SUCCUMB

CHAPTER XVIII - ALLISON

"The number you are calling is either unavailable or out of coverage area. Please try again later."

Allison's been hearing that robotic, automated voice for the last three hours and a small inkling of worry started to blossom deep inside her chest as her fingers tapped on the screen at Lydia's profile, the carefree picture she's taken of her marred by the shakiness of her hands that blurred the image altogether.

"Pick up, pick up, please pick up." She chanted over and over again like a mantra.

But no one would answer. The call would either go to voicemail or get disconnected entirely and Allison couldn't help but feel a gnawing feeling right in the bottom of her stomach and feel that something is wrong.

It all started, she thinks to herself as she tries to relax on her bed, when Stiles received the lichen that Deaton managed to find. Everything about it felt wrong. It was too simple and if the past few years have been any indication as to how the supernatural life was in Beacon Hills, it never ended like that.

Grabbing her phone once more, Allison left a text.

When Scott finally got out of the trance, Lydia ran upstairs and didn't bother to return when Stiles was given the cure. She wasn't even there when she drove Scott home from the clinic. She disappeared. It was like she knew something was going to happen, that something was wrong and she needed to get out of there.

Or, a small part of her thought, a darker, more calculating part of her mind speculated, expecting something to happen to her.

Being a harbinger of death, Allison knew it wasn't easy on Lydia. But the way she went cold, just shutting down when she hit Scott with the baseball bat down in the basement, it was like something was triggered within her. And whatever it was, scaring her best friend—who was probably one of the strongest people she knew—Allison knew it wasn't something to be trifled with.

Whatever guilt and fear it was she had was cemented when her father burst into her door. His eyes were wide, skin pale and gleamed with a thin sheet of perspiration. In his hand was a cellphone, screen still lit from when it was last used. He looked unsettled, his eyes scanning the room, but calmed down when he saw her, right there on her bed, safe and sound.

"Dad?"

He surged forward and took her into his arms. A soft sob escaped him and tremors wracked his body. "You're fine. Oh, God, you're fine." Allison's heart stared to race and her mind was just about ready to explode. What was happening.

"Dad. What's going on?"

She pulled away from the embrace and stared right at her father, who looked like he was just on the verge of crying. Whatever it was that troubled him, that managed to get him into that state, she had a gut feeling that it was connected to what she was feeling with Lydia. "Allison, we need to get out of here." The message was short and succinct and Allison could only wonder why he would suggest that.

The apartment had just about every weapon in their arsenal. It was their base of operation and it gave a nice scope around the town. Leaving the only armed, supplied, and fortified stronghold couldn't, wouldn't be a logical decision.

But there her father was, pacing like he was living on borrowed time. "Allison, we're wrong."

"Wrong?" she parroted, voice slightly an octave higher. "What's wrong, Dad?"

"Stiles." He breathed out, voice nearly breaking. "Stiles isn't the nogitsune."

Allison shook her head, mouth left hanging. "No." She shook her head. "That's not possible."

"Allison, listen to me—"

"Dad, Mrs. Yukimura told us the signs, Stiles had them all. He was sick and you saw him that night, Dad!" Allison didn't want to admit it, but she still had nightmares of that night when Stiles, the nogitsune, took her and dragged her all the way to the reserve. It was one of those moments where Allison truly feared for her life and wondered if she would ever see the light of another day.

She took her father by the arms and looked at him, dead in the eye. "The lichen cured him, Dad."

But her father could only shake his head, an audible and palpable fear exuding him like never before as he gritted his teeth. "Nogitsunes feed on light souls because they embody the dark. They never choose humans as hosts, Allison."

"Stiles isn't a human. He's a spark!"

"Sparks don't have light souls. They're as human as you and I—Allison, this is beside the point, we're in danger."

"I don't understand—"

"Nogitsunes aren't tangible creatures, they become tangible by possessing a body, a host."

Allison nodded, supplying as quickly as she can, "Yes. Stiles!"

Her father had a conflicted look. "You said it yourself, Allison. He's a spark. Nogitsunes don't possess them because they're volatile beings. They don't know what to expect from them. A human, on the other hand, would be too weak to host such a being within them. A human, hosting a nogitsune, means immediate and inevitable death."

Allison paced around her room, struggling to get to the false bottom drawer of her cabinet to grab her crossbow. In her heart of hearts, she knew where the conversation was going. She knew what her father was going to say next, but she had to know for sure. She needed to hear someone say it. "So, there's like a changeover?"

Her father grimly nodded and Allison scrambled to get her phone and dial Lydia's number.

"The number you are calling is—"

"Lydia's not answering." She said in quick, panicked voice. She knew it. Allison knew that there was something wrong. "Dad, Lydia's not answering her phone!"

"Allison, it's not Lydia." The statement brought her to a standstill. "Stiles was a transition host, a way to bide time and gather strength before taking over a new host." Allison could feel a tear streaking her cheeks.

There were only a few people who went to purgatory. Aside from a harbinger of death who could only tap into its energy to know who's going to die, the list could only be narrowed down to three people: herself, Stiles, and Scott.

A human couldn't host a nogitsune, and if the demon was planning to gather strength through causing strife, pain, and chaos, the immediate death of its host was clearly a point of disadvantage. Becoming a host for the nogitsune, Allison reasoned, wasn't at all logical. It didn't make sense.

Not to mentioned the kanji that was etched unto her skin just at the base of her ear. She was herself.

Now, if Stiles was only a transition host, that only left one more person—Scott.

"But that's impossible. A person can't be both a werewolf and a nogitsune at the same time!"

"It can." Her father answered quietly. "It can if the the wolf died inside."

Allison could only blink in response. It was so simple. It all came to a staggering halt when she realized the big picture. Scott couldn't control his werewolf powers. At first, they thought it was because they broke up, that he didn't have an anchor anymore. But Scott was capable of so much more love in his heart that even she knew, back then, that their break up clearly wasn't the cause.

With all they've been through, it's easy to forget that they're kids. Just barely eighteen.

And they've died.

"We died. In purgatory. We were already dead. Scott's been dead longer."

"You can't be a werewolf when you're dead."

"So, Scott's been holding a piece of a nogitsune in him all this time?" the past few months, it all made sense. "When Scott disappeared when the coyote attacked Stiles. Or that night when we tried to save Malia. He was the one to find Scott—oh, God, that amnesia right after. That wasn't Scott, that was the nogitsune."

There was a realization on her father. He raced towards the security panel just near the kitchen. "Do you remember that morning when we woke up in the living room?" Allison scrunched up her eyebrows and thought hard until she remembered the searing pain she felt back then.

Other than that, she couldn't remember anything. "We didn't know what happened the night before."

"And I can't remember—what if we were compelled?"

Allison surged forward as her father rummaged around the room until he found the bestiary. "Compelled? What's that?"

She huddled near her father as the pad of his finger scanned the page until it landed on section of vampires. "Mind compulsion is an ability vampires have, and some demons to an extent. The Winchesters have long speculated that nogitsunes have the ability, too, but so far, there are no cases to prove that." Allison nodded and focused on the section on the page.

"It says here that compulsion would only wear off once the creature who compelled us dies." The line trailed off her tongue with a grave realization. "We never remembered." Her father nodded, the same thought in mind. "It means the lichen didn't kill the nogitsune because—"

Allison remembered the footage of Scott caught by the cameras installed in the basement of the clinic. She quickly pulled it up and scanned the video, only pausing it and zoomed in on the screen to show a faulty pipe dripping water on the Devil's trap. "The nogitsune escaped and possessed Scott." She let the video play at an accelerated speed and noticed how, when Lydia hit Scott in the head with the aluminum bat, her body froze.

Lydia went to the corner and when the rest of them appeared, she disappeared upstairs. Allison scrambled to get the other footage of the cameras upstairs might catch. From the lobby's camera, Allison couldn't notice anything. "There!" her father called out and she noticed, in the darkness of the screen outside, was a woman standing right next to her car.

Allison recognized her immediately as her best friend.

"Switch to the footage outside the building."

Allison did so quickly and the footage now played out. Lydia was writing something on the glass.

As fast as they could, both Allison and her father rushed to the parking and found their car. They found nothing on the glass until she remembered how she used to sneak out with Scott back when her parents didn't approve of her dating him. Allison leaned in forward and fogged up the glass. Sure enough, there was writing on the glass.

Vision. Scott. Don't look for me.

Allison's stomach dropped and she rushed to call Lydia's number. She raised the phone to her ears, and it kept ringing until, "The number you are calling is either—" Allison turned to face her father with a grim, grave look.

"The nogitsune took Lydia."

Alright! We are getting close to that finale!