- DISCLAIMER -
I do NOT own Teen Wolf
I can't believe we're back.
Question of the Chapter - Did you enjoy Chaos Theory?
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"This doesn't seem so bad," Stiles said looking around.
Lydia cocked her head to the side, "It's not the town, it's the plan."
"What's wrong with the plan?"
"Really, Stiles?" I scoffed. "I would like to go on the record letting you know that this may be the worst idea you've ever had. Ever. But, I'm sure you already know that?"
It had been about a month since Allison Argent had died during the fight against the Nogitsune. Stiles and I spoke about it every other night, whether we were in the same bed, or just on the phone.
We were doing our best to move on, but it wasn't exactly something you just forgot. Charlotte offered to pay for me to see a therapist, but I didn't think it was necessary.
Plus, she wouldn't admit it, but there was no way we would be able to afford that. After how long I was in Eichen House and what happened in the hospital the night I was admitted, Charlotte was still attempting to pay off the bills. Unfortunately, there was only so much money in journalism, and she didn't want to go to our father for help.
And now we stood in the middle of a town in Mexico, because Derek was missing. Scott had went to see him after we defeated the Nogitsune, only to find that his apartment was empty. Thankfully, the person who had taken him hadn't exactly cleaned up their trail.
Scattered bullet shells with skulls etched into them found by Scott and sensed out by Lydia lead us to where we were. Apparently, they belonged to a family of hunters named Calaveras.
"Yes, thank you, Riley. I'm aware it's not our best."
Lydia pursed her lips with a nod of her head, "We are going to die."
"Are you saying that as a Banshee, or just being pessimistic?" Stiles asked as we began to walk.
"I'm saying it as a person who doesn't wanna die."
"Okay. Would you just mind restricting any talk of death to actual Banshee predictions?"
"This plan is stupid and we're going to die," Lydia smiled.
Stiles smiled back sarcastically, "Oh, thank you."
"She has a point," I told my boyfriend, squeezing his hand. "This is seriously dangerous. These people are professional hunters."
"Yeah, well we've dealt with worse."
"I hope you're right."
♧♤♢♡
It took a while, but we finally got to the building we had been looking for. It was a club that was said to be run by the Calaveras family. We just hoped that if we found them, we would find Derek.
Two guards stopped us at the door when, to no one's surprise, Lydia spoke Spanish to them. When this didn't work, Stiles pulled a card out of his pocket that depicted a skull. After he held it up to a security camera near the door, the door was opened for us.
We slipped past the guards and into the building. I sighed with relief, glad that it had actually worked. The three of us walked down the hallway silently, until we reached the club.
Not really knowing who we were looking for, we headed over to the bar. The bartender had three shots of tequila sitting in front of us almost immediately.
As Stiles searched his jacket for his wallet, a man approached us from behind. He placed a hand on a shoulder of Stiles and Lydia, leaning forward. "No. On the house."
None of us moved to take the shot glasses, which only made the man more persistent. "Most American teenagers don't cross the boarder to refuse a drink."
"We're not 'most American teenagers'," I informed the man.
"And we didn't come here to drink," Lydia added. She retrieved one of the empty bullet shells from her pocket, before dropping it into one of the shot glasses.
The man narrowed his eyes at the three of us, before leading us away from the bar.
♧♤♢♡
"Severo hates this music."
The man, Severo, had taken us to a separate room after Lydia had revealed the casing. We were now in a much quieter room, sitting across from an older woman at a desk. The shadow hit her face in a menacing way, making her look much more threatening than a woman her age should.
The woman, who I assumed to be head of the Calaveras family, continued to talk to us as she sharpened a small knife. "Me? I've always loved the music of youth. This kind, especially. It has a savage energy."
"We're here for Derek Hale," Lydia stated, basically ignoring everything the woman had just said.
"Is that so?"
"We didn't come for the party, I'll tell you that much," I shrugged. "We know you have him."
When the woman didn't respond, Lydia sighed, "We've heard you can be bought."
Stiles proceeded to lay out wads of bills on the desk, lining them up neatly. "It's fifty-thousand for Derek."
This caught the woman's attention. "Now, where does a teenage boy get money like this? Japanese mafia?"
Every other person in the room chambered a round in their guns as the woman leaned forward. Now that she was out of the shadows, I could finally see her face. She was definitely older, and if I didn't know that she was someone who would take my head off, you could easily mistake her for a sweet, old woman.
"Not smart to come alone," she told us, crossing her arms on the desk.
Stiles' brows came together as he leaned forward slightly, "What makes you think we came alone?"
The smug look melted off of the woman's face, and I felt a smirk reach my lips. She hadn't expected that. She nodded to someone in the corner of the room, who opened the door and left straight after.
They were going to be looking for our back up now. Scott, Malia and Kira just had to blend in until we got the information we needed, and then we were golden.
The woman stood up and stared out her window with a sigh. "My friends. . . I don't think you're aware of your poor timing. Do you know what the dark moon is?"
I looked over to Lydia, who knew the answer. "The part of the lunar phase when the moon is least visible in the sky."
"But do you know its meaning?"
"Some people say it's a time of reflection. Or grief."
"Grief and loss, mija," she corrected as she turned to us, placing her hands on the back of her chair. "I wonder why, when you and your friends have suffered so much loss, you would risk it again for someone like Derek Hale."
"'Cause we don't like to lose," Stiles responded, surprisingly unsarcastic.
The woman smirked, nodding. In that moment of silence, someone spoke in Spanish over a radio sitting on the woman's desk. Different voices then spoke, each saying in English. "Front door clear." "South clear."
"North?" Severo said into the radio expectantly. When there was no reply, he began to speak in Spanish. Lydia would've known what he was saying, but Stiles and I were in the dark.
I held his hand between our chairs, trying to remain calm as the situation unfolded. We had no way of knowing how this was going to end. Not even Lydia knew for sure if we'd get out alive.
"Stiles," a voice buzzed through the radio. Scott. "Take ten off the table."
Stiles released my hand to lean forward and take one of the wads of notes off of the desk, slipping it into his coat. Were we actually ahead of this hunter family right now?
"Maybe you should just take the deal," Lydia suggested.
The woman laughed, moving around her chair to press her hands against her desk. "While I'm keen to follow the warning of a Banshee, I'm going to have to decline."
She knew Lydia was a Banshee. That meant that she probably knew about all of us, which also gave reason to believe that we may have lost our upper hand.
When I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, the woman noticed. "I suggest not trying anything."
She didn't even have to say what she meant as I saw guns being raised out the corner of my eyes. I placed my hands in my lap where she could see them, so that she wouldn't be suspicious.
"Alright, come on. Just give us Derek," Stiles told the woman. "You don't want him anyway. Haven't you noticed what a downer he is? No sense of humour, poor conversationalist. Just come on, take the money."
He definitely shouldn't become a lawyer, bargaining didn't seem to be his strong suit. And while I agreed with everything he was saying, this woman didn't seem all too impressed.
She proceeded to pick the radio up off of the desk and press a button. "Severo? Show them how the Calaveras negotiate."
Confused, I looked over my shoulder to see that Severo had slipped out of the room while we had been talking. The fact that the woman didn't seem worried, really concerned me. What was happening out there?
She placed the radio back on the desk, before heading over to the door. "Show our guests to the waiting room, won't you?"
Every hunter in the room stepped closer to us, guns at the ready. They got us to stand up, before leading us out of the office and down the hall to another room.
It looked almost like the bathroom out of the first Saw movie, that's how gross it was. When we got there, they shoved Stiles and I in and locked the door.
"No!" I yelled, pounding on the door. "Bring her back! Lydia!"
As my knuckles began to bleed from hitting the door, Stiles pulled me away. I let him put his arms around me soothingly as I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. He helped me concentrate and drown out the noise.
When I opened my eyes, I wiped my knuckles to see that any damage I had done to myself was gone. It never felt any less strange healing like that.
"What are we going to do?" I asked softly, putting my arms around him.
"I don't know, Ri. But, we'll figure it out. We always do."
♧♤♢♡
Not long after we had been put in the room Scott, Malia and Kira were brought in also. This wasn't very reassuring, considering that that only left Lydia on the outside and the rest of us locked up.
When they brought them in, they had all been passed out due to wolfsbane. Scott was out a bit longer though, because the Calaveras woman had shocked him with one of those electric hunter weapons.
"He's awake. Guys, he's awake," Kira told us all after twenty minutes of waiting.
We all rushed over, watching as the boy opened his eyes.
"Scott, you okay?" Stiles asked, concerned.
As we helped him sit up, Scott was quick to tell us what had happened before he had been knocked out. "They don't have him. They don't have Derek."
"We know," Kira told him. "But right now, they've got Lydia."
"Lydia? What do they want with Lydia?"
Running a hand through my hair, I shook my head. "They knew she was a Banshee, Scott. They know more than we anticipated."
"We need to get out of here."
Scott got to his feet and went straight over to the door. We let him have a go at it for a few minutes, hoping that maybe the strength of a True Alpha would be enough. Unfortunately for all of us, it wasn't.
"We already looked for a way out," Kira finally told him. "I think a lot of people have."
Malia stood towards the back of the room, watching Scott run his hands over scratch marks on the walls. "I say when that door opens again, we take out whoever's standing in the way and run for it."
"What about Lydia?"
"What about her?"
Scott stopped examining the door to rejoin our circle. "We're not leaving without her."
"Why not?" Malia asked, genuinely confused.
Stiles and I had been working with her for a while, trying to normalise her to her new surroundings. But believe it or not, it was hard to teach someone how to act normal after being trapped in the body of a coyote for eight years.
"Because we don't leave without people," Stiles reminded her calmly. "Remember, we talked about this? Rules of the wild kingdom don't apply to friends."
Malia lowered her head in disappointment. I couldn't tell whether it was from forgetting what we had told her, or because we weren't going to leave Lydia behind.
Kira looked curious as she studied the girl, "Is that what you would do as a coyote, leave her for dead?"
"If she was weak and injured, yeah," Malia answered without skipping a beat. "If hunting had been bad that season, I would eat her. Then I'd leave."
Wincing, I pursed my lips as I glanced over at Scott. "We're working on it."
"Believe it or not, that's progress," Stiles tacked on.
Scott reassumed his role as leader, straightening up. "All right, guys, we're not dead yet. And that means Araya wants something."
It made me smile how much he had grown. Thinking back to before all this started, and seeing who he had become, I was a proud friend. Hell, not even just of Scott. Lydia, Stiles, even myself. We had all changed.
"But if the Calaveras don't know where Derek is, that means they didn't take him from the loft. Right?" Kira clarified.
Stiles nodded, "Maybe he left on his own."
"I don't think so. Not without a word at least," I said, thinking. "What if it was someone else?"
We didn't have time to discuss the matter further, before the door was thrown open. Severo strode in, flanked by two hunters with guns.
The man walked straight up to Scott, zapping him with the electricity again. I could only imagine how high that had to have that little thing amped up to take him down.
My eyes glowed as I stepped forward to attempt to stop them. Scott told me to stay back, falling to his knees. He didn't want anyone else to get hurt, I understood that. But I didn't want him to get hurt.
When I took another step, one of the hunters aimed their gun. Not at me though; at Stiles. I didn't know whether I was faster than a gun, and I didn't feel like testing it.
Closing my eyes, I reopened them to their natural brown. The two hunters with the guns picked up a drowsy Scott, while Severo walked over and grabbed Kira by the arm.
Since she was a Kitsune, there was no way their weapon was going to work on her. But a gun to Scott's head did the trick.
So, Stiles, Malia and I all stood by helplessly as they took two more of our friends.
We had definitely lost the upper hand.