Banshee (Teen Wolf FanFiction: Derek Hale)

Chapter Five: Hum

Rule number one: Don’t pick a fight with a werewolf on the night of a full moon. They’ll win.

I turn my body and raise my shirt so that I can see the damage done to my back in the full length mirror on my closet door. When I woke, I felt the muscles and bones constrict and dislodge uncomfortably. Now I can see why. There is one, large black and purple bruise along my back. Apparently, getting kicked across a table is bad for your health.

A grumble interrupts my viewing and I allow the fabric to brush down my skin causing a torrent of painful nerves. On the couch, with one arm flung over his face and the other rest on his stomach, lies Derek. I’m not entirely sure why he decided to sleep on my couch. I suspect it’s so he can pester me for more answers.

While he’s sleeping, I cross over to my suitcases and quickly select an outfit for my first day of work. Each movement stretches the sore and bruised muscles in my back causing me to move much slower than usual. By the time I leave the bathroom, Derek is sitting up on the couch, rubbing the back of his neck. I kneel down by the bed to search for the black ballet flats that I wore the day before.

“You’re hurting,” he says.

I stop searching and glance at him. His green eyed gaze studies my movement. I shrug and immediately regret this action as it causes a sharp pain to shoot through my back. On a brighter note, I locate my shoes. I settle into the couch beside Derek and slide the flats onto my feet. A sudden, cool draft hits the skin on my back and I jerk away from the man sitting beside me. He grabs onto me, though, and continues his inspection of my back.

“It’ll heal,” I say.

“Slowly,” he replies and is surprised when I laugh.

“That’s because I’m human.”

“Which is exactly why you shouldn’t place yourself in dangerous situations.”

“Derek, I know about werewolves. That knowledge alone has placed me in danger more times that I can’t count.”

“And how do you know about werewolves again?” he asks. He asked the previous night but I had been too tired to answer. I shoot him a look.

“That answer is rooted in my name,” I say.

Derek opens his mouth to respond but then stops. His eyes travel to the coffee table where my driver’s license is laying. They then snap back to me, wide with his newfound knowledge. I can’t help the amusement I feel at his discovery.

“Kavanagh. You’re Kavanagh. A werewolf family in Arizona except you’re not really werewolves. Well, you are but every single off spring in the family is born human. I thought everyone takes the bite at fourteen?”

“Not everyone,” I say. It’s true. When I turned fourteen, I refused the bite from my alpha father. He had been disappointed but wasn’t surprised with my decision. I had always been a little different from my family. Some of the others say it’s to do with my birth mother, a woman I’ve never met.

Derek sits in silence, contemplating what he just learned about me. I check the time. If I don’t leave soon, I’ll be late for my first day. I stand from the couch, jostling Derek from his thoughts.

“Since I graciously let you sleep on my couch last night, you can graciously give me a ride to work,” I say.

…

I find my way to the guidance counselor’s offices. The halls were already beginning to fill with students needing to get an early start on a project or needing to make full use of the quiet library. As I walk, I notice a kid standing around taking pictures of the nearly empty school. As I pass by him, I offer a polite smile which he returns.

“You must be Charlotte Kavanagh. I’m Marin Morrell,” a young, gorgeous woman says when I walk into the offices. She’s older than my but not by much. I shake her hand.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I say.

“This is your office. I already took the liberty of placing the files of the students who match your specialties on your desk,” Morrell says as she leads me into my small but cozy office. I see the stack she refers to. It’s a fairly thick stack.

“You’ve been given a few days to go over the files so you can be acquainted with students before you actually start meeting them. I’ll leave you to it,” Morrell says and closes the door as she leaves the office.

…

My phone dings and I look up from the dismantled file in front of me. Not recognizing the number, I set the device back down on my desk but not before catching the time. It’s past nine p.m. I pick my pen back up and write a couple more notes down in the fourth file of the day and carefully replace all the documents and information.

As I pack up, I hear the humming of electrical machinery. I go to the window and try to look around outside. From this position, I can’t see much but what I can see shows an empty parking lot. I turn away from the window and shake my head to clear the noise. When I’m met with silence, I lock the filing cabinet and leave my office.

I hear it again. This time it’s louder and I feel pressure at the base of my head where my spine and skull connect. It’s more of a dull ache. If I had been any other person, I would assume the headache was a result of all the reading and notes I made today but I’m not just any other person. I’ve had the headache enough times to know what it means. To recognize the signs when they come.

I fight hard to control the shaking in my hands. The humming gets louder with each step I take and the ache worsens. I begin to rub the back of my head in a futile attempt to ease it. There’s one way to relieve the pain and stop the hum but its temporary and someone could hear her. Especially someone with supernatural hearing.

When I fling myself through the exit, it all stops. The humming, the pain. It just stops. I release a sigh of relief but it’s momentarily lived. In the cold, night air, I allow myself to think the words that I had refused moments before. I allow myself to accept the reality that is Beacon Hills.

Someone’s going to die.

Authors note: Charlie's lineage will be important to her role in season 3B and four. She and Morrell seem to have hit it off pretty well and Charlie is showing signs of being a workaholic. Tsk. Tsk. Doesn't anyone know better than to be at the high school after hours?