“Can I go?” I asked Parrish as we stood out the front of the house. Lydia was talking to Haigh the other deputy as the Sheriff’s men all surrounded the house and the bodies where being dragged out.
“Yeah, I can drive…”
“No, I need to talk. Get some fresh air.” I said in a small voice.
“I’m not sure…”
“Parrish… please. I have a phone, if I need to I’ll ring.”
“Alright. I think we’re done anyway.” I nodded and slowly turned around. “Anna?” I turned back to look at him. “I’m sorry about your friend. And you shouldn’t blame yourself. I know he disappeared from your party, but looking at what was in there if it wasn’t him it would have been someone else.”
“But it was him.” I said back in a small voice before walking over to Lydia. “I’m going to walk, you should ring Scott.”
“Sean, the survivor of the family is at the hospital, if his family killed these people than…”
“Lydia… If Scott needs more help tell him to ring me, but I have to do something.” She didn’t say anything else, only nodded.
I made my way down the road and walked for almost two hours before I found myself looking up at a familiar set of apartment buildings. I was about to head up when my phone started to ring.
“Scott?”
“The Wallcotts were something called Wendigo’s. They eat people to survive, that’s why they had those bodies in their house.”
“What happened?”
“Sean killed a deputy and took Liam to the roof.”
“Liam?”
“Liam Dunbar, the new freshman. I kind of injured him in tryouts and Stiles and I had to take him to the hospital. Sean had him and it ended in a fight. This isn’t something I can explain over the phone, I’ll tell you more at home, but Lydia said I should tell you that much straight away. Are you alright? She mentioned Jake.”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’ll be home later, see you then.” I said before we said our goodbyes and hung up.
I felt my blood boil and then ran up the flights of stairs until I found the right level. Once I was standing outside his door I pounded on the wood.
"Peter! I know you're in there! Open up!" No answer. “Peter! Open the door!”
"I don't want to. You sound like you're in a bad mood." He finally replied.
"If you don't open this door it will take you an entire year to find your masculinity when I'm done with you!"
The door swung open, "If I didn't know that was meant as a threat it could actually be fun." He teased
"Wendigos?" I stated with a pissed of edge
"What?" I slapped/punched him on his arm as hard as I could. "Ow! Jesus, are you sure you're a Nix and not iron women?”
"You gave his body to Wendigos to eat!?" I screamed.
"Oh shit. Keep your voice down and get inside." He grabbed my arm and pulled me inside. The fact that he knew exactly what I was talking about was proof enough that he did. "He was a 17 year old boy not dog food!" I yelled back at him.
"I know, Wendigos aren't dogs an for the record dead is dead, I assure you Jake doesn't have an opinion on the matter."
I couldn't help the accusing scoff, "Dead is dead?" I repeated back to him and then punched his arm in the same place, but this time with more force.
"My god women! Stop that! And how the hell did you find out?"
"Next time you die, I'm feeding you to a pack of rabid wolves! Oh god Stiles was right, you do feed you're victims to things to get rid of the evidence." I muttered.
"Okay slow down. All of my victims were found. Jake... He's yours."
"And now they've found him. That family that was murdered by the psycho axe killer were the Wendigos. And in their little game locker they found Jake!"
"Huh. You would think they would have finished with him by now." I punched him again before walking over to the living room.
"Again!? Look I didn't plan on the police finding his body. And I gave him to them to protect you if you recall!" I picked up the closest object I could find, which unfortunately was a pillow, and threw it at his head. “Okay, calm down. If I just left in the woods he would have been found. This way the evidence would have been destroyed.” The next thing I threw was a stone coaster that Peter barely managed to duck as it rammed into the door leaving a dint. “Anna! Stop it! For the record you weren’t meant to find out about this either.” He muttered under his breath. The next thing I picked up was a laptop. “Okay, whoa! Just put the laptop down, please. Can we just talk about this?”
"I think I'm going to throw up."
"Don't be so dramatic."
"DRAMATIC!?! You handed my friends body over to cannibals!
"A friend whose heart you ripped out... Literally."
"That's not the point! I was evil... You were just you." I paused for a moment and thought about what I just said as Peter raised his eyebrows. "Huh... Well that's not the point." I collapsed on the couch as I placed the laptop back down on the table. Peter soon collapsed down next to me. “You’re an arse.” I finally said.
“I know.” He said back as he looped his arm around my shoulder and I fell back on his chest.
“What happens now?”
“There shouldn’t be an evidence left on Jake’s body to connect him to you and the Wallcotts would have cleaned him up anyway. His death will be linked to them. You can’t tell anyone, Anna. It won’t end well.”
“I know… Why didn’t my eyes change colour?”
“Murder is in a Nix’s nature. It wouldn’t change your eye colour anymore than it would change a Wendigo’s.”
“Does that mean I’ll kill again?”
“No, not with having a werewolf side. You can control it, especially with Scott. With enough practise you won’t need him at all.” He paused for a moment. “I never answered you, about Selene.” Peter said, fianlly.
“It may have escaped your notice Peter, but you never really answer anyone aside from the occasional vague and cryptic comments, but if you’re in a chatting mood now then please by all means… spill.”
“She was a French hunter from a family called the Corbeaus. They were wiped out years ago when she was five by werewolves and from there she was raised by the Calaveras. One of her first solo jobs was to come to Beacon Hills and scope out my family, see if we were a threat to the local population. The Argents had told Araya Calavera that we weren’t, but she needed someone she trusted to find out for certain, especially considering who my sister was. So she sent in Selene, the girl she’d raised. Selene was a fresh face among hunters and wouldn’t have been recognised. She was also only 17 so she could go to school and befriend Derek and Laura. It was Derek who brought her home and introduced her to the family.”
“Did they go out?” I asked, curiously.
Peter shook his head as he stood up and walked away from me, always keeping his back towards me. “No, it was the same time Derek was sneaking around with Kate. Selene was just a friend… to him at least.”
“You dated her…” I said, realizing. Peter never replied. He clasped his hands on the edge of the desk in front of him for support. “You loved her.” I whispered this time.
“She’d realised my family wasn’t a threat in the first few weeks, but then she saw Derek’s eyes… the blue.” He continued, ignoring my comment. “She had to find out the circumstances. So she staged her discovery of werewolves. Came across Derek and I on the full moon. She acted scared and ran. I spoke to her the next day and she came to terms with what we were and eventually I told her the story of Paige’s death. She could have left then. She had her answers, we still didn’t know she was hunter… she could have just left Beacon Hills without another word, but she didn’t… She’d seen Derek with Kate and knew she was up to something. The Calaveras follow the code, it’s their law. They enforce it and she had to know that what Kate was doing lived up to it. So she stayed, still under her cover of the innocent 17 year old school girl. In all the time we’d known her, none of us had been to her home. She’d told us that her family had been killed and that she lived with Guardians, but we’d never met them. One night I followed her home. She went up to an apartment and then came back down in less than ten minutes. She’d changed clothes, was wearing all black and caring a duffle bag. I didn’t know what she was doing, but it didn’t seem right. I got closer and I saw her pull a gun out of her belt before she got in her car and drove off. Instead of following I went upstairs to the apartment… inside I found guns, amo, knives, compound bows… profiles of my entire family ad bullets with a raven engraved in the side.”
“A raven?”
“Corbeau. French for raven, her families surname.”
My heart was pounding just listening to the tone of his voice. “What did you do?” I asked thinking I would sound like a normal person, but really my voice was breaking. I stood up off the couch and inched closer to him, but he never turned around.
“The one thing I shouldn’t have. I waited until she got back… when she did it ended, obviously, in an argument that resulted in a hands on fight. I didn’t see her again until the fire. She came back to the house and found me burnt, lying outside. That was the last time I saw her. She ran off before the police and ambulances arrived.” Peter spun back around finally facing me. Only when he did, did I realize my eyes were starting to water. This made him smile. “Why are you the one crying?”
“I don’t know.” I said in a small voice. “You don’t know what happened to her after that?”
Peter’s eyes darted away from mine. “She went back to Mexico.” He said in a small voice. There was something he was holding back, but I didn’t push it. I walked up to him and wrapped my arms around his waste, letting my head wrest on his chest.
If you had told me 18 months ago that I would be hugging Peter Hale and wishing that this Selene person had never broken his heart I would have laughed and called you crazy before locking you in Eichen House.