Chapter Text
Consciousness was a slippery, insubstantial thing. Stiles reached for it, opening his eyes, but it dodged sideways and skittered off at the last second, light and sound swirling around his head in a woozy sort of dance. He closed his eyes and swallowed, vaguely aware of a cottony, unpleasant taste in his mouth, and much more vividly aware of a treacherous lurch in his gut and burning bile at the back of his throat.
What the hell had he been drinking last night?
Whatever it was, he’d clearly had too much of it. This wasn't even a hangover. He was still drunk, for fuck’s sake. It was probably all Isaac’s fault. The guy might look like a Baroque angel - all glossy golden curls and wide, innocent eyes - but he had a mischievous streak a mile wide and an uncanny ability to convince Stiles to do shots.
Stiles needed to get up, drink some water and find a spoon so he could murder Isaac with it. Then all he’d need was a quiet, dark corner to die in.
He squinted an eye open cautiously and regretted it at once. Maybe unconsciousness wasn’t such a bad thing. It might be full of darkness and oblivion, but at least it wasn’t spinning.
A thought in a distant corner of his mind niggled, a vaguely unsettled feeling, like there was something he was forgetting, something important. A test he needed to study for, or a project he needed to research, or –
A tattooed face, a trailing black robe, and the glint of a hypodermic needle.
Fuck, Stiles thought, adrenaline punching through his system and burning away the drug-induced haze. He would have cursed aloud, but as it turned out, his mouth didn’t just taste cottony; there was a literal wad of cotton, or some sort of cloth at least, stuffed behind his teeth and held in place with a haphazardly tied gag. It was probably for the best. As satisfying as it would have been to shout, Stiles really didn’t want his kidnappers to know he was awake.
With a rapid glance, Stiles took stock of his situation. He was lying on a bench seat in what appeared to be the back of a van, gagged and bound with his arms bent awkwardly behind him. It was dark outside the windows, though he caught fragmented glimpses of the nearly full moon through the branches of passing trees. They were in some sort of forest – probably the preserve, though Stiles had no idea how long he’d been out. They could just as easily be in Oregon for all he really knew.
Another bench seat blocked his view of the rest of the van, but after a few seconds of careful maneuvering, he managed to prop himself up on his elbows and cautiously peeked over it.
There were two people up front. Judging by the little Stiles could see of them around their seats, they were likely the same friendly neighborhood muggers who had shown up uninvited on his doorstep and stabbed him in the neck with a tranquilizer.
They must be members of the Order of Silence. Sure, it was possible they were from some other freaky cult of cruelty, but the likelihood that two nefarious, pseudo-religious factions were out for Hale Pack blood was…actually, it was probably higher than Stiles was comfortable contemplating, but definitely still on the unlikely end of the spectrum. So, going with the odds, this was their fairy-foretold doom.
Stiles glanced down at the bench seat in front of him and felt his stomach clench as a beam of moonlight splashed across ashen skin, fresh blood, and strawberry-blonde curls.
Lydia.
She was bound and gagged like him, but her eyes were still closed, limbs limp and unresisting. An angry, purpling bruise marred her cheek and a trail of blood drew a dark line from her split eyebrow down her temple and into her hair. There was blood on her clothes, too, though from his vantage point Stiles couldn’t tell if she had any more injuries.
He clenched his jaw, fighting the instinct to move towards her. It was almost physically painful not to at least try to help, but there was no way he could do anything without drawing attention.
A guttural stream of something that sounded like Russian cut over the low hum of the van’s engine, drawing Stiles’ attention. Cursing, he was pretty sure. He’d heard enough cursing in his life that he thought he’d probably recognize the flavor of it in any language.
The voice was unfamiliar, deep and masculine, and it broke off with a pained hiss of indrawn breath every time the van bounced over a pothole.
“The bitch better not have made us late,” the man said, switching to strongly accented English.
“Relax. It took less than ten minutes to subdue her,” a female voice replied in crisp, London-tinged syllables.
The guy snorted. “Ten minutes and half a liter of my blood.”
Stiles felt a fierce flash of pride at that. These bastards may have taken him by surprise, but Lydia was an entirely different story, and she’d been in the kitchen. With knives.
“Barely a scratch,” the woman dismissed. “Stop whining.”
“A scratch?” he scoffed. “I bleed through the bandage!” Stiles saw him raise a clumsily wrapped forearm.
“You’d better not be bleeding on the seats,” she replied, slowing to turn the van onto another, bumpier path. “Moiran will not be pleased.”
“She’ll be more angry if we’re late,” the man grunted, then hissed again as the van bounced over another rough patch. Maybe his arm wasn’t the only place Lydia had managed to stab.
“We have time,” the woman soothed. “It’s over three hours until midnight, we’ve already crossed the spell line, and we’ve nearly reached the axial point.” She tapped a lit screen on the dashboard displaying a pinned destination on Google Maps. “Focus on finishing the amulets, and whatever you do, don’t get any of your blood on them. We can take care of the rest when we get there.”
The man grunted again – clearly his preferred method of communication – and began fiddling with something in his lap.
Stiles sank back down, mind flying rapidly from one detail to the next, connecting dots and slotting puzzle pieces into place to construct a comprehensive, if crude, picture of his situation.
The Order of Silence was here, the Nemeton-fueled supernatural genocide was going down at midnight, his pack was in danger, and once again Stiles was bound and gagged and completely fucking useless.
Panic clawed at the back of his throat, making it almost impossible to breathe around the gag in his mouth. He hated being kidnapped, and he hated it even more when the people he loved were in danger, too. The universe was a bastard, and Stiles was going to be voicing some pretty loud complaints whenever he managed to get rid of the damned gag. He wrenched at his wrists in futile frustration, then froze when his fingertips brushed the dangling ends of a rope.
Suddenly, he could hear the ghost of Scott’s voice; feel the muscle memory taking over from countless hours of practice.
He wasn’t helpless. He could do this. He could get free, and then…
Well, first things first, he needed to escape. There would be time once he had access to all of his limbs to figure out what came next.
Taking a steadying breath through his nose, he closed his eyes, searching for the focus he’d developed over months of training. He could almost pretend he was in Scott’s room, that this was just another practice session, and at any moment Scott would jump in with a helpful suggestion or Melissa would walk in and embarrass them both.
Curling his hand, Stiles slipped his fingers along the slick length of nylon, searching for the knot that held his bonds together. Stiles’ hands were already half numb, joints aching, but he pushed and pulled at the cord, testing for any sign of weakness. The knot was at an uncomfortable angle, but Stiles worked on autopilot, twisting and turning, loosening the cord bit by bit in a way that had become second-nature sometime over the past several months.
It took less than a minute. The rope slipped, the tension around his wrists eased, and Stiles wrenched his hands free. After that, it took only seconds to untie the cords around his ankles, then Stiles pulled the gag loose with a vicious yank and spit the sodden cloth out in disgust.
He stared down at the tangled lengths of rope where they’d fallen in jumbled loops on the van’s floor. All that training with Scott had worked. It had actually worked. He resisted the urge to pump a victory fist in the air and sent Scott, wherever he was, a mental high-five instead.
He was free.
Well, ok, no. Free might be a bit of a stretch. He was still in a moving vehicle driven by lunatics who were at the very least armed with industrial strength tranquilizers and insanity, but he was untied at least.
He felt in his pocket and let out a relieved breath as his fingers closed around the key ring Derek had given him for his birthday. If they’d searched him, they must have assumed, as Derek had intended, that the keys were simply keys.
Stiles slotted the blades between his fingers and anchored them with the wrapped lanyard as Derek had shown him. After a month of regular training, the weapon felt natural in his hand, and the muted light glinting off the sharp edges helped calm his beating heart.
He was armed. He was unbound. Now, it was time to come up with a plan.
Stiles weighed his options. The Order members clearly thought he was unconscious and tied up. If he attacked now, he’d have surprise on his side. Surprise was a huge advantage, and he needed any advantage he could get.
On the other hand, there were two of them and only one of Stiles, and while he had many stellar attributes, stealth had never been high on the list. With Lydia’s bench seat between them, it was highly unlikely that he would be able to sneak up on the bastards unnoticed. And then there was the potential for a car crash. If he startled the driver, she might swerve into a tree or roll the van, or worse. It might work in his favor, incapacitating one or both of the Order members, but it was equally likely that he and Lydia would end up injured instead. More injured, he amended, remembering Lydia’s bloodied and bruised face.
Before he made up his mind, the van slowed, coming to a stop in a sparsely wooded glade. The woman pulled a cell phone out of her pocket, thumbed the screen a few times, and put it on the dashboard.
The speakerphone rang once, then there was a click as someone answered on the other end.
“Report.” The voice was a low and terse, but Stiles thought it might be a woman speaking.
“We’re here,” the driver announced, unbuckling her seatbelt.
“Good,” the phone answered. “You have the sacrifices?”
Stiles tensed. These asshats really were planning on killing the pack.
“Yes. It went smoothly,” the woman responded, ignoring the snort of disgust from the man, who was gingerly unbuckling his seatbelt with his bandaged arm. “They were unguarded.”
“As I predicted they would be.” The voice sounded smug. “It’s shameful, really. The Hale pack of old would have at least attempted to protect their weaker members. This fledgling pack is barely past its milk teeth.” There was a noise that sounded like a disappointed sigh. “At least they have enough members for the ritual to work.”
“Were the other captures successful?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” the phone confirmed. “All axial points have checked in. We’re ready to begin the first stage.”
“So we go dark,” the man said, speaking to the phone for the first time.
“We go dark.” the voice agreed, and the line went dead.
Stiles tilted his head, trying to process what he’d just heard. The most alarming word was “sacrifices,” but he’d already known that the Order was out for pack blood. He was more concerned with the other hints and questions raised by the conversation.
Who was the woman on the phone? These two had mentioned a name earlier. Moria? Morgan? Something. Maybe she was their leader, or at least the leader of this particular group. Or maybe she was just another lackey one rung higher on the Order’s social ladder than his current captors. Without knowing more about the Order itself, it was impossible to tell.
And what were the axial points? It sounded like something from a math textbook, though he didn’t think he’d ever heard the term before. On the other hand, he had heard the phrase “go dark,” but why would these guys be cutting off communication when there were still three hours left until midnight?
Stiles was so caught up in his contemplations that he all but forgot about the immediate threat until he heard the click of the van’s side door.
Time had obviously run out. He still had no plan, no real idea what to do, but he pulled his legs under him, his whole body a coiled spring, keys clutched tight in his fist. If he was going to go down, he was going to go down stabbing something.
The door slid open, framing the Order woman’s robed silhouette against the pale moonlight.
“Hi!” Stiles said, teeth flashing in a manic grin, “I’d like to lodge a complaint with your HR department.” He lunged straight at her shocked face.
In their early days training together, Derek had spent a solid week trying to break Stiles of his tendency to ramble while he fought. Stiles had stubbornly resisted and eventually Derek gave up. Privately, Stiles thought it was because he’d realized the value inherent in the tactic. Not only did the inane babble help him focus, it also annoyed and distracted his opponents.
Case in point, Stiles thought as the woman stumbled backwards with a startled curse, giving him just enough room to scramble out of the van. Her surprise only bought him a heartbeat, though, and before he’d gained his footing, she was already springing forward, fist swinging unerringly towards his head.
Stiles let out an alarmed squawk, but his body reacted without conscious thought in a way that had become base instinct sometime during the last year. He ducked under her arm, spun sideways, and swept a foot out to catch her across the shins.
“I know it’s tough to recruit qualified personnel in this economy,” Stiles continued as the woman leapt backwards, nimbly avoiding the blow, “But really, kidnapping is not the way to go.”
She pulled an archaic knife out of the folds of her robe.
“Yeah, threats and coercion aren’t really viable recruitment strategies either,” Stiles quipped.
The woman charged, knife slashing through the air.
Stiles darted sideways, trying to avoid the outstretched blade, but bright line of pain bloomed along his ribs, the telltale burn of metal biting through skin. He swore and kicked backwards without turning, just managing to tangle one of his feet between hers.
“That was rude,” he panted, wrenching her legs out from under her and trying not to think about the sticky wetness he could feel flowing down his side.
She fell heavily, knife clattering out of her hand as she hit the dirt.
“I mean, we’ve only just met,” Stiles rambled as he knocked her blade away. “I don’t even know your name.” He straightened, gritting his teeth against the pain, and turned to face her. “You cannot, in good conscience, stab someone without at least a proper introduction.”
She was already back on her feet, robes swirling as she spun and kicked him. The blow landed just above his hip. Stiles absorbed the momentum as Derek had taught him, allowing it to spin him in a tight circle right back towards his attacker.
He needed to end this, needed to free Lydia and find Derek and Scott and the rest of his pack before these homicidal crackpots could finish what they’d started. He brought his keys up in a vicious arc, aiming for her eyes.
The woman jerked back, and Stiles’ blades missed her face by millimeters, catching instead on the flowing fabric of her robes. He wrenched his hand away, slicing through the material and drew his arm back to strike again.
She was already dropping down, falling under the reach of his blades. Expecting a low, sweeping kick, Stiles stumbled backwards into a defensive stance.
He watched in confusion as the woman continued to crumple, landing in an awkward pile of limbs and billowing fabric. Stiles stared, trying to predict her next move.
She was completely still, not a muscle twitched, and Stiles held his breath for a solid three seconds, eyes never leaving her form.
“What the hell?” he demanded, blinking uncomprehendingly at her immobile form. “I didn’t even touch her…”
Before he had time to finish his thought, a hand settled roughly on his shoulder and another grabbed his wrist, twisting it violently behind his back.
“Shit,” Stiles swore. “I forgot there were two of you.”
Even as he spoke, his body reacted, his Derek-trained reflexes taking over again. He slammed his heel down on his attacker’s foot and chopped his free hand back towards the man’s groin. As the guy hunched reflexively to protect his junk, Stiles brought an elbow up to connect hard with his chin. By the time Stiles trapped the arm still draped over his shoulder, dropped his center of gravity, and twisted forward, the man was unbalanced enough that he was easy to throw. He sailed over Stiles’ shoulder and crashed head-first into the van, then hit the dirt with a heavy thunk.
“Uh…” Stiles looked back and forth between the two robed figures sprawled on the ground. “What just happened?” Neither one answered. Stiles blinked. “Did I just…win?”
The woman was utterly silent and motionless, lying exactly where she’d fallen, arms and legs splayed at angles that made Stiles uncomfortable just looking at them. The man twitched.
“Right.” Stiles shook his head and retrieved the ropes he’d been tied up with out of the van. “No celebrating yet. You bastards are sneaky.”
Stiles made quick work of restraining the man, thankful that all his practice slipping knots meant he’d also learned how to tie them, then cautiously approached the woman. He still had no idea why she’d collapsed, and he wasn’t taking any chances.
With a nudge of his foot, he flipped her over, braced for an attack, but she rolled easily, limbs limp and unresisting and flopped onto her back. Her face was completely blank, mouth slack, and eyes closed.
She wasn’t breathing.
“What the ever loving fuck?” Stiles demanded, knowing there was no one conscious to respond. He stared at her for a long minute, mind searching for an answer, then shook his head and scrubbed his hands over his face.
Maybe she’d had an aneurism. Maybe she’d had an extremely rapid heart attack. Maybe it didn’t matter, because he was wasting time staring at an evil dead lady’s body while his friends and the whole supernatural world were in jeopardy.
“You might look dead, lady,” he muttered, flipping the woman back onto her stomach, “but I don’t trust you or your apparent mortality as far as I can throw you.” He hogtied her and emptied both their pockets to make sure they weren’t packing any surprises. They had a few knives, a phone each, though neither had signal, and a set of car keys. He turned back to the van.
“Lydia?” he called as he scooted inside. He reached out and shook her shoulder. Her head lolled loosely, showing no sign of life.
Stiles tensed, fear tracing a cold finger down his spine. Holding his breath, he pulled the gag from her mouth and leaned close, listening hard.
He couldn’t hear anything but the frantic thrum of his own heart in his ears.
She wasn’t…She wasn’t breathing. Oh, god, she wasn’t breathing. Stiles cursed and pressed a suddenly shaking hand against her throat, searching for a pulse.
Nothing.
“No,” Stiles groaned under his breath, moving his trembling fingers to the other side of her neck.
Still nothing.
Desperate, he used one key to slash her bonds and felt both her wrists, then pressed his ear against her chest, listening for a heartbeat, a breath, anything.
There was only silence.
“No!” His voice broke on the syllable, rough and ragged, and he drew in a shuddering gasp. “You promised me Avengers and tequila. You promised me a lecture on my mopes, damn it. You’re not…” He swallowed thickly. “I really need you right now, you brilliant asshole. Please wake up. Please. You can’t be–”
He clamped his jaw shut, biting off the word that was making his stomach roil. She was still warm, still pliable in his arms. Weren’t bodies supposed to be cold and stiff? Weren’t you supposed to be able to tell when someone was…when they’d…“God damn it.”
He wanted to punch something, wanted to bite and claw and maim.
Instead, he flipped Lydia onto her back, tipped her chin up to clear her airway, and pressed the heels of his palm down against her breastbone in the rapid rhythm of CPR.
“That won’t save her.”
Stiles froze for a moment startled by the roughly accented words. He spared a glance at the bound man, just a fraction of a second, long enough to see that he’d regained consciousness but was still securely trussed and lying on the dirt.
“She won’t wake,” the man insisted, harsh syllables scraping like nails over Stiles’ already raw nerves.
“Shut up.” Stiles’ voice sounded hollow, echoing in his own ears. He knew the statistics, knew the man was probably right, that CPR was only a stop gap measure meant to keep the brain oxygenated until the paramedics arrived with their defibrillators and adrenaline injections and expertise. The likelihood of restarting her heart with his hands alone was just this side of zero, and there were no paramedics coming, no way for them to get here, wherever here was, in time to make a difference. But he couldn’t stand by and do nothing. He had to at least try.
“She is already under.” the man continued, a cracked laugh catching at the edge of his voice. “She will never wake again.”
“Shut up,” Stiles rasped, clinging to the edges of his control.
“She will die, like you, like your pack, and all the filthy creatures who dare to defile the laws of nature.”
The words hit him like a physical blow. Stiles’ restraint snapped, and he was clawing his way out of the van, determined to kick the smug smirk right off the bastard’s face.
He was nearly to the man when his brain caught up with his body. He froze.
“Will die.”
“What?” the man asked, eyebrows drawing down at Stiles’ rapid shift in mood.
“You said she will die. That means she’s not already dead.”
Several expressions flitted across the man’s face, before he controlled his features and sighed dramatically. “English,” he dismissed with a shrug made awkward by the bonds holding him. “It is a clumsy language, yes?”
“No,” Stiles shook his head, turning back towards the van, back towards Lydia. He knew what he’d read in the man’s face, the regret at giving away too much. “No, you meant it.” His mind was spinning, fast but frustratingly ineffective, like tires searching for traction in slick mud. He needed more information; needed pieces to put together. He closed his eyes, trying to remember anything that might be a clue. “You said she was under, not that she was dead. Under what?” Then it clicked. “A spell. One of you said something about a spell line earlier. Is that why…?”
Stiles spun to face the motionless tattooed woman; the woman who had collapsed inexplicably and who, like Lydia, lay limp and lifeless on the ground.
“She must have been protected,” he said, working through the problem, “but something happened, something that took that protection away, and now she’s under the spell, too.”
He dropped to his knees next to the woman, straining to remember the moments before her collapse. They had been fighting. She’d kicked him and then…
He flipped her over, and gave a triumphant shout as he saw the slices in her robes near the neckline where his blades had shredded the fabric. “She must have been wearing something – some kind of charm.” Unconsciously, he lifted his fingers to brush the warm weight of the fairy queen’s gift through the fabric of his t-shirt. “Some kind of protective talisman.”
“No,” the man denied, but Stiles was already scouring the dirt with his fingers, scanning the ground with sharp eyes. He saw it almost at once, a dull gleam in the moonlight, and snatched it out of the dust.
The braided leather strap held a metal ring with twisting lines tracing intricate patterns over its surface. It seemed crude, somehow, when he compared it to his own warm ivory talisman, but he could feel an echo of the same power etched into the churning whirls.
Stiles turned his eyes on the man. “You must be protected, too.”
“You’re wrong,” the guy ground out, thrashing against his bonds, muscles straining.
“There’s one way to find out for sure.” Stiles leaned over and grabbed the man by the hair, dragging his head back with one hand as he fished inside the neckline of his robe with the other. Stiles’ fingers found corded leather, and he pulled the necklace free revealing a twin to the twisted talisman he already held.
“I would say I’m sorry about this,” Stiles drawled, carefully slipping one of his keys between his fingers, “but I’m not.” A deft movement of the blade sliced the cords and the man immediately went limp. Stiles let him fall face first in the dirt, then shuddered, scrubbing the hand that had touched the man’s hair against his jeans as though he could rid himself of any lingering crazy through simple friction. He knew it was irrational, but it still made him feel better somehow.
Pushing himself to his feet, Stiles stumbled towards the van, both talismans clasped tightly in his fist. He scooted in next to Lydia, and held his breath as he looped one of the necklaces around her neck. With fumbling fingers, he retied the severed strands, careful to follow the same braided pattern in case the magic depended on it. He finished the last knot, and straightened up, hope and anxiety roiling in his stomach like a storm-tossed sea.
“Lydia?”
She didn’t move. Stiles re-adjusted the necklace so it lay firmly against her skin, traced the length of each of the necklace’s strands to make sure he’d completed the pattern, and tightened the knots.
“Lydia?” he tried again.
She remained as still as a corpse.
“Damn it!” Stiles cursed, scrubbing both hands over his face in frustration. There must be something he was missing, another step to make the protective magic kick in…
With sudden clarity, he remembered the activation of his own talisman, the tiny drop of blood that had made the ivory warm to his touch. There was no need for a fairy-wielded dagger this time; Lydia was already covered in blood – blood she had sacrificed in self-defense. Stiles carefully picked up the talisman and, hope clogging his throat, dabbed it against the bloody cut at her brow.
Lydia’s eyes flew open, and she came to swinging. One of her fists connected with Stiles’ jaw and he fell backwards, narrowly avoiding the outstretched nails of her other hand.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he soothed, both palms up in a gesture of peace.
Lydia stilled, blinking around at the van’s dark interior in confusion.
Stiles’ jaw was throbbing – Lydia knew how to throw a punch – but it did nothing to dampen the smile that tugged at his lips. She really was okay – awake, and alive and as fierce as ever.
“Stiles?” She demanded, sitting up and shaking her head to clear it. “Where are we?”
“In the preserve, I think.” Stiles sighed. “How much do you remember?”
She tilted her head, sharp eyes scanning her surroundings and taking stock even as she efficiently listed off events. “Two freaks with ink fetishes knocked you out at the door. The Order, I presume?”
Stiles nodded. The man’s diatribe about “filthy creatures” and “defiling the laws of nature” had basically confirmed it.
“They cornered me in the kitchen. I may owe your dad a new set of dishware.” She sounded anything but apologetic. “But I held them off until I ran out of things to throw.”
Stiles winced, imagining the wreckage.
“Eventually Etch-a-Sketch over there” she indicated the tattooed man with a flick of her chin, “tackled me, but not until after I stuck him like the swine that he is. And the witch bitch shot me with some kind of dart.” Lydia gave a delicate little shudder at the memory, massaging her wrists where creases from the ropes still marred her skin.
“Tranquilizer,” Stiles agreed. “That’s what knocked me out, too. Are you ok, though? You’re covered in blood.”
Lydia took a moment to assess. “I’ve got a few scrapes and bruises, but most of this is his,” she said sending the man a withering look. “How did you get free?”
Stiles pulled the fairy queen’s talisman out from under his shirt. “This,” he explained. “There’s some sort of spell over this area – something that puts people to sleep. I think the Order was depending on that to keep us quiet, because the tranquilizer wore off while they were still driving us here. The talisman must have protected me from the magic, so I woke up as soon as the tranquilizer was out of my system.”
“So why am I awake?” Lydia asked, her analytical mind quickly picking up on the most glaring unknown in the equation.
“I, uh, borrowed one of the talismans the Order was using for protection.”
“Hmm.” Lydia’s hand went to her neck and traced the soft cords of the necklace. She brought the metal ring up to eye level and examined it for a moment before letting it fall back to rest against her chest. “And what happened to them?” She asked primly, eying the two dark mounds visible through the van’s open door.
Stiles grinned. “I kicked their asses.”
Lydia raised both perfectly manicured brows. “I’m impressed.” She tilted her head to the side. “Is that their blood?”
Stiles followed her gaze down to his side. “Oh, uh, no.” He plucked forlornly at the torn and blood-soaked fabric, and winced when the congealed mess tugged at the edges of the knife wound. “Not exactly.”
Lydia sighed and leaned in to take a closer look. “It’s long, but not too deep,” she informed him. “You’ll live, but I recommend avoiding the pointy ends of their weapons next time.”
“Duly noted,” Stiles said dryly.
“They must have bandages in here somewhere,” she pushed herself up and started rustling around in the front seats. “What do you know about their plan?”
“I…” Stiles swallowed, throat suddenly tight with nerves. “I still don’t have the whole picture, but I overheard them talking. They were planning on using us as sacrifices. They said the rest of the captures had gone well. It’s a guess, but I think they have the pack, and I think we have until midnight to get them back.”
“Tell me every detail you remember,” Lydia demanded, and, taking a deep breath, Stiles did.
☆★☆
“Do you see this?” he demanded in outrage, shaking the Mickey ears at Lydia.
She raised an unimpressed eyebrow but otherwise made no move to respond.
Stiles glowered at the closest unconscious Order member. They’d propped both lifeless bodies in the van’s back seat, deciding it would be better to keep an eye on them than leave them behind, even if they did appear completely dead to the world.
“There’s a souvenir cup from Niagara Falls, a can opener in the shape of the Statue of Liberty, a singing keychain from Mount Rushmore, a goddamn toilet seat cover with Elvis’ face on it, and, oh my god, are these fireworks?” Stiles demanded, leaning in close to examine the neon packaging. “These are illegal in California. Haven’t these people ever heard of forest fire prevention?”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “I really think forest fires are the least of their concerns.”
Stiles shook his head in disgust. “I was looking for some devious plan - some intricate, calculated path of destruction creeping towards us, but no. These fuckers were just disorganized tourists. They must have killed the Golem while visiting Mount Rushmore, and that family of yetis was found near the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. Jesus Christ, I cannot believe how many hours of sleep I lost trying to figure that out. This is my angry face. My angry, sleep-deprived, you-have-my-pack-and-I-will-kill-you face. You jerkwads. And talk about hypocritical. How the hell can they claim to be all about the balance of nature and shit when they’re buying this trashy tourist crap that clearly feeds into the capitalist strip mining of earth’s resources to create flimsy memorabilia that will only add to our dumps?”
“Stiles,” Lydia broke in. “Breathe before your pass out from oxygen deprivation.”
Stiles sighed. Then he looked down at the Mickey ears still clenched in his fist. “Oh my god, he even got it embroidered with his name.” Stiles pointed indignantly at the stitched cursive letters spelling out “Boris” on the back of the hat. “What kind of self-respecting villain pays extra for embroidery?”
“Focus please,” Lydia singsonged, breaking into his frustrated muttering. “As fascinating as this is, we’ve got less than three hours until midnight. Let’s analyze their motivations after we save the pack.”
Stiles gave the fireworks one last angry glare before he shoved them aside with a sigh. “You’re right,” he conceded, shuffling through a useless pile of brochures about helicopter tours of the Grand Canyon and the top ten hiking trails in Yosemite.
“I think I found something,” Lydia said.
“What?” Stiles scooted over to look at the pile of stuff she’d pulled out of the van’s glove compartment.
“It’s a map of Beacon Hills.” She pointed at the unfolded paper. “This big circle. That’s the Nemeton, isn’t it?”
Stiles nodded, recognizing the location. “And these little dots out here…”
“They form a circle around it.” Lydia traced the shape with her finger.
“A circle,” Stiles agreed, touching each of the five points, “Or a pentagon, or maybe even a pentagram depending on how they connect. Do you think they’re the axial points?”
“They must be, which means we’re at one of them. So which one is us?” Lydia wondered aloud.
“No way to tell.” Stiles said, then flailed as he realized how wrong he was. “No wait, I’ve got this!” He snagged the woman’s key ring from the pile of stuff he’d pilfered out of their pockets and scrambled into the van’s front seat, ignoring the throbbing protest from the quickly bandaged knife wound on his side. As the engine started up, the dashboard panels blinked to life, and the central display screen brought up an absurdly cheerful welcome menu. “There was a map,” Stiles recalled, glancing through the menu buttons. “Here!”
He let out a sigh of relief as the GPS kicked in. He’d been worried, with the inexplicable lack of cell reception, that the GPS might not work either. Fortunately, a red pin flashed into place over a solid green background labeled ‘Beacon Hills Basin Wildlife Preserve.’
“Zoom out,” Lydia suggested.
A few taps on the screen revealed labeled roads and recognizable landmarks to the east.
“Greenvale Park,” Stiles said, pointing.
“And Beacon Lake.” Lydia agreed. Cross referencing, she placed a finger on the point to the south-west of the Nemeton. “We’re here.”
“Which means the others must be…” Stiles looked at the paper map, then back to the display. “Here,” he tapped the screen and dropped a pin. “And…here. And here. And here?”
“Yes.” Lydia nodded once, decisive. She shuffled through the other glove box papers and froze, her fingers hovering over a sheet that looked like a photocopy of a page from an old book. It was full of incomprehensible tightly packed lines.
“Lydia?” Stiles prompted after several seconds of silence.
“It’s the spell.” Lydia flipped the page over, and there were scribbled annotations in both English and Russian covering the other side. “I think it’s the spell for shutting down the Nemeton and eliminating the supernatural, but…” Her eyebrows drew together as she flipped the paper back over, then flipped it again.
“What?” Stiles demanded, eyes catching broken phrases like ‘blood sacrifices’ and ‘willing vessel’ and ‘guide the flow of power’ every time Lydia turned to the handwritten notations.
“They’re not the same. The original and these notes – they’re different. Contradictory, even.”
“What do you mean?”
Lydia flipped the paper over again. “The whole thing is wrong. It’s just…It’s like a parody, like someone was trying to simulate an ancient ritual, but didn’t have accurate information. This,” she said, indicating the photocopied side full of vertical lines slashed with short slanted stripes, “Is a rare variant of Ogham, an ancient Celtic dialect. It’s instructions for a spell, a ritual, but even that’s wrong. The druids didn’t write down any of their own knowledge. They didn’t even describe themselves. Modern scholars believe they were literate, but recording their knowledge was forbidden by some part of their doctrine. Everything we know about them comes from artifacts or accounts written by outside observers, so there shouldn’t be any genuine Druid spells recorded in any dialect.”
Stiles blinked. “So it’s fake?” he asked, confused. “It won’t work?”
“Oh, no.” Lydia brought her chin up and met Stiles’ eyes. “It’ll work. It’s just not druid magic. It’s blood magic dressed up to look like a druid spell.”
“But why bother?” Stiles asked. “If they had a spell that would work, why bother to translate it into ancient Celtic?”
“No clue,” Lydia shrugged one shoulder. “And there are discrepancies between the Celtic spell and the notes here. But I need time to look at it, and we’ve got a hell of a lot of rescues to pull off before midnight.”
Stiles sat up a little straighter. “So, what’s the plan, Stan?”
“Find the bad guys. Knock them out. Rescue our friends.”
Stiles grinned. “Simple. Elegant. I like it. Axial points first, you think?”
Lydia nodded. “You drive, I’ll read. Do not crash into any trees.”
“That was one time!” Stiles protested as Lydia closed the van’s side door and swung into the front seat. “And it totally wasn’t my fault. We were being chased by trolls!”
Lydia tossed her curls over one shoulder and gave him an arch look. “One tree, three werewolves, a kanima, a chimera, and two gashadokuro. Not exactly a stellar driving record. What are your insurance premiums these days?” she asked, making a big show out of buckling her seatbelt.
“Low blow,” Stiles grumbled. “Stop using facts against me. That’s so unfair.” He threw the van into drive, and headed east towards the next axial point.
☆★☆
“Holy god!” Stiles cursed, dropping the bloodied talisman around Kira’s neck and scrambling backwards, ignoring the burning knife wound in his side in favor of getting as far away from the flaming kitsune as possible. “It’s me, it’s me! Don’t attack!”
Kira struggled upright. “Stiles?” she asked as the flames surrounding her sputtered and died out.
Stiles snorted, splattering blood on the forest floor as he massaged his aching jaw. “Yes, damn it. Can everyone please stop hitting me in the face while I’m trying to save your lives?”
Next to them, Lydia was crouched beside a disoriented Chris Argent, who had also come to swinging and was responsible for Stiles’ bloody nose. Chris’s presence had shaken him even more than the punch. The fact that Allison’s dad had been pulled into this mess meant it was entirely possible that his own father was out there somewhere, unconscious and probably bleeding, and Stiles could not even begin think about that right now.
“Maybe you need to learn to keep your face out of range,” Lydia suggested. “We obviously all went down fighting. It only makes sense we’d wake up in a bit of a mood.”
“You know what? I’m putting you in charge of resuscitating the next pack members we find. Let’s see how well you do when Isaac wakes up all claws and fangs and snarling werewolf rage,” Stiles grumbled, unrepentantly wiping the blood from his nose off on the trailing black sleeve of one of the unconscious Order members’ robes.
“Where are we?” Kira asked, at the same time as Chris demanded “What happened?”
They quickly explained the salient points they’d pieced together from their own spotty memories and the Order’s cryptic notes.
“We drove here in their van,” Stiles said, “Parked about a quarter mile away and approached on foot.”
“We knew we just needed to get the talismans off them, so it was easy enough in theory,” Lydia added. “And it got even easier when one of the guards wandered away to take a leak in the underbrush.”
“I slipped up behind him as he was taking care of business, sliced the talisman’s necklace strap, and he dropped mid-pee,” Stiles recounted.
“Classy,” Kira observed.
Stiles shrugged. “It worked. Anyways, the second guy was even easier. Pee-man—”
“Stiles,” Lydia broke in, “We agreed you wouldn’t call him that.”
“No, you agreed because you actually are classy. I, on the other hand, think it is a perfectly sound nickname considering it’s his only defining action. As I was saying, Pee-man had a tranq gun on him, so Lydia used that to take down our pal Sleepy, here,” he nudged the unconscious man lying bound at his feet with one toe. “Shot him in the left butt cheek, and bada bing, bada boom, you guys were free. You’re welcome.”
“Your story telling technique is really…unique, Stiles,” Kira said with a tentative smile.
“Thanks,” Stiles grinned. “What do you guys remember?”
“We were getting ready for movie night. Allison and Isaac had already left for Stiles’ house,” Kira said, “And Scott and I were going to ride his motor bike over, but one of the tires was flat. Mr. Argent came out to help replace it when…”
“Around fifteen people appeared out of nowhere,” Chris continued, taking up the story. “Black robed and tattooed, just like those two.” He indicated the guards Stiles and Lydia had taken out.
“There were fifteen of them?” Lydia asked, eyebrows climbing.
Kira nodded. “Yeah, and they obviously knew who they were after. A bunch of them had guns and they opened fire on Scott first.”
Stiles felt the blood drain from his face. “They shot Scott?” he asked, voice suddenly unsteady.
“They were shooting darts, not bullets,” Chris replied, gruff but somehow still comforting.
“Tranquilizers,” Lydia guessed, hefting her own confiscated gun.
“I think so,” Kira agreed. “They obviously knew Scott would be the hardest to take down, because every person holding a gun shot him with that first round. He was still moving, even with all the darts in him. Chris managed to get off a few shots, and I zapped a couple,” She gave a tired smile, “But they reloaded quickly, and took us out with the next round.”
“And you have no idea what happened to Isaac and Allison?” Lydia prompted.
A vein in Chris’ forehead throbbed at the mention of his daughter. “They left a few minutes before we were attacked. My guess is they met with another welcome party on the road.”
Stiles swallowed. “What about Melissa?”
Kira’s eyes went wide, as though she’d only just realized Scott’s mom was probably in danger, too. “Working a late shift. She was supposed to get off at nine.”
“Five axial points and the Nemeton,” Lydia said in a flat voice. “So far, there have been two of us at each point, which probably means they need twelve people total, and since you’re here…” she looked straight at Chris.
“That means the Sheriff and Melissa are probably also in trouble,” Chris concluded.
“Nine pack members and the three pack parents in the know. Everyone we had participating in our little sleepovers. They must have been watching us.” Stiles took a steadying breath, pushing down the ever-present fear for his father’s safety. “It doesn’t change anything. We already knew they’d taken our pack. We just have to figure out how to get everyone back.”
Kira tilted her head quizzically. “If they had fifteen people to take us down, why are there so few guarding us here?”
“The rest of them must be at the Nemeton,” Lydia answered. When all eyes turned to her, she continued. “That’s the nexus. The central point. That’s where they’ll have Scott and Derek.”
“The alphas,” Chris was nodding. “Their tie to the land is stronger than the betas and other pack members.”
“So let’s go there,” Kira said. “Let’s go and cut this off at its source.”
Stiles felt his gut clench at the idea of leaving Scott and Derek in the clutches of these madmen for even a moment longer than necessary, but he met Kira’s fierce gaze and forced himself to shake his head. “We can’t.”
“Why not?” she demanded.
“Because we can’t take on a whole damn army of these people when there are only four of us.” Stiles scrubbed his hands through his hair, thinking out loud. “We have no real idea what kind of numbers we’re dealing with here. You said fifteen attacked you, and that probably means they had just as many to take down Derek, Jackson and Danny – maybe more, because there were two werewolves. They must have had another group to take on Isaac and Allison, and a few more for both my dad and Melissa. They only had two for the two of us, but I heard them say we were “unguarded,” like the only way we would have been a threat was if someone else was watching over us.”
Lydia rolled her eyes, and Kira let out a disbelieving huff of air.
“Clearly they underestimated your ability to make trouble,” Chris said in a dry tone.
“Clearly,” Stiles agreed. “But other than the fact that they are laboring under the delusion that Lydia and I are helpless, we still don’t really know anything about them. There could be fifty of these people. A hundred. More. We have no idea what kind of weapons they have, what kind of magic. We also have no clue yet how to safely stop this spell. We need all the help we can get.”
“I can call for backup,” Chris said. “One of these bastards must have a phone.”
“Maybe,” Stiles conceded, “But I doubt it will work. I heard one of the goons holding us say they were ‘going dark,’ and neither of the phones I’ve checked had reception. I’m guessing there’s some sort of magical interference.” There was a stubborn set to Chris’s jaw, but Stiles continued, wielding common sense like a weapon. “And what good could they do anyways? The only reason we’re conscious at all is because of these talismans.” He held up the spare Order talisman, and tapped his own fairy gifted one for good measure. “We have no idea how far the stasis spell reaches. Even if you were able to get a hold of your men, as soon as they reached the spell line, they’d just pass out.”
Chris ground his teeth. “We should split up then. We can hit the axial points faster and free the others before we tackle the group at the Nemeton.”
This time it was Lydia who shook her head. “Bad idea. Both axial points so far have been guarded by two Order members. If we split up, we’re fighting two on two. I’d much rather outnumber them. And we don’t know for sure that the other axial points will have two guards. What if there are ten at the next point? What if we somehow give ourselves away and they hit us with more tranq darts before we can fight back? And without phones, we don’t have a way to stay in contact with each other, either.”
“We’re a pack,” Stiles agreed. “We’re stronger in numbers. That’s what the fairy queen said, that we had to stand strong and fight together. She was right about the Order coming. I’m guessing she’s right about this, too. Listen,” he took a shaky breath and met first Kira’s eyes, then Chris’s, “I want to save the others as much as you do. My best friend is out there, my dad, too, probably, and Derek,” his voice broke over the name, but he swallowed and forced himself to continue. “And the rest of the pack. But we’ve got to be smart about this. We’ve got to work together, or we could all be killed.”
Kira was nodding, and Chris gave him a long, assessing look, before he finally said, “Alright, kid. What’s the call?”
Stiles felt a little of the tension in his shoulders drain away. They were probably still completely fucked, but it was nice to know that he wasn’t going to have to fight his allies on this, not when he was already fighting his own instincts, instincts that were urging him to abandon logic and head straight to the Nemeton. He was almost glad there was evil to fight so he didn’t have to examine that desire too closely.
He pulled the map of Beacon Hills out of his jacket pocket to distract himself, and spread it out. “Lydia and I started here.” He pointed to the first dot they’d identified. “And we’re here now. As long as communications stay down, the Order probably isn’t going to realize we’ve taken out two of their bases. If we continue around the circle and tackle each of these as we go,” he pointed to the three remaining dots, “Then maybe we’ll have the numbers we need to take down the group at the Nemeton.”
Chris gave a decisive nod, and Lydia stood up a little straighter.
Kira closed her eyes for a moment, and Stiles could read her inner turmoil, knew she was fighting the same desire he was to race straight to the Nemeton, straight to Scott, and probably straight to certain doom. Finally, she opened her eyes and met Stiles’ steady gaze.
“Alright,” she said. “Let’s do this.”
☆★☆
Chris, muttering about reckless teenage drivers, had booted Kira, Stiles, and Lydia to the back of the van and firmly taken hold of the steering wheel.
As they drove towards the next axial point, Lydia started the painstaking process of translated the incomprehensible Celtic characters into English, and Stiles and Kira combed through the papers and paraphernalia they’d sifted out of the Order member’s belongings, looking for any clues about what they might be facing.
Kira had a fairly solid grounding in general occult knowledge even before she’d discovered that she was a mythical being herself. That knowledge had increased exponentially with access to her mother’s secret library of archaic texts and scrolls. Combine that with Stiles’ ability to spot patterns in almost any kind of chaos, and they made one hell of a detective duo. By the time they neared their destination, they’d pieced together a sketchy picture of the different layers of spells at work.
“So there’s a stasis spell,” Kira pointed to the page detailing how the spell should be set up. “It’s what’s knocking everyone out. It relies on an artifact for power once it’s activated, so it should be pretty straightforward to undo. I think we just have to find a wooden statue of a sleeping bear and break it.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Chris allowed, carefully steering around a low-hanging branch. He was driving slowly with the headlights off even though they were still more than a half mile away from the pinned point on the map. They definitely didn’t want to risk alerting the Order to their presence.
“The Nemeton draining spell is going to be a bit tougher.” Stiles held up another stack of pages they’d found, containing references to the ritual, a few rough diagrams, and a list of necessary items. “It’s darker magic and requires precisely placed blood sacrifices to fuel it.”
“Us?” Lydia asked glancing away from the text she was still translating.
“Us,” Stiles agreed. “These points,” he indicated the five dots on the map, “are spaced in a perfect pentagon around the Nemeton, and they’re supposed to guide the flow of power to and from the tree. Each one of them falls on a ley line.”
“The telluric currents?” Lydia asked.
“Yeah,” Stiles confirmed. “The spell needs power from the land and the sacrifices. It also needs another person, not exactly a sacrifice, but someone they’re referring to as the ‘vessel.’ It sounds like the vessel has to absorb the Nemeton’s power as it’s drained, otherwise it’ll spill out into the world as wild magic.”
Chris drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“No,” Stiles acknowledged, “It doesn’t. There aren’t any specifics here, but I get the feeling that without the axial point sacrifices and the vessel, the power would just explode outwards, like a magical bomb.”
“Great,” Chris’ knuckles went white as he clenched his fingers around the steering wheel.
“The last spell is a little less clear,” Kira continued. “It’s the reversal spell. In theory, it takes the power drained from the Nemeton, power that previously drew supernatural creatures to it, and pushes it back out towards them as a weapon.”
“Like flipping a switch that turns a regular light bulb into a bug zapper,” Stiles explained. “The poor moths’ll never know what hit ‘em.”
“That analogy is a little creepy when you realize we’re the moths,” Lydia sighed. “Do the notes explain how the switch will be flipped?”
“Not exactly,” Stiles answered as Chris pulled the van to a silent stop within walking distance of the next axial point. “But it seems to have something to do with the power of the ley lines, a web of amulets, and the will of the vessel from the second spell. It claims it will ‘restore the balance of nature,’ whatever the hell that means. There aren’t many details, just vague hints, but if they’ve already started setting up the amulets, that might explain why the phones aren’t working. One of the notes mentioned the amulets cause interference.”
“We’ll have time to figure that out on the next drive,” Chris said, grabbing the tranq gun he’d taken off one his captors and checking to make sure it was loaded. “For now, we’ve got work to do.”
☆★☆
“Stiles?” Danny asked, blinking groggily and sitting up.
“Yes,” Stiles heaved a long-suffering sigh, and shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears. “It’s me, though I’m not going to remember that much longer if you guys don’t stop hitting me in the head.”
“What?” Danny squinted, clearly confused, and Stiles couldn’t exactly blame him. Lydia, on the other hand, gave a derisive snort.
“Are you laughing at me?” Stiles demanded, indignant. “Repetitive brain injury is no joking matter, Lydia. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Look it up.”
“I took three graduate level courses in Cognitive Neuroscience last summer, Stiles. I know what CTE is. What?” She demanded when everyone stopped what they were doing to turn and stared at her. “I was bored. Anyways, I thought you said it was going to be my job to wake up this group.”
Stiles shrugged, probing his jaw gingerly with one hand. “I figured it wouldn’t hurt if I had another go. You made it look so easy with Jackson.”
Stiles had actually been a bit anxious about that. It was bad enough being whacked by a human, but add supernatural strength to one of those sucker punches and it could do some serious damage. Undeterred, Lydia had simply knelt next to her boyfriend, slipped the talisman over Jackson’s neck, and brushed it against his bloody but already healed lower lip. Jackson had woken with a shuddering gasp, eyes open and flashing blue, then immediately turned and buried his face in Lydia’s curls, wrapping her in a crushing hug.
“Clearly you have an unfair advantage, here.” Stiles decided. “You’re like a werewolf whisperer or something.”
Lydia arched an eyebrow. “Or maybe you just suck.”
“You know what I’ve always loved about you, Martin?” Stiles asked.
“My honesty?” Lydia answered with a wicked grin.
Stiles snorted. “I was going to say your subtlety and grace.”
“Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” Danny asked plaintively.
“We’ll fill you in on the way,” Chris replied, closing the back door of the van on the six neatly trussed and unconscious Order members. “Get in.”
☆★☆
Jackson craned his neck around from the front seat just so he could roll his eyes at his best friend. “It’s almost like he wasn’t expecting us to wake up, escape, steal his phone, and have a hacker capable of bypassing the lock screen.”
Danny snorted. “Whatever. That’s no excuse for sloppy security practices.”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong, sweetie,” Lydia consoled from her place on Jackson’s lap, still mostly focused on her translation, “But since it’s working out in our favor this time, let’s have a little less outrage and a little more detective work, please.”
“Fine,” Danny grumbled, and continued to read.
“This is ridiculous,” Lydia complained a minute later, capping her pen and twisting around in Jackson’s lap to hand the newly completed translation of the Celtic text back to Stiles. “They’ve outlined step by step instructions for the Nemeton shut-down and reversal spells, including all their potential weaknesses.”
“Really?” Kira’s brows formed a delicate V. “That seems like one of those things you shouldn’t write down, like your ATM password.”
Jackson rolled his eyes again. “It’s almost like they didn’t expect us to wake up, escape, steal their paperwork, and have a genius capable of deciphering ancient Celtic.”
Lydia preened. “Still,” she said, “I wouldn’t have taken the chance. You’d think they’d have some kind of evil-doers’ handbook out there with instructions like ‘Never write down the vulnerabilities in your satanic rituals.’”
“They do,” Danny replied. “It’s called ‘The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became an Evil Overlord.’”
“My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through,” Stiles quoted.
Kira grinned. “My favorite was: ‘One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.’”
Danny smirked and shook his head. “No, no. The best was definitely: ‘I will never employ any device with a digital countdown. If I find that such a device is absolutely unavoidable, I will set it to activate when the counter reaches 117 and the hero is just putting his plan into operation.’”
“Oh my god,” Jackson griped. “You are all such massive nerds.”
“Dude,” Stiles scoffed. “It’s a classic. And you could have done with a refresher on number thirty-four.”
Danny chuckled and Kira let out a startled laugh.
“What the hell is number thirty-four?” Jackson demanded.
Lydia smiled sweetly. “I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.”
Jackson flipped them all off without even turning around.
“My favorite is number fifty-six,” Chris said from the driver’s seat, surprising everyone. “My Legions of Terror will be trained in basic marksmanship. Any who cannot learn to hit a man-sized target at ten meters will be used for target practice.”
There was a long moment of silence before Kira finally said, “I guess that explains why Allison’s so good with a bow.”
“Yes. Well, clearly these evil overlords have not been reading their handbook,” Lydia concluded. “Leaving this information lying around is just careless.”
“Yeah. Except…” Stiles blinked as he finished skimming through Lydia’s translation, his mind suddenly ricocheting back and forth between a hundred seemingly unconnected ideas. He knew that feeling well enough not to fight it, knew what his brain was capable of when it skittered off chasing a half-formed thoughts, and suddenly the clues and hints were sliding together, dimly remembered bits of research and overheard phrases slotting into place like Tetris pieces on an arcade screen. His mind rapidly sorted through each, aligning them and letting them fall, and within seconds, he was just one perfect piece shy of a top score. “Exactly how rare is this dialect?”
“Extremely,” Lydia answered, offhand. “I only know it because I needed to translate that ancient inscription about the púca when we thought there were shape shifters living near the lake. As far as most of the world knows, the only original examples of Ogham are a few dozen rock carvings strewn about Ireland. Fortunately, Deaton has a few long-lived elven friends who were able to find me a very old comprehensive dictionary. It would have been a waste to send it back without learning it all.”
“So the likelihood that anyone who’s not you would be able to decipher this is…?” Stiles prompted.
Lydia twirled a curl around one finger and shrugged. “Highly unlikely.”
“And it’s not exactly something you’d be able to put into Google translate.” Stiles looked down at the incomprehensible symbols and Lydia’s neat notes. “Is it possible that whoever’s in charge has been using it as their own type of secret code? Writing notes to themselves in a language that makes it appear all ancient and official? I mean, it really looks legit.”
Lydia shrugged one shoulder. “It looks legit, but it’s an obvious forgery. I told you, Druids didn’t write down their spells.”
“Yeah, but if we didn’t know that, this would look totally real. It could easily lend someone some serious credibility, right? I mean, they have a spell written in ancient Celtic, and they’re probably the only one who can read and decipher it, like in the Middle Ages when only priests were allowed to read and interpret the bible. You can control a lot about how people think when you do all the interpretation for them.”
“Maybe,” Lydia conceded, “But they’d be banking on their followers not questioning or researching on their own.”
“Sure,” Stiles nodded, handing the translation to Kira, “But we’re talking about a cult mindset, here. These people are ready to commit murder in the name of human sacrifice. I think it’s safe to assume there’s something a little off about their psychological states.”
Kira was scanning the translation with mounting astonishment. “You were right when you said there were discrepancies between this and the English notes.”
“And the ones in Urdu, French, and Russian, too,” Lydia confirmed.
Kira blinked. “The basic process is the same, but the end result is completely different.”
Stiles nodded. “It looks like someone’s been feeding their minions a big ol’ pack of lies.”
Danny frowned. “I don’t remember that being forbidden on the Evil Overlord list, but I feel like it should be number 101.”
☆★☆
Chris calmed substantially after they stormed the fourth axial point and freed Allison and Isaac, and Stiles felt one of the tightest knots in is gut loosen when he hugged his dad after they’d rescued him and Melissa at the fifth.
Based on the cell phone data, Danny estimated there were probably around forty Order members not already unconscious and tied up in the backs of the two vans they’d appropriated.
Lydia, Kira, and Stiles poured over the details and weaknesses of the spells while Chris and the Sheriff went over tactics with Allison, Isaac, and Jackson. Melissa, muttering obscenities under her breath the whole time, patched up everyone’s wounds.
“So that’s it, then” Stiles said, looking down at the rough sketch of their plan of attack. “Everyone knows what to do?” He waited until they’d all nodded in assent. “All we need now is some luck and one hell of a distraction.”
Lydia smirked. “I think I can manage that.”
☆★☆
Stiles clung to that knowledge and to the bark of the tree he was hiding behind with his fingernails. It was the only thing stopping him from sprinting into the middle of the Order-filled meadow and straight towards the slumped forms of Derek and Scott.
The small meadow was teaming with people. Black-robed figures stood guard as gray-clad men and women carved patterns in the trunks of a few of the surrounding trees. A small group swathed in white stood in a tight knot on the other side of the Nemeton, too far away for Stiles to make out more than the muted murmur of their discussion. A few more in brown hung delicate ornaments from the limbs of surrounding trees.
Alone atop the severed stump of the Nemeton, cross-legged, eyes closed, and head tilted up towards the nearly-full moon, sat a single flame-haired figure in robes of deep forest green.
Aside from the cut of their clothing, there was outwardly very little to tie the group together. The black-robed guards were tattooed, but the others weren’t. Their skin tones varied from rich onyx to pale sandstone. Some were tall, some short, some slender, some stout. Still, there was a kind of grace about them, one and all, a fluidity and economy in their movement that spoke of predators at bay.
Stiles didn’t care.
The sight of Derek—bound, sagging limply against the Nemeton’s stump, ashen skin streaked with darkly gleaming patches of fresh blood—had hit Stiles like a physical blow.
He looked dead.
Stiles ground his teeth as he stared at Derek’s profile, at the blood-matted hair falling in a disheveled sweep over his forehead, at the cheek that was darkened more by dirt and gore than by stubble. He wanted to kill whoever had done this.
Seriously.
He was going to stab someone for what they’d done to his…to his friend.
Stiles swallowed. He wasn’t even sure he was allowed to feel this way, gutted and bruised and angry on Derek’s behalf. He’d never told Derek how he felt, after all. If anything, he’d actively worked to hide it, to keep from disturbing the precarious balancing act his life had somehow become. Hell, he’d barely admitted it to himself, but the hurt and rage were slamming through him, knocking rational thoughts aside like twin bowling balls scattering pins, and Stiles wasn’t sure it was something he could hide any more.
And how wrong was it that Stiles couldn’t pull his eyes away from Derek when Scott, his best friend, was there too, beaten and bloody and unmoving. He closed his eyes and dug his fingernails deeper into the tree.
He jumped as Isaac rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “They’re alive,” he whispered.
“You’re sure?” Stiles asked, pushing the words out past the vice-like knot in his throat.
Isaac nodded. “I know their heartbeats.”
Stiles blinked at that. “You can hear them?”
“Yes,” Isaac confirmed.
“But…” Stiles shook his head, trying to refocus. “The spell. They should be in stasis, shouldn’t they? Like the others? No breathing, no heartbeats…”
“They’re not. Their hearts are beating. They’re breathing too. Actually, I think Derek’s growling.”
Stiles looked back at Derek, and they were just close enough that Stiles caught a flicker of movement as one of Derek’s hands curled, his fingers clenching like he was trying to form claws.
Stiles felt a burning flash of relief—thank holy god, they were still alive— before a man in a crisp white robe strode into his line of sight.
Stiles hated him, hated everything about him from the bleach-bright color of his clothes and hair to the way he stepped delicately around the bloodied alphas at his feet, careful not to sully his shoes.
With the air of a meticulous scientist scrutinizing a particularly interesting experiment, the man leaned down and examined Derek, then gave a little shake of his head as he straightened up and regarded the green-robed woman.
“This does not bode well, Ban-Tuathach,” the man intoned, his voice carrying far enough on the crisp night air that Stiles could make out the words clearly.
After a long moment of silence, she stirred, tipping her head down and opening her eyes to regard the man with a cool gaze.
“What is your concern?” she asked, and it was the same voice Stiles had heard on the phone in the van, resonant with calm authority.
The man inclined his head in deference, and Stiles was going to go out on a fairly sturdy limb and assume that this was Moiran, the woman Danny had pinpointed as the leader of the Order.
“The alphas are resisting the stasis spell,” the man replied. “We’ve stripped them of their packs; stripped them of their power. They should not have the strength needed to fight the spell.”
Uncoiling like a snake, Moiran stood, stepped gracefully off the Nemeton’s stump, and sauntered towards Scott. As she approached him, his fist clenched and his jaw worked, though his eyes were still closed.
“What if the pack is not contained?” the old man asked, his tone worried. “What if something went wrong? If the axial points have fallen…”
“All axial points checked in before we went dark,” Moiran replied evenly, her calm demeanor eerily reminiscent of Deaton. “Have faith in your fellows, Thomas. We are on the verge of success.”
“But, Ban-Tuathach,” the man persisted, “If the axial points have been compromised and the Nemeton’s power is drawn or released without guidance, the results could be catastrophic.”
“These are alphas,” Moiran broke in, stepping past Scott and pausing by Derek. “Both of them. We have never attempted the stasis spell with two alphas in the same territory. You warned me yourself, before we began. It should work in theory, but clearly in practice there are a few unforeseen issues.” She patted the old man’s shoulder and smiled. “Even if they do wake, the wolfsbane ropes will hold them. It is less than an hour until midnight, old friend. We are close...”
With one delicate hand, she reached out and grasped Derek’s chin, tilting his head up so the moonlight illuminated the rough planes of his cheeks and the smattering of blood congealed at one temple.
Though his eyes were still closed and his body was still mostly limp, Derek unconsciously flinched away from the contact.
Moiran regarded him with an unreadable expression, then shook her head sadly. “We are so close to restoring Nature’s Balance.” Almost carelessly, she flung her hand aside, sending Derek’s head slamming back into the trunk of the tree.
Stiles bit down hard on his tongue to stop an instinctive cry of protest, bile rising at the back of his throat.
He’d been wrong. So wrong. Moiran’s demeanor was nothing like the vet’s. Deaton’s calm was quiet and comforting, a show of self-control as well as a plea for peace. This woman might appear serene, but the wild glint in her eyes showed it was only a thin veneer. Deaton wore Zen like a warm sweater. Moiran wore it like a straight jacket.
Stiles shuddered.
“Clearly these animals don’t know when they’re beaten,” Moiran sighed, accepting Thomas’ offered handkerchief and delicately wiping Derek’s blood from her fingers. “Tranquilize them again.”
On Moiran’s command, one of black-clad guards raised her gun, but before she could fire, a piercing scream split the air.
Robes rippled in as the Order members twirled as one to face the blood-curdling sound.
Moiran locked eyes with one of the perimeter guards. “Go,” she bit out, and without another word, a group of fifteen black-robed men and women slunk into the forest, weapons raised.
As long as everything went to plan, they wouldn’t be coming back. Chris and Allison were perched in the trees a short distance away, waiting to pick the guards off one by one with their stolen tranquilizer guns. Danny and Lydia, light on their feet and equipped with a knowledge of the preserve gleaned from years of running with the pack, were on the ground to retrieve the Order Members protective talismans as soon as they were downed and lead any strays into the trap.
Stiles scanned the meadow and ran a quick head-count. Danny had been right in his estimated numbers. There were twenty five robed figures still moving around the clearing, some staring in the direction of the scream, others hesitantly resuming their tasks. Moiran and Thomas stood shoulder to shoulder next to the Nemeton, peering into the shadowed woods.
Stiles waited a full count of sixty to be sure the deployed guards were well on their way, then met Isaac’s eyes and nodded. The werewolf tilted his head back, neck straining, and Stiles knew he was whining high in his throat, a cue Jackson would hear and pass on, but at a pitch no human would pick up.
In the meadow, Derek and Scott fidgeted, still unconscious, but clearly fighting it.
Stiles felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as static crackled through the air, and with a sudden blinding brilliance, a lance of lightning struck one of the tattooed guards.
There was a moment of startled stillness, then the guard toppled face-first to the ground.
The meadow erupted like a kicked ant hill, robed figures scattering in all directions. Isaac launched himself forward, bowling over one a tattooed woman and throwing a man sideways into a tree. On the other side of the clearing, Jackson leapt into the fray, teeth bared and eyes flashing blue.
The guard who had been about to tranq Derek took aim at Isaac instead, but before she could pull the trigger, there was a tiny flicker of movement, and a dart bloomed out of her left shoulder. She jerked, looked at the tranquilizer with a bemused expression, and collapsed backwards in an ungainly heap.
Stiles wasn’t sure if it was Melissa or his dad who’d fired the dart, but a second shot coming from the opposite end of the clearing downed a guard who was aiming at Jackson. At the same time, another luminous flash of kitsune-guided lightning felled a brown-robed figure and tinged the air with a lingering scent of burnt ozone.
Stiles threw himself into the writhing masses, darting around fights and skirting robed figures as he dashed towards the center of the clearing.
The pack was holding its own for now, but these were trained fighters who had already taken the pack out once. They’d been lax about security—probably a symptom of overconfidence in the stasis spell—but they obviously knew werewolf weaknesses and how to exploit them. Stiles was sure that when they got over the initial surprise of the attack, the pack would be fighting to survive.
They’d known going in that a frontal assault was unlikely to succeed, but the attack was only a distraction, drawing attention away from the real objective – drawing attention away from Stiles.
Stiles, who might not be stealthy, but who had an incredible ability to flail himself through danger and come on the other side mostly unscathed.
Stiles, who had the spare Order talisman and could wake up one alpha, then help drag the other to safety, depriving the Order’s trap of the bait it needed to spring.
Stiles, who even now was sprinting headlong towards the Nemeton.
It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was the best they had.
Except, as Stiles drew closer, ducking a wayward fist, he caught sight of Moiran hauling herself back onto the Nemeton’s stump. She stood glaring at the roiling confusion before her, and Stiles’ stomach dropped to his knees when he saw her face. Her calm manner had vanished completely. In its place, stark madness gleamed in the whites of her eyes.
Without warning, she strode to the edge of the stump, unsheathed a wicked looking knife, and knelt next to Derek. It was like watching the counter on a time bomb jump from ten minutes to two seconds, and adrenaline punched through Stiles’ already taxed system.
She was going to perform the rite. She was going to sacrifice Derek, let his blood flow over the roots of the Nemeton, and in doing so set off the first step in the spell.
But Stiles knew the dominos were no longer poised to fall. The Order’s careful preparations were unfinished, and all that power, without the sacrifices to direct it, would go horribly awry.
“Stop!” he yelled, still running towards Derek, towards Moiran and the Nemeton, headless of the violence churning all around him. “No!” His voice cracked on the single syllable, but somehow he managed to push out another. “Don’t!”
For all the crackles of lightning, for all the growls and crunching impacts, the meadow was oddly devoid of voices. Perhaps that explained why Stiles’ shout carried so well over the noise, why the fighting suddenly stilled as every eye swiveled as one to regard him.
This was not part of the plan. Stiles was supposed to keep his head down, dart and dodge and depend on the distraction his pack was providing to get through to the two alphas.
Instead, Stiles skidded to a halt, alone in a small empty space, eyes locked on the raised blade in Moiran’s hand.
“Stop,” he repeated, no longer screaming, but easily audible in the sudden stillness of the meadow. He met Moiran’s eyes, and refused to flinch at the loathing he saw there. “If you kill him now, you’ll kill us all.”
Thomas stepped forward, his white robe marred with patches of dirt and blood. “He speaks true, Ban-Tuathach,” he hissed, his urgent whisper just loud enough for Stiles to hear. “The preparations are not complete, and the axial points have clearly fallen. Unleashing the Nemeton’s power now would end in disaster. We must regroup.”
“No,” Moiran grabbed Derek’s hair and pulled his head back to expose his throat. “We can’t stop now. I’ve waited too long.”
Stiles could taste her intention on the wind, crackling around her like a madness-fueled field of static electricity, and he screamed, all the air punching out of his lungs at once, because she was going to do it anyways. She was so god-damned drunk on power that she was going to kill Derek and Scott and release the Nemeton’s force with no guiding channels for it to flow through. She was going to kill Stiles’ best friend and his…and Derek, and in doing so, kill them all.
Thomas was frozen beside her, face a rictus of fear, and why wasn’t he stopping her? He had to know it was sheer insanity, know the unleashed power would wipe them all off the map, but he just stared, eyes locked on her upraised knife, and did absolutely nothing.
Stiles had no idea when he’d started to move again, but he felt the sharp slap of his feet on hard-packed dirt, felt his muscles coil as he dodged between people, pelting forward like a rock from a slingshot as Moiran struck, knife slashing down towards Derek’s exposed throat.
Stiles dove, slamming into Derek head-on, knocking the unresisting alpha sideways out of the knife’s path and blanketing Derek’s prone form with his own body.
He knew to expect it, the agony of honed metal slicing through his flesh, but it still stole his breath when Moiran’s blade slammed into his back and skidded sideways across the hard plane of his shoulder blade.
He kicked out and felt his foot connect with Moiran’s ankle, saw her stumble back a step as she lost her balance.
Locking his arms around Derek’s chest, he rolled them away from the Nemeton, fighting to pull them out of range.
The pain as his injured shoulder connected with the ground was blinding and white. He cursed, sparks shivering at the edges of his vision as his momentum pulled Derek’s unconscious weight across his chest. He knew he only had a handful of heartbeats before Moiran would recover, before she’d close the distance and attack them again, so he gritted his teeth against the pain and wrenched sideways, rolling them both until he straddled Derek’s hips.
There was movement behind him, scuffling and growling, a gunshot, the crackle of static in the air. He ignored it all, his whole focus on freeing Derek.
The key ring felt slick in his sweaty hands, but he clenched his fingers tight around a single key and heard the satisfying snick of the blade retracting. The razor edge of the dragon bone sliced through the ropes with one clean swipe, and Stiles reached forward with shaking hands to drag the spare talisman over Derek’s head.
As soon as the metal touched his bloody skin, Derek’s eyes flew open, crimson and wild, and Stiles flinched because he hadn’t thought this through. He hadn’t thought this through at all and Derek was going to wake fighting, all claws and fangs and undiluted rage, and if Stiles was too slow to dodge a punch from Lydia, he sure as hell wasn’t fast enough to get away from an infuriated alpha werewolf.
Derek would rip through the closest threat, through him, and Stiles had the briefest moment to regret that his dad was about to watch him die, that Derek would have to live with the knowledge that he’d killed Stiles.
Then the body under him twisted, an arm like an iron band wrapped around his stomach, hauling him back, shoving him safely behind a wall of solid muscle and snarling werewolf rage.
Stiles sagged forward resting his weight against Derek’s heaving back. He was aware on some level that it might be ill advised to use an irate alpha werewolf as a crutch, but Derek was alive, and he hadn’t accidentally mauled Stiles, and maybe it was relief or the blood loss talking, but suddenly, being plastered to Derek’s back felt like the safest place Stiles had ever been.
“No!”
It was Melissa’s voice, her agonized scream breaking over the single syllable, and Stiles forced himself to raise his head and peer around Derek’s heaving shoulder.
And, shit. How could Stiles have forgotten Scott? Forgotten that there were two alphas that could be used to trigger the Nemeton’s spell?
Moiran stooped beside Scott’s unconscious body where it slumped against the Nemeton, one hand holding her knife to Scott’s throat, while her other hand…
Her other hand was in his chest. Literally inside his torso, like she’d just rucked up his shirt and passed her fingers straight through his skin, sank her hand wrist-deep through solid muscle and bone as easily as if they were water.
There was no blood, no broken skin or torn flesh, but Stiles knew this spell, had seen it in Deaton’s books, and he understood the damage she could inflict intentionally or accidentally if her hand solidified, still locked around Scott’s heart.
Stiles caught sight of a flash of dull metal behind them and knew without looking that Melissa was taking aim.
“Don’t shoot!” he shouted, frantic because if she fired, if Moiran lost consciousness while her hand was still in Scott’s chest… “Don’t shoot!” he bellowed again. “It’ll kill him!”
Even as he yelled, he felt Derek tensing as he took in his surroundings, the muscles under his palms bunching for a lunge.
“Wait,” he hissed, low and desperate, reaching out and grimacing when his shoulder screamed at the movement. Somehow he still managed to grab Derek’s arm with one hand as he blinked back tears of pain.
The restraint was nothing against an alpha’s strength, but Derek stilled, hesitating because Stiles had asked him to, trusting Stiles to make the right call.
If Stiles hadn’t already been in love with the man, that probably would have pushed him right over the edge.
The flutter of warmth he felt was quickly doused by roiling waves of nausea and fear as his eyes locked again on the knife at Scott’s throat and the vicious snarl on Moiran’s lips.
He had to stop this madwoman, and in order to do that, he needed to focus.
If she was using the phasing spell from Deaton’s grimoire, it was powerful, but limited. It only worked on living flesh, and was impossible to use on inanimate objects, which meant as long as her hand was phased through Scott, she couldn’t kill him without seriously injuring herself.
It was a stalemate, and the manic glint in Moiran’s eyes told Stiles that she knew it, too.
“What are you doing?” Moiran screeched, gaze darting over the robed figures frozen mid-fight, apparently spellbound by their leader’s suddenly erratic behavior. “Kill them!”
There was a soft rustling of fabric as a few of the Order shifted nervously from foot to foot, but none moved forward. Stiles read hesitation in their eyes and pushed his advantage.
“What’s the point?” he called out, infusing his voice with as much scorn as he could muster. Carefully cradling his left arm against his chest, he pushed himself upright and stepped around Derek, ignoring the way the alpha’s growl ratcheted up several decibels. “The whole pack is here,” Stiles continued as Derek crowded in behind him, breath hot against his nape. “Your plan won’t work. Without sacrifices at the axial points, you’ve got no way to contain the Nemeton’s power.”
“They’re filthy abominations!” Moiran spat, ignoring Stiles in favor of glaring at her motionless minions. “Disgusting perversions of nature! They must be put down like the rabid animals they are!”
“Right,” Stiles lobbed the word at her like a grenade, “Because you’re so very full of humanity’s best virtues. Setting up stasis spells, then strolling in to commit wholesale murder while your victims are unconscious. You’re the very definition of kindness and compassion.”
Something darted along the tree line, there and gone again in a flash. Stiles caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and resisted the urge to turn towards it, not wanting to draw any attention. He didn’t need to anyways, not with Derek’s base rumble of “Allison” breathed low against his ear. If Allison was back, Chris, Danny, and Lydia must not be far behind.
Stiles took a step towards Moiran, trying to draw her eye, and felt Derek follow.
It worked. Moiran turned her glare on Stiles, eyes alight with undisguised hatred. Stiles didn’t flinch, meeting her scowl with one of his own, because as long as her attention was focused on him, Scott would likely stay alive. And if he kept her distracted, the others might have enough time to figure out how to cut through this Gordian knot.
“How many helpless creatures have you and your merry band slaughtered?” Stiles demanded. “We know about the gnomes in Zion. The Pied Piper in Vegas. The harpies in Yellowstone. How many more were there? And what had they done to you? What had they done to deserve death?” His muscles were trembling, whether from blood loss, fear, or anger, he didn’t know, but suddenly Derek’s hovering presence behind him became a solid, warm support, and he leaned into it before his knees could buckle and reveal exactly how unsteady he was.
“Their very existence is a threat to Nature,” Thomas intoned, and Moiran’s gaze shifted to the old man, standing little more than a stride from her.
Derek leaned in closer to whisper, “Lydia has a plan. Keep them talking.”
Stiles gave a small nod of acknowledgement even as he glared down the old man. “What gives you the right to decide that?”
“It’s a simple truth,” Thomas shook his head, eyes narrowed over Stiles’ shoulder at Derek. “Their unnatural abilities bring disorder to the world. Their strength, their speed, their ability to shift forms…”
“Ok, yeah. Their tendency to go all freaky fur-day is a little odd, and they’ve got some incredible gifts. I’ll give you that. But all species have different abilities, different strengths and skills. I mean, have you ever seen an octopus? They have nine brains, three hearts, and blue blood, and they can change shape and color at will. Why are they ok but werewolves have to be eradicated?”
“Werewolves are dangerous,” Moiran spat.
Stiles snorted, “So are lions and bears, but I don’t see you hunting them down.”
Thomas’ brows furrowed at that, but Moiran only sneered.
“Maybe you killed some dangerous beasts,” Stiles allowed, “But I studied your movements. I looked at the places and creatures you attacked, and most of them were harmless, living peacefully until you showed up and slaughtered them in their sleep. How is that fair? How is that right? How are you any better than the ‘monsters’ you set out to defeat?”
“We fight for balance,” Thomas argued.
“No,” Stiles shook his head, “You fight for power. Or at least, she does.” He gestured at Moiran, and bit back a groan as the movement sent sickening waves of anguish through his back.
Suddenly, warm fingers slipped under Stiles’ shirt and pressed against the clammy skin of his back. The tell-tale fuzzy numbness of a werewolf pain-drain washed through him, and the relief was so intense he felt a little lightheaded.
He cleared his throat, trying to gather his thoughts, and forced himself to refocus on the old man. “Do you know what this spell will do for her?”
Thomas glared. “She is the vessel. She sacrifices her own purity and sanctity to guide the war against the supernatural plague.”
“Wrong again,” Stiles smiled, but it wasn’t a friendly expression. He met Moiran’s mad eyes and refused to look away. “She’s the vessel, so she’ll absorb the Nemeton’s power and that means she can do whatever she wants with it. She’s not sacrificing anything. She’s using you. She’s using us to make herself more powerful.”
“Lies!” Moiran shrieked.
“You’re a bigot, pure and simple,” Stiles said. “You’re setting yourself up like some sort of prophet, but in reality, you’re just a biased, prejudice asshole who’s trying to instigate a mass genocide so you can gain power.”
“The supernatural must be expunged,” Thomas said, though he sounded a little less certain now than a righteous zealot should. “We fight for balance. We fight to restore nature to her pure, unsullied state.”
Stiles shook his head. “You don’t get it. The spell she showed you is bullshit. Look at her! Look at what she’s already doing! Does that look natural to you? No matter what she’s told you, she’s not planning to get rid of the supernatural. She’s going to become supernatural. Powerfully so. She’ll be as close to immortal is it’s possible to–”
“Silence!” Moiran screeched, and Scott twitched as she jerked, the knife at his throat cutting a shallow line into his skin.
Without warning, Derek moved, shoving Stiles down as something bright sailed past them, straight towards Moiran’s face.
Stiles grunted as Derek’s weight fell on top of him with a growled “Stay down.” The words were completely unnecessary considering the two-hundred plus pounds of alpha werewolf currently pinning him to the forest floor. Still, Stiles strained to keep his eyes focused, following the flight of the sparkling little thing.
Moiran turned towards the innocuous projectile, face a snarl of haughty incredulity as she moved to bat it out of the air.
It exploded.
The meadow flashed white, then fizzed with a shower of blinding sparks.
Stiles squinted in pained surprise, and barely made out the silhouette of Moiran jerking both hands up in an instinctive reflex to protect her eyes.
She must have realized her mistake as soon as she’d made it, her expression shifting from surprise to fear, but it was already too late.
The moment her fingers cleared Scott’s skin, a knife hilt sprouted from Moiran’s throat, blooming a crimson spray of hot blood. Half a heartbeat later, and a shot sounded, and Thomas groped blindly for the dart in his neck. Both of them dropped to the forest floor.
“Shit,” Stiles gasped, blinking to clear his vision.
There were sounds around him – feet running over crunching leaves, familiar voices all talking in a rush – but Stiles couldn’t make sense of any of it. He ducked his head, nausea and pain rolling over him in waves. The heat at his back was suddenly gone, but a warm, steady arm wrapped carefully around his waist, pulling him off the ground. Stiles clutched at it, at the solid body it was connected to, and let out a shuddering breath. “Derek.”
“Yes,” Derek acknowledged, voice close and surprisingly gentle as he helped Stiles sit upright. “You’re ok. It’s ok. Just breathe.”
Stiles did, taking a shaky inhale, and carefully avoiding looking towards the Nemeton, towards the crumpled form on the ground beside it. “I’m fine, help the others. The fight—”
“It’s over,” Derek replied, scrunching a fist full of Stiles’ shirt up to press against the still bleeding wound on Stiles’ shoulder. Stiles hissed at the pressure and Derek wrapped his other hand, warm and solid, around Stiles’ exposed waist. Once again, the roiling pain in Stiles’ shoulder lessened, and he watched curling streaks darken Derek’s arm as he siphoned off enough to make breathing bearable.
“Over?” Stiles asked. “But the other Order members—”
“Unconscious,” Isaac answered as he wandered up beside them. He held out a fistful of talismans. “We took them out while you were having your little chat. Everyone was watching you guys, so we just…” He extended a clawed finger like a hook, “Snipped these off, and took care of the stragglers with tranqs.”
Stiles let out a laugh that sounded a little hysterical even to his own ears. “Good plan. You guys used one of the fireworks?” At Isaac’s nod, Stiles continued, fighting to stay focused on the conversation as Derek’s hand skimmed along his skin, cataloging every bump and bruise. “I guess all that tourist crap was useful after all. How’s Scott?” he asked, voice only slightly breathier than usual.
“Kira and Melissa are helping him,” Isaac answered as Derek let out a low, unhappy growl, thumbing at the edge of the bloodied bandage over Stiles’ ribs. “They put a talisman on him and he’s conscious.”
“Thank god,” Stiles sighed, valiantly ignoring the soft press of Derek’s fingers against his skin as he nudged Stiles around and carefully shifted the wadded shirt to get a proper look at the gouge across his shoulder blade. “What about everyone else?”
“Danny sprained his ankle, Jackson’s healing a broken wrist, and Chris is looking a little twitchier than usual,” Isaac reported with a smirk. “All in all, no worse than our usual Friday nights.”
“Melissa needs to look at this,” Derek said, breaking in to the conversation.
“I’m fine,” Stiles said, knowing full well he wouldn’t be without the magical miracle of Werewolf mojo. “Help me bandage it for now. The rest can wait until we get back to Deaton’s.”
“You need surgery,” Derek grumbled, pressing the fabric of Stiles’ t-shirt hard against the wound again, his mouth a grim line.
Stiles hissed at the renewed pressure despite the pain Derek was siphoning off. Derek was probably right, but he let out an unsteady breath and shook his head. “I’m fine,” he repeated, resting his hand against Derek’s tense bicep. “It’ll be ok. Let her take care of Scott.”
Before Derek could respond, the crunching of heavy boots on dry leaves announced another arrival.
“Stiles?”
“I’m fine,” Stiles replied as he turned towards his father’s anxious voice. A relieved smile tugged at his lips when he saw that his dad appeared relatively unscathed. He had a small cut across one cheek, and one of his sleeves was torn, but otherwise he seemed ok. “That was some fancy shootin’, Sheriff.”
“Could have been better,” his dad said, eyeing Stiles’ shoulder meaningfully. “How bad is it?”
“Not bad,” Stiles said at the same time as Derek growled, “He needs a doctor.”
Concern clouded his dad’s already worried expression and Stiles glared over his shoulder at Derek. He turned back to his dad, countless placating words already half-formed on his tongue, but before any of them made it past his lips, a loud crack echoed through the clearing.
Stiles tensed. He knew that sound, recognized the glimmer of sparkling light hovering just at the edges of his vision, and only barely stopped himself from burying his face in his hands.
“Oh god, here we go again,” he sighed, then turned to face the familiar flitting figure of the fairy queen flanked by fifty or so of her guard.
“Greetings, pack leader,” she intoned in her melodic voice.
Stiles groaned. “I’m not…” he started to protest, then squawked indignantly as Derek dragged him backwards, and suddenly there was a growling wall of werewolves between him and all the sparkles.
Stiles wasn’t entirely sure where Jackson had appeared from, but he, Derek, and Isaac stood shoulder-to-shoulder in front of Stiles and his dad, creating a rather impressive barrier of furry sideburns and fangs. Even Scott had pulled himself away from his mother’s tender mercies, and surged forward to stand behind Stiles, eyes glowing red.
“It’s fine, guys,” Stiles soothed, trying to sound more calming than desperate. The last thing they needed right now was to start some sort of interspecies war with the fae. “She’s the one that gave us the warning about the Order.” The growling didn’t stop, but at least the volume dropped a bit.
Stiles closed his eyes and took a deep breath. At one point in his life, he was sure the idea of being surrounded by four angry, snarling werewolves would have worried him considerably. He wasn’t quite sure what to do about the fact that at this point, he found it kind of cute. He let out his breath on a sigh, and opened his eyes.
“Hey there, Your Majesty.” He peered over Derek’s shoulder and gave a little wave with his good arm. “It’s so lovely to see you again.”
Either sarcasm wasn’t a thing in fairyland, or the queen was remarkably good at ignoring it. She smiled regally, and gave a gracious nod.
“We are glad to find you and your pack well.” Her eyes narrowed in on Stiles, darting from the bloody bandage at his side to the awkward way he held his injured arm. “Mostly well,” she amended.
“Oh my god,” Scott whispered very audibly, “Is that the fairy queen?” He craned around Stiles to get a better look. At least he’d stopped growling, unlike another idiot alpha of Stiles’ acquaintance who would remain nameless.
“Be cool, dude,” Stiles hissed between clenched teeth as he gave Derek a judicious prod in the ribs. He was rewarded a second later when the growling stuttered and died.
“I’m glad we’re all in one piece, too,” Stiles smiled, this time addressing the miniscule monarch. “Thanks for the warning, by the way. And the talisman.” He brushed the ivory charm with his fingers. “It was a literal lifesaver.”
“We are glad our small tokens have been of use,” she replied, “Though through your efforts tonight, the debt we owe to the Hale pack has only increased. This new pack has proven just as tenacious, just as righteous as those who came before, and your sacrifices have not gone unnoticed.”
“Uh, thanks?” Stiles hedged, “But I really don’t think you owe us anything. Seriously. Without this talisman, we’d all have been goners, so I’m pretty sure your debts all paid.”
“Your gracious words have been noted,” the queen replied. “Nevertheless, we wish to offer further assistance. First, let us ease the wounds you have sustained while fighting in our defense.”
The pack hadn’t been fighting in the fairies’ defense. They’d been fighting for survival, for each other, and possibly to end some terrible, supernatural version of the apocalypse. And ok, maybe somewhere in there the fairies had also been saved a little bit, but that was more coincidence than anything.
Before Stiles could express any of that, though, the queen’s jewel-bright eyes flashed golden, and he gasped as brilliant, honey-sweet warmth seeped through his shoulder and side, pushing back the pain. He heard Danny’s quite curse and Jackson’s bitten off yelp, and beside him, Scott muttered, “What the hell?”
“What did you just…” Stiles started, and then cut off as Derek spun towards him, gaze sharp and probing.
“Stiles?” he demanded, eyes raking over him.
Stiles blinked. “It doesn’t hurt to breathe.” He moved his arm experimentally, and noticed Jackson doing the same. It really didn’t hurt. What the hell?
Stiles craned his neck and looked down at the ragged hole in his shirt where Moiran’s knife had stabbed into his shoulder blade. There was blood. There was a lot of blood, all wet streaks and dry, crusted patches, making his shirt stiff and his skin itch. But under the blood, the skin itself looked smooth and unbroken.
Stiles’ eyebrows raised in incredulity.
And suddenly, Derek was in his space, all solid muscle and warm breath, and Stiles froze.
It wasn’t new, exactly. Derek was almost always in Stiles’ space these days in one capacity or another, pressed against him on the couch on movie nights or slamming him into walls when they trained. Ever since they’d started training together, it was a rare day that Stiles didn’t come into some kind of physical contact with the alpha. And he’d been living in Stiles’ house for the past two weeks, adding a torturous combination of unavoidable brushes as they passed each other on the stairs and accidental kicks under the dinner table. Hell, they’d been plastered together not five minutes before, Derek a steady warm wall behind him while the world around them exploded…
But there was something different in the way Derek was moving now, something purposeful and proprietary, like he had a right to be this close, like he was staking a claim.
Stiles’ mind was so busy trying to process the intent in Derek’s proximity that he nearly missed it when Derek hiked up his shirt and peeled the bandage off his ribs with careful fingers. Then they both stared at the thin, white scar that traced the line where the gash used to be. Derek ran one thumb over it, and there was still no pain, just a shocky firing of nerve-endings that sparked under Stiles skin and put even the blinding flash of fireworks to shame.
Stiles swallowed convulsively and pushed Derek’s hands away, awkwardly pulling his shirt back into place. He took an unsteady step back, forcefully shoving any Derek-related thoughts firmly to one side because they were still standing in a clearing surrounded by dead and unconscious bodies, their bloodied, exhausted pack, a fluttering envoy of fairies, and his father for fuck’s sake. Stiles really could not cope with his tangle of Derek-related emotions on top of this level of death, destruction, and supernatural mayhem.
Derek moved as if to follow, then stopped and made the visible, conscious choice to stay put, to allow Stiles his space.
Taking a steadying breath, Stiles turned back to the fairy queen. “Thank you,” he said, sincerely grateful to avoid another set of doctor’s visits and a long, painful recovery.
“Of course,” the fairy queen said simply. “It is but a small gesture of our gratitude. And there is another service we would offer you, if you wish it.”
Chris stepped forward, arms crossed and a suspicious look on his face. “What’s that?”
The queen glanced towards Chris, and then refocused her attention on Stiles. “If you want to deal with the Lost on your own, that would be understandable. Your pack has every right to mete out justice as you see fit. However, considering the number of offenders and the possible complexities of human law enforcement’s involvement in such a case, we wish to offer you an alternative.”
“An alternative?” Stiles’ dad asked, sounding unimpressed.
The queen tipped her head in assent. “The Council of Nine deals with those who stray into the darkness. With your consent, we will bring the Lost to them.”
“What?” Stiles gaped at her, suddenly full of righteous indignation. “What? There’s a council to take care of this shit? Where the hell were they two hours ago when we were all being bludgeoned and kidnapped?” he ranted, willfully ignoring the frantic calming gestures Scott was making at him. “Where were they two months ago when the Order massacred those gnomes? Hell, where are they now?”
“You misunderstand,” the fairy queen soothed. “They, like the fae, no longer interfere in the conflicts of this realm. But they do meet out punishment to those deserving, once their actions are complete.”
Lydia arched an eyebrow. “So you’re telling me we can wash our hands of these creeps? That there’s some sort of supernatural justice system that can punish them and make sure they don’t harm anyone else?”
The fairy queen turned her huge, jewel-bright eyes on Lydia and regarded her with interest. “Yes, Death-crier,” she declared.
If Lydia was bothered by the title, it didn’t show on her face.
“I still don’t get why these people didn’t step in at some point,” Stiles insisted. “And for that matter, why didn’t you? Don’t get me wrong, the talisman and the hints were great and all, but you guys literally just healed all of us without breaking a sweat. Why not use your powers to stop the Order before they nearly wiped everyone out?”
“Once, we might have intervened,” the queen said, a sad smile playing across her face, “But in those ages, this land was ravaged by war and our interference often did more harm than good. The Fae have since sworn an oath, as have the Council of Nine, to observe this realm and not to interfere unduly. You will have to take our word that it is for the best.” She flitted up a few inches, stopping at eye-level with Stiles. “We help in what small ways we can without disrupting the course of events. Passing judgment on those in need is one of those ways.”
“What will happen to them?” Kira asked, gesturing at the unconscious men and women sprawled around the clearing.
“The Council is both wise and fair” the queen answered. “They weigh the actions of each individual brought before them, and respond accordingly. Those who deserve punishment will receive it. Those who deserve help will find comfort and support. In both cases, the world will be safe from the Lost.”
“I’ve heard of the Council of Nine,” Chris said. “Whispers, mostly, but the stories align.”
“I don’t know,” Stiles’ dad said, brows drawn. “These Order folks are probably wanted for crimes all over the country. They can be brought to justice here, as well.”
“But how are we supposed to prove what they’ve done?” Allison asked. “I’m guessing the shattered remains of a Golem aren’t exactly admissible in court.”
“Yeah,” Scott agreed. “And what if they get talkative while they’re being interrogated?
Kira frowned. “One criminal claiming they were fighting werewolves might be dismissed as crazy, but multiply that story by fifty and it’s a little more incriminating.”
The sheriff paused, thinking that over, and Stiles shrugged. “It’ll save you a lot of paperwork.”
“That’s not a good reason to avoid prosecution, Stiles,” his dad replied.
“It’s not exactly like Beacon Hills has enough holding cells to contain them all,” Derek interjected, and there was an awkward pause while everyone remembered how much time Derek had spent in those holding cells himself.
The sheriff sighed and leveled a serious gaze at his son. “Do we trust them?”
Stiles shrugged again. “They did save our lives. Without their warning and talisman, I wouldn’t have woken up in the first place.”
“True,” his dad conceded. “That doesn’t mean we trust them.”
“Paperwork,” Stiles reminded him.
“So very much paperwork,” his dad agreed, scrubbing a hand over his tired face. He exhaled slowly, then met Stiles eyes and said, “Alright.”
Stiles looked around the rest of the group and was met with a series of shrugs and slow nods.
He turned back to the fairies. “Apparently we have no better ideas, and the local law enforcement seems ok with it, so yeah, thanks. We’d really appreciate the assistance.”
The fairy queen inclined her head, and without another word, the fluttering entourage behind her scattered, each ball of incandescence flitting toward a different prone form on the ground. Two groups flew into the woods, headed in opposite directions. Stiles assumed they were taking care of the scouts and the Order members still trussed up in the vans.
He watched as the nearest fairy land delicately on one of the black-robed women’s foreheads. She bent and placed her tiny palm flat against the woman’s skin, and with a sharp crack, they both disappeared. There was another crack, then another and another, as the slumped figures around the meadow vanished in rapid flashes of light. Stiles heard a more distant series of snaps as well, then gradually, the rapid-fire noise began to peter out.
“It sounds like popcorn,” Scott said, expression caught somewhere between disturbed and hungry.
Kira rolled her eyes. “If we ever run into a problem that doesn’t make you think of food, I’ll know it’s actually the apocalypse.”
The meadow was empty now, but for the pack and the fairy queen, and she turned towards Stiles with a quick flick of her wings. “It is done,” She stated. “The Lost will no longer trouble you or this land.”
Stiles felt the solid knot of tension riding high between his shoulders loosen just a little bit at her words. “Good.”
“Before we leave you, there is perhaps one last way we may be of assistance.” She locked eyes with Stiles. “You have been working towards finding a way to safely disperse the Nemeton’s power and break its hold over those creatures within its thrall.”
“Yeah,” Stiles agreed, slightly unnerved by the intensity of her gaze.
She glanced around the clearing, eyes skimming across the curved lines freshly carved in the trunks of the trees and the intricate ornaments hung on their branches. “Though the leader of the Lost intended to use this spell to usurp the Nemeton’s power, the spell itself is not dark. It is the will of the vessel alone that determines its outcome. You could use this spell to quiet the Nemeton’s rage.”
“By killing my pack?” Stiles raised a doubtful eyebrow. “That sounds like a terrible idea.”
“No one need die, pack leader. Do you remember what we discussed when last we met? A life’s worth of blood forcibly taken…”
“Has less power than drop of blood freely given,” Stiles finished, heart kicking up as he suddenly grasped her implication. “Wait…that means we can—” he cut off, mind racing through the possibilities.
The fairy queen closed her eyes, and seemed to focus for a moment. Stiles felt something pass through him, invisible but there, echoing in his chest like the reverberation of a base drum. When she opened her eyes again, she was smiling. “All the foundations for the spell are laid. You need but activate it at midnight when the moon rides highest in the sky. If you guide the Nemeton’s power back to nature, your pack and our supernatural brethren will be released from this burden.”
Stiles stared at her, mouth agape.
“Time grows short,” the queen intoned. “We wish you and your pack luck in this, as in all else. Perhaps we shall meet again, pack leader.” She bowed her tiny head, and with another sharp crack, she was gone.
Stiles spun to Lydia. “Was she right?” he asked. “Could the spell still work?”
Lydia pulled the folded spell translation out of her pocket and scanned it quickly before nodding. “It should. The spell says the amulets needed to be doused in the sacrificial blood at midnight on the night before the full moon to open the lines of power. If it really only takes a drop, in theory we’d just need to get back to the axial points and smear a drop of blood each on a talisman at the right moment to activate it.”
“How much time do we have?” Jackson asked.
Danny fished through one of the backpacks of supplies they’d gathered for the attack on the Order, pulled out a phone, and checked the time. “Forty-two minutes.”
Chris glowered. “That’s not much time to decide what to do. Are we sure this spell will work? How far do we want to trust a random fairy?”
“A random fairy queen,” Scott corrected.
“Gut instinct?” Stiles said. “I think we can trust her. I did some research on the fae after they snatched me and they seem to live by some pretty strict rules. I think she’s probably telling the truth. And this is the closest we’ve ever come to finding a fix for the Nemeton.”
“Hang on a second,” Stiles’ dad broke in, rubbing the bridge of his nose like he was trying to ward off a headache. “We’ve just barely managed to survive a massive group kidnapping by an insane cult who wanted to sacrifice us to a tree. Are we seriously discussing diving into another potential magical crisis?”
Stiles shrugged. “Yes? I mean, this is the closest we’ve ever been to diffusing the Nemeton’s power. If we can stop it, we’ll probably be dealing with a hell of a lot less chaos around here, and I don’t know about you guys, but I’m all for a little more peace and quiet.”
Derek turned to Lydia. “Does the spell mention potential dangers? Anything that might happen if we screw it up?”
Lydia nodded. “The worst case scenario is what nearly happened. If a sacrifice is made here at the Nemeton without the axial sacrifices in place, the power would be too much for any vessel to hold, and it would break free and sweep across the land in a wild torrent of destruction.”
Kira rolled her eyes. “Well, that doesn’t sound dire or anything.”
“It definitely wouldn’t be good,” Lydia conceded, “But it also says the spell could be performed with as few as two axial points active if the vessel was strong enough. And we’re not talking strength in magic, here. This is based on strength of will, and the vessel’s ability to focus on a goal and fight for it.”
“Then how do we make sure everyone’s in place?” Danny asked, checking the phone again. “There’s still no signal, so we can’t call each other.”
“Why don’t we use these?” Kira pulled the remaining neon firework packages out of Danny’s backpack. “We can send up a flare when we get into position. All the axial points should be visible from the Nemeton, right?”
“That might work,” Chris said, peering off into the woods to calculate the distance.
Allison leaned forward, looking over Lydia’s shoulder. “Will anything terrible happen if a sacrifice is made at the axial point but not at the Nemeton?”
“Not according to these notes. It’s only dangerous if the Nemeton goes off without the axial points. The only other danger it lists is the vessel itself. Whoever is trusted with that power has the potential to do some serious damage if they choose to.”
“So if we manage to get everyone in place on time and the vessel is trustworthy and stays focused, it should work?” Melissa asked.
Lydia nodded. “And apparently all that the vessel needs to do to is channel the magic back into nature. If they don’t want to control the power themselves, they just have to act as a conduit and allow the power to flow back to its natural place.”
“Then it sounds like it’s worth a try, at least,” Isaac offered.
Scott nodded, and Derek gave an affirmative grunt.
“Ok, then,” Stiles said “We don’t have much time. Let’s get back to the axial points. Same groups as before?”
“No,” Derek and Scott said at once. At some point, Derek must have stepped closer to Stiles, because he was looming alarmingly close.
Beside him, Scott’s fingers were fisted in the fabric of Kira’s hoodie. Clearly he wasn’t going to let her out of his sight.
“You have to stay here, Stiles,” Lydia said, as though it was obvious. “You’re the vessel.”
Stiles blinked. “What?”
“It makes sense,” Scott said. “You’ve been trying to find a way to diffuse the Nemeton for months. None of us have been as nearly as focused on it as you.”
“And you’re a spark,” Chris added, “You’ve had experience using your will to direct magic before.”
Everyone was nodding, which made no sense at all because, yeah, Stiles might be able to use mountain ash in a pinch, but he wasn’t exactly the poster-boy for attention spans, even on his best days, and this definitely wasn’t one of his best days. Before he could voice any of that though, his dad spoke up.
“Also, you’re apparently the pack leader,” The smirk on the sheriff’s face let Stiles know he was never going to live that one down.
“Listen,” he protested anyways, unwilling to give up without a fight. “The fae are obviously crazy. I’m not–”
“I don’t know,” Jackson shrugged, cutting him off. “It kind of suits you.”
Stiles squinted at the beta, unsure if Jackson was being serious or just being an ass.
“Yeah,” Isaac agreed. “We always use your house for movie night.”
“And you occasionally provide us with healthy snacks,” Allison added.
Stiles crossed his arms and glared. “Those are not actually leadership qualities. God, if this is how our world leaders are being chosen these days, no wonder the global political stage is such a shit-show. Do we really have time for this right now? Can we maybe postpone the whole make-fun-of-Stiles show until after we shut down the Nemeton?”
“Sure thing, boss,” Kira quipped, all sass in a way that made Stiles remember her shy and awkward early days with aggressive fondness.
“This is ridiculous,” he declared. “You are all ridiculous.”
“The longer you spend fighting this, the less time we have to make it work,” Lydia reprimanded, somehow managing to look down her nose at him despite his height advantage.
Stiles closed his eyes to avoid looking at any of their stupidly hopeful faces. “What does the vessel actually have to do?” he asked, ignoring his better judgment.
Lydia shrugged. “Sit on the Nemeton at midnight, open yourself to the power when it comes to you, and avoid thinking any terrible thoughts that might make it into a weapon. As long as you just let it flow through you, and don’t try to impose your will on it or corrupt it with evil intent, it should find its own way back to nature, like water running downhill.”
Stiles looked at her incredulously. “Just think happy thoughts? Really? This isn’t Peter Pan, despite that visit from a real-life Tinker Bell. It’s gotta be harder than that.”
“The spell is pretty clear,” Lydia shrugged. “The will of the vessel can harness the power, or let it flow safely back into the world.”
“And that will stop the Nemeton’s pull?” Stiles asked, his objections crumbling.
“It won’t be the Nemeton anymore,” Lydia confirmed. “It’ll just be another stump in the woods.”
Stiles heaved a sigh. “I don’t know if I can do this,” he admitted.
“You’ll do fine,” Derek said, and the world really must be ending if Derek was acting as the voice of assurance now, but then everyone else was nodding, too, and voicing their assent.
Stiles swallowed and gave a slow, unsteady nod. “Ok,” he agreed finally. “I’ll try. But if this goes tragically wrong, I’m blaming all of you.”
“You’ve got this.” Scott smiled with the kind of blind optimism that was probably going to get them all killed some day. “We trust you.”
Stiles really hoped he was worthy of that trust.
He hoped it while the rest of the pack got into pairs, and divvied up the talismans and fireworks.
He hoped it as Danny gave each group a cell phone with an alarm set to go off five minutes before midnight so they’d be sure to be ready on time.
He hoped it as the groups piled into separate vans and chatting quietly and slamming doors like this was any normal night.
And he hoped it even harder when they drove off, leaving him alone in the clearing with Derek.
☆★☆
Everyone seemed so sure he was the right guy for this job, but Stiles was far too aware of his own distractible mind to share their certainty.
It was terrifyingly possible that he was going to fuck this up.
Derek, who was restlessly prowling the edge of the clearing like an extraordinarily grumpy guard dog, was definitely doing nothing to help his concentration. Stiles should probably have been grateful for the distance since his ability to focus on anything other than his own conflicted feelings decreased exponentially the closer Derek came, but the continual motion at the edge of his vision was setting his nerves even more on edge.
Stiles sighed and checked the time again, but only a minute had passed since he’d last stared at the cell phone’s display. He rolled his shoulders to fight the building tension in his back.
A bright flash suddenly illuminated the sky to the north, red and blue sparkles fanning out, then drifting lazily towards the tree tops.
“That’s the last of them,” Stiles said. “Everyone’s in place.”
“Good,” Derek grunted, finally coming to a stop.
“We’ve got fifteen minutes till midnight.”
Derek nodded and started moving again, which would have been bad enough on its own, but it was made even worse because he was moving towards Stiles now, his expression unreadable.
“Hey, are you ok?” Stiles asked as Derek stalked closer, shoulders bunched like he was expecting a fight. And he was in Stiles’ space again, unnervingly close, jaw clenched as his fingers skated along the bloody slashes in Stiles shirt. “It’s over,” Stiles reminded him, because it looked like Derek might have forgotten that somehow. “We won. The fight’s done.”
“Yeah,” Derek closed his eyes and took a deep breath, like he was coming to some sort of decision. “Yeah,” he said again. “I’m done fighting this.”
And then he was kissing Stiles. Actually kissing him, all soft lips and rough stubble and just the barest hint of blunt teeth, and Stiles froze, his nerve endings suddenly on fire with the press of Derek’s mouth over his, the tortuous slide of hot fingers around the back of his neck and a part of Stiles sighed finally, the thought seductive and simple and so easy to slide into. But this wasn’t right. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t—
Stiles bit back a frustrated groan, shoving Derek away even though it felt like he was trying to peel off part of his own skin.
Derek blinked at him, eyes unguarded and almost sweetly confused, and it was nearly enough to make Stiles reach out and pull him back in, to make him ignore the fact that Stiles wasn’t what Derek needed. But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t—
“No.” His voice caught as he tried to push the words out. “This won’t work.” Intellectually, he knew it must be true, even though all of his emotions wanted to deny it. He forced his mouth to form the words. “We’re not compatible”
Derek made a startled noise, something halfway between a huff and a snort. “What?”
“We’re not compatible,” Stiles repeated, an ache building up at the back of his throat that he desperately tried to swallow down.
Derek glared at him. “Yes we are.”
Stiles’ stomach twisted at that. He wanted to believe it, wanted to trust the frustrated sincerity he thought he saw in Derek’s eyes. He took a deep breath, jaw clenched as his mind waged an internal war.
He’d been quietly pining after Derek for months. Was he really going to push him away? His lips were still tingling, cheeks still burning from Derek’s stubble, and he could still feel the ghost of warmth where Derek’s hand had cupped his skull moments before. Did he seriously want to talk Derek out of kissing him again?
Of course he didn’t want to. But he was going to. There was no future in a relationship with Derek. Nothing they could build on. No security. Derek needed someone who could stabilize him and his pack - an emotional anchor. His alpha biology would know who that was, and Stiles wasn’t it.
Stiles shook his head. “We’re not.” He looked down, unable to meet Derek’s eyes as he continued, voice a little unsteady. “I know about fixation, ok? I talked to Deaton.”
“You talked to Deaton about this?” Derek demanded, sounding as close to scandalized as Stiles had ever heard him.
“Yeah, of course I talked to Deaton about this. I wasn’t about to believe Scott without verifying his information.”
“You talked to Scott?” And what do you know, apparently Derek was capable of sounding even more scandalized.
“Yeah. I mean, you were acting all weird,” Stiles said, trying not to sound accusatory, “And Scott was worried. He told me all about your crazy alpha instincts. And...and Deaton said you’re not fixated on me, so...”
Stiles jerked, voice trailing off as a gentle hand reached out to cup his jaw, tilting his head until he was looking straight into Derek’s eyes.
“I am.”
Stiles blinked at him. “What?’
“I am.” Derek repeated. “Fixated. On you.”
Stiles froze.
Had Derek really just said...
He couldn’t mean...It made no sense.
But he’d said…
All the connections in Stiles’ brain were misfiring as he struggled to comprehend Derek’s words – words he’d simultaneously dreaded and dreamed of hearing. He shook his head, trying to get his brain back online.
“Bullshit,” Stiles blurted, because if there was one constant he could fall back on in times of stress, it was his tendency to poke emotionally charged landmines with a stick. Then a horrible thought struck him, driving ice through his overheated veins. “Wait. Did it just happen? Shit. Did this fight cause it? I know I saved your life a little bit, but that’s like…that’s what friends do. And you saved my life right back, so we’re even. Quits. I didn’t mean to trigger anything. I didn’t mean to–”
“No,” Derek broke in, letting his hand drop from Stiles’ jaw as his lips curled up in small, tired smile. “No, it’s not new. I’ve been fixated on you for a while now.”
“A while?” Stiles demanded, racing through his memories of the past several weeks for anything out of the ordinary. “Since when?”
“Remember when you stormed into my loft and demanded that I teach you self defense?” Derek asked.
Stiles nodded dumbly, and the alpha continued, “You threw a punch at me.”
“You threw me across the room,” Stiles said, brushing fingers against his side, tracing the faint scar, a mirror image of the one he’d acquired tonight. His eyes widened as Derek’s meaning sank in. “You fixated then?”
Derek nodded.
Stiles sputtered. “But that was over a year ago.”
“Yes,” Derek agreed.
“But…” Stiles raked his hands through his hair. “I thought it was like throwing a switch. The way Scott explained it, triggering the instinct means you suddenly feel the compulsion to court and protect.”
Derek nodded. “It does.”
“So why didn’t you just–” Stiles made a gesture that was supposed to indicate a werewolf pouncing but ended up looking more like a spastic T-Rex.
Derek shrugged, far too nonchalant for Stiles’ comfort. “It wouldn’t have worked. You would have said no.”
Stiles raised his eyebrows. “I think you are seriously underestimating the power of my teenage hormones.”
“No,” Derek disagreed. “I’m accurately estimating the power of your suspicious brain.”
Stiles snorted, but Derek shook his head and kept talking. “What would you have thought if I had brought you flowers and serenaded you with Barry Manilow a year ago?”
“Barry Manilow?” Stiles asked with a laugh. “That’s what you’re going with?”
“Stiles,” Derek growled, and it always amazed him how much meaning the alpha could layer into a single word.
“Alright, jeez.” he said, holding his hands up placatingly. “I would have thought you had the corniest taste in the world.”
Derek rolled his eyes. “You would have assumed that I was possessed or under the influence of some kind of wolfsbane or something.”
“Ok, yeah, fine, that is probably true... but, I’ve gotta say, while throwing me across a room might have dispelled any possible concerns about wolfsbane or possession, it wasn’t exactly a stellar first step towards a happy, healthy relationship, either.” Stiles flailed at Derek, limbs cycling through every gesture they knew, trying to come up with one that could accurately depict the epic incredulity he was feeling. “Maybe it’s a werewolf-human culture gap here, but in the land of normal people, bodily heaving someone across your living space does not usually imply romance.”
Derek looked uncomfortable. “I may have...overreacted to the instinct.”
Stiles bit his tongue, trying to let Derek find the words he was clearly searching for.
“When I’ve been…attracted to people in the past,” Derek said finally, haltingly, eyes fixed on his feet, “it hasn’t ended well.”
“I...yeah,” Stiles agreed weakly, reviewing his mental list of Derek’s past partners.
Paige.
Kate Argent.
Ms. Blake.
It was, of course, possible that Derek had dated other people in the long years between the fire and returning to Beacon Hills, that he’d had relationships that ended in a normal breakup – a simple argument or an amicable parting of ways. Still, there was a bit of an ominous pattern given the sample size Stiles knew about. It would be understandable for Derek to be a little gun-shy about romantic entanglements.
Stiles felt his lungs burning, and realized only belatedly that he’d been holding his breath. He exhaled quietly.
Derek closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if to steady himself.
“It’s not…easy for me to talk about this.” Derek said finally, haltingly, working his jaw like it physically pained him to push the words out. “But I’ll try.” He took another deep breath. “Fixation is…It’s all-consuming. I knew about it, in theory. I’d heard about it when I was a kid, and again from Deaton after I became an alpha. But actually experiencing it—”
He broke off, finally looking away from the forest floor and focusing instead on a tree beyond Stiles’ left shoulder. “The instinct was so much stronger than anything I’d ever felt before,” he said, unknowingly echoing Scott’s words. “I wanted you, wanted to protect you more than I’d wanted anything else in my life. It was terrifying.”
“So you hadn’t fixated on anyone else before?”
Derek gave a whole body flinch at that, as though the thought alone was enough to cause him physical pain. “No,” he said firmly, finally meeting Stiles’ eyes.
“Ok,” Stiles prompted when the silence stretched too long. “If you’d never felt fixation before, then why was it so frightening?”
“I’ve learned not to trust people I’m attracted to,” Derek said, shoulders slumping wearily. “And suddenly I was more than just attracted to you. The feeling was so…so huge, so overwhelmingly powerful...” He cut off, shaking his head, like he was frustrated with the English language and its inability to convey meaning. “People I’d cared so little for in comparison had destroyed my family and tried to murder me and my pack.” Derek stopped, swallowed. “If those people could hurt me so badly, what would you be able to do?”
It wasn’t a full explanation. Not really. But Stiles was pretty good at extrapolating information, and he knew Derek well enough now to fill in the gaps.
Derek didn’t want this. He’d been fighting it for more than a year—a nearly impossible feat if Scott and Deaton were to be believed. But even Derek’s iron will couldn’t hold out forever, and he was finally giving in to the instinct, finally worn down enough to break.
Stiles felt sick, insides twisting like he’d swallowed a whole nest of live snakes, because the raw emotion behind Derek’s words was gutting. And Stiles had been right, though he’d never wanted it confirmed. Fixation was a curse. This was horrible, this feeling of having trapped someone, having taken away their will.
But it would be fine. Stiles would make it ok. Thanks to Scott’s warning, he’d had a little time to think about how to frame an honest refusal; to choose which words would release Derek from the prison of his instincts while ensuring he wouldn’t hear a lie. Granted, after Deaton’s flat denial of the situation, Stiles had basically swept all thoughts of Derek and fixation into the deepest, darkest corner of his mind, so he hadn’t exactly worked out the finer points of his plan, but he had a basic idea, the vague outline of what to do.
He could make this right.
He just hadn’t realized how much those words would hurt to say.
“It’s ok. You don’t have to do this. I don’t—” Stiles stopped and swallowed, trying to steady himself. “I don’t want this…I don’t want you,” he managed, then, looking down, he wiped a hand under his nose to hide his lips as he breathed, “Not if you don’t want me, too” silently into his palm so the audible words would ring true.
There was a long, horrible moment of stillness, and Stiles finally looked up to find Derek just staring at him. Stiles braced for anything—for anger or hurt or relief.
Instead, Derek huffed a breath through his nose and leveled Stiles with a look that clearly meant you idiot, and said “I want you, too.” Then he reached out and snagged Stiles’ shirt and pulled him in.
And shit, it hadn’t worked. Stiles wasn’t sure if his heartbeat had betrayed him, or if Derek had somehow made out the ghost of his silent words, but either way, this still wasn’t over. Stiles closed his eyes, trying to ignore the wrenching feeling in his chest.
“You don’t though. Not really.” Stiles’ voice was ground glass in his throat, but he pushed the words out. “This whole fixation thing...It’s so unfair. I don’t want you to be forced into this.” That much was true at least. Painful, but true. “I know I’m not…Not what you probably want,” He laughed a little, high and tense, and leaned back in Derek’s embrace far enough that he could gesture to his bicep which definitely didn’t do the impressive bowing out thing that Derek’s did. “I’m underdeveloped and over-excitable and…”
“Stiles,” Derek warned, like the last thing he needed to hear right now was a list of Stiles’ many and varied insecurities.
“I just…” Stiles started, still trying to pull away.
“Listen to me,” Derek said, as though Stiles had ever been able to do anything else on the few shining occasions when the alpha actually managed to put his thought into words.
Derek wasn’t using his words now, though; wasn’t using his mouth to speak at all. Instead, he leaned forward and smashed their lips together almost brutally, like he was trying to knock some sense into Stiles with his face.
The kiss was awkward at first, wet and frantic and a little bit painful; but if Derek’s intention really had been to sucker-punch Stiles into startled stillness, it was working.
Derek pulled back just far enough to say, “I do want this. I have for months now.” He nuzzled the ticklish spot under Stiles’ ear, muttered against his skin, “This is more than just some instinct. I’d still be fighting it if that’s all it was. But it’s not, Stiles. This is real.” He sighed, air ghosting over Stile’s skin. “You’re an annoying little shit with the self preservation instincts of a frosted donut. You push all the boundaries and you never seem to know when to give up. Sometimes I think your curiosity is going to get us all killed.”
“Geez,” Stiles said, voice breaking as Derek nosed at the tender skin of his throat. “You really know how to sweet talk a fella, don’t ya?”
“I mean it, Stiles,” Derek said. “You’re loud and reckless and stubborn and a complete jackass most of the time.” Derek buried his face in Stiles’ skin, breathed him in. “And you’re exactly what I want. What I need.”
And Stiles felt a startled warmth bloom in his chest at the words. He let out another laugh, this time bubbling and relieved, and looked at Derek with wide eyes. “You mean it,” he said, not a question. “You actually want this.”
He wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that Derek’s insults were what finally convinced him this could be real, but maybe that was a little bit perfect, too, because this was them. This was their rocky, contentious, push-each-other-to-the-breaking-point relationship, and Stiles reeled as Derek growled “Yes,” and surged back in, claiming his mouth.
And maybe they should have gone slow, tested the waters a bit before jumping straight in, but who was Stiles trying to kid? They were both stubborn idiots with no idea how to do things by halves, so of course they’d dive head-first into this, too.
Stiles pressed in, desperate to get closer, aching for the scrape of stubble, the slick slide of Derek’s tongue, the raw edge of his teeth. Stiles fisted both hands in Derek’s shirt and pulled until he was lying under the alpha, the rough wood of the nemeton’s severed trunk under his back and the warm press of Derek’s body all along his front.
A low growl echoed through the clearing, sharp and possessive, and Stiles shuddered at the vibration he could feel straight to his bones, and then there was a sharp bite at his neck. It wasn’t hard enough to break skin, not with Derek’s teeth still blunt and human, but it was hard enough to bruise, to mark, to claim.
Derek froze, like he’d just realized what he’d done. He pulled back a little, muttering a low apology, like he thought somehow he’d gone too far, like this rough, animalistic side of him might be too much.
“No, it’s fine,” Stiles panted, pulling him back in, heat coiling low at the base of his spine, radiating out in bright, shocky waves. “I–” Stiles swallowed and tried again. “I like it.”
Derek’s answering grin was appropriately wolfish, and he dove back in, all slick warmth and urgent pressure, and Stiles gave a low, guttural groan that he would probably be embarrassed about later. There wasn’t space in his mind for shame right now, though. He didn’t have the capacity to think beyond the press of Derek’s thigh between his legs, the sweet friction burning him up from the inside. Stiles tipped his head back, exposing his throat again, and Derek settled his teeth back over the sore spot with a satisfied hum.
Stiles pushed into the bite, and felt a shudder run down the whole length of Derek’s body, every inch of contact where they were pressed together. He slid his hands over Derek’s shoulders, down his sides and had just pushed his fingers under the waistband of Derek’s jeans when a shrill tone rang through the air of the clearing, scattering his already lust-fogged thoughts.
“Shit,” Stiles cursed, groping beside him to find and silence the hellishly loud alarm.
Derek was already pulling back, though, pulling away, and Stiles gave a very undignified whine at the sudden lack of contact.
“No!” he protested, finally managing to silence the wretched phone. “Come back here. We were—that was amazing and we should really keep doing that, like, right now. I might die if we stop.”
“Blue balls never killed anyone,” Derek deadpanned, pushing himself upright and stepping away.
“There’s a first time for everything,” Stiles muttered darkly, propping himself up on his elbows so he could glare more effectively.
Derek snorted. “You want to stop the Nemeton, right?”
“It is remarkable how little I actually care about that right now,” Stiles grumbled.
“Come on,” Derek said, grabbing Stiles’ hand and pulling him into a sitting position. “It’s less than five minutes till midnight. Time to get ready for the spell.”
Stiles sighed. “Right,” He grumbled. “Fine. Let’s save the world or whatever. But you’re making out with me again when we’re done.”
“Deal,” Derek agreed.
Stiles grudgingly got into position, sitting as close to the center of the Nemeton as he could manage, legs crossed and body relaxed. He pulled out Lydia’s translation of the spell and glanced over it again, trying to drag his thoughts away from what was going on in his pants. Or, more accurately, what wasn’t going on in his pants, because Derek was a spoilsport.
The translation revealed specific directions for the spell’s setup, how to initiate it, and what the results should be, but there was no real description of what would happen during the spell itself, which meant Stiles had no idea what to expect. Apparently all he had to do was say focused and calm and let the power flow through him, which sounded simple enough on the surface, but Stiles was pretty sure that if he looked himself up in a dictionary, “focused” and “calm” would be listed as antonyms.
He fidgeted nervously and glancing at the cell phone’s display.
11:59.
Stiles swallowed and tried to center himself, searching for the calm he’d need to channel the Nemeton’s power back into the earth. Considering his distractible brain, it would have been hard enough to stay focused on a normal day. Given the insanity of the night, it was basically a hopeless proposition.
His stomach swooped as the cell phone’s readout flipped over to 12:00.
“Now,” he said, and Derek pricked his palm with a claw and smeared a dark streak of blood on the Nemeton’s rough bark.
There was a moment where nothing happened beyond a slight prickle at Stiles’ fingertips. An expectant silence fell around the woods like an indrawn breath before a scream, then power ripped through Stiles, a raw storm of energy so strong that the first wave of it punched the air straight out of his lungs. It felt like a dam had burst, and Stiles was standing directly in the path of the oncoming flood. The sheer force of it washed every thought from his head other than the desperate realization that he had as little hope of guiding this torrent as he did of diverting a river with his bare hands. It was too much, too fast, too strong, and Stiles felt the beginnings of panic stirring in his chest.
The power seemed to know where it was going, though, and when Stiles calmed down enough to think beyond the wild force of it, he realized with dawning awe that could actually follow the streams as they poured out, diverging into five even flows that ran straight through the axial points. From there, the power branched further, naturally slotting into an intricate web of energy that pulsed through the earth itself. The web seemed to strengthen as the Nemeton’s power rejoined it, reinforcing brittle places and patching frayed ends.
Stiles felt connected to it all, from the insubstantial wisps of clouds in the sky to the sugar-rich sap flowing under the bark of the trees. He stretched with the tendrils of power, burrowing deep into the soil of the preserve, gamboling over the stones in burbling brooks, and racing a spotted owl along a whipping wind. He tasted the wordless thoughts of startled fish and the ancient energy of the bedrock buried below his feet, and rushed farther and farther, on and on through metal and stone, skin and sinew, asphalt and trees. The power reached the city beyond the edges of the preserve and some part of Stiles’ consciousness passed through the solid, man-made structures that stood in neatly ordered rows along the paved streets. He slid sideways through the sleeping minds of their silent inhabitants, glimpsing hazy dreams, and heard the frantic barking of backyard dogs as he gently ruffled their fur. He sailed further still, into the wilderness beyond the city, the mountainside caves reverberating with the low snores of trolls and the murky depths of lakes where kelpies and merfolk played.
He had no idea how long it lasted or how far he’d gone, but gradually the torrent of power dwindled, like a stream drying under the scorching summer sun. Slowly, Stiles became aware of his body again, the strange smallness of his flesh and the limited confines of his own thoughts.
He shuddered as the last trickle of power flowed into him, bracing for its loss, for the emptiness he knew was coming, but this time, the power didn’t leave. The final, miniscule remnants of the Nemeton’s force pooled in his chest and wrapped vine-like around the dark seed of his sacrifice, smothering it in layers of heat and light. Stiles took a shuddering breath as the warmth pulsed, then stretched through him, spreading inside his body just as it had spread through the preserve, burning away the tendrils of darkness that had taken root in Stiles’ heart. The darkness shriveled and died, the foreign warmth fading with it like a fond memory.
Gasping, Stiles opened his eyes at last and pushed himself jerkily to his feet, staggering away from the powerless stump. He stumbled almost at once and would have fallen if Derek hadn’t been there to catch him.
“It’s gone,” Stiles panted, trying to catch his breath as Derek half-walked, half-carried him to the edge of the clearing and helped him lean against the cool bark of a tree.
“The Nemeton?” Derek asked, gently wiping at Stiles cheeks.
With a start, Stiles realized he was crying, tears streaming hot and wet over his skin, and he gave a little laugh, pushing Derek’s hands aside so he could wipe off his own face. “No.” He shook his head as Derek shifted his attention, already running his fingers through Stiles’ hair, down his neck, over his shoulders and sides, looking, as always, for any signs of injury. Then Stiles processed Derek’s words and corrected himself. “I mean yeah, the Nemeton’s gone, too. But the darkness, Derek…the darkness in me, from the sacrifice. It’s gone.”
“Really?” Derek asked, pausing in his inspection long enough to glance up and meet Stiles eyes.
Stiles nodded. “Yeah. The pressure in my chest…I can’t feel it anymore.” He laughed again, and ridiculously the tears kept flowing, even more than before. He smiled, unable to find the words he needed to explain the relief coursing through him, the sense of an immense weight finally lifting, euphoria expanding to fill the void like helium in a balloon. “I can finally breathe again.” He tangled his fingers in Derek’s shirt, pulling him forward, needing the solid heat and warmth of the alpha to keep him grounded, sure that without it he’d float right off the floor.
Derek pressed in, arms bracketing Stiles’ shoulders and weight settling against him like a welcome anchor.
Stiles skated his palms over the smooth muscle of Derek’s back and up his neck. He trailed fingers through the shorn hair at Derek’s nape and pulled him forward until he could feel the shape of Derek’s smile against his own lips. He shivered as Derek growled and deepened the kiss, rocking their hips together, then pressing a knee between Stiles’ legs until he was riding Derek’s thigh.
Stiles lost track of time after that, everything a blur of sweet friction, slick kisses, and the searing scrape of stubble and teeth. Stiles’ world narrowed to the hot, insistent press of Derek’s mouth, the tormenting drag of his fingers, and the sweat-salty tang of his skin.
“STILES!”
Stiles blinked as the sound of his own name crashed into his consciousness with all the subtlety of a six car pile-up. With a monumental effort of will, he pulled away from Derek’s addictive lips and tried to focus beyond what Derek was doing with his hands. His attempt was almost thwarted when Derek, deprived of Stiles’ mouth, ran a tongue down the long column of Stiles’ throat, then bit the junction of his neck and shoulder sending a shockwave of pleasure straight to Stiles’ groin.
Stiles would have given in to the sensation, but the sound of a throat clearing very nearby made him freeze. Stiles glanced towards the noise and cursed as he caught sight of his father standing a few yards away, looking just this side of homicidal.
Stiles closed his eyes and groaned, letting his head fall back against the trunk of the tree with a thump. Clearly he had done something awful in a past life, because the universe seemed set on cockblocking him at every turn.
With a resigned sigh, Stiles cracked his eyes open to regard his father. Considering his dad’s proximity and expression, he’d probably been trying to get their attention for a while, now. And hey, look, Melissa was there, too, standing just behind his dad with a knowing smirk on her face.
“Uh,” Stiles said, gently nudging the oblivious werewolf currently sucking what was probably going to be a pretty impressive hickey into Stiles’ neck. And what the hell? Derek had super-senses. How had he missed their arrival? Stiles tried again, elbowing him a little harder, and Derek finally grunted and pulled back, glaring at Stiles like he was the one being ridiculous.
“Hi Dad,” Stiles said pointedly.
Derek blinked. Then he slowly turned his head and regarded Stiles’ father.
“Sheriff,” Derek acknowledged, and very carefully removed his hand from Stiles’ pants. “Ms. McCall.”
“How did you not hear them coming?” Stiles demanded in a pained whisper, frustration and embarrassment warring for his attention as he tried to covertly zip up his fly.
“You’re distracting,” Derek growled, low enough that Stiles’ dad probably couldn’t hear. And that statement was simultaneously amazingly good for Stiles ego and bad for his sanity because thanks to Derek’s distraction, his dad was still standing right there staring at them.
Derek seemed to notice that, too. He took a small step back, which really wasn’t going to help anyone’s reputation here considering the state they were both in, but he gamely turned to face the Sheriff anyway, and cleared his throat.
The sheriff ran an assessing eye over both of them, then raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Funny what adrenaline can make you do,” he said with the hint of a question in his voice.
Stiles felt his stomach lurch at his dad’s words. If Derek was looking for an out, then this was it. Not that he’d seemed particularly averse to Stiles a minute ago, but Stiles was still struggling with the idea that Derek could actually want him, waiting for Derek to realize how much better he could do. And now his dad had just offered Derek a perfect excuse for his behavior, all neatly packaged and wrapped in a bow. If he wanted a way to escape the situation, to escape Stiles… well, there wasn’t going to be a better opportunity than that.
Stiles waited for him to step away or put distance between them. Instead, Derek reached back blindly, and took hold of Stiles’ hand.
“No, sir,” Derek’s voice was steady, though his grip on Stiles’ hand was nearly bruising. “Adrenaline had nothing to do with this.”
Stiles let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and squeezed Derek’s hand in reply.
“Stiles never picks the easy path does he?” the sheriff asked in a wistful voice, gazing up at the starry night sky, and Stiles felt the same bittersweet ache he did every time that expression crossed his father’s face, because he knew exactly who his dad was talking to.
“No, sir,” Derek answered, sounding almost fond as he tugged Stiles forward and wrapped an arm around his waist. “He never does.”
The sheriff fixed Derek with a steely gaze for a long moment, then gave a little shrug, like he’d come to some sort of decision. “At this point, son, I think you’d better call me Noah.”
Derek froze at that, but before he could respond, another van pulled up, and Lydia and Jackson piled out.
Stiles shifted, wondering if he should step away from Derek. There were already enough things going on tonight without adding a new layer to the complex dance of pack dynamics. And really, Stiles wasn’t even sure what all this meant beyond the fact that apparently Derek wasn’t averse to kissing him. He moved to put some space between them, but Derek’s hand tightened on his hip, pulling him in even closer.
Jackson caught sight of the movement and let out a long-suffering sigh. “Finally. Thank god. Now maybe you’ll both stop smelling like angst and sexual frustration.”
Lydia elbowed her boyfriend to shut him up, and beamed at Stiles and Derek. “Now they’ll just smell like sex,” she quipped, then noticed Stiles dad’s expression and gave him a pitying pat on the back. “Sorry Sheriff.”
Stiles groaned and buried his face in his hands as two more vans pulled up, disgorging Chris, Danny, Allison, and Isaac.
As soon as he spotted Derek and Stiles, Isaac grinned and turned to Allison with a smug expression. “Pay up.”
She glanced at his extended hand, then back over at Stiles and Derek, and cursed, reaching into her back pocket and pulling out a wallet.
“Wait a second,” Stiles glared, scandalized, as Allison handed Isaac a twenty. “You bet on us getting together?”
Danny arched an incredulous eyebrow at Allison. “You bet against this? Are you blind?”
“No.” She gave a resigned shrug. “I bet they’d get together by the end of junior year. It’s not my fault they’re incompetent at communicating.”
“Junior year?” Stiles yelped, straightening. “What the hell. We weren’t even—” He cut off as Derek covered his mouth with his hand, smothering his words. Stiles gave him an indignant glare, then licked his palm in retribution.
“We can talk about this later,” Derek declared, ignoring Stiles’ attempts to bite him. “We’ve got other things to worry about now.”
The last van pulled into the clearing, and Scott and Kira got out.
“It worked!” Scott cheered, running towards the group like the overenthusiastic puppy he was. “It’s gone! The nemeton’s seed of darkness is gone! I can’t feel it at all anymore.”
“Mine, too,” Allison said, her eyes bright as she returned Scott’s smile.
Stiles shoved Derek’s palm away, and this time, the alpha let him do it. “Yeah,” he agreed, “And the Nemeton’s power’s gone, too. I felt all of it drain away. I think you’re right. I think it really did work.”
Scott grinned at Stiles, then glanced back at Allison before doing a hugely comical double-take, eyes wide as his gaze jerked back to Derek and Stiles. He raised his eyebrows and Stiles shrugged and gave him a sheepish smile.
“So that’s it?” Kira asked, leaning against Scott’s side. “We did it? It’s over?”
Lydia shook her head. “Not quite. We still haven’t broken the stasis spell.”
“My guys can come in and sweep the forest,” Chris said. “We’ve got enough extra talismans to send in a full team. I’ll have them search for the statue and make sure the Order didn’t leave us any more surprises. You should all head home. Get some rest. This has been one hell of a night.”
“I could definitely do with some sleep,” Allison agreed, leaning against Isaac’s shoulder as she muffled a yawn.
“You won’t cite us for grand theft auto if we take these vans home, right Sheriff?” Kira asked, gesturing at one of the Order’s abandoned vehicles.
“You’re safe from the wrath of the law for tonight,” Dad conceded with a small smile. “Just drive safe and follow the speed limit on your way home. I’ll have to impound them in the morning, though that’s going to take a bit of explaining.” He turned back to Stiles. “Ready to head home, kiddo?”
Stiles gave a tired nod.
The sheriff met Derek’s eyes. “I suppose you’re coming home with us?” he asked.
Derek tensed, glancing down at Stiles, then back to his father.
Dad sighed. “Why don’t you use the front door tonight? Stiles’ window sill is getting a little scuffed from overuse, and I’d rather not call in the painters again this year.”
After an uncomfortable beat of silence, Stiles elbowed Derek until he nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Noah,” the sheriff insisted, then turned and headed for the van.
Stiles laced his fingers through Derek’s and tugged. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
☆★☆
Stiles slid into the back seat, assuming Derek would sit up front. Instead the alpha had crawled in after him, nudging Stiles over until they were side by side on the van’s bench seat.
“Are you afraid of my dad or something?” Stiles asked.
Derek gave a derisive snort. “No.”
“Then why…?” Stiles trailed off as Derek leaned further into his space.
“I don’t want to stop touching you,” Derek answered, running a warm palm over Stiles’ thigh.
Stiles’ mouth fell open as a blush stole over his cheeks, but before he could reply, his dad had opened the driver’s door and slid in. Stiles snapped his jaw closed, and refused to meet Derek’s eyes, because this was definitely not a conversation he was willing to have in front of his father.
The sheriff, undeterred by Derek’s backseat gambit, started up a conversation as soon as he put the car in drive, and kept up a steady flow of chatter interspersed with the occasional question about sports or movies or food as they made their way slowly through the woods.
Derek, true to his laconic nature, answered in as few words as possible, though he was still being unnervingly polite.
Stiles normally would have done more than his fair share of the talking, but he was still a little overwhelmed by the events of the night, ecstatic and exhausted in equal parts, so a few minutes into the drive, he yawned and let his head fall onto Derek’s shoulder. Derek, still apparently focused on his dad’s rambling story about something that had happened at the station, wrapped an arm around Stiles’ shoulders and held him in close. At least the alpha made a decent pillow, even if he was a bit of an ass.
Sometime later, Stiles blinked his eyes open as the van pulled to a stop, and looked around in confusion when he realized they weren’t home.
“Why are we stopping here?” he asked, sitting up and peering around the 24-hour drug store’s parking lot.
“You’re buying condoms,” his dad said, matter-of-factly, putting the van into park.
“What?” Stiles squawked, dropping into appalled consciousness as the words hit him like ice water to the face.
“Don’t get me wrong,” his dad said, turning off the engine, and meeting Stiles’ eyes in the rearview mirror. “I do not want to know what you two are getting up to. Ever. But I do want to know that you’re safe.” His gaze shifted from Stiles to Derek. “Both of you.”
“W-What?” Stiles sputtered again, but Derek just gave the sheriff a solemn nod.
“Yes, sir,” he said and opened the door. The traitor.
Stiles scooted out after him, because it was that or sit in the car with his dad while trying not to think about Derek shopping for condoms, and that was not going to happen.
Granted, actually going with Derek to shop for condoms wasn’t much of an improvement, but anything beat enduring another minute of the knowing look on the Sheriff’s face.
Stiles followed Derek silently up and down the aisles until he stopped in front of a wall of small, square boxes.
“Oh my god,” Stiles breathed. “There are so many kinds.” Derek ignored him, scanning the shelves, so Stiles reached out to snag a luridly pink box. "They have bubblegum flavored ones?"
Derek made a face and pulled the box out of Stiles' hand. “We are not getting those,” he said as he set them back on the shelf with finality.
Undaunted, Stiles pulled down a shiny silver pack. "What about these?"
"No." Derek glared at him.
"Not even for science?"
Derek closed his eyes and gritted his teeth, like Stiles was causing him physical pain. "While I would be thrilled to discuss your apparent interest in experimentation at some point in the near future," Derek said through clenched teeth, "I refuse to get back into a car driven by your father with a package of anything that's marked 'ribbed for her pleasure.'"
"Fair point," Stiles conceded, and let Derek pick out a nondescript black box before following him to the register.
☆★☆
Stiles had never been so grateful for anything in his life as he was for the fact that his house was only a three minute drive from CVS. Those three minutes still felt like an eternity, though, and by the time they pulled into the driveway at home, Stiles’ knee was jiggling up and down with nervous energy.
His dad unlocked the front door, and let them in. “I’m taking a shower,” he announced. “I expect to see you both at the breakfast table tomorrow morning by nine. Until then, I will be wearing earplugs and completely ignoring your existence.”
“Dad!” Stiles yelped, horrified. Derek’s ears turned bright red.
“Have a good night,” his father said with a smirk, and because he was a heartless bastard intent on sending Stiles to an early grave, he added, “Try not to break any furniture, please,” then turned and headed upstairs.
Stiles glared after him, then rolled his eyes. “My dad, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, with a grand showman’s gesture towards his father’s retreating back.
Derek huffed a short laugh. “I can see the family resemblance,” he said, lips quirked in a small smile. “You’re lucky. He really loves you.”
“Yeah,” Stiles sighed. “He’s a bit of an ass, but I love him, too.”
He turned back to Derek, suddenly unsure.
In the middle of the forest, with magic crackling through the air and the threat of imminent death hovering over them, everything had felt so raw and real. But now, surrounded by normality, in the middle of Stiles’ living room with his math textbook on the coffee table and the gnawed stub of a pencil resting on the lid of his laptop, everything seemed somehow less certain. Doubt crept back in, and Stiles swallowed, trying to calm the kamikaze butterflies suddenly hurtling around his stomach.
“Are you really sure about this?” he asked, mouth dry, because despite Derek’s earlier assurances, a large part of him still thought this was all too good to be true.
“Yes.” Derek answered simply. He tipped Stiles’ head up with a gentle finger under his chin, and met his eyes with a searching gaze. Whatever he saw there must have prompted him to go on. “It’s not because of the instinct, Stiles. It’s because of you. You’re honest and loyal and smart. There have been times when you’ve been the only reason I stayed in Beacon Hills. You’re the best thing that could have happened to me and to my pack, and I’m in love with you.”
Stiles stared, breath punched out of him, and blinked wordlessly at Derek.
“So yeah,” Derek swallowed, and glanced away. “I’m sure. Are you? Do you want this?”
The intensity in Derek’s eyes when he looked back at Stiles hit him like a blow to the gut. And this was it, Stiles realized, the response that would cement Derek’s fixation or break it. And he realized he didn’t have to think about his answer at all.
“Yes,” he said, because it was true. “I want this. I want you. I’m…I’m pretty much hopelessly in love with you, too.”
And then Derek was kissing him, all slick heat and rough stubble, and Stiles clutched at Derek’s shoulders and moaned because he was never, ever going to get enough of this stubborn man and his stupid mouth, but apparently, he had the rest of his life to try.
The clattering rumble of the house's ancient pipes shattered the moment as his dad turned on the shower in the master bath.
Stiles pulled back, breaking the kiss, and leaned his forehead against Derek’s to steady himself.
“We should…” he panted, and sucked in a calming breath. “We should probably get cleaned up, too.” He gave a rueful grin. “Saving the world is a dirty business, and Dad’ll use up all the hot water if we leave it too long. You can have first shower,” he offered magnanimously.
Derek grinned. “We could save some water if we showered together.”
“Uh,” Stiles blinked. “Yeah. That could work.”
“Come on,” Derek said, tugging him up the stairs towards the bathroom.
By the time the hot water ran out, Stiles was in no shape to notice the cold.
☆★☆
It wasn't the first time they'd been this close. Far from it. Between Derek’s general propensity for slamming Stiles against walls and actual life-or-death situations requiring bodily proximity, they’d been colliding with each other in one way or another for years. Their training sessions had only increased the time they spent in each other’s space, rolling and wrestling and pinning one another to the floor. It wasn't even the first time they'd been pressed together like this in bed, Stiles realized, thoughts flashing back to all the awkwardness and bloodshed of the night of the gnome attack.
But this was different. There was no nagging stress, no guilt, no panic or shame. There was only the pleasant feel of loose muscles, and the warm, persistent ache of happiness deep in Stiles’ chest.
“You smell amazing,” Derek rumbled, dragging his nose along Stiles’ jaw.
Stiles gave a little laugh. “What do I smell like? Horny teenager?”
Derek rumbled low in his chest, and Stiles felt the vibration more than heard the sound. “You smell like pack. Like home. Like you.”
Stiles shivered at the rough undertone in Derek’s voice, all heat and longing. “Good to know that eau de Stiles does it for you,” he said, his own voice a little unsteady. He bit his lip, then smiled as another thought occurred to him. “Hey, wasn't I supposed to get some sort of wooing out of this fixation thing?”
Derek raised an eyebrow. “Wooing?”
“Yeah, you know. Like candy hearts and flowers and impractically large stuffed bears. Wooing."
Derek gave him a flat look, then tried to smother him with a pillow.
Stiles yelped and flailed, pushing the pillow away, and Derek leaned in and kissed him, hot and deep. By the time they settled down again, they were both a little sweaty and more than a little sticky and Stiles couldn’t quite manage to stop smiling.
“Ok.” he panted into Derek’s shoulder. “Consider me wooed.”
Derek leaned across him, grabbed his t-shirt off the floor, and mopped up most of the mess before tossing the wadded fabric across the room.
Stiles rolled over and pressed his back to Derek’s chest, tugging one of the alpha’s arms around his ribs with a contented sigh. His gaze caught on the CVS bag on his desk and he huffed a little laugh.
“After all that, we didn’t even use the condoms. Not that we needed to. I mean, blow jobs and hand jobs don’t usually require…”
Derek bit the nape of his neck, and Stiles trailed off, losing his train of thought. As silencing techniques went, it was pretty effective.
“Next time,” Derek murmured against Stiles’ skin, voice rich with promise.
“Yeah,” Stiles agreed, “Next time.” He tugged Derek even closer before falling into a blissful sleep.