Beacon ⌲ Stiles Stilinski [1] EDITING

thirty three

"Eleanor?" Dad's voice sounded muffled through my closed door, under which I had wedged a large chair for a makeshift barrier. 

I didn't reply.

My father had been trying for a couple of days to get me to come out of my room or to talk to me, but every time he came around I remained silent. I wished he could just believe I had been sleeping for the past 48 hours.

"I know you don't want to talk but you have to eat something," he grumbled.

Yesterday his voice had been more sympathetic, but today his tone revealed he was all business. I figured this was due to the fact that Dad, Gerard, and Allison were rallying up after a day of rest to plan another attack on Derek.

When I had snuck out of my room during a rare moment where everyone was asleep to eat cereal straight from the box, I had noticed maps - with large black crosses marking out the grounds our family's troops had covered and discovered nothing - scattered across every countertop and table in sight. By the looks of it, they had narrowed the location of Derek's lair down to the railway district in the Northwest corner of town.

"There's a sandwich out her for you when you feel like getting out of bed."

Shoving my face deeper into my pillow, I waited until I could hear the sound of my father's boots stomp away down the hall before lifting my head up again and inhaling deeply.

Although I was hungry after laying dormant for so long, I still felt a threatening feeling of nausea whenever I considered eating a full meal. After the severe stress my mind, body, and emotions had been through I could barely even stomach my 2:00am Cheerios.

The wound on the back of my neck had covered itself slightly, but it was definitely still sensitive and red. I decided not to dwell on the question of why I hadn't been affected by the toxin, since I had enough to worry about already.

Locking myself in my room and doing absolutely nothing was my weak attempt to shut out reality. I didn't want to think about the new voices in my head, or Mom's suicide, or the fact that they found Matt's dead body by the time I had woken up yesterday and the fact that I was the one who shot him. Although I knew I had only caught him in the shoulder because that scene seemed to be emblazoned on the back of my eyelids, part of me felt like my bullet had been what killed him - depending on how much blood he had lost from the wound. He was a horrible person and had taken many innocent lives already, frankly deserving his fate, but the possibility was still weighing heavily on my conscience.

On top of everything, I still couldn't shake the overwhelming feeling in my gut that we still hadn't been through the worst. Even though Matt was dead, Jackson was still the kanima; leading me to wonder if he was going to become a lone creature easier for us to save or if more lives were waiting to be taken with a new puppeteer in control.

Since I had locked myself up, Allison hadn't made an effort to talk to me. In fact, I think the night at the Sheriff's station somehow made her even more bloodthirsty for Derek. My sister hadn't closed her blinds or pulled up her covers, she had gotten up early the following morning and assisted Gerard in laying out a game plan. Hearing her voice echo through our empty house calling him 'Grandpa' sent a shiver down my spine. 

Even though I willed myself not to push my friends away like my twin sister had, I wasn't exactly doing an excellent job at breaking out of my habit of isolation. Stiles had sent me multiple texts and a dozen phone calls to ask about how I was doing since the night at the station, especially when I didn't show up to school along with everyone else. However, I could never seem to pick up my phone no matter how hard I told myself I wanted to. 

I simply watched the screen buzz before waiting ten minutes to listen to whatever voicemail was left for me.

In his messages, Stiles told me that his dad was able to pin all of the murders on Matt Daehler, earning his job as the Sheriff back. Matt's motive was apparently that he had drowned when he was a kid at one of the 2006 swim team's pool parties which was what made him claim all of his victims had murdered him first and deserved it somehow.