++++++
As soon as the jeep pulled up in front of the station, Scott, Luna and Theo immediately picked up the heavy scent of blood coming out of the building. Stiles threw himself out of the jeep, leaving the door and engine running. Scott, Luna and Theo followed after him, watching as Deaton had gotten out of his own car, following after them from the clinic.
The four run in and freeze when they see Lydia, bleeding heavily on the ground. Luna runs over and immediately puts pressure on the wound with her hands. Theo joins her and begin to pull out his belt to wrap around and apply pressure to Lydia's wound. He and Luna then moved to help Lydia try and sit up.
Natalie Martin walked in. Her eyes fell on the floor, that was stained with blood before her eyes fell on the group of people standing over the body of her daughter. "No," she cried. "Lydia."
Lydia blinked as she looked up at her mother, who got right to her side, looking at her with shining eyes. Scott looked out in the direction that Ms. Martin had come from and smelled a fresh scent of blood coming from the basement. "Stiles," he called out.
But Stiles didn't seem to hear Scott. His gaze had fallen on Lydia, rather to where there was a deep wound in her side, that was still bleeding and staining the floor and everyone else's hands with her blood.
"Malia," he mumbled. She had left the clinic ahead of them, to go after Tracy. He let himself look around but didn't see any sign of her.
"Tracy," Lydia said in a small voice, teary eyed at him. She had heard him say her name. "She went after her."
Scott looked back when he started hearing the sounds of ambulances approaching. They wouldn't have much time, they had to move fast, so he tried again. "Stiles!" That made Stiles finally break his gaze away to look at him. "Come on," he hissed at him before he ran off. Deaton moved to follow after him.
"Stiles, I'm fine," she tells him softly. "It's okay. She's all right. Go find them." Theo threw in. Stiles sent Lydia one last look before being led towards the basement by his father.
++++++
Lydia was slowly blinking under the lights as she was being wheeled through the hospital hallway on a gurney, with her mother at her side, tightly clutching her hand. Following not too far away were Luna, Malia, Kira and Theo. They were soon stopped and told that they couldn't go any further and had to wait. Stiles came up to them a few moments later.
The five stood in the hallway and soon enough they were joined by Scott and Liam just as Melissa McCall walks over to the pack.
"How bad is it?" Scott asked her.
"Could have been worse," she sighed. "Theo, nice going on that tourniquet. You probably saved her life." "What's going to happen to her?" Scott asks. "She's about to go into surgery. So it's going to be a while. Any other supernatural details that I need to know about or do we just stitch her up and hope for the best?"
"It was the tail," Kira said to her. "Yeah, Tracy cut her with the tail, if that makes a difference." Melissa sighed and nodded. "Okay," she said nervously before she took off.
"But it's wasn't just Tracy," Malia pointed out. "There were the others. The guys in the masks."
++++++
Scott and Luna were walking into his house together silently and solemnly. His mother had told all of them that it looked like Lydia's surgery had gone through with no problems and she would make a full recovery.
As Luna walked in, she looked down at her hands, still stained with Lydia's blood. Scott reached over and grasped them, squeezing them comfortingly before they moved to stare at each other.
As they did, the two of them leaned in and started to let their foreheads connect and their noses graze against each other's. The pressure of the day seemed to be catching up to them. By impulse, the two of them brought their lips together for a deep kiss, each seeking comfort in the other. Looking to feel something other than despair and tension. Scott felt his heart start to lighten a bit as he started to move his hand to cup Luna's cheek.
"Sorry to interrupt," they heard suddenly. They broke apart to find Deaton walking in. He set a bag on the table and then pulled out a jar that contained the talons from the werewolf that attacked them at the school. "A werewolf with the talons of an eagle. Possibly a shapeshifter known in eastern mythology as a Garuda."
He then brought out another jar. "Tracy's claws, the unmistakable claws of a werewolf but..." He then pulled out a jar containing a piece of her tail. "A werewolf who also bears the venom and scales of a Kanmia."
"What do you even call that?" Luna asked.
"Personally, I call it terrifying. But, at the moment, I'm more interested in how Tracy was able to get across the mountain ash." "I thought nothing supernatural can do that." "As did I. So if Tracy was able to cross the mountain ash, and no one supernatural can do that."
"Tracy's not a supernatural," Scott finished.
"Exactly. If she wasn't born and she wasn't bitten, she had to have been made." "Made?" gasped Luna. "Someone is trying to make supernatural creatures with non-supernatural means. And whoever they are, they're somehow managing to blur the lines between science and the supernatural."
Scott blinked before he thought of something. "But there's more. Liam said that he found another hole out in the woods." "Burying them could be part of their process, a kind of incubation."
Luna was staring to get scared. "What are we supposed to do?" "What you've always done. Protect your friends. Protect each other." Scott blinked. "What about someone like Tracy?"
Deaton sighed and shook his head. "I wish I could tell you. Hopefully, I'll have more answers soon. I'll be gone a few days." Scott widened his eyes. "You're leaving?"
"Just a few days," he quickly told him.
Luna let her eyes fall on the bottles with the claws and scales from these new...things. "How scared should we be?"
He cast a look upon them as well. It was plain to both Scott and Luna that he was scared himself, but was trying not to show it. "I've lived in the world of the supernatural for a long time, but I'm still a doctor. Still a man of science. Something like this happens...it rattles the foundation of everything you believe. Something like this shakes you to the core."
"Something like what?"
"The rules. The rules have changed."
Luna had her answer. They should be very scared.
++++++
The next day, Scott was sitting with Luna in AP Biology, trying hard not to stare at Lydia's empty seat and dwell on the fact that she was still lying in the hospital. As everyone was copying down the notes that were being placed on the board, Scott was making a list of all the strange aspects found in each of these new shapeshifters, trying to find some way to make sense of them all.
A werewolf with harpy eagle talons and a werewolf with a kanima's venom and tail. Not only that, but it seemed that Tracy was immune to mountain ash, which means that others like her were too. But, what were they?"
"If 99.9% of our DNA sequence is the same as other humans, what could account for the missing 0.1% difference?" Ms. Ramsey, asked out to the class after finishing the last of her notes. She looked out to the room before choosing her student when no one was raising their hand. "Theo?"
Theo looked up from his book. "Um, nucleotides." "That's right," she said approvingly. Luna let her eyes fall on the list that Scott was making and she had a hunch about how they could find a connection of the new shapeshifters that was in their town. She raised her hand.
"Yes Luna?" Ms. Ramsey asked.
"Can there be more than one species in the same DNA?"
"No, but there can be multiple sets of DNA in the same individual. We call that a Chimera. Anyone know where that term comes from?" she asked the room at large. "Sydney," she said to the student that raised her hand.
"Greek Mythology. It's a lion with a goat coming out of its back and a tail that has the head of a snake."
"That's right Sydney. Do you want to read us the full Wikipedia entry off your phone?" she said disapprovingly, as she stared at the phone in her hand. Sydney's face fell and she put her phone away.
At that, Scott wrote that term down. Chimera. Multiple sets of animal features within the same shapeshifter. It seemed as these things now had a name.
Ms. Ramsey continued. "But, that does get us into the next topic of mutation. As you know from the reading, DNA is a fragile molecule. Isn't it Scott?" That made Scott finally pull his head out from his notebook to face her. "Or did you miss last night's assigned reading?" she asked, her expression and tone a mix of disapproving and scolding.
"Kind of." he mumbled.
"Kind of, or yes?" she said, in the same tone.
"Mostly yes," he said, nodding his head down a bit. With everything that happened yesterday, he had put not just the reading, but all of his school work out of his mind.
"Well, thank you for yet another helpful transition in topic." She stared at him for a moment before she moved to her desk and pick up a small stack of papers. "Drop forms," she said, holding them up for everyone to see. "All those now acutely aware that they do not belong in this class, you should fill one out." She then went off to two different students, ones she felt were lost causes, and placed on right in front of them before heading back up to the front. "The rest will be on my desk." She then slammed them on there before the bell rang.
Everyone started to get up and pack their stuff. Luna, Kira and Theo were already heading out the door but Scott hung back. He was looking at the stack of drop forms. He stared at them for a second before he reached for one.
He looked over to see that Ms. Ramsey was looking right at him with that same disapproving look as before. He quickly threw the form in his bag and then left the room to see that Luna, Kira and Theo were waiting for him.
"It's a Chimera," he said to them.
++++++
Scott and Luna were sitting together in the library, a form in between them. The form that Scott had taken from Ms. Ramsey that Scott's eyes were locked on.
"Are you sure you really want to do this?" Luna asked him. "I mean, I know what being in that class meant to you." He kept his eyes on the form. "I don't want to, but I don't think I have any other choice."
Scott pulled the form closer to him and pulled out his pen. He looked at the form's heading one more time before he moved to begin filling it out. Luna looked sadly at him as he began writing. However, Scott only got as far as his name when he caught sight of Stiles, Malia and Kira heading for them.
"Hey guys," Luna greets them.
"Did you manage to see Lydia?" Scott asks.
Stiles shakes his head. "No. I tried using my free period but she's still in the ICU and no one outside family is allowed in."
"Well on the bright side, we got one thing," Luna said holding up a book. "Is that the Bestiary?" Kira asked as Luna nodded as she handed the book over to Scott who opened it up.
"Anything in here about half werewolves, half Kanimas?" Malia asked when they got to an entry about Berserkers. "The Chimera," Scott corrected her. Malia narrowed her eyes. "What?" "Chimera. It's a creature made of incongruous parts." Luna tells her.
"And if Liam said he found two burial sites, it means Tracy's not the only one," Stiles tells them. "Who's the second Chimera?" Kira asked. "And why would they bury them?" Malia questions. "Deaton thinks it's part of their process." Scott explains.
Malia's jaw tightened a bit. "The people in masks."
++++++
Scott and Luna watched as the elevator doors opened and Scott's mom was there. After they had left the school, leaving Stiles and Malia, the two of them had gone off to grab a bite to eat together. Afterwards, they were going to head to his place, but Scott's mom had called about a patient that she felt they had to see.
"He came in about 45 minutes ago," she told them as she led them through the halls. They then quickly heard the sound of someone screaming out in pain. Liam's stepdad came over and informed Melissa that he was going to run off to find an anesthesiologist, leaving the three of them in front of the room where they could still hear the hard screaming almost clearly through the closed door.
"Mom, what's happening to him?" Scott asked as he stared at the door as the pained screaming continued. "It's the pain, nothing's working. We already pumped him full of morphine." "Can't they do anything to help him?" asked Luna. "We can put him in a medically-induced coma. It's how we help burn victims deal with the pain," Melissa explained.
Scott narrowed his eyes. "Let me see if I can help." He then stepped inside and found that it was a kid, around Liam's own age. He remembers seeing him around school. There was a medicinal wrap around his whole lower arm and Scott could smell blood and something else mixed in. The kid was restrained to the bed, sweating buckets as he whimpered and screamed and Scott's heart fell at the sight of him.
"Please make it stop!" he cried out desperately.
Scott moved to take his hand with both of his and began to pull pain away from him. However, it was a lot, more than Scott had been expecting. It flowed up his arms and neck and started to go straight into his head and Scott almost collapsed at how intense the pain was.
Luna moved to try and steady Scott, trying to get him to let go but Scott didn't. He kept pulling as much pain as possible until the kid's screaming stopped and he seemed to settle down. Scott then let go and leaned over. "Let me see his arm," he asked his mom.
Melissa then went and carefully peeled back the wrap and they found that there was a big gash on his arm, but the blood wasn't red. There was some kind of black dried residue all over the wound.
"Holy," Luna gasped. "What is that?" asked Scott. "The lab says scorpion venom." Scott's eyes went up. "Scorpion?" "I know. But that's not the weirdest part. With a sting this bad, he should have been dead 10 hours ago. And, the scorpion that stung him would have been 10 feet tall." "Please don't tell me there is a giant scorpion running across town," Luna freaked.
"Lucas," the kid suddenly gasped out at them. "It was Lucas." "What's your name?" Luna asked him. "Corey," he answered. Scott moved to kneel over next to him. "Corey, what Lucas did to you, he's gonna do to someone else and it's gonna be much worse." Luna moved to back him up. "We need to know what happened," she said to him gently.
"I don't really know. He's never been like that before." He then moved to sit up a bit. "Like what?" asked Scott. "Aggressive. We were taking it slow, but it wasn't me. He was the shy one. Then we're hanging out today and it's like he was a different person." "Like, different how?" asked Scott. "Like, super confident. We were just kissing and then I felt this sharp sting on my arm and then I looked up at him and I swear his eyes turned black."
Luna stepped closer to him. "You mean totally black?" Corey nodded. "The whole eye but it was only for a second and then he said sorry, that he'll see me at the club tonight and then he just left. And then a few minutes later, I'm in the worst pain of my life."
"Hold on, you said club. What club?" she asked.
"Every Friday night. Sinema."
++++++
Outside the club, Scott and Luna were moving fast paced and nervously.
"A kid turning into a half-scorpion, half-werewolf? Is there even a myth for that?" she asked him. Scott nodded. "Sumerian. I remember something about it in the bestiary."
They walked into the club through the back entrance and got inside to find that an alarm had been triggered. Luna grabbed an empty tray from a server who yelled at her and she growled at him, making him run away in fear. She then quickly threw the tray at the bell, stopping it.
Scott shook his head in exasperation. "God, I love you," he said to her.
He then took off for the club floor, leaving Luna there, slightly in shock at what he had just said to her. She blinked and than ran to catch up to him. She saw that he was looking around and acting like nothing was different or changed and Luna shook her head in disbelief.
"You did it again. You did something that changed everything and you don't even realize you did it but you did." He stopped and turned to face her. "I did?" he asked, wondering what she was talking about. That made Luna give him a look.
But they were thrown out of it when they heard roaring through the music.
Liam was trying to fight Lucas off by himself. The stingers itching closer and closer to his face. He then heard someone come into the projector room and saw that it was Scott and Luna.
"You're a little late," he grunted against Lucas' hold.
Scott moved to swing on a pole and kick Lucas off Liam while Luna whipped her claws out. Scott carefully stepped back to avoid a strike from Lucas' claws so that he wouldn't get hit. But Lucas kicked at Scott's chest and sent him flying off into the wall.
Luna looked over at Scott before looking back at Lucas. She growls and ran at him with her claws raised but Lucas avoided her strike and moved to kick her down as well. Luna quickly brought her hands and caught Lucas' foot. She then savagely threw it back, nearly making the chimera stumble back and almost lose his balance and fall.
While stunned, Luna moved and tackled into Lucas, fully knocking them down. As they rolled onto the floor, Lucas had thrust his arm into Luna's side, making her cry out in pain as she felt some stingers pierce into her.
Lucas quickly made his way to his feet to see Liam moving for him. He moved his arm to intercept his attack while moving his other arm to strike at him. Liam managed to duck out of its way as he spun and tried to come at him with his claws again. But Lucas had raised his arm and intercepted the claws again.
Mason found his way back into the room and kneeled over to where Brett was. "Are you okay? he asked him, seeing that he seemed hurt. He caught the sight of Brett bleeding and moved to try and hold the wound and stop the blood.
Lucas throws Liam into a wall, making him let out a groan. All of a sudden, Kira runs in with her sword raised and goes to strike him but Lucas blocked it. But when he did, Kira quickly jumped and threw a kick at his chest, that sent him stumbling back, stunned.
Luna grit her teeth through the pain from the stingers and moved to grab Lucas as soon as he recovered and ran for Kira. Luna took him at his shoulders and threw him to the ground. Luna then moved to put her foot to keep him pinned down and she growled a bit down at him.
As Lucas was pinned, his black eyes slowly shifted back to normal and his muscles seemed to relax under Luna's foot. Kira saw that Luna had let her guard down on him, just as Malia had with Tracy.
Kira began twirling her sword as her aura flared up. Scott noticed her moving in, screaming in Japanese as she went for what seemed to be a killing blow. He managed to catch her wrists before she could bring her sword down on him.
As Scott caught Kira's glowing eyes, her aura seemed to burn brighter until all he saw was the face of a fox. It lasted for a moment before it fizzled out and Kira seemed back to normal. Lucas seemed to pass out then and there and Scott blinked as everyone seemed to calm themselves down.
"Is everyone okay?" he asked. Nobody said anything but than made silent gestures to show that they were more or less okay, physically at least. Scott then looked down at Lucas, who was still displaying his stingers. "Luna, Liam, help me get him out of here."
They moved to grab Lucas' arms and legs but before they could start carrying him out, a blade went and pierced his chest. They dropped him in shock as they saw the blade leaving Lucas' chest and flying off to a harpoon gun being carried by a man in a metallic mask up in the rafters. They saw that there were three of them. The men that Malia had told them about.
Scott looked down and saw that Lucas was now dead. "Why did you do that?"
The Surgeon looked down at Scott as the other two started to blur out of sight. "His condition was terminal," he said in a monotone voice. Then he started to blur too. "What does that mean?" Scott gasped. "What does that mean?" he repeated when the Surgeon seemed to turn around. The Surgeon looked back at him. "Failure."
There was then an electrical discharge that turned off the lights for a moment. When they flicked back on, the three of them were gone.
[Published 7/22/19]