DAMNED BACK BLUES: PART I
In which fourteen years have gone by, the pack is taking down a skinwalker and Derek worries too much.
Derek shows up at his house at six in the morning. He rings the doorbell for once. Which forces Stiles limp to the door and open it for the werewolf, who then decides to just stand there on the porch like an idiot instead of coming in like a normal person. Stiles curses at his visitor and at himself. His body is always stiff and non-complying in the morning, old scars and injuries acting up before he has massaged or medicated them into order.
Derek has flint in his eyes and the set about his jaw tells Stiles that something is going down.
"What's it now?" he asks gruffly. Stiles does not take kindly to being awakened at what he considers ungodly hours, and even less kindly to having to make conversation before imbibing at least a small quantity of caffeine. He is as far from being a morning person that is physically possible without being a vampire. Hell, he has even met a vampire that's more of a morning person than he is.
"We're hunting a skinwalker today. It wandered onto our territory last night and murdered two kids in the woods. The police found them first and have started to investigate, but so far they think it's an animal attack. We have to take the skinwalker down before it hurts anyone else," says Derek. "You can't come with us. I don't want you out in the field."
"Aw shit! You can't make me stay here like I'm some damned…" He calms down when he sees the face Derek pulls. "Look, I've taken care of myself since I was a snotty teenager. I helped you with the kanima at age sixteen, for Christ's sake! You know, I really think I can manage now. Remember that episode when I had gun training and was Deaton's padawan for a year? And what about the Deal?"
The Deal is something that they have hashed out over the last couple of years, after Derek started getting too skittish to involve him in anything that might end in blood or tears. Basically it boils down to that Stiles has been forced to compromise his level of contribution to the pack business, while Derek has had to share a lot more information than he'd ever do willingly. It's far from making either of them happy, but it still means that Derek has to can his whining about the frailty of humans and that Stiles, with only a little self-restraint, can continue to participate in hunts, even if he does so from the outskirts. The Deal is something that they both follow religiously, for mutual benefit. The Deal is sacred.
"I know. But this is too dangerous. There's no way I'm letting a skinwalker get to you again. I can't risk that. If anything would happen to you, I couldn't…," Derek growls. He sounds desperate, which causes Stiles eyebrows to climb, but then he manages to collect himself. "I'll be calmer if I know that you're safe at home and wont get in the way. It's risky even for the rest of us. You know it didn't go down well the last time we took one of them."
"Oh, come on, Derek! But yeah, I remember. Skinwalkers being crazy strong and crazy fast. And plain crazy, did I mention that? The one we took down on the lacrosse field gave me this, after all," Stiles says and drags his fingers across his T-shirt, under which there are three jagged white scars on his chest and stomach. Derek winces at the movement, and Stiles immediately remembers handling the aftermath of him finding the teenaged Stiles splayed out unconscious in a stinking pool of his own blood. Werewolves and trauma do not mix well.
"We'll be in touch when we're done," Derek adds hastily. "If you don't hear from us in a couple of hours, you know we're in trouble. But until then I don't want you to come near this thing. You understand me?"
Stiles briefly thinks about bitching about it, but he knows that Derek means well. Derek probably thinks that he's protecting him by trying to keep him off the field. Life with the pack isn't exactly healthy for a human. Over the last fourteen years Stiles has gotten about as many injuries as the rest of them, but being human means he doesn't shrug them off like the wolves do. By age thirty has seen more of the hospital than he ever wanted to in his entire life. But that doesn't mean he wants to quit hunting with the pack. Derek understands that, but that doesn't hinder him from sending guilty and worried stares after him when he thinks Stiles doesn't notice.
"Stiles, do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Capisce. Staying here. No problem," Stiles agrees.
Stiles spends the morning not being out hunting, like the good boy he is. Instead he's reading and rereading the information he gathered the last time they went after a skinwalker. The coffee pot is his best friend, but he paces himself after the third cup. Coffee doesn't make him bounce of the walls like it did in the good old days when he hadn't outgrown his ADHD yet, but now it prevents him from getting any sleep at all if he overdoses. Getting older sucks that way.
They really are nasty bastards, skinwalkers. Like werewolves, can either be born or made. They behave weirdly much like schizophrenics, Stiles thinks. For long periods they can keep it under control, but now and then they have psychotic breaks. Only that regular schizophrenics don't generally grow fangs, claws and scraggly fur and try to dismember anything living that comes within range. Unless they make an effort, the skinwalkers forget that they've turned. Resurfacing as human between changes leave them scared and confused. Sometimes the skinwalkers don't even know what they are. That freaks Stiles out most of all.
In the 1674 Bestiary of Gloucester that Deaton furnished him with there is a paragraph that mentions the possibility of controlling a skinwalker. Most of the book is complete bullshit, but Stiles thought it was cool until he met his first skinwalker in real life, and after that he wrote it off as creepy and downright impossible. Handling a skinwalker would be like juggling with dynamite with lit detonators. Sure, if you could juggle you could keep it going for a while, but the bomb would sure as hell go off no matter what.
The best part about the Gloucester Bestiary is the pictures. It's very clear that who ever made them had never seen a single one of the depicted creatures in real life. It's also likely that they had never seen lions, monkeys or horses. The picture of the skinwalker looks remarkably much like a cow that has grown talons and saber teeth. Stiles would be cracking up about it if he didn't know what it looked like in reality. The wonky illustration stares at him with mad asymmetrical eyes and a huge smile. Stiles glares back.
After four hours without contact Stiles is starting to get worried. He knows it's not irrational maternal behavior, based on what usually happens when he gets a bad feeling. But he stands down from the urge to throw himself at the jeep. He'll give it a little more time before freaking out.
He paces his tiny house, wandering the living room, kitchen, bedroom, and back again, until his leg starts to hurt too badly and he has to lie down for a while. He checks the inventory of his weapon closet, which Erica has deemed creepy, but Scott, Isaac and Boyd have called awesome on separate occasions. Everything is right where it should, which leaves him with nothing to do. He remembers that it was a while since he checked his utility bag, so he busies himself with unpacking and repacking it. It's got everything one might need if hunted by a supernatural monster. Seriously. It's got everything from extra knifes and ammunition to bandages, granola bars and a teeny tiny bottle of Jack that he stole from a motel fridge years back. Stiles checks and double checks that nothing is missing, and then adds one more cartridge of his own home made bullets.
He's mighty proud of the bullets, and he's pretty sure that even the Argents would approve of them. Not only is the round of pure iron, it contains a capsule with liquid wolfsbane and mountain ash that explodes on impact. It's his own recipe. To his knowledge the Argents only ever made wolfsbane bullets, but the mountain ash really goes that extra mile. The pack refuses to go near his house days after he's cooked the solution, claiming it stinks to hell. The bullets pretty much work on anything. So far nothing has survived them, and Stiles is damned sure he doesn't want to meet anything that would.
When seven hours has gone by he can't help himself, so he grabs the utility bag and his gun and heads for the jeep. The tracking device he stealthily installed on Scotts cell phone in an unsupervised moment leads him to a secluded part of the woods that no one ever visits voluntary. Derek has been irrationally adamant about patrolling the area heavily, which there has been an equally irrational amount of whining about from the rest of the pack. As always, it turns out that Derek's right. Stiles does not look forward to the triumphantly irritating 'I told you so' from the alpha and the grudging death stares from the betas. Stiles drums the steering wheel as he drives and steadily pushes the speed limit in a way that his dad would be very disappointed with.
It looks like a tornado has raged through the woods. Trees are torn from their roots and the ground is scuffled like a herd of elephants has had a wrestling match, which everybody lost. Stiles bends down and flicks at a pool of blood drying into the ground, wishing to god that he had the olfaction of a werewolf so he'd know who the blood belonged to.
Stiles follows the tracks on the forest floor and scuffed trees. He has become quite the good tracker over the years. He's had to. The trail is clear and it is obvious that something ridiculously violent has gone down. He finds pieces of a plaid shirt that he is pretty sure belongs to Boyd stuck on a branch ten feet up.
There is a clearing up ahead, where there's an old abandoned cabin. The pack has patrolled it for years, but never broken into it. When Stiles gets closer he sees that the door has been torn off its hinges and the windows smashed, and who knows what else had gone down.
The clearing is silent. It's too silent and it rubs him the wrong way. Stiles just knows that there's something there. He hefts his gun and unconsciously falls into his battle stance, jogging up to the building as quietly as he can with every nerve in his body on fire.
Something big shoots past Stiles from out the cabin window with an incredible speed and he unloads the gun at it by instinct. He misses, or at least he thinks he does. There's a rough growl from the woods that morphs into a ragged, horrible laughter.
The wolves are tied up and sitting on the floor. The ropes are entwined with wolfsbane, which explains how they are still fighting it without any success. Erica and Isaac are unconscious, but Derek, Scott and Boyd stare at him with big eyes when he climbs through the window himself. They look quite undignified sitting there on the floor, four grown men and a woman, tied together like in a comic book. The gold and red spots glow in the semidarkness. Stiles draws his knife and starts sawing at the ropes.
"'Stay offa the field', huh? Can't go one day without me," he whispers teasingly into Derek's ear as he cuts him loose. His lips nudge stubble as he speaks and Derek startles at the touch. As soon as the wolves are loose, he throws the rope to the farthest corner.
When they stand up, he can see that Derek's healed already, but that the betas are still sporting flesh wounds in different stages of mending. Boyd groans, but still manages to heft up Erica's unconscious body over his shoulder and lift Isaac with one arm like they are ragdolls.
"Are you okay?" Scott asks. He can feel Derek's eyes rake over his body for affirmation, but he does his best to ignore it.
"Yeah, sure," he says, but is distracted by a sudden thought. Something isn't right. The wolfsbane rope is not something deranged monsters whip up just like that. It takes reasoning, planning and thumbs. It's decidedly not the product of a crazed killer monster. Stiles turns it over in his brain until there's only one logical explanation left. Damn it if the Gloucester Bestiary wasn't right for once.
"Listen to me, a fully transformed skinwalker couldn't have tied you up like this. How many were there? One? Two? More?" he asks desperately.
"I didn't see, I don't know," Scott starts. "There was one in the clearing, but then I just blacked out and then…"
"Goddammit! Were there one or two?"
"There were two," Derek fills in grimly.
"Oh shit," Stiles curses. "Oh shit."
Then a scream that cuts through flesh and bone rings through the cabin. Wolves and man turn towards the sound. It's coming from outside and has died down as abruptly as it began. And then the wailing starts.
(Part one of out of two. I'm updating as soon as I can, I'm almost done with the next part! I'd love to hear what you think of it, so please review!
The title is stolen from Esbjörn Svensson Trio. Gotta love that jazz.)