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Aires pov...
There's a moment that comes after you take a shit tone of pills. A moment where everything is out of control in the most freeing way, when your brain doesn't register any responsibility, where there isn't a single heavy thought that goes through your mind. It's like free falling, and it's so fucking addictive. You feel it once, and it makes everything better.
So every heavy thought that comes along afterwards, every heavy feeling, you're reminded of what to do to get rid of it.
"Aires."
Someone was hissing in my ear, shaking me. I could feel their hands on my skin, dragging me, trying to bring me back. But I was floating so high, free falling so fast, I didn't want to let go.
"Aires. Please wake up, we have to go."
"What?" I forced out in a far away whisper.
I didn't want to leave, I didn't want to stop floating, wasn't ready to stop.
"Aires."
My eyes cracked open to see a wide eyed Allison staring down furiously at me, her lips were moving fast as hell but none of the words she was saying were registering in my mind. I wanted to go back, to slip away again. And my eyes were fluttering closed, ready to leave until her hands grabbed onto my face, making them fly back open.
"Let's go." She hissed before bouncing out of the door.
"Okay."
My body was in my bedroom, but my mind was still free falling in the euphoria the pills blessed me with. I was still gone.
"Aires, we don't have time. Grab your shoes and meet me in the car." Allison snapped from down the hallway.
"Oh shitting hell." I grumbled whilst pushing my hair out of my face.
I had left my shoes at Danny's.
I had every intention of researching, of finding out more about the Darach. I was close, so close, I knew I was. But I had to have a break. I needed a release. I had no clue how I got home, or how I got into my bed.
But from the hickeys on my chest, I had an idea of who got me home.
I remembered blue eyes from Dannys- bright blue eyes that haunted me.
"AIRES!" Alli shrieked, causing a ringing sensation in my head.
Dragging a hoody over my head, I abandoned the idea of shoes and stumbled out of my room. "COMING!" I yelled back whilst hastily rubbing at my forehead and stumbling out of the door.
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At some point in the car journey, the Hale had fallen asleep- and there was nothing anyone could do to wake her up. Whilst everyone else chalked it up to sleep deprivation or exhaustion, Allison and Stiles couldn't help but feel as if something else was up with the girl- however, they had other things to worry about.
"Cops are on their way-"
"Is she okay?" Stiles asked for the hundredth time whilst shooting a glance at the girl.
"She's probably exhausted." Lydia brushed off with a shrug.
"Why isn't she wearing shoes?" Stiles demanded. "Did she seriously just come out in a hoody and socks?"
"I don't know, Stiles." Allison shot back back. "Lydia scared me on the phone, I didn't exactly have time to make sure Aires got dressed-"
"Guys." Scott interrupted. "Cops are on their way. Lydia and stiles have to stay but the rest of us have to leave."
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Aires pov...
"Aires are you even listening to me?" Allison asked me for the hundredth time.
"Listening." I mumbled with my knees pulled up to my chest as my body rested against the car door.
I was ninety nine percent sure I was still high as a fucking kite.
"Lydia's still freaked out from this morning, I don't think she's coming to school. To be honest I don't think any of us should be attending school right now. Finding a body is traumatising-"
"She found a body?"
What the hell did I miss?
"Yes, I'm talking about the body that we found this morning, at the school."
A body? When the fuck did we find a body? And at the school? Seeing my confused expression, Allison let out a loud frustrated groan which let me know I was in deep trouble.
"I'm on about Tara." She muttered with a roll of her eyes, however, as her words echoed in my head, my heart dropped.
"Tara?" I echoed back in horror. "Taras dead? Tara Green?"
"Yes." She shot back dumbfounded, as if I had no clue what she was on about.
Dropping my head in my hands, I let out a muffled scream. Everything was going wrong, people who weren't supposed to die were dying. I was already up into my neck with issues, and now I had another funeral to fit in.
"Ree." Allison whispered before giving me a light nudge. "What's going on with you? Are you okay?"
"Tara helped me do my maths homework. She played with me and Stiles. She fed me food at the station."
"Ree-"
We pulled into the school parking lot and he second Allison killed the engine, I grabbed my bag and jolted out the car after muttering a quick goodbye. I ignored every look thrown my way, every hello or attempt to talk to me. I had one place I needed to be and one place only. I wasn't stopping, I didn't even stop as I accidentally knocked into Stiles.
Tara was dead.
Tara's body was found in the morning, and I was too high to realise.
Crashing into the bathroom, I slipped into a stall and wasted no time crushing up pills and snorting them as quickly as I could. Line after line, I snorted every feeling of stress, anxiety, horror and hollowness away.
And I slid down against the bathroom wall and let it finally hit.
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Aires pov...
After rubbing under my eyes and pushing hair out of my face, I slipped out of the bathroom and shoved my way through the busy hallway.
"AIRES!"
No. No leave me the fuck alone, please.
Glancing over my shoulder, my eyes locked onto Stiles who was racing towards me. Shaking my head, I shoved harder as I weaved my way through the sweaty bodies until I found a saviour, Isaac.
"What have we got?" I asked whilst tucking myself into his side.
Isaac was tall, built- the perfect shield in a hallway full of chaos.
"English lit."
A groan was lodged in the back of my throat, however, I forced it down. As much as I was beginning to hate school, I needed all the credits I could get. It was no longer about college, I just needed Chris off of my case.
Slipping into the classroom, I slouched in my chair before turning to the boy behind me.
"Wanna grab lunch together?"
"Can't. Allison isn't here." He shot back, bringing a frown to my face.
"Wait, what?" I shot back. "No? I rode with her here, I literally saw her like twenty minutes ago, right before first period."
"Uhm, no- Aires, that wasn't twenty minutes ago. It's fourth period."
It was what?
Quickly, I pulled my phone out of my pocket to se the time, and low and behold, the boy was right. And I had been in the bathroom a lot longer than I thought I had been.
"Screw it- i'm going to go check up on her." Isaac suddenly declared whilst jumping out of his seat.
"Want me to come?" I asked hopeful, desperate to skip class.
"No- stay here, Scott will kill me if you ditch as well."
Scowling, I watched in horror as Isaac slipped out of the classroom. He left me. And I was ready to snap someones neck- or do another line of three.
Resisting the urge to lose my shit, I snatched out my notebook and began to mindlessly doodle away. I wasn't putting any thought into what I was doing, just letting my hand do the work whilst I tried to distract my brain. It started off simple, a drawing that had somehow gone from being a plain tree to one being surrounded by fairies and fireflies.
It was beautiful- and eerily familiar.
"Aires." Miss Blake's voice hissed from beside me, making me jump out of my skin as I looked up to meet her glance. "I wasn't aware you had so many hidden talents."
Shaking off the scare she had just given me, I forced my lips into a smirk. "You and everyone I've ever been with."
"Oh, uhm. That was an idiom by the way."
"I know." I mumbled with a nod before returning my focus back onto my drawing.
Drawing was never a therapy to me, never a coping mechanism- but my fingers were gripping the pencil in a way that could kill a human had I been gripping them the same way. I was trying not to lose my shit, trying not to explode.
Glancing back down at the picture, it was almost as if I was staring at a photo that had come from my mind. I was high as fuck, and my high mind had created something that sent dread crashing through my chest.
It was so eerily familiar it was absolutely fucking sickening.
Maybe it was because I was high, or maybe it was all the built up stress from the news about Tara, but with every second that passed, and the longer I stared at the picture- the more I felt as if I was losing my fucking mind.
It was almost as if my subconscious was drawing a memory.
Ripping the picture out of my book, I ignored Miss Blakes calls, ignored the fact that I had left all of my crap behind, ignored everyones stares and stumbled out of the room. I practically sprinted down the hallway until I stumbled into the bathroom, and in seconds, I was on my hands and knees heaving as mistletoe fell from my lips.
"Oh my god." I choked out in horror as I began to wheeze.
Because suddenly, everything fell into line.
Scrambling away, from the mess in front of me, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand before snatching up the picture and jumping onto my feet.
The whole time I was trying to figure out who the Darach was, trying to put a face to the person causing chaos. I never thought about trying to find a place that connected the two.
Darachs thrived off of earth magic, it's what channelled them- and that damn fucking tree stump- it was the same as the one I had hidden in as a child. And it was no coincidence that after I finished my drawing I had thrown up mistletoe. My mind was already ten steps ahead of me, it had already worked out the puzzle pieces.
It wasn't just a tree, it was more, so much more. I was so close to figuring out who the darach was, I knew it was a woman from the voice I heard the night on the roof. I knew that the darach was channelling power from a tree, a natural source of magic. Everything was connected to a tree, the only problem was I couldn't work out why that tree- and what was worse was I couldn't remember where the tree was, or anything really about it.
I just remembered it existed.
"AIRES." Stiles snapped whilst grabbing onto my shoulders, stopping me from flying down the hallway.
"Someones going to die tonight." I blurted out.
"What do you mean?" Scott questioned.
"I have a feeling, a really bad feeling. All of this is connected. See this?" I asked before shoving the picture in Scott and Stiles faces. "This means something."
"It's a really pretty drawing." Scott whispered with a shrug, making rage race through my veins.
"You're not understanding!" I hissed through gritted teeth.
"Okay- why do you think someones going to die and where?" Stiles questioned, being the only somewhat reasonable one of the two idiots.
"The recital?" I wasn't sure where I was going with any of it, my mouth was moving faster than my mind. "I've had a bad feeling about it since Alli told me. There are so many pieces and they are all scattered. It's like trying to solve a puzzle when you haven't even seen the picture yet."
"Ree, you're starting to freak me out. Just calm down, okay-"
"I'm freaking you out?" I hissed with a scowl. "I'm freaking me out!"
"Look, we are all going to be at this recital tonight, okay? We are all going to be on alert-"
"Your not listening!"
"Ree, the darach isn't going to do anything with so many eyes watching. Maybe you're just overreacting, it's a pretty picture, that's all."
"A pretty picture?" I snapped disgustedly as I recoiled away from them. "A pretty picture?"
They weren't believing me, they thought I was crazy. It didn't matter that I was slowly connecting everything, that I was all so close to figuring out the darach's identity. Nobody believed me. Nobody believed that the tree I drew was more than a tree, that something terrible was going to take place tonight.
"We need you to do something." Scott muttered, asking for yet another favour as he bled me dry.
"What?" I snapped.
"We need you to distract Aiden so we can talk to Ethan. The druids are emissaries, right? What if the darach was an emissary to the alphas."
I was so pissed and the audacity they had to ask me for a favour was beyond me, however, I did want to speak to Aiden, so it was a win win situation.
"Marin is Deucalion's emissary and as far as I'm aware she's the only one alive." I shot back. "The alphas all had to kill their pack, including the emissaries however it's possible one of them survived. If you talk to Ethan I'll distract Aiden. Even if you don't get an answer out of him I can find out who all their old emissaries were."
"How are you going to distract Aiden? We need Ethan alone for a while."
"Don't worry." I muttered with a roll of my eyes. "I'll distract him."
Stiles audibly gagged as he glared at me, as if I had done something wrong. A scowl blossomed on my face as I narrowed my eyes on him.
"Get your head out of the gutter Stiles."
"Well, when you say it like that..."
"Not everything has to be sexual."
"I never said everything had to be."
"Well you made it sound like that!"
"GUYS- Now's not the time."
"Whatever." I snapped before turning on my heel and storming off. "I'll distract Aiden."
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Aires pov...
The second Aiden walked into Coach's office his fingers were already on the bottom of his shirt, making me roll my eyes.
"Slow down playboy." I muttered. "I'm here to talk."
"Oh really?" He mumbled back with a smirk.
"I'm serious, Aiden."
"Okay, okay. Ask away gorgeous."
"If you lie to me, I will never speak to you ever again. I'm dead serious." I snapped with narrowed eyes. I could always tell when someone was lying, it was a talent I had picked up when I was younger. "Did you know they were gonna kill Boyd?"
"No. I knew that they were gonna eventually kill someone, I just didn't know who or when."
With a small nod, my eyes darted back to the wall. I knew his answer before he even told me. Because as much as I hated to admit it, Aiden never lied to me- not once, not since he came back to Beacon Hills.
"Is that it?" He poked.
"No." I snapped. "Where were you last night?"
A flicker of surprise flashed in his eyes before he forced a controlled expression onto his face. "What?"
"You heard me." I needed to know. "Where the hell were you last night?"
And please don't say Danny's party.
"Aires."
"Where were you?" I asked firmly whilst staring the boy straight in the eye.
Something wasn't quite right with Aiden, it hadn't been since he came to Beacon Hills- there was something different about him. And him being at Dannys parties, multiple times, told me that there was something familiar about us.
It was a connection I hadn't made until I had woken up this morning.
But every time I had seen him, he would always have a bottle of something strong in hand. Tequila, Vodka, Sambuca- every time I saw him at a party he would have a bottle in his hand.
"Are you really ready to have this conversation?" He questioned, bringing a murderous scowl to my face as I balled my hands into fists.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Are you too high to have this conversation right now? Because it is pretty big and I would rather you remember it."
He could always see right through me.
He knew.
It was as if I had been smacked across the face, his words ricotched off of my skin- pricking it like small knives. I could deny it as much as I wanted to, but he always saw right through me, and it made me sick to my stomach. I hated him for it so much, hated that he was the one who always knew everything about me. I hated him so fucking much.
"Aiden." I warned in a low voice. "You don't understand."
"So explain it to me." He shot back with a shrug, as if talking about it was the easiest thing in the world. "How long?"
"It's not what you think-"
"How long, Aires?"
A lie was the only way I could get out of the situation, however, I doubted how much of it he would believe. "There's nothing wrong with having a bit of fun whilst partying so wipe that accusing tone from your voice."
"But it's more than 'fun', right? You were so out of it-"
"I'll admit, I got a bit carried away but that doesn't make me an addict. And besides, you have no right to accuse me of anything when you have your own secrets." I was turning the tables on him, turning the attention onto him because I needed it off of me.
"What is that supposed to mean?" He threw back in my face, and as much as I hated doing it, I was going there- he went low, but I went lower.
"You were also at Danny's party- you always seem to be at parties, just like me. Except the difference is, I'm in Danny's den and you, you, Aiden are always somewhere else. The kitchen, the garden, wherever you can wrap your lips round a fat fucking bottle. I'm not the only one who likes to party hard, am I?"
"There's nothing wrong with drinking, Aires." He admitted ever so easily. "You make it sound like it's a crime."
"But it's not just drinking, it's so much more than a drink and you know it."
The silence that settled between us only confirmed my suspicions. Aiden liked to party hard, just like I did. Whilst I partied with drugs, he partied with alcohol. He drank more than he should and partied out way too long and often, just like I got high more than I probably should have been.
We were both used something to escape.
"Since when did you start drinking?" I questioned suddenly, curious as I crossed my arms over my chest defensively. "I thought werewolves couldn't feel the effects of alcohol?"
"We can't, not unless we drink a lot- and mix or whatever." He muttered.
"So why do you drink so much then?" I questioned, genuinely interested in the answer.
"Because, after a while, being the bitch of the pack gets exhausting."
I didn't expect him to be so honest- so raw. And in all honesty, it kind of threw me off.
Nobody trusted Aiden, just like nobody trusted me. We were both pushed away by our own packs, isolated and ignored. We both ended up the same. And by partying so hard, we forgot how shitty our lives really were.
"I think we have a lot more in common than we thought." I admitted in a whisper. "I'll keep your secret if you keep mine."
"Does that mean you trust me?"
"Don't get ahead of yourself playboy. Do we have a deal?"
"I thought you weren't supposed to make deals with the devil?" He shot back, and a small smirk stretched onto my lips at his words. "However, I'm always willing to make a deal with you, gorgeous."
Before I could shoot something back, a scratching at the window stole both of our attention. The sound sent chills down my spine as my eyes squinted at the symbol being carved. A spiral.
"Oh shit." I mumbled, knowing what was coming.
As my head snapped to the side, Aiden stormed out the room, charging after who I guessed to be Cora. Derek and Peter wouldn't be stupid enough to leave that mark- our mark.
"AIDEN!" I screamed whilst charging after the two.
A loud crash from the locker room sent me flying out the room and through the door. Whatever was happening wasn't good and it would most likely end in bloodbath.
"AIDEN!" I screamed again whilst frustradely running around the lockers.
However, horror filled my eyes as I stared at the scene in front of me. Cora was attacking him. I don't know how long I stared at the scene, only that the sound of bones being crushed broke me from my trance.
"STOP!"
Cora would never be able to take down Aiden, he was too strong, he was an alpha. And just like myself, when he got angry he lost all control- and I had to save my sister from his wrath.
"AIDEN, STOP!" I screamed as he lifted my sister from the ground and launched her straight into the sinks.
"NO!"
Without a second thought, I ran straight to her, and wrapped an arm around her shoulder as I hauled her from the floor. There was nowhere to go, Aiden wasn't going to stop until he got what he wanted- and that's what terrified me. I had no clue what he was planning to do.
"CORA!"
My sisters body was snatched from me and thrown into a row of lockers, sending me into fight mode. I couldn't use my magic on him, I would end up accidentally killing him. However, I couldn't exactly use my fists to stop him, leaving me to use the next best thing. Causing a distraction.
"AIDEN!" I screamed whilst running to the boys side.
I was supposed to make it past him, supposed to lead him. out of the room. However, everything became a blur. A strong stinging sensation burned on my cheek as I suddenly went crashing onto the floor whilst Aiden stood over my body.
He hit me.
He fucking hit me.
As he began to bend down, I wasted my time throwing my hands up from my sides and throwing him across the room and into the sinks with a force so strong he had left a huge broken body print in the wall. But just as I sunk back onto the floor, four more bodies came running into the locker room.
"AIRES!" .
"Cora." I snapped whilst pointing a hand in my sisters direction.
"Aires, you're hurt." Stiles whispered whilst crouching down to my side.
"I'm fine." I shot back dismissively. "Check on Cora."
"Aires, I'm so sorry." Aiden suddenly mumbled frantically from across the room. "I didn't mean to."
"It's fine." I shot back, still slightly weazing.
"Wait, he fucking hurt you?" Stiles suddenly spat through clenched teeth.
"Just drop it." I hissed back, the last thing I needed was another shit show. "Go help Cora."
"Ree-"
"Go to Cora, Stiles."
"Aires, I'm so sorry." Aiden pleaded once again. "I lost control. Your sister- she- she came at me. I didn't mean to-"
"Aiden, I'm fine. I promise."
He reached out a hand to pull me up and hesitantly, I took it.
"Really, Aires?" Cora suddenly muttered disgustedly bringing a frown to my face as my gaze flickered to her. "You're standing with him?"
Shaking my head, I resisted the urge to scoff, what the fuck was up with everyone? "I'm not on his side, just because he pulled me off the ground doesn't mean I'm siding with him-"
"But you are. You're so selfish."
She was unbelievable.
They all were.
They were so in their heads, didn't trust me at all, and were using any and every excuse to fuel that. It was unfuckingbelievable
"Cora." I hissed through gritted teeth. "I tried to break it up. I got hurt trying to protect you- I threw him off you, I tried to get you out of here-"
"Yet your still stood with him. God, Aires, just drop the little miss perfect act already."
"Cora-"
"Just give it a break, Aires. You run around thinking you can save everyone but all you do is show up late. If you're not doing that then you're getting someone killed. Everyone dies because of you! When are you going to realise that you're the problem! You can't save anyone, they need saving from you!"
Her words burned a whole straight through my chest, she was so out of pocket it was insane- however, there was some truth to her words, and I hated that even more. Everything Cora was saying was correct, it was everything I feared but also knew. I was the problem. I would always be the problem. I couldn't even defend herself.
But watching my sister, my own family, stare at me in such a disgusted way- I felt sick to my fucking stomach.
Glancing around the room, I caught sight onto all of their disappointed and disgusted expressions. And right at that moment, I wished that my attempt at the Motel had worked.
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This i just the beginning of Aires downfall...