Chapter Text
Dear Stiles.
You’re probably busy doing homework, fixing your crappy Jeep, being a teenager and minding your own business, so I can imagine you don’t want to read this. Everything has been quiet what with Derek and Chris gone and Malia in your life – honestly, I can’t blame your wanting to feel secure once in a while.
Only that’s not gonna last. You know it.
So far you’ve lived through it all and – believe me, I’m proud of you. You’ve grown, Stiles, and you’ve become the person I expected you to become.
That little boy, screaming for his Mommy, shaking like a leaf, scared shitless by the monsters under your bed – he’s gone.
It’s your story now, Stiles. Only, you don’t know it.
Yet.
But you’re ready now, yes, it’s time. You don’t even have to do anything for the moment.
Just look at me, will you?
Look.
At me.
Yours eternally.
L.
***
Picture a boy who’s running for his life.
The street in front of his parents’ house is empty, everyone’s asleep, the verandas quiet except for the door he threw open that is still swinging ten feet behind him.
Twenty.
Fifty.
The soles of his sneakers connect with asphalt again and again and again as he hurries past mailboxes and neat front lawns, but no matter how hard he’s pushing himself to go faster, he can’t seem to be getting away from it. In fact, it’s catching up.
It must be because he can hear it breathe. He never heard that sound before, wheezing and disgusting and otherworldly.
It’s flitting from shadow to shadow, spreading a darkness denser than the night.
His lungs feel like they’re on fire but his short feet just keep going, his mind looping a single thought.
Please, God, no, please, no, God, please…
His whole body is screaming but his little mouth is screwed open without making a sound, as if he’s drowning, like he’s a slasher victim on mute. As if this thing, whatever it is, is sucking all the noise out of him.
When he hits the end of the road and continues in the direction of the forest the creature lets out a shriek.
It’s still in flight, massive and deadly and fifty feet behind him.
Twenty.
Ten.
***
“Sí, sí, sí… ¡Ya está bien!”
Dereks sweeped the bills into his pocket, a wide grin in his face. This was getting better and better.
“Derek, what the hell are you doing?”
Chris had just entered the scene, his eyes darting around the room.
Screw his hunter’s instinct.
“Derek, we’re not taking commissions”, Chris said in a low voice but Derek quickly gave him a pat on the shoulder to shut him up – unnecessarily so because the shady group of locals wouldn’t have understood a word he was saying anyway. They just stood there, glaring at this uneven couple.
“It’s alright. Come on, we gotta get going.”
He grabbed his partner’s upper arm and quickly pulled him out of the room into the blazing desert sun, musing over the irony of the situation.
A werewolf pulling a hunter out of the danger zone, wasn’t that hilarious. Well, or pathetic.
Partner… yeah, I guess we really teamed up, haven’t we...
They had lost track of Kate near Heroica Caborca which is about 160 miles off the Mexican border if you go down federal highway 2. They’d been combing ancient ruins in a hundred mile radius for her ever since but the local mission church, La Purísima Concepción de Caborca, had turned out to be much more fruitful. There was something seriously wrong with that place and, as Derek had just found out this morning, the hunters in this area were even paying people with a death wish to track whatever had torn apart these five nuns. The scratch marks on the mutilated body parts certainly looked like they had been caused by claws smaller and sharper than those of a wolf.
“Three more bodies…,” Chris mumbled while scanning the print-out Derek had handed him. It was the English version of an article from a local online daily newspaper.
“Yeah, fifty miles North-West from here,” Derek said. He had heard the story directly from Eléna Vasquéz, head of the local hunter clan.
“Another mission church?”
Derek shook his head.
“The desert. Literally, in the middle of it. Arms and legs were strewn around a Saguaro.”
Chris handed Derek the paper who put it back into his pocket.
“Maybe there’s something like a den nearby. In all cases, she can’t stay in the broad sunlight so she must have found shelter somewhere. We have to check it out.”
Derek nodded.
“That’s what I was thinking. Let’s pick up Braeden und get going.”
***
Stiles let himself fall back onto the bed, arms folded behind his head. He had been staring at the ceiling for five minutes when Scott said, “So that’s… 47?”
No response.
“Stiles?”
Scott turned around in his computer chair.
“Stiles, I’m trying to do math here…”
“You and me both, brother,” Stiles mumbled, followed by a few less audible words that sounded like ‘house,’ ‘crossing’ and ‘no way’.
Scott sighed and put his pen on top of the pile of unfinished homework on his desk.
“You still thinking about that family?”
Stiles shot up from the bed and started pacing the room.
“What if the dirt mentioned in the article was mountain ash? They might have tried to protect themselves. Maybe they were hunters –”
“Stiles! Relax. That wasn’t even in Beacon Hills County. It was just.. an ordinary crime, man. Ok? Relax.”
“Re-”, Stiles started, pivoting on his heel to face his best friend. “Relax? Relax?! Scott! Get real, everything has been quiet for far too long, you said it yourself! I mean, what dismembers a whole family and then props up their heads in a circle? Mh?”
“A serial killer?”
Stiles was shaking his head vividly. He started pacing again.
“You’re not connecting the dots, Scott. It happened in Greenbay County, alright. The month before? Redding. That thing in June, a group of kids massacred in a barn? Klamath Falls.”
Scott frowned and shrugged.
“So?”
“So?! Scott! It’s getting closer!”
That night, Stiles’ dreams were haunted by monsters lurking in the shadows, drawing their circle closer and closer. He woke up kicking and screaming.
“What the…”
It took a full ten seconds for him to realize that he was safe at home in his room.
Or, well – can you ever be safe in Beacon Hills?
Stiles got out of bed. His heart was racing and his t-shirt was soaked in sweat. His dad was working the night shift so there was nobody home but him.
This feeling again. How did the doctor call it? Impending doom. A symptom of his generalized anxiety disorder.
“It’s in my head”, he was mumbling to himself while he slowly climbed down the stairs. “Everything’s alright, it’s just my survival instinct set off by nothing whatsoever…”
The cruel feeling of being hyper-alert 24/7, of sensing a presence that was closing in on him and then of the ground shaking when a panic attack was coming on – it had all returned when the supernatural returned to Beacon Hills and he deeply loathed this by-product. Well that and the real deadly danger they were basically constantly in.
“Okay, everything alright here… moving on to the kitchen like a man,” Stiles said out loud.
“Everything’s good here, everything’s-”
He froze.
The lights in the kitchen were on.
He was absolutely a hundred percent certain he had turned off all the lights before going to bed.
He was shaking already. Awesome. Too much adrenaline is just… awesome.
But all was good in the kitchen. Everything looked normal. Except for that guy sitting at the kitchen table, solving his Dad’s crossword.
“Stiles.”
He looked up.
And Stiles’ mind went blank.
***
“You fell over a chair and twisted your ankle?”
Lydia was staring at him, a small heart-shaped mirror in her left hand, an open lipstick in her right and that how-dumb-can-you-be-look on her face.
“Yeah…” Stiles cleared his throat.
“How is that even possible? Breaking your arm, alright, but-”
“Lydia, don’t – overthink, ok? It just happened. I slipped.”
“You sure you don’t need to see a doctor?”, Scott said.
Stiles shook his head.
“No, it’s alright, man, really… I’ll just be limping for a few weeks…”
“Ok, boys, I have a lunch date. Gotta run,” Lydia said and threw her make-up back into her purse.
“I’m leaving, too… homework,” Malia said slowly, frowning like she wasn’t sure if there was anything worse than brooding over math problems on a sunny Friday afternoon.
They said goodbye.
The two girls had just turned the corner when Stiles hissed, “Scott, there was a guy in our kitchen.”
“What?”
“He – he just sat there and looked at me and said ‘Stiles’ with this odd voice and then he was gone.”
Scott blinked twice.
“Er… that’s why you twisted your ankle?”
“Yeah that’s why I twisted my ankle,” Stiles said impatiently, “but I don’t even remember falling.”
“What do you remember?”
“Just what I told you, I see this guy, he gets up, looks at me, goes ‘Stiles!’ and then he’s gone and I wake up and my ankle hurts like crazy.”
“Well, what did he look like?”
Stiles shook his head in frustration.
“I don’t know! It’s like – in my memory, he has no face at all even though I was sure, absolutely sure that I was seeing him and-”
“Buddy,” Scott interrupted him, smiling, “You were just dreaming.”
“But what about my ankle? What about – what about Void Stiles?”
There. He said it.
And, avoiding Scott’s eyes, hoarsely, “It’s just… what if I’m doing it again?”
“What?”, Scott said, blinking, and then, “The murders? Come on, man, you just had an extremely vivid dream. And,” speaking up because Stiles looked like he was about to protest, “even if – and that’s a big if – this guy in your kitchen was real and some kind of a monster, it is highly unlikely that he – or you – were committing those murders. You said it yourself, nothing like that happened tonight in Beacon Hills or any of the neighboring counties. Plus, you have an alibi for each and every one of these murders, so… just don’t worry, ok? Get your thoughts off horrible crimes and monsters for a few days.”
Stiles was slowly nodding, less than convinced.
“Come on, practice starts in ten minutes…”
“Yeah, I don’t think so, buddy…,” Stiles muttered, limping after his best friend, his swollen ankle stinging with pain.
***
“So, Lydia… you’re er… into fashion?”
Lydia took a sip from her Cappucino.
You’re freaking hot but, boy, can you be any dumber?
“Yes, I guess you could say that.”
“Ok yeah, I thought ‘cause…. yeah that dress looks really good on you.” He was the captain of the neighboring town’s Lacrosse team and he was blushing. Uncool.
Lydia put down her cup with a clink.
“Ah you,” she said with her sweetest smile, “you’re sweet when you’re nervous, Andy, why don’t we talk about you last game – where was that?”
“Sacramento,” Andy said, breathing a little lighter now.
“Ah.” She took another sip.
“Yeah, did a dive for the goal three minutes before the end and made the winning shot,” he added beaming like a first grader who spelt his name correctly. Lydia was liking this date less and less.
“That’s awesome, Andy. So-”
She stopped, cup hovering in mid-air.
Andy frowned. It took him a few seconds but then he realized something was not right.
“Lydia? You…. you having a stroke?”
“No,” Lydia breathed, eyes wide open, gazing at something beyond the crowd in the café.
“Oh no no no no…”
***
“Oh man…,” Chris said. His eyes scanned the mess in front of him. It was hard to tell how many people exactly had been slaughtered and strewn across the field. Looked like a whole football match – or the jigsaw puzzle of one.
“I don’t think we’ll find a survivor,” Derek said stiffly. “And this wasn’t just Kate. It must have been a whole pack – or flock – or… herd?”
“Are you sure Kate’s been here?”
Derek bent down over one of the unrecognizable heaps of flesh and started sniffing. He grimaced and looked up to Chris. “Just like before, unmistakably her scent. It’s faint but I’d recognize it anywhere.”
“I got some news,” Braeden said when she joined them. She flipped her cellphone shut and put it into her leather jacket.
“There’s another incident, about 80 miles from here. Different location, same result.”
Chris nodded and opened the map on which he’d been marking the locations of the gruesome murders to track Kate’s movement.
“Campo…. California,” Braden said and Chris circled the name of the town with a red marker.
“It’s definite,” he said grimly. He put a red line through the new circle connecting it to the rest. Braeden stepped closer to look at the map. A five-year-old could have worked out the pattern – the circles generated a straight line.
“That means…,” Braeden said, hesitating. “They’re headed-” started Chris but he was interrupted by a low, threatening growl that had him instinctively reach for his gun.
He and Braeden both turned around to face Derek.
“We have to get back to Beacon Hills,” Derek snarled, his eyes glowing ice blue. “And fast.”
***
Stiles was in bed, wide awake.
There it goes again, he was thinking. Hating his life just a little bit.
He lay there waiting for that feeling to wash over him.
“Just go to sleep,” he mumbled to himself, pressing his eyes shut.
That was ridiculous. As if anyone in that state of agitation could actually sleep. It was physically impossible.
“Just calm down…”
He tried hard not to concentrate on anything in particular – but what the freakin’ hell was up with that dude’s face? It’s like – he knew it was somewhere in his memory but for some reason he couldn’t remember.
Maybe he had dreamt it after all, he wasn’t sure anymore… this wouldn’t have been the first time his memory was fucked up and, quite frankly, it scared him shitless.
There was something about that guy – like a –
He couldn’t put his finger to it.
Stiles punched the mattress and let out a frustrated snort.
What the hell did all of this mean?
After what felt like hours of tossing around and wracking his brain for the elusive image, Stiles felt his limbs getting heavier. Maybe that was it, sleep, finally, finally...
And yet that fear of someone – something – being down in the kitchen right now.
While he was still considering going downstairs and trying hard to come up with arguments why he absolutely shouldn’t do that, his eyes fell shut.
He just had to… throw a glance … bestiary…
But maybe it was alright. It was alright and that’s how it was supposed to be.
Maybe this is how it begins.
Picture a boy who’s running for his life.
The hood of his precious jeep is bent all the way in from its encounter with a solid tree, the driver’s door is smashing into it with a CLONK ten feet behind him.
Twenty.
Fifty.
His ankle is screaming with pain but he keeps on going. He doesn’t have time for this.
Thin branches whip about his body and face as he’s brushing past trees and bushes, deeper and deeper into the forest. He can hear that thing crashing through the underwood in the distance.
What was is that Derek once said about monsters? Something like: when they run, they run?
Stiles pushes the thought away. And then he’s just breathing, breathing, trying hard not to trip over a root while wracking his brain for a plan, a plan, just a simple plan…
That thing is galloping through the forest, fifty feet behind him.
Twenty.
Ten.