Scott McCall's Arc

Chapter 26 of 30

The flooded street peeled back. Scott and Malik stood on the bank of a black lake ringed by twisted, dead trees. The Acheron rose from the water, taller now, its body churning silt and shadow. It split the ground between them with a wave, and the shore became two shores. Scott swung. His claws passed through the creature like a hand through smoke. Water closed the wound before it opened. On the far bank, Malik struck and struck again. Nothing held. Then the lake showed them what it wanted. A girl with a bow stepped out of the mist in front of Scott, smiling the way she used to. Across the water, faces Malik never named lined up at his feet, small and still. The Acheron drank. The water climbed Scott's knees. Scott closed his eyes. He stopped looking at the girl with the bow. He thought of his mother's kitchen light. Stiles' laugh. Kira's hand on his wrist. The pack, waiting. The water around his legs dropped an inch. The illusion guttered like a candle. Across the lake, Malik saw it too. "It eats alone," Malik said, voice flat and carrying. "Not grief. Alone." He turned his back on the small faces. The Acheron screamed, and the water peeled away from its feet, exposing something underneath — a single silver arrow half-buried in the mud, clean and bright. An anchor. A weapon. Something the real world could hold. Scott grabbed it. The lake shattered like glass. He woke on the clinic floor with the arrow in his fist and Malik breathing hard beside him. "We can hit it now," Scott said. Outside, the storm kept coming.