"Everybody out….. NOW!" Marco's voice boomed with power as he left his Alpha form just barely breach the surface while covering his eyes.
The barely awakened people made a break for it like a human stampede with enough brain cells to count on one hand. People broke through the wooden fencing, others climbed it. Somebody rushed through the door until it got clogged.
All the while Marco jumped over the pool and scaled the back of Lydia's home. His claws dug into the layered outer white walls like hooks giving him the grip to spring up onto the top floor window sill.
"What are you doing?" Stiles yelled up to him amidst the chaos as he shrugged off his wet blue jacket.
"I'm tracking. The rest of you sweep the area for Wolfsbane just in case she has any more reserves." Marco elbowed Lydia's window and shattered it before hopping in.
Her room was exactly how he expected it to be. Brain numbingly expressive…. And girly. Pink flower petal curtains hung on the sides of her window, sliding off the leather jacket he wore like wandering pink ghosts.
Her bed was consumed by gigantic quilts that looked to be weighted.
"Sleep walking…" He muttered as he approached her dresser, ignoring the many anti-depressants and anti-psychotics on the countertop.
He rummaged through the drawer pulling out any clothes that had her scent in its most potent form. Preferably an old article of clothing. Something she wore every day. Something close to her sk—
The door slowly creaked open and a man and woman stood in the doorway, looking up at Marco as terror filled them. The woman had red hair….strawberry red as Stiles would put it. And the same green eyes as Lydia. They looked very similar. Equally as scared in the face.
Then, the mother gasped as she looked over to what Marco was carrying….inches from his face.
A bra and panties.
Marco had never wanted to stab himself in the face more than that moment. Instead, he played his role.
"Boo."
"AHHHHHH !!!! CALL THE POLICE!" Lydia's mother screeched as her father shut the door and fought to retain his masculinity.
Marco clutched the underwear and dove out of the window, landing soundlessly back in the grass below before taking off in a blur of dreads and leather.
It had been a long time since he tracked a scent in such a way. For a moment, he was back home. Back in Africa. It was ignorant to simply say Africa— as if the whole of it wasn't a world on its own. But he'd traveled it all. It was all his home in that sense. And as he ran, focusing on her potent perfumes and natural scent that spoke of her prestige natural diet, he was back there.
He was transforming for the first time, feeling the long grass crush beneath his pawed feet. Scaling mountains and rock formations in a rush to keep up with his sisters who were already ripping through poachers. Despite the silence of night, in his core memory he could hear the animals of the wild roaring towards the sun in thanks. Roaring— praying to Ra, Father of Anhur.
He skidded to a stop in the grass, finding that he was facing an abandoned house. It smelled of old fire. Portions missing and broken. The same insignia he found carved into the Vet Clinics door was on the house door.
Derek and Lydia's scent led straight through the door.
For a moment, he worried that the horror Deaton was so worried about had fallen on them. It had to if their markings were present, did it not?
He rushed over to the house, partially transforming to the point of his jacket ripping and falling as shreds.
He stalked the home, listening, smelling, feeling, connecting until he could practically see the interior without ever entering.
There were only two people inside. But there was presence of something more.
Marco leaped over the house walls and landed inside the top floor. Through the broken floor, he could see Lydia, laying beside Derek as she broke away at the floorboards.
His confusion faded the moment the smells of death became more potent than the smells of burned wood. The body was buried deep. And it was no normal body at that. Burned like the wood. A scowl permanent on the man's charred face.
He suddenly knew what she was doing. Alpha Sacrifice.
A Shifters Spark was everything, and an Alpha's was that and then some. It even had the power to revive those recently killed at the right time.
Marco looked up at the Moon.
"Worm Moon…." A time when the spirits of the dead were most potent, rising up to the real world like the worms that did the same.
Marco's oldest sister, used to tell scary stories of cousin Shifters born from Anubis— Shifters like the Wolves of the North, only they lusted over death and the dark arts, growing their packs from cemetery's of the dead to eat children on the Worm Moon.
He never knew what of that story was true— when he looked into his oldest sisters beautiful blue eyes, he believed all of it. Now he could only believe some.
Lydia was no child of Anubis, but she was trying to raise the dead.
Marco dropped down from the top floor. He landed behind Lydia. Not a sound, not even a raised spec of dust.
Lydia moved in a trance, eyes glazed over and tearing up from the dryness. Hands cracked and bleeding as she grabbed Derek's hand and dragged it to the hole.
With his claws extended, she turned his hand over and tried to shove it into the corpses chest— to revive his spark, and thus his life.
Marco caught her hand before it could reach the corpse.
"I need him, Lydia. I need all the Alphas I can get for what's to come…"
Soon after he flicked her head and she woke up in a stunned state, scrambling away from him and screaming.
"Oh no….. no no no….n— NO NO! WHAT DID YOU DO?" Lydia cried and began looking around as if someone was running through the house around them.
Marco picked up Derek, "What do you hear Lydia?"
"He's angry….. oh god he's so angry— he's not human…. He used to be a boy…. WHAT DID YOU DO?!"
"I stopped you from being a slave to the spirit of a dead man. He'll by gone by morning…. Isn't that right?"
The house suddenly shook as a wolf howled in the distance.
Lydia cradled herself and for the first time, he noticed her hair moving as if she were underwater.
It seemed the Full Moon was affecting her as well….