|| Disappearing Act
When Braeden brought her bike to a standstill, they were on an overlook like the one that resided in Beacon Hills. Both she and Scott walked to the edge, their destination below.
"La Iglesia," Braeden said, looking out on sun scorched remains.
"What happened here?"
"An earthquake," she told him. "It leveled the town."
Scott pointed a little, "Why is the church still standing?"
Among the ruins of a once great town towered a church, old in architecture and grand in size.
"The locals think it's because what's underneath."
Scott couldn't stop staring at it, "Do I wanna know?"
"The church was built over the ruins of an Aztec temple. It belonged to a people called the nagual."
"Shapeshifters."
"Werejaguars."
Scott's brows lifted, anxiety and concern swirling within. "So Derek and Kate are somewhere in there?"
"I don't know." Braeden had almost a pleased look on her face. "Never gotten this far before."
"That's comforting."
||
Given another half hour, the Jeep was still not fixed.
Stiles worked, holding tools between his teeth as he tried to bring his baby back to life.
"Maybe we should just walk," Lydia suggested, the sun lowering slowly.
"Hey," he took the screwdriver out of his mouth, "I will never abandon this Jeep. You understand me? Never. Never."
"That's an understatement," Jacy softly said, sure she was about to die from boredom. She found herself walking in front of the car, something playing at her senses - a warning that they weren't safe. "Work faster, Stiles. There's something out here with us."
Stiles and Lydia exchanged a look, their Jeep situation now the least of their troubles.
Kira furrowed her eyebrows, "Jacy, I think your phone is going off." She moved, reaching into the backseat of the Jeep.
"How do you even have service?" Lydia asked as Jacy was handed her cell.
"I don't know." Jacy grew concerned, her mom's contact across the screen. "Mom? Is something wrong?"
"Honey..."
Jacy stopped cold, knowing that tone exactly. "Mom, what is it? What's wrong?"
"...It's your brother."
"What happened to him?" She'd risen her voice, but she didn't care that her friends had looked at her strangely.
"There was an accident."
Jacy winced at the words, "Is he okay?" Her voice went nearly void. "Is he alive?"
"Yes, yes he's alive," Olivia assured. "It's just he, um...he doesn't remember anything."
Jacy's lips parted, "He what?"
"Stilinski called me last night. They found Jordan unconcious at the edge of the woods. Nothing seemed wrong with him, physically, but when he woke up about an hour ago, he didn't know who he was."
"That can't just happen right?" Jacy sharply asked. "Did someone hit him or something?"
"From what I can tell, he's perfectly healthly. There's no injury, but sweetheart you need to come home."
Stranded in Mexico, Jacy couldn't agree more.
"I will as soon as I can," Jacy told her, wishing she could run home to make sure her brother was okay.
"There, uh, there's something else."
Jacy's eyebrows laced together. "What else is there?"
"Well, as his memory seems to be gone, something else is gone too."
Stiles looked over his shoulder, seeing Jacy put her phone down with white knuckles wrapped around it. "Jace?"
Jacy put up a hand before she turned around. "Keep working, we have to get back to Beacon Hills as soon as possible."
"What happened?" Kira asked, the brunette with a stiff expression on her face as she came back to the jeep. "Is Jordan okay?"
"Well, he's an amnesiac." Jacy's whole persona seemed to have flipped, "And that's all he is."
Lydia lifted an eyebrow, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"He's not clairvoyant anymore."
||
With the sun below the horizon and the moon high in the sky, Braeden and Scott manuvered their way through the collapsed town with the help of a flashlight.
As they approached the church, Braeden readied her shotgun.
"If you find Kate in there, what are you going to do to her?"
"Bring her back to the Calaveras," she replied. "It's what they paid me for."
"What happens after that?"
"Not my problem," Braeden said, clearly beyond the point of caring.
"You don't care?" Scott questioned with a slightly off expression.
"Do you?" she asked with a minor judgemental tone. "She's a mass murderer."
"You're a mercenary."
Braeden kept her gun in her grip as they gained on La Iglesia. "Girl's gotta eat."
"If you were paid enough, would you kill her?"
"If the money was good, I'd kill you."
Is 25 million enough?
||
With the world so dark, it only set the four around the broken down Jeep into higher paranoia.
Kira rifled through the back, pulling her katana free. Even if they weren't in imminet danger, it made her feel better to have. She took her blade up to Jacy, standing next to the wolf.
"Lydia," Stiles complained, still digging through the insides of his Jeep, "could you please hold the light still for a second? It's really hard to see anything when you keep shaking it like that."
"I'm shaking it like this because we're in the middle of nowhere with your broken down Jeep and we're being attacked by yet another razor clawed monster," she breathed out, "and I'm terrified."
"We'll be fine. Look, they've both got us. So just try to be slightly less terrified," Stiles told her, removing a car part. "And hold this."
Lydia took the hunk of metal, "What's this?"
"I don't know. I'm hoping it's not important."
"Oh, God," Lydia sofly said, questioning if they were going to die out here.
"Anything?" Kira asked Jacy, the pair ahead of the Jeep on guard.
Jacy was halfly frustrated, wanting to get back to her brother. "It's too hard to see. We should've brought another flashlight."
Kira got an idea, moving back to the headlights of Roscoe. She wasn't sure if it would work, but she needed to try. She put the blade in front of the light, shifting it to the side to create a focused beam.
And out in the darkness was something beyond human.
Kira's eyes went from narrowed to wide. "Did you see that?"
Jacy's eyes lit up purple and blue, roaring with her fangs bared. She took off running, but then the strangest thing happened.
She disappeared, only a whirl of dust blustering where she took her last step, and Stiles' jacket.
"Jacy!" Stiles shouted, nearly jumping up from the jeep as he and Lydia were left alone.
There was an indistinct roar, one that sounded like Jacy's, beyond the high ridges Kira went into.
She was out there, no matter how impossbile it seemed.
"How did she - she vanished."
"Stiles, focus! When they get back we need to get out of here." Lydia held the light, her eyes constantly flickering to the jacket that was on Jacy before she seemed to zap out of existence. "They'll be okay," she assured, believing it with every fiber of her being.
||
Kira ran beyond the lights of the Jeep after what she saw.
Actually, she didn't know what she saw, but she knew it wasn't good.
Panting as she stilled, she held her katana up. It was dark and she was alone, but she trusted her blade. She slowly walked the dusty, rocky path between two large masses of earth, ready.
But with readiness comes paranoia.
Kira felt like she wasn't alone. "Jacy?" She swung around, her katana at the level of her forehead. Still with heavy breaths, she swung back around sharply.
The feeling of uneasiness was growing, a twig snapping sending Kira back around with a yell. Distantly, she heard footsteps running at her.
This is it. She thought, swinging back around and nearly connecting with a figure.
"It's me." Jacy held up a hand, panting as she was hunched over slightly. "It's me."
"What happened?" Relief flooded Kira, but not enough. "What's out there?"
"I'm not really sure." Jacy was recovered from running, but not from the exposed rib she had. "I might know what it is, but it is big and fast. And it cuts deep."
She knew it was healing, but the feeling of tissue and bone melding back together wasn't exactly pleasant.
As if a note from a singing angel, the rumble of the Jeep's engine blocked Kira's next question.
"Oh, thank God," Jacy huffed out, Kira taking her arm and the two quickly going back to Stiles and Lydia.
Lydia slapped Stiles' shoulder from the back, "Look!"
Stiles lept out of the running car, meeting Kira and Jacy. He grabbed Jacy's shoulders, "What the hell happened to you?"
"Stiles! We have to go now!" Lydia yelled, Kira on her way.
"Come on, Scott first." Jacy took Stiles' hand, pulling him back to the Jeep. She climbed into the car, Stiles taking the driver's seat.
Stiles grudgingly put the Jeep into drive, heading off in the way Braeden took Scott. He kept glancing to his girlfriend as he drove until he couldn't take it anymore. "Okay, seriously Jace. What the hell was that? You disappeared, into thin air."
"I don't know why that happened or how," Jacy said. "I was thinking about getting to what I saw, and I showed up there."
"So you teleported without meaning to?" Stiles asked, his eye nearly twitching. "I honestly don't get how that just happens."
"I have no clue." Jacy rubbed the side of her head, twinging from the pain in her torso. "Maybe it's something I can do now that i've turned - some really freaky power I have."
"Jacy, did that thing cut you?" Lydia's attention was drawn away from teleportation and to the blood seeping through Jacy's top.
"Yeah, but I'm fine." Jacy shook it off, able to feel the bone and skin replenishing.
"It looks deep," Kira said, in the back next to Lydia.
"I can feel it healing. I'll be okay," she replied, having a want to change shirts.
"Did either of you see anything?" Lydia asked, the jeep racing on towards The Church.
"I never saw it," Kira said, her eyes going to Jacy. "Did you, Jacy?"
"It was kind of hard to see, but it was gigantic. Seven, eight feet, and it had a really strong scent."
"Like what?" Stiles asked, seeing the faint traces of a colllapsed town come closer.
"Like death," she said, narrowing her eyes soon after. "Why is only the church standing?"
Stiles' headlights only lit up so much, but as he drove through a town in ruins, one building clearly stood out. "We can ask once we find Braeden and Scott."
"Flashlight," Jacy said as the Jeep came to a stop in front of La Iglesia. "It's them."
The four inside jumped out, meeting Scott, Braeden and a third person being carried by the pair.
Jacy's eyebrows furrowed, the build of the unknown person not matching the Derek she knew. "That's not him."
A teenage face met them, confused eyes trailing around.
"Uh," Stiles hesitantly said, "it sort of it."