#wtbheclipse

To be a killer was an innate part of being a werewolf. It was an overpowering instinct that guided every fluid motion, every snarl; every pulsating quavering beating of his heart. It was the instinct that was egging him on. Jackson Whittemore had been scouring much of Beacon Hills for the scarlet-eyed alpha that had made life hell for him. The need for revenge had been bubbling up inside of him since Matt Daehler had used him like his own personal killing machine. Now he was free, unbound by any circumstance or consequence. It was just him and his tormenter, and the capacity to kill and get away with it. He was a killer by nature and with one crushing blow satisfaction would be his. Yet he could not stifle the small undeniable fact that he did not want to be a murderer. His nightmares were tainted with whisperings of his murderous soul, often he’d imagine his ivory skin blemished with the scarlet sanguine of another, and more often times he would be up till four am rubbing his skin raw trying to rid himself of the scarlet blood on his hands. There was blood everywhere on his hands, on his soul, and there was a darkness that surrounded his heart. Nothing would ever take away the fact that these hands had been the one that had taken the lives of nine innocent souls. People would try to make excuses for him. It’s not your fault Jackson they’d say. But it was his fault, because he had sought out the bite. He had made himself a monster out of jealousy and spite.  What did it get him really? The inability to sleep at night, the heightened senses that made it impossible to focus, or the murderous hunters on his trail that made living a normal life nearly impossible. All he had wanted was to be the best player on the team again and to feel special. Instead he felt powerless.

  Finally Jackson found himself at the abandoned mall. He could smell the muskiness of Danny’s cologne and the flowery essence of Lydia’s perfume and he knew the pug had led him to the right place. The winds were billowing, as the night became darker and blacker, the stars disappeared from the sky and the moon became blood red. A small twisted smile appeared at the corner of his lips. He had finally figured out what the eclipse meant. Without moonlight a werewolf was powerless, but in the darkness he’d be the most powerful he’d ever been. Because unlike the alpha before him he knew what it felt to be human. To work for something, to build himself up bit by bit, and to fight as though his heart was going to give out.  “Looks like I’ve got the upper hand here puggy” Jackson said feeling increasingly confident as the sky became darker and darker.

  “Is that so pretty boy?” Aiden mocked his mirth; he looked at Jackson his red eyes running over the young wolf. He had delivered his fair share of pain and brutality, Jackson was bloodied and weak and once the moon disappeared from the sky he wouldn’t be able to heal. This was truly going to be a fight to the death.

  Suddenly he could feel his heartbeat slow down, the warmth leave his body replaced by a cold chill. Soon his every limb was hit with immeasurable pain, pain that eviscerated through him, but he couldn’t give up. Despite himself he let out a whimper of pain to which Aiden laughed mocking him.

  “You were always so weak, no wonder she didn’t want you anymore. No wonder you’re such a pariah. The omega, the weakest link” Aiden said a smirk on his lips as he went to deliver a crushing blow to Jackson’s jaw. The dark haired boy staggered backward, the fury inside of him building up as he did so. But fury wasn’t going to be how he was going to win this. He stepped forward as Aiden delivered a punch to his gut, and Jackson coughed up some blood wiping his mouth as he did so.

  “What pretty boy not going to fight back?” Aiden said as he kicked Jackson down, on the floor kicking his gut once again. Not yet he told himself, not yet he said as he could feel his body slowly start to shut down. Finally he could feel the moon appear in the sky, and he looked up to see Aiden huffing tired from delivering his beating.

“Out of shape are we puggy D I get it living the pug life is difficult” Jackson teased as Aiden got ready to deliver a striking blow to his face. But Jackson was too quick for him, once the moon came back into the sky Jackson retracted his claws and scratched Aiden’s bare abdomen. The blood started to pour out of it immediately. The sight of it perturbed Jackson slightly, but he had to remain focused. As he started to heal he stood up delivering blow by blow to Aiden’s face his rage taking over. Finally Aiden was on the ground barely breathing, his face smashed, a bloody lip, a broken nose, and a gash on his chest that was bleeding profusely. “What the big bad alpha has no tricks up his sleeve?” Jackson asked darkly. Leaning close to him as he grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, his claw tracing the boy’s throbbing adam’s apple.

  “I could kill you now, Aiden. Slash your throat maybe give your decapitated head to your brother, or I could make this gash on your chest a bit deeper rip out your intestines and give Daddy Deucalion an early birthday present.” His claws left the boy’s throat scaling down his back to his spine. “But I’m not going to do that” His claws just under the cervical portion of his spine. “Do you know what a crushing blow to your C1 does Pug boy?” he laughed a cruel laugh that scared even him. “Of course you don’t you’re not the smart one, let me show you” he said as his claws buried into Aiden’s spine ripping out nerves and veins alike. “It paralyzes you from the waist down, see advantages to being in love with a genius you pick up a book or two once in awhile” Jackson got up. “I’m not going to kill you, you’re going to bleed out on your own you may even kill yourself once the pain gets bad enough. You don’t deserve to die a clean death. Not after what you did to Boyd, to me, and what you were going to Lydia and Danny. Remember how you threw me in the woods like trash? The difference between you and me is though. You actually are trash. No one’s coming for you not your brother, not your alpha, and you’re going to die here alone paralyzed” Aiden didn’t speak anymore his eyes closed as his breathing became increasingly heavy and laboring.

  Jackson got up his own breathing raggedy as he looked at his bloodied hand. He wasn’t perturbed anymore at the sight of blood. He was no monster, no killer; he was a creature of the shadows.

  Before the realization sunk in deeper, Jackson heard an outcry in the distance. He ran over to see Scott’s lifeless body on the ground and a shroud of people surrounding it. His fingers reached over on the boy’s neck trying to feel for a pulse incase his ears had betrayed him only to feel that there was none there. He can’t be dead Jackson thought, as his eyes fell on his veins and he suddenly realized what he had to do. Isaac was already one step ahead of him and Jackson grabbed Scott’s forearm his eyes blazing a cold blue as black blood filled his veins. The pain already overpowering him was only exacerbated. A part of him wanted to quit, just give into the pain, just die but instead he pushed on. This had to work. Finally when his own veins felt like they were about to explode his ears filled with the sound of a thunderous heartbeat. He was alive and more so he was an Alpha. Jackson stepped back exhausted, but his rushing mind focused on one point.

  Lydia.

  He gave Scott a nod getting up on his feet staggering slightly as he saw Caleb carry someone out. No he immediately thought, his mind immediately flashing back to the night of the formal a year ago. When he himself had carried Lydia’s near lifeless body. After all this she couldn’t have died. The bleed in his abdomen got progressively worse as he jumped into the Porsche madly rushing to the hospital. His mind working out all the worst case scenarios until he finally pulled up towards the white building screeching to a loud halt in front of the visitor’s entrance.

  Not bothering to park he rushed inside, looking around. “Where is she?” he asked, as doctors scurried towards him ready to bandage him up and heal him. “Where’s Lydia?” he asked as he saw them roll her towards a pair of white swinging doors. Before he could rush after her, an orderly stopped her him. “Sorry son, family only”

This was what had become of the Martin family. There wasn’t anything left after all of the fighting, the departures became inevitable. This was something that could’ve been seen coming if you were one of the members. To the outside world, there were just a few issues that had to be dealt with and would eventually be conquered. This though, was not one of those things that could have been conquered. How could it even be forgotten? One day you wake up to a complete family: mother, father, older sister, and a younger one. Then, in the blink of an eye one of them is missing. Lost forever without a warning. Disappearances are like that though; no one knows when they’re happening, there isn’t exactly some sort of warning.

When Paige first disappeared, Caleb didn’t have much understanding over that. How did someone just disappear? The boy wondered that for a long time and he had no idea what to say whenever little Lydia was around for conversations about it. The look of confusion on her face and the sadness over the fact that their sister was missing broke him. He didn’t even know what it meant to be broken over something like that because at the end of the day, he was sure that it was all just a bad dream that he would wake up from. That wasn’t happening though and each day that passed only made things much more difficult until one day it seemed as if the search for his missing sister stopped. Somewhere between that there had been a lot of arguing and yelling between his parents; things he tried to ignore by burying himself in books, distracting himself outside with his friends, making sure that Lydia wasn’t spending too much time out with the Whittemore kid and Danny when she should have been doing her homework- all of the things that an older brother should have been doing for his little sister.

Caleb tried to keep a lot of things normal for himself but mostly for Lydia. She was so young when they lost Paige and it he didn’t want her confusion over that to haunt her. Luckily, things seemed to be going somewhat smoothly as they got older. That didn’t mean that Paige had been forgotten though. There wasn’t a day when Caleb didn’t think about her and he was sure that it was the same for Lydia as it was for their parents. There were days when he’d actually forget though, not purposely but it would happen. Once he’d realize that he hadn’t thought about his older sister for an entire day, a wave of guilt would come crashing down on him in a way that it made it painful to even think about the girl. Pain was something that was becoming a constant inside for him and it didn’t help that James and Elizabeth couldn’t seem to go more than a day without arguing.

At first, Caleb didn’t mind it as much because they had the decency to do it behind the closed doors of their own bedroom where it wasn’t easy for either Lydia or Caleb to hear the things that they said to each other. For a bit Caleb thought that maybe they were trying to hide the fact that they argued so much because there was a good chance that they would put their differences aside and carry on with trying to give their kids the family they deserved. The boy had been so very stupid to even think that. The worst part wasn’t that he thought that though, the worst was having told his little sister that things would be fixed. The more time that passed, the worse things got. That only broke their home apart even more; it was broken beyond repair. Now, not only was he disappointed in his parents for doing this to him and Lydia but he was disappointed in himself for having gotten his sister’s hopes up. All of this was the outcome of having lost Paige. After years it had completely exited his mind that the girl was even alive and even if she was, there wasn’t any chance of the family ever being what it once was. Not that Caleb minded too much now though. Since he came back to Beacon Hills, things had changed and the little girl he had left behind, the one he wished he hadn’t abandoned wasn’t the same anymore. Both James and Elizabeth were the same; bitter, angry, and impossible to live with. Their absence was something that Caleb saw as a good thing. They weren’t what mattered though. Lydia was the one who mattered; she was the reason for his return. Upon his return he realized that the little girl had become a woman. He had missed this transition. She was still young but now it was more than obvious that she had been through more than he had initially imagined – she was stronger, smarter. He was lucky to have been given a chance to come back into her life. She was the only person he considered family aside from his estranged sister Paige, the one that he didn’t think he’d ever be seeing again. Until now…

It’s Paige Martin…

She’s the Darach.

The moment he read those two lines, everything stopped. The world stopped spinning, his blood stopped flowing, his mind stopped thinking and his heart dropped right before it stopped as well. At least that’s what it felt like when he read the six words that were a part of the text from Jackson. How could it be Paige? No one had seen or heard from her in years and now she was back, doing something that could potentially bring death to everyone in Beacon Hills.

Instead of sitting around asking himself these questions he quickly made his way to the Distillery, thinking that it would be the place to find her. Caleb needed to see her for himself since a part of him was in complete denial over it. So, he ignored the tired and weak feeling he had after having been held captive by his sister. As he drove, he kept his eyes on the road ahead but wasn’t really thinking about it. His mind was still on Paige and what her reasons for doing all of this were and that was when it clicked. She let him go. He was one of the three people that she had selected to sacrifice but she let him go. That could only mean one thing; there was still someone in there that cared and maybe, just maybe there was a way to stop her from carrying on with whatever she had planned. Hopefully it wasn’t too late. Caleb didn’t have much time and there could be a lot on the line if his timing was off and he failed to make it there before seeing her.

If he was right, if there really was someone inside that mind, maybe he and Lydia would be the ones to stop her from causing any more damage to people. If Jennifer and Lisa were okay then that would also help give him more hope for the mission he was now set on going through with. He didn’t know much about this Paige, she was obviously not the same girl that he remembered. The old Paige wasn’t going around collecting people for sacrifices. She was an intelligent, talented, and poised young woman with ambitions that could’ve helped her take the world by storm. Lydia sort of reminded him of Paige when it came to that except something in Lydia was different. Lydia was on a completely different level of determination. All three of them were like that for their own separate reasons.

Upon arrival he came to find that the place had been abandoned but being there again made some of the memories of what had happened fade back into his mind. Still, this wasn’t all a good thing and just being in that location again made his fatigue from the experience rush through him again. Taking a few steps back he looked around for signs of anything that could help him but there was nothing. Turning around quickly, an odd feeling came over him causing an inexplicable pain in his head throb harshly. He closed his eyes and grabbed his head trying to will it to stop and just then there was a vibration in his pocket. “Stop,” he growled as if saying it would make the pain go away as he reached into his pocket for his phone which he had somehow found in his possession when he had returned home. It was a text from Lydia telling him where she was and that Paige was also there.

Once back inside his car he sat inside for a moment without doing anything, only trying to get the pain to completely go away as he inhaled and exhaled deeply. The doctor he had seen after he had been found and regained consciousness had warned him about this. The lack of sleep, food, and whatever it was that had made him go unconscious would have a big effect on him if he didn’t rest. Resting wasn’t something he had the luxury of doing now though, ever since he had returned his time had been spent worrying, racking his mind to try to remember, and going through with no sleep because of the thoughts that invaded his mind. Not too long passed before the rest of the pain was dealt with by just ignoring it before he was on his way to the abandoned mall. Caleb had no time to stop and worry over himself when he wasn’t even sure what the hell was going on with both of his sisters.

After knowing about the things that Paige was doing, it was almost sick for him to even think of her as his sister. Most people would have been sick to regard someone as anything other than a monster if they had been going around killing people like Paige had been doing. Caleb had come to see a lot of things in the past year though, things that he was sure didn’t even exist, that he actually thought that considering her anything other than his sister would be wrong. She did, after all, release him and in a way it was something that he owed her. For all he knew this was something that Paige didn’t want. She could have had a great life but she was dealt a bad hand of cards to play the game of life with.

The drive to the old abandoned mall seemed to be taking a lot longer than it really was. It was as if every single force on earth was holding and pulling him back like the ocean’s tides did when it was at its strongest and fiercest points. It didn’t help that he would look at the time displayed on the car’s dashboard every two seconds which made it seem as if the minutes were passing by in the length of hours. It was all in his head though and the more he thought about all these things the worse it became. He had to clear his mind and just focus on getting to his destination. Lydia and Paige needed him now and time was of the essence. He navigated each street with ease once he was able to block out most things from his mind and pulled up to the place after what had felt like forever. Turning the car off he made his way out of it, shoving the keys into his pockets and hurried towards the first available entrance to the place that he saw. Caleb didn’t know what to expect and he wasn’t about to stop and think about that. Whatever he came upon had to was just something he was going to have to deal with one way or another. Not knowing the exact location, seeing as the place was huge; he followed the first sounds of anything that he heard. The place was abandoned and chances were that Paige, Lydia, and a few others were the only ones there and they would most likely be together.

His speed increased quickly as the sounds he was hearing became louder and louder. Walking to running within short seconds, he found himself coming onto a scene that he wouldn’t have figured he’d ever seen. Paige was really there, alive or so she seemed to be, and she was fighting who Caleb assumed was Deucalion. He had heard the name a few times and whenever he was mentioned, whoever said it either had fear in their eyes or were just worried. Before he could make his presence known he had to decide if it was even something he should have been considering and the answer to that came to him quickly. Before he could act though he realized there was no Lydia. He frantically looked around for his sister hoping to see her, his heart racing faster and faster when he didn’t see her until his search for her stopped. His breath caught in his throat as he kept his eyes on the young woman who wasn’t standing or even had her eyes open. “No,” he thought and ran to her not caring if he was noticed by either of the two figures who were caught up in their altercation.

“Lydia!” he said as he fell to his knees besides her and picked her up while still on his knees. Bringing a hand up to her face, he moved her hair out of the way, and shook her carefully hoping that she would open her eyes. “Lydia,” he said again and again, his voice cracking when she remained motionless and unconscious in his arms. “Please, wake up.” By that point everything around him except for her became blurred as if it were all a million miles away, “don’t do this to me.” Setting her back down to lay on the floor he tried to find a heartbeat as he placed his index and middle finger on the pulse point of her neck. At first he felt nothing but his nerves were getting the better of him making it hard for him to feel anything but long moments later he felt it. Her heart was still beating, she was alive. Before he could pick her up again to get her out he heard someone calling his name; a voice he hadn’t heard in over twelve years.

“Caleb,” he heard being called out. Slowly, he rose to his feet again and turned around to find Paige looking directly at him. He didn’t know what to say and didn’t know if she even expected him to say anything to her. Even if he had the words though, he felt his mouth run completely dry making it impossible for him to even be able to say anything. “You need to leave,” she said to him as he remained motionless. “Yes, you need to leave. We wouldn’t want you to see the death of your beloved sister now would we?” Deucalion said mockingly as he stood several feet away from Paige but seemed more than ready to continue their fight. “You lost her once, losing her again and actually watching it happen would be very painful for you,” he snarled with a wide grin on his face. “Don’t talk to him!” Paige yelled, turning back to look at Deucalion. “Say another word and I’ll kill you now,” she warned the older man.

Looking between them, Caleb took a step forward and called out Paige’s name to get her attention. “Paige,” he said with uncertainty in his voice as if he were asking if it were really her. “Why are you doing this? You have to stop.” She only looked at him with a blank expression as if she didn’t even hear him speaking to her, almost as if she were staring at a wall. “You – you’re better than this,” he continued as he took yet another step forward, slowly extending his hand out in front of him towards her. “Please, if you care… If there’s any remote chance that you can let it all go. Do it for –” he stopped before he could finish, turning his head to look at Lydia over his shoulder. “Do it for her. Not me, not yourself or anyone else but for Lydia.” At his words, her expression softened and looked at Lydia as well then back to Caleb. “I’m sorry,” Caleb heard Paige whisper, not knowing if it meant that she was sorry for everything that had happened or if she was sorry that his words weren’t enough to make her stop.

“How touching,” Deucalion spoke again breaking the small silence that had fallen around them which was when Caleb felt something change. He didn’t know what it was or where it was coming from until it all began to play out in front of him. Within what seemed like mere seconds, Paige had her back turned to Caleb again and was lunging herself towards Deucalion who awaited her attack with ready claws. One attack, two attacks, three – the speed at which it all happens is almost too fast for his eyes to keep up with let alone process in his mind.  As he watched his mind went back to everything that had happened during the past few weeks and the people that had been affected by all of this. It wasn’t just him, Lisa, and Jennifer. It was obviously Lydia as well although it didn’t stop there. He was sure that tonight, more people had been involved in something that could have possibly ended in a bloodbath for them. Jackson, Danny, Erica, Isaac, McCall, Stilinski, Allison, Violet… There wasn’t anything that he could do for them now though, all that there was left was hope that they were okay and out of harm’s way but that wasn’t something he could easily convince himself of.

All of a sudden, he was back in present time, it was over. He closed his eye for a split second and when he opened them again Deucalion was no longer standing and then… Paige followed. One lifeless with their throat ripped out, and the other out of their own sacrifice. Caleb stood watching as both bodies collapsed onto the floor. Stepping towards them he kept his eyes on his sister. She had done it, it was all over and she had given herself up in the process. He had lost her again but this time it hadn’t been in vain and he knew it. The Paige he once knew had come for a few final moments to do what she had to for her family. “Thank you,” he said quietly before tearing his gaze away from Paige and back to Lydia. He picked up the young woman and quickly carried her out of the place and to his car. He had to get her to the hospital even if it was the last thing he did.