Chapter Nineteen
...
"So do we just start calling out for him? Here, hellhound! C'mere boy!" Stiles called.
"We want to find the hellhound in a calm manner, not have him attack us because you're treating him like a dog," Parrish muttered.
"I smell something," Tasha said, stopping abruptly. "Like you, but... more ash," she said to Parrish, wrinkling her nose.
Derek sniffed as well. "We're near my house. It burnt down a long time ago," he added in explanation.
Stiles frowned. "Where better to hide than in the ruins of a burnt house? The hellhound obviously knows he smells similar. He could stay hidden for ages in there," he said.
He could see that Derek wasn't entirely pleased or convinced, but he was still willing to try. The Hale house itself had been condemned and knocked down by the state, but there were still the ruins of the basement and the escape tunnels beneath the house that the hellhound could be hiding in. After a moment, Derek nodded.
"HQ, we're heading to the Hale house. Possible location of the hellhound," Parrish said into the radio.
Stiles led the way with Derek beside him.
...
Sara was driving the van, following Mr. Forrester to his farm once he'd finally stopped giving them all his complete life story. Lydia was drawing a pattern on the window of the van, distracted by the desire to get every line right. It shouldn't have been hard since there wasn't much detail to the drawing itself - unlike the Nemeton - but her hand was shaking.
"Lydia? Hey, we're here," Li said, shaking Lydia gently.
Lydia came back to herself, blinking rapidly. On the other side of the van, Kuhle was getting both Tomika and Jade's attention, both banshees having faded out as well. Tomika pulled out the notebook she'd kept between her shirt and vest, frowning as she looked at the drawing she'd projected onto the pages. Jade unlocked her phone and listened to the recording she'd left behind, frowning as well. They both looked to Lydia in unison, which was creepy enough, but then Tomika held out her notebook.
"Do you recognise this?" she asked, revealing the exact same drawing that Lydia had completed on the van window, her breath still fogging the glass behind her.
It consisted of two diagonal lines and two straight lines, making an exaggerated number three if she squinted a bit. Lydia felt like she should know what it meant, but she couldn't put her finger on it. Lydia didn't have a chance to respond because then the van door slid open and Sara looked in.
"Are you lot coming or do I have to listen to Mr. Forrester bemoan the loss of his favourite prize-winning chicken for the third time tonight?"
They climbed out of the van and followed Mr. Forrester to the back of his property. The Sheriff had been right about him being lonely, because he immediately offered his guests drinks, food, and continued to talk about everything, as though he'd never get another chance. Lydia vaguely wondered if Mrs. Gawler and Mr. Forrester would get along.
Lydia watched Sara as she murmured under her breath. She recognised the language as archaic Latin and knew the words she spoke, but Lydia also knew that without a spark of power or magic, she would never be able to recreate exactly what Sara was doing herself.
Beside her, Li was changing their features to look like a combination of various animals, focusing mostly on their nose so they could pick out between the scents of chickens, humans, emotions, and find the proper scent that belonged to Mr. Forrester's chicken thief. To be honest, it wasn't exactly the way Li had envisioned their first FBI case.
"There," Sara murmured, letting go of the chicken feathers she'd gathered.
As she had done with Stiles earlier, a line of light shot out from the chicken coop and towards the forest. It was a spell meant for two people, so without Stiles' magic, it wasn't as strong nor as long. However, Sara was pretty pleased at her ability to recreate so much of the spell alone.
Lydia's head tilted to the side when she saw the light, but mostly from what she could hear coming from the line. Stepping around Li, she started to follow the light, unaware that the others were still in the coop behind her.
"Girl, we're working on your control later," Tomika muttered under her breath, setting off after Lydia.
...
"The rats died along here," Liam said, coming to a stop. He and Mason looked around, in case there were more rats, frowning when they didn't see anything.
Malia sniffed and ran ahead. She was a little surprised to see Jorge beside her rather than Liam or Mason, but then Malia noticed the fangs at the side of his mouth. "Vampire?"
"Of a sort," Jorge said with a brief nod. "Don't make any Twilight jokes, please," he said, almost desperately.
Malia frowned. "What's Twilight?"
"Never mind," Jorge said quickly, looking relieved.
Malia was confused why he would be relieved that she didn't know something. Usually people were annoyed when she didn't know what they were talking about. Malia shrugged to herself, thinking that people - whether or not human - were weird.
Jorge stopped a second before Malia scented it, and she turned abruptly to face the same direction, sniffing and recognising the far-too familiar scent.
"Your nose is better than mine," Malia said curiously. "Not by much."
"Thanks?" Jorge said. "Uh, don't watch, this isn't going to be pretty," he added, picking up one of the rats and biting into it, blood gushing forth.
Yelena and Yukimi turned away, while Liam and Mason chorused a lengthy 'ewww' from behind Malia. She watched, not at all perturbed by the sight, and waited impatiently for Jorge to finish eating. Why he was eating in the middle of their mission, she had no idea, but it reminded Malia that she was kind of hungry as well.
Jorge pulled the rat away from his mouth and dropped it, which Malia thought was a waste of food, and wiped at his bloodied mouth and chin. "Sorry. It's better when I go straight for the source, rather than trying to sniff it out, especially in a forest like this," he added in explanation.
"What did you do?" Yelena asked curiously, handing him her handkerchief.
He accepted it with a nod of thanks, wiping off the remainder of blood. "It's difficult to explain. My abuela says that there are memories in blood, which sort of fits?" When everyone just stared at him blankly, Jorge added, "I know what killed the rats."
...
"I'm telling you, there has to be an explanation. Dr. Deaton wouldn't do this. He's a good person. He's a vet," Scott added as they headed from the van to the veterinary clinic.
"So what? A person's occupation has no correlation as to whether they're a good person or not," Marcie said, getting a little annoyed at the werewolf's blinding optimism.
"Children, behave," Sean muttered.
Marcie rolled her eyes and disappeared, enjoying Scott's look of surprise again. Grant hung back with Marcie as the others headed inside, waiting for the opportunity to get in without alerting Deaton to their presence.
"Dr. Deaton? We have some questions for you," Sean said, showing the vet his badge.
Deaton looked as impassive as always and he simply nodded. Then he looked to Scott. "I'm surprised at you for this, Scott."
Scott's eyes widened. "But I didn't do anything?!"
"You've brought a threat directly through my front door. It is not something I appreciate, and I am very disappointed in you."
At his words, Scott hung his head.
Ari frowned at the tone of voice Deaton was using. It was far too similar to her own voice as a siren, almost as if the veterinarian was hypnotising the young werewolf. "Scott. Listen to me, Scott," she said, trying to get Scott's attention on her voice instead of Deaton's.
"Scott, these people are a threat to me. Don't disappoint me again," Deaton said, his voice just that little bit louder and more familiar than the siren's.
As Deaton ran down the hall, Scott growled under his breath and looked at the group with burning red eyes.
Sean nodded to Mohammed, who took after Deaton at a run. Scott started to attack Sean, who in turn had his skin protected by a thick layer of bark. Ari was still trying to get Scott's attention. His eyes flickered between red and brown any time she got close enough, so she hoped this fight would be over sooner rather than later.
"Holy shit!" Grant gasped, eyes wide when he saw what was happening inside.
"Say your prayers later, Grant. C'mon," Marcie snapped, tugging at his vest so they could follow after Deaton and Mohammed.
Grant nodded and ran after Marcie, following the footsteps she left in the gravel. In his two-way radio, Grant let HQ know what had happened.
...
HQ was set up with maps and cameras on every screen, everyone listening to the police scanner for reports from the police officers patrolling the streets. They had been told to patrol, report, and not engage. The Sheriff refused to let his officers die if he could help it, and considering he had both the FBI and every supernatural person he knew on hand, then he could sure as hell help it.
"Isaac, you're closest to the vet clinic. Can you get there and help get Scott under control?" the Sheriff asked.
"No problem, Sheriff," Isaac replied, clipping his radio to his belt and running towards the clinic at a faster pace.
The police scanner went off with a location and sighting.
"Jackson, Gerard's been sighted near the warehouse district. Keep your eyes peeled," Teresa said, getting an affirmative response a second later.
"Sara, what's going on down there?" McCall asked, looking between the map and silent radio. They hadn't had a report since the group had arrived at Mr. Forrester's place and it was setting him on edge.
"Jorge found out what happened to the rats," Mason reported.
"Go ahead," Mia replied, her notebook ready to get the details and relay the information on as necessary.
"Shit!" Ethan's voice came over the radio urgently, panting heavily as he ran, a barrage of bullets sounding in the background. "The Calaveras are here."
There was a knock at the door, startling most of them as they were concentrating on their tasks. The Sheriff turned around, relieved when he saw Chris Argent.
"Sheriff," Chris said with a nod. "McCall," he said, faltering slightly at the sight of Rafe.
"Argent," Rafe replied.
"You two know each other?" the Sheriff asked, looking between them. "And you didn't know about werewolves sooner?" he asked Rafe, though he knew he sounded a little judgemental for someone who'd only found out about werewolves three years prior.
"I'm good at my job," Chris said, his eyes still trained on Rafe.
"Sir, you're not going to believe what we found," Sara's voice came over the radio, the disbelief in her voice grabbing Rafe's attention immediately.
He ignored Chris' presence - he'd deal with him later, if the man stuck around this time - and Rafe looked to the map, his two-way radio in his hand. "What is it? Are you all okay?"
"We're fine. Mostly. Uh... Sir, we found out who stole Mr. Forrester's chickens," Sara said, sounding as though she needed to come to terms with the sight before her, and doing that meant spelling out every detail before she believed it herself.
"Who is it?" Rafe asked, trying not to sound impatient.
It was Lydia's voice that came through the radio next, her voice almost dream-like despite the crackling noise of the radio. "Allison."
Rafe heard a gasp behind him and he turned abruptly to see Chris with his eyes wide and possibly full of unshed tears. "Give us your exact location; we're sending someone there straight away," Rafe replied, not looking away from Chris.
On the Sheriff's radio, the silence was broken by Stiles screaming.
"Uh, sir? We found the hellhound," Parrish said.
...
End of the nineteenth chapter.
Author's note: Rafe's backstory
Rafe has met Chris (as well as the other Argents and/or their lackeys) several times over the course of his career at the FBI. Most of the time, there's been suspicious activity and the Argents just happen to be in the area. Annoyingly, those same activities seem to stop around the same time the Argents leave.
Chris might tell him the truth eventually.