Chapter Text
The forest is a tilting, spiraling tangle of moonlight through canopy and fallen branches jutting up through the underbrush. Stiles wasn’t lost when he started back towards town but now he can’t tell if he’s walked past this tree a thousand times or if he’s never seen it before in his life. The bottle of stolen Jack Daniels is warm now, heated by his sweaty hands, and nearly empty. Stiles staggers for the nth time and finally leans to rest against a tree trunk. It is always quiet in the Preserve. The green, velvety tree tops are an oppressive, stifling lid on the wilds that line Beacon Hills. Nothing seems to get in or out.
Lydia Martin’s house is in the older neighborhood of town, the fancy Victorians that were built when town square was near the river that now bisects Beacon Heights from Beacon Hills. Stiles had been initially excited to hear that somehow he and Scott had been invited to the party at her house. It was the perfect opportunity to try and cozy up to Lydia. Maybe even impress her enough to get her to remember his name. He was still pretty excited when Scott had explained that they’d been invited at the behest of the new, smiley girl, Allison. He was happy that she and Scott seemed equally into each other. He was pissed when Scott and Allison had snuck off to her car and ditched him at the party. Scott’s his best friend. Best friends don’t do that to each other.
The turning point for the evening had been when most people had left and Stiles had been stranded twelve miles from his house. Lydia glued herself to Jackson almost immediately and never did get unstuck. After the third hour of watching them giggle and kiss, Stiles weighed his options and decided a two-ish mile trek through the Preserve would land him close enough to Scott’s house that he could steal his bike and ride home. He’d snagged a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels on his way out of the party and set off into the woods.
That had been over an hour ago.
Now, Stiles is tired and lost and drunk and his phone is beyond dead. The bark of the tree is rough and cool under his hand and he leans in closer to press his forehead against it. Sitting down is starting to feel like a pretty good idea. He kills the rest of the bottle because he’s tired of carrying it and tosses it out into the Preserve.
“Littering? That’s not very nice,” a voice trickles from the dark.
Stiles’ blood runs cold.
“Who’s there?” He asks, back against the tree trunk.
“Just a couple of good Samaritans,” a second voice says and two men move into sight. “I guess we should probably get a reward, huh?”
“I think that sounds fair,” the first one replies. “Got any money, kiddo?”
They’re locals. Thugs. Stiles recognizes one guy as the graveyard cashier from the Circle K and the other as a suspect from one of his dad’s cases about a string of muggings. They haven’t approached him without malice and Stiles is hopelessly lost and the world is swinging behind the men in nauseating yo-yos.
He runs anyway.
The men laugh out barks like hyenas and the chase is on. They’re enjoying themselves, that much is obvious, and Stiles is tripping every third step. He lands wrong on his wrist in one of his falls and pain sluices up his arm like white-hot plasma. He keeps running. All he can hear is the heady thump of his blood and his veins and the suffocating hush of the woods and his feet cracking twigs. He can’t see, he can’t hear, all he can do is move forward and hope that—
The ground retreats beneath his feet and he’s abruptly plunging down a ravine. His hurt wrist gives way when he tries to catch himself and he smacks into the damp pines carpeting the forest. His breath exits from his lungs in a heave and he lays there, aching for air, while the world churns around him. There’s a sliding sound, the skitter of twigs and debris, and the two men circle around him.
They’re still laughing.
“That was annoying,” the Circle K guy says. “Now, you really owe us.”
They haul him to his feet and leave him swaying.
“I’ll ask one more time—Got any cash?”
“My dad is the Sheriff,” Stiles wheezes. “He’s going to lock your asses up if you hurt me.”
Circle K looks nervous then, the whites of his eyes flash as he looks at his partner. The partner doesn’t look nervous. He looks mad.
“Is that right?” He says, leaning in closer to look at Stiles. “Well, your daddy got me fucking fired. He came around my job, asking if I was a thief, and the boss didn’t like it.”
“Look, let’s just bounce,” Circle K proposes. He looks more nervous. “I don’t want to fuck around with prison, Unger.”
“Nah,” the man called Unger answers. “I’m a thief, right? I want his shoes.”
“Fuck,” Circle K snaps. He looks at Stiles. “Fine. Take your shoes off.”
“My shoes?” Stiles echoes. “You can’t take my shoes. I still have to walk out of here.”
Then, for the first time since sixth grade, Stiles gets punched in the face. It hurts more this time. Jackson didn’t really know how to hit someone when they were eleven. Unger is a grown man and his punch snaps Stiles’ head to the side, makes his eyes water and his stomach turn. He stumbles, ears ringing, and when he looks back Unger is so, so close to him.
“Take off the damn shoes,” Circle K yelps.
Stiles does. The pines and rocks hurt his feet and Unger smiles meanly when he takes the shoes from him.
“And the jacket,” Unger says. “In fact, I want the entire getup. You can keep your drawers but I want the rest of it.”
“Come on, man,” Circle K says. “You got his shoes. Let’s go.“
“Fuck off, Reddick. Either you can hang or you can’t,” he turns back to Stiles and leans in to hiss. “But I want your dad to feel like I did. He humiliated me. It’s my turn.”
Numbly, Stiles takes off his clothes until he’s standing in the woods in his socks and boxers. It’s absurd, kind of. He’s not cold, he’s still drunk. He kind of wants to cry. He’s kind of afraid he’s going to be murdered. Unger shoves him once he’s half-naked and Stiles stumbles back against the ravine wall. He was already angry, and now his thoughts of making them pay swim through the current of alcohol in his mind. Unger slaps him, lightly, and then harder. Stiles clenches his teeth.
“Not so fucking cool, now,” Unger laughs. “‘My dad is the Sheriff.’ Fuck you and him. What’s your mommy’s job? Is she the crossing gua—“
Something wet and hot sprays across Stiles' chest and face.
He’d closed his eyes when Unger talked about his mom. He opens them now. Unger’s mouth is clenched closed, he looks normal aside from the dark sludge dripping through his teeth. He’s making this awful sucking noise, like a clogged pump, and in the scattered moonlight Stiles can just see the tips of some curved things—thin, like daggers—jutting from his chest. The things—the claws retract into Unger’s chest and for a strange moment Stiles thinks that the claws grew from inside of him.
But then, as they slide completely back into his torso, Unger crumples and Stiles sees the thing standing behind him.
It looks like a myth, like a legend. A black wolf stretched over a minotaur’s frame.
Electric blue, glowing eyes shine out from the head of a massive, black wolf. Its inky fur, marred only by shiny pink burn scars splashing down the right side of its face and neck, spills down over its shoulders, forming a capelet that would look costume-like if it were not so obviously real. Ivory tusks and violent crags of primal teeth fit neatly into the snout of something lupine, crowned by a growl-wrinkled muzzle and glowing blue eyes.
The eyes are the worst, somehow, terrifyingly alien in the way they glow in the din of the forest.
The beast’s torso and lower body is that of a muscular man with the same stretches of burns pulling the skin taut in jags and painful looking wrenches. Black fur, black like pitch, scrabbles across the beast’s chest to its groin.
Reddick whines, face twisted into a grin of sheer terror, and the thing reaches over without looking away from Stiles and snatches him by the throat. It seems to lift him effortlessly, Reddick’s feet kick the air uselessly and the scent of urine stains the night.
“Shall I?” It growls, throaty and horrible. It’s still looking at Stiles.
“W-what?”
“Kill him.”
“No,” Reddick chokes out, hands pulling at the thing's epic paw. His face is a lurid scarlet.
“He didn’t do anything,” Stiles shouts. The vicious urge to say yes curdles in his belly.
“Didn’t he?”
“Nothing that makes him deserve to die!”
“He’s a murderer,” the thing says. “Is that enough?”
Reddick is weaker now, his hands have fallen to his sides and he clumsily kicks his feet. Stiles wonders if the thing is telling the truth. Stiles thinks about how much his wrist hurts. How cold he is. The heat in his cheek where Unger slapped him. The blood trickling down from the cut on his cheek from Unger’s ring. How angry he is that Scott just left him there. The world smears across his awareness, clouded and strange from the inebriation. Is the word of a monster enough?
Reddick is looking at Stiles, mouth moving uselessly. There’s betrayal in his eyes. It’s unjustified, in Stiles’ opinion. Reddick was happy to let Unger steal from him, to humiliate him, to hit him. There’s no betrayal in letting someone get what they deserve. Stiles isn’t sure any of this is even happening but he is sure that being an accessory to assault is still a crime.
He stands there, debating the life of a stranger, while Reddick dies.
The thing seems to smile, rubbery lips pulling up to show those terrible fangs again. It huffs, a laugh perhaps. Then it pulls Reddick in half like he’s made of wet newspaper. There’s a wet slopping noise and then the two pieces of Reddick fall aside. Unger is given a similar treatment and then, finally, the thing looks at Stiles again.
Stiles is forced, then, to grapple with his sanity. It is not a man in a suit. It is not Bigfoot. It is not a hallucination.
“What are you?” Stiles manages to ask.
“I am the Omega. The last one.”
And it leaves as it came, silent like the night.
***
Somehow, some way, he makes it to his house without being spotted. His clothes started out wet and heavy with blood and the cool night air has made them crunchy and stiff. The scent of copper stopped being overwhelming around mile two and now Stiles thanks his lucky stars that his dad isn’t home yet. He strips in the backyard and hoses off the worst of the blood. It’s cold already and the water does its best to freeze him entirely.
He decides a fire will be too conspicuous and so he bundles the rust-darkened clothing in a brown paper bag. Tomorrow, he will take it to a campground barbecue and dispose of them. He tucks the bag outside of his bedroom window, right on the porch awning. It’s nearing five in the morning now and he’s so tired his eyes are baby-doll blinking but he forces himself into the shower and scrubs every speck of blood and dirt from his body, from under his nails, from his bare feet. The sun is cresting the mountain looking down on Beacon Hills when he finally feels clean enough to collapse into bed. His body is finally still but his mind isn’t. It can’t be. He’s seen monsters and murder and somehow escaped both with his life intact.
He thinks about what the beast said, about Reddick being a murderer. If that’s true, then maybe he can reverse engineer the source of the monster—find out who would want Reddick dead. Who did Reddick kill? And what caused the beast to exist. If it exists. If it’s a hallucination, nothing will come of his research. He can prove if it’s real or not. If it is, then the world is larger and stranger than Stiles ever knew.
And if it’s not real? Stiles needs an MRI. And that thought is more frightening than the creature by miles.
***
Stiles spends the next day refreshing the local news website, waiting anxiously for the headline to read TWO LOCALS FOUND, SUSPECT IS SON OF SHERIFF. It doesn’t. After his dad gets home and knocks out, Stiles leans out his window to retrieve his paper bag and freezes.
It’s gone.
The bag is gone.
Stiles proceeds to the bathroom in order to quietly have a panic attack. He comes back to himself clutching the bathroom counter, staring at his open teeth in the mirror. He can’t help but take in the rest of his face. The mark from the slap has faded to a soft red outline but the bruise from Unger’s punch is an angry, vibrant scarlet. His dad can’t see him. The punch could probably be explained away with a story about tripping but the slap is a clear handprint on his cheek.
Something horrible occurs to Stiles then. Was the bag ever there? What if none of it happened? He leaves the house through the back door, looking for traces of blood. He’d cleaned up last night—or at least he thinks he cleaned. What if it was all an invention of his—what if he’s sick?
He has to go back into the woods—back to the site of the murder. He has to know.
It takes him a week to work up the nerve. Scott is off in Lala-Land with the new girl and that gives Stiles’ plenty of time to take too much of his Adderall and spin out alone. When he finally decides it’s time to go look, he leaves his phone at home in case he is about to return to a murder scene. He doesn’t need a GPS print. He parks his car in the strip mall parking lot that borders the woods and waits until there’s no one looking to head into the forest. He remembers the landmarks well enough to bring him back to the trail he found after crawling out of the ravine. Then, he goes off trail and deeper into the woods.
The woods don’t feel the same anymore. Where they were once a private place that Stiles could comfortably wander through, now Stiles finds himself jumping at every bird call. As a boy with little parental oversight, he’d spent his summers creeping around the woods. He’d hidden in the goose pens of fallen trees and collected salamanders from the creek. There had been a world of entertainment chasing Scott through the brush. The trails he had walked could be drawn from memory, each turn and dip as familiar as the ones on his own body.
Eventually, he looks up and he’s a mere ten yards from the precipice of the ravine. It looks normal. Unblemished by death or monsters or fear. Stiles is suddenly aware of the sweat on his skin. He walks forward. There is a tree across the ravine from him with a spiral freshly carved in its bark.
The ravine is empty.
There’s no blood or gore or, most importantly, bodies. Stiles slides down the ravine wall and digs through the dirt, through the leaves, desperate to find some proof that he isn’t losing his mind. There’s no proof. There’s no evidence. He traces the ravine to the left and right, walks the entire length of it over and over again but the ravine remains empty. Stiles makes his way back to his car mindlessly, drives home on autopilot, as he grapples with the concept of his own mind being an interloper.
There’s two options, he muses as he pulls into the driveway at his house.
One option is that he is losing his mind. His mom was older than him when she was diagnosed but the little information he’s managed to glean from his father points to initial confusion and memory problems. If he is remembering something that didn’t happen, something is wrong with his mind. If there was no murder and no beast, something is wrong with his mind.
The second option is that there is a creature and there was a murder. The beast was obviously intelligent and could have followed Stiles to his home and taken the bag. It could have cleaned up the ravine. It’s possible. If the men are reported missing, or if there is proof of Reddick being a murderer, then it’s possible he isn’t going crazy.
He’s yanked from his musing by a loud knocking on his window. His father looks in, eyebrows pressed together with concern. He's still dressed in his uniform.
“I’ve been calling you,” his voice is muffled by the window. “Where the hell have you been?”
“I just needed to clear my head,” Stiles says, pushing open his door. He forces a smile, looking up at his dad. “How was your day, pop?”
“It was fine. Long,” his dad says. “Be much better in about twenty minutes.”
“And what is happening in twenty minutes?” Stiles asks.
“Well, you will have poured me about an ounce of whiskey,” his dad replies. Stiles frowns at his dad’s back. Then, his dad continues, “And I will be twenty minutes further along looking into these disappearances.”
Stiles’ blood runs cold.
“Disappearances?” He asks as they cross the threshold of his house. His father takes his throne at the kitchen table and Stiles brings over a glass and the bottle of whiskey. He pours more than an ounce, closer to four, and his dad swirls the glass suspiciously when he picks it up. He visibly shrugs, taking a long pull from it.
“Two local jackasses,” his dad sighs. He sips his whiskey and Stiles splashes in more when he turns to pull a stack of case files from his briefcase. “They have a history of– Hell, I shouldn’t be telling you about this.”
“It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone,” Stiles grouses. He pulls up Tetris on his phone, content to wait for his dad to drink enough whiskey to start gabbing.
“I suppose Scott doesn’t count as anyone,” his dad snarks. “Actually, where has that kid been?”
“He’s got a new girlfriend,” Stiles says and his dad softens.
“I was wondering why you’ve been in the house so much lately.”
Stiles can’t say that he’s been in the house so much because he’s terrified of being arrested or mauled by a boogeyman so he makes a non-committal noise and plays another few levels of his Tetris. Eventually, he gets hungry enough to go make some Hamburger Helper and green beans for them to eat. He tips in another few ounces of whiskey as he sets down his dad’s plate.
“If I didn’t know better I’d think this has to have something to do with that fire–You remember that?”
“The Hales?”
“Yeah, yeah,” his dad has a thickening voice, a slight slur. “The Hale House fire.”
“Well, basically everyone died from that right?”
“Almost,” his dad replies. He’s leaning forward, chin balanced on his hand now. “Couple of the kids were at school. I think one man was alive for a while after the fire but– I’m not sure if he lived or not. Seventy-five percent of his body was covered in burns. The kids split town and left him while he was still recovering.”
“What makes you think the disappearance is even related to the fire?” Stiles asks casually.
“God, that ounce hit me like a brick. And I have said way too much, and if you repeat any of that–”
“Come on,” Stiles groans. “It’s me!”
“Fine, fine. The two missing guys, they’re both known arsonists. And,” his dad leans forward conspiratorially, pushing a file folder across the table. The folder is open to a handful of photographs of carvings of spirals. “There’s been all this weird graffiti out at the Hale House ruins. Spirals. Carved into the house and surrounding trees. Hell, a hiker found a doe with the spiral cut in its side. It’s spooked some of the deputies. Ford actually used the phrase ‘Satanic’ the other day.”
It’s, horribly enough, a relief that the men are arsonists. It’s a relief that his dad thinks they might have killed the Hales. It's a relief that those men are missing. It means that he isn’t losing his mind. It means that there is a monster in the woods of Beacon Hills. And it means that the monster knows where Stiles lives if he came and took the evidence bag from his porch roof.
“Ford should have retired ten years ago,” Stiles says in lieu of screaming.
“Ain’t that the truth.”
Stiles flips through the photos, looking at them for any sign of the creature. They’re obviously hand-carved, sketchy and messy like someone just hacked at the surfaces with a knife. The deer looks almost posed, head tilted up and legs arranged just so. The spiral on her side is a smooth, curving incision that Stiles can easily imagine his beast creating. It matches the carving on the tree by the ravine. By the murder site.
“I mean, it’s weird, sure,” Stiles says, putting the photos back. “But one is just an incident.”
“And two is a coincidence,” his dad says. “Arson charges and defacement at the site of Beacon Hill’s worst case of arson– Well, it was never actually ruled arson.”
“Everyone says it was.”
“It really seemed to be,” his dad says. The mood shifts minutely to one of somber. “All those people. They didn’t lock themselves up in that basement, kid.”
“Another shot?” Stiles offers the bottle to his dad.
“I really shouldn’t.”
Stiles pours him one.
“Were there any other reasons you thought it was arson?”
“I’m not trained but–You pick stuff up, you know. The way the fire started and spread. The official report said it was faulty wiring but it never made sense. The Hale House was deemed a local landmark. They don’t just hand those out. You have to have inspections from the city. And the fire had three points of ignition. Hard to believe three wall sockets went up simultaneously.”
“Doesn’t really make sense.”
“None of it does! I guess the missing men– they spent a lot of time in the woods. So, I checked with animal control-- just to see if there were any bear sightings or something. Checking off a possibility. You know the instances of wild animal reports were up seventy percent over the past few months? It's like they're going crazy, running out of the woods... I don't know…”
“Or something's scaring them out.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Stiles says. He needs to go to the Hale House. “You look tired. Maybe you should hit the hay.”
“Yeah, maybe,” his dad looks at him with bleary eyes. “You know, I miss talking to you... It's like we never have time anymore.”
“I miss talking to you, too,” Stiles says. He means it.
“I do... I miss it... and I miss your mom,” his dad mutters. His head drops down to his folded arms.
“Come on, dad,” Stiles says, grabbing his dad’s arm and heaving him to his feet. His dad holds his arm tightly, his soft weight pressing against his side. “You’re alright.”
Stiles puts his dad to bed, guilt weighing in his stomach like a stone. He turns him on his side with a waste bucket on the floor in front of him and a glass of water on the bedside, a practiced ritual. His dad murmurs as he settles into bed and Stiles closes the door softly. He pushes the guilt aside and takes his dad’s MagLite with him as he heads out to his Jeep.
***
The road that winds up to the house is covered in undergrowth and advantageous vegetation that has been freshly driven through. No one had driven this way in a long time and the tracks they left are obvious now. It could just be the Beacon Hill cops, Stiles supposes, but the tracks he can see aren’t standard-issue patrol car tires.
The Hale House ruins scrape the night sky like vicious claws, fading into the dark at the base and stretching up to spear the violet night at its highest peaks. The woods around it seem to hang over the house, heavy and dark.
He parks a few meters from the steps to the house, turning on his flashlight before he gets out. The weight in the gloomy air doesn’t let up and the lack of animal noises sets Stiles’ teeth on edge. He moves carefully, looking for any signs of who has been out here. He finds a newly discarded cup from the town’s organic coffee shop with a damp chai tea bag still in it on the mantle of the fireplace, but not anything else that seems out of place. Stiles picks his way through the hollowed out hallways, taking in the charred grandeur that makes up the Hale House. Burned family photos still cling to the walls and the evidence of the people who used to live here clutter the rooms. A rocking horse, black with soot and seared yarn hair, holds court to a crowd of melted Barbies. A kitchen full of ash and broken crockery. The ruined arm chairs in the family room. This was a place of elegance once, a monument to one of the town’s founding families. But now it’s just…empty.
It’s empty and burnt and wrong.
And, if Stiles is right, it’s the birthplace of a monster.
***
That night, the Omega comes for him.
When he gets home, he takes his father’s place at the dinner table. He pours over the casefiles, snatching for any clarity he can glean from the pages within. His dad had brought home three volumes from the Hale House fire and Stiles combs through.
Three survivors. Laura and Derek and their uncle, Peter. Peter was in the house and somehow lived through the fire, but barely. Stiles makes a mental note to look into where the uncle is now. The Omega had said he was the last one but maybe he didn’t mean the last Hale. Omega means many things in this day and age but it can also mean the final part. The Omega could have meant that he was ending something. Finishing the vendetta. Closing the chapter on the Hale House fire.
Stiles isn’t sure what time it is when he goes upstairs. He leaves the lights in his room off and changes into pajamas, only realizing too late that something is in his room. Something primal, lurking in the darkest corner.
“Are you real?” Stiles asks, voice giving out with a rasp. He’s frozen, trapped and afraid.
“Yes.”
With shaking fingers, Stiles reaches out. The Omega moves to him in a jab of speed. Stiles flinches, crying out involuntarily, and he shrinks back. The Omega slows, drops his massive head between his hulking shoulders to look into Stiles’ eyes. Stiles reaches out to touch the furred side of the creature’s face. It’s magical, under the gnarled and burned flesh. Under the fur and the fangs and the eyes lies a creature from a fairytale. His fur is coarse, like scrub grass, and his skin is burning hot. His breath is a warm, wet exhale against Stiles’ bared wrist and it sends shivers down his spine. Too quick to process, the Omega gently catches Stiles’ wrist and pulls his hand up until Stiles’ is stretched up on one foot, one hand braced against the barrel-like torso of the Omega.
“Hey—,” Stiles yelps, stifling himself when the Omega presses a gnarled hand against Stiles’ exposed side. The daggers tipping the Omega’s fingers are startling cold beside the heat of his palm. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?” The beast asks, voice marred with a thick growl.
“Don’t kill me.”
The Omega huffs a laugh and ducks a little to sniff Stiles’ wrist. He makes a contented noise and then he’s sniffing his way down Stiles’ arm. Stiles freezes under the attention, arm still held up above his head. The Omega’s nose dips into Stiles’ armpit and, helplessly, Stiles jerks away, snorting.
“Stop,” The Omega snaps, ears pinned. He ducks back in and his snuffling nose forces Stiles to squirm again. The Omega huffs, lips curling up into a snarl.
“I’m sorry,” Stiles says, stilling again. His shoulder aches. “I’m sorry! You’re—it’s an involuntary response.”
The Omega grumbles again but his ears flit forward. He looks down at Stiles, blue eyes burning in the dark of Stiles’ bedroom. He looks like he’s studying Stiles, deciding something.
“The murderers,” he says finally. “You will help me punish them.”
“The ones who started the fire—Aren’t they dead?”
“More to it. More layers. More guilty.”
“I can’t help you kill. I can’t.”
“I will kill,” the Omega says. “You will find.”
Then the Omega’s tongue, thick and slimy, smears around Stiles’ wrist. He bites Stiles’ arm lightly, holding him still. Stiles holds his breath, jarringly aware of the pressure of fangs around his arm. The Omega breaths around Stiles’ wrist, eyes blinking closed. He looks…happy.
“A-are you a Hale?”
The Omega lazily opens one eye and then closes it again, unwrapping his tongue and moving his teeth open and closed against Stiles’ wrist. Stiles’ calves shake.
“This would be easier if you sat down,” Stiles says, unable to keep his mouth shut.
The Omega sinks, Stiles’ wrist still held delicately in his mouth, to the floor. He never stops looking like a monster. But he also looks lonely, like a stray cat hungry for affection.
Stiles reaches out with his other hand slowly. The Omega’s eyes snap open and he growls, clamping down on Stiles’ wrist harder. He growls, deep in his throat, but Stiles doesn’t stop. His fingers make contact with the Omega, sliding through his coarse fur slowly. He lifts his hand again, causing a slight increase in pressure around his arm, but then he starts petting the strange creature on his floor. The pressure on his wrist releases but his arm is still held, an obvious source of comfort. It’s a long while before the Omega’s eyes close again.
“You are a Hale. And something about the fire made you like this. Made you into something that can take revenge,” Stiles says. “There’s a ton of legends about what happens to people after they lose someone. Losing family is—hard. But losing everyone? It changed you. You’re like a vengeful spirit or something. And I think maybe that killing them will cure you. You don’t deserve to be trapped like this. But I can’t just say that the other ones deserve to die.”
The Omega grumbles, non-committal.
Stiles stands there, petting the monster until he releases Stiles’ arm and goes the way he came. He leaves behind a tidy ring of teeth marks around Stiles’ wrist.
The adrenaline spins in Stiles’ head long after the Omega leaves. Stiles pulls a corkboard out from under his bed and leans it against the wall on his dresser. He takes his time laying out the framework of the Hale House fire, photos pinned carefully above index cards with pertinent information and copies of the reports. He winds yarn around it in tracks of vibrant connection, lines of coincidence and patterns, until the board is a map of the tragedy. He works into the night, mind heavy with the mystery of the fire, full of the faces of the Hales and the men who could have killed them. The men who did kill them.
The remaining Hales, Peter and Laura and Derek, get their pictures pinned at the top of the board. Stiles knew them, distantly, when they still lived in town. The mysterious Hales were always a source of conversation in town. Beautiful people who kept to themselves, sequestered in the dark woods that encompass Beacon Hills. Were they killed for that? For being other? Did they anger the wrong thugs? Was it for a reason or just because they were far enough from town that it was easy to set their home ablaze?
The blueprints and crime scene photos of the Hale House tell an even more confusing story. There’s no way the Hales locked themselves into the basement. Were they corralled down there? Were they already down there? There’s a thousand questions pinging around Stiles’ brain and the only people who can answer them are missing in action or comatose in an assisted living facility.
But the Omega won’t stop until it finds its vengeance and that means Stiles can’t stop until he understands what really happened that night. Who really killed the Hales and why.
He slides the cork board back under his bed and falls into a frenzied sleep.
***
Stiles wakes up the next day to his dad’s shout. He barrels down the staircase, tripping on the last few steps and barely catching himself on the side table across the hallway. Their backdoor is open and Stiles launches towards it, grabbing the first weapon he can find.
He crashes through the backdoor, broom held aloft, and his dad catches him across the chest with an outstretched arm.
“Hold on, kid,” his dad says.
Stiles calms down enough to look out into the yard. A buck staggers to its feet, one hind leg held limply aloft. Their backyard is a mess, the buck has wrought havoc on their patio furniture and broken boards in their fence. It looks at them, eyes wide with fear, and crashes into the fence again and again.