I watched as dad crossed out Tracy's photo with a red marker.
"Chimeras..." He mused with a hint of loathing in his voice.
"Two dead Chimeras..." I added, clenching my fists out of intensity.
"And eight new ones." Stiles reminded, as if everything wasn't concerning already.
Couple of nights ago, someone dug up eight new holes in the stadium. That means eight new Chimeras...
"So, that's ten in all..." I mused, looking around the room worriedly.
"I'm thinking maybe eleven." Dad spoke as he pinned the photo of Donovan on his board, much to my horror that sent uneasy shivers down my spine.
My face sank down as my heart got stuck in my mouth. I looked away eventually, not being able to look at those psychotic eyes any longer.
"Our station tech guys confirmed something for me." Dad continued. "They said both the holding cell lock and cameras could have malfunctioned because of something electromagnetic." He then looked to his desk and picked up the book. "You said that, uh, these guys—"
"Dread Doctors?" Stiles interrupted while I still had my eyes down on the floor, slowly walking away from my family.
"Are we really calling them that?" Dad squinted at my brother, not wanting to give any acknowledgement to these masked men.
"So they broke Donovan out?"
"It's how they got to Eichen, isn't it?"
About Eichen House... While the pack was there to see Dr. Valack, they were paid a visit by the Dread Doctors. Kira, being a Kitsune, disrupted the building's defenses with her inner electrical power. Eichen House is built on a convergence of telluric currents and she seemed to have caused some malfunction, resulting in masked men's appearance and her passing out.
There was hell of a fight after my friends managed to get some information about the book. Valack implied that it's not simply a book, it's a tool – a tool to remember, seeing that it triggers the brain's memory center.
"Donovan's a Chimera." Stiles nodded curtly and walked over to the photo, ready to cross it out.
"Yeah." Dad breathed out. "But is he a failure like Lucas and Tracy?"
I turned away and stepped towards the door before stopping and clenching my knuckles at the sides. The images of the encounter flashed back, making me flinch and close my eyes shut.
"If he is, he's probably dead."
I slightly turned my head back and saw how dad gripped Stiles' wrist, preventing him from crossing the photo. "Not until I've seen the body."
I turned back, realizing that they won't really get to see the body, because it's simply vanished. I wonder if I will ever get the strength to confess about killing him.
"Silvie?" Dad called with a concerned voice, making me cope all my strength and turn back to them.
"Sorry, uh, I'm just trying to think about it." I shook my head curtly before approaching dad and Stiles. "Uh, these were all teenagers, right? So, now shouldn't we be trying to figure out why these teenagers ? If the Dread Doctors, if they went through all that... burying them, killing them, breaking one of them out of jail –"
"They couldn't have been chosen at random." Dad interrupted me, catching the hook.
"They had to have something in common." Stiles did the same.
"Something that made them right for this experiment." Dad gazed into oblivion while we all let the information sink in.
"Something that made them special." I breathed out as I eyed the photo of Donovan Donati.
~
I walked through the school yard, trying to resist the urge to scratch the itchy wounds on my body from the night I got attacked. It's been getting worse – my well-being and sanity. I can't spend half an hour without travelling back to the incident and freaking out about it all over again. Constant anxiety like this really wears me out...
Suddenly, I winced as I felt my shoulder tingle and looked around, hoping that no one heard my whimper. I reached the wound and stroked it, furrowing my brows. Automatically I adjusted the hair so it would continue to hide the gash on my temple, which had started to heal properly.
Before I could continue to walk, I idly lifted my eyes to see Scott and Theo eyeing me from the second floor balcony.
My feet sank to the ground as I watched them approach me, exchanging a few sentences occasionally.
"Hey, Silvie," Scott greeted me anxiously. "You feeling okay?"
My breath hitched as my eyes jumped from Scott to Theo in search of their true intentions. "Yes, I'm fine."
"What's with your shoulder?" Scott didn't budge as Theo looked down with a little smile on his face.
"Nothing." I snapped after gulping anxiously. "I-It's just my backpack... heavy..." I mentally slapped myself for being such an awkward stutter.
"Oh." Scott breathed out, his eyebrows furrowing in worry. "Let me carry it for you." Before I could object, he snapped my backpack from my shoulder and hooked it over his.
His face slowly contorted into an amused scowl when he realized that a backpack of mine couldn't be any more lighter. "You need to eat more, Silvie." Scott noted with a breathy laugh, causing me to force out a freakish smile.
I looked up at Theo who tried his best not to burst out into a fit of laughter.
We walked back to school together, Scott still insisting on carrying my backpack. "We plan to meet at my place this evening, to read the book."
"Do you really think it's a good idea?" I asked, knitting my eyebrows in worry. "Considering that Malia almost got hit by a car yesterday after reading it..."
"That was exactly what I said." Theo snapped, making me look at his argent eyes and swoon a little. "But Scott's right, we need to read it and remember something that might help."
I sighed quietly as we continued to move, not really wanting to remember my past, while all I tried to do lately was to forget it.
~
"My mom's book club usually has more wine." Lydia murmured as Scott, Stiles, Malia, Kira, Theo and I looked down at the copies of the book on a glass coffee table.
"Well, they also probably didn't read books that cause violent hallucinations." Stiles cracked a joke, making me roll my eyes slightly.
"That's why Malia's here." Scott noted, seeing that Malia had already read the book.
"So none of us go running into traffic?" Kira asked sheepishly, turning her timid eyes to her boyfriend.
"Or worse." Scott muttered, eyes set on the copies.
"Like what happened to Judy." Malia mused thoughtfully, staring into oblivion. We all looked at her, considering that none of us read the book. "Chapter 14."
Lydia took the original book and observed it. "Maybe I should have my mother read it. She might remember a girl with a tail leaping off the ceiling and attacking everyone."
"Yeah, if it works." Stiles murmured skeptically, looking around.
"It has to." Lydia retorted, as though she hid something.
"What does that mean?" Scott questioned, catching the hook.
"I think I saw them during my surgery." Lydia explained, pressing her mouth into a thin line and letting the words sink in to everyone. "When I look at the cover of the book, it's almost like it."
"A memory trying to surface." Theo mused nodding his head slightly, his arms crossed on his sturdy chest.
"Yeah." Lydia confirmed as she looked up at him.
"Isn't that what Valack wanted when he wrote it?" Kira quizzed, looking confused.
"If they did something to me, I wanna know what it is."
We each took a copy of the book and succumbed to our seats. It was hard for me, because I didn't actually want to remember anything from my past, but I wanted to help sort this whole hellish situation out. Not to mention that I wasn't sure if Theo tried to read the book, or me.
~
It was her salvation.
As if she knew what Judy was thinking, Amy turned and hissed a challenge. Her jaw extended impossibly low, revealing rows of deadly fangs.
With a roar, Amy charged her friend. Judy swung the bat as hard as she could and connected with the side of Amy's head. The creature went down but was up again before Judy could react. In an instant the bat was out of her hands and clanging at her feet. Amy swiped her taloned hands ripping Judy's shirt and the skin beneath.
Judy cried out as she collapsed to the floor.
Before she knew it, Amy was on top of her, but not before Judy could get her foot up and under Amy's chest. Amy snarled and squirmed gnashing her teeth inches from Judy's face. With all of her might, Judy kicked as hard as she could sending Amy backwards against the concrete wall.
Amy righted herself, looked back to Judy and..
Crack! Judy smashed the bat across Amy's face.
Her chest rose and fell again and again as she sucked air into her lungs. As the adrenaline began to wear off, Judy felt her eyes sting with tears. She looked away from the twisted remains of the creature that was once her friend as a wail escaped her lips.
With a labored step, Judy turned toward the open door at the end of the walkway. Blood pounded in her ears every step of the way like the droning of a great cloud of bees.
She pushed the door open until it clanged against the outside wall. Night air filled her lungs and for the first time in weeks Judy felt like everything was going to be all right.
She stepped outside into the darkness and ran like hell.
I sighed heavily and slammed the copy back on the glass table before I headed towards the kitchen, where Malia was making coffee.
She raised an eyebrow at me as I succumbed onto the counter beside her. "Can't handle it?"
"It makes me tired an uneasy." I sighed as I looked at her.
"That probably means it's working."
"Yeah, probably..." I muttered as I felt my shoulder tingling once again but couldn't afford to wince right in front of Malia.
"What did you do to your shoulder?" She asked me as she poured coffee into the mug.
My eyes nearly popped out at such straightforwardness. "What are you talking about?"
"I can smell the blood." My heart pounded extremely fast as I tried to come up with a reasonable lie, but instead I only gaped awkwardly. "I don't understand why you're hiding something from me. You know you can trust me."
With the corner of my eye I saw how Theo turned his head towards us ever so slightly. "Malia, I..."
"What?" She inquired as she passed the mug to me. "I won't tell anyone if that's what you want."
I sighed, seeing that Theo's still listening to our conversation. "Promise me?"
"Of course, I promise."
"Theo's training me." I murmured lifting the mug to my lips and eyeing Theo at the same time. Latter couldn't help but let wide amused smirk stretch out his face.
"What?" Malia quizzed in a high pitched voice, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion. "Like BDSM?"
My eyes became as wide as plates as I choked on the coffee, nearly spitting it all over the counter. "MALIA!!!" I hissed, daggering her confused expression. "What the fuck?!"
She gasped and giggled. "You just swore!"
"Yeah, I did!" I bellowed as I felt my cheeks heat. "Anyway, he's training me how to fight..." I corrected her, smile still evident on her features.
"You could've just asked me." She mused as she took a sip of her coffee.
"It was a last minute decision." I gently shook my head as I looked down.
Malia gulped down her coffee, slowly nodding and squinting at me. "I see."
"By the way, how much did you remember?" I asked, desperately trying to change the subject. "With the accident, did it play like a movie in your head or was it like being completely in it again?"
After Malia read the book she found herself in the middle of the highway, being carried there by a memory of hers when she was a child, that crucial car crash when her family died.
She thought about it a little before answering me. "In it."
Although Malia is perfect at hiding hew own emotions, I was able to see just a bit of anxiety spicing her features. "Was it just the crash? Nothing else?" I inquired, scrutinizing every single twitch of her flesh.
"Nothing." She snapped, looking me dead in the eyes.
I knew she was lying right away, because by looking straight into my eyes she tried to convince me otherwise, at which she failed.
"Lies." Voice flowed silkily off my tongue, catching Malia off guard. "You just told me I can trust you, yet you yourself are lying to me."
She motioned me to silence down hastily and sighed. "Okay, there was something else."
"Something?"
"... Someone."
"Who?" I felt the curiosity grow inside of me each second.
She pierced right through my eyes once again before she continued. "My mother. The Desert Wolf."
My eyebrows knitted in aggravation while several thoughts swam in my head, concerning the Desert Wolf. "What was she doing there??"
"She was standing in the middle of the road and shooting at us, that way causing the accident."
There was a load of silence before I dared to speak again. "She knew you were in the car?"
"Of course she did. Why else she would want to murder random people?"
I didn't speak again because I simply had no words. I couldn't even imagine how it is to know that your own mother tried to dispose of you in such a cruel way. Although Malia didn't really seem phased by that, I knew that deep down she feels something bitter.
"No one can know about this. Especially Stiles."
I nodded my head. "No one will."
~
I lazily opened my eyes only to see the rest asleep on the couch or armchairs, except one. It was dark already and no light was lit up in the house, but I just about managed to catch Theo making his way upstairs.
At that moment I knew that he isn't an ordinary lone wolf, he came here with a purpose. He's enigmatic, mysterious and secretive, and I tend to break through these barriers, no matter how hard it will be.
I squinted at him before I myself stood up and tiptoed behind him as quietly as possible. He walked towards Scott's bedroom, where Kira was sleeping. Even from further away where I am now, I could hear whispers leaving the room.
Theo entered the room while I stayed near the door, creeping my head through and observing Omega's actions. He crouched beside sleeping Kira and just stared at her sinisterly for a couple of moments before he took his phone and turned on the microphone to record Kira's idle whisperings. Why on earth he would do that??
I strained my neck so I could hear Kira's murmurs better when I realized that it's something Japanese.
"Watashi wa shi no shishadesu..." She murmured again and again, drawing me deeper into the whisper, making me eager to listen.
I got so gripped into it I didn't even react when Theo stood up and turned around in one motion, this way spotting me, backing away from the door.
He seemed pleasantly surprised and cocked his head to the side before he started to approach me.
"What are you doing?" He asked with a smug expression on his chiseled features.
He walked so close to me I felt my back hit the wall. "What are you doing?" I countered, not taking my eyes off him.
"Don't play this game with me again."
"Tell me what were you doing there and I won't."
He giggled breathily before he stepped even closer, our clothes almost brushing together. "I don't feel like I have to." He whispered in my ear, raising a threat of sensory overload for me. "Will you be a good girl and stay quiet?" He drew back a little, his face inches from mine.
"I just busted you in the midst of something suspicious. You want me to stay quiet about that?" I whispered back to him, intending to tease him.
"Of course." He purred, stroking the ends of my hair slightly. "I stayed quiet about Donovan and I expect you do the same now."
I eyed him intensely before answering. "Fair enough."
"I must admit, I was surprised that you didn't confess to Malia under such pressure. She really does have a... broad mind."
My eyes gradually popped out as I understood what exactly he was talking about. "Don't tell me you heard everything..?"
He chuckled quietly. "I did."
"Right." I breathed out, feeling extremely embarrassed. "I should be going now."
I stepped out of his grasp but didn't manage to go few more steps when I felt a strong grip on my wrist before Theo dragged me back right into his embrace with a thud, forcing out a light gasp from me.
"You're not going anywhere." I didn't even manage to answer when he crashed his lips on mine, sending thousands of sparks throughout my whole body, making me feel alive and well once again, and most importantly, warm.