he explains.
"So when we heard a wolf howling, that means others could've been nearby," I realize, and Stiles nods in agreement. And if we're talking about werewolves. . .
"Maybe even a whole pack of them."
"A whole pack of wolves?" Scott asks, surprised.
"No," Stiles says, pausing. "Werewolves."
"Are you seriously wasting my time about this?" Scott spits, rushing to his feet. He glares at us in utter disbelief. "You know I'm picking up Allison for the party in an hour."
"I saw you on the field today, Scott," Stiles says, putting a hand on my brother's chest to stop him from leaving. "Okay, what you did wasn't just amazing, alright? It was impossible."
"Yeah, so I made a good shot," he admits with a scoff.
"No!" Stiles yells, grabbing the bag from Scott's hand and tossing it on the bed to prevent him from leaving. "You made an incredible shot! The way you moved, your speed, your reflexes. You know, people can't just suddenly do that overnight!"
"A—and there's the vision, and the senses. You don't have to use your inhaler anymore," I blurt out without even realizing what I'm saying. Do I seriously believe this? Do I really think my brother is a werewolf?
"Really Skylar, you're in on this too?" he yells. "You know what, I can't think about this right now. I have to pick up Allison in an hour. We'll talk tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? What? The full moon is tonight!" Stiles shouts back. "Don't you get it?"
"What are you trying to do? I just made first line, I've got a date with a girl who I can't believe even wants to go out with me. Everything in my life is somehow perfect, why are you trying to ruin it?"
Stiles, clearly hurt, tries to brush off Scott's heated rant.
"He's trying to help," I say softly.
"You're cursed, Scott," he adds with a pitiful expression. I cringe at his harsh word choice. "It's not just that the moon will cause you to physically change, it also just so happens to be when your bloodlust will be at its peak."
"Bloodlust?"
"Your urge to kill," I define, my voice coming out quiet. I don't know where I stand with all of this, but if Stiles is right. . . I don't know.
"You know guys, I'm already starting to feel an urge to kill," he sneers, giving us matching dirty looks.
"Listen," Stiles says, grabbing a book off his desk. "'The change can be caused by anger or anything that raises your pulse.' Alright? I haven't seen anyone raise your pulse like Allison does. You gotta cancel this date. Sky, get his phone."
I reluctantly reach over and unzip the front pocket of his bag where I know he keeps his phone. Scott spins on his heels and gives me a furious glare, his jaw set and his fists clenched. "What the hell are you doing?" he demands. I take the phone out and toss it into Stiles' open fist, and he catches it with ease. If only he could catch that well at lacrosse practice, I think. If the look on Scott's face hadn't stopped me, I might've snickered at my own inside joke.
My brother, still shouting in anger, shoves me to the side. I stumble back a few steps, having to stop myself from falling, shocked to my core at his actions. He has never put his hands on me like that. By the time I turn my attention back to the boys, Scott has Stiles pinned against a wall, one arm keeping him there and the other reared back as if he were going to punch him. I can't stop the shriek that leaves my lips as I lunge forward, watching Stiles, who suddenly seems much smaller under the looming fist of my brother, flinch away. My fingers wrap around Scott's arm just as he suddenly relaxes his hold, letting go of our friend. His hands come down to his sides and he stares at them as if he previously had no control over their actions.
"I—I'm sorry," he murmurs, looking between the two of us briefly. His shame turns back to rage, but this time it's at himself. He lets out a growl and hits Stiles' computer chair, flipping it over and letting it crash at my feet before snatching his bag and stomping out.
Neither of us move, Stiles against the wall as if Scott's arm is still pinning him there. The second the front door slams shut downstairs, it's as if a spell is lifted and the two of us let out a breath. Fat tears spring to my eyes, and Stiles notices right away, coming to comfort me. I feel horrible as he pulls me into his arms. I shouldn't be the one crying—I'm not the one who was almost just beaten by someone we'd never think could cause us harm. But seeing my brother do that . . . seeing him be so violent, especially towards me. . . That was not my brother. At all.
Maybe Stiles is right.
After pulling away from my friend, I clear my eyes of the tears and wipe them away before they can damage my makeup too much. We share a look of pity, each thinking the same thing but neither wanting to say it out loud.
"I should go," I tell him, knowing if I don't change out of my comfy clothes and into something a little more glamorous Lydia will bring me up to her closet and pick something for me—and that's never something I want, because she likes to experiment with fashion on other people. I notice Stiles' chair is still laying flat on the ground. "Here."
I reach down to pick it up, gasping as I catch a glimpse of its backside. Right where Scott's hand struck it moments before, three long claw marks have sliced the fabric open.
Claw marks.
"Stiles," I whisper, the words unable to leave my lips. His eyes turn to the back of the chair and he visibly gulps, neither of us able to lessen the tension and fear in the atmosphere.
"Yeah, we're definitely going to that party."
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A/N: