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NINE
THREEFOLD DEATHS
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Carson felt herself get shoved to the ground and she let out a growl, glaring up at Isaac.
Her vision was clouded with red spots, like blood was slipping down a windowpane. She was fighting, but she was losing. The hold that the moon seemed to have over was was too strong, plaguing her thoughts and pushing her conscience and herself down. So far down that all she was emanating was a feral monster. She could see herself doing it, but she couldn't stop it.
The urge to go back downstairs and make the kill was far too strong.
Rip him to shreds.
Take out Isaac too, just for the hell of it.
And Peter. He deserves to die. He's the true monster of all, his death would be a service to the world.
They all deserve to die.
No one cares about you.
It won't matter if they're gone.
Carson let out a scream which seemed to filter into another feral growl. Her feet started moving on their own accord and soon she found herself charging at Isaac. Barely a second past after she crashed into his chest and his forearm came up, landing a blow that caused her to sail back to the ground like a rag doll.
"Let me go, Isaac," Carson snarled, getting back to her feet. She stalked towards him again, just to meet a similar result. Only this time, he wrapped his forearm around her and spun her around so that her back was against his chest. She struggled against his ironclad grip to no avail.
You're weak.
Kill. Him. Now.
Kill them all.
"Carson, snap out of it, focus!" he yelled. "Find yourself an anchor!"
"Let me go!"
"Find an anchor! That's Stiles downstairs, you don't want to kill him."
"Yes. I. Do!"
"No, you don't. Don't let this control you. Don't let it consume you."
The normal part of Carson knew that Isaac was right. But that part was too overshadowed by what she was becoming. The full moon was like an overcast over everything she thought was right. Carson was seeing in shades of red, instead of the clear view she was used to. This was the complete opposite of rose-colored glasses; this view was making her a killer.
"It's Stiles!" Isaac shouted once more. "You two may be broken up but you know that everything you said downstairs was a lie. You love him Carson. Hold on to that!"
She snapped her teeth together loudly.
"You're really wracking my nerves right now," a voice called from down below.
Stiles.
You want to kill him.
"No I don't," Carson screamed.
She didn't. She couldn't. She couldn't let this part of her run wild. She couldn't let it win. You weren't supposed to let evil win. They say that you can only fight back for so long, but they never really said if it was possible to win. To keep everything that made you a monster down. The idea of an anchor never really factored into that equation before. Fighting was something you did when there wasn't any other option. But in her case, in any werewolves case, there was a way out. She just needed to find an anchor.
Isaac tossed Carson to the floor again and didn't make a comment when she didn't move. She let her claws scratch at the floor but she didn't try to get back up and fight. She wasn't giving up and she wasn't running out of fight. She was just trying to find another option. Plan B. They always had a plan b, always. She just needed to find one.
She had to get through this.
Scratch.
She was alive.
Scratch.
She was not a killer.
Scratch.
She was a survivor. That hasn't changed.
Scratch.
Isaac shuffled behind Carson. She heard liquids shaking, pounding in her ears.
Scratch.
Stiles was downstairs, going on a rant at Peter. Something about werewolf dens.
Scratch.
He's alive.
Scratch.
She didn't want to kill him. She couldn't want to kill him.
Scratch.
Something sharp hit Carson's neck. Isaac shoved a needle in her neck.
Scratch.
She could feel herself drifting slightly. Her arms were moving slower, like she was being submerged in water.
Scratch.
She didn't want to kill anyone. She didn't want to kill Stiles.
Stiles . . .
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When she woke up the next morning, literally everything hurt.
It felt like her entire body had been driven over with a steam roller and that someone had yanked all of her bones out of their respective sockets. Her head was pounding with a force she didn't even know was possible, even as a werewolf. Migraines as a human, she could understand. But wasn't the whole point of being a werewolf was that pain was only momentary?
With a loud groan she attempted to sit up, only for her arms to be yanked right back down. Her brow furrowed and she looked down at her limbs which were chained to the radiator in Isaac's room. That was weird; the last place she remembered being yesterday was downstairs when Derek started chaining her up to the pipes that jutted out of the wall of his loft. How did she get up here?
"What the hell happened last night?" Carson choked out with a groan, longing to clutch her head and roll into the fetal position and just go back to sleep. But whoever chained her up was an asshole and didn't want her to have options.
A steady rhythm of footfall near the doorway caused Carson to turn her head the opposite way. A sigh of relief left her mouth when she realized that it was just Scott. He came in with a sympathetic smile, a glass of water, and a set of keys.
"You're gonna feel out of it for a bit. Isaac had to use a whole bottle of ketamine on you to keep you down," Scott murmured to his friend, as he bent down and began unlocking the handcuffs. It was then she realized that she probably could have busted out of them but she wasn't in the mood for werewolf superpowers.
"Wait, ketamine?" Carson let out, cocking her head to the side while she sat up. "Like the stuff that we used on Jackson last year?"
Scott nodded, while handing her the water. "According to Isaac you got a little . . . out of hand last night. Then again, so did everything else."
"Out of hand?" she echoed. "Scott, what the hell happened last night?"
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Scott wasn't kidding when he said everything got out of hand. Not only had the full moon caused Carson's lunacy last night, it had become a backdrop to all the chaos that had arisen last night. Scott had tried to break it down for her in the simplest way he could, but even still she couldn't wrap her head around it.
Derek and Scott had managed to get into the vault last night and realized very quickly that it wasn't Erica in there with Boyd. Erica was in fact dead, like Isaac had let on. And this girl was like them. But she was more like Derek than anyone could have expected. Her name was Cora, Cora Hale. The youngest of the Hale children, only a year older than the rest of us. Derek thought she died in the fire, but somehow like Peter she had managed to get out.
And then back here, right underneath Carson as the ketamine had swirled through her consciousness, Peter and Stiles had figured something out, something very vital. The Alphas were ultimately planning deaths, and Boyd and Cora had been trapped in the vault which was made out of hecatolite. According to Peter, it scatters the moonlight. Meaning that Boyd and Cora hadn't experienced the full moon for months. And with the giant gaping hole Derek punched in the wall, they were only giving in to the alphas plans. Because the moonlight had shone through that damn hole and awakened the animalistic parts in the two detainees.
They were like the lions Romans used for fighting. And Derek and Scott had only stepped into the Colosseum.
Apparently Marin Morrell, neighborhood guidance counselor, was on the side of the alphas. She had trapped Derek and Scott in the vault room for dead with some mountain ash. A series of events led Allison, who had sneaked into the bank vault, to break the seal which let Boyd and Cora out.
Allison had been unceremoniously sent home, which Carson didn't really see her complaining about considering the night she had had. Isaac had left the loft and joined up with Derek and Scott who needed to plan a way to get Boyd and Cora trapped long enough for the sun to rise. Surprisingly, they managed to get Argent on their side.
With help from the elder hunter, they succeeded in luring Boyd and Cora into the school and then down into the boiler room. It was after hours, after all. No one should be there. After what had happened last year to the janitor, none of the teachers optioned to stay in the school after the sun had set.
Well, all the teachers who had been present for that. Miss Blake hadn't been.
Which is exactly how Derek found himself in the boiler room, behind the steel door ripping his beta and his sister to shreds in order to keep them away from her. He had been victorious, like any good alpha and Miss Blake was okay. Shaken up and probably thinking monsters were real, but at least Principal Stevens wouldn't have to go and hire yet another teacher. He still seemed pissed about the whole library thing.
And apparently, while Scott, Derek, Isaac, and Argent were out playing badass werewolf trappers, Stiles had also left. Lydia had somehow wandered her way out to the local swimming pool and found a dead body. And apparently, the boy who died wasn't the only dead body to be seen by the hospital. Heather, who Carson didn't even know was missing, was dead now. And there was apparently a girl missing too.
All of the things that involved Stiles's activities last night is where Scott was fuzzy on the details. He wasn't really sure exactly of what happened, mainly because he said that Stiles was still trying to make sense of it.
Which is why Carson found herself in the passenger seat of the McCall's Toyota at seven in the morning to go talk to Stiles at the hospital. Apparently he had been there all night. She didn't fight Scott on going. If people were dying, they had to figure out what it was and how to stop it. She had to learn how to suck it up and deal with being around Stiles.
When the two got to the hospital, she made a beeline for the morgue. It was increasingly easy to actually sneak in to the room itself. Carson could see at least ninety nine things wrong with that, but right now it didn't matter. What mattered was what was going on.
Stiles was backed up against one of the counters, staring down at the two dead bodies that were lying on the metal tables. He looked like he wanted to cry and throw up all at the same time. His head snapped up at the sound of their footsteps and he wiped his eyes on the back of his sleeve. He bit his lip as he glanced at her before nodding at Scott. He gestured at Heather.
"Your mom showed me this last night," Stiles muttered, his voice void of all emotion. "They weren't killed in a way that screams werewolf." He gulped before rolling the blanket back over Heather's face.
"So Boyd and Cora might not have killed anyone?" Scott asked.
"You're gonna wish they did."
Carson raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Well I'm not exactly sure yet but the other girl who was out in the woods, Emily . . . eventually they're going to find her. She's one of them. Emily, Heather, the guy Lydia found at the pool. All three were virgins. And all three are going to have the same three injuries: strangled, throat slashed, head bashed in. It's called a threefold death," Stiles added, glancing up at Carson.
His words caused her to let out a small gasp and raise her eyebrows. "You're not actually thinking that right?"
"You remember what the threefold death was?"
Carson nodded. "I remember a lot of the fucked up things we found when we researched. But this, Stiles . . . "
"The wounds are the same on all three — "
"But that doesn't make them sacrifices, Stiles!"
"Wait, hold on," Scott cut in, holding his palms up. "Sacrifices?"
"Human sacrifices," Stiles muttered.
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Stiles and Carson sat side by side on the floor in an empty corridor of the hospital. Scott had to go talk to his mom about something, to make certain that these killings didn't look werewolf-y to her either. Apparently he needed a second opinion that wasn't Carson or Stiles.
He kept running a hand down his face as they waited and Carson knew he was trying his best not to break because of Heather. She cast a few glances at him out of the corner of her eye before she sighed softly.
"I'm really sorry about Heather," Carson managed to choke out. Her words sliced through the silence, even though someone without super hearing would have to strain to hear it.
But Stiles managed to catch her words. He bit his lip and shook his head. "No, you're not."
She furrowed her brows together, giving Stiles an utterly confused look. She wasn't sure she had even heard him correctly. "Excuse me?"
"Carson, you hated her."
Carson looked at him and tried her very best not to smack him. "Yeah, you know what? I did hate her. I hated her a lot. We never got along and she's part of why our relationship is ruined. And no, I'm not going to be one of those people who hate someone who dies and then tries to make up for everything I ever said or did. I had my reasons for hating Heather and her death isn't going to change that. So yeah, I hated her. But I didn't want her to die, Stiles. I don't want anyone to die."
"You weren't saying that last night."
"Last night? Did I talk to you last night?" No one had bothered to tell her what had occurred on her half of the story from last night. She remembered being chained to the wall, hearing the voices and seeing red. That was it.
He looked at Carson in confusion before nodding. "You don't remember anything from last night? Of course not. Well, you tried to kill me. You said that you wanted to rip my throat out or in some other horribly morbid and macabre way."
"Oh." Carson looked down, knotting her hands together at his revelation. But he wasn't done yet.
"And you said that you hated me. That you lied about ever loving me."
"You don't actually believe that, do you?"
"Honestly, I don't know what to believe anymore," he shrugged.
She ran a hand through her hair and bit her lip. He thought she didn't love him. He actually was believing that she didn't love him. How could he think that? After everything they did together, everything they shared. Every moment, every one of the faintest touches . . . did he not remember any of that?
"Stiles, you have to know that everything that came out my mouth last night was a lie. You know that I'm not a killer, I wouldn't want to hurt you."
"I know, that was the full moon."
"Then why can't you believe that me saying I don't love you was the full moon too? Stiles, everything we had together was real. The way I felt for you, the things I said to you, none of that was a lie. You can't fake the kind of love we had. You can't pretend and make believe the things that I felt for you. I fell in love with you. Every word, every kiss, everything was real. Every last moment of it was real. It was fucking real. You can't lie about shit like that."
Their eyes met sometime during her monologue and now they stared back at each other, on the floor of the hospital. She could make out the subtle shifts that his body was making, any way to get closer to her. Stiles wanted to get closer. And Carson wasn't really objecting right now.
"And what about now?" he asked gently. "Do you think you could still love me like that now? Do you still love me like that now?"
"Honestly? I don't really know how I feel about anything anymore."
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author's note: So I may or may not have just skipped the entirety of episode three. But honestly, no matter what way I did it, Carson would be irrelevant because she's a new werewolf. Full moon Carson was kind of important.
But yay I'm finally past 2&3 which means that the era of badass werewolf Carson is soon to begin. Honestly, she's gonna be kicking a lot of ass. So yay.
Let me know what you think lovelies :)
Also, this story has been changed to third person. If you notice any POV issues from the prologue up until chapter ten, please inline comment where the mistake is and I'll be sure to fix it. Chapter eleven and up were written solely as third person, so there shouldn't be any issues with those.