Trust me - A Liam Dunbar fanfiction

III - RUTH

Ruth was in English class when her phone vibrated. She looked up at the board, making sure the teachers back was turned, before retrieving it from her pocket and looking at the screen. It was a text from Stiles.

'Did you get the text from dad?'

Ruth quickly scanned her other notifications, before answering:

'No, what's up?'

'Meet at lunch? Library?'

Stiles did that quite frequently, answering questions with another question. And Ruth hated it. Now she was left with another handful of questions, knowing she wasn't going to get any answers until lunch. If Noah hadn't texted her, like he clearly had texted Stiles, he wasn't going to answer her questions over text or the phone. So she swallowed them down and texted Stiles back.

'Sure'

The time only started going by slower and, what felt like weeks later, Ruth's English class finally ended and the student were led out for lunch. Ruth headed directly for the library. It was never that crowded during lunch, only when it was finals week, because the students couldn't eat or drink in there - understandably so considering how messy high schoolers tended to be with food.

Stiles, Lydia and Malia were already sitting at one of tables on the first floor. Ruth dumped her backpack by one of the table legs and sat in a chair against Stiles. "Why does Noah always text you about these things, but not me?" 

"Probably because he hopes it will keep you out of it." Stiles shrugged, not looking up from the book he was holding in front of his face.

"Does he really think that will work?" Ruth scoffed. She knew Noah meant well, but Ruth had been a part of Stiles and Scott's shenanigans since before Scott was turned into a werewolf - that wasn't going to change now, no matter how much Noah wanted it to.

Ever since Ruth had started living with Stiles and his dad, Noah had tried keeping Ruth out of the trouble that seemed to follow the two boys around. At first he had called it accountability, used the fact that he was now responsible for her well-being as an excuse. But now it was quite literally a matter of life and death sometimes and Ruth didn't blame him for wanting to keep her - and Stiles - as far away from it as possible. Unfortunately for him, that just wasn't in the cards.

"This is not going anywhere," Stiles said, throwing Ruth out of her thoughts.

That was when Ruth noticed the book Stiles was reading. It was huge, with a frayed, leather spine and gold lettering on the front. Vampires and how to find them; the official encyclopedia was the title. It made Ruth want to laugh. "There's an 'official encyclopedia' for Vampire Hunting?" Ruth wasn't really sure why she was surprised. Over the years, they had seemed to have found books about everything in the Beacon Hills High School library. Werewolves and banshee's and Alpha packs...all of it under one roof. It had come in handy more times than Ruth cared to count.

"Yes," Stiles said, closing the book to look at the cover. "And the font is very tiny and almost impossible to read."

"Why are you reading it?"

"Because of the text from Dad," Stiles put the book down on the table and fished into his pocket, producing his phone. He swiped the screen a couple times before handing it over.

Dad
'I'm only telling you this because I don't want you hearing about it anywhere else. There was an attack in the woods. One survivor, one dead. Body was drained of blood and survivor claims a vampire attacked them. Try not to get involved...Please.'

"A vampire?" Ruth said when she finished reading. "Is there anything that isn't possible anymore?"

"I called dad a couple minutes ago," Stiles said, ignoring Ruth's question. "He's hoping that it's an animal and that the survivor is just in shock, but she was insistent that whatever attacked them was human. Considering the body was drained of blood, I'm willing to guess vampire too."