inhuman [2] // teen wolf

25. exchange

"Riley, you need to get out of here, seriously. Go home."

"I'll go after we've talked."

"We're talking right now. See you later."

"Isaac, shut up and let me talk to you."

Riley was fed up with talking to Isaac so far away and with two werewolves eavesdropping in their conversation. All she wanted was for Isaac to get where she was coming from when she wanted to save their friendship. Frankly, he was being an asshole to her and she wanted to roast him, but at that moment, she wasn't able to. If she walked across that floor, then she would be the one who got roasted instead of Isaac.

"Hey, can you two stop arguing for a minute and look at that alarm over there. Isn't it supposed to be on?" Boyd cut in, pointing to a pillar near the entrance that had some kind of large red button on it that was currently not lit.

"Yeah." Derek replied, seemingly angry about it not being on. Well, Riley thought that he must have forgotten to pay his electricity bill, since only the emergency lights were on. He must have forgotten when he was dead.

"What does it mean if it's not?" Isaac asked, his complete attention shifting from Riley to the button.

"It means that someone must have cut the auxiliary power."

"But what about the main--" Boyd was cut off when all of the emergency lights shut off, and they were left in darkness with the only light coming from the large wall of window panes from where the sun was setting quickly. Riley noticed the very big black symbol that was gratified on the window; it looked like a mutated Nazi symbol. Derek walked off of the wooden crate he was standing on and into the water, but he wasn't electrocuted. He walked over into the main room, staring up at the main door.

"Derek, what do we do now?" Isaac asked cautiously, and Derek motioned for Riley to run for cover. She did now, suddenly a tiny bit afraid as to what was going to happen. Were those Alphas really going to come back again? The dude just died, why don't they just leave him alone?

"We fight."

"How about we run? I'm a fan of that idea." Riley asked quietly, as she stood with Isaac on the crate. He glanced at her for a brief second, then back at Derek. "Why do they want to kill him?"

"He killed one of theirs." Isaac replied bluntly, still looking at Derek. Boyd walked over to him and stood behind Derek, waiting for the fight to begin. Isaac turned to Riley and grabbed her arms, leaning down a bit so they were almost eye level. "Listen to me, don't come out when they're here. Run up those stairs and stay up there, you got it?" Riley was confused, but she nodded nonetheless. Isaac gave her a tight hug and joined his pack. She quickly ran into the water and across the room, then jumped up the stairs and sat at the very top. The room up there was not very extravagant; it had an old bed and some books on a bookshelf.

Once she settled on the ground next to the stairs (a place where she could look down but not be seen), she heard the large door clanking and sliding to the side as it was opened by a barefooted woman name Kali. Riley pulled her head back straight away and out of sight, remembering the woman from the bank and the way she looked at her when she left. Riley wanted to know what she was thinking, but she wasn't going to find out anytime soon.

"Gotta be honest, Derek. When Ennis died, I thought to myself, 'I'd just go for it; find you and kill you, wherever you stood'. But then I remembered, how you surround yourself with these teenagers, hiding behind them. And I thought, 'what's a girl gotta do to get you alone'?"

Ethan and Aiden came from the corner, holding Ms. Blake by the throat as they stood there confidently. If she made it through this, she would definitely quit, before expelling all of the people that were affiliated with Riley and her friends, of course. What did Ms. Blake have to do with Derek? Unbeknownst to all of Derek's betas and basically everyone he knew, Ms. Blake and him had taken a liking to each other, and she actually helped him heal himself after pretending to die.

"You and me, Derek. Or they'll tear her apart. What do you say? Think you beat me, one on one?" Kali's voice echoed around the room, leaving silence after her. Again, Riley peeked her head down the stairs and saw Derek wave Boyd and Isaac off as they went off to the sides reluctantly. Wow, he must really like Ms. Blake.

"I'm gonna rip your throat out, with my teeth." Derek threatened, to which Kali's response was to howl at him dangerously. Riley turned away from the fighting, cringing as she could still hear them. Her phone started to buzz, from which she fumbled with it before pressing the answer button. It was Stiles.

"Where are you? Are you at Derek's?" He asked, and she could hear other people around him.

"Yeah, Isaac and Boyd are here as well. You know who else? Ethan, Aiden and Kali; Kali wants to kill Derek because he killed Ennis. You guys better get here quickly because--" She quickly rambled in a hushed tone. She tried to speak as quietly as she could, even though she didn't really need to; Emma had upped her shielding game when she realized that Riley was literally surrounded by werewolves. Anything within her shield, the werewolves couldn't hear.

"Soon, okay? Listen to this, I went to go to see Danny at the hospital because the other night he vomited mistletoe everywhere. At first I thought he was a sacrifice but it wouldn't make sense because he's not a healer. I found this homework in his bag about geomagnetic fields for Harris' class." Stiles interrupted.

"What does this have to do with anything? I can hear whimpers from downstairs." She interrupted, not opting to look down again.

"Can you just let me finish? This is about what Harris wrote on Danny's proposal. 'I strongly advise you to choose another subject. The ideas here, while innovated and thoughtful, border on pseudo-science. Not suitable for class'."

"So Harris wasn't just a sacrifice, he knew something." Riley heard Scott's voice in the background, and wondered who else was in the room with him. The phone was set on something hard (Riley thought it must have been a table) and she heard paper being unfolded.

"Yeah, and check this out. Danny marked all of the telluric currents in Beacon Hills, okay? Now the weird thing about Beacon Hills, is that it's actually a beacon. You wouldn't believe how much energy is flowing through the earth is around this town." Stiles informed, as Riley heard paper being glided across the map.

"Stiles, look. They match." Scott exclaimed, whereas Riley had no idea what they were talking about. "Oh, hang on. Lydia, put her on FaceTime."

"Why do I have to do it?"

"Lydia, please!"

"Okay, fine."

The phone was picked up, then Riley pulled the phone away from her ear to look at the screen, which now showed her what they were looking at. They were in the Animal Clinic, looking at a map of Beacon Hills with lines running across it. Stiles was putting almost transparent blue sheets of paper that looked to be the map, only it had circles, squares and crosses all throughout it on various places through the town.

"Alright, there's three places, right? Where they were kidnapped, and then the place where they were killed." Scott explained, as he started to circle the places from where each body was lost and found.

"Look, that's right on a tulleric current." Lydia pointed, her finger resting on a circle spot that had a line curving through it.

"So, maybe where he was sacrificed is some place in between." Scott suggested, and Stiles took the pen from him.

"So you said that there were six more bodies to be found. Deaton's one of them. So they gotta be somewhere in between--"

"Stop." A fourth voice lit up Riley's speakers, as she frowned at the hand on Stiles' as it moved it over to the National Bank. He recognized the voice as Cora's. "He's in the vault. He's in the same vault."

"Alright, we gotta go--"

"Before you hang up," Riley interjected, and Scott took the phone from Lydia and turned the camera so it faced him.

"What is it? We don't have time."

"The Alphas are here, and they cut the power. Derek's plan isn't working!"

"It's just like he said." Scott mumbled, and Riley was about to ask who, when he hung up the call. Great, now she was completely stuck.