Chapter 85

Feeling an unholy rage inside of him at this violation of the peace, Stiles sent out every speck of mountain ash he could spare. The order was clear; find the darach and make them regret all their life choices.

"You look like a demon," Boyd stated as he observed Stiles in all his red-eyed and black-skinned glory. "Good."

"How likely is your grandma to come out here?" Stiles asked.

"She'll stay inside and pray that the TV won't give out on her," Boyd replied. "Who am I gonna call for you? Tell me what you need."

"If you could send a text to our group with a status update, that'd be great." Stiles licked his dry lip. "I'll ask Danny to have an eye on the city's security feed, maybe he'll be able to see something interesting."

They typed their messages and then Stiles called Peter.

"What do you need, sweetheart?" the werewolf asked without delay.

"For everyone to stay inside," Stiles said. "Other than that, more mountain ash would be fantastic. I've already sent out my guys to open the sacks at my house, but I'll need more. Could you open your stores?"

"I'm on it," Peter said crisply. "Done. It's running out. What else?"

"I asked Danny to watch for unusual happenings. Should he find something, I'll need someone on the streets. Can you do it or should I ask Derek?"

"Derek will hold down the fort with Isaac," Peter replied. "I'll get in contact with Danny and go where he sends me."

Stiles exhaled, feeling something inside of him unclench at Peter's ready acceptance of Stiles' plan. "Thank you. If you find that bitch and if it seems like a good idea to fight them I won't be mad, but I'd be happy with just a picture for now."

"I'll be careful, Stiles."

"You'd better," Stiles growled, the sound weirdly amplified in his throat by Lou's spark. "I gotta go, make that bitch's life a misery."

"Do your absolute best, darling. I'll check in with Boyd every fifteen minutes."

Peter ended the call and Stiles took a deep breath. So far his mountain ash hadn't found the darach but it was only a matter of time. They couldn't hide from him inside his wards, not for long.

The thought brought a blood-thirsty grin to Stiles' face.

oOo

Stiles woke with a start and groaned when his vision blurred a little and he became woozy.

"What happened?" he asked, flopping back into the tangled blankets.

Boyd's reply was calm and factual. "You spent hours harassing the darach bitch. Here, I made coffee. You'll get breakfast once you can sit up without vertigo."

"Thanks, man." Stiles allowed Lou to carefully sit them up. The early morning light was far too bright in his tired eyes and the blood was rushing uncomfortably in his ears. "Oooh, smells like the good stuff."

"Peter insisted," Boyd explained succinctly. "There's footage of the mountain ash attacking something all over town."

"What?" Stiles blinked as his brain used the smell of the coffee to come back online.

"Seems like the bitch led you and Peter on a merry chase," Boyd clarified. "Not that you didn't do them some damage because everyone believes you did. It's just that it unfortunately wasn't enough."

The icy cold made Stiles' hands and feet useless. Boyd had to lunge to save him from coffee burns. "No."

"Yes." Boyd sighed and ran a hand over his head. "They made a mistake, though."

"Fuck, no!" Stiles yelled, yanking the blankets off and standing. "When! And how? Do we know who it is?"

"The laptop's ready when you are," Boyd said quietly. "Wake up first, Stiles. Give yourself a minute."

Stiles wanted to argue against that request, wanted to rail against the gods and the heavens until his desperate fury was spent … but Boyd didn't deserve such a display.

I'm gonna make time for that later, though, Stiles swore to himself and Lou agreed with a fierce growl reverberating through Stiles' mind.

Under Boyd's worried and watchful eyes, Stiles took care to drink some of his heavily creamed coffee but the food, a lovely plate of scrambled eggs and buttered toast, was utterly beyond him. As it was, the coffee on his empty stomach was enough to give him cramps.

"I'm lucid," Stiles sighed after a couple of minutes and made grabby hands at the laptop. "Hit me."

Boyd still looked a little wary, but he did let Stiles have the laptop and helpfully tapped a key to get the video Danny had compiled for them running.

Stiles stared at his mountain ash struggling against invisible forces and ultimately defeating them and rushing on; twice there was even a shadowy figure visible - once in a rain-streaked window of a shop and once just outside the light of a street lantern - though it wasn't enough to determine whether it was male or female. Both times, Stiles could also make out Peter's eerily glowing eyes from the shadows.

So he's been on their tail the whole time, Stiles thought with grim satisfaction. Looks like the mountain ash tag works, at least.

Towards the end, the security camera of a doctor's office caught a dark blur racing past. As that blur had a very human shape in the stills Danny had managed to extract, it definitely wasn't Stiles' mountain ash or Peter, because Danny wouldn't have included it if it weren't important.

"They got away," Stiles snarled, curling his clawed fingers in the bedding. "Despite getting tagged by the ash and Peter having their scent, they got away."

"For all intents and purposes, you won," Boyd said when the video was over. "You pushed them back, and violently."

"How were they able to kill someone, then?" Stiles demanded.

Boyd sat next to him and cued up another short video. "Danny and Peter's best guess is that they killed their magic and scent and fled into this hotel lobby. It's the exact time when the storm suddenly let up so that makes sense. Peter thinks that the darach drawing the magic almost completely back into themselves made your mountain ash more or less blind to them, just like it took away their scent. Through the heavy rain, Peter said he could barely hear them as they ran as it was. Without their scent, he lost them almost immediately, unfortunately. But check this out."

The video began to play, showing the bar of the hotel the darach supposedly fled into. Danny had fast-forwarded the feed a bit but then it suddenly started running normally again and Stiles' mouth dropped open.

"Holy shit, are you kidding me!"

On the laptop screen, Kali appeared, wearing a slinky red dress and black killer heels. She sauntered into the bar area and chose a seat a couple of feet away from an awkward-looking man in his thirties. And as if she knew that she was being observed she turned to the camera once she had her drink and saluted it with a smug smirk on her face.

oOo

"They just chatted up the poor dude and walked out with him!" Stiles shouted into his phone. "With Kali's face!"

"Believe me, we are on it," Stiles' father said tiredly. "Danny is scarily effective with his anonymous tip-offs. If it helps, the station is completely spooked by a dead woman going around and killing people."

"Obviously, it wasn't her," Stiles growled. "That fucking darach wore her fucking face! They can shapeshift or use glamours or whatever the fuck we wanna call it. That's DEFCON one!"

"At this point, I think we can safely assume that your dark druid person is a woman," the sheriff replied.

"How do you figure?" Boyd asked before Stiles could.

"It's just in the way she moved. A man in disguise would never move that way, even with some training. I should know because we have an undercover operative who sometimes doubles as a woman and he's good."

"Well, that's something," Stiles muttered. With an angry hiss he then snarled, "Damnit, I was so close last night!"

"You were," his father said soothingly. "Even if it won't ever get acknowledged publicly, the station thanks you for your efforts. It's not your fault she got what she wanted after all. From what the victim's email and social media tell us, that man was desperate; he'd have wanted to be alone with a far less attractive woman. According to his friends, the only thing he had left was some pride. He didn't want to pay for it."

"Well, I wish he did," Stiles said, feeling so much better now about Isaac's decision to just get it over with. No romantic notion was worth this. "Being pathetic is not a reason to die such a wretched death. God fucking damnit!"

"Prostitution is illegal but in this case, I have to agree," the sheriff said quietly. "Dying like this … it's a tragedy. I swear to you that I'll drill my people to be careful and to wear their talismans religiously or else, kiddo."

"You'll spin it so that they'll have their eye on the people next on the darach's list?" Stiles asked, suddenly exhausted.

"I'll find a way," his father promised. "And now call Peter, I know you want to. Love you."

"Love you, dad." Stiles let his phone sink after the call had ended and took a moment to just breathe.

"Come, we're going to see the others," Boyd said. "I already texted Isaac to take care of lunch. Everyone will be there."

Stiles looked at his friend, noting for the umpteenth time just how solid and dependable Boyd was. "Thanks. And sorry for the mood."

"You didn't say anything I didn't wanna say, myself," Boyd snorted. "I'll just check that my grandma has everything she needs and then we can go."

A bit later they left the house with all of Stiles' mountain ash neatly packed away again. Stiles trusted Boyd to drive the Jeep and while part of it was an actual show of trust as well as an unspoken apology for his uselessness, the by far larger part was the ongoing mental and physical exhaustion Stiles was labouring under. He knew he needed to eat and replenish his energy but the mere thought about the failure of last night robbed him of his appetite. It was a vicious cycle.

Boyd didn't say anything when Stiles chose to use the elevator instead of the stairs. Instead, he simply stood close enough to Stiles to have their shoulders touch. His silent support meant the world to Stiles and Lou, resulting in a tendril of mountain ash winding around Boyd's wrist and holding on until they'd entered Peter's apartment.

"C'mere, sweetheart," Peter rumbled, drawing Stiles into a long embrace right inside the door. Around them, their friends approached slowly. "What a night, eh?"

"Yeah. I feel like shit," Stiles mumbled into the man's shoulder.

"That's normal," Peter returned softly. One of his hands found its way to Stiles' head, cradling him even closer. "I wish I could say that it'll get better but that'd be a lie. You'll learn to deal with it, however. That I can promise."

"How do you deal with it?" Stiles asked in a small voice.

"By finding out what went wrong and improving myself and my circumstances accordingly as much as possible," Peter answered. "The pack and I have been doing that for a bit already and so far the consensus is that it's not our fault."

"It came down to having too little information about the bitch," Danny explained. "But that's changing and I'll show you why in a minute."

"Really?" Stiles snuffled against Peter's shirt and inhaled the comforting scent before raising his head.

Danny smiled reassuringly. "Yeah, really. It's a lot of guesswork at this point, but we've got something now, and we've got a hunch that we're on the right track."

"Before we delve back in, Stiles will get something to eat," Peter said sternly. "You're exhausted and of no use like this."

"I tried feeding him," Boyd told him.

"My stomach's been cramping all morning," Stiles sighed. "Not sure I'll be able to eat."

"You have to," Peter said, his tone final. "Lou requires sustenance and so do you. If you're not feeling up to it yet let him take over. He should be able to suppress the influence of your mental state on your body. It won't be great but it's better than having you pass out due to hunger."

Stiles swallowed. "Lou can do that?"

"I don't see why not," Peter said. "Give him a chance to help you out."

"You know he wants to," Isaac encouraged. "Just look." He pointed at Stiles' arms where the mountain ash was slowly forming into some sort of external skeleton.

Stiles raised that arm and flexed his fingers which were now lined, the fingertips capped in black. "Huh."

We need food, Lou told him firmly. Hunting the dark bitch was exhausting.

You can make sure I'm not gonna spit it back out?, Stiles asked. Because that'd suck even more than being hungry.

I take care of your body, you learn more about our enemy. Lou used the mountain ash exo-suit on Stiles' body to hug him. Alpha made so much yummy meat!

Charmed by Lou's enthusiasm for the food, Stiles chuckled quietly. Turning to his friends, he said, "We're all sorted out. Lou will eat and I'll look at what you've found."

"You're gonna love this," Erica promised. She showed her fangs as she grinned.

In short order, Stiles had a plate with roast cauliflower, a frankly decadent sweet potato mash, and fried chicken in front of him. It smelled amazing and Lou's tight hold on him made sure that his stomach remained quiet. It was different than their near-blending some weeks back; Lou didn't come close to Stiles' mind at all, remaining firmly separate, and yet Stiles felt physically very sheltered right then. It also helped that Derek sat right next to him, lending some much-needed strength.

"It's working, isn't it?" Peter asked smugly as Stiles was moaning appreciatively after the first taste.

"I might have to let Lou do this more often, maybe during a research binge," Stiles admitted and shoved another forkful of food into his mouth. "Man, this is good. Now, what've you got?"

Danny turned around his laptop and started a presentation. "You already know that you nearly got the darach, which forced her to flee and hide. Shortly afterwards, she impersonated the dead alpha, Kali, and seduced a male virgin at a hotel bar into following her. Can you guess how this is significant?"

Stiles eyed the still of not-Kali at the bar. "She looks incredibly alike. Suppose the darach knew Kali from somewhere?"

"That's exactly what we thought," Danny nodded. He tapped a key and the next page of the presentation came up. "Now, with Peter's help, I was able to compile some information on the alpha pack and found out that before Kali became a member she was alpha to a large and healthy pack. With all that it entails."

Stiles chewed slowly, his intent eyes going from the screen to Danny. "She had an emissary."

"A druid, as far as I was able to find out," Peter said, placing a hand on Stiles' shoulder. "It could be conjecture that it's Kali's former emissary terrorizing our city."

"But you don't think so," Stiles replied. "Why? Didn't the other alphas have emissaries? Or if they did, weren't they druids?"

"Good questions and the answer to all of them is no, as far as we know," Peter said. "I've reached out to my contacts ever since the alpha pack decided to grace us with their presence. Ennis' emissary was a beta and the twins killed their pack the same night they gained the alpha spark. Their emissary was a witch with certain dark leanings."

"Wow, so much lovely in that origin story."

Peter snorted. "Not to take their side but it appears they did this for a reason, and as far as I can tell, the witch especially deserved it."

"What reason could someone have to slaughter their whole pack, though?" Stiles asked, appalled. "If it's abuse I can sort of get behind it, but the way you tell it that doesn't seem to be the case for all of them."

"It wasn't for Kali and Ennis, to the contrary." Peter paused, choosing his words carefully. "This is where it gets ugly, Stiles."

Stiles grimaced. "Do I have to hear it?"

"You absolutely do because Deucalion, Kali, and Ennis didn't just leave their packs," Peter answered gently. "There's a taboo in werewolf culture that, in my opinion, every wolf needs to know."

"I gather that it isn't talked about usually?" Stiles asked, spooked by Peter's unusually circumspect language.

"No, because this knowledge has destroyed packs in the past." Peter looked oddly tenderly at the ragtag group of teenagers before him. "While everyone knows that killing an alpha will very likely transfer the alpha power to the victorious beta or omega, the uncomfortable truth is that the reverse is also true."

Stiles' mouth dropped open. "What? Killing betas gives an alpha power?"

"The short answer is yes, it does," Derek murmured, looking as uncomfortable as Stiles felt.

"Before werewolves became civilized enough to blend in better with humans, there were alphas seeking power where they had no business seeking it," Peter explained. "Whole packs were slaughtered in the quest for more strength and endurance, but that practice had a price. The sacrifice of that which is sacred to us was fuelling a madness that nothing could cure. Many of those alphas sooner or later succumbed to its thrall, turning countless humans only to kill them later, and had to be taken out by hunters."

"I …" Stiles swallowed. "I thought you guys were all about the pack. The family. Why would someone do this? What did they need so much power for?"

"For the usual reasons," Peter answered evenly. "Status, wealth, the high. The first two were valid reasons for human in those times so we can't cast judgement there; it was the high that was the real problem because it could only be achieved by killing many betas."

"So killing a beta that hurt the pack wasn't a problem?" Stiles asked hesitantly.

"No, of course not. Taking down a bad apple had, and still has, to happen every now and then. It's part of our duty to our human packmates and neighbours. Taking down the whole pack, however? That's sacrilege and The Council used to come down on these defilers hard."

Stiles pointed at the laptop. "But then why-"

"Haven't they intervened with Deucalion's alpha pack?" Peter completed the question, smiling without humour. "Because no one will talk openly about such madness for fear that it spreads. As you can see, that fear is not baseless. Knowledge is power and power can be seductive for my kind. Besides, such stories gave children horrible nightmares and fuelled the issues with our duality even further in a time when the packs could hardly afford to get on the humans' bad side."

"So … Deucalion went medieval and actually murdered his pack?" Stiles asked. "Like a complete psycho?"

"His origin story is pretty tragic," Peter said thoughtfully, "and it could be said that he saw an opportunity and ran with it. Remind me to tell you about it sometime. It makes for interesting listening."

"It doesn't change the fact that he killed his whole pack, gained a lot of strength by absorbing all of the beta sparks, and is now terrorizing peaceful packs all over the continent," Derek countered, shoulders stiff and a heavy frown marring his face.

"And gave himself the moniker demon wolf," Isaac scoffed.

"It doesn't," Peter agreed. "And neither does it justify encouraging other alphas to do the same. Unfortunately, Deucalion is uncommonly strong and charismatic even blind, which obviously impressed the others enough to follow his lead. Whatever edge Deucalion has must've convinced them that it would be worth it."

Stiles' stomach twisted despite Lou's best efforts to keep him calm. "So they killed a lot of people. Did they really kill everyone?"

"To achieve that necessary high? Yes. Everyone," Lydia said. Her face was pale and drawn. "Even their lovers and children. They spared no one."

"Oh my god," Stiles whispered.

"Which brings us back to why we believe that our darach could be Kali's emissary. She reportedly was also Kali's lover," Danny chimed in. "If she survived somehow … getting betrayed like that would break anyone. Give her the power and knowledge to match ..."

Stiles didn't want to think about that because it was far too close to their own Peter situation. "What was her name? Do you know?" he asked roughly to distract himself from developing compassion for the woman.

"Julia Baccari. That's her." Danny pulled up the picture, showing a pretty woman in her late twenties or early thirties with curled dark hair and milky white skin. "I couldn't find a death certificate under that name, though that doesn't have to mean anything when the supernatural is involved. We just don't know how thorough Kali was in making the bodies disappear."

"And of course you wouldn't show me this if it weren't important," Stiles concluded. On his shoulder, Peter's grip tightened a little and Derek leaned against his other side for comfort. On his skin, Lou was carefully applying pressure, never once loosening his subtle hug. "Just get it over with. What terrible thing have you found?"

"I got lucky," Danny went on bluntly. "After the shady characters that already invaded our school, my knee-jerk reaction was to trawl their personnel database first and lo and behold … I found this."

Another picture came up, this time an application for a teaching position.

Stiles stared at it, and then at his friends. "This is a joke, right? You're having me on to take my mind off the poor dude we couldn't save. Please?"

"It's not a joke," Jackson snarled. "That bitch applied for English wearing her own face."

"It's like she wants to confront the alpha pack," Derek added.

"The way she behaved so far I'm pretty sure that she wants to confront them," Erica stated. "I mean, using the face of her former lover and alpha for a murder? Yikes."

"That's just it. She tried to frame Kali, which means that Baccari probably doesn't know yet that Kali's dead," Stiles said. "Nothing else makes sense, other than trying to scare the bejeezus out of the other alphas."

Lydia raised an eyebrow. "And us. Enemy of my enemy is a good concept but she obviously doesn't care for making nice with us. She even tried to kidnap Stiles and Heather for her ritual, knowing well enough that Stiles is a magic user and consorting with werewolves."

"If she's fully invested in her vendetta she might be beyond reason," Peter said. He tilted his head thoughtfully. "I distinctly remember going after some of you in an attempt to reach my goals. I wasn't my best but then I hardly cared. All I wanted was justice for my family."

"Maybe we'd better not talk about that time in our relationship," Stiles said, aiming for sarcasm but falling flat. "It's over and we don't need a repeat."

"Seconded," Lydia said crisply. "Plus, she's far worse so I won't allow sympathy for this particular devil. She's not one of us and saving her is out of the question. Some things can't be forgiven."

"You're decided," Stiles noted, taking in the faces of his friends. None of them looked terribly upset at Lydia's declaration. He looked up at Peter. "Your opinion?"

"I bow to the banshee's judgement," Peter said and his words settled on the room, heavy and comforting like a warm blanket.

A lot of Stiles' misgivings dissipated then. Inside of him, Lou was howling in agreement, projecting his fierce desire to protect the pack and their people in any way necessary. It felt right in a way that should've made Stiles uncomfortable, but didn't.

Across the table, Stiles found Lydia's hard and clear eyes and nodded.

End of chapter 85