I'm so sorry, guys. I've got had a lot of crap going on in RL. Unbeta-ed, so all mistakes are mine. Speaking of which, if anyone is interested in beta-ing, message me!

Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf and am making no profit from this writing.

Chapter 3: Lost to the Fire

Before the fire, the Hale house was beautiful. Stiles knew because he had seen pictures. Derek was never very open about his family and he certainly didn't want to talk about the fire, but he had kept the newspaper clippings. Any family photo albums had gone up in smoke along with his parents, so those pictures of the Hales that were in the public eye were the only ones Derek had left. The house had been painted lemon yellow, with old-fashioned white windowsills and a front patio with latticework. Before it all went up in flames, the Hale home was something to be admired and coveted. The land alone was worth a fortune, and the house was historic. Of course, after the fire, no one wanted to touch it. Especially after Laura's bisected corpse was found on the property. Stiles was pretty sure half the town was convinced the place was haunted, and the other half thought the Hales were cursed.

He had always dismissed it as the ridiculous rumors of a small town with no real criminal activity. But right now, looking at the burned-out husk before him, he couldn't help but wonder if maybe the superstitious citizens of Beacon Hills weren't so crazy after all. It almost made sense, in a weird, freaky kind of way. What other explanation could there be, for so many horrible things to happen here?

Hypothetically speaking, Stiles could see where people might think that. But he was still the Sheriff's kid, and he knew there was a logical explanation for everything. He and Lydia hadn't gotten this far by following silly theories of the paranormal and supernatural. (For the record, if he did believe in such things, which he didn't, he would suspect it was a powerful wizard the Hales had offended. Like Voldemort! Which would make Derek The Boy Who Lived, which…was just weird. Because then who would Cora be, Hermione? And Laura would be Ron? Or Neville? Nope, not going there.) People didn't just die, that wasn't how the world worked. Families weren't cursed. That was all the stuff of fairy tales, and Stiles had learned long ago that fairy tales didn't come true. There was no Prince Charming, there was no carriage that turned into a pumpkin when the clock struck midnight, and bad things happened to good people because life isn't fair. Stiles didn't believe in the boogeyman, he knew the real monsters were human. They didn't have three eyes or tentacles; they were just ordinary humans with something dark and terrible inside of them. But that meant they were bound to the law, just like any other human.

"You better have a good reason for dragging me out here."

Stiles would have been lying if he said his heart hadn't nearly leapt out of his skin. Apparently, Cora was as good at sneaking up on him as Derek had always been (and wow, if that didn't give him a pang), even though her unimpressed stare lead him to believe that she hadn't actually intended to scare the living daylights out of him.

"No, I just wanted to come out here to sight-see," he grouched, embarrassed at having been caught so completely off-guard by Derek's baby sister. She waited expectantly and he huffed in annoyance, but retrieved the folder he had dropped on the front stairs and motioned her over as he crouched there.

He pointed to the picture of the spiral on the burned door, "Does this mean anything to you?"

"Not really. Why?" she seemed genuinely puzzled, but Stiles couldn't help but feel she was holding something back. He was sure he had seen a spark of recognition in her eyes, however brief.

"It appears at three crime scenes," he pulled out the two pictures from Laura's murder, "First, at your house. Then, on Laura's wrist, drawn in blood. And again, where we found Laura's body."

"I don't see it," Cora frowned.

Stiles sighed, and traced the pattern with his finger. He watched as her eyes slowly widened in realization. "You know something, don't you?"

The woman hesitated, twirling her hair in a distinctly un-Cora-like show of nervousness. Then she proceeded to give him what was possibly the most heavily edited story (read: blatant lie) he had ever heard. (All he got out of it was blah blah, religious persecution, blah blah.) There was obviously something she didn't want him to know, some deep dark secret that could explain why her family was being targeted by a psychopath.

"Alright," he conceded, because he could tell there was some grain of truth hidden in the web she was desperately trying to spin (and it said something about her secret that she was willing to go to such lengths to protect it, even when giving it up might help save her only sibling), "Did Derek have any enemies?"

"Yes," she answered immediately, which was…kind of surprising, actually. Sure, Derek looked like a serial killer, and he had all the manners of an ape, but he wasn't a bad guy. Stiles had seen him nurse an injured fawn back to health; he was a giant teddy bear.

"I mean actual enemies, like people who might've wanted to hurt him, not Jackson," he pointed out, in case she had misunderstood.

Cora rolled her eyes, "I know. My family was powerful, Stiles, we didn't get that power by making friends."

What the hell did she mean, "powerful?" As far as he knew, the Hales had been a typical middle-class family. It was only after the fire, when the insurance payout had been enormous, that the Hale siblings had come into money. Even then, with eighteen dead and three in critical condition, the bills following the fire had to have been astronomical. Derek always looked guilty and uncomfortable whenever his stay in the hospital was mentioned, and Stiles knew he regretted that his sister had poured so much money into his recovery.

He kept his mouth shut. If Derek had been twitchy about what he called "blood money," he could only imagine how Cora must feel. She was the only one to escape the fire unscathed, and Stiles wouldn't be surprised if she had some sort of a guilt complex as a result. That kind of thing didn't just erase itself with time.

"Anyone in particular?" he asked instead. She shook her head slightly.

"Derek and Laura didn't want me involved," she answered, scowling, "I don't know much about it."

He picked up the photograph again and held it out in front of her, "Look again. Think, is there anyone who might have used this?"

"I don't know," she repeated, "It's not like a crest of arms. It could have been anyone."

"Okay, but what is it? I know you know," he demanded.

"It means 'vendetta,'" she answered darkly. So it hadn't been random, but Stiles had already figured that out based on the fact that the killer came back for Laura, and then Derek. The question remained: if it wasn't random, why did they target the Hales?

They were both silent for a few long minutes, just staring at the ruins before them. Once a thing to behold, now it was a place to be feared. A place where teenagers came on dares Halloween night. Even Stiles had been guilty of that, once before he met Derek. He couldn't imagine what Cora must be feeling, looking upon the house where she had been raised. The preserve had been their home for generations, but now it was a place of morbid fascination and, in the light of what Stiles now knew, unspeakable evil.

"Do you want to go inside?" Cora finally broke the silence.

It wasn't what he had meant to say, but he found himself blurting out, "Do you?"

She took a deep breath, seeming to take his question seriously.

"Yeah," she spoke, after a moment, "I do. I've never been back, not since…"

Not since Derek shoved her out a window and she listened to her family screaming as they burned. Stiles was surprised she wanted to see it now, but perhaps she thought it would bring her closure, to see her family's final resting place. Stiles offered her a flashlight from his backpack, but she waved it off as she opened the door.

It was dark and creepy, but he pushed away the feeling. He just flicked on his light and shone it along the wall as he followed her up the stairs to the second floor. The upstairs didn't hold the crime scene he was looking for, but he didn't rush her. If she needed a moment to see it, to remember the home it had once been, the family it had once held, he could hardly deny her that.

She ran her fingers along the wall, tracing the stenciling he could see remnants of (now burned black in places), and whispered softly, almost reverently, "Laura did this. It was for Derek, after Paige. Mourning doves."

The doves, now that he knew that was what they were, were intricately painted. The wall was charred, interrupting the pattern, but he could see that before the fire, they must have been beautiful. They were arching up towards the ceiling as they went towards the center of the house, like they were flying into the clouds. Where the two flocks met, above the stairwell, a pair of wolves rested beneath them. The burn marks separated them, but it was obvious that the wolves had been painted wrapped around each other.

"You have a lot of good memories here," Stiles observed.

Her laugh was harsh and bitter, "It was our home."

He didn't know what to say to that. Cora seemed to sober after a few moments, her hand covering one untouched dove, her fingers wrapped around it cautiously as if afraid the illusion might break if she dared to touch it. When she finally spoke again, she sounded resigned, defeated.

"The basement door is in the kitchen. I'm just going to look around up here. I don't want to see that," she said quietly.

He nodded, then, realizing she couldn't see him, answered, "Of course. Yeah. I'll just…yeah."

He made a hasty retreat back down the stairs and into the kitchen. He liked to think he was pretty good about the whole emotions thing – definitely better than Scott and Jackson, who totally freaked if their girlfriends started crying – but he was not prepared to deal with Cora's tears if they came. He would probably try to hug her and get punched in the face for his efforts. And he had seen her throw Derek into walls, so he could only imagine what she would do to him. It wasn't a pleasant thought.

He was distracted from his worry when he saw the basement door. Sure enough, there was a spiral there. He remembered then that the Hales hadn't been just trapped in the house; they had been locked in the basement. The door had to have been locked from the outside. There was only one door leading out of the basement, and this was it.

The police report had said the Hales locked themselves in accidentally. But, looking at it now, Stiles couldn't see it. It was a keyhole lock. More than that, it was a deadbolt. The Hales couldn't have locked themselves in. There was only one explanation.

Kate, or one of her partners, had been inside the house. They had waited until the family was in the basement, then locked the door before exiting. But the police had found no signs of forced entry. Stiles had eavesdropped on his father at the station long enough to know what that meant.

The Hales – or at least one of them – had known their killer. He barely managed to suppress a shudder at the thought. He had never worked a case with a sociopath before, but there was no other explanation for how someone could kill so many people outside of a war. He made a mental note to talk to Deputy Kyle Parrish, the station's resident murder-guru. He could be a little overzealous (like the time he confiscated Chris Argent's guns and told the Sheriff they were basically light sabers), but he was a good cop and he knew his murder cases. He was also Stiles' ex-boyfriend, and he had planned to avoid him for at least another month, just on principle, but whatever. They were still friends on Facebook, so it was fine. It wasn't like he would refuse to help Derek just because he broke up with Stiles (he said he was "emotionally unavailable," what did that even mean?). And if anyone could get inside Kate's head, he suspected it was Kyle.

He took a few pictures of the door on his phone, though the lighting wasn't great and he wasn't too hopeful anyone would be able to make out the spiral. Inside the basement was almost totally dark, the only light coming two barred windows. That explained why only Cora had made it out, and by the look of it, only because one of the bars was missing. Looking at the basement, charred black and the walls covered in the scratches of the damned, he could understand why Laura had been obsessed with finding their killer. Their terror and desperation was almost tangible, still lingering even now, nearly a decade later. If it had been his family…he could only imagine her horror at having come home to this.

As he crossed the basement to look at the broken window, for any sign of tampering (though he knew any evidence had most likely been destroyed by now), he heard something strange, a sort of echo as he walked. He crossed back, and there it was again. His footsteps were reverberating.

"What the hell?" he muttered, as he kneeled there and knocked on the floor. It was hollow. He shone the flashlight around, feeling along the slate for some kind of inconsistency, some indication of a hole – a loose tile, perhaps. He found nothing of the sort, but he did find something else. There were grooves carved into the slate. Handholds, he realized after a moment. He put down the flashlight to fit his fingers into the grooves, but he only managed to lift it a few scant inches.

"Holy shit," he breathed, "It's a trap door."

Seemed like a good place to end it. :D Happy 4th of July!