robinonadderall (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
robinonadderall) wrote2013-07-07 11:22 am
robinonadderall) wrote2013-07-07 11:22 am
Beacon Hills High | Afternoon
It may have been Sunday in Fandom but in Beacon Hills it was the middle of the school week and for some reason Stiles had cross country practice. Coach hadn't been looking at him when he said he didn't want the lacrosse team to become a bunch of fat asses during the off season but he could feel the scrutiny.
So he was back in everybody's favorite locker room, hearing Scott talk about this guy who vanished outside the vet's office last night and left his little dog behind. Typical Beacon Hills.
"He just walked away, left his car, his dog..." Scott trailed off as he got momentarily caught in his track shirt.
Unlike everybody else on the track team Stiles was covered head to toe in sweats. "Okay, was he like--did he look like a virgin? Could he have been a virgin? Was he like...virginal?"
"No, definitely not," Scott said seriously. "Deaton makes me have sex with all of his clients. It's a new policy."
Scott looked amused that he finally got to crack a joke for once but sobered up at the glare Stiles was giving him. "No, I don't know if he's a virgin and why are you talking like he's already dead, he's just missing."
"Missing and presumed dead probably because he's a virgin, Scott," Stiles hissed. "You know who else is a virgin? Me! I'm a virgin, okay? And you know what that means? It means my lack of sexual experience is now a threat to my life! I need to have sex like right now! Someone needs to have sex with me today! Someone needs to sex me right now!"
Okay he was shouting, he knew that. But this was a sexual emergency---
"Alright, I'll do it."
Stiles yelled and turned around to see Danny leaning against the lockers, wearing a ridiculously deep v-neck. "What?"
"Come to my place at nine," Danny said. "Plan to stay the night. I like to cuddle."
In that moment Stiles swore that the skies opened up and angels started singing. "That's so sweet, are you kidding?"
Danny rolled his eyes. "Yes, Stiles, I'm kidding."
Insert Price is Right losing horn here. "Okay, you don't toy with a guy's emotions like that Danny, it's not attractive."
Okay, it was still attractive. But only because Danny was always attractive.
Stiles was not made for running. So not made for running. Practicing with Derek hadn't prepared him for this at all. Not that he really tried to run a lot during those sessions. Mostly he just jogged lightly until he flopped over and begged for a piggyback ride.
So yeah, he was so not prepared for practice at all. He couldn't even start off strong considering there were four werewolves on the team. Ethan and Aiden sped past him like the stupid alpha douches they were and they were quickly followed by Isaac, who looked pissed, and then Scott was sprinting after Isaac. Stiles was not even going to try to catch up. Let them do whatever, he was just gonna try not to die.
Probably a poor choice of words considering about a half a mile in the entire track team discovered a dead body tied to a tree. One look at Scott and Stiles knew that it was the guy that went missing last night. His body was just like the rest; head bashed in, throat cut and strangled.
Stiles wasn't surprised when his father was called on the scene, though the Sheriff looked surprised to see Stiles. He imagined he was going to get another interrogation on staying at his own damn school later but at the moment the dead body took precedence.
"Get out of the way everybody, get back!" the Sheriff shouted, pushing his way through students. "Get this area quarantined before they trample every piece of evidence. Get these kids out of here!"
"Dad, dad, look," Stiles said, dragging his father towards the body. "Same as the others, see?"
"Yeah, I see that," the Sheriff said. "Do me a favor and go back to school. Your school. Coach, give us a hand here?"
"You heard the man, nothing to see here!" Coach Finstock shouted. "Probably just some homeless teenager."
Scott cleared his throat. "He was a senior..."
Coach lifted an eyebrow. "He wasn't on the team was he?"
Stiles and Scott got pushed away from the crime scene and joined Isaac and the rest of the track team along the wooded path. Isaac was frowning over at the twins, which was typical these days.
"See the way the twins looked at the body?" Isaac asked.
"Yeah, you mean like they have no idea what happened?" Stiles said. He liked to think he could get a pretty good read on people and those twins definitely did not kill that guy.
Isaac shook his head. "No, they knew."
"That kid was strangled with a garrote," Stiles said. "Am I the only one noticing the lack of werewolfitude in these murders?"
"You think it's coincidence they turn up and people start dying?" Isaac asked.
Stiles sighed. Don't start with him, Lahey. "No. But I still don't think it was them."
Isaac pressed his lips together in a thin line and looked like he was tempted to smack Stiles upside the head. "Scott, what about you?"
"I don't know yet," Scott admitted.
Stiles' mouth dropped open. They had discussed this. He thought they were on the same page here with what was going on. "You don't know yet."
"He's got a point," Scott said apologetically. "Seriously, dude, human sacrifices?"
Oh that was it. He was not going to have his best friend doubt him just because Isaac and his amazing cheekbones and beautiful angelic curly hair disagreed. "Your eyes turn into yellow glowsticks, hair literally grows from your cheeks and will immediately disappear, and if I were to stab you right now it would just magically heal and you are telling me you are having trouble grasping the idea of human sacrifices?!"
Scott at least had the decency to look sheepish. "...that's a good point too."
"I don't care," Isaac said. "They killed that kid, they killed the girl that saved me and I'm going to kill them too."
Isaac stalked off in a huff, leaving Scott and Stiles alone. Stiles crossed his arms and looked over at Scott. "You do remember he's tried to kill me before, right?"
"Every werewolf has tried to kill you at some point, Stiles."
"Not Derek!" Stiles said. "Or Boyd--ugh shut up, Scott. You go to class, I'm going to dig a little into this murder."
"Yeah, okay, just don't piss your dad off."
Stiles ended up pissing his dad off.
Turns out cornering the dead guy's girlfriend and asking if her recently dead boyfriend was a virgin was a good way to get you slapped. It was also a good way to piss your Sheriff dad off because apparently teenage boys weren't supposed to be investigating murders that the FBI were now involved in.
None of this stopped Stiles from going to the library and researching more on human sacrifices. He had a feeling he knew somebody that could help put more of the pieces together but since he was in the school already he decided to visit the other half of the Beacon Hills brain trust while he was on campus.
"Hey Lydia, did you know there's a temple in Calcutta where they used to sacrifice a child every day? Every day a dead baby, Lydia! Every day!" Stiles said, admittedly sounding a bit hysterical. There have been a lot of long nights doing research on this thing back in Fandom, okay? "Hey you wanna know what today is? It's dead baby day! Oh no, that's every day 'cause every day is dead baby day, yay!"
Stiles freaking out did not stop Lydia from walking down the hallway at an amazingly fast pace in those heels. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because Scott's busy with the alpha twins." Stiles frowned when Lydia stopped in her tracks and gave him a carefully blank look. "You don't know about the twins?"
"Alphas," she repeated.
"Ethan and Aiden."
"...oh yeah," Lydia said. "Yeah, I knew about them."
If Stiles had been able to focus on anything else outside of ritual killings he would have questioned Lydia's hesitation there. But as it was-- "Okay, so good, here's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking the murders may be coming in threes. Ancient people love things in threes, right? So maybe first it's three virgins and then maybe it's, I don't know, three people who own little dogs."
"I own a little dog." Lydia rolled her eyes. "I'm not getting rid of my dog."
"Would you at least consider getting rid of your dog?" Stiles asked. Puppy Joe didn't count for him since clearly he was Derek's. Clearly.
"No!" Lydia said. "And by the way you can not discern a pattern from a single data point so stop trying."
"So, what, I'm just supposed to wait around for someone else to die then?" He was so damn tired of people trying to fight him on this. "I'm just supposed to sit there and let someone wither up and die in front of me?"
Lydia turned toward Stiles and give him a funny look. "Wither?"
He had said wither hadn't he? "You know what I mean, die in a hideous head bashing, throat cutting, strangling kind of way!"
"Maybe it's not your job," Lydia said. "You said it yourself, they were strangled with a garrotte. That's a human thing to do, so maybe leave the figuring out part to someone human."
Stiles frowned. "You mean someone like my dad."
"No, I actually mean your dad," Lydia said. "The sheriff!"
No way Stiles was listening to Lydia's advice. His dad couldn't handle this, not when Stiles was becoming increasingly convinced that whoever was behind this wasn't using entirely human means to kill people. Since all the werewolves were busy with the alphas Stiles had to go to someone else for help. Deaton was very rarely useful in a way that didn't make Stiles want to slap him upside the head but he had to admit the guy did seem to know everything.
"Mr. Stilinski, shouldn't you be in school?" Deaton asked.
"My school doesn't really care." Which was the truth, let's be real. "I was just headed home to see my dad, I guess you've heard people are kind of getting murdered again. It's his job to figure it out."
"I gathered as much from the sheriff title."
Was everyone going to give him sass about that today? "Yeah, um, but it gets kind of hard for him to do his job when he doesn't have all the information. And we all know he's pretty much missing half the story, right?"
Deaton already looked like he knew where this was going and that he didn't like it. Too bad for him 'cause Stiles kept talking.
"So I started thinking, who does have all the information? Someone who always seems to know more than everyone else around here," Stiles said. "You."
There was a frown and a light sigh before Deaton nodded towards the back room. Once they reached the room Stiles couldn't resist sharing what he found out. Research guy meetings always made him happy. "All these symbols and things, the triskeles, the mountain ash, all of it's from the Celtic Druids. And anyone's that looked up human sacrifice before knows the Druids had a pretty big hard on when it came to giving one up to the gods."
Not the greatest wording, but accurate. "The body of this 2,000 year old guy found in England? Strangled, throat cut, skull bashed in. They also found seeds in his stomach. Guess what favorite Druid plant that was?"
Deaton had kept a straight face during Stiles' spiel but at that he picked up a glass vial from the table and pulled out a plant. "Mistletoe."
Stiles frowned. That research had taken him hours and it annoyed him that Deaton could have stopped being mysterious for five seconds and helped them. "So I'm just telling you stuff you already know. Then why are you telling us?!"
For the first time since Stiles had known him, Deaton looked a little defeated. His shoulders slumped and he looked down at the sprig of mistletoe for a moment, guilt etched on his face. "Maybe because when you've spent every moment of the last ten years trying to push something away, denying it, lying about it, becomes a pretty powerful habit."
The words hit Stiles right in the gut. He could relate, oh could he relate. It felt like ever since Scott had been turned into a werewolf he had been lying more than he had been telling the truth. To his dad, to Lydia, to hunters. He lied to Derek about his sister and his uncle. He lied to everyone when he said he was fine and he was even lying to himself when he tried to convince himself he was completely over Lydia and that he didn't feel anything for Derek beyond friendship.
It was a weird little moment where he understood where Deaton was coming from for once. Not just the lying, but wanting to keep on doing it. After lying for so long Stiles was terrified of what would happen if he started telling the truth. He couldn't imagine what people would think.
Just from the look on Deaton's face Stiles could tell this was a subject he'd be better off not touching so instead he cleared his throat and said, "Alright so this guy, is he a Druid?"
"No. Someone copying centuries old practice of a people who should have known better," Deaton said. "Do you know what the word Druid means in Gaelic? Wise oak. The Celtic Druids were close to nature, they believed it kept in balance, they were philosophers and scholars. They weren't serial killers."
"Well this one is," Stiles said, getting interrupted when his phone rang. He saw Lydia's name on the screen and frowned. "Hey, I can't talk right now."
"You most definitely can," Lydia said. "The music teacher is missing."
"Wait what?" Stiles asked, "Are you sure he's missing?"
"Not just missing. Taken."
Stiles and Deaton headed straight to the school and met up with Lydia in the school's music room. She quickly filled them in on the situation, with the teacher not showing up to class and Lydia finding a recording of ominous Latin chanting on it. Stiles knew Lydia didn't take music classes and he was curious about how she got there but one stern look from her told him it was not to be brought up around Deaton.
"Can we get a copy of this?" Deaton asked after listening to the recording.
Stiles was frantically searching through the teacher's desk drawer, trying to find any clue of who he was or what happened to him. "Hey, Doc, you have any insight on this?"
"Each grouping of three would have it's own purpose," Deaton said. "Virgins, healers, philosophers, warriors---"
"Wait, wait," Stiles said. "Warrior, could that also be a soldier?"
"Absolutely."
Stiles lifted up a picture off the teacher's desk with him in military uniform with his wife. "The last victim was ROTC, Boyd told me."
"That's it, that's the pattern," Deaton said. "Where's Boyd?"
"He's probably home by now, I can call him," Stiles said, pulling out his phone.
Lydia frowned. "I just thought of someone else with a military connection."
Stiles would be the first person to say that Mr. Harris was a dick that deserved terrible things in life but he did not want the guy to be murdered by some Druid serial killer. He, Lydia and Deaton headed to Harris' office as soon as Lydia brought up he had been in the service (Stiles didn't want to know how she knew that) only to find it empty.
"This is just one of many possibilities," Deaton said. "He could have simply left for the day."
Stiles lifted up a briefcase. "Not without this."
He really wished he felt worse about having evidence that Harris had been taken. Stiles put the briefcase down and started sifting through more of Harris' stuff, frowning when he noticed something strange. "This test was graded with an 'R'."
Lydia lifted up another test. "This one with an 'H'."
Deaton gently pushed Stiles to the side and started going through the rest of the tests on the desk. "Stiles, you remember I told you Druid is the Gaelic word for 'wise oak'?"
"Yeah."
"If a Druid went down the wrong path, the wise oak was said to become a dark oak. There's a Gaelic word for that as well---" Deaton finished lining up the tests in the right order and stepped back. "---a Darach."
Stiles frowned at the tests spelling out D-A-R-A-C-H. He definitely needed to do more research.
[Taken from Teen Wolf 3x04 "Unleashed". NFI, NFB but OOC is fine]
So he was back in everybody's favorite locker room, hearing Scott talk about this guy who vanished outside the vet's office last night and left his little dog behind. Typical Beacon Hills.
"He just walked away, left his car, his dog..." Scott trailed off as he got momentarily caught in his track shirt.
Unlike everybody else on the track team Stiles was covered head to toe in sweats. "Okay, was he like--did he look like a virgin? Could he have been a virgin? Was he like...virginal?"
"No, definitely not," Scott said seriously. "Deaton makes me have sex with all of his clients. It's a new policy."
Scott looked amused that he finally got to crack a joke for once but sobered up at the glare Stiles was giving him. "No, I don't know if he's a virgin and why are you talking like he's already dead, he's just missing."
"Missing and presumed dead probably because he's a virgin, Scott," Stiles hissed. "You know who else is a virgin? Me! I'm a virgin, okay? And you know what that means? It means my lack of sexual experience is now a threat to my life! I need to have sex like right now! Someone needs to have sex with me today! Someone needs to sex me right now!"
Okay he was shouting, he knew that. But this was a sexual emergency---
"Alright, I'll do it."
Stiles yelled and turned around to see Danny leaning against the lockers, wearing a ridiculously deep v-neck. "What?"
"Come to my place at nine," Danny said. "Plan to stay the night. I like to cuddle."
In that moment Stiles swore that the skies opened up and angels started singing. "That's so sweet, are you kidding?"
Danny rolled his eyes. "Yes, Stiles, I'm kidding."
Insert Price is Right losing horn here. "Okay, you don't toy with a guy's emotions like that Danny, it's not attractive."
Okay, it was still attractive. But only because Danny was always attractive.
Stiles was not made for running. So not made for running. Practicing with Derek hadn't prepared him for this at all. Not that he really tried to run a lot during those sessions. Mostly he just jogged lightly until he flopped over and begged for a piggyback ride.
So yeah, he was so not prepared for practice at all. He couldn't even start off strong considering there were four werewolves on the team. Ethan and Aiden sped past him like the stupid alpha douches they were and they were quickly followed by Isaac, who looked pissed, and then Scott was sprinting after Isaac. Stiles was not even going to try to catch up. Let them do whatever, he was just gonna try not to die.
Probably a poor choice of words considering about a half a mile in the entire track team discovered a dead body tied to a tree. One look at Scott and Stiles knew that it was the guy that went missing last night. His body was just like the rest; head bashed in, throat cut and strangled.
Stiles wasn't surprised when his father was called on the scene, though the Sheriff looked surprised to see Stiles. He imagined he was going to get another interrogation on staying at his own damn school later but at the moment the dead body took precedence.
"Get out of the way everybody, get back!" the Sheriff shouted, pushing his way through students. "Get this area quarantined before they trample every piece of evidence. Get these kids out of here!"
"Dad, dad, look," Stiles said, dragging his father towards the body. "Same as the others, see?"
"Yeah, I see that," the Sheriff said. "Do me a favor and go back to school. Your school. Coach, give us a hand here?"
"You heard the man, nothing to see here!" Coach Finstock shouted. "Probably just some homeless teenager."
Scott cleared his throat. "He was a senior..."
Coach lifted an eyebrow. "He wasn't on the team was he?"
Stiles and Scott got pushed away from the crime scene and joined Isaac and the rest of the track team along the wooded path. Isaac was frowning over at the twins, which was typical these days.
"See the way the twins looked at the body?" Isaac asked.
"Yeah, you mean like they have no idea what happened?" Stiles said. He liked to think he could get a pretty good read on people and those twins definitely did not kill that guy.
Isaac shook his head. "No, they knew."
"That kid was strangled with a garrote," Stiles said. "Am I the only one noticing the lack of werewolfitude in these murders?"
"You think it's coincidence they turn up and people start dying?" Isaac asked.
Stiles sighed. Don't start with him, Lahey. "No. But I still don't think it was them."
Isaac pressed his lips together in a thin line and looked like he was tempted to smack Stiles upside the head. "Scott, what about you?"
"I don't know yet," Scott admitted.
Stiles' mouth dropped open. They had discussed this. He thought they were on the same page here with what was going on. "You don't know yet."
"He's got a point," Scott said apologetically. "Seriously, dude, human sacrifices?"
Oh that was it. He was not going to have his best friend doubt him just because Isaac and his amazing cheekbones and beautiful angelic curly hair disagreed. "Your eyes turn into yellow glowsticks, hair literally grows from your cheeks and will immediately disappear, and if I were to stab you right now it would just magically heal and you are telling me you are having trouble grasping the idea of human sacrifices?!"
Scott at least had the decency to look sheepish. "...that's a good point too."
"I don't care," Isaac said. "They killed that kid, they killed the girl that saved me and I'm going to kill them too."
Isaac stalked off in a huff, leaving Scott and Stiles alone. Stiles crossed his arms and looked over at Scott. "You do remember he's tried to kill me before, right?"
"Every werewolf has tried to kill you at some point, Stiles."
"Not Derek!" Stiles said. "Or Boyd--ugh shut up, Scott. You go to class, I'm going to dig a little into this murder."
"Yeah, okay, just don't piss your dad off."
Stiles ended up pissing his dad off.
Turns out cornering the dead guy's girlfriend and asking if her recently dead boyfriend was a virgin was a good way to get you slapped. It was also a good way to piss your Sheriff dad off because apparently teenage boys weren't supposed to be investigating murders that the FBI were now involved in.
None of this stopped Stiles from going to the library and researching more on human sacrifices. He had a feeling he knew somebody that could help put more of the pieces together but since he was in the school already he decided to visit the other half of the Beacon Hills brain trust while he was on campus.
"Hey Lydia, did you know there's a temple in Calcutta where they used to sacrifice a child every day? Every day a dead baby, Lydia! Every day!" Stiles said, admittedly sounding a bit hysterical. There have been a lot of long nights doing research on this thing back in Fandom, okay? "Hey you wanna know what today is? It's dead baby day! Oh no, that's every day 'cause every day is dead baby day, yay!"
Stiles freaking out did not stop Lydia from walking down the hallway at an amazingly fast pace in those heels. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because Scott's busy with the alpha twins." Stiles frowned when Lydia stopped in her tracks and gave him a carefully blank look. "You don't know about the twins?"
"Alphas," she repeated.
"Ethan and Aiden."
"...oh yeah," Lydia said. "Yeah, I knew about them."
If Stiles had been able to focus on anything else outside of ritual killings he would have questioned Lydia's hesitation there. But as it was-- "Okay, so good, here's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking the murders may be coming in threes. Ancient people love things in threes, right? So maybe first it's three virgins and then maybe it's, I don't know, three people who own little dogs."
"I own a little dog." Lydia rolled her eyes. "I'm not getting rid of my dog."
"Would you at least consider getting rid of your dog?" Stiles asked. Puppy Joe didn't count for him since clearly he was Derek's. Clearly.
"No!" Lydia said. "And by the way you can not discern a pattern from a single data point so stop trying."
"So, what, I'm just supposed to wait around for someone else to die then?" He was so damn tired of people trying to fight him on this. "I'm just supposed to sit there and let someone wither up and die in front of me?"
Lydia turned toward Stiles and give him a funny look. "Wither?"
He had said wither hadn't he? "You know what I mean, die in a hideous head bashing, throat cutting, strangling kind of way!"
"Maybe it's not your job," Lydia said. "You said it yourself, they were strangled with a garrotte. That's a human thing to do, so maybe leave the figuring out part to someone human."
Stiles frowned. "You mean someone like my dad."
"No, I actually mean your dad," Lydia said. "The sheriff!"
No way Stiles was listening to Lydia's advice. His dad couldn't handle this, not when Stiles was becoming increasingly convinced that whoever was behind this wasn't using entirely human means to kill people. Since all the werewolves were busy with the alphas Stiles had to go to someone else for help. Deaton was very rarely useful in a way that didn't make Stiles want to slap him upside the head but he had to admit the guy did seem to know everything.
"Mr. Stilinski, shouldn't you be in school?" Deaton asked.
"My school doesn't really care." Which was the truth, let's be real. "I was just headed home to see my dad, I guess you've heard people are kind of getting murdered again. It's his job to figure it out."
"I gathered as much from the sheriff title."
Was everyone going to give him sass about that today? "Yeah, um, but it gets kind of hard for him to do his job when he doesn't have all the information. And we all know he's pretty much missing half the story, right?"
Deaton already looked like he knew where this was going and that he didn't like it. Too bad for him 'cause Stiles kept talking.
"So I started thinking, who does have all the information? Someone who always seems to know more than everyone else around here," Stiles said. "You."
There was a frown and a light sigh before Deaton nodded towards the back room. Once they reached the room Stiles couldn't resist sharing what he found out. Research guy meetings always made him happy. "All these symbols and things, the triskeles, the mountain ash, all of it's from the Celtic Druids. And anyone's that looked up human sacrifice before knows the Druids had a pretty big hard on when it came to giving one up to the gods."
Not the greatest wording, but accurate. "The body of this 2,000 year old guy found in England? Strangled, throat cut, skull bashed in. They also found seeds in his stomach. Guess what favorite Druid plant that was?"
Deaton had kept a straight face during Stiles' spiel but at that he picked up a glass vial from the table and pulled out a plant. "Mistletoe."
Stiles frowned. That research had taken him hours and it annoyed him that Deaton could have stopped being mysterious for five seconds and helped them. "So I'm just telling you stuff you already know. Then why are you telling us?!"
For the first time since Stiles had known him, Deaton looked a little defeated. His shoulders slumped and he looked down at the sprig of mistletoe for a moment, guilt etched on his face. "Maybe because when you've spent every moment of the last ten years trying to push something away, denying it, lying about it, becomes a pretty powerful habit."
The words hit Stiles right in the gut. He could relate, oh could he relate. It felt like ever since Scott had been turned into a werewolf he had been lying more than he had been telling the truth. To his dad, to Lydia, to hunters. He lied to Derek about his sister and his uncle. He lied to everyone when he said he was fine and he was even lying to himself when he tried to convince himself he was completely over Lydia and that he didn't feel anything for Derek beyond friendship.
It was a weird little moment where he understood where Deaton was coming from for once. Not just the lying, but wanting to keep on doing it. After lying for so long Stiles was terrified of what would happen if he started telling the truth. He couldn't imagine what people would think.
Just from the look on Deaton's face Stiles could tell this was a subject he'd be better off not touching so instead he cleared his throat and said, "Alright so this guy, is he a Druid?"
"No. Someone copying centuries old practice of a people who should have known better," Deaton said. "Do you know what the word Druid means in Gaelic? Wise oak. The Celtic Druids were close to nature, they believed it kept in balance, they were philosophers and scholars. They weren't serial killers."
"Well this one is," Stiles said, getting interrupted when his phone rang. He saw Lydia's name on the screen and frowned. "Hey, I can't talk right now."
"You most definitely can," Lydia said. "The music teacher is missing."
"Wait what?" Stiles asked, "Are you sure he's missing?"
"Not just missing. Taken."
Stiles and Deaton headed straight to the school and met up with Lydia in the school's music room. She quickly filled them in on the situation, with the teacher not showing up to class and Lydia finding a recording of ominous Latin chanting on it. Stiles knew Lydia didn't take music classes and he was curious about how she got there but one stern look from her told him it was not to be brought up around Deaton.
"Can we get a copy of this?" Deaton asked after listening to the recording.
Stiles was frantically searching through the teacher's desk drawer, trying to find any clue of who he was or what happened to him. "Hey, Doc, you have any insight on this?"
"Each grouping of three would have it's own purpose," Deaton said. "Virgins, healers, philosophers, warriors---"
"Wait, wait," Stiles said. "Warrior, could that also be a soldier?"
"Absolutely."
Stiles lifted up a picture off the teacher's desk with him in military uniform with his wife. "The last victim was ROTC, Boyd told me."
"That's it, that's the pattern," Deaton said. "Where's Boyd?"
"He's probably home by now, I can call him," Stiles said, pulling out his phone.
Lydia frowned. "I just thought of someone else with a military connection."
Stiles would be the first person to say that Mr. Harris was a dick that deserved terrible things in life but he did not want the guy to be murdered by some Druid serial killer. He, Lydia and Deaton headed to Harris' office as soon as Lydia brought up he had been in the service (Stiles didn't want to know how she knew that) only to find it empty.
"This is just one of many possibilities," Deaton said. "He could have simply left for the day."
Stiles lifted up a briefcase. "Not without this."
He really wished he felt worse about having evidence that Harris had been taken. Stiles put the briefcase down and started sifting through more of Harris' stuff, frowning when he noticed something strange. "This test was graded with an 'R'."
Lydia lifted up another test. "This one with an 'H'."
Deaton gently pushed Stiles to the side and started going through the rest of the tests on the desk. "Stiles, you remember I told you Druid is the Gaelic word for 'wise oak'?"
"Yeah."
"If a Druid went down the wrong path, the wise oak was said to become a dark oak. There's a Gaelic word for that as well---" Deaton finished lining up the tests in the right order and stepped back. "---a Darach."
Stiles frowned at the tests spelling out D-A-R-A-C-H. He definitely needed to do more research.
[Taken from Teen Wolf 3x04 "Unleashed". NFI, NFB but OOC is fine]