From Ashes ✗ Stiles Stilinski - Chapter 36: Chapter 36

Madeline did not like the new plan. The original plan was to go to the morgue, show Lydia the body of the boy who had been attacked, maybe do some feat of strength, and hope that was enough. The last thing Maddie wanted was to head to the outskirts of town to find a real vampire. Unfortunately, as soon as Stiles had put on his turn signal to head to the hospital, Lydia had interrupted by telling them to keeping going forward.
Maddie had tried to argue it but Lydia had kept repeating the same thing over and over, more fervently each time. "We have to keep going. We have to."
Now, they traveled uneasily on the long strip of road out of town. Maddie was getting more and more worried about whatever was happening to Lydia and why she wasn't asking more questions.
"Stop the car," Lydia voice rang out, firm and authoritative – so much so that Maddie had vaguely forgotten that it hadn't been that long ago that she had made the same order. It was nearly identical.
"Seriously?" Stiles grumbled. "There's not even any-"
"Stiles." Maddie was too preoccupied with Lydia's expression. Fear. Horror. "Stop the car."
The car stopped reluctantly on the second command, just like it had weeks before. The difference lied in just how far out of town they were. In fact, they hadn't even reached the large green sign that signified that they were leaving. Instead, they were only a few feet away from where it stood. Lydia scrambled out of car first, alarming both Maddie and Stiles who followed quickly after.
Without the loud, choking sounds that regularly came from the engine of the jeep, the night fell into an unsettling silence. The forest that surrounded both sides of the road was so still, the rustle of leaves in the distance would have made Maddie jump. It was the type of silence that only seemed to fall just before...
"What? What is it?" Stiles asked, his voice nervous. If Maddie was paying closer attention, she might have wondered if he was addressing her or Lydia, who was taking measured steps in the direction of the large 'Now Leaving Beacon Hills' sign.
Maddie's only took one step towards the girl, alarmed but cautious. "Lydia?"
"Did you hear that?" Lydia breathed, her gaze fixed on the road ahead of her.
The slayer felt her stomach lurch as her nerves spiked. She closed her eyes and listened, trying to will her hearing to pick up something. Anything. Still, the unnerving quiet filled her ears. Alert and only a bit frustrated, Maddie turned to Lydia with a worried stare. "Hear what?"
The word that left the fair girl's mouth was the most unsettling of all. "Humming."
Again she began walking, taking careful steps past the sign to the center of the road. Stiles attempted to call out to her and move forward when Maddie caught his arm. When he turned back to her with an alarmed look, she only momentarily looked at him and shook her head. There was something Lydia could hear that they could not. There was something she was looking for. Maddie was torn between telling her to get back and allowing her to follow whatever she was hearing. What if it was important? What if it was something they needed?
She might not have understood what was happening, but interrupting might have been worse.
Suddenly the girl stopped after another few feet and looked down, appearing like an eerie silhouette against the moonlight. Slowly she bent down as close to the ground as possible and reached down. As she did, Maddie caught a glimpse of something dark and splotchy stuck to the pavement to the girl's right, just by the edge of the woods. The petite brunette swallowed as her heart began pumping rapidly. There was something familiar about a stain like that.
In a flash, Maddie rushed forward and knelt down beside the mark on the road. She thought she heard Stiles shout something but ignored it and she rubbed her index finger against the stain and it began to chip slightly. She held her breath for a moment and she turned over her finger to examine was came off.
Even when she squinted, she couldn't tell what it was. In one fluid motion, she pulled out her phone from her jacket and allowed it to flicker to life. Once it lit up, she pointed the light in the direction of her finger. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears. It was a dark red, almost brown. Dried blood. Beside it, off the road and in the dried mud, were tire tracks. She rubbed dried blood off her fingers and was about to stand when she finally heard something – although it certainly was not humming.
A low growl reverberated around them.
Maddie stood but just as she did, she saw another silhouette in the moonlight. One she did not recognize. In an instant, she grabbed the wooden stake from inside her jacket when she heard another growl from deep in the wilderness. And another from the other side of the road.
"Lydia, run!" Maddie shouted, her wild stare moving to the girl. Lydia stood there, standing again but frozen. In a matter of moments, shadows slunk out of the trees and into the light. First two, then three and four. They joined the figure in the center of the road. Maddie turned back to where Stiles had been but found him inching toward Lydia and reaching toward her. Out of sheer instinct, Maddie ran toward the two and stopped just in front of them, facing the hoard of creatures. "Get her and leave!"
"There's too many!" Stiles shouted back. "You-"
"Stiles! Get in the car and go! Now!"
"I'm not just gonna leave without you!"
"I won't leave without her!"
Maddie squeezed her stake tightly as she stayed rooted in her spot, shaking away the memory. In a split second, the monsters moved forward and Maddie felt a hand close around her wrist and tug hard. He was probably right. There were probably too many.
How many were there? That night in the alley? How many were slayed?
Twin daggers spun gracefully in the air, slicing through dead flesh. Clouds of dust exploded in the air. Maddie ran forward, shouting.
A dozen. A dozen, at least. Could Maddie take a dozen on her own? Could she even take five on her own?
The daggers fell to the ground splashing in a pool of rainwater and blood. Someone grabbed Maddie's wrists and shoulders. She fought against the grip, screaming into the now silent alley until her throat was raw.
And how many did it take to kill a slayer? Fear and rage gripped her suddenly as the question echoed in her head, repeating the answer over and over. Only one.
She felt the irresistible urge to run forward, to fight all of them. She wanted them to pay. To suffer. That's not how it works, kid, a familiar voice sounded in her head. Why did her voice of reason always sound like Xander? There was a truth in it though; someone else's vengeance was what turned her into this. This wasn't her.
She felt another hard tug at her wrist and knew it was Stiles, pulling her away from her thoughts and back into the present. There were two people behind her, unwilling to move. Two people who needed her help. They needed her to walk away from this.
The shadowed vampires growled again and Maddie shuffled a step back. "We have to run."
A larger vampire bellowed a roar as the slayer willed herself to spin around and push the two front of her to do the same as they ran to the car in a clumsy scramble. Maddie reached for the person closest to her, which was Lydia, and pulled her along to the car. She nearly shoved the girl into the car in a hurry and was about to follow her in when she noticed the driver side door had yet to be opened. Her breath caught in her throat as she turned to the door and looked beyond it to where they had run from.
In the center of the road and almost parallel to the road sign, Stiles was pulling himself up from the ground, visibly wincing in pain. Behind him, monsters with shadowed faces and bright yellow eyes were nearly bearing down on him. Maddie felt the urge to call out to him in fear, but the sound didn't come to her. Instead, even when she knew the monsters were closer to him than she was, she slammed the car door shut and ran.
Time seemed to move in slow motion and she couldn't get there quickly enough. And suddenly, she was pulled into the most horrible memory. She was going to be too late. She's always too late. As if he could feel it, he flipped onto his back, looking up at the creatures that had almost reached him in horror. He backed away only a few inches clumsily when it happened.
The closest vampire had reached out for him and its hand began to burn. The deformed woman screamed in pain and clutched her searing hand.
Maddie had finally reached Stiles and hooked her arm under one of his, pulling him to his feet. The frightened boy stumbled back a bit into her shoulder but Maddie was too preoccupied to notice. The five vampires where less than a foot from them and came no closer. Instead they glowered at the two and fell back into the shadows.
Maddie let out the breath she hadn't known that she was holding and cautiously walked Stiles back to the car, looking back every so often.
☽ † ☾
It had to have been a trick. There was no way they were alive.
The ride to the Argents was silent as Lydia stared wide eyed at her hands and Stiles flinched every time they hit a bump in the road. Maddie had strain her mind to figure out what had just happened and how it could have happened. There was no answer. Getting in the house was more awkward than she had hoped as both Chris and Victoria heard them enter. The slayer hadn't even tried to come up with a good excuse and instead shouted "studying" as the other two snuck up the stairs and closed the door behind them.
Now, they sat in the small space Maddie called her room, surrounded by stacked boxes that weren't even hers. Stiles was busy picking the gravel out of one of his hands as Maddie sat with her head in one hand and a warm, beige washcloth in the other and Lydia paced the length of the room.
"Vampires," was the first word that split through the silence and it had come from Lydia, who still sounded incredulous. Skeptical. Maddie stayed quiet for a long while, going through the order of events in her head over and over, looking for an answer. Again, she heard the increasingly frustrated sound of Lydia's voice. "Vampires!"
Two simultaneous shushes came from Maddie and Stiles. The slayer sighed and nodded. "Vampires."
Lydia took a deep breath and nodded, mumbling the word again only without the edge in her tone. She folded her arms and went back to pacing, this time at much easier pace.
On Maddie's right, she heard a sharp intake of breath and side-eyed the boy sitting next to her. He was wincing and looking down at his dirty, scratched up hand. She looked back down at the warm washcloth in her grasp and then back to Stiles. Hesitantly, as if she had to fight with her limbs to make them move again, she held out her free hand to him.
It took him a second to notice this and even still spent an inordinate amount of time looking between the outstretched hand and the girl it belonged to. Her expectant stare turned almost annoyed before his slightly bloodied hand reluctantly inched towards hers. To be fair, she was not known to be a particularly gentle person but she still felt a tad bit offended by the response – then again, she wasn't certain why. Sure, she had practically carried him to the jeep earlier, but now, with something so small, a tension formed.
The strangest thing happened, though.
Warmth. Not just from his hand; that would only make sense. Warmth in her chest, rising through her neck and to the back of her ears as soon as they made contact. His skin was a little rough (but less than she was ever used to) probably from practicing lacrosse and working on the jeep. Just rough enough to cause the tiniest bit of friction when his hand twitched, regardless of how slight - like electricity, but not. She knew that feeling - that fire, that spark - but this...this was different. The alarming jolt she felt between her hand and Stiles' was new. It didn't hurt. It was like touching one of those electric blue plasma balls that sat next to the lava lamps in the mall. She didn't feel the shock; it was more like a warm, calming hum.
She didn't even realize at first that she had been holding her breath or that she had tensed. She could feel him looking at her and it's for that reason that she remained stoic - to the best of her abilities. Working to keep the hand that his was resting in still, she gently dabbed the cuts on his upward facing palm with the warm washcloth. He flinched a little but she did her best to ignore it. Too many things were far too easy to notice right now. It was better not to think about it. She had done this a million times with too many people to possibly count. Why was this time so different?
It isn't, she rationalized. It isn't. It isn't. It isn't.
She had to convince herself of that.
Taking the washcloth off of his hand, she took her other hand away as well. The humming was getting to be a little too much to handle. A punch to the face was looking like less of a challenge. She shot him a glance for less than a second before focusing on the washcloth. "Did you need a bandage?"
"Nah, I'm fine. It's just a scrape."
He almost died. I almost watched him die. She stood up suddenly, ready to make a bee line for the bathroom. "You should put something on it-"
"Mads," he cut her off and her stare, hard again and as guarded as possible, met his which was softer and infuriatingly unreadable. There was concern there as he gave her a small, appreciative smile. "I'm fine. It's nothing."
There was a pause in her movements as she wrung the edge of the washcloth and gave a stiff nod. In the very next second, she did her best to walk calmly out of the room and to the bathroom, flicking on the light and closing the door softly. After wringing out the washcloth in the sink under hot water, she took a moment to look at it. Blood. Tiny specks of red dotted the sand colored cloth no matter how much she tried to squeeze them out.
She threw the washcloth into the hamper on the door and gripped the sides of the sink tightly, watching the water run still as steam surrounded it. It was too close. She was still play it in her brain on repeat, only with a different outcome. She wasn't fast enough. She was never, ever fast enough. She swore that she would never let this happen to someone she care about ever again and it almost did. The only reason it didn't was some force outside of her control.
When Lydia had gotten hurt, things spun out of control. She wouldn't sleep, she threw herself into training, and she kept seeing her. Marie.
If something had happened to Stiles...
Maybe she really wasn't ready for this. He was too close. It's not just him. Lydia was too close. They all were. She cared about them. They were a team.
But if it had been Stiles... her thoughts crept up on her. It'd be like Marie all over again.
She shook her head violently. No. Nothing would ever be like that. No one would ever be that close, not again. Never again. A sharp pang of remorse and rage shot through her stomach, as if feeling the sharpness of a blade slice through her again.
Madeline's grip loosened on the sink and she slowly lifted the hem of her shirt, revealing a long, pale scar just under her ribcage in the mirror. Her thoughts turned bitter. Maybe this was Marie's plan all along, to make Maddie feel this alone. To take away everything. She touched the scar, struggling to remember the pain of the blade but remembering the hate and betrayal as if they had been the physical wound.
Maybe this really is what she wants. She shoved the thought away with one truth. Maddie's eyes raised up to meet her reflection's. They were nearly black and almost as empty as her chest felt.
"No," she said aloud, just above a whisper. Marie can't want anything. "Marie's dead."
She needed to say it so she could hear it. She needed to know that there was no way she could hear a dead girl's voice or see her in the halls at school. There was no way a dead girl could feel anything at all. She needed at least that. She needed to say it for the first time.
She tugged her shirt down and opened the door, turning the bathroom light back off. Once she made it back into the room, there were two concerned sets of eyes staring back at her. She frowned and muttered a nonchalant, "What?" as she closed the door behind her.
"Nothing," Stiles said, immediately receiving an expectant look from Lydia. He shot the strawberry blonde a wide eyed look before looking back at Maddie. "Well, not nothing. Something. We might have theory."
Maddie gave a silent nod, leaning against the wall.
"City limits," Lydia started simply, gaining a confused expression from Maddie. "It wasn't that they – th- the vampires didn't want to grab Stiles. They couldn't."
"The one that tried to grab me screamed, right?" Stiles added, not waiting for confirmation. "It was more than that though. Her hand was smoking, like – I don't know, like she put her hand on a hot stove and let it sit there for a while. Something blocked her."
"Something hurt her," Lydia went on. "She barely touched whatever it was and it hurt her like..."
"Like whatever blocked them was consecrated," Maddie finished.
Lydia raised an eyebrow. "You're kidding. The whole holy water, crucifix, garlic legend is real?"
"The garlic thing's a little corny but yeah." Maddie shrugged. "All true."
"Anyway," Lydia interrupted with a frustrated sigh. "That happened right at the city limits, right by the sign almost down to the inch. They can't get in."
Stiles nodded, standing up. "It makes sense. The first time you asked me to drive you somewhere to patrol, we had to go out of town. Maybe there's something stopping them from getting in."
"What about the other night in the club?" Maddie argued. "The guy that grabbed me had severe blood loss and puncture wounds."
"Was he a vampire?" Lydia asked.
Maddie exhaled loudly. "No, but-"
"The guy's name was Phil Larson. My dad I.D.'d his car. There was blood all over the driver's seat," said Stiles, his tone solemn. "Maybe he was attacked and bled out on his way here."
"I don't know...it just doesn't seem-" Maddie cut herself off, as something flashed into her memory. Dried blood. Tire tracks. "Damn it."
"What?" the other two said in unison.
"Blood." Maddie rubbed her temples, closing her eyes. "There was dried blood not too far from some tire tracks. I don't know how long they might've been there."
"Was it in city limits or-" Stiles start before Maddie cut in again.
"It was a few feet past the sign... Outside of Beacon Hills." the slayer took a breath, recalling her face to face with the boy who died at her feet.
Lydia took a step toward Maddie, calling her attention. "You said he gave you a cryptic message, that they are going to take something." Maddie nodded and Lydia eyed her curiously. "Did he say anything else?"
Maddie shrugged. "Mostly just basic creepy stuff."
"Specifics, Maddie."
"Like..." Maddie sighed, rolling her eyes. "The mother and her son know something. They'll take it. My...my..."
"Your what?" Stiles asked, eyes wide. "Maddie?"
Any color on Maddie's face had drained as she pictured the boy – Phil Larson – looking her dead in the eye and choking on his words. "'Your wall will crumble...your beacon will burn.'"
Stiles looked from Maddie to Lydia and back. "So, something is blocking them."
"But they know how to destroy it." Lydia shot Stiles a look before sending a more concerned one to Maddie. "They might know how to get in."
"Why else would there be a group of blood thirsty monsters waiting just outside of town?" Stiles asked.
"I think there were more than we could see," Lydia said suddenly, her stare becoming distant. Her eyes shut instantly and her eyebrows knitted together as if she were remembering something painful. "The humming...it kept getting louder. I..."
"You picked up something," Stiles began, caution etched in his town. "Lydia, what did you pick up?"
Her green eyes snapped open again, terrified as she stood frozen for a moment. After another moment her hand slowly reached in the pocket of her cardigan, shaking slightly. Another second passed and she pulled her hand out once again. Both Maddie and Stiles had taken a few steps forward, the three of them forming a tight circle while Lydia's closed hand raised up in the center.
"She was there. I don't know, I... She was waiting for us," Lydia whispered. There was another beat before her hand opened once again, revealing a small marble in her palm. Stiles, who had looked a bit closer, took a measured step back. Maddie, on the other hand, looked closer, realizing it wasn't a marble.
"Who was waiting for us?" she vaguely heard Stiles say as she picked up the tiny sphere.
"The mother," Lydia choked out.
Maddie raised the object to the light. A tiny, blue doll eye looked back at her.