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“Damn it - goddamn it!” Laura kicks the nearest chair, breaking off one of the legs and sending it skidding across the kitchen. Stiles almost falls in his haste to get down the stairs. He takes in Allison and his best friend standing in the doorway and starts asking his father a dozen questions.
John ignores him in favor of talking Laura down off of the ledge.
“Laura, calm down.”
Laura bares her teeth on a growl and Allison shrinks back further into Scott. She closes her eyes, using every shred of strength she possesses to hold the wolf back. John puts his hand on her arm and squeezes; that helps, too.
Stiles plops down on the far end of the couch. Allison sits down on the other side with Scott perched on the arm, his side pressed against her body.
Laura sits on the table in front of Allison, who watches her every movement with wary eyes. “Allison, I need you to tell me exactly what you saw.”
“I--” She bites her lip. John sits on the couch at her other side, nudging Stiles away with his hip.
“I know you’re scared, okay?" Laura says. "I’m not going to hurt you--”
“Why would you hurt her?!” Stiles bursts in.
“--I just want my brother back.”
That seals the deal. Allison takes a breath, sitting up straighter with fire in her eyes, looking every inch the hunter matriarch Kate could never hope to be.
“Kate told me our family had a secret. She said my parents wanted to keep it hidden from me because they didn’t think I could handle it.”
“Handle what?!”
“Stiles!” John barks, and Stiles lurches back, shutting up. “Go ahead, Allison.”
Allison takes another breath. Scott takes her hand. “Kate told me she disagreed, but the best way to get me to believe her was to show me.”
“Where?”
“The old tunnels. The ones that run under the preserve. We went in near the H— your house.”
In her own fucking backyard. Laura takes a deep breath as she continues.
“When I got there, Derek was chained up and —“ Laura jerks, sitting on her hands to hide her claws “— I mean, it was all a joke to her. She was talking about the entire thing like he was —“
“An animal,” Laura says softly. Something rabid, dangerous, to be put down.
“Yes. Derek was -- I don’t --” Allison huffs a watery laugh. “God, I’m going to sound crazy.”
John pats her thigh. “It’s okay, Allison. I know.”
“You know?” She asks, eyes wide, and he smiles kindly.
“Know what?” Scott and Stiles ask in unison, Stiles more enthused than his best friend.
John glances at Laura, who gives him a brief nod. Now’s not the time to worry about keeping secrets; she’ll tell the whole goddamn world if she gets her brother back alive.
“Laura’s a werewolf.”
Stiles scoffs at his father. “Yeah right - oh my god!” Stiles does an impressive flip over the back of the couch when Laura turns towards him, fangs bared with red eyes. Scott rears back.
“I knew it!” Stiles crows, eyes alive with excitement. ”That whole thing after the first couple of days here, and then tonight with the pacing and the growling and the--”
“Stiles!” John turns to chew out his son, and Laura uses his distraction to head towards the door. He curses, lets go of Stiles, and cuts her off at the pass.
“John, get out of my way.”
Allison gets to her feet, Scott and Stiles standing at her back, all of them wary.
John shakes his head, standing in front of the door with his arms folded. “No.”
Laura’s eyes burn red. “You realize I can make you move.”
“But you won’t.”
Laura lets out a desperate, whimpered howl, exactly like the wolf snarling under her skin. “John, please. I need to find my brother.”
“You need to not get yourself killed!”
“She’ll kill him! Do you understand that?” Laura’s falling apart at the seams, caught between jumping past John out a window and collapsing into sobs. “They burned my entire family in their own home, and I am not going to lose my brother, too!”
John clutches at both of her shoulders. “I’m not going to let that happen. Okay? I have a plan. But you have to trust me.”
Laura closes her eyes, counts to ten. Opens them and holds the wolf at bay, promising a little longer. Just a little longer. “Okay. Tell me.”
--
John informs the station of Derek’s kidnapping, telling the dispatcher to call in every single available deputy in Beacon County.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he says, grabbing his gun from the safe in the closet. He hangs up and turns to Scott. “Call your mother. Wait for her here, lock the doors, and don’t let anyone else inside who isn’t me.”
“Dad, what—“ Stiles starts, but Scott nods and starts dialing.
“Allison,” Laura says, catching the panicked girl’s attention, “Chris didn’t tell you anything before this? Nothing?”
“No." Her eyes narrow. “Why?”
Because Chris has always stuck to that stupid farce of a code. Because out of his entire family, he was the one with whom her mother was willing to form a truce.
If he isn’t raising his only daughter to her family birthright, then there’s a chance - however slight - that he has no idea what his sister is up to. That he had no idea about the fire.
She may not need to kill him after all.
John follows her train of thought. He turns to Allison, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I want you to stay here until I can speak with your father.”
Allison’s eyes almost pop out of her skull, defense coming on the heels of her horror. “You don’t really think he has something to do with this, do you?"
“No, I don’t. But until I am absolutely positive of something more than a gut feeling, I don’t want you in that house. Stay here with Melissa. Don’t call your parents. Can you do that for me?”
Allison swallows hard and nods after a moment’s deliberation.
“Dad—“
John whirls on his son. “Stiles, stay in this house. I swear to god, if you try and follow me, I’ll lock you in your room for the rest of your natural life.”
“Okay!” Stiles screams. Beneath the defensive, frustrated exterior lies the sour terror lurking underneath. “I was going to say be careful.”
John pauses to reel Stiles in for a hug, and Laura wraps her arms around herself, staring at the floor. She looks up again when John heads towards the door.
“Allison,” Laura says, before they leave, because she doesn’t know if she’s going to get another chance. “Thank you.”
Allison nods. The door clicking shut sounds like goodbye.
--
By the time they get down to the station, the parking lot is full, cars lined up from on end to the other. Every available deputy in the greater Beacon County turned up.
John helms the war room from his office, ordering people where to go, what to do, and exactly when and how to do it.
When everyone has their marching orders, he drags his three most trusted deputies into the room and shuts the door. Among them are Deputy Sacks and Jordan Parrish, who was a year behind Derek in high school.
“I want you down there in the tunnels with me,” he says, and the three of them nod as he points to two entrances on a map. “Things might get a bit… hairy.” Laura can't help but snort. He glares. “I know I can trust you to have my back whatever happens.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Deputy Sacks says, and he gestures at Laura, “isn’t having her here a conflict of interest?”
“You let me worry about that,” John says; the words smack of an order. “If anything happens, I’ll take the fall for it.” Parrish and the other deputy glance at each other. Deputy Sacks nods.
Laura could get to the preserve twice as fast if she shifts into her fur. She forces the wolf down, deep as she can go and follows John’s lead. They traverse down into the dark, dank tunnels, while Laura listens over the dripping water for her brother’s voice.
“Wait," Laura whispers after less than ten minutes, and John holds up his hand.
“--wanna kick those people in the face?” Kate. Every muscle in Laura's body screams at her to attack, but she clenches every muscle, gestures down the corridor.
Derek groans, pain evident in every tiny, bitten off sound.
John points Parrish and the other deputy straight, waving at Deputy Sacks to follow him to the right. They stop right outside of the doors when John holds up his hand again. He’s wearing a wire, brought in from one of the larger stations in the county in the hopes that Kate would incriminate herself.
There’s no relief found in hearing her brother’s voice, exhausted despite his wise-ass response. “Are you gonna torture me, or are you just going to talk me to death?”
Kate clucks her tongue. “Oh, sweetie, I don't wanna torture you. I want to catch up. Remember all the fun we had together?”
The smug, repugnant smile comes through loud and clear in Kate’s voice. Unease settles deep in the pit of Laura’s stomach.
“Like the time you burned my family alive?”
“No, I was thinking more about the hot, crazy sex we had.”
The world tilts sideways. Laura grasps onto the wall to hold herself up. So much of her little brother’s behavior now makes a terrifying, twisted sort of sense - the pungent scent of guilt that surrounded him after the fire that she chalked up to the devastation of losing his pack. His aversion over the years to any sort of relationship, especially with women. The frantic, absolute panic at finding Kate’s scent at the house.
She bites back bile, stomach rolling as she remembers what she said to Derek about hiding from Allison. Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a little girl.
Kate keeps talking, oblivious to the firing squad standing outside of the door. “But the fire thing. Yeah, that was fun too.” Derek screams, and John grips Laura’s arm with his free hand, yanking her backward. The sound cuts off. Every one of her brother's heaved breaths cuts through her belly like a knife. “You did tell your sister about me, didn't you? The truth about the fire?” She takes Derek’s silence for complicity, and says, with a mockery of concern, “Oh, sweetie - that's a lot of guilt to keep buried. After all, it's not all your fault. You got tricked by a pretty face. It happens.”
Laura’s nails rip into claws, eyes a blinding, hateful red. She rushes around the corner, kicking Kate in the face and halfway across the room. John curses, grabbing Deputy Sacks and following.
Laura snarls, crouching down, eyes snapping to Derek, chained to a metal grate and attached to a car battery. The wires taped down to the side of his stomach release just enough electricity to keep the wolf at bay. Until Kate turns up the voltage.
The echoes of his screams bounce around her head, and Laura pounces.
“Don’t!” Derek shouts as she slams into an invisible force, body flung backward. She lands at John’s feet.
Kate stands, wiping the blood from her nose. She tugs a gun from the small of her back. There's a mountain ash line drawn out on the ground in front of her feet.
“Put the gun down and get on your knees,” John says, while Deputy Sacks helps Laura to her feet, not flinching an inch at the fangs and claws.
Kate laughs, as calm as nails down a chalkboard. “I don’t think so.”
“Down on the ground, now, or I will shoot you.”
Laura keeps her eye on Kate’s feet she paces forwards, one incremental step after the other.
“Are you going to kill me, sheriff?” She throws her arms open wide. “Come on. Take your best shot.” Her boots slide half across the line. She screams, unhinged, “Come on!”
Laura pounces, taking Kate to the ground. The gun goes off, skittering across the floor and further breaking the ash line. The bullet gets lodged in one of the walls.
Kate scratches at Laura's face with her nails. She manages to wrestle a knife out of her boot, and Laura’s snarl turns into a howl of rage when the blade plunges into her stomach. She digs her claws into Kate’s wrist until she drops the weapon with a scream.
Laura manages to wrestle Kate onto her back, digging her knee into her spine. Deputy Sacks holsters his weapon and rushes over, holding down her legs with his body weight as he snaps handcuffs on her wrists.
“You have the right to remain silent,” John says, lowering his weapon. “So shut the hell up.”
“They’re killers, sheriff! That’s all they’ll ever be! You--”
Laura socks her in the jaw, knocking her out.
“Sorry,” she says, rolling to her feet and wiping the dirt off of her knees. She makes a face at the blood on her clothes, lifting her shirt to get a better look at the almost-healed wound on her stomach.
Deputy Sacks shrugs. “Was self-defense from where I’m standing. Boss?”
He yells when Kate manages to slip the cuffs, flipping him off of her back. His ribs slam into the edge of the table, knocking the car battery to the floor and ripping the wires out of Derek's side.
Deputy Sacks hits the ground and doesn’t move.
Kate scrambles for her fallen weapon, pointing it at Derek.
A shot rings out in the dark.