Teen Vamp

Chapter 6 - The Drum Beats Out Of Time

***DEREK***

Skylar and I tell Parrish everything we can in the time it takes for Stiles and company to get over to the station. Being a military man, he takes it pretty well, like Renard Senior is just another enemy to take on. One that puts any Taliban warlord to shame, I guess.

By the time our friends are here to join us (and Hunter's actually helping the Stilinski men string up the murder board, rather than lying on the ground playing with the ball of yarn like he's really a cat), we've explained as much as we can to Parrish, and he's helped give us all sorts of info to go on as well. Like, for instance, his idea of the exact time of Blue's death. "Somehow," he says, "I managed not to hear it. Probably 'cause I drank a little too much last night - but then I woke up without any kind of hangover."

"I doubt it has anything to do with how much you drank, you not hearing what happened," I say. To be honest, I get the feeling that, for a human, he's pretty damn good at holding his liquor.

Skylar nods sadly. "For some vampires - especially older ones - it's sort of a mark of pride, silent running."

Parrish shudders. "How silent?"

"Whisper, murmur...it helps that we vamps, our natural vibrating frequency is infrasonic." She looks over his shoulder and observes Hunter and Stiles pulling on both ends of the same string, and pulling themselves closer to each other until they meet in the middle with a kiss. As Scott and Lydia, in particular, cover their mouths from laughing, I can't help but wonder if they were trying to copy Lady and the Tramp.

"Doesn't mean a vampire can't step on a branch or something, or break glass without noise..." Parrish's voice trails off.

"Could you turn around?" Skylar asks him.

"What, so you can show me how silent you guys are?" Parrish scoffs. "Um...well, yeah, I guess. I need to have an idea." He kicks his foot against the desk and pushes himself and the chair away from it with a loud scrape that rattles my ears and earns half a dozen turned heads from outside. Then he turns around, straddling the chair and pressing his stomach and chest into its back.

Skylar lets go of my hand - she's been holding it for about twenty minutes straight now - and steps forward. Not too slowly, and yet I can't hear her at all. Infrasonic or not, the sound of her footsteps is very faint. Almost too faint for me to hear, and certainly too much so for Parrish. By the time Skylar lays her hand on his shoulder, he jumps a mile out of his seat, then turns around and almost flips her to the ground. Right away, I come in to separate them, not wanting either of them to hurt each other. Not that they don't each get some good hits in, both being made of some seriously tough stuff.

"We get the point, Skylar." I pull her away from Parrish, and she retreats even further to keep out of the sunlight. Even with the blinds shut, there's still too much sunlight in this room for comfort.

"Yeah..." Parrish climbs back into his seat. "Yeah, I see. No wonder I didn't hear nothing. But...how quick would it have been? The, uh, attack?"

"It depends," Skylar says. "As silent as we are, we can sneak up and prevent you from even crying out for help-"

"That's disturbing-"

"Although, knowing my father, a quick go isn't exactly his style."

Parrish wrinkles his nose. "Even more disturbing." Then he jumps to his feet. "Wait, so...how long was...but..."

"What?" I ask, wishing I could sink my claws into his neck and read his mind. But no, I can't do that. Especially not when there's Stiles out there being pissed at me for not turning him in a timely manner. How much of a hypocrite would it make me if I were to potentially turn Parrish so quickly?

"No, I just..." He swallows and takes a moment to gather his thoughts. "I just thought, since you said..." He looks more at Skylar than at me, naturally. "If your dad likes to play with his food before eating it, what if Blue were...but he's not. I saw his body."

"Then I can't imagine what he's doing here," says Skylar. "Really, this is so unlike him, it's not even funny."

I cross the room and gaze out the window, narrowing my eyes as I look through the slats in the blinds. "What if..." I shake my head. It's too easy. "What if it's not your dad, Sky? What if someone's faking it?"

"Who could it..." Her voice trails off. "No. Not Deucalion?"

And I thought vampires weren't blessed with the power of telepathy in any circumstance. Maybe Skylar was more like Hunter than I thought.

"Who's Deucalion?" Parrish, of course, looks like he already regrets asking.

"Oi, oi!" Hunter barges into the room, holding up one hand triumphantly. "Stand aside, mes amis, for I come bearing important evidence!"

As Hunter saunters past me and Skylar and parks himself behind the Sheriff's desk, I turn to Parrish and say, "Let's put a pin in that for now." Back to my werelynx friend, though. "What've you got?"

Hunter taps the space bar on the keyboard, then growls to himself, his feline features springing out for a split second. "Password protected, of course. Boss? Could you let me in here?" He waits until the Sheriff walks in, then slides back in the chair until he can access the desktop and plug in the flash drive he's got in hand.

"Two minutes," says the Sheriff. "No more." He stands aside, watching Hunter work the mouse and keyboard. Probably to make sure he doesn't try and take advantage of his temporary access and flood the station's intranet with porn or something.

"What is it?" Skylar asks.

"Security footage from a gas station down the street from Parrish's place." Hunter clicks it open, and it plays a video of a car driving away just outside the range of the gas station's harsh lights. It's a large, luxurious ride, a nineties-era black BMW with tinted windows.

"He still drives that clockwork rust bucket after all these years," Hunter remarks. "Then again, anything newer is a little too computerized for him. Though I think he could do with such computerization. Cameras to allow him to navigate should he need to drive during the day. Distracting multi-functions just to change the radio station and maximize his chances of causing an accident. That sort of thing." Everyone else, me included, looks at him with concern for his sanity, and I'm not the only one backing away from him subtly. "What?" he asks, recognizing the mild chaos he's served our way.

"If only this thing were equipped with UV or IR or something," I say.

"I'm not sure night vision would help with seeing through tinted glass," Parrish points out. "But...since we can't see who's actually driving, maybe that'll lend some credence to you guys' theory."

"What theory?" asks the Sheriff.

"That Deucalion is involved," I say, even though it's really very premature to speculate about this. Then again, Deucalion hasn't been seen in a while, and I wouldn't be surprised if he were more than ready to strike back after biding so much time.

"What's that you said?" Aiden comes up next, his head looking strangely floaty as it pokes through the door.

"Like you didn't hear me," I say. "Listen, don't go off half-cocked, man. We don't know if he's back, or if he's even...and if you think about it, he probably wouldn't dare work with a vampire-"

"Unless he wanted revenge that badly," Aiden says.

Hunter unplugs the flash drive and backs away from the computer, while the Sheriff comes in and logs off. "Keep an open mind, is what I say. You never know what surprises are in store, and you never know when your theory's on the mark."

Now it's my turn to shudder. "Two bad guys working in tandem. That's what I'm afraid of."