From Ashes ✗ Stiles Stilinski - Chapter 45: Chapter 45
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The training room was freezing, the cold dulling the stench of various sickly sweet body sprays and sweat. Maddie was in the corner, seated at a low, wooden bench while she tied her generic blue and white sneakers. She already missed her boots, even if it was only ten hours since she last wore them. She loved them even before they were broken in and now she never felt the need for any other shoes - but she couldn't train in them, according to Xander and Kennedy. Xander was at least nice about it and Maddie pulled the double knot as tight as she could.
"Since when did you start gettin' here so early?" a voice drawled in a light, nonchalant tone to Maddie's side and just out of her peripheral, even though there was no mistaking who it belonged to. "And without me? I'm offended."
Maddie forced a small smile for two reasons: number one, this was the tone that Marie used around the other girls, the one to show she didn't care when she really did; and number two, this was the tone Marie had recently taken on when speaking to Maddie. Maddie, of course, didn't understand why. The best part of their friendship started when Marie dropped the 'playing nice' mask and Maddie had no idea why Marie's guard had gone back up on her.
Maddie shrugged and didn't turn. "Didn't want to wake you, I guess. Yesterday you said you haven't been sleeping all that much."
"No, yesterday I said 'why turn in early when there's a party happening over on Delancey?'" Marie's tone was still light and conversational but any expert on the girl - which was a short list that started and ended with Maddie - would've been able to detect the thinnest edge in her voice.
"And you went by yourself."
"I asked you if you wanted to go - and going to a party doesn't mean I have sleep problems."
"Then there was the rave two days ago," Maddie said without hesitation, like she was reading off an itemized list she didn't even realize she kept. It was a whole month since the rave that landed on Maddie's birthday and as time passed, the frequency of Marie's partying went from once a week to about three a week on the lowest end. Maddie opted out of most of them to patrol or binge watch movies and TV shows with Terra and Em. When she did go, which was about once a week, she went for a very specific reason and it wasn't Marie.
"So what?" Marie snapped but barely. Her voice sounded like anxious fingers snapping but there was no anger there. Not yet. "So I like to hang out with people after I patrol. There's nothin' wrong with that, right?"
Marie wanted Maddie to agree with her and, for some reason, that made Maddie's own annoyance flare in her stomach. The way things worked and had always worked at HQ was that everyone else begrudgingly went along with whatever Marie said because she had a presence about her. She came from money and the rumor was that her father was someone important. Even then, she was the best of the best that they had. She made fighting look like dancing, like ballet. The other girls admired her and were attracted her personality which, even when they were younger, was magnetic. Everyone gave in, everyone agreed. Everyone, except for Maddie. For a while, Maddie would've sworn that's why their friendship worked.
Until recently, Maddie assumed that Marie knew this dynamic and preferred it. Then, without warning or explanation, something...shifted. Marie made it clear she wanted Maddie to let it go and just agree, changing the solid earth beneath Maddie to a high wire performance. Marie wanted Maddie to be exactly like everyone else in her life and that hurt more than Maddie thought it would. Still, she replied through gritted teeth, "Right."
Maddie stood and pulled her arm across her chest in a stretch, then the same with the other arm as she walked past Marie to the punching bag. The urge to hit something was needling her thoughts. She cracked the knuckles on her taped up hands before taking a defensive stance but, before she could take the first punch, she heard Marie behind her. Maddie forgot how grating her voice could be.
"Speaking of raves..." Marie said, her irritation passing - or she was an expert at hiding it - and her eyes, blue and bright as a clear summer day, filling with hope and mischief. A sly smile spread over her lips. "There's one on Saturday. The rest of the team's in."
Maddie began punching the bag in front of her, the skin on her knuckles stinging slightly at first contact. The bag shook a bit as she furrowed her brows and frowned. "Even Nora?"
"Everyone except Nora, obviously. She's, like, five."
"She's fourteen. She's only nine months younger than me," Maddie nearly snapped but reigned in most of her annoyance at the last moment. She punched the vinyl casing of the bag again, a quick left and right, only harder this time. "And she's part of our team."
"Yes, Mads, I know," Marie droned. Maddie knew Marie didn't like Eleanor. Eleanor was too nice and Marie was sure there had to be a catch or, as she put it, no one smiled so big and so freely without using it to hide something. "But you just said it! She's fourteen. You don't take middle school kids to high school parties. Jesus."
Maddie kept her head low as she focused only on the punching bag and connected in a flurry of hits. "Then I'll take her with me to patrol."
Marie's shoulders slumped and she pouted, or at least that was what it looked like from the corner of Maddie's eye. "Come on! You promised that I get to choose what we do at least one night a week..."
"I said that when I was twelve." And got tired of you bugging me about reading Harry Potter, she didn't say. The books weren't terrible and she didn't regret spending the whole summer reading through them all. Still, there was a difference between reading Harry Potter and watching her best friend get drunk or high in the middle of a blisteringly hot room.
Marie was getting annoyed again, Maddie could tell. Marie was playing with the end of one of her curls and there was a long beat of silence. "What if I told you...your new friend would be there."
Maddie was in mid punch when her fist stopped short of the bag by mere inches. The pause in her movement made her realize how much she was sweating already and how much of her hair had fallen loose of her ponytail and was now sticking to the sides of her face. She dropped her fists and tried to give Marie a curious look. "Friend? What friend? All my friends are here."
Maddie looked down, feeling a bit sheepish at the statement as her annoyance fell away. She could count her friends on one hand and at least two or three didn't feel like friends. Marie, at least most of the time, felt like a friend. Still, the part that made her the most embarrassed was knowing exactly who she was talking about.
"That...Elliot guy? The one who's way too old to be hanging around you?"
Maddie tucked the stray hair behind her ears and quickly returned to pummeling the punching bag, mostly to have a reason not to look Marie in the eyes. "He's sixteen."
"As far as we know." Marie folded her arms. "And, hello? These are our formative years! Age gaps for us are way wider than regular age gaps. It's all about, you know, maturity. It's literally the difference between watching Shrek and watching the Shrek porn parody."
For a second, Maddie's mind went blank and she looked over at Marie in horror and disgust. "What? Oh gods! Ew! Why would you say that?!"
"You know what I mean!"
"And you're seventeen."
"The difference being you don't have a crush on me."
That word. Crush. It really did feel exactly like how it sounded, like a cannonball colliding with her gut and the wind rushing out of her as her bones crumble. She'd never had a crush, not a real one at least. She liked a boy in the first grade and showed that by chasing him around the playground and punching him in the arm. Needless to say, even before becoming a slayer, she somehow ended up frightening people through her aggression - at least until someone larger and more aggressive came along.
She remembered the last time she saw Elliott, a boy who oozed confidence and charm and was so distractingly gorgeous. She remembered how he said only two sentences to her all night. He looked at her with those half-lidded eyes and his lips quirked up on one side in a smirk. He didn't approach her but instead went back to the random group of sweaty, half naked party-goers. He talked to a girl with blazing red hair most of the night and it should've been a relief. Instead she was unnerved and snuck outside every half hour to not look at him. Crush really was the perfect word, wasn't it?
By the end of the night, he caught her arm while she was on her way out and said two things.
"Sorry we didn't catch up. You looked so beautiful and I got nervous," which was such a lie, just by the way he said it, but she answered with a smile anyway. "Next time, though."
In retrospect, there wasn't even an indicator that he remembered her name but he'd called her beautiful and she couldn't seem to find a reason to complain after that. She looked over at Marie, her mind reeling back to the present. "So, what if I have a crush on him?"
For a moment, something changed in Marie's eyes and she squared her shoulders, standing straighter than before. She didn't say anything for an extra few seconds and something between them that was bending painfully for weeks snapped in two, like Maddie was staring at someone she didn't know. Marie looked to the ceiling, eyes wide as she searched for something. When she looked back down, she didn't look at Maddie but instead at the punching bag. She shrugged. "Well, he's probably going to be there."
Maddie knew Marie was only saying that to get Maddie to go, but the seed had been planted. Thoughts and daydreams of what might happen next time bloomed in her head and she bit her lip. There was no reason for this boy to give her the time of day but, even when he could've ignored her all night, he managed to find her and talk to her. That had to mean something. Maybe she was willing to let it mean something.
She didn't officially say yes but, on Friday night, she was ready to go right on time. Still, Marie couldn't meet her eyes.
☽ † ☾
Somehow, with the many months she'd known both Stiles and Scott, trips to their houses were rare. Even rarer were the moments when she was forced to interact with their parents and it made her uncomfortable how little Scott's mom and Stiles' dad knew about their own kids, their own hometown. Xander always told her that people only see what they want, especially when things got bad. "Monsters? Demons? Are you kidding? Almost half the country can't even bring themselves to believe in evolution. Vampires are a big no go."
Her current situation was increasingly awkward, considering Sheriff Stilinski was having a hard time believing his son who had no non-supernatural proof to back up his claim that Matt was behind the murders. Then again, most of her discomfort was probably coming from the fact that she couldn't get the image of all of her friends dead at her feet out of her head. An hour or so passed since they left the party and she could still see the whole scene in remarkable detail. Instead, she focused on the yearbook in front of Stiles who was currently sitting at his desk and just set his red marker down.
That was the other awkward thing. Maddie remembered, with perfect clarity, that she had admitted that he was her closest friend. Her head at that point felt heavy and full of water that sloshed all around from behind her skull when she moved - which was probably due to the spiked punch. Words happened to find their way out. The silence that followed almost implied she'd said something else entirely though - or, worse, that he'd wanted her to say something else. Also, to add to the proof that she hadn't been sober, she didn't even move or look away until he did.
It reminded Maddie of something from a long time ago, bringing a dull ache with it. Something that probably had to do with Elliott if she thought hard enough about it. She didn't want to think about that or him - ever, if she had the choice.
Instead, she allowed her thoughts to veer all the way back to where she stood and just how sobered up she was now. She had been to Stiles' house before, but never to his room and she tried not to grimace at just how juvenile that sounded. It wasn't so long ago that she was explaining the whole 'slayer' thing to them in Scott's room, which was about as messy and smelled just as much like boy. Still, she couldn't even bring herself to sit down.
"All right, fine. I'll allow the remote possibility, but give me a motive. I mean, why would this kid want most of the 2006 swim team and its coach dead?" Stiles' dad asked incredulously.
"Isn't it obvious?" Stiles paused, almost like he was attempting to build dramatic tension. It wasn't working. "Our swim team sucks! They haven't won in, like, six years."
His shoulders slumped as any tension deflated.
"Okay, we don't have a motive yet. I mean, c'mon, does Harris?"
The Sheriff sighed and, for a second, turned his attention to Maddie. "And how'd they end up dragging you into all of this?"
Stiles looked almost stricken by the comment and Maddie didn't know how to answer such a loaded question. She gave the most honest answer she could think of and shrugged her shoulders. "Still trying to figure that one out."
The Sheriff looked exasperated as he looked over at his son again. "...What do you want me to do?"
"We need to look at the evidence," Scott said.
"Yeah, that would be in the station, where I no longer work."
"Trust me, they'll let you in," Stiles answered.
His dad looked incredulous. "Trust you?"
The look on Stiles' face went from completely sure to wide-eyed, feigning innocence. It was almost laughable. "Trust- trust Scott?"
The older man eyed his son carefully while pointing at Scott, who was just behind Stiles. "Scott, I trust."
They went over the plan again and, after another few minutes, left the house. Stiles agreed to meet up with his dad at the station and the Sheriff begrudgingly agreed before getting in his car and backing out of the driveway.
So many of Maddie's nights recently had ended like this, in this hellish downward spiral. So much so that she was beginning to wonder what tipped the karmic scale against her. Why did she feel battered and bruised? Why did Buffy show up unannounced? What was happening to her slayer powers? She felt as though the answer to all of these was the same and painfully obvious, still she'd never admit it. She would never admit that it had anything to do with Allison.
After everything, after the fights and the secrets, she still considered Allison a friend on some level. She had to be frightened. She couldn't know what was actually happening. Allison Argent was a kind and caring person - and Maddie had to believe that.
"You think Allison's alright?" Scott had asked just after they reached the sidewalk.
"I didn't see her on the way out of the party." Stiles glanced over at Scott. "It's Allison. Allison with the added benefit of slayer strength. She'll be fine."
The slayer comment stung but the part that really got to her was the look on Scott's face afterward. It was slightly crumpled, his dark eyes unfocused.
"Why did you kill them?" The question echoed ferociously in Maddie's head, gnawing and tearing at her insides. If she thought for too long, she was sure she'd imagined Scott and Allison's bodies among the dead that appeared to her only an hour ago. Somehow it layered like a thin film over her first dream in Beacon Hills, superimposing her friends' faces onto the severed corpses in the thick, dense woods. She could feel her stomach turn and the bile rising in her throat. Suddenly, unable to shake the images, she stopped and looked up at Scott and Stiles.
She didn't say anything at first and it took an extra second for Scott and Stiles to realize she wasn't beside them. Scott, who already looked concerned, caught back up with her first. "What? What is it?"
Maddie must've looked as sick as she felt - or at least worried. She shook her head in a slight jerk and refocused her gaze on the boys. Her eyes flicked from Scott to Stiles and quickly back to Scott. Looking at Stiles for too long made her stomach leap up into her throat and not in a good way. Guilt surged through her and she could almost hear the sound of her ax being buried in his back, even when she knew that she hadn't actually heard it. She could imagine it now and that was enough.
"I can go - find Allison, I mean."
Out of her periphery, she saw Stiles' eyebrows furrow before he opened his mouth. "Wait, are you sure that's a good-"
"I'm no good," she cut him off and felt her throat constrict once she heard her own words and how pained they were. Even though she didn't completely understand the way she meant them - I can't even protect anyone anymore or I'm too broken to be fixed - she felt the ache in her chest and at the base of her throat, knowing that all of them felt just as true. She swallowed the lump down and let the static in her head ebb away.
"I mean," She sighed. "I'm no use to you guys. You need Allison right now. I'm sure she just went home."
That one felt just as painful.
Stiles didn't say anything but she could feel his gaze on her still. Scott spoke up instead. "Are you sure?"
"Well, she's not going to answer if we call," Maddie said, looking down at the phone in her hand. "And I wouldn't recommend texting about the kanima if we don't want her family to know. I'll just head over there and-"
"And what?" Stiles said, a bite in his tone. "You two aren't exactly on the best terms. How do you know she'll even go along with this? Cause I'm betting you don't."
She wanted to look over at him, to throw him one of her trademark glares and tell him to shut up. She didn't; she couldn't find the energy to be annoyed. Instead, she paused and looked in the direction that Stiles' dad had driven.
"Because it's Allison. I have to believe she'll help." She almost added 'because Scott does' but knew it went without saying. "She cares too much."
"Yeah, she does," she heard Stiles mumble, his voice defeated and without the edge. Something about the way he said it made a surge of anger roll through her. You don't know me, she wanted to say through gritted teeth but didn't just in case he really was talking about Allison - or, what she was really dreading, that he wasn't and knowing he was right. He must've nodded to Scott because both of them started toward the jeep. She saw Stiles hesitate for a moment before opening the driver side door. "Be careful, okay?"
And there it was again, the pull of something reeling her back to the present, to reality.
The anger in her chest collided with the guilt, creating a surge of energy that lifted her head up and, by that time, he was already closing his door. Something urged her forward and she jogged to the car. The motor had just started to rev when she knocked on the window sharply. He jumped and accidentally hit the car horn which made all three of them wince at the sudden screech. She could see him cursing before he rolled down the window, looking alarmed. "What? What's wrong?"
His eyes were wide when they met hers and she hardly had enough time to muster up her guard or the oldest and most familiar thing she could cling to. She used to call it resolve. She narrowed her eyes and made her mouth into a line before speaking, bringing back her gruff tone. "Don't do anything stupid, either of you. Call Derek or something before you get there, just in case. We're going to need plenty of help to track down this guy. I'll text you when we're on our way."
She was looking between the two, both stunned at her sudden forcefulness.
"Mads?" Stiles tried to interject, as if he was going to ask her to calm down.
She held up an index finger. "Shut up, Stiles."
Stiles' mouth was open but clamped shut a moment later, one corner of his lips quirking upward in the slightest grin. "Just asking if you needed a ride."
"I know the way on foot." Of course she did, but that still sounded slightly embarrassing. She paused and thought back to her hallucination, gaze unfocused. "Besides, I could use the fresh air."
Before either of the boys could say anything else or she forced herself to awkwardly thank him anyway, she stuck her phone in her back pocket, turned away from the jeep toward the other end of the road, and began to run.
☽ † ☾
Sadie hated the woods. Not just any woods, though.
She hated dense woods and the long shadows they cast on her skin, the way that the thin, brittle branches reached out to her. She especially hated the particular silence these woods brought with them, the thick type of silence that pressed into her head and allowed her memories to spill out. The most she could do was hope that the memories that did find their way out were the more recent ones, even when the older ones bubbled up under her skin and almost itched like a wound she wouldn't stop picking.
Not today, though. She wouldn't let them. She was too busy being annoyed about being ditched by Allison. She was even more annoyed at herself and not even at the fact that she hadn't found that stupid power source D'Hoffryn had told her to locate.
Sadie huffed and reached into the brush of dead leaves, dirt, and twigs for a something solid, something with weight. Something that could do a little damage. She picked up a small handful of stones, crusted over with dried mud. A little magic and few whispered words sent them flying from her palm, one by one at a tree that was yards away from her. They rocketed like bullets and lodged there, looking like gray freckles against the dark brown of the bark.
There was no way in her current state to find that damned power source. Her head was pulsing with anger and annoyance and the sounds of the woods, amplified in the silence that came with the night. The rustle of dead leaves scratching against each other in the breeze, the skittering of small animals in the distance, the sound of branches snapping under heavy feet, the low rumble of humming.
The last two were the most interesting because they were certainly not coming from Sadie. She keep moving, maneuvering around trees and listening quietly. Her heeled boots kept a steady rhythm as she moved, although the stranger somewhere close by did their best to keep in time with her pace. It was game, one made to frighten her. It wouldn't necessarily hurt to play along.
After a few minutes of focusing on the sounds coming from the stranger somewhere in the dark, the woods began to thin and moonlight streamed through in large gaps between trees. Sadie glanced up at the sliver of white in the sky as the woods came to an abrupt halt, as if the switch from woods to grassy plains had been manufactured. It probably was, the bastards. Before her was a grassy field of small, sloping hills dotted with tall weeds. The night sky seemed to bleed into the landscape, desaturating the field that was just starting to come back to life with the promise of spring and inking in the scene with a translucent dark blue.
The humming grew louder and Sadie recognized the tune once she zeroed in on it.
Ring around the rosie
Pocket full of posies
Sadie hated that song, but anyone as old and well traveled as she was would probably agree. Over-played. Almost tacky.
"Ashes, ashes," a soft voice sing-songed, coarse around the edges but low and sweet at the very core. Out of the corner Sadie's eye, she could see a thin wisp of a girl, white and almost glowing from head to toe. She turned to see her, pale and shining in the light of the moon that she could've been a piece of polished ivory. Her long, white-blonde hair hung in limp waves, nearly covering her heart-shaped face and the purple circles around her eyes.
Her lips were curled at the edges and parted slightly like she wasn't done singing but couldn't remember the words.
Sadie jerked her head, flipping her dirty blonde hair over her shoulder. "Not gonna finish your song there, Casper?"
The girl's eyes were unfocused, her head lolling side to side slightly as if on the end of a loose spring. Her nearly invisible eyebrows furrowed and she turned her head like she'd heard something in the center of the large expanse of empty field.
"Ashes...ashes..." she sang again, her voice fading into nothing.
"Okay, I don't know if this escaped your keen, vampy senses, but I'm clearly not your type." Even though the girl didn't turn or look at her, Sadie waved and smiled. "Professional demon over here. Hi. And, real talk, I got over my crazy, undead kink Post-Bram Stoker. Not really my type."
The boney, fragile girl who was too thin for her calf-length white dress wasn't listening though; instead, she was muttering under her breath. Over and over again, the same word forming on her lips as she turned back to the woods behind them and started walking towards the trees, her dirty feet dragging with every step. Ashes.
Both of her hands were raised as if she was feeling around for something until the strangest thing happened. The air around them felt like standing by a blazing fire, warm and sucking the moisture from everything it touched. The sound of fresh meat hitting a hot frying pan filled Sadie's ears and smoke began billowing around the vampire's hands. The girl, still muttering the same word over and over again, began to giggle, a smile breaking across her porcelain features.
Sadie watched with quiet interest, eyes wide and focused. The girl pushed her hands forward as if moving something immense and heavy. At first, nothing happened and there was no sign of damage, even as the smoke twisted around her fingers. Then, the vampire's palm began to bubble and turn from white to red to black. She kept going until her blackened hands pushed against the invisible barrier so hard that the area she was pressing against glowed red as the cherry on a cigarette around the edges of her skin. The area seemed to almost stretch in a way.
It was too late though. The pain must've been too much to bear because the giggles emitting from the girl became shrieking sobs. There weren't many things that could still make Sadie feel sick but the smell of dead flesh burning and the girl's hand blackening instead of simply crumbling to ash made the acid rise in her throat. She could never escape the horrors of watching someone else burn alive, although watching a vampire do it was a bit more bearable. A bit.
Still, the scene was intriguing and confounding. Why couldn't something as simple as a vampire get into a random patch of woods? She looked around, her eyes scanning the field and then the thick brush behind her, her mind reaching for what could be different. What was so special about the woods behind her?
This was not enough to entertain Sadie for long and she strode over to the vampire girl and grabbed her by the neck. She raised her up with one fist so that the undead thing couldn't touch the ground with the tips of her toes. She grabbed the girl's damaged hand with her free one and examined it for a moment before pressing it into the barrier, following the basics of the scientific method, as one experiment was not enough to prove a theory. The vampire screamed.
"Okay, Vampirella. This is getting boring real quick," Sadie said in a low, dangerous voice. Smoke was streaming from the hand she was holding to the barrier and Sadie knew it was moments from bursting into flame. "What's so special about those woods?"
Behind her, she heard laughter - loud, boisterous, and manic. Without letting the girl down or even relieving pressure on her neck or wrist, Sadie turned and eyed the field that was empty just a moment before. God, she hated vampires.
Behind her was a man, middle aged, bearded, and ghostly. He was clutching his large barrel chest as he laughed so hard that it probably hurt. His smile was a wide split in his face just below his plump cheeks. His small eyes were a pale, indistinct color washed out by the light of the moon, but they shined so bright that it was almost hypnotic. His outfit was an odd assembly of clothes he must've found or stolen. A florescent orange Hawaiian shirt with palm trees over a black t-shirt and clean, white slacks clashed with -his long dark hair and sleeve tattoos. He looked a lot like Robert DeNiro's character in Cape Fear was over-inflated with air in the strangest parts of him. Not overweight, but large.
His laughed ebbed and there was a low scratchy Southern drawl when he spoke. "Can't you feel it? The power of it? The chaos bleeding out?"
Sadie cocked her head to the side and said nothing, unprepared for this level of unhinged.
"The Beacon calls to us but it is on fire. Consecrated with the bones and blood of our ancestors, bleached in the flame of the most holy."
Sadie blinked and raised an eyebrow at the man. "Sorry, what?"
"I know why you're here, my child," he said, his voice almost melodic. "She knows as well. She wants to give you what you're lookin' for."
"She," Sadie began, nodding to the girl in her grasp, "can't do much right now."
"You know not of whom you speak, so we will forgive your ignorance." The smile dropped from his face as he took a step towards her, ignoring the girl Sadie had by the neck. His tone was a warning but Sadie couldn't help but feel annoyed. The man folded his hands behind his back and took another step. "Our Mother, the savior of our kind, knows you. She has seen you, Sadira."
The way he said her name was a rasp, but there was no mistaking it. Sadie felt a burst of curiosity take her by the bones and shake her awake, intrigued even if she wouldn't let him know that. "That was a neat trick and all, but I'm not doing anything until someone explains the woods thing."
"Have you not been listening? It's all right in front of you." He hummed 'Ring Around the Roses' as he walked toward the edge of the woods, stopping right where the girl did before. A large hand pressed into the invisible wall and he sucked in a sharp breath as it stretched.
The Beacon. Sadie squinted and amusement lifted her tone. "The edge of town...you can't get into Beacon Hills."
"And you cannot find the power you desperately seek." A monstrous growl emitted from the man as his hand started to burn. He took it away in one quick motion as he turned away and allowed himself a moment. Once he did look at her, it was from under a protruding, gnarled brow and with seething yellow eyes. "We know what you long for and we how to find it."
While her interest grew, Sadie kept her icy demeanor. "This is starting to sound like you want to make a deal. What exactly do you want from me?"
"The Slayer," came his rumbled voice. Something about that word sent a quiet rage into his eyes as he stared at Sadie. "We want Madeline Hayes."
Sadie chortled. "Right. Okay, sure. You want me to just take a slayer from a pack of wolves? And somehow this guarantees me my power source? How exactly am I supposed to pull that off without turning every supernatural goody-two-shoes against me?"
Suddenly, a shadow seemed to gather and take form, blocking the moon from Sadie completely. She turned and eyed its source, a slim outline of a woman. The man chuckled again. "The Mother has seen the way and we would like to share it with you. Alas, she did warn us that you would only take something more specific. Personally, I would recommend showing them..."
His voice dropped off for a moment as he got closer to her and smiled wide, his monstrous visage still present.
"...Mercy."
Something black and cold shot through Sadie's veins as she dropped the girl more out of shock than anger. She turned back to the feminine figure looming behind her as she heard the pale girl on the ground giggle again and finish her song.
"Ashes, ashes...
We all fall down."
☽ † ☾
Every light was on, all of the cars were in the driveway, and there was a silence that unsettled Maddie. When she walked through the front door, the living room was well lit but empty. In fact, every light she could see was on as if someone had gone into every room and forgot to turn off the light when they left. The smell of dinner still lingered from the kitchen as it usually did. The pot roast was most likely already stored in the fridge by now and all three adults would no doubt be asleep.
She went around shutting off the lights in the empty rooms, casting the front of the house in dim white light from the moon outside. She jogged up the steps and crossed the landing, noting that both Gerard's light and Allison's parent's light were still on as well; while the guest room that housed Allison's grandfather was wide open and empty, yellow light peeked through the cracks in the closed door of the master bedroom. She could hear both Chris and Gerard arguing and Chris sounded strained and scratchier. There was a hard break in his voice, an innocent sound. Not wanting to know what was happening or for them to know that she was here, she stepped softly and carefully toward the other end of the hall.
Allison's light was also on and the door was shut, but on the other side Maddie could hear the sound of objects clacking together and crashing. She couldn't imagine that this would be an easy conversation, but she knew that she needed Allison on their side, more importantly on Maddie's side. There was a long moment where Maddie couldn't even lift her hand, dreading the outcome and fighting off her paranoia. After a couple deep breaths, she finally raised her fist and knocked on the door gently.
"What?" she heard on the other side. It was Allison's voice, but lower and full of ice.
This did nothing to ease Maddie but she slowly turned the doorknob anyway and pushed open the door. She was about to say a quick and polite 'hey' when she stepped into the room and caught sight of everything it held at the moment. The walls were bare, as were the tops of her desk and dressers. Her eyes continued around the room until they reached the carpet that was littered with broken picture frames, knick knacks, and pieces of jewelry glinting in the incandescent light.
Finally, Maddie's gaze landed on Allison, who gave off the opposite impression of her trashed room. Moreover, it looked as if she'd raided Maddie's closet, considering the lack of color. Her black long sleeve shirt and jeans matched the piece of weaponry in her hands: a full size metal crossbow, gleaming black. Allison's hair was neatly pulled back from her face and her eyes were already locked onto Maddie.
Maddie struggled to find words for what she was seeing and settled on gesturing to the room. "...What is this? What happened?"
A short, hollow sound hardly resembling a laugh came from Allison's throat as she continued to examine the crossbow. "Of course you don't know. How could you? You weren't here."
The words were a snarl, low and filled with venom. Maddie looked at Allison closely and recognized the same destruction in her, behind the polished veneer. She was a clutter of emotion, torn down and ripped apart, and rage had wiped the surface clean. It was horrible. Looking into Allison's eyes was horrible, because Maddie recognized something there, something far too close to a memory. Maddie swallowed, pushing the question she didn't want to ask from her throat. "Wasn't there for what?"
There was something familiar that Maddie wanted to run away from, but it wasn't Allison. Nothing about that memory had to do with Allison. It was a combination of people, pieces of people and parts of her past she didn't like to remember. Allison was standing stock still but Maddie could see the tremor pass through her because her intuition helped her identify fear for all the worst reasons. She remembered that tremor from abandoned pool houses and caved in roofs. From the crack of thunder and shining twin daggers. It was a warning that something awful was coming.
Allison's eyes, though, were another memory. Something more recent. They were accusatory and unashamed; they were a pyre Allison wanted the world to burn upon. They were Kate's.
Allison sucked in a sharp breath and held it, like she was trying not to let out a sob or a scream. It was the most haunting and painful sound that Maddie could remember hearing - and she remembered being the one to make it once. It came to her in a strike of lightning that illuminated her thoughts, her memories. She remembered not having Allison's composure. She took that sharp inhale and let out a scream that still rang in her ears, along with the wailing sob that followed. How many days was it now? She'd stopped counting a week-
Ice shot through her veins and she stayed frozen in her spot. Of course.
Three hundred and sixty five. How fitting to see Marie's ghost exactly one year later. She looked at Allison, into her bloodshot eyes, with a familiarity not meant for this girl. The expression, the room, the poisonous words were too close to that night one year ago.
This wasn't Allison. This was what death makes of them.
Someone was dead.
As if Allison could hear her thoughts, Maddie asked through her tightened throat, "Who?"
"Why the hell do you care?" Allison spat in a way that was so vicious and precise that she might've actually shot Maddie through the chest with one of her arrows. This girl, this kind and compassionate girl, couldn't be this. Whatever Maddie was looking at, this new Allison, was clawing off her polished exterior - shredding off her paper skin in large chunks - to reveal something frightened, feral, and hideous. "You hated it here from day one! You don't give a damn about this family!"
"This family? But I heard..." Maddie trailed off, fighting through the rage thrown at her to remember walking through the house. She turned the lights off in every room downstairs and the Master bedroom was filled with the noise of Chris and Gerard arguing. Chris sounding pained and torn down. Chris Argent, sounding scratchier than usual, sounding like he was crying. Against her will, Maddie took a gasping breath, mouth hung open as the image of that proud woman, that vicious lioness flashed in her brain. She could almost hear the strangeness in Victoria's voice only a few hours ago, the feeling in it that Maddie wouldn't think about, that she convinced herself she didn't have the time to think about.
Not sadness or regret, but finality.
A door closing, a slow exhale that leads to silence.
"What does protecting you get anyone who stands by your side?"
The words didn't slice through, but instead jaggedly tore open something in Maddie that should've stayed closed.
Her mouth was still open and her eyes had gone wide. She could see the anger on Allison's face gnarling her delicate features. Maddie took in another shuddering breath. "Allison, I'm so sor-"
"Don't you dare," Allison growled as tears welled in her eyes and her jaw clenched tightly, barely allowing the words to escape. "If you even think about apologizing, I swear to god I'll make you regret it."
"Marie, I swear to god-!"
In between the shock and the guilt and the hurt, something in Maddie's brain clicked. It was, in part, another memory and, without realizing it, her hand bolted to the thin scar on her stomach. It was a reminder she never wanted of her faith in people -
"Because it's Allison. I have to believe she'll help."
- and, worse, how ugly the world can become in an instant.
"You ruined all of it! Everything!"
She descended into something deep and dark and thick, loneliness and betrayal filling her up and bleeding out the hope she'd had when she walked through the door. The last inch of her hope. The last fleeting thought of the four of them standing together disintegrating, just like the one of her family and the one of her team. In the end, there was always just this, those echoing words in her head during a stupid second grade math test that followed her no matter how fast and far she ran.
"We. Are. Alone."
She was still looking at Allison as her bones weakly kept her upright. There was no way out of this. No way to get away from Allison's rage the same way she didn't get away from Marie's. The adrenaline of that anger and the slayer power in its rawest state could kill Maddie easily. Allison didn't need the combat training she already had; Maddie could bet that Allison didn't even remember most of it. She was too concerned with her strength, the way Maddie was in their fight a week ago.
"You being on our team wasn't a fluke." Terra's words came in waves, both the good and the bad. She'd nearly forgotten the good. Only six months in Beacon Hills and she'd nearly forgotten a time when she wasn't the strongest or fastest.
Eight years of training. Hand to hand combat. Melee weaponry.
She could still die. She could actually be beaten within an inch of her life and past that by Allison Argent. Good, kind, and compassionate Allison Argent who hugged her at Kate's funeral and didn't hesitate to show her around that first day. That's the girl who could beat her bloody and not stop if she let the demon take over.
Maddie swallowed, her chest constricted and her stomach a bottomless pit. "Fine."
Allison's eyes narrowed.
Maddie remembered her first patrol, fighting a newly turned vampire. She remembered being beaten and broken by a creature that didn't know anything but instinct and hunger. She remembered seeing her own blood on her hand when she wiped her brow. She took a breath. "You want to hurt me? You want to use all that power? Fine."
"You were bleeding so bad, it was everywhere and I thought you were done before any of us could reach you. Then you wiped away the blood and it smeared all across your face, like some viking war paint. Totally done for, banged up, and bloody... and you smiled."
Allison was fuming, becoming unhinged. Every bone in Maddie's body and thought in her head fought against it, but she managed the faintest of grins and the rage in Allison's eyes flared again. This wasn't Allison, just like Marie hadn't been Marie. Maybe Buffy hadn't even been Buffy last week. There was no rationality left, just a ferocity Maddie had seen in all of them, sometimes even in the mirror. This was the demon, the blackness inside them that called for violence and death.
"Do it!" Maddie goaded and it came out a bark, a burst of anger and fear. Her eye caught on the crossbow on the desk behind Allison and she looked back to the girl. "Be another psychotic hunter like the rest of your family! Prove to me that you'll never be one of us!"
Something in Allison must've boiled over because her fist hurdled wildly towards Maddie's face like she expected. No precision or structure, just a wild animal flailing its claws when cornered. With her enhanced speed, Maddie could've easily caught it and blocked but now hardly had time to move. She narrowly missed the punch but managed to avoid it all the same. Allison must've put all of her weight into it, the top half of her body hunched over. Maddie could've used the time to escape but something opened wide in her and adrenaline shot through her veins.
She grabbed Allison's shoulders and kneed her sharply in the gut with all of the strength she had. She wanted a fight. She wanted the fight she refused to have with Marie and the fight she screamed for one year ago in that alley.
Allison recovered quickly and struck Maddie across the jaw with the back of her fist, sending her sprawling into the bookcase - arm and ribs first - and nearly making it tip over onto her. Her jawbone felt like it was in pieces and she knew it'd be swelling soon when she tasted something liquid and metallic filling up her mouth. It trickled out of the corner of her lip and she wiped it with a free hand as she struggled to stand.
She looked down at her hand and saw dark red smear along the back of it. Her heart beat quicker and she wasn't sure if it was out of excitement or fear, if she maybe even loved the pain. She didn't have time to think about it but, as she stood, she smiled at Allison, knowing that anyone could easily see the red on her gums and between her teeth. She'd forgotten why she even sought out Allison because this was all that mattered.
Allison barreled towards her and she felt her whole body tense.
The thought of a cloudy sky and unblinking blue eyes flashed in her memory.
Happy anniversary.
"Since when did you start gettin' here so early?" a voice drawled in a light, nonchalant tone to Maddie's side and just out of her peripheral, even though there was no mistaking who it belonged to. "And without me? I'm offended."
Maddie forced a small smile for two reasons: number one, this was the tone that Marie used around the other girls, the one to show she didn't care when she really did; and number two, this was the tone Marie had recently taken on when speaking to Maddie. Maddie, of course, didn't understand why. The best part of their friendship started when Marie dropped the 'playing nice' mask and Maddie had no idea why Marie's guard had gone back up on her.
Maddie shrugged and didn't turn. "Didn't want to wake you, I guess. Yesterday you said you haven't been sleeping all that much."
"No, yesterday I said 'why turn in early when there's a party happening over on Delancey?'" Marie's tone was still light and conversational but any expert on the girl - which was a short list that started and ended with Maddie - would've been able to detect the thinnest edge in her voice.
"And you went by yourself."
"I asked you if you wanted to go - and going to a party doesn't mean I have sleep problems."
"Then there was the rave two days ago," Maddie said without hesitation, like she was reading off an itemized list she didn't even realize she kept. It was a whole month since the rave that landed on Maddie's birthday and as time passed, the frequency of Marie's partying went from once a week to about three a week on the lowest end. Maddie opted out of most of them to patrol or binge watch movies and TV shows with Terra and Em. When she did go, which was about once a week, she went for a very specific reason and it wasn't Marie.
"So what?" Marie snapped but barely. Her voice sounded like anxious fingers snapping but there was no anger there. Not yet. "So I like to hang out with people after I patrol. There's nothin' wrong with that, right?"
Marie wanted Maddie to agree with her and, for some reason, that made Maddie's own annoyance flare in her stomach. The way things worked and had always worked at HQ was that everyone else begrudgingly went along with whatever Marie said because she had a presence about her. She came from money and the rumor was that her father was someone important. Even then, she was the best of the best that they had. She made fighting look like dancing, like ballet. The other girls admired her and were attracted her personality which, even when they were younger, was magnetic. Everyone gave in, everyone agreed. Everyone, except for Maddie. For a while, Maddie would've sworn that's why their friendship worked.
Until recently, Maddie assumed that Marie knew this dynamic and preferred it. Then, without warning or explanation, something...shifted. Marie made it clear she wanted Maddie to let it go and just agree, changing the solid earth beneath Maddie to a high wire performance. Marie wanted Maddie to be exactly like everyone else in her life and that hurt more than Maddie thought it would. Still, she replied through gritted teeth, "Right."
Maddie stood and pulled her arm across her chest in a stretch, then the same with the other arm as she walked past Marie to the punching bag. The urge to hit something was needling her thoughts. She cracked the knuckles on her taped up hands before taking a defensive stance but, before she could take the first punch, she heard Marie behind her. Maddie forgot how grating her voice could be.
"Speaking of raves..." Marie said, her irritation passing - or she was an expert at hiding it - and her eyes, blue and bright as a clear summer day, filling with hope and mischief. A sly smile spread over her lips. "There's one on Saturday. The rest of the team's in."
Maddie began punching the bag in front of her, the skin on her knuckles stinging slightly at first contact. The bag shook a bit as she furrowed her brows and frowned. "Even Nora?"
"Everyone except Nora, obviously. She's, like, five."
"She's fourteen. She's only nine months younger than me," Maddie nearly snapped but reigned in most of her annoyance at the last moment. She punched the vinyl casing of the bag again, a quick left and right, only harder this time. "And she's part of our team."
"Yes, Mads, I know," Marie droned. Maddie knew Marie didn't like Eleanor. Eleanor was too nice and Marie was sure there had to be a catch or, as she put it, no one smiled so big and so freely without using it to hide something. "But you just said it! She's fourteen. You don't take middle school kids to high school parties. Jesus."
Maddie kept her head low as she focused only on the punching bag and connected in a flurry of hits. "Then I'll take her with me to patrol."
Marie's shoulders slumped and she pouted, or at least that was what it looked like from the corner of Maddie's eye. "Come on! You promised that I get to choose what we do at least one night a week..."
"I said that when I was twelve." And got tired of you bugging me about reading Harry Potter, she didn't say. The books weren't terrible and she didn't regret spending the whole summer reading through them all. Still, there was a difference between reading Harry Potter and watching her best friend get drunk or high in the middle of a blisteringly hot room.
Marie was getting annoyed again, Maddie could tell. Marie was playing with the end of one of her curls and there was a long beat of silence. "What if I told you...your new friend would be there."
Maddie was in mid punch when her fist stopped short of the bag by mere inches. The pause in her movement made her realize how much she was sweating already and how much of her hair had fallen loose of her ponytail and was now sticking to the sides of her face. She dropped her fists and tried to give Marie a curious look. "Friend? What friend? All my friends are here."
Maddie looked down, feeling a bit sheepish at the statement as her annoyance fell away. She could count her friends on one hand and at least two or three didn't feel like friends. Marie, at least most of the time, felt like a friend. Still, the part that made her the most embarrassed was knowing exactly who she was talking about.
"That...Elliot guy? The one who's way too old to be hanging around you?"
Maddie tucked the stray hair behind her ears and quickly returned to pummeling the punching bag, mostly to have a reason not to look Marie in the eyes. "He's sixteen."
"As far as we know." Marie folded her arms. "And, hello? These are our formative years! Age gaps for us are way wider than regular age gaps. It's all about, you know, maturity. It's literally the difference between watching Shrek and watching the Shrek porn parody."
For a second, Maddie's mind went blank and she looked over at Marie in horror and disgust. "What? Oh gods! Ew! Why would you say that?!"
"You know what I mean!"
"And you're seventeen."
"The difference being you don't have a crush on me."
That word. Crush. It really did feel exactly like how it sounded, like a cannonball colliding with her gut and the wind rushing out of her as her bones crumble. She'd never had a crush, not a real one at least. She liked a boy in the first grade and showed that by chasing him around the playground and punching him in the arm. Needless to say, even before becoming a slayer, she somehow ended up frightening people through her aggression - at least until someone larger and more aggressive came along.
She remembered the last time she saw Elliott, a boy who oozed confidence and charm and was so distractingly gorgeous. She remembered how he said only two sentences to her all night. He looked at her with those half-lidded eyes and his lips quirked up on one side in a smirk. He didn't approach her but instead went back to the random group of sweaty, half naked party-goers. He talked to a girl with blazing red hair most of the night and it should've been a relief. Instead she was unnerved and snuck outside every half hour to not look at him. Crush really was the perfect word, wasn't it?
By the end of the night, he caught her arm while she was on her way out and said two things.
"Sorry we didn't catch up. You looked so beautiful and I got nervous," which was such a lie, just by the way he said it, but she answered with a smile anyway. "Next time, though."
In retrospect, there wasn't even an indicator that he remembered her name but he'd called her beautiful and she couldn't seem to find a reason to complain after that. She looked over at Marie, her mind reeling back to the present. "So, what if I have a crush on him?"
For a moment, something changed in Marie's eyes and she squared her shoulders, standing straighter than before. She didn't say anything for an extra few seconds and something between them that was bending painfully for weeks snapped in two, like Maddie was staring at someone she didn't know. Marie looked to the ceiling, eyes wide as she searched for something. When she looked back down, she didn't look at Maddie but instead at the punching bag. She shrugged. "Well, he's probably going to be there."
Maddie knew Marie was only saying that to get Maddie to go, but the seed had been planted. Thoughts and daydreams of what might happen next time bloomed in her head and she bit her lip. There was no reason for this boy to give her the time of day but, even when he could've ignored her all night, he managed to find her and talk to her. That had to mean something. Maybe she was willing to let it mean something.
She didn't officially say yes but, on Friday night, she was ready to go right on time. Still, Marie couldn't meet her eyes.
☽ † ☾
Somehow, with the many months she'd known both Stiles and Scott, trips to their houses were rare. Even rarer were the moments when she was forced to interact with their parents and it made her uncomfortable how little Scott's mom and Stiles' dad knew about their own kids, their own hometown. Xander always told her that people only see what they want, especially when things got bad. "Monsters? Demons? Are you kidding? Almost half the country can't even bring themselves to believe in evolution. Vampires are a big no go."
Her current situation was increasingly awkward, considering Sheriff Stilinski was having a hard time believing his son who had no non-supernatural proof to back up his claim that Matt was behind the murders. Then again, most of her discomfort was probably coming from the fact that she couldn't get the image of all of her friends dead at her feet out of her head. An hour or so passed since they left the party and she could still see the whole scene in remarkable detail. Instead, she focused on the yearbook in front of Stiles who was currently sitting at his desk and just set his red marker down.
That was the other awkward thing. Maddie remembered, with perfect clarity, that she had admitted that he was her closest friend. Her head at that point felt heavy and full of water that sloshed all around from behind her skull when she moved - which was probably due to the spiked punch. Words happened to find their way out. The silence that followed almost implied she'd said something else entirely though - or, worse, that he'd wanted her to say something else. Also, to add to the proof that she hadn't been sober, she didn't even move or look away until he did.
It reminded Maddie of something from a long time ago, bringing a dull ache with it. Something that probably had to do with Elliott if she thought hard enough about it. She didn't want to think about that or him - ever, if she had the choice.
Instead, she allowed her thoughts to veer all the way back to where she stood and just how sobered up she was now. She had been to Stiles' house before, but never to his room and she tried not to grimace at just how juvenile that sounded. It wasn't so long ago that she was explaining the whole 'slayer' thing to them in Scott's room, which was about as messy and smelled just as much like boy. Still, she couldn't even bring herself to sit down.
"All right, fine. I'll allow the remote possibility, but give me a motive. I mean, why would this kid want most of the 2006 swim team and its coach dead?" Stiles' dad asked incredulously.
"Isn't it obvious?" Stiles paused, almost like he was attempting to build dramatic tension. It wasn't working. "Our swim team sucks! They haven't won in, like, six years."
His shoulders slumped as any tension deflated.
"Okay, we don't have a motive yet. I mean, c'mon, does Harris?"
The Sheriff sighed and, for a second, turned his attention to Maddie. "And how'd they end up dragging you into all of this?"
Stiles looked almost stricken by the comment and Maddie didn't know how to answer such a loaded question. She gave the most honest answer she could think of and shrugged her shoulders. "Still trying to figure that one out."
The Sheriff looked exasperated as he looked over at his son again. "...What do you want me to do?"
"We need to look at the evidence," Scott said.
"Yeah, that would be in the station, where I no longer work."
"Trust me, they'll let you in," Stiles answered.
His dad looked incredulous. "Trust you?"
The look on Stiles' face went from completely sure to wide-eyed, feigning innocence. It was almost laughable. "Trust- trust Scott?"
The older man eyed his son carefully while pointing at Scott, who was just behind Stiles. "Scott, I trust."
They went over the plan again and, after another few minutes, left the house. Stiles agreed to meet up with his dad at the station and the Sheriff begrudgingly agreed before getting in his car and backing out of the driveway.
So many of Maddie's nights recently had ended like this, in this hellish downward spiral. So much so that she was beginning to wonder what tipped the karmic scale against her. Why did she feel battered and bruised? Why did Buffy show up unannounced? What was happening to her slayer powers? She felt as though the answer to all of these was the same and painfully obvious, still she'd never admit it. She would never admit that it had anything to do with Allison.
After everything, after the fights and the secrets, she still considered Allison a friend on some level. She had to be frightened. She couldn't know what was actually happening. Allison Argent was a kind and caring person - and Maddie had to believe that.
"You think Allison's alright?" Scott had asked just after they reached the sidewalk.
"I didn't see her on the way out of the party." Stiles glanced over at Scott. "It's Allison. Allison with the added benefit of slayer strength. She'll be fine."
The slayer comment stung but the part that really got to her was the look on Scott's face afterward. It was slightly crumpled, his dark eyes unfocused.
"Why did you kill them?" The question echoed ferociously in Maddie's head, gnawing and tearing at her insides. If she thought for too long, she was sure she'd imagined Scott and Allison's bodies among the dead that appeared to her only an hour ago. Somehow it layered like a thin film over her first dream in Beacon Hills, superimposing her friends' faces onto the severed corpses in the thick, dense woods. She could feel her stomach turn and the bile rising in her throat. Suddenly, unable to shake the images, she stopped and looked up at Scott and Stiles.
She didn't say anything at first and it took an extra second for Scott and Stiles to realize she wasn't beside them. Scott, who already looked concerned, caught back up with her first. "What? What is it?"
Maddie must've looked as sick as she felt - or at least worried. She shook her head in a slight jerk and refocused her gaze on the boys. Her eyes flicked from Scott to Stiles and quickly back to Scott. Looking at Stiles for too long made her stomach leap up into her throat and not in a good way. Guilt surged through her and she could almost hear the sound of her ax being buried in his back, even when she knew that she hadn't actually heard it. She could imagine it now and that was enough.
"I can go - find Allison, I mean."
Out of her periphery, she saw Stiles' eyebrows furrow before he opened his mouth. "Wait, are you sure that's a good-"
"I'm no good," she cut him off and felt her throat constrict once she heard her own words and how pained they were. Even though she didn't completely understand the way she meant them - I can't even protect anyone anymore or I'm too broken to be fixed - she felt the ache in her chest and at the base of her throat, knowing that all of them felt just as true. She swallowed the lump down and let the static in her head ebb away.
"I mean," She sighed. "I'm no use to you guys. You need Allison right now. I'm sure she just went home."
That one felt just as painful.
Stiles didn't say anything but she could feel his gaze on her still. Scott spoke up instead. "Are you sure?"
"Well, she's not going to answer if we call," Maddie said, looking down at the phone in her hand. "And I wouldn't recommend texting about the kanima if we don't want her family to know. I'll just head over there and-"
"And what?" Stiles said, a bite in his tone. "You two aren't exactly on the best terms. How do you know she'll even go along with this? Cause I'm betting you don't."
She wanted to look over at him, to throw him one of her trademark glares and tell him to shut up. She didn't; she couldn't find the energy to be annoyed. Instead, she paused and looked in the direction that Stiles' dad had driven.
"Because it's Allison. I have to believe she'll help." She almost added 'because Scott does' but knew it went without saying. "She cares too much."
"Yeah, she does," she heard Stiles mumble, his voice defeated and without the edge. Something about the way he said it made a surge of anger roll through her. You don't know me, she wanted to say through gritted teeth but didn't just in case he really was talking about Allison - or, what she was really dreading, that he wasn't and knowing he was right. He must've nodded to Scott because both of them started toward the jeep. She saw Stiles hesitate for a moment before opening the driver side door. "Be careful, okay?"
And there it was again, the pull of something reeling her back to the present, to reality.
The anger in her chest collided with the guilt, creating a surge of energy that lifted her head up and, by that time, he was already closing his door. Something urged her forward and she jogged to the car. The motor had just started to rev when she knocked on the window sharply. He jumped and accidentally hit the car horn which made all three of them wince at the sudden screech. She could see him cursing before he rolled down the window, looking alarmed. "What? What's wrong?"
His eyes were wide when they met hers and she hardly had enough time to muster up her guard or the oldest and most familiar thing she could cling to. She used to call it resolve. She narrowed her eyes and made her mouth into a line before speaking, bringing back her gruff tone. "Don't do anything stupid, either of you. Call Derek or something before you get there, just in case. We're going to need plenty of help to track down this guy. I'll text you when we're on our way."
She was looking between the two, both stunned at her sudden forcefulness.
"Mads?" Stiles tried to interject, as if he was going to ask her to calm down.
She held up an index finger. "Shut up, Stiles."
Stiles' mouth was open but clamped shut a moment later, one corner of his lips quirking upward in the slightest grin. "Just asking if you needed a ride."
"I know the way on foot." Of course she did, but that still sounded slightly embarrassing. She paused and thought back to her hallucination, gaze unfocused. "Besides, I could use the fresh air."
Before either of the boys could say anything else or she forced herself to awkwardly thank him anyway, she stuck her phone in her back pocket, turned away from the jeep toward the other end of the road, and began to run.
☽ † ☾
Sadie hated the woods. Not just any woods, though.
She hated dense woods and the long shadows they cast on her skin, the way that the thin, brittle branches reached out to her. She especially hated the particular silence these woods brought with them, the thick type of silence that pressed into her head and allowed her memories to spill out. The most she could do was hope that the memories that did find their way out were the more recent ones, even when the older ones bubbled up under her skin and almost itched like a wound she wouldn't stop picking.
Not today, though. She wouldn't let them. She was too busy being annoyed about being ditched by Allison. She was even more annoyed at herself and not even at the fact that she hadn't found that stupid power source D'Hoffryn had told her to locate.
Sadie huffed and reached into the brush of dead leaves, dirt, and twigs for a something solid, something with weight. Something that could do a little damage. She picked up a small handful of stones, crusted over with dried mud. A little magic and few whispered words sent them flying from her palm, one by one at a tree that was yards away from her. They rocketed like bullets and lodged there, looking like gray freckles against the dark brown of the bark.
There was no way in her current state to find that damned power source. Her head was pulsing with anger and annoyance and the sounds of the woods, amplified in the silence that came with the night. The rustle of dead leaves scratching against each other in the breeze, the skittering of small animals in the distance, the sound of branches snapping under heavy feet, the low rumble of humming.
The last two were the most interesting because they were certainly not coming from Sadie. She keep moving, maneuvering around trees and listening quietly. Her heeled boots kept a steady rhythm as she moved, although the stranger somewhere close by did their best to keep in time with her pace. It was game, one made to frighten her. It wouldn't necessarily hurt to play along.
After a few minutes of focusing on the sounds coming from the stranger somewhere in the dark, the woods began to thin and moonlight streamed through in large gaps between trees. Sadie glanced up at the sliver of white in the sky as the woods came to an abrupt halt, as if the switch from woods to grassy plains had been manufactured. It probably was, the bastards. Before her was a grassy field of small, sloping hills dotted with tall weeds. The night sky seemed to bleed into the landscape, desaturating the field that was just starting to come back to life with the promise of spring and inking in the scene with a translucent dark blue.
The humming grew louder and Sadie recognized the tune once she zeroed in on it.
Ring around the rosie
Pocket full of posies
Sadie hated that song, but anyone as old and well traveled as she was would probably agree. Over-played. Almost tacky.
"Ashes, ashes," a soft voice sing-songed, coarse around the edges but low and sweet at the very core. Out of the corner Sadie's eye, she could see a thin wisp of a girl, white and almost glowing from head to toe. She turned to see her, pale and shining in the light of the moon that she could've been a piece of polished ivory. Her long, white-blonde hair hung in limp waves, nearly covering her heart-shaped face and the purple circles around her eyes.
Her lips were curled at the edges and parted slightly like she wasn't done singing but couldn't remember the words.
Sadie jerked her head, flipping her dirty blonde hair over her shoulder. "Not gonna finish your song there, Casper?"
The girl's eyes were unfocused, her head lolling side to side slightly as if on the end of a loose spring. Her nearly invisible eyebrows furrowed and she turned her head like she'd heard something in the center of the large expanse of empty field.
"Ashes...ashes..." she sang again, her voice fading into nothing.
"Okay, I don't know if this escaped your keen, vampy senses, but I'm clearly not your type." Even though the girl didn't turn or look at her, Sadie waved and smiled. "Professional demon over here. Hi. And, real talk, I got over my crazy, undead kink Post-Bram Stoker. Not really my type."
The boney, fragile girl who was too thin for her calf-length white dress wasn't listening though; instead, she was muttering under her breath. Over and over again, the same word forming on her lips as she turned back to the woods behind them and started walking towards the trees, her dirty feet dragging with every step. Ashes.
Both of her hands were raised as if she was feeling around for something until the strangest thing happened. The air around them felt like standing by a blazing fire, warm and sucking the moisture from everything it touched. The sound of fresh meat hitting a hot frying pan filled Sadie's ears and smoke began billowing around the vampire's hands. The girl, still muttering the same word over and over again, began to giggle, a smile breaking across her porcelain features.
Sadie watched with quiet interest, eyes wide and focused. The girl pushed her hands forward as if moving something immense and heavy. At first, nothing happened and there was no sign of damage, even as the smoke twisted around her fingers. Then, the vampire's palm began to bubble and turn from white to red to black. She kept going until her blackened hands pushed against the invisible barrier so hard that the area she was pressing against glowed red as the cherry on a cigarette around the edges of her skin. The area seemed to almost stretch in a way.
It was too late though. The pain must've been too much to bear because the giggles emitting from the girl became shrieking sobs. There weren't many things that could still make Sadie feel sick but the smell of dead flesh burning and the girl's hand blackening instead of simply crumbling to ash made the acid rise in her throat. She could never escape the horrors of watching someone else burn alive, although watching a vampire do it was a bit more bearable. A bit.
Still, the scene was intriguing and confounding. Why couldn't something as simple as a vampire get into a random patch of woods? She looked around, her eyes scanning the field and then the thick brush behind her, her mind reaching for what could be different. What was so special about the woods behind her?
This was not enough to entertain Sadie for long and she strode over to the vampire girl and grabbed her by the neck. She raised her up with one fist so that the undead thing couldn't touch the ground with the tips of her toes. She grabbed the girl's damaged hand with her free one and examined it for a moment before pressing it into the barrier, following the basics of the scientific method, as one experiment was not enough to prove a theory. The vampire screamed.
"Okay, Vampirella. This is getting boring real quick," Sadie said in a low, dangerous voice. Smoke was streaming from the hand she was holding to the barrier and Sadie knew it was moments from bursting into flame. "What's so special about those woods?"
Behind her, she heard laughter - loud, boisterous, and manic. Without letting the girl down or even relieving pressure on her neck or wrist, Sadie turned and eyed the field that was empty just a moment before. God, she hated vampires.
Behind her was a man, middle aged, bearded, and ghostly. He was clutching his large barrel chest as he laughed so hard that it probably hurt. His smile was a wide split in his face just below his plump cheeks. His small eyes were a pale, indistinct color washed out by the light of the moon, but they shined so bright that it was almost hypnotic. His outfit was an odd assembly of clothes he must've found or stolen. A florescent orange Hawaiian shirt with palm trees over a black t-shirt and clean, white slacks clashed with -his long dark hair and sleeve tattoos. He looked a lot like Robert DeNiro's character in Cape Fear was over-inflated with air in the strangest parts of him. Not overweight, but large.
His laughed ebbed and there was a low scratchy Southern drawl when he spoke. "Can't you feel it? The power of it? The chaos bleeding out?"
Sadie cocked her head to the side and said nothing, unprepared for this level of unhinged.
"The Beacon calls to us but it is on fire. Consecrated with the bones and blood of our ancestors, bleached in the flame of the most holy."
Sadie blinked and raised an eyebrow at the man. "Sorry, what?"
"I know why you're here, my child," he said, his voice almost melodic. "She knows as well. She wants to give you what you're lookin' for."
"She," Sadie began, nodding to the girl in her grasp, "can't do much right now."
"You know not of whom you speak, so we will forgive your ignorance." The smile dropped from his face as he took a step towards her, ignoring the girl Sadie had by the neck. His tone was a warning but Sadie couldn't help but feel annoyed. The man folded his hands behind his back and took another step. "Our Mother, the savior of our kind, knows you. She has seen you, Sadira."
The way he said her name was a rasp, but there was no mistaking it. Sadie felt a burst of curiosity take her by the bones and shake her awake, intrigued even if she wouldn't let him know that. "That was a neat trick and all, but I'm not doing anything until someone explains the woods thing."
"Have you not been listening? It's all right in front of you." He hummed 'Ring Around the Roses' as he walked toward the edge of the woods, stopping right where the girl did before. A large hand pressed into the invisible wall and he sucked in a sharp breath as it stretched.
The Beacon. Sadie squinted and amusement lifted her tone. "The edge of town...you can't get into Beacon Hills."
"And you cannot find the power you desperately seek." A monstrous growl emitted from the man as his hand started to burn. He took it away in one quick motion as he turned away and allowed himself a moment. Once he did look at her, it was from under a protruding, gnarled brow and with seething yellow eyes. "We know what you long for and we how to find it."
While her interest grew, Sadie kept her icy demeanor. "This is starting to sound like you want to make a deal. What exactly do you want from me?"
"The Slayer," came his rumbled voice. Something about that word sent a quiet rage into his eyes as he stared at Sadie. "We want Madeline Hayes."
Sadie chortled. "Right. Okay, sure. You want me to just take a slayer from a pack of wolves? And somehow this guarantees me my power source? How exactly am I supposed to pull that off without turning every supernatural goody-two-shoes against me?"
Suddenly, a shadow seemed to gather and take form, blocking the moon from Sadie completely. She turned and eyed its source, a slim outline of a woman. The man chuckled again. "The Mother has seen the way and we would like to share it with you. Alas, she did warn us that you would only take something more specific. Personally, I would recommend showing them..."
His voice dropped off for a moment as he got closer to her and smiled wide, his monstrous visage still present.
"...Mercy."
Something black and cold shot through Sadie's veins as she dropped the girl more out of shock than anger. She turned back to the feminine figure looming behind her as she heard the pale girl on the ground giggle again and finish her song.
"Ashes, ashes...
We all fall down."
☽ † ☾
Every light was on, all of the cars were in the driveway, and there was a silence that unsettled Maddie. When she walked through the front door, the living room was well lit but empty. In fact, every light she could see was on as if someone had gone into every room and forgot to turn off the light when they left. The smell of dinner still lingered from the kitchen as it usually did. The pot roast was most likely already stored in the fridge by now and all three adults would no doubt be asleep.
She went around shutting off the lights in the empty rooms, casting the front of the house in dim white light from the moon outside. She jogged up the steps and crossed the landing, noting that both Gerard's light and Allison's parent's light were still on as well; while the guest room that housed Allison's grandfather was wide open and empty, yellow light peeked through the cracks in the closed door of the master bedroom. She could hear both Chris and Gerard arguing and Chris sounded strained and scratchier. There was a hard break in his voice, an innocent sound. Not wanting to know what was happening or for them to know that she was here, she stepped softly and carefully toward the other end of the hall.
Allison's light was also on and the door was shut, but on the other side Maddie could hear the sound of objects clacking together and crashing. She couldn't imagine that this would be an easy conversation, but she knew that she needed Allison on their side, more importantly on Maddie's side. There was a long moment where Maddie couldn't even lift her hand, dreading the outcome and fighting off her paranoia. After a couple deep breaths, she finally raised her fist and knocked on the door gently.
"What?" she heard on the other side. It was Allison's voice, but lower and full of ice.
This did nothing to ease Maddie but she slowly turned the doorknob anyway and pushed open the door. She was about to say a quick and polite 'hey' when she stepped into the room and caught sight of everything it held at the moment. The walls were bare, as were the tops of her desk and dressers. Her eyes continued around the room until they reached the carpet that was littered with broken picture frames, knick knacks, and pieces of jewelry glinting in the incandescent light.
Finally, Maddie's gaze landed on Allison, who gave off the opposite impression of her trashed room. Moreover, it looked as if she'd raided Maddie's closet, considering the lack of color. Her black long sleeve shirt and jeans matched the piece of weaponry in her hands: a full size metal crossbow, gleaming black. Allison's hair was neatly pulled back from her face and her eyes were already locked onto Maddie.
Maddie struggled to find words for what she was seeing and settled on gesturing to the room. "...What is this? What happened?"
A short, hollow sound hardly resembling a laugh came from Allison's throat as she continued to examine the crossbow. "Of course you don't know. How could you? You weren't here."
The words were a snarl, low and filled with venom. Maddie looked at Allison closely and recognized the same destruction in her, behind the polished veneer. She was a clutter of emotion, torn down and ripped apart, and rage had wiped the surface clean. It was horrible. Looking into Allison's eyes was horrible, because Maddie recognized something there, something far too close to a memory. Maddie swallowed, pushing the question she didn't want to ask from her throat. "Wasn't there for what?"
There was something familiar that Maddie wanted to run away from, but it wasn't Allison. Nothing about that memory had to do with Allison. It was a combination of people, pieces of people and parts of her past she didn't like to remember. Allison was standing stock still but Maddie could see the tremor pass through her because her intuition helped her identify fear for all the worst reasons. She remembered that tremor from abandoned pool houses and caved in roofs. From the crack of thunder and shining twin daggers. It was a warning that something awful was coming.
Allison's eyes, though, were another memory. Something more recent. They were accusatory and unashamed; they were a pyre Allison wanted the world to burn upon. They were Kate's.
Allison sucked in a sharp breath and held it, like she was trying not to let out a sob or a scream. It was the most haunting and painful sound that Maddie could remember hearing - and she remembered being the one to make it once. It came to her in a strike of lightning that illuminated her thoughts, her memories. She remembered not having Allison's composure. She took that sharp inhale and let out a scream that still rang in her ears, along with the wailing sob that followed. How many days was it now? She'd stopped counting a week-
Ice shot through her veins and she stayed frozen in her spot. Of course.
Three hundred and sixty five. How fitting to see Marie's ghost exactly one year later. She looked at Allison, into her bloodshot eyes, with a familiarity not meant for this girl. The expression, the room, the poisonous words were too close to that night one year ago.
This wasn't Allison. This was what death makes of them.
Someone was dead.
As if Allison could hear her thoughts, Maddie asked through her tightened throat, "Who?"
"Why the hell do you care?" Allison spat in a way that was so vicious and precise that she might've actually shot Maddie through the chest with one of her arrows. This girl, this kind and compassionate girl, couldn't be this. Whatever Maddie was looking at, this new Allison, was clawing off her polished exterior - shredding off her paper skin in large chunks - to reveal something frightened, feral, and hideous. "You hated it here from day one! You don't give a damn about this family!"
"This family? But I heard..." Maddie trailed off, fighting through the rage thrown at her to remember walking through the house. She turned the lights off in every room downstairs and the Master bedroom was filled with the noise of Chris and Gerard arguing. Chris sounding pained and torn down. Chris Argent, sounding scratchier than usual, sounding like he was crying. Against her will, Maddie took a gasping breath, mouth hung open as the image of that proud woman, that vicious lioness flashed in her brain. She could almost hear the strangeness in Victoria's voice only a few hours ago, the feeling in it that Maddie wouldn't think about, that she convinced herself she didn't have the time to think about.
Not sadness or regret, but finality.
A door closing, a slow exhale that leads to silence.
"What does protecting you get anyone who stands by your side?"
The words didn't slice through, but instead jaggedly tore open something in Maddie that should've stayed closed.
Her mouth was still open and her eyes had gone wide. She could see the anger on Allison's face gnarling her delicate features. Maddie took in another shuddering breath. "Allison, I'm so sor-"
"Don't you dare," Allison growled as tears welled in her eyes and her jaw clenched tightly, barely allowing the words to escape. "If you even think about apologizing, I swear to god I'll make you regret it."
"Marie, I swear to god-!"
In between the shock and the guilt and the hurt, something in Maddie's brain clicked. It was, in part, another memory and, without realizing it, her hand bolted to the thin scar on her stomach. It was a reminder she never wanted of her faith in people -
"Because it's Allison. I have to believe she'll help."
- and, worse, how ugly the world can become in an instant.
"You ruined all of it! Everything!"
She descended into something deep and dark and thick, loneliness and betrayal filling her up and bleeding out the hope she'd had when she walked through the door. The last inch of her hope. The last fleeting thought of the four of them standing together disintegrating, just like the one of her family and the one of her team. In the end, there was always just this, those echoing words in her head during a stupid second grade math test that followed her no matter how fast and far she ran.
"We. Are. Alone."
She was still looking at Allison as her bones weakly kept her upright. There was no way out of this. No way to get away from Allison's rage the same way she didn't get away from Marie's. The adrenaline of that anger and the slayer power in its rawest state could kill Maddie easily. Allison didn't need the combat training she already had; Maddie could bet that Allison didn't even remember most of it. She was too concerned with her strength, the way Maddie was in their fight a week ago.
"You being on our team wasn't a fluke." Terra's words came in waves, both the good and the bad. She'd nearly forgotten the good. Only six months in Beacon Hills and she'd nearly forgotten a time when she wasn't the strongest or fastest.
Eight years of training. Hand to hand combat. Melee weaponry.
She could still die. She could actually be beaten within an inch of her life and past that by Allison Argent. Good, kind, and compassionate Allison Argent who hugged her at Kate's funeral and didn't hesitate to show her around that first day. That's the girl who could beat her bloody and not stop if she let the demon take over.
Maddie swallowed, her chest constricted and her stomach a bottomless pit. "Fine."
Allison's eyes narrowed.
Maddie remembered her first patrol, fighting a newly turned vampire. She remembered being beaten and broken by a creature that didn't know anything but instinct and hunger. She remembered seeing her own blood on her hand when she wiped her brow. She took a breath. "You want to hurt me? You want to use all that power? Fine."
"You were bleeding so bad, it was everywhere and I thought you were done before any of us could reach you. Then you wiped away the blood and it smeared all across your face, like some viking war paint. Totally done for, banged up, and bloody... and you smiled."
Allison was fuming, becoming unhinged. Every bone in Maddie's body and thought in her head fought against it, but she managed the faintest of grins and the rage in Allison's eyes flared again. This wasn't Allison, just like Marie hadn't been Marie. Maybe Buffy hadn't even been Buffy last week. There was no rationality left, just a ferocity Maddie had seen in all of them, sometimes even in the mirror. This was the demon, the blackness inside them that called for violence and death.
"Do it!" Maddie goaded and it came out a bark, a burst of anger and fear. Her eye caught on the crossbow on the desk behind Allison and she looked back to the girl. "Be another psychotic hunter like the rest of your family! Prove to me that you'll never be one of us!"
Something in Allison must've boiled over because her fist hurdled wildly towards Maddie's face like she expected. No precision or structure, just a wild animal flailing its claws when cornered. With her enhanced speed, Maddie could've easily caught it and blocked but now hardly had time to move. She narrowly missed the punch but managed to avoid it all the same. Allison must've put all of her weight into it, the top half of her body hunched over. Maddie could've used the time to escape but something opened wide in her and adrenaline shot through her veins.
She grabbed Allison's shoulders and kneed her sharply in the gut with all of the strength she had. She wanted a fight. She wanted the fight she refused to have with Marie and the fight she screamed for one year ago in that alley.
Allison recovered quickly and struck Maddie across the jaw with the back of her fist, sending her sprawling into the bookcase - arm and ribs first - and nearly making it tip over onto her. Her jawbone felt like it was in pieces and she knew it'd be swelling soon when she tasted something liquid and metallic filling up her mouth. It trickled out of the corner of her lip and she wiped it with a free hand as she struggled to stand.
She looked down at her hand and saw dark red smear along the back of it. Her heart beat quicker and she wasn't sure if it was out of excitement or fear, if she maybe even loved the pain. She didn't have time to think about it but, as she stood, she smiled at Allison, knowing that anyone could easily see the red on her gums and between her teeth. She'd forgotten why she even sought out Allison because this was all that mattered.
Allison barreled towards her and she felt her whole body tense.
The thought of a cloudy sky and unblinking blue eyes flashed in her memory.
Happy anniversary.
End of From Ashes ✗ Stiles Stilinski Chapter 45. Continue reading Chapter 46 or return to From Ashes ✗ Stiles Stilinski book page.