Belief is a Wise Wager
Title: Belief is a Wise Wager
Summary: Stiles accepts a new job (thanks to Mayor Laura Hale), in a new town and inadvertently starts a war, but it’s not his fault. Honestly.
Warnings: Violence, Blood,
Rating: Mature
Chapters: 13/?
Notes: I swore up, down and whatever other direction that I wouldn’t post another WIP, yet here it is! I just feel like I’m more motivated to work harder once I’ve posted.
PS AO3
1| 2| 3| 4| 5| 6| 7|8| 9| 10|11| 12|
-
The imminent threat of a war, the shaking of the ground and the screaming of the village people - it’s definitely a boner killer. Any thought that Stiles had about where he wanted to get his hands on Derek, or where Derek could get his hands on Stiles - vanished into thin air.
Stiles scrambles off of the bed trying to rearrange and change his clothes as Derek does the same. He barely has time to grab his jacket leaving the rest of his belongings in the house as he follows Derek outside into the chaos. There’s a gust of cold wind that hits Stiles in the face the minute he steps outside, a stark contrast to the heat of the house and Derek’s body against him.
He pulls the jacket closer to his body, pulling the hood up over his head to shelter himself from the wind and the billowing snow that’s making it even harder to see that far into the distance let alone in the middle of the night. Even with the whirring noise of the wind they can hear the screams and shouts of the rest of the residents and see the plumes of smoke coming from the village centre. Stiles barely keeps pace with Derek as they run towards the chaos.
“Oh my God,” Stiles gasps coming to a halt near the gazebo in the centre. He’s staring at the barn that serves as the meeting place and gym - currently set alight, the fire blazing higher and higher as a group of men try and put it out but end up backing away as the fire starts to spread further out.
“Come on,” Derek yells over the shouts of the other people as he grabs Stiles’ forearm. Stiles feels himself being dragged as his mind snaps out of its daze watching the fire expanding before he refocuses and follows after Derek. They make it to the Town Hall in no time where they see Laura standing on the front steps looking more than a little stressed and halfway shifted. Stiles still hasn’t gotten used to that.
“Derek,” Laura commands, “I need you to go the perimeter with Boyd, Erica and Isaac hold them off as long as you can. Take this,” she chucks a walkie-talkie in Derek’s hand.
“What about -” Derek starts.
“Stiles, I need you to either stay here or get to the Doctor’s office and stay with Scott and help there. Take these.” She hands him a similar walkie-talkie that she gave Derek, but also shoves a gun into his hand. “Have you ever used one?”
Stiles nods his head yes. Funnily enough it wasn’t Stiles’ dad that had taught Stiles how to fire a gun. There was no way his dad would teach him when he was in high school when he could barely focus on his school work let alone fire a gun and not even after he graduated. Stiles didn’t have any desire to enter the police force - so there was never a reason for his father to teach him.
Incidentally enough it was Lydia that had dragged him about a year ago. When he’d asked why on earth they were going to a shooting range she replied why not? So Stiles’ very limited knowledge on guns expanded as he learned how to load, aim and shoot a gun. Of course his targets before weren’t moving, or you know, alive.
“Shoot anyone that comes at you that you don’t recognise from the village,” Laura instructs, she explains quickly what channel to use on the walkie-talkie in case they need to get a hold of anyone.
“Derek, go,” Laura demands when she sees Derek hesitating to leave, his eyes lingering on Stiles.
“I’ll be fine,” Stiles rolls his eyes trying to play it off, even as he takes a steadying breath.
Derek nods his head not breaking his gaze for a few seconds longer before he cracks his neck, the sound of bones cracking and changing barely heard over the other noises as Derek shifts. Stiles gets one last good look at Derek, transformed - and thankfully doesn’t pass out like last time - before Derek runs off towards the outskirts of the village.
Stiles didn’t even notice that Laura ran off roughly around the same time as Derek until he looks around and realises he’s standing on his own on the Town Hall steps, people running past him. The only logical thing he thinks to do is run off in the direction of the Doctor’s office in search of Scott. Thankfully there are no incidents on his way there; no one shoots an arrow at him, throws a fire bomb at him and no more butt-hurt villagers trying to kill him.
“Scott?” Stiles yells the minute he’s in the doctor’s office, shutting the door behind him to keep the coldness and smoke from coming in. “Scott! Where are you?”
Stiles runs up the familiar stairs and finds Scott in the first open door. He nearly faints at all the blood he sees, nearly. He sees Ian laying on a table, his shirt torn and blood seeping out of his stomach. Scott’s hands are just as bloody, splotches of blood on his face from where he must have wiped his hand to get rid of stray hairs falling into his face.
“Hand me those forceps,” Scott instructs glancing up at Stiles.
“The what?”
“Those grabby looking things!” Scott shouts his eyes darting towards the tray full of medical tools.
Stiles hands clambers for the tray as he knocks various tools out of the way to quickly hand Scott the forceps.
“Hold his wound open,” Scott instructs.
Stiles knows he can’t exactly protest - not that he wants to. But all he can think about is blood, blood, blood and shouldn’t he be wearing gloves or something? Logically he knows there’s no time to question or fret over these things when lives are at risk. Ian lets out a loud growl of pain and Stiles snaps out of it.
His large hands replace where Scott was holding Ian’s wounds open as Scott grabs the forceps, hovering over Ian’s wound. Scott looks anything but delicate as the forceps dig into the open wound fishing around for something.
Ian’s eyes turn to a glowing yellow his back arching off of the table as he tries to pull away. One of his clawed hands reaches to grab out as Stiles’ wrist squeezing hard, on the wrong side of pain. Stiles lets out a yelp of pain trying to free his wrist from Ian’s death grip.
“It’s out,” Scott yells and Ian visibly relaxes his hand going lax on Stiles wrist.
Stiles watches as a bullet slug clanks into a small metal bowl covered in Ian’s blood. The next thing he sees is Scott lighting some ashy herb substance on fire and placing it over Ian’s wound, Ian howls out in pain again before it looks like he passes out.
“Is he okay?” Stiles screeches.
“He will be now; he just needs to snap out of it.”
The minute Scott says it Ian gasps sitting up straight like he’s trying to catch his breath. He hands fly to his wound watching as it starts to shut itself as if it never happened.
“Thanks. I need to get back out there,” Ian says hopping off of the table with a spring to his step, no evidence showing that Scott just pried a bullet out of his stomach.
“Are you going to be okay dude?” Stiles says just wanting to get Ian to lie back down on the table and relax for a minute.
“Werewolf,” Ian raises his eyebrow as if to say ‘duh’, “when a human gets hurt they’re out of commission, we need all the people out there we can get.”
Scott yells out be safe before yet another werewolf is coming in injured in one form or another. Stiles gets into the rhythm of helping Scott when a new injured werewolf comes in, handing him certain tools, grabbing bandages and holding even more bloody wounds open.
At random times there are sounds of screaming, yelling and gun shots. There are no more bombs, at least not in the village centre because the ground doesn’t shake as violently as it did earlier in the night and there’s not any more smoke outside than there was before. Stiles could barely see out the window with all the snow and being too preoccupied being a pseudo-doctor to injured werewolves.
There’s an interim of time when no more werewolves come in for a few minutes and Scott runs downstairs to see how his mom is fairing with the humans that are injured - they need all the help they can get. Stiles’ mind wanders to where Derek is and what he’s doing is he okay or is he injured? The only comforting thought he can take is that if he were injured than he would have shown up here - and he hasn’t. Then his mind wanders to what if Derek is hurt but beyond saving and there was no point in bringing him here?
Stiles can’t think about that for too long otherwise he’s going to go out of his mind. It’s all too much too soon and even if he hadn’t just made out with Derek like a highschooler a few hours ago - he’d still be worried. He doesn’t want to see anyone in this village die. Stiles trudges down the stairs to see if he can help Scott and Melissa anymore with the humans.
-
There’s just a bit of peace in the Doctor’s office with only a few human patients with minor burns from the fire at the barn and Stiles is in a little pantry under the staircase grabbing more supplies when it happens.
There’s another loud boom and the ground shaking, seconds later more screaming takes place. Stiles drops the supplies he’d been getting and runs back out into the main room where Scott and Melissa run to as well.
“What’s happening?” Melissa asks.
Scott stands still for a few seconds trying to listen in. “There’s been another explosion,” he says.
‘No shit,’ Stiles thinks - but it’s not the time for sarcasm. He’s more concerned about who’s hurt.
Scott’s about to open his mouth again, say something when smoke starts pushing its way in through the crevices in the door, flowing in from the slit underneath and through the side. Stiles coughs as he pulls up his shirt to cover his mouth and nose to stop from inhaling any more smoke, Melissa following suit. Scott coughs but doesn’t have time to pull his shirt up, he goes into an even bigger fit of coughs before he crumples to the floor clutching his chest.
“Is he okay?!” Stiles yells through his shirt as he drops to his knees on the floor bending over where Scott is still continuing to cough. “Is he asthmatic?”
Melissa is cupping her free hand on her sons cheek trying to get Scott to look at her when Scott breaths out, “wolfs bane,” before he’s in another fit of coughing and wheezing.
“Stiles,” Melissa says sharply, “go back to the medical pantry, and get as many of those surgical face masks you can.”
Stiles doesn’t waste any time in jumping to his feet and grabbing the masks, he puts one on himself like you’re taught to do in an emergency during a flight before handing one to Melissa and Scott. Stiles runs to the patient room where there are a few remaining humans nursing their injuries. He hands them out to them as well making sure they’re on and secure.
“I don’t get it, why is Scott having a coughing fit?” Stiles asks when he returns to the front foyer.
Melissa had gotten Scott up on his feet and was walking him towards another exit farthest away from where most of the smoke was coming from. Stiles slung Scott’s arm around his shoulder and was helping Melissa walk him out of the office.
“Wolfs bane can be deadly to werewolves,” Melissa explains, her voice muffled through the surgical mask. “Just as deadly to humans as well but something with the werewolves system it affects them at a quickened pace.”
They’ve barely gotten Scott dragged to a secluded area under the cover of some trees farthest away from the smoke, Melissa running back inside to get the humans when Stiles hears his walkie-talkie go off. He’d almost forgotten about it until Laura’s voice crackled through.
“Stiles, I need you to get back to the Town Hall ASAP. Grab all the gas masks you can find and make sure the underground safety room where all the kids are in is secured and locked. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”
“Got it,” Stiles yells into the speaker. He makes sure all the humans are out of the Doctor’s office and that they and Melissa are safe under the trees before he quickly explains that he has to go back to the Town Hall. Melissa looks sceptical, like she wants to tell Stiles to stay here where it’s safe but instead she says to just be careful.
Even running along the outskirts of the village square is not enough to be away from the smoke, the closer he gets to the Town Hall the more the wolfs bane smoke is condensed, like a thick cloud sitting right at eyelevel. There’s another loud boom - another smoke bomb dropped - and Stile stumbles over his feet falling to the ground his knees hitting the cold snowy and partially icy ground and he can feel the pain radiating. He doesn’t have time to worry about it or think about it too much he has to jump back up on his feet and make it to the Town Hall - before the next smoke bomb hits him.
When Stiles makes it back to the Town Hall scrambling up the steps he’s relieved to see that most of the werewolves that were guarding the Hall already have their gasmasks on and are handing a bunch out to carry out to the other werewolves. Stiles doesn’t know if there’s even enough for everyone but hopes that at least if any don’t have a gas mask can at least find shelter somewhere.
He remembers what Laura told him and runs down to where his basement office would be, but taking a different turn down a hallway where he now knows what hid behind that elusive steel door. It’s a shelter for people and Laura had sent all the kids with Rory and Lane to look after them - make sure they’re safe and not completely freaking out. Stiles runs to the door making sure it’s still shut tight and the bolts are in place - which thankfully they are, so the children are at least safe.
After Stiles has readjusted his mask he’s running back up the steps to the main floor where he finds Laura with Charles handing out masks and instructing where everyone should go and what they should be doing.
“Gerard and his men are pushing their way farther in to our territory. We didn’t see those wolfs bane bombs coming!” Laura shouts through her mask to Stiles.
“Do we have any sort of defence tactic for whatever those bombs are doing to us?”
“Only the masks, I’ve sent someone to get them to everyone at the perimeter but if it’s already in their system they may become infected their systems might start to shut down soon. We need to take them down and soon otherwise it’s all over.”
“What about the tunnels?” Stiles says all of a sudden perking up straight.
“What tunnels?”
“When I was encrypting!” Stiles explains, “I saw these underground plans for tunnels beneath the village, they lead right out of here don’t they? Can’t we use them to sneak up on Verdun?”
“The tunnels don’t lead to Verdun that doesn’t help,” Laura shakes her head.
“He’s right,” Charles cuts in. “The tunnels lead to that piece of road that’s county property. Not ours and not Verdun’s, from there we should be able to access their tunnels, possibly sneak up on them.”
“Exactly!” Stiles screeches.
“Even if we did get to the county road their tunnels may be rigged, mountain ash might not let us get any farther.”
“Mountain ash?” Stiles asks.
“Then we take Stiles with us, if there is any ash he moves it and then we advance,” Charles instructs.
“I guess it’s our only hope,” Laura nods. She steps a few feet away to talk into her walkie-talkie as Charles calls a group of werewolves to huddle in as he explains the plan.
Stiles gets distracted from listening to Charles when he can hear who Laura is talking to on the walkie-talkie - Derek.
“Derek, we’re advancing through the underground tunnels to get to Verdun. We’re taking Stiles with us,” Laura shouts into the walkie-talkie.
“Give me a second I’ll meet you,” Derek’s voice crackles through.
“No, I need you to stay here and be my eyes and ears.”
“But Stiles -”
“He’ll be fine just try and hold them off as long as you can.”
Laura hands Stiles a proper gas mask to put on as he discards his surgical mask quickly replacing it with the gas mask. Thankfully there haven’t been any other loud booms and grounds shaking so it seems that Gerard has stopped with the smoke bombs for now at least. Laura leads the werewolves Charles had gathered with weapons, one of them being Luke and Stiles out of Town Hall, and around back of the building where she finds a sewer with the grating over it.
One of the werewolves grips the heavy grate and lifts it up throwing it to the side as if it weighs nothing as the werewolves start to jump one-by-one down into the dark hole. Even Charles in all his elderly-ness jumps down as if it’s nothing and all Stiles can think is ‘holy shit I’m going to break my ankle.’
“Jump, someone will catch you,” Laura instructs, “Stiles is jumping down!” She yells into the dark hole and pushes Stiles forward. Stiles doesn’t have any choice but to jump, his eyes closed as he feels his stomach drop out of him and hopes for the best.
Someone does catch him - Luke - but his foot still lands awkwardly on the ground fortunately it doesn’t hurt him too much and he’s still able to walk. He’d have made some silly comment about catching him like a swooning bride or something just to tick Luke off, because it’s so easy - except now is really not the time or place. He’s pushed to the side as he sees Laura and the last werewolf, the one who’d lifted the grate jump down landing on their feet in a crouch perfectly. Show-offs.
They walk down the darkened tunnel and Stiles can barely see two feet ahead of him, his hand running along the wall so he knows where he’s going and doesn’t trip. Werewolves and their fantastic abilities can see perfectly in the dark and therefore didn’t think to bring flashlights. They walk for a few minutes through what feels like a maze taking twists and turns and Stiles would have feared he somehow wandered off in the dark on his own with his lack of vision except he can hear the others walking and murmuring to each other.
The group finally reach a dead end and up above they can see another grate. There’s a rusty old ladder with a few steps missing that lead up to the top, Luke takes the steps first and lifts the grate up and over as he climbs up back onto solid earth. He helps everyone - mostly hoisting Stiles up before recovering the grate. They walk a few more meters before they’re jumping down again back underground this time on Verdun’s property. Stiles has learnt by now how to jump properly and this time when Luke catches him with a grunt, he doesn’t land awkwardly on his feet.
“Mountain ash,” Laura growls when she tries to walk forward but is almost propelled backwards. She tries again like it’ll make a difference but the same thing happens again. “Stiles break the seal. Just push the ash away.”
Stiles doesn’t see how that’s going to help any but he looks down at the black ashy looking substance and pushes it away with his hand. It doesn’t feel any different, doesn’t look very weird but this time when Laura tries to step forward she isn’t push backwards. ‘huh,’ Stiles thinks - he’s definitely curious about that and wishes he had some of that when he was in college and his first ever roommate didn’t know boundaries. If only it worked on humans too.
By the time they finally got to the end of the tunnel and up through the last grating, finally on solid ground once again - they’re in Verdun. Stiles doesn’t remember this area, he’d only been on the main road that held Argent’s Tavern. The group stealthily follow the sound of voices - or rather the werewolves were stealthy while Stiles’ boots were crunching on the falling snow and trying not to fall.
Laura makes some aborted hand movements that Stiles doesn’t even understand but he sees the other werewolves split up into mini groups as they keep moving forwards - like some sort of army. Stiles keeps his distance walking behind the group because he’s not about to walk into enemy territory on the front lines - his jacket may be puffy but it ain’t no bulletproof vest.
Stiles should have known better. Not to walk in the back by himself, instead he should have walked in the middle with the werewolves as a sort of circular shield. Instead, now he’s feeling something hard - probably a 4x4 piece of wood - connecting to his side and back as he crumples to the ground.
“Filth,” a woman spits and Stiles suddenly remembers her as the woman at Argent’s Tavern, the one with red dishevelled hair who was drunk out of her mind. If she’s drunk now, her drunken aim is fan-fucking-tastic.
“What the hell man,” Stiles whines even as his face is still in the snow some melting in his mouth the front of his jeans and jacket completely soaked through.
Before she even has time to lift the gun slung around her shoulder, Luke pounces on her breaking her right arm - the loud crack clearly audible along with her screams of pain before Luke snaps her neck effectively cutting off her shouts. Stiles watches as her body slouches to the ground, blood dripping out of her throat. Luke turns around and everywhere around his mouth is covered red - the woman’s blood - and Stiles’ stomach goes a little queasy. Than he remembers Luke did just save his life so that’s something. He mutters thanks while Luke just gives him a blank look before he helps Stiles up.
Stiles’ knee and sides start to hurt the more he focuses on it as he limps behind the group, this time Luke walking behind him to make sure he’s safe. The pack make it to the main street where there are a group of men and woman scattered about talking with a few children. It seems like Verdun residents felt they didn’t need to hide like Laura had the children do back in Wulfstan - they were over confident.
“Chris, it’s over,” Laura shouts holding up her gun as they step on to the main road.
The Verdun residents all stop and wheel around to where the voice is coming from, some holding up their weapons, parents moving their children behind them to protect them. Chris is standing there without a weapon in hand, crossing his arms.
“Hold it,” Chris commands and the residents don’t pull the trigger on their weapons, or advance but they don’t lower them either.
“Call Gerard off.”
“I think you’ll realise that I hardly have any control over my father.”
“That’s your excuse?” Laura snorts her eye glow red when Chris just shrugs his shoulders.
They stare at each other for a few more minutes, some of the Verdun people getting restless their eyes darting between the werewolves. Laura slowly moves her hand to grab the walkie-talkie from her pocket as she talks into it.
“Derek, find Gerard I’m sure he’s around there somewhere. Tell him we’ve invaded Verdun.”
Derek’s voice crackles through the speaker, “he heard you.”
“How did you like my wolfs bane bombs?” Laura hears Gerard’s distinct, grating voice come through the speaker. Derek must be holding the speak button for Gerard to be able to talk.
“Might have been a bit too pre-emptive considering I managed to invade Verdun. Back off or I won’t hesitate to kill,” Laura answers.
“A bunch of weak woman and children? Is that really your style?”
“You want to test me?” Laura snarls.
There’s a humourless laugh on the other end of the walkie-talkie that makes Stiles shiver and not from the snowy winter night.
“They’ll die martyrs when at the end of it all your whole village, full of filthy creatures are dead.”
“Even your own son?”
Laura steps closer to where Chris is standing and there’s an echo of clicks from the Verdun residents aiming their guns ready to fire. Chris doesn’t step back but still raises his hand to stop them from shooting - standing his ground.
“Especially my own son and my daughter. I should thank you for that dear Laura. Kate ruined the whole plan, she was supposed to stick around and ‘comfort’ Derek,” Gerard spits out the word comfort as if it sickens him, “and then we were supposed to attack wipe out the rest of your pathetic village, the oldest most well-known Hale pack right then. But she was weak, whether she felt bad or couldn’t stomach it and left. You cleaned up my mess Laura.”
There’s an impregnable silence and when Gerard realises that Laura isn’t going to say anything, he continues on.
“I couldn’t risk Kate having some sort of moral breakdown and blabbing her mouth to someone. I fully intended to hunt her down and get rid of her myself. I should have known a killer monster like yourself would do it, it’s in your nature isn’t it?”
Laura can’t believe what she’s hearing - that Gerard would kill his own daughter, his own townspeople just to get rid of werewolves. Not even all werewolves, but only a village of them. What surprises Laura even more is the look of horror and shock that crosses Chris’ face - he wasn’t aware of what happened, or was only fed half of the story. The side that suited Gerard more than it did Wulfstan.
“Derek?” Laura talks into the walkie-talkie.
“Yeah?”
“Kill him.”
Laura watches ever so perceptively to see any sort of anger radiating from Chris - she doesn’t see anything. Some of the other residents gasp but Chris nods his head ever so slightly, looking at them until they lower their weapons.
There’s shots and muffled groans over Derek’s side of the walkie-talkie and then it goes dead - radio silence.
14|
Summary: Stiles accepts a new job (thanks to Mayor Laura Hale), in a new town and inadvertently starts a war, but it’s not his fault. Honestly.
Warnings: Violence, Blood,
Rating: Mature
Chapters: 13/?
Notes: I swore up, down and whatever other direction that I wouldn’t post another WIP, yet here it is! I just feel like I’m more motivated to work harder once I’ve posted.
PS AO3
1| 2| 3| 4| 5| 6| 7|8| 9| 10|11| 12|
-
The imminent threat of a war, the shaking of the ground and the screaming of the village people - it’s definitely a boner killer. Any thought that Stiles had about where he wanted to get his hands on Derek, or where Derek could get his hands on Stiles - vanished into thin air.
Stiles scrambles off of the bed trying to rearrange and change his clothes as Derek does the same. He barely has time to grab his jacket leaving the rest of his belongings in the house as he follows Derek outside into the chaos. There’s a gust of cold wind that hits Stiles in the face the minute he steps outside, a stark contrast to the heat of the house and Derek’s body against him.
He pulls the jacket closer to his body, pulling the hood up over his head to shelter himself from the wind and the billowing snow that’s making it even harder to see that far into the distance let alone in the middle of the night. Even with the whirring noise of the wind they can hear the screams and shouts of the rest of the residents and see the plumes of smoke coming from the village centre. Stiles barely keeps pace with Derek as they run towards the chaos.
“Oh my God,” Stiles gasps coming to a halt near the gazebo in the centre. He’s staring at the barn that serves as the meeting place and gym - currently set alight, the fire blazing higher and higher as a group of men try and put it out but end up backing away as the fire starts to spread further out.
“Come on,” Derek yells over the shouts of the other people as he grabs Stiles’ forearm. Stiles feels himself being dragged as his mind snaps out of its daze watching the fire expanding before he refocuses and follows after Derek. They make it to the Town Hall in no time where they see Laura standing on the front steps looking more than a little stressed and halfway shifted. Stiles still hasn’t gotten used to that.
“Derek,” Laura commands, “I need you to go the perimeter with Boyd, Erica and Isaac hold them off as long as you can. Take this,” she chucks a walkie-talkie in Derek’s hand.
“What about -” Derek starts.
“Stiles, I need you to either stay here or get to the Doctor’s office and stay with Scott and help there. Take these.” She hands him a similar walkie-talkie that she gave Derek, but also shoves a gun into his hand. “Have you ever used one?”
Stiles nods his head yes. Funnily enough it wasn’t Stiles’ dad that had taught Stiles how to fire a gun. There was no way his dad would teach him when he was in high school when he could barely focus on his school work let alone fire a gun and not even after he graduated. Stiles didn’t have any desire to enter the police force - so there was never a reason for his father to teach him.
Incidentally enough it was Lydia that had dragged him about a year ago. When he’d asked why on earth they were going to a shooting range she replied why not? So Stiles’ very limited knowledge on guns expanded as he learned how to load, aim and shoot a gun. Of course his targets before weren’t moving, or you know, alive.
“Shoot anyone that comes at you that you don’t recognise from the village,” Laura instructs, she explains quickly what channel to use on the walkie-talkie in case they need to get a hold of anyone.
“Derek, go,” Laura demands when she sees Derek hesitating to leave, his eyes lingering on Stiles.
“I’ll be fine,” Stiles rolls his eyes trying to play it off, even as he takes a steadying breath.
Derek nods his head not breaking his gaze for a few seconds longer before he cracks his neck, the sound of bones cracking and changing barely heard over the other noises as Derek shifts. Stiles gets one last good look at Derek, transformed - and thankfully doesn’t pass out like last time - before Derek runs off towards the outskirts of the village.
Stiles didn’t even notice that Laura ran off roughly around the same time as Derek until he looks around and realises he’s standing on his own on the Town Hall steps, people running past him. The only logical thing he thinks to do is run off in the direction of the Doctor’s office in search of Scott. Thankfully there are no incidents on his way there; no one shoots an arrow at him, throws a fire bomb at him and no more butt-hurt villagers trying to kill him.
“Scott?” Stiles yells the minute he’s in the doctor’s office, shutting the door behind him to keep the coldness and smoke from coming in. “Scott! Where are you?”
Stiles runs up the familiar stairs and finds Scott in the first open door. He nearly faints at all the blood he sees, nearly. He sees Ian laying on a table, his shirt torn and blood seeping out of his stomach. Scott’s hands are just as bloody, splotches of blood on his face from where he must have wiped his hand to get rid of stray hairs falling into his face.
“Hand me those forceps,” Scott instructs glancing up at Stiles.
“The what?”
“Those grabby looking things!” Scott shouts his eyes darting towards the tray full of medical tools.
Stiles hands clambers for the tray as he knocks various tools out of the way to quickly hand Scott the forceps.
“Hold his wound open,” Scott instructs.
Stiles knows he can’t exactly protest - not that he wants to. But all he can think about is blood, blood, blood and shouldn’t he be wearing gloves or something? Logically he knows there’s no time to question or fret over these things when lives are at risk. Ian lets out a loud growl of pain and Stiles snaps out of it.
His large hands replace where Scott was holding Ian’s wounds open as Scott grabs the forceps, hovering over Ian’s wound. Scott looks anything but delicate as the forceps dig into the open wound fishing around for something.
Ian’s eyes turn to a glowing yellow his back arching off of the table as he tries to pull away. One of his clawed hands reaches to grab out as Stiles’ wrist squeezing hard, on the wrong side of pain. Stiles lets out a yelp of pain trying to free his wrist from Ian’s death grip.
“It’s out,” Scott yells and Ian visibly relaxes his hand going lax on Stiles wrist.
Stiles watches as a bullet slug clanks into a small metal bowl covered in Ian’s blood. The next thing he sees is Scott lighting some ashy herb substance on fire and placing it over Ian’s wound, Ian howls out in pain again before it looks like he passes out.
“Is he okay?” Stiles screeches.
“He will be now; he just needs to snap out of it.”
The minute Scott says it Ian gasps sitting up straight like he’s trying to catch his breath. He hands fly to his wound watching as it starts to shut itself as if it never happened.
“Thanks. I need to get back out there,” Ian says hopping off of the table with a spring to his step, no evidence showing that Scott just pried a bullet out of his stomach.
“Are you going to be okay dude?” Stiles says just wanting to get Ian to lie back down on the table and relax for a minute.
“Werewolf,” Ian raises his eyebrow as if to say ‘duh’, “when a human gets hurt they’re out of commission, we need all the people out there we can get.”
Scott yells out be safe before yet another werewolf is coming in injured in one form or another. Stiles gets into the rhythm of helping Scott when a new injured werewolf comes in, handing him certain tools, grabbing bandages and holding even more bloody wounds open.
At random times there are sounds of screaming, yelling and gun shots. There are no more bombs, at least not in the village centre because the ground doesn’t shake as violently as it did earlier in the night and there’s not any more smoke outside than there was before. Stiles could barely see out the window with all the snow and being too preoccupied being a pseudo-doctor to injured werewolves.
There’s an interim of time when no more werewolves come in for a few minutes and Scott runs downstairs to see how his mom is fairing with the humans that are injured - they need all the help they can get. Stiles’ mind wanders to where Derek is and what he’s doing is he okay or is he injured? The only comforting thought he can take is that if he were injured than he would have shown up here - and he hasn’t. Then his mind wanders to what if Derek is hurt but beyond saving and there was no point in bringing him here?
Stiles can’t think about that for too long otherwise he’s going to go out of his mind. It’s all too much too soon and even if he hadn’t just made out with Derek like a highschooler a few hours ago - he’d still be worried. He doesn’t want to see anyone in this village die. Stiles trudges down the stairs to see if he can help Scott and Melissa anymore with the humans.
-
There’s just a bit of peace in the Doctor’s office with only a few human patients with minor burns from the fire at the barn and Stiles is in a little pantry under the staircase grabbing more supplies when it happens.
There’s another loud boom and the ground shaking, seconds later more screaming takes place. Stiles drops the supplies he’d been getting and runs back out into the main room where Scott and Melissa run to as well.
“What’s happening?” Melissa asks.
Scott stands still for a few seconds trying to listen in. “There’s been another explosion,” he says.
‘No shit,’ Stiles thinks - but it’s not the time for sarcasm. He’s more concerned about who’s hurt.
Scott’s about to open his mouth again, say something when smoke starts pushing its way in through the crevices in the door, flowing in from the slit underneath and through the side. Stiles coughs as he pulls up his shirt to cover his mouth and nose to stop from inhaling any more smoke, Melissa following suit. Scott coughs but doesn’t have time to pull his shirt up, he goes into an even bigger fit of coughs before he crumples to the floor clutching his chest.
“Is he okay?!” Stiles yells through his shirt as he drops to his knees on the floor bending over where Scott is still continuing to cough. “Is he asthmatic?”
Melissa is cupping her free hand on her sons cheek trying to get Scott to look at her when Scott breaths out, “wolfs bane,” before he’s in another fit of coughing and wheezing.
“Stiles,” Melissa says sharply, “go back to the medical pantry, and get as many of those surgical face masks you can.”
Stiles doesn’t waste any time in jumping to his feet and grabbing the masks, he puts one on himself like you’re taught to do in an emergency during a flight before handing one to Melissa and Scott. Stiles runs to the patient room where there are a few remaining humans nursing their injuries. He hands them out to them as well making sure they’re on and secure.
“I don’t get it, why is Scott having a coughing fit?” Stiles asks when he returns to the front foyer.
Melissa had gotten Scott up on his feet and was walking him towards another exit farthest away from where most of the smoke was coming from. Stiles slung Scott’s arm around his shoulder and was helping Melissa walk him out of the office.
“Wolfs bane can be deadly to werewolves,” Melissa explains, her voice muffled through the surgical mask. “Just as deadly to humans as well but something with the werewolves system it affects them at a quickened pace.”
They’ve barely gotten Scott dragged to a secluded area under the cover of some trees farthest away from the smoke, Melissa running back inside to get the humans when Stiles hears his walkie-talkie go off. He’d almost forgotten about it until Laura’s voice crackled through.
“Stiles, I need you to get back to the Town Hall ASAP. Grab all the gas masks you can find and make sure the underground safety room where all the kids are in is secured and locked. I’ll meet you there as soon as I can.”
“Got it,” Stiles yells into the speaker. He makes sure all the humans are out of the Doctor’s office and that they and Melissa are safe under the trees before he quickly explains that he has to go back to the Town Hall. Melissa looks sceptical, like she wants to tell Stiles to stay here where it’s safe but instead she says to just be careful.
Even running along the outskirts of the village square is not enough to be away from the smoke, the closer he gets to the Town Hall the more the wolfs bane smoke is condensed, like a thick cloud sitting right at eyelevel. There’s another loud boom - another smoke bomb dropped - and Stile stumbles over his feet falling to the ground his knees hitting the cold snowy and partially icy ground and he can feel the pain radiating. He doesn’t have time to worry about it or think about it too much he has to jump back up on his feet and make it to the Town Hall - before the next smoke bomb hits him.
When Stiles makes it back to the Town Hall scrambling up the steps he’s relieved to see that most of the werewolves that were guarding the Hall already have their gasmasks on and are handing a bunch out to carry out to the other werewolves. Stiles doesn’t know if there’s even enough for everyone but hopes that at least if any don’t have a gas mask can at least find shelter somewhere.
He remembers what Laura told him and runs down to where his basement office would be, but taking a different turn down a hallway where he now knows what hid behind that elusive steel door. It’s a shelter for people and Laura had sent all the kids with Rory and Lane to look after them - make sure they’re safe and not completely freaking out. Stiles runs to the door making sure it’s still shut tight and the bolts are in place - which thankfully they are, so the children are at least safe.
After Stiles has readjusted his mask he’s running back up the steps to the main floor where he finds Laura with Charles handing out masks and instructing where everyone should go and what they should be doing.
“Gerard and his men are pushing their way farther in to our territory. We didn’t see those wolfs bane bombs coming!” Laura shouts through her mask to Stiles.
“Do we have any sort of defence tactic for whatever those bombs are doing to us?”
“Only the masks, I’ve sent someone to get them to everyone at the perimeter but if it’s already in their system they may become infected their systems might start to shut down soon. We need to take them down and soon otherwise it’s all over.”
“What about the tunnels?” Stiles says all of a sudden perking up straight.
“What tunnels?”
“When I was encrypting!” Stiles explains, “I saw these underground plans for tunnels beneath the village, they lead right out of here don’t they? Can’t we use them to sneak up on Verdun?”
“The tunnels don’t lead to Verdun that doesn’t help,” Laura shakes her head.
“He’s right,” Charles cuts in. “The tunnels lead to that piece of road that’s county property. Not ours and not Verdun’s, from there we should be able to access their tunnels, possibly sneak up on them.”
“Exactly!” Stiles screeches.
“Even if we did get to the county road their tunnels may be rigged, mountain ash might not let us get any farther.”
“Mountain ash?” Stiles asks.
“Then we take Stiles with us, if there is any ash he moves it and then we advance,” Charles instructs.
“I guess it’s our only hope,” Laura nods. She steps a few feet away to talk into her walkie-talkie as Charles calls a group of werewolves to huddle in as he explains the plan.
Stiles gets distracted from listening to Charles when he can hear who Laura is talking to on the walkie-talkie - Derek.
“Derek, we’re advancing through the underground tunnels to get to Verdun. We’re taking Stiles with us,” Laura shouts into the walkie-talkie.
“Give me a second I’ll meet you,” Derek’s voice crackles through.
“No, I need you to stay here and be my eyes and ears.”
“But Stiles -”
“He’ll be fine just try and hold them off as long as you can.”
Laura hands Stiles a proper gas mask to put on as he discards his surgical mask quickly replacing it with the gas mask. Thankfully there haven’t been any other loud booms and grounds shaking so it seems that Gerard has stopped with the smoke bombs for now at least. Laura leads the werewolves Charles had gathered with weapons, one of them being Luke and Stiles out of Town Hall, and around back of the building where she finds a sewer with the grating over it.
One of the werewolves grips the heavy grate and lifts it up throwing it to the side as if it weighs nothing as the werewolves start to jump one-by-one down into the dark hole. Even Charles in all his elderly-ness jumps down as if it’s nothing and all Stiles can think is ‘holy shit I’m going to break my ankle.’
“Jump, someone will catch you,” Laura instructs, “Stiles is jumping down!” She yells into the dark hole and pushes Stiles forward. Stiles doesn’t have any choice but to jump, his eyes closed as he feels his stomach drop out of him and hopes for the best.
Someone does catch him - Luke - but his foot still lands awkwardly on the ground fortunately it doesn’t hurt him too much and he’s still able to walk. He’d have made some silly comment about catching him like a swooning bride or something just to tick Luke off, because it’s so easy - except now is really not the time or place. He’s pushed to the side as he sees Laura and the last werewolf, the one who’d lifted the grate jump down landing on their feet in a crouch perfectly. Show-offs.
They walk down the darkened tunnel and Stiles can barely see two feet ahead of him, his hand running along the wall so he knows where he’s going and doesn’t trip. Werewolves and their fantastic abilities can see perfectly in the dark and therefore didn’t think to bring flashlights. They walk for a few minutes through what feels like a maze taking twists and turns and Stiles would have feared he somehow wandered off in the dark on his own with his lack of vision except he can hear the others walking and murmuring to each other.
The group finally reach a dead end and up above they can see another grate. There’s a rusty old ladder with a few steps missing that lead up to the top, Luke takes the steps first and lifts the grate up and over as he climbs up back onto solid earth. He helps everyone - mostly hoisting Stiles up before recovering the grate. They walk a few more meters before they’re jumping down again back underground this time on Verdun’s property. Stiles has learnt by now how to jump properly and this time when Luke catches him with a grunt, he doesn’t land awkwardly on his feet.
“Mountain ash,” Laura growls when she tries to walk forward but is almost propelled backwards. She tries again like it’ll make a difference but the same thing happens again. “Stiles break the seal. Just push the ash away.”
Stiles doesn’t see how that’s going to help any but he looks down at the black ashy looking substance and pushes it away with his hand. It doesn’t feel any different, doesn’t look very weird but this time when Laura tries to step forward she isn’t push backwards. ‘huh,’ Stiles thinks - he’s definitely curious about that and wishes he had some of that when he was in college and his first ever roommate didn’t know boundaries. If only it worked on humans too.
By the time they finally got to the end of the tunnel and up through the last grating, finally on solid ground once again - they’re in Verdun. Stiles doesn’t remember this area, he’d only been on the main road that held Argent’s Tavern. The group stealthily follow the sound of voices - or rather the werewolves were stealthy while Stiles’ boots were crunching on the falling snow and trying not to fall.
Laura makes some aborted hand movements that Stiles doesn’t even understand but he sees the other werewolves split up into mini groups as they keep moving forwards - like some sort of army. Stiles keeps his distance walking behind the group because he’s not about to walk into enemy territory on the front lines - his jacket may be puffy but it ain’t no bulletproof vest.
Stiles should have known better. Not to walk in the back by himself, instead he should have walked in the middle with the werewolves as a sort of circular shield. Instead, now he’s feeling something hard - probably a 4x4 piece of wood - connecting to his side and back as he crumples to the ground.
“Filth,” a woman spits and Stiles suddenly remembers her as the woman at Argent’s Tavern, the one with red dishevelled hair who was drunk out of her mind. If she’s drunk now, her drunken aim is fan-fucking-tastic.
“What the hell man,” Stiles whines even as his face is still in the snow some melting in his mouth the front of his jeans and jacket completely soaked through.
Before she even has time to lift the gun slung around her shoulder, Luke pounces on her breaking her right arm - the loud crack clearly audible along with her screams of pain before Luke snaps her neck effectively cutting off her shouts. Stiles watches as her body slouches to the ground, blood dripping out of her throat. Luke turns around and everywhere around his mouth is covered red - the woman’s blood - and Stiles’ stomach goes a little queasy. Than he remembers Luke did just save his life so that’s something. He mutters thanks while Luke just gives him a blank look before he helps Stiles up.
Stiles’ knee and sides start to hurt the more he focuses on it as he limps behind the group, this time Luke walking behind him to make sure he’s safe. The pack make it to the main street where there are a group of men and woman scattered about talking with a few children. It seems like Verdun residents felt they didn’t need to hide like Laura had the children do back in Wulfstan - they were over confident.
“Chris, it’s over,” Laura shouts holding up her gun as they step on to the main road.
The Verdun residents all stop and wheel around to where the voice is coming from, some holding up their weapons, parents moving their children behind them to protect them. Chris is standing there without a weapon in hand, crossing his arms.
“Hold it,” Chris commands and the residents don’t pull the trigger on their weapons, or advance but they don’t lower them either.
“Call Gerard off.”
“I think you’ll realise that I hardly have any control over my father.”
“That’s your excuse?” Laura snorts her eye glow red when Chris just shrugs his shoulders.
They stare at each other for a few more minutes, some of the Verdun people getting restless their eyes darting between the werewolves. Laura slowly moves her hand to grab the walkie-talkie from her pocket as she talks into it.
“Derek, find Gerard I’m sure he’s around there somewhere. Tell him we’ve invaded Verdun.”
Derek’s voice crackles through the speaker, “he heard you.”
“How did you like my wolfs bane bombs?” Laura hears Gerard’s distinct, grating voice come through the speaker. Derek must be holding the speak button for Gerard to be able to talk.
“Might have been a bit too pre-emptive considering I managed to invade Verdun. Back off or I won’t hesitate to kill,” Laura answers.
“A bunch of weak woman and children? Is that really your style?”
“You want to test me?” Laura snarls.
There’s a humourless laugh on the other end of the walkie-talkie that makes Stiles shiver and not from the snowy winter night.
“They’ll die martyrs when at the end of it all your whole village, full of filthy creatures are dead.”
“Even your own son?”
Laura steps closer to where Chris is standing and there’s an echo of clicks from the Verdun residents aiming their guns ready to fire. Chris doesn’t step back but still raises his hand to stop them from shooting - standing his ground.
“Especially my own son and my daughter. I should thank you for that dear Laura. Kate ruined the whole plan, she was supposed to stick around and ‘comfort’ Derek,” Gerard spits out the word comfort as if it sickens him, “and then we were supposed to attack wipe out the rest of your pathetic village, the oldest most well-known Hale pack right then. But she was weak, whether she felt bad or couldn’t stomach it and left. You cleaned up my mess Laura.”
There’s an impregnable silence and when Gerard realises that Laura isn’t going to say anything, he continues on.
“I couldn’t risk Kate having some sort of moral breakdown and blabbing her mouth to someone. I fully intended to hunt her down and get rid of her myself. I should have known a killer monster like yourself would do it, it’s in your nature isn’t it?”
Laura can’t believe what she’s hearing - that Gerard would kill his own daughter, his own townspeople just to get rid of werewolves. Not even all werewolves, but only a village of them. What surprises Laura even more is the look of horror and shock that crosses Chris’ face - he wasn’t aware of what happened, or was only fed half of the story. The side that suited Gerard more than it did Wulfstan.
“Derek?” Laura talks into the walkie-talkie.
“Yeah?”
“Kill him.”
Laura watches ever so perceptively to see any sort of anger radiating from Chris - she doesn’t see anything. Some of the other residents gasp but Chris nods his head ever so slightly, looking at them until they lower their weapons.
There’s shots and muffled groans over Derek’s side of the walkie-talkie and then it goes dead - radio silence.
14|