Burning Slowly

Chapter 21

Stiles watched the fight between the werewolves in mute horror. Derek crushed Scott's leg, threw him across the room. Stiles took a step toward his fallen friend. He kept his eyes on the monstrous wolf, tried to circle around. The Alpha caught Jackson's arm in its jaws, blood sprayed everywhere. Stiles thought he was going to be sick. The noise Jackson made was inhuman. Stiles had never seen so much red. It mixed with the water on the floor, spread slowly through the warehouse. It was like a horrifying tide controlled by the blood red moons that Derek's eyes had become.

"Stop!" Stiles yelled, but it didn't matter. His voice was nothing compared to the sounds of Scott and Jackson's bones snapping as they hit the wall.

Derek didn't even react to him, kept stalking towards his friends. They were his pack members, but Derek didn't seem to recognize them anymore. Stiles didn't know what to do. He couldn't fight Derek, couldn't beat him down or make him back off. It didn't matter what the score of their game was. Stiles was still just a person. Derek was something more. He couldn't babble Derek into submission.

The Alpha took a step towards Scott and Jackson's prone bodies.

Stiles saw Allison on the far side of the room. She looked like she was frozen in place, paralyzed by fear. It was one thing to fight with Derek in his human form, or to face Peter in his Alpha form when she had the security of her bow in her hands. It was quite another to be alone and unarmed. She wasn't watching Scott fight valiantly, overcoming a foe trying to protect her with the help of his friends. She was watching the person she loved get torn to pieces. It broke Stiles's heart.

The Alpha took another step, dropped down on all fours. It let out another thunderous howl.

He looked over at Lydia. She was paler than normal, her lips moved soundlessly. Derek had become the very thing that nearly tore Lydia to pieces. She was trembling. Stiles had no idea what she was whispering to herself, but it didn't matter. The look of raving mad fear in her eyes would never leave Stiles. He was going to live with it for the rest of his life. Lydia would be worse off-she was actually experiencing the terror-Stiles was only seeing it from the outside.

The Alpha got closer to the fallen werewolves. Time felt like it was slowing down.

Stiles looked at Jackson. His head lulled uselessly to the side. His left arm was grizzly, clearly dislocated. There were pieces of bone poking through the muscle where Derek's jaws had scythed through the flesh. Stiles hoped he wasn't conscious, wished for that small mercy. If Jackson had been awake he'd have been screaming in mindless agony.

The Alpha stopped his advanced, sniffed the air. He assessed the state of his victims. Derek was a much wiser Alpha than Peter had been. In a way it was more terrifying. Derek's calculating advance was more purposeful, more deliberate than Peter's consuming rage had been.

Stiles locked eyes with Scott. His best friend was clutching the leg the Alpha had mangled. Unlike Jackson the damage wasn't obvious, but it was only slightly less severe. Stiles had to do something. They looked at each other and time slowed down even further-it was like bullet time in movies-except it wasn't awesome. Stiles had never wanted to be in a moment like that.

Stiles tried to use special best friend telepathy, the connection that two people had sometimes where they could communicate things without voicing them. People who were really close like Scott and Stiles had it, because the bond they had surpassed silly things like words. There hadn't been words created to truly describe those moments where two people really got each other.

Stiles tried to use it to tell Scott to take care of his dad, to make sure that he ate right and that he didn't work too hard. He tried to tell Scott to put flowers on his mother's grave on her birthdays from now on without him. Stiles tried to make his best friend understand what he was going to do and why.