I N S T I N C T | Jackson Whittemore

20: good to bad / bad to good

Good to Bad / Bad to Good
Chapter Twenty

Stiles watched in fear for Annie as he panted, trying to catch his breath with a weak Derek laying beside him on the pool deck. Scott was roaring, completing his transition from human, to half-creature. His features were now of a wolf's, and even in his state he recognized that Annie was in trouble.

It roared loudly once again, but the scaly creature didn't stop as he pursued Annie. She unloaded every arrow possible into the monster, but nothing was taking it down. She reached behind her, searching for another arrow, but finding her quiver empty.

She looked beneath her, hearing a crunch of glass as she stepped backwards. Someone had broken the mirror that used to sit on the wall, and pieces were shattered beneath her. She picked up a shard, the blade slicing into her hand from the firm grip she had around it, but she continued to prepare herself in a fighting stance.

The creature looked at Annie confused, then to the blade. It caught its own reflection, taking a few glances before backing away from it.

Was it afraid of its own reflection?

It took off backwards, climbing up the walls like Spider-Man, and shattering the moonroof in the pool room. Glass shards scattered into the pool, and the only thing that could be heard was the lasting echo of the creature's battle call.

Stiles pushed Derek's arm off of his shoulders. He had done enough supporting for the night, and quickly took off his warm-up gear. Stiles ran over to Annie, taking her hand in his, and wrapping it in his jacket.

"Are you okay?" Stiles asked, looking down at Annie.

Annie gulped, using her unharmed hand to run through her hair, "Um... I think so."

The two looked back at Derek who slowly made his way from the pool room. Not that he would ever admit it, but for a second there... he was scared. Seeing Annie fight like that, fight until the very end... It made something click inside of him. Something he wouldn't understand for a while.

Annie blinked, looking around the deck, "Where's Scott?"

Scott pulled the keys from Gerard's office door, looking at the small USB port connected to his key-chain. After realizing that the bestiary wasn't in a book, the recognized the fact that it had to be small enough to carry it with him at all times. Allison made the connection between the two items, remembering when she saw the port when she passed the keys to Stiles.

Annie watched with Stiles as Scott sprinted out to the parking lot, already finding the group camping outside of Annie's car.

Scott held up the keys, "I think I found it."

Annie nodded, running to her backseat and pulling out her book bag. She wasn't lying at dinner, she really did have English notes to look over, and she never knew that those notes would help this much. She pulled out her laptop, then took the USB port and plugged it into her computer.

A file popped up named "House Bills" and opened to yellow pages with brown writing and drawings on them. The description of each creature was in a foreign matter. They tried to hide it beneath a cover file.

"Is that even a language?" Stiles scoffed, leaning over Annie's shoulder and looking at the information himself.

"Actually, it's Archaic Latin..." Annie spoke up, and Scott's eyes widened. She sighed, "Too bad I only took Formal Latin..." thinking about the several classes of Latin she took when she was only fourteen.

Derek watched from a distance as the group tried to translate the bestiary. The fact that none of them knew what it was, meant that he was in the lead, but... they needed to know.