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TEN: Because Giant Worms Are a Thing
The Beacon County Sheriff’s Department has seen a lot in the twenty years that Noah Stilinski has been on the force, but when Deputy Graeme comes in carrying the remains of giant worm almost as long as her forearm, eyebrows are definitely raised.
(BINGO cards are also consulted, because “Weird New Creature” is a square none of them have been able to mark off for a while now.)
“Found our rogue groundhog,” she says, setting it down so everyone can see, “I figure it tunneled under maybe half the town before the Hales found it. From what I could tell, it didn’t cause any structural damage, but we might want to bring someone in, just to be on the safe side.”
Everyone in the station gathers around for a closer look, but there really isn’t much to see. It looks like any other worm, really, just much, much bigger.
“Is this a magic thing?” the Sheriff asks, sipping on his coffee, “or is this something supernatural?” Even as he asks, Stiles is already cross checking his sources and the newest deputy, an up-and-coming witch that Deaton recommended, is making a sketch in the department’s bestiary.
“It’s not a Mongolian death worm or anything,” Stiles announces. “I’m not even sure those are real, anyway. Maybe it’s just a mutant? Either way, it doesn’t seem dangerous.” He reaches over and pokes it with his pen for emphasis.
“What did the Hales say about it?”
Tara shrugs, then smiles. “Didn’t see ‘em. I’m pretty sure they thought that I wouldn’t go out far enough in the woods to find it.” She gestures at the worm. “They definitely couldn’t have blamed this one on a mountain lion, though, so I have no idea what their excuse would have been this time.”
Hidden at the bottom of one of Sheriff Stilinski’s desk drawers is a scrapbook of all of the excuses the supernaturally-inclined have given the department over the years. “Mountain lion” is very popular, along with gas leaks, sleep deprivation, and (especially while the Hale kids were still in school) drama club rehearsal. At least Peter and Cora are creative about it, enough so that Noah thinks that the two of them might have figured it out, and are simply enjoying trolling the rest of their family. It might make him a bad person, but he likes them a little bit more for that.
“I imagine we’ll run into them again soon enough, but if we don’t, you can always pull Derek over for driving that ridiculous car.”
(It was true. For a guy who should have been keeping himself off of police radar, the kid managed to get almost thirty percent of the county’s speeding tickets. Maybe if Tara left the corpse of a giant worm in his car, he’d cool it for a while.)
<><><>
NINE: Scott McCall is a Horrible Liar
Stiles loves Beacon Hills, but for the life of him, he can’t figure out how people who are so powerful can otherwise be so clueless. He understands the town’s supernatural residents wanting to remain anonymous, truly, he does, but he really wishes they’d work a little harder at it. Or not invite Scott into their little club, maybe. That would help.
“So you’re telling me,” he glances down at his notes, curses himself for letting Jordan take patrol that day, and looks back up at Scott and Erica, “that you, who couldn’t run the mile in school without a visit to the nurse, managed to chase down and catch a guy who looks like he could bench press a tank, and just calmly convinced him to return Ms. Reyes’ purse. Is that right?”
(To say nothing of the fact that Erica looks like she could have caught the guy without Scott’s help. It’s not something that Erica could have done until recently, what with her miraculous epilepsy cure, but he’s supposed to be pretending he believes them. It’s just so hard. His fingers itch to bring out his BINGO card to look at; he’s sure that something in this poor excuse for a statement will qualify.)
Scott, bless his recently werewolved little soul, decides to stick to Erica’s story anyway, despite the fact that Scott hasn’t been able to lie to Stiles since they were kids. They both know that. Not for the first time, Stiles wonders if maybe he shouldn’t have let the Hales take charge of Scott after his transformation. At the time, Stiles had assumed that the best people to train a new werewolf would be other werewolves, but now he thinks maybe he and his dad should have taken a shot at it instead. The Hales certainly don’t seem to be teaching their new recruits how to keep their heads down, anyway.
“I’m just glad I was there to help,” Scott says, so earnestly that Stiles doesn’t have the heart to poke him any more, even though he really wants to keep poking at him. He hasn’t seen Scott nearly as much since he was bitten, and he misses his best friend. Still, he takes heart in the knowledge that Scott also missed Stiles, enough use this ridiculous story to visit him at the station. If it wasn’t for the paperwork, Stiles would be touched. As for Erica, he knows that she had a hard time in high school, so maybe they both just needed some attention? Even though it pains him to do it, he decides to be a good friend and let the Scotty the Good Samaritan story slide.
(Subterfuge-wise, though, they still suck, and Stiles fights the urge to offer to fix it. How the supernatural in this town managed to stay hidden for so long, he’ll never know.)
<><><>
EIGHT: Kittens with Friends
Despite what popular culture might say, kittens don’t get stuck in trees all that often. Nevertheless, there is a “Kitten in Tree” square on Jordan’s card, and even if it was probably put there as a joke, it’s actually happening, and it will be nice to deal with a normal, non-lethal creature for once.
(Plus, kittens are cute, and everyone deserves a breather now and then.)
If he’s lucky, he should be able to get an early dinner before heading back to the station.
The cat (and the tree that it’s sitting in) are in the middle of the downtown square, which means that pictures of he and the cat are going to end up all over the internet, and neither Stiles nor Tara are ever going to let him live it down. It’s late afternoon, so some folks have gone home, but there are more than enough left to gawk at the “hot deputy and the adorable kitten”.
He makes it up the tree easily enough, and he almost wants to coo himself at the tiny calico that awaits him at the top. There’s no collar to say who it belongs to, but it looks well taken care of. It isn’t afraid, like Jordan thought it might be, but merely cocks her head at him and meows as if to ask what took him so long. Jordan checks that his footing is secure, and then reaches out for the cat, who leans toward him as well. It’s at this point that everything goes sideways.
He hears a commotion down below, but he can’t really look at what’s happening because he’s trying to situate the cat and turn around without losing his balance. When he finally does it he realizes two things simultaneously: one, all of the gawkers are gone; and two, there is something else waiting for him on the ground. The deputy isn’t sure what it is, but it sort of looks like a miniature Bigfoot.
Stiles would know what this is and whether it’s likely to attack, but Jordan has no clue. Still, he can’t stay in the tree forever, so he climbs down, and both the cat and tiny Bigfoot wait patiently while he does so. Jordan expects something to happen once he touches the ground, but there’s nothing. He and the cat stare at the creature, and the creature stares back. Then the kitten meows and jumps out of his hands and onto the creature’s shoulder. It wraps itself around the hairy man’s neck and starts purring.
Now it’s cat and creature staring at Jordan. Jordan’s certain at this point that the creature means him no harm, but he’s not sure what to do from here. Suddenly, it grins and reaches up to pat Jordan’s knee amiably before it turns and lopes away.
For the next week, Jordan waits for the gawkers to either talk about tiny Bigfoot or post their pictures online. By some miracle, neither happens, and he is eternally grateful.
<><><>
SEVEN: Fun With the Hales and the Argents
The thing is that Noah and Chris have been quasi-friends for years, ever since Chris and Allison moved to town. The two of them had bonded over both the perils of gun ownership (and copious amounts of paperwork that went with it), and the horrors of single fatherhood. Noah knew that Chris wasn’t the type to get drawn into a feud, or to hold a grudge. So, this particular scene, in the woods with Talia Hale, a shotgun, and a dead body, was kind of baffling.
(It isn’t that he dislikes the Hales; he just thinks they’re somehow terrible at being werewolves.)
“Any of you folks want to tell me what’s going on here?”
Talia and Chris trade glances, and Noah can almost hear the, “heard random noise, found obviously off-season hunter already dead” excuse that is getting ready to roll off of the alpha’s tongue. Noah doesn’t know what kind of deal Chris has struck with the Hales to get them both here, and he doesn’t want to know. An alliance will be better for Scott and Allison in the long run, which will also (theoretically) keep Stiles from running himself ragged trying to keep an eye on Scott.
Still, there’s only half of a body here, and that would be tough for anyone to explain. He’s genuinely curious about how they’re going to do it. Coyotes, maybe.
Honestly, Noah’s eighty percent sure he already knows what killed this guy because the department’s been tracking the beastie all week, but he can see Allison and Scott and Derek and Peter off to the side and what, were they having some sort of werewolf-hunter reunion or something? Let’s bring everyone to the crime scene, why don’t we?
Scott, God bless him, tries to salvage the situation with a story about a moonlight stroll with Allison, which is actually plausible, and then ruins it by adding that they came closer because they thought they heard howling.
Only years as an officer helps the Sheriff keep his face blank. “You mean, like a wolf?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Chris facepalm and has to hold back a laugh despite the situation. He can only guess at the face that Talia’s making right now.
At which point Peter “half-werewolf, half-troll” Hale cuts in with a bland, “But there are no wolves in California, Sheriff.”
This time, Noah doesn’t bother fighting back the grin. “Didn’t you hear about the reintroduction efforts by the state? They’ve been going on for a few years, now. There are almost certainly wolves here, Mr. Hale.” Then he turns to Scott and (because he can troll with the best of them) adds, “If you think you heard wolves, I imagine your instincts are spot on. You should trust those.”
The groan-squeak combination that comes out of Scott is almost worth the hassle of half of a body in the woods.
<><><>
SIX: Gnome Wars
There are people in every town who take great pride in what they consider their space. Their gardens are carefully cultivated, their holiday decorations are the boldest and the brightest, and they strive to come out on top in everything they do. Those two households in Beacon Hills were occupied by a pair of sisters, Hannah and Grace, whose never-ending game of one-upmanship was thankfully far more gleeful than malicious.
For all that the sisters lived a few blocks apart, they regularly had lunch together (on Tuesdays), and dinner (on Fridays). They shopped at many of the same places and liked many of the same things. They both also had impressively large collections of garden gnomes.
It was a well-known joke around town that the configuration of gnomes on Hannah’s porch in the morning would be different from the one you’d see on your way home. Likewise, Grace’s gnomes were often arranged according to size, or the color of their shoes. Still, most people had better things to pay attention to than garden gnomes. That was why most of them didn’t realize that the gnomes at Hannah’s were all wearing black belts, while all of Grace’s wore brown.
Hannah and Grace had both gone all out this summer, so much so that their yards looked more like mini-jungles than anything. The gnomes were much harder to spot this way, and more than one child had made a game of I Spy out of passing by one of the properties. Once in awhile, they might see the flash of a red or blue cap, but mostly, the gnomes seemed to fade into the foliage.
It was the middle of July when the department started receiving calls about broken gnomes lying like roadkill in the middle of the road. Two days later, a woman called about hitting something with her car, only to find a cracked gnome in the ditch beside her car. Other calls quickly followed.
“They’re like that Doctor Who episode,” Stiles explains, after having borrowed one of Grace’s gnomes to stare at for the day, “except that they don’t turn into terrifying monsters when you look away, and they obviously don’t know road safety. I noticed some broken limbs and questionable patches of grass in Grace’s yard, like there’d been fighting. I’m going to drive to Hannah’s later, but I bet I’ll see the same thing there.”
The number of gnome-spottings increases significantly over the next few days, especially overnight, which was how Stiles and his dad found themselves doing surveillance on garden decorations at 3:00 on a Thursday morning.
“Maybe there’s a king and queen of the gnomes, and they’re fighting over the throne,” Stiles speculates, because Noah had waited far too long to cut off his son’s caffeine for the day. “Maybe there are other gnome families we don’t know about. Ooh, maybe instead of Game of Thrones, it’s Game of Gnomes.”
Noah doesn’t spit out his coffee, but he may choke a little, and he definitely glares at his kid. He doesn’t get the chance to respond, though, because there’s a loud crash to the left, and Stiles throws the headlights onto what looks like a reenactment from any number of Shakespearean plays where the lovers are pulled apart and carried off stage. The gnomes have frozen in place while the Stilinskis are watching them, and the tableau is almost creepy: dozens of gnomes, gathered in two groups; one with black belts and the other, brown, each holding one other gnome aloft. Those two gnomes seem to be reaching out to each other despite the fact that they don’t have visible arms.
Stiles and Noah share a look, because what are they supposed to do now? Try to talk to them? Rescue the two gnomes that evidently want to run away together? Run them all over with the car? They really don’t get paid enough for this stuff.
<><><>
FIVE: Frustratingly Complex Police Codes
“So, here’s the book of codes,” Jordan adds another text to the growing pile, “but don’t worry about getting them all straight; they’re kind of fluid anyway. If you stick around long enough, you’ll get the hang of it, eventually.”
The newest deputy, a transfer from a large city on the East Coast, is staring at him with wide eyes. He doesn’t know what she expected, but the sheer number of books he’s given her makes her look like a clueless freshman on the first day of classes. It’s a lot, but this job is more dangerous than most. It doesn’t help that she didn’t know anything about the supernatural two hours ago, and her worldview has been turned on its head. She looks maybe too afraid, but Stiles had started researching new hires as soon as his dad mentioned the idea, and she was Stiles’s first choice. Jordan knows she’ll be a good addition to the department, but it always takes the newbies a little time to get their bearings after being told that vampires and werewolves (and other things) are real.
“What is this?”
Her voice brings him back to the present, and opens his mouth to explain all the extra codes—it’s not enough to have a 10-91b for a noisy animal if that “animal” is really two werewolves fighting, and using 11-14 for animal bites is not nearly descriptive enough for their strata of possible bites, for example—when he notices that she’s found the custom BINGO card that’s been tucked into her book.
This, somehow, makes her look more uncomfortable than anything else so far, so he hastens to explain. “Stiles—Deputy Stilinski—probably left it there as a welcome to the station present,” he explains. He wants to ask to see it, because for all that neither the Sheriff nor Stiles tries to hide the truth about their little town, Stiles also always gives the newbies the easiest BINGO cards to help ease them in, too. He doesn’t ask, though, because he remembers being the new guy, back before he’d even figured out that he was supernatural, and marking out squares on his BINGO card had been just silly enough to keep him from going crazy.
“Why is there a square about vague conversations with veterinarians?”
“Don’t ask.”
Shortly thereafter, they get a call about a possible monster in the lake, which actually turns out to be Jenny Greenteeth, which, after long and intense negotiations (and a little bit of fighting), leads to Jordan and the newbie drinking hot chocolate and discussing why it’s important to know the difference between a generic lake monster and someone like Jenny.
It also gives the newest deputy a chance to find out why Dr. Deaton is on her BINGO card.
<><><>
FOUR: Curses, Compulsions, and Cluelessness
Tara Graeme has known Stiles and Scott since they were in diapers. She babysat when Melissa was at work and Claudia was in the hospital. She gave the boys their first (and Scott’s only) firearms lesson when they were twelve. The point is, new werewolf urges aside, Tara knows Scott McCall, and the blank-faced, creepy-smile guy in front of her is not Scott.
Or not entirely Scott, anyway. Less easy to know is why Scott is wandering around the cemetery at night, but Tara bets it has something to do with the absolutely gaudy and glowing necklace he’s wearing. She shakes her head. She would have thought that either the Hales or the Argents would have warned him about picking up random glowing things; hell, she’s surprised that two decades of movies and video games with Stiles hasn’t taught him not to pick up strange objects. Scott might be hopelessly naive sometimes, but he’s not an idiot. But if it was for Allison...
(She can see the scene in her mind’s eye: lovesick Scott finding the necklace, and with his compulsive need to give his girlfriend some sort of knickknack every half hour, picking it up; then, instead of sticking it in his pocket [where it might get damaged!], putting it around his own neck for safekeeping.)
Whatever whammied Scott is ignoring her completely while it searches the graves, and otherwise making no threatening moves, so the deputy decides to let whatever this is play out.
Which, of course, is when Isaac Lahey pops out of nowhere and starts trying to herd Scott in the direction of the Hale house. Worse, the Lahey kid doesn’t even see Tara at first, so she hears all sorts of information in the meantime that would sound insane and possibly criminal if she didn’t already know about the supernatural.
“You boys want to tell me what you’re doing in the cemetery, in the middle of the night, with stolen property?” she asks, stepping into Lahey’s line of sight. She feels bad at the way the kid blanches—the Hales did a good job of getting him over his daddy issues, but not so much his fear of authority figures—but Scott doesn’t so much as twitch.
“Um—”
“I’ll tell you what,” she interrupts, because she doesn’t want to have to drag both of them home, “I know that you two aren’t the type to steal, so how about you give me the necklace and we’ll call it a night?” She brings out a magically-reinforced evidence bag for them to drop the necklace into because she certainly doesn’t want to touch the thing.
Lahey looks like he wants to argue, but cop trumps alpha, at least for now. Thankfully, he gets the necklace off with relatively little fuss, and the deputy decides that the who, what, when, why, and how of the necklace can wait for another day, or at least until Stiles gets bored.
On the way back to the station, she texts “BINGO” to her colleagues, because this totally counts as possession, and no one can tell her otherwise.
<><><>
THREE: Magic Mushrooms (And Not the Fun Kind)
It starts with spores, which sounds like the beginning of a bad sci-fi movie, but that’s Beacon Hills for you. The spores spread and then sprout as mushrooms, which then explode and release more spores until the edge of the Hale property is covered in them. It might still have been fine, except that it turned out that werewolves find the spores highly addictive and—once a certain amount is in their systems—hallucinogenic.
The spores have no effect on humans at all, which is while it takes a few days, and a call from seven-year-old Addie Hale, for the department to know that anything’s wrong.
Addie Hale, who is the only human currently living at the Hale house, realizes that her family has gone crazier than usual and, remembering Deputy Stilinski’s visit to her school in the fall, decides to call for help. She explains the situation as calmly as only a girl who has grown up with werewolves can, and asks that they send help immediately.
It turns out that the only thing more aggravating than regular werewolves are stoned werewolves who think that everyone else is out to get them. And it’s not that the Sheriff and deputies can’t or won’t defend themselves, it’s just a pain. Noah doesn’t want any of the deputies to risk getting close enough to a wolf to taser them, and none of them want to risk using even the mildest forms of aconite in fear of making things worse.
(It would be obvious to anyone at this point that the Sheriff’s Department knows how to handle werewolves, but the people who would most care about that revelation are currently out of their minds and will likely have no recollection of the experience later. For her part, Addie [who is Peter’s daughter in every way], loves the fact that she knows something all of the nosy werewolves don’t.)
They finally decide to burn as many of the mushrooms as they can, so Noah pulls out his phone to call the Forestry Service while Stiles steps away for a moment and comes back with a tank strapped to his back.
“Since when does the department have flamethrowers?”
Stiles grimaces while he hands one to his dad. “They don’t. I tried to requisition some about six months ago, but the paperwork was so complicated that I had to give up for my own sanity. These are mine.”
Noah loves his kid, so he’s going to ignore the fact that neither Tara nor Jordan seem surprised that Stiles has flamethrowers and they’re going to burn the hell out of these mushrooms. In fact, the four of them probably take too much pleasure in standing in the Hales’ yard and taking care of business.
(At one point, Addie suggests marshmallows, but the Sheriff regretfully nixes that idea.)
After that’s done, they call Deaton to ask him to look after Addie while the Hales recover, and it’s irrationally funny after the day they’ve had to see the way Deaton’s jaw drops when he sees how the wolves are acting. He’ll never mention it to Talia, Noah’s certain, so the veterinarian automatically becomes the third side in the BCSD-Addie Hale-Alan Deaton triangle of silence.
In a way it’s nice, though, because nobody needs to bother with excuses here—everyone can blame the mushrooms and pretend everything else is fine. That will save on paperwork, at least.
<><><>
TWO: Gerard Argent Is Everybody’s Problem
There’s a difference between turning a blind eye to weird stuff and being forcibly pulled into supernatural bullshit, and if any of his deputies are killed because of this Hale-Argent feud, Noah’s going to make sure both families regret it. The way he sees it, everyone seems willing to ignore Gerard Argent so long as he ignores them, which means that for too long, Gerard has been able to do whatever he wants whenever he wants, which has led him to the point where he thinks he can assault a police station and get away with it.
Of course, the man is too much of a coward to do his own dirty work, so he enslaves someone and sets them loose on the local law enforcement. Noah’s not sure what Gerard hopes to accomplish, but this is beyond the pale. His kid is currently paralyzed and somehow Scott is running around with Derek Hale and how dare they bring their stupid feud into his station! The next time one of them tries to convince him that, “Oh, no, Sheriff, you didn’t see a monster, it was the smoke, and are you sure you’re getting enough sleep?”, he’s going to inject them with kanima venom and see how they like it.
Noah is angry enough right now that he’d probably just shoot the kanima if he knew for certain who it was; he’s got a guess, but he’s not willing to risk it. Thankfully, while he’s trying to think of something other than the nuclear option, Jordan and Tara somehow manage to electrocute the thing using a taser and an extra large glass of water. He’s not sure why it works, but he doesn’t care, and he doesn’t even mock glare at Tara for her joke about fried alligator as they practically toss it out of the station.
The fact that they don’t bother to move it any farther than the parking lot should be an indication to certain people that he and the deputies aren’t as ignorant as the Hales think they are, and yet Noah still has to stand there and pretend to listen when Talia Hale appears out of nowhere and once again tries to convince him that he’s blind, deaf, and stupid. Seriously, his kid just spent an hour paralyzed on the floor while a mind-controlled lizard ran amok; it wasn’t the type of thing he could ignore.
He can only imagine that Stiles is now having a similar conversation with Scott and Derek somewhere, which is why Noah decades to spin his own bullshit for the alpha about how, “No, he has no idea how they disarmed the guy, and sure, he looked funny, but he was probably a drug addict, so; also, hey, your kid was here earlier. Why is that, and are there any problems at home we should know about?”
The look of confused indignation on Talia’s face is almost enough to make him smile, but he’d rather just go hug his son.
<><><>
ONE: The Deadpool; or Let’s Get This Over With Already
They find out about the Deadpool not from Talia or Chris, but from Addie Hale, who calls to tell them that her cousin Derek has been shot and is going to visit Dr. Deaton and please, could someone go check on him because he looked pretty awful when he left.
Stiles knows that the Hales often go to Deaton for medical issues, but he also knows that the man in question is currently visiting his sister and isn’t available to patch anyone up right now. Luckily, Stiles has taught himself how to use most of Deaton’s things, and they have a decent stores at the station, too, if necessary.
He finds Derek half-dead in the back of Deaton’s clinic with a bone saw in his hand and a determined look on his otherwise ashen face. The poor guy must be even worse off than he looks, because his first reaction to seeing Stiles—in his uniform, no less—is to ask the deputy to cut off his arm.
Stiles reacts like he imagines anyone is the situation would: he rushes forward to grab the saw out of Derek’s hand, pushes him down onto a stool, and fights the urge to smack the werewolf upside the head.
“One, no. Two, hell, no. And three, are you nuts?”
This, unfortunately, does not get the response that Stiles hopes for; instead, Derek tries to take the bone saw back, despite the fact that he can hardly sit upright.
“Listen, Stiles, this isn’t a normal bullet, and—” Derek stops and leans forward like he’s going to gag, and Stiles should help him, but he’s not feeling particularly generous at the moment, so instead he lets Derek suffer a bit while he texts his dad that they’ll be coming in to the station ASAP. It’s obvious by the open cabinets and general mess that Derek tried to find what he needed, and couldn’t, but Stiles has worked hard to make sure they’re prepared for almost anything at the station, so he’s confident they’ll have the wolfsbane he needs.
He feels a sudden weight against his middle and realizes that Derek has passed out on him. This is good, because now he doesn’t have to waste time convincing Derek to come with him, but also bad, because hauling around a couple hundred pounds of deadweight werewolf is not an easy job.
He’s actually starting to worry a little when Derek doesn’t regain consciousness on the drive to the station and he peels into the parking lot fully expecting his dad to be waiting for him.
His dad’s in the parking lot, at least, but he’s got problems of his own. Namely, Peter Hale, whom his dad is half-dragging, half-walking toward the door.
“Is that a tomahawk in your leg?”
“You should see the other guy,” Peter joked. It was clear he was in pain, but at least he was lucid, which was more than they could say for Derek. “No, really, he had no mouth. Also, I’ve torn him into itty, bitty pieces.” He zeroed in on the lump that Stiles was pulling out of his car. “Is that my nephew?”
Stiles doesn’t answer beyond a breathless nod, and eventually, both Hales have been wrangled into the station and into the back room set aside for nonhuman problems. Peter is eyeing everything with interest. If he had suspected that the Stilinskis were in the know about the supernatural, he was definitely sure now.
“Where are Tara and Jordan?” Stiles asks conversationally as he digs the bullet out of Derek. Years into this mess, and he still hates the sight of blood. He can handle it, but talking helps, and he really does want to know about the others.
“Tara’s out helping Satomi Ito’s pack, and some stupid kids tried to trap Jordan in his car and set it on fire,” Noah explains as he looks Peter over. It isn’t much trouble to get the tomahawk out, but that much blood on the floor is going to require assistance from their sometimes-intern witch to clean. “He’s out hunting, now.”
Peter frowns. “Why go after Deputy Parrish? He’s not on the list.”
Stiles shrugs as he finds the right type of wolfsbane and grabs a lighter. “Jordan’s a hellhound, but those kids couldn’t have known that. They probably just wanted him out of the way because he’s a cop.”
Peter doesn’t react that Stiles can see, but he internally crows a little at the thought that the department is better at keeping secrets than the werewolves.
“And who is he hunting?”
The Sheriff helps Stiles rearrange Derek so he looks less like a rag doll and helps Peter to his feet and guides them toward his office. “Jordan said he recognized the kids from our file on Gerard Argent, so he’ll be taking care of that problem as soon as possible. That should clear a lot of things up.”
Peter smirks at the Stilinskis for a moment until he realizes what the Sheriff is saying. “You’re serious. Doesn’t that go against your oaths?” he asks, but not like he disagrees.
“Gerard Argent has been a threat to this county, this town, and this station for far too long. Our file on him is a half-inch thick, and we haven’t been investigating him all that long. I can only imagine how much misery he’s been responsible for over the years. My only regret is that I don’t get to kill him myself.”
Peter hums thoughtfully, and the smirk returns. “What are you going to tell my sister?”
“I think we should let Derek do it,” Stiles offers.
The three of them look toward the room where Derek is sleeping it off, and then back at each other. Yes, that sounds like it might be fun.
(Two weeks later, Peter Hale is given a laminated BINGO card with the admonition, Don’t tell Talia. He doesn’t.)