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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄

𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘰𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦

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Meilani stood in Derek's loft with Derek, Lydia, and Parrish as Derek checked over Parrish's flawless arms and hands. She had been called to rush over to the loft after Parrish showed up at the sheriff's station caked in dark ash and beat a deputy nearly to death because he had tried to set Parrish on fire. The deputy had gotten a hold of the dead pool and saw Parrish was worth five million, instantly setting his eyes on him to get whatever money The Benefactor would send him. Noah had been shot in the crossfire of the attack and Stiles took him to Beacon Hills Memorial to get checked out and make sure he was okay.

The pack still didn't know what Parrish was supernatural wise, but he hadn't posed a threat to them yet. If anything, he's been more than helpful since he'd arrived and Meilani was hoping they could be allies once they all figured out what was going on with him. She could really use more people on her side right now with The Benefactor still being at large. The Benefactor who Lydia wanted to believe was her grandmother who she and Stiles believed faked her death. While Lydia was at the boat house during the quarantine, she had found out the ashes in her grandmother's urn was actually mountain ash and that the boat house had been made out of ash wood. Only leading Lydia to believe that her grandmother knew of the supernatural and either was The Benefactor or that she was at least helping him.

"He covered you in gasoline?" Derek asked Parrish, flipping his hands this way and that to check them over.

"It's the hair and nails, isn't it? The parts of the body that are essentially dead," Lydia spoke up, motioning to Parrish who dropped his hands back to his sides once Derek released them.

"I was set on fire. All of me should be gone," Parrish retorted, pressing a hand to his chest as he still looked shaken up over the whole thing. Something that Meilani didn't blame him for because Parrish didn't appear to realize he was anything supernatural so his mind probably raced over any possibility for how he survived. No normal human would have survived that.

Meilani lifted a shoulder in a half shrug and stuffed her hands into her back pockets, rocking back on her heels. "Well, not if he's like us."

Parrish's eyebrows furrowed as his green eyes flickered over to Meilani in confusion. "Like you?"

"I don't think he's like us," Derek denied, shaking his head.

"Then what is he?"

"Sorry, but I have no idea."

"Derek, you knew about Jackson and Kira. What's so different about this?" Meilani inquired, dropping her arms back to her side in defeat.

Derek let out a small laugh and scratched the back of his neck. "Well, this is a little out of my experience. There might be something in the beastiary. Did you try Argent?"

Meilani grimaced slightly since she hadn't seen Chris at all and the last time Stiles and Isaac had seen him, he'd been fighting Kate off. She had come to try and collect Meilani's "dead" body to claim the twenty-five million it would have brought, but no sign of The Benefactor had showed up. She just figured that Chris had gone off to deal with Kate and she didn't want to bother him. "I have no idea where he is."

"Okay, hold on," Parrish cut in, waving his hands to stop everyone from talking. He only looked even more confused than he did a second ago. "What's a beastiary? Actually, that's not even my first question. Just . . . Just tell me one thing. Are all of you like Lydia? Are you all psychic?"

Meilani's lips tugged up into a small, amused smile at the fact that Parrish thought Lydia was a psychic. She guessed that Banshee really wasn't too far off from one since she knew someone was about to die, but it was still funny to think about. "Um, not exactly."

"Uh, okay. Then what are you?"

Meilani glanced over to Derek to silently ask if he thought it was a good idea, but Derek merely shrugged. Parrish knew about the supernatural now ━ to some degree, at least ━ so it wouldn't do any harm to show Parrish what they were so he could feel more comfortable around them. She fluttered her eyes shut and turned to face Parrish again, slowly opening her eyes again to reveal her red alpha eyes. 

Once Parrish had gotten over his shock at seeing Meilani's eyes go from a normal human color to a bright red of an animal, Derek, Meilani, Lydia jumped right into easing Parrish into all of the supernatural creatures that surrounded them at the moment. From werewolves, to Berserkers, to banshees, to kanimas. Parrish had sat and listened intently the whole time and didn't speak once, letting the trio get through all the things they needed and decided to wait until the end to ask any of his questions. It was a lot for someone to take in, especially now that they were already a couple years into this whole thing, but Meilani knew it was best if Parrish was prepared. 

Especially if he was a supernatural being himself.

"Wait, so what's a Kanima?" Parrish asked once the room had gone silent, looking like he was two seconds away from having his head explode from all the new information. 

"We'll get back to that," Meilani promised, walking over to the couch that Parrish sat on and perched herself up on the arm on the couch. "Just know that everyone like us, everyone with some kind of supernatural ability, is on the dead pool."

"But I don't even know what I am!" Parrish exclaimed, sounding incredibly frustrated over the whole thing. A feeling that Meilani could smell heavily in the air around Parrish as he tried to work through everything being thrown at him.

"I'm pretty sure they don't care," Derek quipped.

Parrish puffed out his cheeks and ran his hands over his face tiredly, dropping them so they dangled over his knees and looked over to Derek. "How many professional assassins are we talking about?"

"We're starting to lose count," Lydia answered.

"Is is it still just professional assassins? It's starting to feel like anyone can their hands on this list now," Meilani noted, a frown forming on her face. It was really starting to get harder and harder to figure out how to save everyone on this list. Parrish almost just bit the bullet himself if he hadn't somehow survived the fire that was set to the police cruiser.

"I don't think Haigh's ever tried anything like this. I think he was taking a chance."

Derek crossed his arms and leant back against the wooden pillar behind him. "That means anyone with the dead pool could take a chance."

"But if Haigh had it, then who else does? How easy is it to get this thing now?"

"We don't know, but we can start with what we do know. Lydia, you said you thought your grandmother knew Meredith and that she might be apart of the dead pool lists. Why?" Derek asked, turning to the banshee who had stood to the side near Derek's bed that replaced the table by the massive window. 

"Meredith was only at my grandmother's lake house ounce, but . . . I think once was enough. My grandmother didn't even know her. She found her because of another woman named Maddy. The woman she loved," Lydia responded, taking a small picture out of her bag and walking over to Meilani to hand it to her. It was a photo of a strawberry blonde that looked like Lydia and a pretty brunette as they sat together on a couch. "I never met her, but I saw her name everywhere. She used to be part of a yacht racing team. There were plaques and trophies in the lake house from all the regatas she won."

"How did she die?"

Lydia hummed and turned to walk back over to where stuff was. "How isn't the story. It's what happened right before. My grandmother, Lorraine, used to work in San Francisco for IBM. She was there on a weekend, catching up on work. She started hearing this sound . . . like rain. When she looked out the windows . . . all she saw was blue sky."

Meilani sat up straighter on the arm of the couch she'd been perched on and clutched onto the photo in her hand. "But she kept hearing the rain?"

"And it just kept getting louder and louder. Rain and thunder cracking like gunshots in her head. So loud. She finally just screamed, like a banshee. She called Maddy who was planning on taking one of the boats out on the lake. Maddy said that the sun was shining there, too. So Lorraine didn't say anything. It took them four days to find Maddy's body. Then it took decades to figure out how Lorraine knew. She started with parapsychologists, like the PhD in their name made it more scientific. They built the study in the lake house according to every pseudoscientific theory they could find. None of it worked," Lydia said, her voice barely above a whisper as she retold the story she'd found out about Lorraine.

It was a lot of information to take in and the way Lydia took a deep breath, Meilani knew the strawberry blonde wasn't even done yet with her story. That only sent a cold chill down her spine at the thought of what else the woman could have done.

"So then she started going to more extreme occult. Things like mediums and psychics. All of them were failures until she found Meredith. They found her in Eichen House. This fragile girl who didn't understand the things she heard. They brought her to the study and they almost killed her. She was hospitalized for over a year. She . . . " Lydia trailed off, sniffling quietly and not so subtly swiping her finger underneath her eyes where some tears spilled out. " . . . never really recovered. My grandmother drove her insane and I drove her to suicide. All she ever wanted to do was help."

Lydia exhaled heavily and dug around in her bag again for a sheet of paper and walked over to the table in the middle of the loft, the other three following after her. She unfolded the sheet of paper and revealed a bunch of coded numbers, letters and symbols to the others. "My grandmother created the code for the dead pool. They think she's the Banshee who put the names out in the first place. She left me this message in the same code."

Meilani reached out to pull the paper closer to her and Derek who stood next to each other and scanned her eyes over the randomly placed items in the middle of the page. "She didn't leave you a cipher key, did she?"

"No . . . "

"You need to go to Stiles."

After Lydia promised to call Meilani when she got to Stiles' and Parrish left to go to his house and try to sleep, Meilani stayed back at Derek's for a few minutes. She noticed a leather jacket and a silver handgun on Derek's bed. She rose an eyebrow as she picked up the gun and inspected it closely, wondering why in the hell Derek would want one.

"Careful with that. Your boyfriend and twin will kill me if they found out you accidentally shot yourself on my watch," Derek mused, walking over to Meilani after he had walked out Parrish and Lydia.

"I'll heal," Meilani laughed lightly and handed the gun back to Derek when he held his hand out for it. "I thought you didn't like guns, Der. Does it have anything to do with your eyes not changing anymore?"

"My eyes, my strength, the healing . . . all of it. Gone. Whatever Kate did to me, it's still happening," Derek admitted, avoiding Meilani's eyes as he placed the gun back safely on the bed.

Meilani chewed on the inside of her lip as she tugged on the ends of her purple zip-up hoodie sleeves with it being a chillier night than usual. She wasn't sure if it was the weather that constantly made her feel like she was going through a cold chill or if it was all the haunting information that kept coming to light. Or maybe it was both. "Hey, Der? If the dead pool really was made by a Banshee, then there's something else that you should know about. Your name broke the third list. It was a cipher key. The other two keys were Allison and Aiden. I don't want to make you nervous, but it kind of feels like there might be a patter there, doesn't it? Allison, Aiden . . . you."

Derek shrugged not knowing what else he could do since his name was already out there. "It was picked by a Banshee."

"No, Derek! It could mean you're in danger."

"Meilani, Banshees don't predict danger. They predict death."

The next day rolled around and Meilani felt like she was having some weird out of body experience. She was physically there, but her mind was everywhere but where she was. Between Noah being stuck in the hospital because he had to get surgery and Stiles crying on the phone because he was so worried about his father and the debt that will grow even higher now that the was getting surgery. Then there was the possibility of Derek dying because his name was being used for a cipher key. Then the gym bag filled with money burning a hole beneath Meilani's bed.

It was a lot and it didn't help when Meilani was called into a meeting in the locker room with the boys to talk about the lacrosse team bonfire happening later that night. A bunch of other teams would be showing up and drunken Beacon Hills students will be stumbling around. However, Meilani barely focused on the words that came out of Finstock's mouth as she noticed the fidgety nature of her beta just feet away. The smell of anxiety could be smelt off him as if he had suddenly swapped places with Stiles. She knew she needed to talk to him and make sure he was okay after the other night.

Once Finstock had released the team to go back to their school day, Meilani told Isaac and Scott she'd meet them in the library where they planned to spend their free period after she spoke to Liam. Isaac offered to take Meilani's bag to their table for her and she handed off her bag to Isaac before she jogged off in the direction she noticed Liam rush off in after Finstock dismissed them. She found him sat alone in one of the back hallway stairs, fiddling with the netting on his lacrosse stick. She approached him and sat on the stair above his, startling the freshman boy slightly.

"Hey, bud," Meilani greeted quietly, not wanting to disturb the classes currently going on in the classrooms nearby. "Are you okay? Don't try lying to me either. I can hear your heart beat."

Liam sighed, knowing fully well that he couldn't lie to his alpha and laid his lacrosse stick down in his lap. "Last night, my printer went off by itself. I couldn't turn it off. I hit the cancel button, but it just kept printing." He dug in his back pocket for a folded up piece of paper and handed it off to Meilani with a frown. "Here."

Meilani took the sheet from Liam and unfolded it to see it was one of the dead pool list's with a name missing. Derek's. Almost like he'd already been killed off.

"What the hell is this?!" Finstock's voice boomed from his office that was the closest room to their staircase Liam and Meilani sat in.

Meilani and Liam both leapt off the steps and rushed over to Finstock's office to see him stood before his printer with a mass of printed out sheets of paper lying on the ground around his feet like a new flooring. His printed continued to shoot out sheets of paper like it was a baseball shooter that the players used to work on their swings and Meilani bent down to pick up the same list that Liam had just handed to her just seconds before.

Liam grabbed onto Meilani's arms and hauled her away from Finstock's door before he could see them, crossing his own arms once they were a few feet away from the door. "You see the difference?"

"Derek's not on the list anymore," Meilani whispered, staring down at the list wide eyed and is it appeared to be a fully updated list.

"Yeah, and I'm not worth three million anymore. I'm worth eighteen million now," Liam said, pointing to his name that now had 18 next to his name instead of 3. 

Just great.

Later that night, Meilani would have wanted to be anywhere else but the lacrosse team bonfire. She had been dressed in her lacrosse jersey with the number twelve on the back, blue jeans and her maroon sneakers with her in its natural curly look down her back. Finstock was counting on her to make sure the boys didn't do anything stupid during this bonfire so she had to keep her word to him that she'd watch over them. So far, the boys seemed to be doing okay and just danced to the bumping rave music that blasted from the DJ that sat on a stage in the courtyard of the high school. Her and Isaac were the only ones who showed up since Kira wasn't around and Scott had gone with Stiles and Lydia to try and crack the code Lorraine left for Lydia on the dead pool.

As Meilani made her way through the crowd of teens with Isaac by her side, she noticed Malia in an area that didn't have as many kids. She smiled at the sight of the werecoyote and tugged Isaac in the direction the girl, their hands burning hotly at the other's touch. A feeling that the two were slowly starting to get used to now and wasn't as intense as it used to be. The duo stopped before Malia who danced to the beat and held a flask in her hand as her body moved freely.

"Malia, what are you doing here? I didn't expect you to come," Meilani greeted, hoping that they were truly good now. Especially now that Malia actually talked to Peter face to face and that Malia had showed up to Stiles' to tell them how Malia's adopted mother died. That she felt guilty because she'd told her mom that she wished that she'd die in a fight they had just before they got in the car. 

"Getting drunk. What are you doing?" Malia responded, not stopping her dancing to the music.

"Trying to make sure no one gets hurt," Meilani said, eyeing Malia as she continued to drink the alcohol as if it'd do anything to her. Alcohol didn't necessarily stick well when it came to their kind. "Mal, I really don't want to ruin your night, but you know we can't get drunk, right?"

Malia's dancing paused for a brief second as she stared at Meilani with a confused glance. "What?"

"I think it has something to do with our healing. Trust me, I've tried that when I first turned and was fighting with Scott. You won't feel anything."

"Maybe you should tell him that," Malia told Meilani, pointing over her shoulder to Liam who sat on the picnic table with Mason and two other people as he poured some alcohol into his soda bottle.

Meilani groaned at the sight of her beta doing something stupid and Isaac brushed past Meilani, mumbling he'd watch over "the child" so the girls could talk. She offered Isaac an appreciative smile before she turned back to Malia who looked like she didn't want to be bothered. "Malia, can we at least talk?"

"No. I want to dance," Malia remarked, clearly not okay with Meilani like the girl had been hoping. She really needed to hold out an olive branch to Malia.

"We had our reasons for not telling you, Mal. We didn't tell you about Peter . . . "

"To protect me," Malia cut Meilani off and rolled her eyes, bringing the flask up to her mouth again. "Yeah, Peter said you'd say that. Guess what he said next? That you were right. Does that surprise you?"

Meilani scoffed softly at the thought of Peter saying that she was right in way, shape or form. Usually that was Peter's code for him wanting something and usually from her. Not that Meilani had anything to give him that he'd want. "Just makes me wonder what he wants. Malia, we need to stay together. You, me, the pack . . . "

"I don't wanna talk about the pack!" Malia yelled, cutting Meilani off effectively once again. "I just wanna dance, okay? Get drunk."

Meilani's eyes widened when Malia suddenly stumbled and she caught the girl who began to giggle at the sudden lightness to her. She scanned over Malia's form and realized that Malia really was drunk. "Are you . . . are you drunk right now? But that's impossible."

Not wasting a second, Meilani looked over to where Liam, Mason and Isaac were and noticed her beta stumbling around before Isaac caught him much like she had just done with Malia. Isaac's confused gaze met with Meilani's and he sent her a silent question about what the hell was going on. 

"Is that was drunk feels like?" Malia asked, sounding sick and snapping Meilani's attention back to her. "It doesn't feel as good as I hoped."

"I don't think it's supposed to," Meilani answered and took the flask from Malia, sniffing the bitter liquid and coughing lightly. That definitely did not sit right with Meilani. "Uh . . . Malia, what did you have to drink?"

"Just vodka."

Meilani gripped the flask tightly in her hand when she noticed one of the school security guards stationed not too far away near a bunch of the dancing students. Not good. "Okay . . . Malia, stay on your feet and keep moving." She wrapped Malia's arm around her neck and began to move in the direction of a tree that would hide the duo perfectly until she could sober Malia up, jerking her head for Isaac to bring Liam over. She grabbed a water bottle from the cooler she passed by and propped Malia up against the tree to hide her. "Here, drink this."

Once Malia had taken the drink and was safely sat against the tree, Meilani rushed around to Liam was in the same predicament nearby and frowned at the sight of her swaying beta. She knelt down in front of him and cupped his face, twisting his head this way and that to see the drunken glaze take over Liam's usually bright blue eyes. "Mase, how much did Liam have to drink?"

"Not enough to get him like this, that's for sure. Is he gonna be okay?"

Meilani poked her tongue into her cheek and gently dropped her hands from Liam's face, getting back to her feet so she was stood between Mason and Isaac. "Boys, we need to get them out of here. I think something is happening. I think we're gonna have to, um . . ." She trailed off as she stumbled back into Isaac's side, her vision twisting and turning as if she had drank a whole body of alcohol on her own. 

Isaac appeared to be getting the same way as he brought his own hand up to his face to inspect it as his own vision went in and out. He dropped next to Liam as he blinked his eyes slowly as if that would right whatever had been done to him, Malia, Meilani and Liam. Meilani placed her hands on her knees as she tried to stop the room from spinning and tried to figure out how the hell she and Isaac were affected when they didn't drink or eat anything since they'd arrived. It had to be something else, but what?

"Meilani, how much did you drink?" Mason questioned, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder as he noticed both her and Isaac quickly become subdued to the "alcohol".

"Nothing. I didn't even eat anything," Meilani gasped out, trying to scan the area around her but it was all so blurry and distorted. She could see blobby shapes of the teens dancing at the DJ booth nearby and the burning flames of the bonfire that had been lit a bit ago. Her eyes fell on the DJ booth itself as her eyes righted itself for the briefest second. It's high pitched and loud volume only seemed to raise by the second and Meilani could practically hear a ringing in her ear as she looked at it. "It's not the drinks! It's the music. I have to . . . I have to turn off the music. Don't let these three out of your sight, Mase. You hear me?"

Mason tilted his head at Meilani in minor confusion but he nodded anyway. He didn't even have a chance to say anything before Meilani was stumbling away like she was drunk. She could barely walk a straight line and her eyes continued to distort and blur as she pushed her way through the crowd of dancing teens in the makeshift dance floor beneath the stage the DJ booth sat on, it's flashing blue, green and purple lights blinding Meilani even further. 

Once Meilani was half way through the crowd, her eyes met with the DJ's and he smirked at her in a knowing type of way. Like he knew exactly who Meilani was even though she'd never met him in her life and he raised the tempo on the music, pounding it through Meilani's skull and sending her crashing to her knees. She could feel herself become weaker from the sound and she tried to get back to her feet, but was stopped when two sets of hands were under her armpits and lifting her off the ground. 

"Wait . . . no . . . stop . . . " Meilani trailed off, not having the energy to fight off the posed security guards that hauled her away. She was brought into the high school and dropped to the ground against the lockers, her friends all passed out near her legs. Her eyes landed on a gasoline jug gripped in the bald man's hand that stood above her with a dark smirk. "What is that? What are you doing?"

"It's gasoline. Haigh says we gotta burn you," the bald man taunted, ripping off the cap from the red jug and dumping the gasoline all over Meilani, Isaac, Malia and Liam. 

Meilani choked as some of the gasoline got in her mouth and she had to fight off the bile that suddenly jerked up at the foul taste. She tried to push herself up and fight her and her three passed out best friends, but the bald man pushed her back down onto her ass. He waved the silver lighter in her face mockingly as he flipped the lid open, flicking on the mini fire. 

However, it was like a switch had gone off as the thumping music outside was cut off instantly. Meilani's eyes shifted immediately back into focus and her red alpha eyes glowed brightly back at the now nervous bald man before her. She gripped onto the man's hands when he was distracted for a second by the lack of music, flicking the lid on the lighter back over. Without much of a warning, Meilani snapped the bald man's wrist which caused him to groan and drop the lighter. 

Three other "security guards" came running down the hallway, but before the could make it to Meilani, Malia, Isaac and Liam, Derek jumped out of the staircase to the side and attacked the three new threats effortlessly. Even without his top strength, Derek was able to overpower the three guards and Braeden rushed out of nowhere, snatching a gun that one of the guards had out of his hands before he could use it. 

Meilani breathed out a laugh as she watched Derek approach her. "What happened to your silver gun friend?"

Derek tutted and squatted down so he was eye level with Meilani and sent her a shit eating grin. "Has anyone ever told you that you look really pretty drenched in gasoline?"

"Fuck off, Der," Meilani huffed, accepting the hand that Derek held out to her to help her back to her feet. She watched as Derek helped Isaac, Malia and Liam back up, leaning back against the lockers to catch her breath that was coming back, thankfully. "Thanks for saving our asses."

"Don't I always?"

AUTHORS NOTE

Hi hey hello

Welp, sorry this chapter was lowkey boring in some bits, but these final THREE chapters will be, wild. We will see The Benefactor real soon and I'm so ready for all the crazy that's about to happen! 

Also, I really don't remember if I gave Meilani a number ( i don't think i did because i didn't see it when i quickly scrolled through the other books ), so yes her number is 12. If you guys see the number in the other books that I might have missed, let me know and I'll swap it! But I don't think I ever actually said her number which is sad.