CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE:
SMELLS LIKE CHEMICALS

     WHEN AN ANGERED YELL FELL from Coaches lips, Elaine couldn't help but chuckle, watching as the man angry walked out of his office. Elaine, Scott, and Stiles all exchanged looks with one another before turning their head and watching as Coach entered the room. He pointed at the children. "Mischief night, Devil's night. I don't care what you call it. You little punks are evil." This earned laughs from the class. "You think it's funny every Halloween my house gets egged? A man's house is supposed to be his castle." He slapped a hand on Scott's desk. "Mine's a frickin' omelet."

     Coach then turned towards his desk where a present lay. He picked it up. "Oh, this? We're gonna do this again?" He dropped the present to the ground. "I don't think so." Then he stomped on it, and the sound of glass breaking could be heard. Coach looked at them for a moment before kneeling down to reveal it had been a mug that said '#1 Coach' on it. He sighed when there was a card. He read it out loud. "Happy Birthday. Love, Greenberg."

The day continued on and Elaine's head was pounding. She grimaced, losing her balance and catching herself against the lockers. Her mind was screaming at her and she found herself making her way to the bathroom, stumbling inside as she looked at herself in the mirror before watching the black veins run across her face. She blinked, trying to make them disappear, but they wouldn't leave. She continued to groan, her hands clenched around the sink. Her eyes started glowing purple as she felt her control slip from her grasp. The lights started going on and off and it felt like the whole building was shaking before she allowed a pained scream to leave her lips, cracking the mirrors and causing the lights to go out.

She continued to stand there, the only light being her glowing eyes before the purple suddenly turned pitch black. And then, everything went back. She gasped, looking around in panic, before looking back towards the mirrors that were still cracked. Her phone started ringing, causing her to swallow thickly before going to grab it, only to stop when she saw how violently her hands were shaking. There was one thing Elaine had yet to realize. That night when Scott, Stiles, and Allison had went under the water, she had connected herself to Stiles the same way she had connected herself to Scott that one time. And as whatever happened to Stiles got worse, it happened to Elaine as well. She was infecting herself with darkness without knowing it, and she was on the cliff of losing control.

Time slipped as she stayed in that bathroom, and she didn't realize that all of her friends were looking everywhere for her. But she found herself unable to move. She wanted to scream, and she felt like she was going to shut down at any given moment. She closed her eyes, taking deep breaths before a frown suddenly fell on her face. She looked at the cracked mirror before finding herself grabbing onto her shirt, lifting it up just a little to reveal black veins that were starting to crawl up from her hips. She ran a hand over the veins, wondering if her mind was playing tricks on her. That's when the bathroom door flew open, causing her to quickly drop her shirt and turn her head to look at Lydia.

     "There you are." Lydia sighed, walking towards her. "We've been looking everywhere for you. We thought. . . Barrow had somehow managed to get to you."

     "Barrow?" Elaine frowned.

     "God, how long have you been in here?" Lydia questioned before noticing the cracked mirrors. She looked away from them and looked back towards her best friend. "The cops thought Barrow was here, but now they're leaving and the school is on lock down until 3:00."

     "Oh."

     Lydia frowned as she looked at her. "Laine, is everything alright?"

     "Hm?" Elaine blinked, bringing her focus back in. "Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Just a little headache. That's all." Lydia didn't question it and instead nodded before grabbing Elaine's hand and pulling her out of the bathroom.

     "Oh thank god." Stiles' voice filled her ears, causing Elaine to look up and watching as the boy rushed over to her, immediately checking her over. "Are you alright? I tried calling you several several times, and you didn't answer."

     "Sorry." Elaine mumbled. In the blink of an eye, everyone went separate ways. Scott, Isaac, and the twins were going to use Barrow's hospital gown in hopes of being able to sniff the man out whilst Elaine, Stiles, Allison, and Lydia all went to an empty classroom in hopes of sneaking Allison out so that she could get the Bestiary.

     "The Bestiary is literally 1,000 pages long." Allison told them, pulling up the blinds. "If I'm going to find anything about flies coming out of people's bodies, it could take me all night."

     "And remember, the word in archaic Latin for fly is musca." Lydia quickly told her.

     "Got it." Allison nodded before opening the window and carefully climbing out of it.

     A sigh fell from Elaine's lips before she turned towards Lydia who was looking between her and Stiles. "Where do we start?"

    Stiles thought for a moment before saying, "Upstairs." He looked at the time before realizing how close to three it was. "We gotta go." And they were off. They walked down the halls before entering the art room, with Stiles looking at all of the easel's. Elaine didn't feel like she was actually in her own body. She felt uncomfortable in her own skin, and she didn't like that.

     "Scott and Isaac are in the basement right?" Lydia questioned.

     "Yeah, with Ethan and Aiden. The plan is we meet in the middle, in the boiler room."

     "All of the wolves. . ." Lydia suddenly said. "All of the ones with glowing eyes are in the basement at the boiler room?"

     Stiles rose his eyebrows. "Oh, my god. An engineer could use a boiler room to blow up the whole school."

     "We have to get them out of there."

     "We have to get everyone out." Elaine corrected.

     "How do we do that?" Lydia snapped.

They pulled the fire alarm. Or at least, the two females watched as Stiles did. They watched as all of the students quickly started making their way out of the building, causing Stiles to smile and do a little happy dance whilst Elaine and Lydia watched Coach appear behind the boy with narrowed eyes. He grabbed Stiles by the ear and started to drag him out of the building, quickly reprimanding the boy.

     "Pulling a fire alarm on Mischief night is one thing. Doing it when there is a mass murderer spotted nearby is insane! If I was four years younger I'd punch you!"

     Stiles furrowed his eyebrows. "What? Coach, that doesn't make sense."

     "Oh, well, it does to me." Coach replied before walking away.

     Lydia and Elaine moved to stand by the boy before he suddenly pointed towards one of the benches. "There." They were quick to make their way over there, meeting the others.

     "We didn't find anything." Aiden shook his head.

     "Not even a scent." Scott sighed.

     "It's 3:00, so school's over." Stiles pointed out. "If there was a bomb, wouldn't he have set it off by now?"

     "Does that mean everybody's safe?" Ethan quizzed.

     "I don't know." Lydia truthfully answered. "I just. . . I don't know."

     Elaine sat on her boyfriends bed, wrapping the red string around her fingers as she stared blankly at the floor, remembering what had happened to her in the bathroom. Stiles was stringing up everything that connected to Barrow. "Did you get detention for pulling the alarm?" She asked, though her voice didn't really sound all there.

     "Yep." Stiles sighed. "Every day this week. It's okay, though. We were onto something."

     "Everyone was. Not me." Elaine whispered. "Even though we couldn't find any proof that Barrow was there, Lydia knew that he was. I watched you guys do everything and just stood there like an idiot."

     Stiles looked at his girlfriend for a moment before turning and making his way over to her. "Laney, you've helped out so much. It's okay to give someone else the chance to be helpful." But he had a feeling that wasn't what was bothering her. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and noticed that she was trying to avoid eye contact with him. "Hey, talk to me, El. What wrong?"

She shook her head, watching as Stiles placed a hand over her and removed the string from around her finger that was starting to turn purple from the lack of circulation. A tear hit his hand, causing him to immediately look at her once again. He placed a hand gently under her chin, causing her to look at him, and her eyes were filled with nothing but fear and tears. He frowned.

     "I'm so tired." Elaine admitted, her voice cracking. "I'm so tired, Stiles. My head has been hurting so much, and all I want to do is scream. I want the pain to go away. I want it all to go away. To just stop. Why can't everything just stop?" He didn't say anything but instead allowed for her to place her head on his chest as she cried. He knew that everything that had happened this past year was killing her. She wasn't sleeping much―︎if at all. Her family had been put in danger more times than she could count. And so she cried everything out.

     As he held her, her thought back to everything that had happened before realization suddenly hit him. "We gotta call Lydia. We gotta go to the school."

     "What why?" Elaine asked after calming down.

     "Come on." He held out his hand to her and she looked at him for a moment before forcing herself up off the bed and quickly interlacing her fingers with his as Stiles called Lydia. Elaine couldn't help but feel more relaxed after taking the second to cry everything out. Now, she could get back to the task on hand.

     Elaine, Stiles, and Lydia all entered one of the classrooms, Elaine and Lydia sharing a look with one another and shrugging before watching Stiles. Lydia was the one to ask. "So, what are we looking for?" 

     They entered the closest that was supposed to be locked, which Lydia made a comment about. "Notice anything else?" Stiles asked her.

     "Smells like chemicals." Elaine scrunched her nose up.

     Lydia watched as Stiles started searching the shelves before she had a realization. "They wouldn't have been able to catch his scent." That's when Stiles noticed the glass and blood that was on the floor.

     "He was here." Stiles whispered. "Preforming very minor surgery on himself. Lydia, you were right."

     "Then why don't I feel good about this?" Lydia questioned.

     "Probably because he was here to kill someone." Elaine whispered.

     "But who?" Lydia asked.

     "That's what we gotta figure out." Stiles stood up and exited the closet with Lydia doing the same whilst Elaine continued to stand there. She kneeled down before grabbing a piece of glass that was covered in blood. She looked around before grabbing a plastic bag and quickly placing it inside. She walked out of the closet, just in time to watch as Stiles and Lydia discovered the name Kira written in atomic letters.

     "I need a map." Elaine quickly snapped at them. "I can use this to track where he's going. I need a map of beacon hills." Lydia and Stiles were quick to search for one before Stiles managed to find one and laid it out in front of her. She took out the glass before allowing the blood to drip onto the map. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath before she said the enchantment. "Phasmatos Tribum, Nas Ex Veras, Sequitas Sanguinem."  They watched as the blood moved on the map, before it suddenly stopped.

     The three looked down at the location before looking towards one another. "We gotta find Scott."

When they did indeed find Scott, her brother had been knocked out in front of the Yukimura's household. Stiles was quick to shake the boy awake, and much to Elaine's disappointment, Barrow was nowhere to be found. Scott shot up with a gasp.

     "Barrow, he took Kira." Scott quickly told them.

     "We know. He was after her the whole time. Elaine tracked him here." Stiles explained. Scott stood up and was quick to call Isaac, only to find out they hadn't found anything out in the bestiary. Scott walked back over to the three. "We have to think of something. He's going to kill her."

     "If I had something of his I could do another locator spell." Elaine answered.

     "I knew he was there." Lydia told them. "How did I know that?"

     "Because you heard the flies, right?" Stiles suggested.

     "What do you hear now?" Scott caught on.

     Lydia looked away from them, searching for some kind of noise only to come up empty handed. "Nothing. I feel like I can do this. But I don't know what to do. It's like it's on the top of my tongue, and  I don't know how to trigger it. I just. . . I swear to god, it literally makes me want to scream."

     Stiles looked at the girl for a moment before saying, "Okay then, scream. Lydia, scream." And she did, causing the three to quickly cover their ears. Lydia stood there for a moment before slowly looking up towards the light, causing for them to follow her gaze.

     "It's not flies." She realized, quickly turning towards them making Stiles jump back. "It's electricity."

     "Wait a second, Barrow was an electrical engineer. He worked at a power substation."

     "What substation?" Scott quickly asked.

     Elaine pulled out her phone, quickly to search up anything she could about the man before finding it and pointing her phone towards the three. "That substation."

The group quickly pulled up at the substation. Elaine climbing off her brothers bike whilst Scott looked towards Stiles and nodded his head. Elaine and Scott exchanged looks with one another before nodding and quickly running inside. Elaine followed her brothers lead and they didn't stop till they managed to find the room where Kira was tied up in.

     "Scott! No!" The girl yelled. "Look out."

Elaine watched as her brother was quickly knocked away by Barrow who was holding a cord in his hand that was sparking electricity. He didn't hesitate with Elaine, watching with a laugh as her eyes started to glow purple in anger before he placed the electric part right on her stomach, sending painful shocks all throughout her body before she was thrown across the room, whimpers and pained groans falling from her lips.

She didn't know what happened, but suddenly the place exploded in electricity. Barrow was burned with electricity whilst Kira seemed to be sucking all the electricity up without any harm coming to her. Scott moved his attention away from Kira before quickly making his way over to Elaine, using his wolf eyes to see her in the dark.

     "El." He softly called her name, and all he received was a pained groan in response.