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They’ve been working with him regularly for a couple of years, but the pack is still slightly tensed when Chris Argent is in the room, even Allison, because he’s not pack, because he’s still a hunter. Allison may be, too, but she is pack.
“What’s the news?” Stiles asks as he and Derek and Cora walk into the kitchen, where everyone is gathered, some sitting around the island, most standing. He takes note quickly and sees that the rest of the pack is already there. He jumps up on the counter, Cora sitting next to him, Derek on his other side. Everyone looks at him, nod in greeting, and stay slightly turned toward him – it’s something he’s noticed for years, with Scott and Derek, how everyone aligns themselves slightly towards them, and he figures now they’ll be doing it toward him, and his nose twitches at the thought. Derek gives him a look, leans toward him a bit, as Argent speaks up.
“Just that a couple of hunters from Oregon might have a lead on that witch of yours,” he comments from his position at one end of the island, “They’ve been tracking this witch – he goes by Cassius – for ages, but he’s too powerful, hides his tracks very well. He’s near impossible to track, besides catch and kill.”
“Why do they want to kill him?” Scott speaks up, tension in his voice, and Stiles feels that too, knows the rest of the pack does as well, because hunters, man. Some of them were okay, good even, like the Argents and a few of their allies, but a bunch of them didn’t care whether you had done anything wrong, if you were supernatural.
“For good reason,” Argent continues, “He goes after powerful packs, has been for centuries, we think. Kills off entire packs, or at least kills off their Alphas, inherits the power himself instead of letting it take it’s natural course – ”
“That’s possible?” Kira asks, and Derek speaks up this time.
“With powerful enough magic anything is possible,” he says, “And it’s my guess that every time he kills off a pack or an Alpha he gets more power, which makes it even easier the next time.”
Argent nods.
“Exactly. There’s a spell, a fairly simple one but definitely one that requires a lot of power, that can reroute an Alphas powers so that instead of the next-in-line inheriting, it will go directly to him.”
“Why didn’t it work this time, then, if this is who we’re dealing with?” Stiles asks. Argent shakes his head.
“It’s my belief – these hunters too – that it has to do with the Omega already being dead when Derek died.” He says this with an inflection, which Stiles assumes has to do with what Allison said before; it was in the code, even the reformed one, that what’s dead should stay dead. Argent had never really gotten around to liking Derek, probably had too many bad memories associated with him and all that had happened to his father, his sister, his wife, regardless about how he felt about their actions, and he probably wasn’t too happy about the fact that the pack had gone ahead and brought him back from the dead.
“The Omega was the link, the spell had been done on her, and it was through her that the powers would have travelled to Cassius.”
“So with her dead, the powers had no link through which to travel, meaning they went to their usual route, to the most worthy, next in line,” Derek says, and Argent nods again.
“Why were they coming after our pack, though? We can’t be all that powerful, we’re mostly in our early twenties, most of us only a few years old in supernatural terms,” Scott points out. Cora speaks up this time.
“Not true. This pack is kind of a legend, if I’m being honest, it’s highly talked about even down in Argentina. Our family,” she gestures to Derek and herself, “Has been here for generations, the territory is huge, the Alpha for this territory is incredibly powerful, not to mention having a True Alpha, that’s almost unheard of these days, and to come back from being a pack of – well, thought to be a pack of three after the fire – to what you are now? Is incredible.”
“That’s true,” Argent confirms, “The amount of power in this pack is nothing to be scoffed at, and you are the first Cassius has gone after in over seventy five years. He’s not going to stop just because the Omega is dead. He’s got many other stragglers, Omegas as well as other supernatural loners, at his beck and call. With the amount of power he stands to inherit from this pack if he succeeds in any form,” he pauses, sighs, shakes his head, “He’s not going to stop until he’s succeeded or he’s dead.”
“How does he have so many others in his command?” Allison asks, and Lydia speaks up for the first time.
“He’s created a haven, hasn’t he?”
“A makeshift pack,” Argent agrees, “Any supernatural creature who runs the risk of being killed by hunters, or other supernatural beings, any stragglers or loners, can join as long as they are willing to do whatever he says. And, with as much power as he has, he can keep them in line, easily. We think this pack’s about twenty large, mostly made of Omegas.”
The pack sits in silence for a moment, taking it in. Stiles can feel mixed emotions, from himself and the pack, ranging from fear to anger and other bits he can’t put a name on.
“So we need to find him,” Stiles starts, everyone turning to look at him, “And kill him.”
“They last tracked him down the coast, a couple of days ago, not long after the Omega was killed,” Argent says, then looks over to Stiles, “We believe he’s coming down here himself, with or without his lackeys, to finish this himself.”
“Well, shit,” Erica speaks, and Stiles can’t help but agree with the sentiment. They’ve dealt with nearly everything possible to deal with – they’ve all almost died a hundred times, and now they’ve actually dealt with Derek dying and coming back to life, they all have battle scars, physical and mental, but now they were talking about an extremely powerful witch, by and far the most powerful they’ve ever dealt with, not to mention the fact that he could have a makeshift pack of magically enhanced supernatural creatures with him. Well, shit was an understatement, in all actuality.
“Easier for us to track him if he comes to get us, though,” Scott points out, and that’s a good point, actually.
“So what do we do?” Isaac asks, and Stiles meets Scott’s eyes before he glances at Derek, too.
“We wait,” he says, because what else can they do?
“We wait here,” Scott amends, and Stiles meets his eyes again, “Us three,” he gestures to himself, Stiles and Derek, “Are obviously the most at risk, because as far as we know he doesn’t know that Derek isn’t still the Alpha, and Stiles,” he pauses, makes sure Stiles is listening, “As good as you are at fighting, as adept as you’ve become, you’re still mostly human, maybe the easiest to kill. We need to keep an eye on you.”
Stiles doesn’t roll his eyes, but he feels a little like it, because that’s just like him, to be the Alpha but to somehow still be the most at risk, the most vulnerable, the weakest link.
“Cora,” Derek speaks up, and everyone looks to him, but his eyes are trained on Cora, voice strained, maybe a little sad. She raises her eyebrows at him, expectant.
“You don’t have to be here, you know. You have another pack, an Alpha to get back to,” he says, but Cora does roll her eyes.
“Like I’m leaving you, any of you. The more people there are the better our chances’ll be, anyway.”
“And it’s not like she isn’t still part of this pack, too,” Stiles says, smiling at her, “I can feel it.” She smiles back, bumps shoulders with him. Derek, though, is tense next to him, strained, still.
“Hey,” he says, puts his hand on Derek’s arm, and Cora speaks up with “It’s my choice, Der. I want to help you, I want to do what I can to make sure you’re okay.”
“It’s just – ” he starts, clenches his jaw.
“You’re pretty much the last of her family, too, y’know,” Stiles reminds him quietly. The rest of the pack is quietly turned away from them, but he knows they’re eavesdropping anyway.
“It’ll be fine,” Cora tells him, somewhat authoritatively, “We’ll all be fine.”
There’s a short pause, before Scott stands, nods.
“So it’s settled. We all stay here, together.”
“We need to set up a perimeter,” Argent says next, standing also.
“I’ll take Cora, Boyd, Malia and Scott,” Derek decides, straightening up, “We’ll go, make a circle a few hundred feet around the house, see if we can’t sniff anything out. Stiles, Scott, he’s probably going to be able to keep himself off of our senses, we’re probably not going to be able to sense when he enters our territory – you know that tracking spell, right, Stiles?”
Stiles looks at Derek, sighs, but nods.
“I’m not very good at it, though, and he probably has some sort of invisibility spell on or something – ”
“We’ve got to try,” Lydia says, “You’re more powerful than you ever have been, anyway, it might work, and it may be our only choice.”
Stiles sighs again.
“I’ve got to get some things from the clinic, though.”
Scott nods, grabs his key from the kitchen counter, tosses it over.
“Take Cora and Isaac and Lydia with you.”
“Take my car,” Derek hands his keys over, too.
“And we’ll go get some weaponry,” Argent speaks up, nodding over to Allison, who nods back.
“Stop by the station and let my dad know what’s going on, too,” Stiles tells them.
“Meet back here as soon as possible, we’re stronger as a pack,” Scott reminds them, and then they’re off.
“Stiles, backseat, it’ll be harder for him to get to you if he tries anything while we’re on the road,” Cora says, holding out her hand for the keys.
“I can defend myself, you know,” he replies, but hands over the keys nonetheless.
“We know you can,” Lydia agrees, coming up beside him, “But you need to realize that we are going to do everything in our power to protect you and this territory, including getting between you and him and giving you the best chance of getting away.”
Stiles stops, stares at her as Isaac climbs in the backseat first.
“Okay,” he finally says, seeing the absolute truth of it in her eyes and knowing that the others are the same way. It’s a little intense, the feelings he has for these people, his pack, his family. He knows he’d die in an instant for any one of them, has sometimes stupidly jumped in the way and gotten severely injured to save one of them (and they have all done the same for him, and for each other), and knows that if push comes to shove, they’re going to put themselves between him and this witch, to save him, to save the pack, to save the territory.
It’s probably easier to just go along with it.
So he gets in the backseat.
***
“What do you need?” Lydia asks as soon as they’re there, inside the clinic, in Deaton’s back office, where he stores everything. They’ve always had the okay to get anything they need from him, when he’s gone, like he is now. Stiles thinks, remembering back to the last time he’d done the spell.
“Um, there should be an acacia/belladonna mix. Mugwort. Nightshade. See if you can find patchouli, too, it’ll help if he does have a spell keeping him from being tracked. Um. A black tourmaline crystal? See if you can’t find a bloodstone, if not there’s one in my bedroom we can grab on the way back. Ashes of yew,” he continues, remembering Orion saying it enhances magic, “And. Anise.”
Lydia glances at him at the last one, raising an eyebrow, understanding it’s qualities for protection, not useful in a tracking spell but very useful in a protection one, but he just raises his eyebrows back at her and they continue to look.
“Ashes of yew,” Isaac calls out, “Anise, acacia and belladonna.”
“I’ve got mugwort and nightshade,” Cora says, and Lydia picks up the tourmaline crystal as Stiles finds some patchouli.
“I don’t see a bloodstone, though,” Lydia says, looking through the huge collection of stones and crystals, carefully labelled. Stiles goes over to her, glances through them quickly, and shakes his head.
“It’s okay, we can stop by my house really quick, let’s just go. We probably don’t have much time before the witch is here, the faster we can track him the better.”
It’s a ten minute drive to Stiles’ house, Lydia opening her door as soon as they’re pulled up.
“I’ll go get it,” she says, but Stiles shakes his head.
“It’s hidden, it’ll take you ages to find. I know right where it is.”
“Isaac – ” Cora starts, but Isaac’s already unbuckling his seatbelt, nodding.
“I’ll go with him.”
“Guys,” Stiles says as Lydia climbs out, pushes her seat forward to let Stiles out, “It’ll take me half a minute, tops. I’ll be fine, I’ll be faster on my own.”
They all give him a look, but Lydia nods as he climbs out of the car.
“Go. Quickly.”
He grabs his keys and gets the front door open, taking off, up the stairs two at a time to his bedroom. The bloodstone is kept with the rest of the crystals and herbs and other things used in spells he keeps tucked away behind the dictionary on his bookshelf, carefully hidden. He grabs the bloodstone quickly, shoves the dictionary back on the shelf, and then he feels a slight bit of pain in his head before all he sees is black, and he’s out cold.
***
“Please tell me you didn’t feel that,” Lydia says as she feels shiver, kind of like an electric shock, run through her body, an ache in her head, but the yelp from Isaac and a “shit” from Cora. They’re both instantly out of the car, racing toward the house, Lydia shouting “Stiles!” even as they run up the stairs, Isaac right behind them.
They reach Stiles’ room to find nothing but the bloodstone, laying in the middle of the room, and Lydia lets out a loud “fuck!” just as her phone starts ringing.
“What the hell happened?” Derek asks from the other end as she answers, and all she can say is “He’s gone.”