Chapter Text
Kira was thankful that Lydia offered to drive her home to spare her from being embarrassed by her dad again. Not that her dad ever did anything particularly embarrassing, well, except for maybe telling the whole world that she had a crush on Scott McCall, but she guessed that was a moot point since they were now dating. Regardless of everything working out, having your dad be a teacher in your own high school never got anyone any ‘cool points.’
Cool points? Kira thought to herself, Great, now I sound like a loser even in my own head.
She was thankful she would be home soon and she would be able to take a nap and forget about the day. While being the daughter of the only history teacher in school wasn’t necessarily bad, it was on days when no one did the homework reading and you’re the only one he calls on because he knows you know the answers. After her nap she was planning on finishing what must have been her twentieth run of Final Fantasy 7, she already knew she wouldn’t have the energy to deal with anyone else until tomorrow. At least the peaceful scenery going by was soothing enough. Car… big tree… house… barn… closed park gate… another car… another big tree… another house… another barn… another—
Wait.
Kira turned her head ever so slightly so she could observe Lydia without her noticing. She stared at her for a few minutes and then decided to test her hypothesis.
“Do you like this song?” She asked.
“Yeah…” Lydia replied, eyes wistful but still on the road. “It’s kind of weird though don’t you think?”
“What’s weird about it?”
“I don’t know, it sounds like–”
Kira tapped her nail against the plastic of the car radio and Lydia turned to see the origin of the noise. She saw that the radio was currently off.
Lydia sighed. “Not again…”
Kira remained quiet for the rest of the ride, not wanting to disturb whatever it was that made Lydia’s banshee powers work. They pulled into an inlet to the woods and got out.
“So, where are we going?”
“I don’t know yet,” Lydia said and set off so quickly Kira had to try to keep up.
They had walked so far that Kira couldn’t tell where the car was anymore and wondered if they’d ever get back to civilization. She was also beginning to wish she had the forethought to turn on the RunTracker app on her phone because she wondered if she was tired because of how far they walked or because she was massively out of shape. She resolved to start running again if they got out of the woods alive, something she was beginning to become worried about because of the fading daylight and the creepy darkness of the trees around her.
“I know I’m not really supposed to talk while you’re looking for a body–”
“I don’t look for them, I just kind of find them.”
“However it works,” Kira conceded as she almost tripped over a fallen branch. “You have to admit we’ve been out here for a while.”
Lydia finally stopped walking and looked around, annoyed.
“Sorry. I don’t know, maybe I’m slipping.”
“Maybe we should just give up for now and come back tomorrow.”
Lydia looked around one last time.
“Yeah, let’s go back to the car.”
Kira turned and walked in the direction she thought the car was. Realizing they weren’t totally lost because they lived in the modern world, she opened her Maps app to try and figure out where the car might be and convinced herself it would be just like looking at the map in Fallout.
A Lydia turned, the wind brushed against her ear carrying the sound she first heard when they got out of the car. The scream of death elicited when a person passed, a noise that only her banshee ears could hear. But there was something strange entwined in it, under the fading scream she could hear a single voice lifted up in song. She turned her face into the wind to find the origin of the sound.
By the time Kira realized she was walking alone, Lydia was already several feet away.
“What is it?” She called after her.
“I think I know where it is!” Lydia yelled back and broke into a run in the direction of the sound.
Kira ran after her - and when Lydia stopped at the edge of a ditch - collided with her, nearly sending both of them over the edge.
“Oh my god,” Lydia whispered in shock.
“Ugh,” Kira said and turned away. “Can’t anyone ever die nicely around here? Like a heart attack or peacefully in their beds?”
“I think Beacon Hills is a statistical anomaly that way,” Lydia replied as she crouched and tried to observe the body from her vantage point.
The face of the victim looked as if it had been pulled almost entirely off. The lower jaw was missing, the throat opened up, and the chest was shredded down to the belly. The flesh and sinew was ragged like the edges of fraying fabric and stretched away from the body like boody ribbons. The leaves around the body were stained with red of destroyed viscera.
“Call Scott,” Lydia said, unable to look away.
“I am so already on it.”
When Scott and Stiles arrive to where Lydia’s car was parked, they had to play a game of Marco Polo to find them.
“Why don’t you know where you are?” Scott asked as he and Stiles turned around again because Kira sent them in the wrong direction.
“We were walking around for a while as Lydia was doing her banshee thing.”
“Your scent is all over these woods. I think you’ve successfully made it difficult for me to find you.”
“Really? I think I see you.”
“What? I don’t see you anywhere.”
“Turn around,” Kira said as she waved one hand in the air above her.
In the distance both Scott and Stiles spun around, scanning the area. Scott saw Kira waving and hung up. They both ran over.
“In the ditch,” Kira said gesturing.
In the time it took Scott and Stiles to find each other, drive out to the woods, and find them on foot, Kira had firmly decided that, were she to ever die a grisly death helping to save Beacon Hills from the Big Bad Du Jour, she didn’t want anyone looking at her and wanted to be cremated immediately.
Lydia, on the other hand, was in the ditch attempting to examine the body. Stiles jumped into the ditch and began helping her.
“Ugh, wow,” Scott said.
“Yeah,” Kira replied uncomfortably.
Scott touched her arm gently. He wanted to console her because she, turned away as she was from the ditch and trying not to look in, was clearly uncomfortable. He drew her gaze to his eyes and gave her a sympathetic smile which Kira returned unconvincingly. He decided to leave well enough alone and joined Stiles and Lydia in the ditch while Kira stayed on the high ground.
Stiles took the folded up tarp he had be carrying under her arm and put it on the floor. “Does this remind you of anything in the bestiary, Lydia?”
“Wendigoes, for one.”
“But why would it take their jaw?” Scott asked.
“Their jaw is gone?” Kira called down.
“Yeah,” Lydia affirmed.
“Ugh, EW. Sorry, I didn’t really look.”
“That’s okay,” Scott wanted to say more, to make her feel less gross about finding bodies.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure how a wendigo feeds,” Lydia started, interrupting Scott’s thought. “I figured it was just that the thing that killed them ate so much of them. But it could be some other reason, I’m not sure how many supernaturals have M.O.s like serial killers. I’ll have to go through it again.”
“I can help,” Stiles offered.
Lydia raised an eyebrow, “Unless you speak archaic Latin, you won’t be much of a help.”
Scott looked at Stiles who shifted his weight awkwardly.
“I can… aggregate information.”
Lydia raised her eyebrow higher and lowered her gaze. She knew when she was being used.
“Don’t you have a test tomorrow?”
“Yeah, but I don’t have to study.”
“Or you don’t want to study,” Scott said as he folded his arms.
Stiles looked from Lydia to Scott and back and began shouting and gesturing wildly.
“I hate art history! I don’t understand why I have to take it!”
Lydia smiled, “So you can become a fully rounded human being?”
“So you can have taste?” Kira asked from above.
Scott pointed in the direction of Kira’s voice and nodded in agreement.
Stiles saw he was outnumbered but protested anyway.
“I have taste.”
“Okay,” Scott said as he picked up the tarp and began unfolding it. “Let’s just bring the body to Deaton and we can discuss Stiles’ lack of taste later.
"I have taste,” Stiles protested again as Scott shook his head and Lydia pretended to agree with him.
Once they had lugged it the half mile out of the woods and over to Stiles’ jeep, bringing the body to Deaton was easy. Once in the examination room, it was laid supine on the examining table while Deaton leaned over it. While Scott and Stiles were the picture of concern, Kira decided to hide form the body in the waiting room. Lydia elected to go back to her house and was already pouring over the Argent bestiary, trying to find an attack style that matched the wounds of the victim.
Deaton furrowed his brow as he carefully investigated the body.
“Initially, when you said the body looked like it had been eaten I thought we might be dealing with another wendigo.”
“What, like the black sheep of the family with the walk-in fridge? This one prefers free range human?”
Deaton looked directly into Stiles’ eyes for a moment, and then very pointedly went back to his examination.
Stiles cleared his throat, “That’s what Lydia said.”
Deaton shook his head, “But the way this flesh is torn at is unlike any wendigo bites I’ve ever seen. Their teeth are very much like the mouth of a lamprey, many rows of sharp, small teeth. This looks like it was done with larger teeth… or maybe talons.”
“Talons?” Scott asked. “Like a bird?”
“Yes. The way the flesh ribbons at the edges looks more like something large and sharp took hold and pulled until the skin and muscle ripped under the force.”
“So we’re looking for some kind of large bird, or something with really big teeth?”
“That’s my guess for now. Whatever it is, it certainly made a mess of its prey.”
“Is that the end of your examination? I have to call my dad and we need to put the body back.”
“I’d like to take some pictures, maybe a sample or two that won’t be missed. But that won’t take long, call your dad whenever you like.”
Stiles walked into the waiting room to make the call.
Kira quickly looked up from her phone with the same expression of a student who just got in trouble for looking at their phone during class.
“Uh, Lydia hasn’t found anything yet.”
“Okay, I’m calling my dad,” he said as he dialed. “We’re going to have to take the body back.”
“Is it okay if I don’t go? I mean, I didn’t exactly help you guys carry it in, and it kind of grosses me out.”
Stiles put his phone to his ear and shrugged.
“You can stay here if you want.”
“Cool.”
"Dad?” Stiles asked into his phone. He walked to the other side of the waiting area.
Kira looked back down at her phone and started typing.
Kira: I don’t think I have as strong a stomach as you guys.
Lydia: What do you mean?
Kira: The body…
Lydia: Ah. That’s fine, not everybody does.
Kira: I feel bad though I don’t want Scott to think I’m
Kira: weak
Lydia: You’re not weak. Not everyone can be a butcher, you know? Some people are chefs instead.
Kira looked at her phone quizzically and responded.
Kira: Um, I think I know what you mean, but plaese explain?
Kira: *please
Lydia: Like, a butcher can take apart an entire animal and not be bothered, a chef uses those pieces to make something else but may be bothered to see them looking much more like the alive animal than they’re used to.
Lydia: I only half thought that analogy through, to be honest.
Lydia: But what I’m trying to say is, it doesn’t matter that you’re grosses out but finding a horribly mutilated body because you can do other stuff that doesn’t involve that.
Kira: I get it. But I still wish I didn’t feel sick looking at it. I wish I could be more like you were.
Lydia: Well, for me it’s kind of an occupational hazard.
Lydia: Being a banshee and all. Lol
Kira: Lol
Kira smiled at her phone and sat up straighter. Stiles shoved his phone back into his pocket as he walked back over.
“Okay, when Deaton is done we’re going to bring the body back to where you guys found it. You’re cool to stay here?”
“Completely fine with it.”
“Okay. Scott and I will pick you up when we’re done.”
Scott walked back into the waiting room, “He’s all wrapped up.”
Stiles clapped his hands together, “Let’s put him in the car,” and walked back into the examination room to get the body.
“Do you want to help?” Scott asked as he turned to Kira.
“No, I’ll stay here. Lugging around a mutilated corpse isn’t really fun or… non-nauseating to me.”
“I didn’t think you’d say yes, I just didn’t want you to feel left out.” Scott said and smiled.
“Trust me, if you start training for the doubles division of the corpse-carrying championships, you can leave me all the way out of it.”
Scott smiled again, “Did Lydia find anything yet?”
“No, but she’s keeping me posted.”
“Okay, we’ll see you when we get back.”
Scott walked over and gave Kira a quick kiss.
“Have fun,” Kira said as he turned to walk away.
Scott turned around and gave her a confused look.
“I mean, as much fun as lugging a dead guy around can be.”
Scott smiled wryly and walked away. Kira rolled her eyes at her blunder and went back to looking at her phone. She could hear Scott and Stiles take the body out the back door to load it into Stiles’ car.
Deaton walked into the room and leaned against the molding.
“You know,” he began, almost startling Kira, “not wanting to be around the dead isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just means you can never live out your dream of being a mortician.”
Kira chuckled softly. “Lydia said the same thing, just not the mortician part.”
“If I could give some advice?”
“Sure.”
“Not everyone is good at the same things.”
“Lydia said that too. Only, she used a metaphor.”
“She’s a smart girl.”
“Yeah.”
Deaton smiled and turned to walk back into the examination room and analyze the samples he took.
Kira’s phone buzzed and she looked down at the notification.
“A smart girl who thinks she may have found something.”
Deaton spun back around, “Oh?”
“She said to ask if you know what a…” Kira couldn’t gauge how the word was supposed to be pronounced. “Hull… huldra? is?”
Deaton’s eyes widened. He hoped that he was successfully displaying a look of concern, but to Kira he just looked scared.
Instead of immediately picking up Kira and dropping everyone off home, Scott and Stiles came back to Deaton’s office to find he, Lydia, and Kira gathered around a pile of papers strewn across the examining table.
“Good, you’re back,” Lydia said as she looked up.
“Does all of this mean you found something?” Scott asked.
“Maybe,” Lydia said as she handed Scott a copy of the relevant bestiary pages. “The bestiary speaks of a being called a Huldra, or in Swedish ‘Skogsrået’. It’s a guardian of the forest that is said to look like a beautiful woman and, like the sirens of ancient Greek myth, would sing to ensnare her victims and either wed them… or eat them.”
“You think that’s what killed our victim?” Scott asked as Stiles took the copy out of his hand and flipped through them.
“Yes. Our guy was found in the woods, he was…”
“Devoured,” Kira offered and shifted at the thought.
Lydia looked at her friend and sighed. “Yes.”
“Scott, before I found him I heard what I thought sounded like singing. I don’t know if she was there or if it was some kind of left over, but I know I heard it.”
“Okay,” Scott said thoughtfully, “what does the bestiary say it looks like?”
“That’s the difficult part,” Lydia said as she rolled her eyes. “All it says is that it looks like, 'a beautiful young woman.’”
Stiles looked up from the pages briefly. “So we have two possible candidates in front of us is what you’re saying?”
Scott frowned. “Well, we know it’s not any of the women we know so that brings it down by what, six or seven?”
“There are thousands of women in Beacon Hills. How are we supposed to find one person?” Kira asked.
Deaton offered some rationality, “Is there a way we can draw it out of its hiding?”
“The book says they inhabit forests so I suppose we could check the woods,” Lydia said as she shook her head. “It also says they watch over the kilns of charcoal makers, but I don’t think there are any colliers around here.”
Scott furrowed his brow, “A collier is a…?”
“Someone who makes charcoal.”
“That’s weirdly specific,” Kira stated flatly.
Lydia shrugged. “Most professions have a specific name.”
Kira nodded. The thought had never crossed her mind.
“Is there anything else?” Scott asked.
Lydia searched her thoughts. The entry on huldras was brief but still, it was in archaic Latin.
“They would sometimes bless hunters if they were kind to them or would help people who willingly offered their blood to them. They’re described as lonely and sad. Maybe that’s why they sing, I don’t know.”
“What does this picture mean?” Stiles asked, holding up one of the pages.
Lydia squinted at the words for a second before remembering what she read.
“’The huldra is often said to be tied to a specific grove or singular, large tree.’”
Stiles looked at the page again and put it on the table so everyone else could look at it.
“It looks like she’s turning into a tree.”
“The majority of this entry seems to be from Swedish sources, and it says that in the south she’s said to have the ears and tail of a cow or fox, but tales of her from the north say she had a hollowed out back and skin like tree bark. But both of those are like… hidden versions of herself. Also, this line here,” Lydia said as she pointed to the excerpt, “says that you should never mention her ears or tail because she would take offense and kill you over it.”
“Sensitive,” Stiles said and looked to Scott.
Scott raised a brow and nodded.
“I found it somewhat amusing.”
“So…” Scott began, “all we have to go on is that she’s pretty and may or may not be singing?”
Lydia swept the papers together into a pile and tapped them on edge to straighten them out.
“Apparently.”
“That is so not helpful,” Stiles said and turned to Scott, folding his arms.
“It really isn’t,” Scott agreed.
The group stood in silent reflection as they all processed what Lydia learned from the bestiary. Scott leaned on the table with both hands as Lydia quietly thumbed through the pages again trying to see if there was some more helpful tidbit she missed.
Kira was quietly thinking, her brow furrowed, before she finally spoke.
“Maybe she’s like me.”
Scott looked up at her.
“What do you mean?”
“You can see the fox part of me when you look at me with your other eyes, maybe we can find her the same way.”
“The both of you walking around with glowing eyes all the time? That might get suspicious, don’t you think?” Stiles asked.
Kira sighed, “I don’t mean all the time, obviously. But if we check the woods that way, maybe we can find her. Scott, you said the fox is bright, it’d be like using night vision goggles.”
Scott pushed off the table and stood up straight.
“That might work… good idea.”
Kira smiled.
“Okay, but even with Malia and Liam that’s only four people, you still have acres and acres of forest to cover,” Stiles pointed out.
“You can start near where you found the body. If she’s as committed to being in the woods as the bestiary says, she could still be in that area.” Deaton said.
“What about what you said about the body?” Scott asked. “That it looked like huge teeth or talons ripped him apart? How does that mesh with 'a beautiful woman’?”
“Perhaps that’s what the huldra is hiding. Maybe her appearance of a beautiful woman is a mask, hiding something more terrifying, and clearly more formidable, underneath.”
The teens all stood for a moment as they mulled over the words of the druid.
“We’ll look through the woods tomorrow,” Scott stated.
“You should stay away from where we found the body, my dad and his deputies will still be all over it,” Stiles said with a yawn.
Scott nodded slowly. That Sheriff Stilinski and his men would be in the immediate area of the body went without saying. If he wasn’t already so aware of how tired his friend was, Scott might be a little annoyed that he seemed to think so little him as to point it out. The corner of Scott’s mouth curled upwards. He could practically smell the melatonin coming off of him.
“Let’s go back to our respective homes and get some sleep for now. We’ll meet up tomorrow morning and finish our plans.”
Stiles was led the way out of the room with Lydia and Kira behind him. As Scott moved to leave, Deaton gripped his arm. Scott turned around, his face moving from shock to concern as he did so.
“What?” Scott asked.
“Just… be careful tomorrow. You know nothing about this person and very little about what they are.”
“We will be.”
“Remember: not all myths are right. Even the bestiary has its blind spots.”
Scott tried to reassure his friend with a smile and a nod. Deaton let go of his arm and Scott left to rejoin his friends.
“You really should study for your art history test,” Lydia finally said to Stiles as they and Kira walked across the parking lot to Stiles’ jeep. It had been bugging her since he tried to use helping her as an excuse not to study earlier that night.
Stiles yawned and spun his keys around his finger absentmindedly. “Well, it’s too late now.”
“You could at least review so you don’t completely fail.”
“That’s easy for you to say, you’re a genius.”
“Stiles,” Lydia stopped dead in her tracks and cocked her head at her friend. Stiles turned to face her. Lydia continued.
“I’m not brain meltingly smart for my age because I was born this way, I’m constantly studying. Also, I know how to use my time wisely and study the correct way.”
“What’s ‘the correct way?’”
“Have you ever heard of the Spaced Repetition System?”
Stiles looked to Kira who shrugged.
“Uh, no. Should I have?”
Lydia continued walking as she explained. Stiles followed, intrigued, while Kira turned around, wondering what was keeping Scott.
“They don’t teach it in school, so no. I only found out about it when I was having problems with French in middle school.”
Stiles was somewhat surprised, “You were having problems with French? Wasn’t that the first of the many languages you speak?”
“That’s the problem when you try to learn a language that no one around you speaks and it’s treated less like a language and more like a subject in school that you’ll never need later. I’ll let you borrow my SRS books, it’s not hard to learn. There’s even an app for it now. You can use it for the rest of the class.”
“Wow, thank you, Lydia.”
At the sound of the office door opening they all turned around and watched as Scott jogged over to them.
“What took you so long?” Kira asked.
“Deaton told me we should be careful since we really don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
“He’s right,” Lydia said, “We saw what it could do and we don’t know how powerful it really is.”
“I was originally thinking we should split up and comb the forest, but now I’m thinking we should stick together in case she’s really that dangerous.” Scott took his phone out of his pocket, “I’ll text Liam right now. Hopefully he’s not asleep yet.”
Stiles shoved his hands in his pockets trying to find his own phone, “I’ll text Malia.”
“Where is she, by the way?” Lydia asked.
At the beginning of the year Malia had made a new friend in her chemistry lab partner; a girl who wore all black and, Malia thought, maybe too much eye makeup. They had time to chat while their first experiment was coming to a boil over the Bunsen burner, and Malia asked her why she dressed the way she did. One topic lead into another and Malia was being regaled on the histories of Goth fashion and death metal music. Malia couldn’t help but be intrigued, music where the singer wasn’t singing but it still sounded good? She expressed a desire to see such music in person if only to discover how it worked. The girl told her she couldn’t beat a live show and that one of her favorite local bands always played at Titan, a club on the outskirts of town.
That’s where Malia was now, weaving her way through the crowd as she tried to get closer to the stage. The crowd buzzed as everyone talked excitedly, she figured they must be people who met up there regularly to listen to music and see their friends. She knew that she must have missed the first band but wasn’t sure if she missed the second as well, and she couldn’t remember if the band her lab partner told her about was second or third. If she were being honest, she also couldn’t remember the band’s name and she was hoping she’d recognize if someone said it. The hum of the crowd grew louder as the techs finished setting up the instruments and band members walked onto the stage one by one. First the drummer, a somewhat short man with a blue Mohawk who smiled and waved at the applause that greeted him before sitting behind the kit and making final adjustments. Then a very tall and muscular man came onto the stage as he was finishing his drink, put the cup down on the drum riser, picked up his guitar without acknowledging the crowd and tested its tuning. Malia marveled at the length of his hair for a moment, before two other musicians, both with long hair, came out and picked up their respective instruments. As the band members milled about onstage, checking tuning and signaling to the guy at the soundboard at the back of the room, Malia looked at their faces. She was trying to get a good look at the 'corpse paint’ her lab partner had told her about. She didn’t think it looked very corpse-like, but she supposed it kind of, sort of, looked like a vague artistic interpretation of a skull.
If she squinted.
Her thought process was violently interrupted by the renewed vigor of the crowd. Malia looked to find what could have sparked such a reaction, and saw the singer walk out onto the stage. The singer, smaller than the other band members and dwarfed by the lead guitarist, had long black curls and a face covered in makeup that faded from black to red as it moved from the forehead down to the cheekbones and then was white from there down. Malia wondered if that was called corpse paint too since it didn’t look like a skull or like a corpse at all. Then she wondered who decides such things.
The lead guitarist introduced the band, Sister of Ash, Malia smiled to herself. Now she recalled that Sister of Ash was the last band to go on and was the band her lab partner told her she needed to see. As she was being quietly proud of herself at remembering this information, the crowd lost its collective mind around her and people started jumping and slamming into each other and shaking their heads around. Malia was surprised at first but remembered the 'mosh pit’ and 'head banging’ her lab partner warned her about. Malia decided she could mosh but she would have to be careful not to hurt anyone, and she smiled and started jumping with everyone else.
Through all the vibrations from the noise and people jumping around, Malia felt a distinct vibration come from her pocket and fished her phone out.
Stiles: Where are you?
Malia: At a concert.
She put her phone back and went back to throwing herself into people when it buzzed again. She sighed and pulled it out of her pocket as she found a less turbulent place to reply.
Stiles: Since when do you go to concerts?
Malia: Since I’m not a coyote anymore?
Malia: Someone in my class told me about it so I decided to check it out.
Stiles: Why didn’t you tell me about it? I could have gone with you.
Malia: Honestly, I don’t think you’d like it. It might give you a panic attack.
Malia: It’s also very loud.
Stiles: You don’t know that.
Malia: Okay, if I come here again you’re more than welcome to come with.
Stiles: Cool. Call me when you get home, I need to tell you about what we’re doing tomorrow.
Malia: Okay. Later.
Malia put her phone back in her pocket and pushed her way back into the crowd before throwing herself into someone. The person laughed and shoved her back.
She spent the rest of the show enjoying the music and guarding smaller people at the edge of the mosh pit so they wouldn’t get injured. She felt it was her duty as someone much stronger than anyone else in the room to make sure that people could enjoy the music without getting hurt and garnered at least one confused look from a man twice her size who thought it was weird that he slammed into her and she didn’t budge.