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This thing of darkness, I Acknowledge mine. --William Shakespeare's The Tempest
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It became obvious all too quickly that Peter had made a hasty decision in choosing to leave his room.
He would have liked to blame his uneasiness on his reaction to his host, or on the impossibility of the girl in his room, but the werewolf was beginning to suspect that there was a deeper reason that most people chose not to wander these halls.
Granted, Peter wasn't currently at his best (his run-in with the mages had taken more out of him than he’d anticipated), but he wasn't so addled as to let curiosity and a pretty face get the best of him. After all, he was a wolf, an apex predator, and an enforcer for his pack, and there was very little in this world that he couldn't outsmart if the first three failed him, even against attractive magicians.
Unfortunately, none of his most prominent traits had proven useful in navigating this seemingly incomprehensible maze disguised as a house.
Stiles--if that truly was his name--and his companion wraith had both invited Peter to explore, but that concession hardly mattered if they were simply luring him out for nefarious purposes; a scenario which seemed increasingly likely to the werewolf as he moved deeper into the bowels of the house.
Frankly, the mystery of the situation would have intrigued Peter had he not been the one caught in the middle of it.
For all of his frustration, there was an odd, lulling timelessness to the place, as if the priceless paintings adorning the walls and plush carpet covering the floors were simply props meant to distract the unwary from the house’s true purpose; though Peter had no idea yet what that purpose might be. The hallways seemed to both stretch endlessly and end abruptly, the windows all offered the exact same view, and there seemed to be many more doors than there could possibly be rooms behind them.
Initially, Peter had opened a few of them, but that had proven to be as perilous as it was informative. Some of the doors opened to ordinary rooms, yes, but many opened to reveal brick walls, or iron bars, or alcoves holding chests not unlike the one that had appeared in his room. In one case, a door had opened on a darkness so complete that it chilled Peter every time he thought of it.
(And he thought of it every time he saw a hint of movement out of the corner of his eyes.)
Some of the doors were locked, or the knobs turned, but the doors themselves refused to open. Sometimes, a door would start shaking before Peter had even reached it, or a knob would rattle ominously while his fingers remained frozen above it. Peter's eyes would be drawn down, to the light glowing through the cracks, and he would stand there, immobile, until a bang from somewhere pulled him from his inexplicable trance and his feet started moving once more.
Most of the things Peter found as he wandered were as inexplicably alluring as they were innocuous, and though he longed to peek inside a vase or open a stray book sitting innocently on a side table, it was the memory of the chest in the bedroom that stayed his hand.
That, and the sensation that he was being followed.
Stiles may have advised him to ignore phantom sounds or smells, but Peter knew that the random buzzing that echoed through the halls couldn't be explained away as a settling foundation, and anything large enough to be picked up by the werewolf's ears was best avoided.
It was unlikely that the predator in question (and there was a little else it could be if it was stalking a werewolf) was interested in being his friend. Peter took a left, and then another at the end of yet another unfamiliar hallway, and then bit back a curse a few steps later when he recognized a now-familiar painting that he'd come across multiple times since he’d started exploring. If he didn't know better, he'd curse the house itself for running him in circles. He'd been wandering for hours (or was it days?) now, and the excitement that he’d felt when he first stepped outside his door was slowly being replaced by the surety that he wouldn't be allowed to return to his room even if he wanted to--not without finding his host. Or getting eaten, whichever came first.
Peter probably should have been horrified at just how much he still wanted to find his host, and not simply to wring the magician’s neck. He thought back to his first meeting with Stiles, from how unlike himself he'd acted (how besotted he’d been with someone he'd never met); to the feeling that something deep within him had slotted into place at that moment, as if the universe had been holding its breath until the two of them first saw each other. Just thinking about the moment when their eyes met made something in Peter's belly swoop. It didn't make sense, but nothing in this place made sense. Whatever else this house and its occupants had to offer, the werewolf instinctively understood that their moment of connection meant something, and despite everything else, the werewolf needed to find out what that something was.
Peter froze at the sound of a door easing open and closed behind him, but the werewolf knew better than to turn and look; the last time he'd done so, he'd caught a glimpse of something his mind didn't dare identify--lightdarkwrithingstillsilent--reaching out from the crack in the opening.
The hallway behind him remained quiet, and--after a long moment where Peter half-expected to feel hot breath on the back of his neck--he let out a deep sigh and continued walking, all the while berating himself for ever getting into a vehicle held together by duct tape in the first place.
(He carefully ignored the fact that had he not gotten into the jeep, he would likely be a wolfskin rug by now.)
Distracted as he was, Peter heard the growing buzz of wings too late, and by the time he realized exactly what was behind him, there was nowhere to run. He screamed as the first pixie bit viciously into his neck, a dozen others landing almost simultaneously and doing the same elsewhere on his body. Every time he removed one, it seemed like four more took its place, until he was crumbling under the onslaught of pixies. He reached out blindly to try and gain any sort of purchase, and when his hand fell on a doorknob, he thoughtlessly turned it.
The door slid open, light flooded his already wavering vision, and he knew no more.
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Peter came awake with a groan, pleasantly surprised that he was still breathing. He was less pleased to realize that he was laying on the hallway floor. “What happened?”
There was a strange, hair-covered creature staring down at him, and if Peter had been feeling better, he might have been concerned by just how little he was bothered by the creature’s closeness.
“Pixies, nasty little bastards,” the man-thing said, eyeing the werewolf's remaining injuries while they healed. “Still, it could have been worse--they might have been trying to kill you.”
Peter wanted to argue the point--the pixies had done an excellent job of mangling him, regardless of whether or not they wanted him dead--but blood loss would be the last of his injuries to heal, and his head felt too heavy to move for the moment. Instead, he did his best to glare at the creature above him, though he doubted it was particularly successful.
If Peter had been at his best, he would have used the opportunity to question his apparent rescuer about the house, and the situation, and his host. Instead, he squinted up at his rescuer and asked the first question that came to mind. “Why does Stiles want me?”
“How should I know?” it said with a shrug and a snort. “I imagine you're here because you're supposed to be, and if you aren't, then you won't be here for much longer, now will you?”
Peter blinked, eyebrows drawing together as he tried to figure out what the domovoi meant. He finally registered just how much the thing towered over him and pushed himself into a seated position, ignoring the way his head spun. “I don't understand.”
The creature nodded amiably. “Of course you don't. That's not the way it works. Technically, there are protocols to be followed, but the boy is hardly a usual Keeper. It's not at all the way the last magician did things, but then she's dead; so obviously, her way wasn't working out."
The domovoi eventually hefted himself to his feet, and then pulled Peter up as well, dusting him off none to gently as he admonished the werewolf for opening strange doors, especially when things moved around as often as they did. “You’re lucky I found you,” he said matter-of-factly, “most would have gobbled you up and spit out the bones, and then you’d be no use to anyone at all. Speaking of which, you need to get moving before the redcaps pass through.”
The creature's words were punctuated by a shove to the back and a series of loud bangs from somewhere deeper in the house, and Peter stumbled forward with a particularly creative insult that would have gotten him a smack from his grandmother when the shove in question almost sent him into the wall. When the werewolf turned around, however, the domovoi was gone, and Peter cursed when he realized that his surroundings had changed once again.
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If anyone had asked Stiles six months ago, he would have said that nothing could top the sheer craziness of living in Beacon Hills.
Unfortunately, his new job proved him wrong almost every single day.
The magician flopped down on the sofa with a beleaguered sigh, and wondered if anyone would stop him if he tried to smother himself with the cushions. Deciding he didn't want to know the answer to that question, he shut his eyes and told himself that things weren't falling apart around him. In these rare moments of quiet, he could almost believe it. Just as Stiles began to think that the universe was (for once) going to grant him a nap--
"There are redcaps in the hall.”
He didn't flail at Allison's voice next to his ear, but he did shoot up from his spot on the sofa and level a glare at her that Lydia would have been proud of. He really didn't want to talk about the redcaps at the moment, not only because it was interrupting his almost-nap, but also because he knew that his friend would not like how Stiles had chosen to deal with them.
"Yeah, I know,” he sighed when Allison continued to stare at him. “We kind of have an understanding? I told them they could stay as long as they only ate the pixies and cleaned up after themselves."
Allison glared at him, and very reasonably, too, because on the scale of “oh, what a cute magical creature” to “you might as well kiss your ass goodbye”, these creatures definitely skewed toward the later. "They're redcaps, Stiles!"
"I know,” he soothed, unconvincingly, because there was no better way to say ‘we’re in deep shit now’ than to let redcaps roam free, “but I think we can both agree that the pixies are the greater threat at this point! They can get into much smaller spaces, and we can't afford to have them let loose something we can't control. I know that we can't trust the redcaps indefinitely, but we can trust them to eat the pixies, and we need all the help we can get right now. Besides, I'm convinced that there's a correlation between the size of supernatural creatures and how evil they are--I'd make a joke about them compensating for something, but I'm afraid a swarm of them would try to chew my face off in the middle of the night, and I like my face."
“We can’t--” Allison broke off as the cupboard next to her rattled menacingly, and she slammed her mostly corporeal fist into the wood with a scowl. The cupboard shook one last time before falling still, and both Allison and Stiles sighed in relief. “Look,” she said, cutting her friend off before he could interrupt, “I'm not saying that we should talk to Scott or Deaton, but maybe my dad can help. He might know of some people who can help out while we recruit...staff.” The young woman grimaced as she said the last word, but Stiles snorted at the previous one.
None of the house’s occupants--including, to a certain extent, Stiles and Allison--were here voluntarily, and even if some of the people that Allison and the jeep had found for him were physically strong enough to stay, most of them collapsed mentally under the pressure of what they were asked to do.
(Stiles would have been irritated just how much they were testing Peter, but he needed to know that the werewolf could handle living there just as much as the nemata did, and probably more; the trees might be looking for warriors, but Stiles was ultimately searching for companions, and he tried not to let that tiny spark of hope that Peter would stay grow too soon.)
“Do you know why it didn't work when you tried to send me back?”
Stiles pulled himself from his musings to find that Allison had settled herself next to him on the sofa and was watching him intently. “Because I wasn't strong enough to do it?”
“No. It's because I didn't want to go. I know that you think that our nemeton made a mistake when it brought me back, but it didn't. I would rather be here, helping you, than stuck in Beacon Hills with Scott and his guilt.” She pulled a face that made Stiles really wish he could hug her. “That might make me a horrible person, but it's true.”
Stiles gaped at her. “Ally--”
“I just hope they stop playing with Peter soon,” she interjected slyly, cutting him off again. “I mean, it's kind of funny, but I'm looking forward to watching him try and get into your pants.”
The laugh escaped before he could stop it, and before they knew it, they were both giggling like the children they had never had the chance to be.
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Peter wasn't sure how how to feel when he found it; a dead end hallway with a single door at the end. If he hadn't have wandered through the rest of the house, he would have thought it an ordinary door. It didn't shake, or rattle, or emanate strange light, but Peter knew with an unshakable certainty that if he opened this door, there would be no going back.
He thought briefly of his family, his pack, and how much they loved him.
Peter turned the knob and pushed open the door.