Til The Dawn [Midnights #1] ✓

chapter 55

Derek slammed on his brakes as he flew into a parking spot, causing all the air to leave Kate's lungs in the form of a grunt as the seat belt restricted her movement forward. God, Derek felt terrible. Really. But it was hard to concentrate on any of that when the teenagers stuck in the building in front of him were in danger.

Those were his band of misfits, damnit.

And it felt like before. Before had ended badly. Very badly.

"Stay in the car, Katie," he instructed.

She nodded, swallowing hard, as if she could possibly understand the gravity of the situation in front of both of them. Maybe she was remembering the same things he was, though. Maybe she did get it. At least to some degree. Maybe, but probably not because she didn't know any of them, or the important roles they played in each other's lives, as intimately as Derek did.

If one of them fell, they all fell.

"I'm going to try to find a way inside."

"Scott said all the doors were locked?"

"He didn't actually say, but I..."

Derek had no idea how to end that sentence. He had gone over and over the short phone call with Scott, but he was no closer to any sort of answer.

The things he did know were that someone was after them. Someone had killed Mr. Harris, the chemistry teacher everyone loved to hate. And there was no way out. Oh, and Scott was scared out of his mind. That was it. That's all he had to go on. And there was nothing Derek Hale hated more than walking into something this potentially catastrophic basically blind.

He had tried, and failed, numerous times on the way over to get Scott to answer the damn phone. And then he had tried everyone else. So, while it was essentially nothing, the little bits of information he had was what he would get. Nothing more. And he had already relayed all of this to Kate on the way over. Hence why she wasn't allowed to leave the car.

Derek couldn't handle anything else right now.

"Look!" she shouted.

She was pointing toward one of the large windows that Derek knew opened up into the new cafeteria and his eyes went wide. Sure enough, there was Scott. And he was clawing at the glass, with his actual goddamn claws. As he looked closer, he noticed his eyes too. Bright yellow. He imagined if he got out of the car and walked up there, he'd see fucking fangs too.

Shit.

But the part that had him the most confused was that he couldn't feel Scott. He could see him, but even as he reached out, in a purely metaphorical sense, there was nothing. Just a void. He reached out further, looking for the only human in the bunch with whom he'd developed a weird, tenuous bond. One he couldn't deny either. Nothing. No Stiles. More void.

Derek furrowed his brows and made the short trek to the windows, not even bothering to check the door yet. He had to get Scott calmed down enough first. And he had to do it before Allison or one of their other friends noticed something was different about him. Something that science couldn't explain. Something that forced all logical thought right out of your mind because it wasn't capable of coexisting with the new information that told you the supernatural was, in fact, real. Terrifyingly real.

"Scott, can you hear me?"

Scott's eyes refocused and his head cocked to the side, like he was confused.

"Derek?"

"Hey, man. Can, uh, you get these windows open?"

Scott shook his head, pulling at the ends of his hair in frustration, a slight whine leaving his lips. "No. No, I tried that. I swear. They won't open."