A/N: So sorry for the uber late update! As I've said before, I'm going to move all of my stories to AO3 soon. The chapters there will be longer and overall better. Furthermore, they'll be updated way sooner. I have finals and a wedding in the family coming up right now, so I seldom get time to write. Please forgive me. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 4

"I don't get it," Stiles says to his father, rubbing his sweaty palms on his sweatpants, shaking his head slightly as he lets out a sigh. "When did they conduct the autopsies?"

The sheriff tilts his head to the side, forehead creasing in confusion. "Maybe an hour after the bodies were found," he answers.

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Why not?"

"Because," Stiles starts, turning his chair to face his father completely, "the victims died an hour before you texted me. Ten minutes later, when Scott and I arrived, you guys said that the bodies arrived at the hospital twenty minutes earlier, which means," he pauses for a second, "that the bodies got to the hospital about ten minutes before Scott and I got there."

The sheriff opens his mouth to say something, but is interrupted by his son.

"An autopsy typically takes about two to four hours to conduct, and results can only be released after a minimum of twenty-four hours, so it makes absolutely no sense that you guys have the bodies and the forensic reports already."

The sheriff stays quiet for a while, making sense of what his son has just said, before speaking.

"Son, the bodies were found yesterday morning."

Stiles blurts out a surprised "What?"as his eyes widen. He stands up and off his chair, taking a step towards his dad, who is seated across from him at the table.

"The bodies were found yesterday morning," his father repeats. "The victim's wife went looking for him and called us. All the reports... they were conducted yesterday. The bodies only arrived to the hospital today because the scientists wanted to collect as many samples of the venom as they could manage."

"So who died today?"

"What do you mean?"

Stiles swallows.

"Lydia felt a bunch of people die about an hour before you texted me."

"She felt it?"

"Yeah," the boy says as he nods. "She even screamed like hell."

In less than a heartbeat, the Sheriff is up on his feet, reaching for his phone. He dials a number and paces around impatiently until whoever it is on the other side picks up. Stiles just watches him, his gaze following the older man's footsteps.

"Hello?" Noah says then, "Where's Deputy Parrish? No, no, send Deputy Young to deal with the car accident. I've given clear orders. Parrish's first priority is the homicide case. Alright, good, now, tell him that I want him to go to the old purification plant across town. I'll meet him there. Yes, right now. Very well. And Clark?" he pauses momentarily, "Tell him to bring backup."

He hangs up and reaches for his jacket, looking up at Stiles as he does so.

"Call Scott and Lydia. You guys are coming with me."

It's almost an hour later that the four of them find themselves seated in the backseat of the Sheriff's car, parked right in front of the old, abandoned building.

Scott and Stiles talk during the whole ride, discussing theories and ideas and possibilities and whatnot. The whole time, neither of them addresses the other two passengers. Lydia keeps track of the conversation, taking note of what makes sense and what doesn't, but besides that, it's almost as if she wasn't in the car at all. She doesn't complain. It's not like it's she's got anything helpful to say, anyway.

The two boys, quite intrigued by the banshee's silence, don't question her. She's got enough on her plate already.

"Why is it always abandoned buildings?" Stiles whines from the passenger's seat, earning a deathly glare from his dad.

The Sheriff looks around then, and, as he spots the officer he's looking for, he turns back to face Scott.

"I'll try to hold them back for a while. You guys have about five minutes to go in there and see if anything... supernatural was involved."

Scott nods, and before the Sheriff even reaches Parrish a couple of cars away, the three teenagers are inside the big building.

It's dark in the facility, obscuring the teenagers' vision. Scott tries to find the bodies by scent while Lydia and Stiles just mindlessly wander, but none of them can ever find anyone. Every once in a while, one of them would trip over an old rock or torn piece of clothing, but all in all, no bodies were to be found. Dead, or alive.

"I don't think there's anyone here," Scott says half an hour into their search. He can hear the cops somewhere behind them, searching in places they've already looked, and knows that they, too, cannot seem to find any bodies. "I can't smell anything."

"But I felt it," Lydia protests, walking further into the darkness, manoeuvring her way through the various pipes and nozzles. She ducks slightly to get through them, as if maybe she'll get a better view from between the tubes, her mind fiercely determined not to give up.

"Maybe it was just a-" he's interrupted by Lydia's scream. Not a banshee scream, luckily, but pretty freaking close, if you ask him.

He makes his way to the strawberry blonde, and his breath catches in his throat at the sight in front of him. Stiles makes his way to them as well, and his eyes widen as he looks at the dozen of bodies scattered across the room, the scene looking as if pulled straight out of a horror movie in the absence of light.

There are exactly twelve of them laying there, if he's counting right, some sprawled across the larger pipes overhead, with their backs to the metal and their arms flung over their heads or across their torsos, others hanging by smaller ones under, with their legs hanging off the pipes as if they'd purposely been seated there, and a couple on the ground, all looking fast asleep, all looking as peaceful as Scott remembered Marlin looking. Their eyes are shut, and their bodies look like they haven't been harmed at all. Slowly, Lydia goes up to the corpse closest to her and, her hand shaking uncontrollably, she forces its eye open. A yelp escapes her as the eyelid lifts to reveal nothing but a soft, grey stone.

Stiles runs towards another one of the bodies and does the same thing, revealing the exact same result. Sighing loudly, he turns to Scott, and the alpha knows exactly what he's trying to tell him. They're all dead. And eye-less.

Scott lets his gaze wonder from one body to the next, from the old woman on the highest pipe to the middle-aged man at his feet, and his eyes well up as he sees Lydia next to the limp form of a small child, not much older than ten.

Stiles looks at his friends and remains motionless for a while, before speaking, his voice wavering, as though he feels the urge to cry but refuses to.

"It's an entire family," he says at last. "I knew them."

Scott furrows his eyebrows and turns towards his friend, tilting his head slightly.

"The old man over there," Stiles says, pointing to a corpse hanging loosely by a large pipe, "he worked at the hospital. He took care of my mom, too. I used to play with his son at the park sometimes." His gaze flickers towards a body to Scott's right, seemingly belonging to a boy of their own age. "I think his name was Mario or something, I'm not sure." He pauses again. "I haven't seen him in almost ten years."

"Do you think you know why?"

Stiles just shakes his head. Both the boys look at each other hopelessly, listening to the sound of the cops, who were still at a distance from them, before focusing on Lydia, who is still sitting against the body of the little boy, his hand in hers. She stares at him, motionless but for the heavy heaving of her chest as she breathes, her pink lips parted in shock as her fingers are tangled with the boy's.

"He's so cold," she whispers.

Stiles walks towards her and puts a hand on her shoulder. Scott gets up and makes his way to them as well.

"We'll find whatever it is that did this to them," the werewolf reassures her, "and we'll stop it."

Before she can answer, Stiles is pushing them away towards another big room as the several cops begin to pour into the room, gasping and muttering curses under their breaths. Before the teenagers can listen in to any of what is being said, however, their attention turns towards the large pools of water around them.

Instinctively, Lydia walks towards one of them, and is soon followed by the two boys. Scott reaches out to touch the water.

"Don't," Lydia whispers.

Scott looks up at her.

"The basilisk's venom," she says quietly, "if there's a basilisk around this place, and it's been in any of this water, the entire thing is poisonous. You'd die as soon as you touched it."

"Besides," Stiles adds, "the water in these pools, which there shouldn't be here at all, by the way, it's probably been stale for at least a decade. This plant hasn't been used ever since the new one opened up closer to the river."

Scott hesitates a moment, before getting up and looking around for something.

"Maybe if we can find a container," the alpha starts as he's walking around in search of something, "we can take back samples of the water to Deaton. To check if there really is anything wrong with it."

"I have an empty mint box. It's small, though."

"That'll do," Stiles chimes in. "If the venom really is as strong as we think it is, then even a drop should be enough." He walks towards Lydia, his hand reached out expectantly as she pulls out a small mint box from the pocket of her jacket. She places it in his palm slowly.

"Don't let any of that water touch you, Stiles. At all. I mean it."

Stiles just smiles a little as he turns away from her. Walking over to one of the pools, he crouches down on the edge, careful as to not come in contact with the he opens the box, he looks over to Scott, nervous. The werewolf nods in encouragement and fixes his gaze on the pool in front of him. Inhaling sharply, Stiles dips the box into the pool, filling the little blue box up to at least three-quarters of its capacity. Pulling the container back out, he holds it away from himself as water drips off its sides.

"Um, a little help here? I've got to get rid of the water on the sides."

Whipping his head around, Scott gets up and runs to find something. After a couple of seconds of frantic searching, he comes back towards Stiles with a scrunched up old piece of tissue paper.

Stiles makes a face at his friend, but takes the tissue nonetheless, wiping off the unwanted liquid. Once he's sure that it's safe, he secures the lid on and stands up.

"Let's hope this helps."

"I've never quite seen anything like this," Deaton says to the pack the next day. He's got the liquid in a glass jar as he examines it, tossing different substances into it. "Although, I am almost definitely sure that you guys are right. This may be basilisk's venom after all."

He drops a leaf into the jar and watches it wither in less than a heartbeat.

"So you're saying," Mason asks, "that those pools, all the water in them is contaminated?"

"I'm saying that if we're after the right creature, it should be."

Malia shakes her head and stands up, pushing away the stool she had been sitting on. In three long steps, she's next to Deaton.

"How do we kill it?"

"No," Hayden says, "We can't kill it without knowing its purpose."

"How do we know it even has a purpose?" Liam questions, getting up from his seat next to Malia's stool.

Lydia takes a deep breath and walks towards them, Scott following suit.

"Because that purification plant is abandoned. No one in their right minds would just casually walk in there."

"Especially not an entire family," Scott adds.

"We think that they're being lured in, somehow," Stiles says, joining everyone around Deaton. "Can a basilisk do that?"

"It shouldn't be able to," the man answers before putting a lid on the container and walking towards the counter. "But then again, nothing about this 'King of Serpents', as people like to call it, is for sure. Basilisks are rare creatures, Stiles. A fertilized serpent's egg, hatched by a rooster, and born on the night of a full moon. The chances of that happening are, as you can probably imagine, very thin. So thin, actually, that many of us think it's impossible for a basilisk to even come to life. Unless..."

"Unless what?" Scott asks.

"Unless it was bred on purpose."

"What, like a weapon?" Stiles asks.

"Essentially."

"Alright, so if someone has bred this homicidal snake to kill a bunch of people," Malia begins, "who are they? What do they want?"

"And why these specific people?" Liam adds. "I mean, if they're being lured into that plant, then they must be like, chosen or something, right?" His gaze shifts over to Stiles. "There must be a pattern of some sort."

"Yeah, is there something that the victims have in common?" Corey chips in, his gaze shifting back and forth between Scott and Stiles.

"Not that we know of ye-"

"Wait!" Stiles interrupts Scott. "Marlin Rosoff, the guy who got attacked the first time, along with his brothers, I'm pretty sure my dad said that his family was going to be brought in for questioning today."

"Do you think they're there right now?"

Stiles goes to pick up his schoolbag and walks towards the door, only stopping to glance back at Scott.

"Guess we're going to find out."

Turns out, someone's there right now.

Stiles smirks in satisfaction as the duo spot the sheriff speaking to a woman through the blinds at the station. Scott reaches for the door to the facility, but Stiles puts a hand on his shoulder, shaking his head.

"Can you try to listen in from here?"

"You know I can, Stiles. Although it'll be harder to catch scents from here."

Stiles gulps and looks down, vigorously rubbing the sole of his left shoe against the ground.

"I just– I'd like for my dad to not know to what extent we're involved with this case. I mean, I don't want him to know that we're more involved than he knows. He's been stressing out lately, after Theo..."

Scott nods, and Stiles flashes him a grateful smile. Together, they crawl towards the window to the sheriff's office, sitting right under the windowsill as Scott tries to catch up on the conversation he's hearing.

"They live right next to where the plant is," Scott recites, "and they go on walks every night, the whole family. Some sort of tradition. That night, the dentist, – her husband – heard some weird noise from inside the building, and decided that he'd go take a look. She says that she told him not to go alone, so two of his brothers went in with him. They didn't come back all night."

Stiles nods at Scott, encouraging him to go on.

"She says that she went looking for them later that same night, and she found their bodies by the pools."

"By the pools," Stiles repeats as Scott nods. Processing the information, the human turns to his best friend. "We need to find out more about this guy. Liam was right, there's got to be a pattern. They died the same way, at the same exact spot."

Scott shrugs.

"We could go to his workplace? Do you think they'll let us in?"

Stiles stands up, shaking his head as walks towards his jeep.

"Of course they won't. We're sneaking in."

Scott is about to follow when he hears something, a faint, rapid sound, the continuous, fast thumping of a heart. A little too fast.

"Stiles," the alpha says to his best friend, "I need to get closer to that woman."

Stiles turns around, his brows furrowed.

"Hm?"

"I think she's hiding something from your dad."

Stiles hesitates for a while, glancing towards the window to his dad's office, but when he looks back at Scott's determined face, he merely nods as he comes back towards him, whispering.

"I'll distract dad, tell him off for eating a burger or something. You try to talk to the lady."

Scott nods and stands up, getting ready to sneak into the station as soon as Stiles goes in to distract his father. As Stiles places his hand on the door handle, though, he turns his head to face his friend, a childishsmile upon his face.

"Scotty?"

"Yeah?"

"Be nice to the lady. Don't growl at her or anything. I've heard she's scared of dogs."

Scott just rolls his eyes as his friend walks into the building, trying in vain to conceal his smile.

It's much easier for Stiles to distract his father when he walks in on the man unwrapping a greasy, disgusting, burger as he steps into the office. At least you could've gotten a burger that isn't bleeding to death, dad, is what he opens his argument with.

Scott steps into the building a few moments later, casting a look in the office's direction to make sure Mr. Stilinski doesn't see him. It's a little hard to approach the woman at first, the deputies all looking at him curiously. He watches as she pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose, simultaneously tucking a strand of hair behind her hair. Her hands tremble as she reaches for her purse, which is lying on a chair near Deputy Young's desk, and hastily brings it up to her shoulders. It doesn't escape his notice that she keeps her gaze on the ground, almost as if the half-chipped of tiles of the station are the most fascinating thing in the world.

Inhaling deeply, Scott walks towards the lady and puts a calm hand on her shoulder, his eyes soft as she flinches at his touch. To her furrowed eyebrows and racing heartbeat, he just says "Can we talk? Outside?"

He isn't sure why the woman agrees to go with him as quickly as she does, but decides not to dwell on it. What he does dwell on, though, is the fact that her steps are hurried, her gaze wary, her breaths forced. He dwells on the fact that this poor woman, whoever she is, is traumatized.

He leads her out of the station, a hand lightly rested against her shoulder, barely there. When he stops next to the jeep, on the side opposite to the station, just in case someone decides to glance out the window, he can't bring himself to speak, to ask her the questions he desperately seeks answers to until she coughs, signalling that it's time for him to talk.

"Oh, yeah, um, I know you're hiding something from the cops."

Goddamn, Scott, what a great way to start a conversation.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I –uh, I feel like there's something you're afraid to tell the cops about what happened to your husband at the factory. You can tell me."

She takes a short step backwards.

"Who are you?"

"Scott, ma'am. I'm just trying to help."

"What do you know about my husband?" she asks, her voice louder, more resolute.

"Not much. That's why I'm asking you."

"How did you know that I was hiding something?"

"I –I guessed?"

"Tell me how you know," she presses, "Are you one of them?"

He takes a short step towards her.

"One of whom?"

"A werewolf," she says quietly, her gaze locked on his, her entire body violently shaking, but more in anger now than in fear.

Scott just nods in response.

"I should've known. What do you know? What killed him?"

"We're trying to figure that out, Mrs. Rosoff. I just need to tell me what it is that you're hiding from the cops. And why you're so scared."

"Why I'm scared? Young man, there have been fifteen dead people in the past two days, and three of the victims were my family members. I have every right to be scared."

"Yes, you do, I'm sorry –Wait, how do you know about werewolves?"

She looks around before answering, her breath barely above a whisper after she sighs loudly, clearly meant for no ears other than Scott's.

"My husband and his brothers, they were werewolves, too."

Needless to say, the rest of Scott's questioning was significantly easier.

"They were werewolves, like, all three of the dead guys?" Stiles asks for the fifth time as they're both seated in the powder blue jeep, on their way to Lydia's house.

"Yeah. Bitten when they were teenagers. Their alpha died a couple of years ago. They've been omegas ever since."

"Okay, so... maybe if we figure out the pack they were a part of, we can find a connection to the other murders. Did she say anything else?"

Scott shakes his head, before turning it towards the window, watching the houses zip by them.

"She said that she never questioned her husband much. She doesn't know a lot."

Stiles nods, and they both stay quiet for the rest of the ride.

It isn't long before the vehicle is pulling up into the driveway of the Martin household. The house was kept so pristine, one would sometimes wonder if they're actually in front of the thing, rather than staring at some giant photograph. Surely, to some passerby, Roscoe would look like a pine tree in a field of poppies, casually parked in front of the house like that.

The two boys hop out of the jeep, Stiles flinging his schoolbag over his shoulder before accidentally slamming the car door shut. He flinches at the noise before making his way to the door, where Scott has already rung the bell.

The white door swings open shortly after, revealing Ms Martin, a crease between her eyebrows, her head tilted to the side slightly with her glasses resting on the bridge of her nose.

"Yes?" she asks.

Scott is the one who answers.

"Um, Ms. Martin, we're uh, here to see Lydia, actually."

The woman straightens up before plastering a smile on her face.

"Oh, boys, Lydia's actually out right now. She went shopping with Malia."

"Oh. Okay, thank you."

The lady nods before closing the door, and Scott turns to Stiles, confused.

"Lydia didn't say anything about having plans."

"Maybe she's getting something for her date with Jackson," Stiles shrugs.

Scott's eyes widen for a moment, but he regains his composure quickly as he notices his best friend's expression.

Stiles says Jackson's name almost nonchalantly, but no matter how hard he tries, he just can't control the way his nostrils flare a little when Lydia talks about the way she used to feel about him, the way his upper lip twitches slightly at the werewolf's mention, the way his eyes roll whenever Scott tries to explain to him that people can change, and the way his heartbeat spikes when someone even says the name.

Deny it forever, Stiles. You still like her.