Chater 24: Ancestors and Arson

In the end, they didn't tell anyone. Damon desired to keep his possible new secret weapon, well, a secret. Jeremy didn't want to get anyone's hopes up in case the kid didn't have what it took. And Lydia, well, Lydia was sworn to secrecy by the would-be witch himself. Stiles still didn't believe any of it, especially after the first "training session" resulted in nothing more than Damon putting a fist through a wall and Lydia retreating to the library.

Jeremy kept up the pretense of calling Bonnie every night, when the pair instead sat side by side. The ghost would tell Jeremy everything he needed to know for the following day's lesson with Stiles and Bonnie would just happen to be out of cell range when Damon undoubtedly threw a tantrum and demanded she get on the phone to talk some magic-sense into her so far powerless protege. Caroline grew more and more suspicious of Jeremy's excuses, but the faked daily emails from Bonnie and helping Derek with his wolves and the search curbed her curiosity.

The wolves and vampires kept up with their routine sweeps and scouts of the city and the preserve, until they were left with expanding the search party to surrounding towns. None of them said it, but they knew it was pointless. If the Alphas were using magic to hide, then they would need magic to find them. It still didn't stop anyone from trying.

Anyone - except Stiles.

"You don't believe."

Stiles was clicking his way through city records when she announced her presence. It was odd how natural of an occurrence this had become for them. Besides Jackson being on lockdown, Allison was now back from France but spending her days helping her father pack up their house. Not to mention how curious Lydia was when it came to Stiles' potential magical leanings.

Stiles swung around in his chair, ready with a retort when instead his mouth was left hanging open. There, in his bedroom doorway, stood Dr. Deaton. It was odd seeing him outside of the clinic, as if the two were a fixture.

"You brought him ?" Stiles crumpled so far down in his chair that he was practically melting into the cushion.

"Hello, Stiles," Deaton sighed his greeting in reply to the one he hadn't received. "I understand you're having some difficulty accessing your magic."

"Of - of course I am," Stiles sprung back up in his seat, waving his arms in the air. "Because I don't have any."

"When you told me that you were able to spread the mountain ash when there wasn't enough left, I had my suspicions. Yes, mountain ash works on belief and is powerful by itself in the hands of any human, but what you did, was something I had not heard of."

"So I made some magical ash work? That doesn't mean I'm Stiles the Teenage Witch."

"I looked into your family, Stiles."

The boy's head snapped toward Lydia.

"What?"

"Internet, city records -"

"Yeah, I did all that too for my genealogy project in junior high."

"And you got upset because there weren't any records predating the early 1800s on your mother's side."

Stiles squinted, the corners of his lips upticking for a moment. Lydia Martin had noticed him back then?

"I think I found your ancestors, Stiles. Or, more importantly, one particular ancestor."

"What are you talking about?"

Lydia marched over to the bed, dropping a stack of books onto the mattress and flipping the top one open. Stiles sighed and wheeled himself over, only for Lydia to swat at his pawing hands.

"In 1806, there was a fire that burnt a Polish town almost entirely to the ground. There was this maid, she was known for her connection to the magics, and the people blamed her. In 1807, she was arrested and imprisoned in the dungeons of a castle in the same city she was accused of burning down. She was there for years until she was executed by burning at the stake on a hill outside the town in 1811. Apparently, she was dead before she ever made it there. The executioner strangled her before the fire was even set."

Stiles squinted at the blurry black and white photo in the corner of the page that absolutely did not look like his Grandma Cecylia or his Great Aunt Gosia.

"And you think she's related to me ?"

"Stiles, your ancestral history begins in that city. Your earliest known documented relatives were from there. There is a birth record from when the woman was imprisoned. No father or mother listed. Just the baby, taken in by a church. Then another abandoned baby, no parents, and the woman still in those dungeons."

"Babies get left on church doorsteps all the time." Stiles rolled his eyes. "It's called teen pregnancy, poverty, affairs."

"There were rumors, Stiles. Rumors that while she was imprisoned, the people keeping her there - did things to her. They, they raped her. The rumors also say that she had two children as a result, but that no one knows what happened to them."

"This is crazy -"

"There's more." Lydia frowned as she reached behind her back and into her purse, pulling out a small memory stick. "Something about this story sounded familiar. And then I remembered that Barbara Zdunk, the same woman from that story, was also mentioned in the bestiary. There was never any proof that she set that fire on her town or why she was targeted as the suspect. Some say it was because she was a 38-year-old woman with a teenage boyfriend."

"And what does the bestiary say?" Stiles swallowed.

"It says that he wasn't her teenage boyfriend." Lydia glanced up at Deaton and then back at her friend. "He was a werewolf. The last of his family, his pack. The war back then was more than politics. What is now known as Poland was once home to several packs of werewolves - and vampires. Prussia just so happened to have a few royal vampires, so when Prussia took control, the vampires wiped out the wolves. All but one. When they found out Barbara, a local and powerful witch, was protecting him, the vampires killed him. In retaliation, she set fire to the town, hoping to kill the vampires while they slept during the day. She went mad. Innocent humans, families, children. The remaining vampires had to work with hunters and the woman's coven to bring her down and imprison her. But her magic was too strong and they couldn't hold her forever. The vampires and hunters wanted her dead, but the witches refused to allow it. They had agreed to contain her, not kill her. Werewolves from other packs in other countries heard the story and came to try to free her and get revenge for the boy. But with the vampires and hunters united and the vampires in political power, the witches and wolves didn't stand a chance. The war between them ended and, to make a statement, they killed Barbara. According to the Argent records, a hunter strangled her when she started to incant a spell."

"Hold on," Stiles shook his head. "If she was just a witch, even a powerful one, and she's dead, why is she in the bestiary? Isn't that for, you know, beasts ?"

"I said she was mentioned. It's not like there's a whole section on her or anything. The bestiary documents some of the major feuds between different creatures. It's an encyclopedia for a reason. With all the talk of Barbara's relationship with the teenage werewolf, hunters worried they might have some future witchy-wolf hybrid children to face. But, like I said, the rumors were just rumors."

"So, congratulations, there isn't any pedophilia in my alleged ancestry, but apparently there is mass murder ?"

"She was long rumored to be the last witch to be burned at the stake in Europe," Deaton finished. "And the timeline fits a little too well with what Lydia found of your ancestral records."

"Wait," Stiles eyed the pair back and forth, putting something together. "You told him?"

"Didn't have to," Lydia shrugged before setting herself down on the end of his bed. "I wanted answers for you. According to what you've told me about this last year, Dr. Deaton is the one who usually has them. I asked a few totally hypothetical questions, entirely unrelated to you."

"And?"

"He figured it out."


It was Tyler who figured it out. After the second full moon passed and neither had felt a thing. He didn't know if it was magic of the walls or both but something was keeping the girl from turning. Maybe it was the vampire in him that put it together. Those memories of days on the run from Klaus without a drop of blood and then suddenly finding himself out of the woods. Stumbling into a city, surrounded by bulging veins and pounding hearts, barely keeping control as he ran to the nearest hospital and choked down a handful of blood bags.

Or maybe it was the human somewhere left inside. The angry teenager with an unstable temper. Knowing what happened when he shoved it all down, only to watch it explode all over the people he cared about.

"They're taking away your tolerance."

Erica blinked over at him a few times before pulling herself off the floor.

"What?"

"The full moon. The Alphas have done something. They're stopping you from feeling the effects of the full moon so they can take away whatever tolerance or control you might've had. They think they're doing it to both of us. Or they want you to kill me."

"What are you talking about?"

"When I got the message from Caroline, I put out the word on the Alpha pack. A couple hybrids had heard of Deucalion. Of what he did to packs."

"Derek told us. He kills them. Takes the Alphas. Or kills them too if they fight."

"It's not that simple. Deucalion and the other Alphas don't kill the members of a pack. They make the pack's Alpha do it. They kill their own pack."

"What? Like some twisted gang initiation?"

"Something like that."

"So why all this? Why keep us if they want Derek to kill us?"

"To make it easier. Think about it. They leave you and any other pack member in here long enough, wait for a full moon, and then let you loose on him. Without your tolerance to the moon, you'll be out of control. He'll have no choice but to kill you to save himself."

"But Derek would never do that."

"Then you'll kill him and Deucalion will have a new Alpha to go after. Either way, he gets what he wants."

"So how do we stop it?"

"I have an idea, but you're not going to like it."

A/N: History Lesson: Barbara Zdunk was a Polish alleged arsonist and witch who lived in the town of Rößel in East Prussia, now Reszel in Poland but, between 1772 and 1945, part of Prussia. She is considered by many to have been the last woman executed for witchcraft in Europe. This is doubtful because witchcraft was not a criminal offense in Prussia at the time. It is thus likely that she was convicted, formally at least and most probably wrongly, of arson. In 1806, a devastating fire ravaged the town of Rößel, which burnt almost entirely to the ground. Zdunk, who was a maid known for her fondness of magic, was blamed. She was arrested in 1807, and imprisoned in Rößel castle. No evidence of substance was available, but she was still accused and found guilty of causing the fire. In 1811, Zdunk was executed by burning at the stake on a hill outside Rößel, though she was apparently strangled to death by the executioner before the fire was set. It is believed today that a group of Polish soldiers were the actual arsonists. There is uncertainty as to the true reason for Zdunk's conviction, which was upheld by several appeal courts, up to the king himself. Revenge on Poland on the part of the Prussian authorities or a concession to an outraged public may have played a role, or that she was a 38-year-old woman who had a teenage boyfriend. (obviously the stuff about werewolf-vampire war was added by me)