Geek wolf

Back in the strange room, Eli gave up trying to speak. This guy just wouldn't stop chattering. Eli had tried to scream earlier, but the man shoved his marble bracelet into his mouth. When Eli tried to scream from the pain of the wires cutting up his mouth, the man ripped off Eli's pocket and shoved it into his mouth too—the one containing the Mind's Gate potion and mountain ash. His mouth hurt, but he couldn't spit it out. One, there was tape over his mouth, and two, the man was scaring him.

Eli had come to understand, from the man's earlier descriptions, what was happening. From what he gathered, this man had never been able to use magic until eli accidentally tried upgrading him as a baby. Over the five years of practicing his skills, the eli had noticed something strange: any energy he tried to give to something else would always cause a backlash. It was like filling up a tank of water with a pipe connected at the bottom instead of the top. The more water that flowed in, the harder it became to add more due to increasing water pressure. If you weren't careful, all the water would rush back, bursting the pipe.

That's what Eli thought had happened to his skill. He couldn't use his skill until he was five, or well, his skill wasn't fixed—just barely made usable. All the power released from his broken skill must have flooded into this man, and it was killing him. Eli wasn't sure if he should be impressed that the man had survived under that kind of power for so long, or if he should be more impressed that the man had learned to use it for magic. Right now, though, he was just concerned about the jars in front of him. They contained heads with their eyes closed.

The strange man said, "It's time, boy. Remember this: I am the Forgemaster. Ha ha ha!"

He slammed his staff into the ground just as the full moon completely covered a hole in the ceiling. His eyes, which had turned blue, shifted back to red, and he continued to slam the staff into the ground. With each slam, one of the faces in the jars opened its eyes. The eyes were a faded red. When all their eyes were open, the man—now known as the Forgemaster—said, "Children of the moon, bear witness to the claim of my conquest."

The golden lines on the ground brightened, and with his words, a strange force emerged from the jars, disorienting Eli. A black liquid poured out of each jar, covering the golden lines. Eli could see how the ghosts were funneled into the liquid, and just a few seconds later, human hands stretched out from it, reaching for him.

The moment they touched him, Eli felt a slight force pulling at his bucket. He raised an eyebrow, expecting something more. If it was just this little, he could act like nothing was happening. But then, more hands reached toward him, and he felt a chill of fear. Surprisingly, after the hands held him, the pulling force didn't increase much. Eli started to wonder if the man had properly cast the spell. Curious about what would happen, he allowed the bucket to tip slightly, letting a trickle of his power flow out. The hands greedily absorbed it, sending the energy into the Forgemaster. Eli rolled his eyes as the man laughed maniacally. He immediately stopped the flow of his power, but it took a while for the man to stop laughing. Eventually, the Forgemaster noticed that the energy had stopped flowing to him. His face twisted in hysteria. "Why didn't it work? I researched for countless hours—it should have worked! Why am I not complete? Where's the rest of my magic?"

Eli realized he should have let the Forgemaster enjoy the energy a little longer. Now, he had to deal with a living man who could easily kill him in his current position.

The Forgemaster shouted, "It's you! It must be you!" He slammed his staff into the ground, and suddenly, a bolt of lightning shot toward Eli. Eli tried screaming in pain after being hit by it, but the tape and cloth in his mouth prevented it. Somehow, the marble slipped out of its wire nesting and partially blocking his throat, causing him to bite down with enough force to break the Mind's Gate potion. Before eli could think about how strange the flow of events where.

Boom! It was like an atomic bomb, no, like the birth of a universe inside his mind. Eli was about to break under the pressure in a matter of nanoseconds. What felt like decades to him passed in mere seconds. He forced his powers to upgrade the marble stuck in his throat, hoping it would absorb the Mind's Gate potion. It took years, decades, even centuries to upgrade, but eventually, everything started to speed up.

In the fraction of a second it took for Eli to return to the present, a strange force rushed out of his body, slamming the Forgemaster into the wall and separating him from his staff. The Forgemaster groaned before shouting hysterically, "Give me my magic! Stop using my magic!"

The strange force wrapped around the Forgemaster's staff and sent it flying toward him, impaling him through the throat. The man screamed as he fell. Eli thought it would be the end of him, but strangely, the Forgemaster's scream echoed as the staff shattered. The released magic blasted Eli backward. As he flew back, he saw several shards of the staff flying through the walls, heading god knows where, before everything went black.

Miss Jenna was done. This town was a curse—one thing after another, no breaks. Five years ago, she had caught a break in the form of her dead mother. She had apparently left a huge amount of money—enough money to last some people a lifetime—but the affairs at her house were draining it as if it were free candy. She couldn't take it anymore. She was going to run away—from the damn town, from her damned responsibilities. A quiet voice cut through the hum of the engine, low and distant, as if carried by a gust of wind.

"Jenna."

Her heart skipped, and she slammed on the brakes, eyes darting across the empty road. There was no one. The trees loomed silently on the sides of the road, their dark branches stretching toward the sky, too still in the night air. But the voice, it had felt so close.

"Jenna," the voice called again, louder this time, a hint of urgency in its tone.

She whipped her head around, searching, a chill creeping along her spine. It sounded almost... familiar. The words that followed hit her like a physical force, pulling her into a strange stillness.

"Help him. Help him."

The words were as clear as the wind that blew through her cracked window, and they wrapped around her thoughts, pushing them aside like waves sweeping over the shore. For a moment, she wasn't in her car anymore. The road faded, replaced by an image—dark trees and a small building. She felt it. She had to go there.

Just as quickly as the vision had come, something sharp—almost painfully sharp—pierced the trance.

"Wake up!"

Jenna snapped her head up, eyes wide, her pulse pounding in her ears. She was still in the car, her knuckles white against the wheel. The road ahead was a blur, and the forest loomed too close.

Her breath came in shallow gasps as the realization hit her. She was heading straight for the woods, the trees coming at her like jagged teeth in the dark. Panic surged through her. She swerved the wheel sharply, the tires screeching in protest. The car lurched, throwing her against the seatbelt, but she managed to right it just in time.

The road straightened, but her hands trembled on the wheel, as if the dream—if it had been a dream—was still wrapped around her mind.

"What the hell was that?" she muttered, her voice barely above a whisper. "Help him? Who the hell was I supposed to help?"

The image of the boy in her mind lingered, though she couldn't place him. His face was blurry, but his eyes—those eyes—kept flashing in her memory, wide with something between fear and desperation.

She glanced around at the empty stretch of road, the endless hills and the darkened sky overhead. It all felt wrong. But the dream... the dream felt like a call. And maybe, just maybe, it was telling her something she couldn't ignore.

Might as well, she thought, gripping the wheel tightly. The world couldn't possibly get any more hateful.

With reluctance, she turned the car around, heading back toward the become hills.

At the Hale house, Talea watched as the last candle finally burned out. Such a strange thing. She wondered, could it really calm the resentment of a ghost? She had never heard of supernatural beings like the boy before, though she had some suspicions. He seemed like a banshee, but not exactly. Maybe banshees were separated into deferent types, much like kitsunes, and he was another version with different powers. She stopped her thoughts.

This was the kind of thing she could only worry about if she were still alive. Right now, all she wanted was to get rid of all the Argents and make sure her kids were safe. Moving around the room, she realized how easy it was now compared to when she first died. She floated to the window, slowly drifting out. She would have to apologize to Peter, but she needed his anger. If only she had the heart to harm a little banshee boy, maybe she'd be back with the living. Surprisingly, it didn't take her long to get to the hospital. Once she passed a few trees, she found herself emerging from the tree line at the hospital. "That's strange," she thought.

 "I don't remember the house being so close to here."

Could it be that thing? Shaking the thoughts out of her head, she reminded herself that thoughts were for the living. She flowed in her ghostly form toward a window with flickering lights. Inside, there was one still-lit blue candle, and Peter was holding the rest of the family in a spiral above his sleeping head. The candle had given her a moment of clarity. Should she really add to her brother's burden?

She was sure that even without her anger, Peter would hunt the Argents. There was no doubt about it. But she wanted to be involved. Suddenly, a shout came from the parking lot.

 "Help... help! I'm not sure if he'll...!"

 The voice stopped. Jenna was pissed off. What was this? Was this a sick, cruel way of the town telling her she was trapped? That she was its prisoner. She had found the place in her dreams. Once she reached it, she wasn't sure what to expect, but that was, what was that? It felt as though she was being guided. She found the boy lying in a room, with black tar on the ground.

There was another body, but it was already gone. She had thought it was the same for the boy, but she noticed his chest was slightly moving. She immediately picked him up and rushed him to her car. There was no time to care about the disgusting things she saw in the jars. Now, she was at the hospital, sitting in one of the chairs as Sheriff Stilinski barraged her about the night's events. Jenna said,

"As I said, Mr. Stilinski, I had a dream, and then I went there, I wasn't responsible for any of the events in that room... and those jars, I couldn't do such a thing."

 The sheriff looked at her suspiciously. He had a feeling she wasn't lying, but the best sickos could make you feel the safest around them before taking you out. He was going to keep an eye on her.

 "Mrs. Jenna," Mr. Stilinski said in a questioning voice. She looked up at him with a tired face. Stilinski wondered, for a moment, if somehow her life was more stressful than his. He continued,

 "I want to believe you. I really do. But I must ask that until we can get more evidence, you do not leave Beacon." Stilinski watched as she gritted her teeth.