Chapter 1: Anger issues
The lair smelled of old concrete, damp earth, and the sharp, coppery scent of anxiety. A single bare bulb swung from a rusted pipe, throwing long, frantic shadows every time someone moved. Maps were tacked to the wall, riddled with red pins and angry question marks scrawled in permanent marker. Lists of names, times, locations—all of it useless noise.
Kate Neilson stared at the chaos on the wall, her breath coming in short, hot pulls. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the edge of the wobbly table.
“It’s been six weeks,” she said, her voice a low, dangerous wire. “Six weeks, and we have nothing. Not a footprint. Not a scent that doesn’t go cold in ten feet. Nothing.”
Scott McCall leaned against a support beam, his broad shoulders slumped. “We’re doing everything we can, Kate. My pack is running patrols every night. Stiles has hacked into every traffic cam in a twenty-mile radius.”
“And what has that gotten us?” Kate whipped around, her dark hair a sharp curtain across her cheek. “A bunch of grainy footage of blurry shapes and three separate sightings of a really big dog. My sister is dead. She was torn apart in a parking garage, and the thing that did it is out there buying a freaking latte right now for all we know!”
Stiles Stilinski, perched on an overturned crate, held up a finger. “Technically, the dietary habits of werewolves are poorly documented, but I’d wager more towards raw meat than pumpkin spice. Just a hunch.” He offered her a tentative, lopsided smile. “You look kinda amazing when you’re furious, you know that? All fiery and tragic heroine.”
“Stiles,” Derek Hale’s voice cut from the darker corner of the room, a single word that was both a warning and a growl. He hadn’t moved, a silhouette of coiled tension against the stone.
Kate didn’t even acknowledge Stiles. She took a step toward the wall, her eyes burning into the map of the city. “He’s here. He’s laughing at us. He knows we can’t find him.”
“We will,” Scott said, pushing off the beam. His voice was gentle, firm. “Kate, I promise you. We won’t stop.”
The promise was the trigger. It was too familiar, too hollow. It was what people said when they had no real answers.
“Your promise isn’t bringing her back!” The shout tore out of her, raw and scraping. The frustration, the sleepless nights, the image of Allison’s broken body under fluorescent lights—it all condensed into a white-hot pressure behind her eyes.
Her hand shot out and swept across the table. Files, coffee cups, a laptop, all went flying in a cacophonous crash. Papers snowed through the dusty air.
“Kate!” Scott moved forward, but she was already spinning, grabbing the first solid thing she could find—a metal folding chair. She hurled it sideways. It slammed into the stone wall with a deafening, clanging scream, one leg buckling grotesquely.
“Where is he?” she screamed, not at them, at the room, at the universe. She snatched a glass jar full of pens and heaved it. It exploded against the map, a shower of glass and plastic and ink that bled over the streets and alleys, obscuring everything.
“Hey, whoa, okay, breaking the good jar—” Stiles yelped, scrambling back.
She couldn’t stop. The anger was a living thing, a fire in her veins that needed to burn out. A lamp was next, yanked from its extension cord, the bulb popping in a bright flash as it shattered on the floor. Every crash was a fraction of the explosion inside her head. Every destroyed object was a stand-in for the creature she couldn’t reach.
She reached for a small wooden stool.
“Kate.”
Derek was suddenly there. He didn’t shout. He didn’t grab her wildly. He simply stepped into her space, his hands closing firmly over her wrists, pinning them and the stool between their bodies. She struggled, a feral sound in her throat, trying to wrench free.
“Let me go!”
“Look at me,” he said, his voice low, an anchor in the storm of her rage. She fought, her breath sobbing, muscles straining against his immutable strength. “Kate. Look at me.”
Her wild, desperate eyes finally focused on his. They were green, intent, holding hers with an unshakeable calm. The fight began to leach out of her, replaced by a tidal wave of exhaustion so profound her knees wobbled. The violent tension snapped, leaving a hollow, aching vacuum.
The stool clattered to the floor from her slack fingers.
A shudder ran through her entire body. The furious heat evaporated, leaving her cold and exposed. The adrenaline dumped her, and what was left was the simple, unbearable truth she’d been trying to smash into oblivion.
Allison was gone.
And she was powerless.
A sharp, broken gasp escaped her. Then another. Her face crumpled. She tried to turn her head away, to hide it, but she was locked in place. The first tear felt like a betrayal, a hot, wet track cutting through the dust on her cheek. Then they fell in earnest, silent and fast, her shoulders shaking. She brought her hands up, now free, to cover her face, but the sobs were too big, forcing their way out as choked, painful sounds that echoed in the suddenly quiet ruin of the room.
Scott looked away, jaw tight, his own grief reflected in his posture. Stiles stared at the floor, all traces of flirtation gone, replaced by a helpless, miserable respect.
Derek didn’t move. He just stood there, a solid presence as she fell apart, his hands now resting lightly on her shoulders, the only thing keeping her upright. The lair held its breath, the only sound the raw, unfiltered grief of a sister who had run out of things to break.
The lair held its breath, the only sound the raw, unfiltered grief of a sister who had run out of things to break.
Slowly, the world filtered back in. The drip of water from a pipe. The distant rumble of a truck. The heat of Derek’s hands through her shirt, steadying her. She hated it, hated that he was seeing this, that they all were. She tried to pull away, to retreat into the familiar, sharp armor of anger, but her body wouldn’t obey. It was spent.
“Okay,” Derek said, very quietly, his thumbs moving in a slow, minute circle on her shoulders. It wasn’t a patronizing pat. It was a grounding pressure, a reminder she was still here, in a body, in a room. He slowly eased his grip, letting her stand on her own, but didn’t step back, a silent wall between her and the wreckage she’d made.
Scott had busied himself righting the table, gathering papers, giving her the dignity of not staring. His movements were careful, subdued.
It was Stiles who broke the quiet. He didn’t approach her directly. Instead, he shuffled over to the cooler they kept tucked in the corner, the plastic lid cracking open with a sound like a gunshot in the silence. He pulled out a can of generic lemon-lime soda, the kind no one ever actually chose to drink.
He walked it over, his steps uncharacteristically careful on the littered floor. He stopped a few feet from her and Derek, holding the can out by its tab. Condensation already beaded on the aluminum.
“Here,” he said, his voice stripped of its usual manic energy. “It’s sticky and it’s warm and it’s probably the worst thing you’ll ever taste. But my mom… when I’d have a meltdown, when things were just too much, she’d give me one of these. Said the sugar shock would reboot the system. Said the cold would give my hands something else to feel.” He gave a small, one-shouldered shrug. “It’s not a solution. It’s just… a thing. A really crappy, lukewarm thing.”
Kate lifted her head. Her face was a mess of tears and dust. She looked from the offered can to Stiles’s face. There was no leer there, no clever punchline waiting. Just an open, awkward empathy that was, for once, completely real.
She reached out a trembling hand and took it. The metal was indeed shockingly cold against her palm. She popped the tab, the hiss absurdly loud. She took a sip. It was syrupy and flat and too sweet.It was perfect.
A shaky, watery breath that was almost a laugh escaped her. “It’s disgusting.”
A flicker of a smile touched Stiles’s mouth. “Told you. The worst.”
She took another sip, letting the aggressive carbonation burn the back of her throat, a new, focused sensation to crowd out the numbness. She looked at the destruction around her—the shattered glass, the bent chair, the ruined maps. A fresh wave of shame, hot and prickling, washed over her. “I… I’m sorry. About the…”
“Forget it,” Scott said, his voice firm but kind. He leaned the busted chair against the wall. “We needed to redecorate anyway. The ‘desperate murder-board chic’ was getting stale.”
Derek finally took a half-step back, giving her space. His gaze, however, remained fixed on her, assessing. “The anger’s not going to find him,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. Not cruel.Just true. “It just wears you out. Makes you sloppy.”
Kate nodded, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. She felt hollowed out, but clearer. The static in her head was gone. “I know.”
Stiles stuffed his hands in his pockets. “So, new plan. My dad’s filing cabinet has a drawer labeled ‘cold cases - weird.’ I’ve been avoiding it because, you know, confronting paternal obliviousness is a Tuesday thing, but… maybe we look there.For patterns. Other things that got written off as animal attacks or random violence. Stuff from before.”
Scott nodded. “That’s good. That’s a thread.”
“And I need to run the perimeter again,” Derek said, his eyes drifting to the ruined map.“Tonight. Something might have crossed the territory lines we missed. A new scent.”
The mission was re-forming, not from a place of rage, but from a grim, determined clarity. Kate placed the half-finished, awful soda on the wobbly table. The sugar was hitting her system, a jittery, alive feeling replacing the devastating emptiness.
She looked at Stiles, then at Scott, finally at Derek. Her voice was hoarse, but it didn’t crack. “I’m coming with you.”
That the three of them didn’t immediately argue was a measure of how bad she must have looked. Derek just gave a short, sharp nod. “Stay close,” he said, and that was that.
The rest of the evening was a grim, methodical exercise. They left the lair’s wreckage behind. The woods at the edge of the Preserve were a different world—cold, silent, and vast under a blanket of stars the city never saw. Kate moved mechanically, her boots crunching on frozen bracken, her breath pluming in the air. Scott led, his eyes flashing gold occasionally as he scented the wind. Stiles trudged behind, uncharacteristically quiet, the beam of his flashlight cutting erratic paths through the trees. Derek was a shadow just off her left shoulder, a constant, silent presence.
Every snapped twig was a potential clue. Every strange odor—of rot, of musk, of something unnatural—made them freeze. But it was all old, decayed, leading nowhere. The creature was a ghost. After two hours, the cold had seeped into Kate’s bones, replacing the fire with a dull, numb ache. The rage was gone, but the emptiness it left behind was worse. It was a void where her sister should have been.
“We’re spinning our wheels,” Derek said finally, his voice cutting through the quiet. His words weren’t an accusation, just a cold fact. “It knows we’re looking. It’s hiding. Or it’s gone.”
Scott stopped, shoulders slumping in defeat. “We’ll try again tomorrow. A different quadrant.”
Stiles shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “Yeah.Okay. I’ll, uh… I’ll cross-reference those cold case files with utility reports. See if any power dips or weird animal control calls line up with the older attacks. It’s a data sieve, but it’s something.”
The drive back to her apartment was silent. Derek walked her to her door, a habit born of paranoia she no longer fought. He paused, his gaze searching her face in the sickly yellow glow of the hallway light. “Get some sleep,” he said, the command softer than intended.
Kate just pushed her door open. Sleep was a joke.That night. Kate can’t sleep.
The silence of her apartment was a physical thing, a weight on her chest. Every creak of the settling building was a footstep. Every rush of water in the pipes was a growl. She lay rigid in her bed, staring at the ceiling where streetlight bled through the blinds, painting bars of shadow across the plaster.
Her body was exhausted, a leaden, trembling shell, but her mind was a sparking live wire. It kept replaying the day in jagged, punishing loops. The feel of the metal chair leaving her hand. The sound of the glass exploding. The look on Stiles’s face when he handed her that awful, warm soda—not pity, but a recognition of a pain he understood. Derek’s hands on her shoulders, holding her together when she was determined to fly apart.
And underneath it all, playing on a constant, hellish reel behind her eyes, was Allison. Not the vibrant, laughing Allison, but the Allison on the cold concrete of the parking garage, the one she’d identified through a sheet of glass, her face a careful arrangement of what was left.
A dry, heaving sob choked her. She threw the covers off, the air cool on her sweat-damp skin. She paced the short length of her bedroom, from the door to the window and back, her bare feet silent on the worn rug.
She tried the mindless distractions. Scrolling through her phone was a minefield of old photos and memories. Turning on the TV offered only laughing audiences and inane commercials, the fake cheer like sandpaper on her nerves. She made tea, let it grow cold on the counter.
The lair’s map, ruined by her own hand, kept superimposing itself over her vision. The red pins. The angry circles. All wrong. They were looking for a monster, a beast. What if they were wrong?
A thought, cold and slithering, insinuated itself. Stiles’s offhand comment in the lair, days ago, tickled the back of her feverish brain. “It’s not just about strength, it’s about intelligence. This thing… it plans. It watches.”
She stopped pacing, her blood running cold for a reason that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature.
What if it wasn’t hiding in the woods?
What if it was hiding in plain sight?
The idea was absurd, terrifying. It meant the parameters were wrong. It meant the enemy wasn’t just an animal to be tracked, but something that could smile and shake your hand. It meant everyone was a suspect.
She walked to the window, pulling the blind aside with one finger. The city below slept, or pretended to. A thousand darkened windows. In one of them, was it sleeping? Or was it awake, thinking, planning its next move?
The exhaustion finally hit her then, not as a wave of sleep, but as a crippling gravity. She slid down the wall beside the window, pulling her knees to her chest. The numbness was gone, burned away by this new, chilling fear. The anger had been a weapon, a shield. This was just naked dread.
She rested her forehead on her knees. The first hint of dawn, a grim smear of gray, was just beginning to bleed into the black sky over the rooftops. Sleep wouldn’t come. But a new, terrible resolve did.
She wasn’t waiting for a scent trail anymore. When the sun was fully up, she was going back to the beginning. Not to the woods. To the garage. And then she was going to look at everyone—everyone—with new eyes.
And then she was going to look at everyone—everyone—with new eyes.
The thought didn’t let her rest. It gnawed at the quiet. An hour before dawn, she was dressed in dark jeans and a worn-out hoodie, her hair pulled back tight. She left the apartment like a ghost, the door clicking shut with finality behind her. The morning air was a cold slap, tasting of exhaust and damp concrete. Her destination wasn’t the woods. It was the beginning.
The Multi-Level Parking Garage on Ash Street was a concrete wound in the city’s side. Police tape, faded and torn, still fluttered from one entrance pillar. The city had moved on, but the stain of what happened there lingered in the empty spaces, the dark corners. Kate ducked under the tape, her footsteps echoing in the cavernous silence.
She went to the exact spot. Level 3, Bay 77. The stained concrete had been scrubbed, but a darker shadow remained in the porous surface, a phantom shape no chemical could erase. She crouched, her fingers not touching the ground, just hovering inches above. She had read the report a hundred times. The attack was frenzied, brutal, but the entry and exit routes made no logical sense for an animal chasing prey. It was a blind corner, a dead-end. Allison had been driven here.
Kate’s eyes scanned upwards, following the lines of the concrete pillars to the cold fluorescent lights above. Security cameras. Stiles had pulled the footage weeks ago; a two-second blur, useless. But he’d looked for a monster. She was looking for a person.
She walked the route from the entrance ramp to Bay 77, her pace slow, deliberate. A person would have needed to know the garage’s layout. A person would have needed to know her sister’s schedule. A person could have walked alongside her, talking, laughing, before…
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Scott. She silenced it.
Near the stairwell door, something glinted, tucked against the wall where the sweeper had missed it. Not a clue from that night—too clean. A modern car key fob, sleek and black. Someone had dropped it recently. It felt heavy, alien in her palm. A link to a normal world of errands and groceries, worlds away from bloodstains and vengeance. She pocketed it. A thread, however thin.
Back in the lair, the air was thick with stale coffee and frustration. Scott paced by the ruined map, while Derek leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, staring at the bent leg of the chair Kate had thrown.
“She’s not answering,” Scott said, shoving his phone back into his pocket. “She shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“She’s not ‘alone,’” Derek said, his voice flat. “She’s angry. She’s processing. Give her space.”
“Processing by doing what? Getting herself killed?” Scott shot back.
Stiles, meanwhile, was absorbed in his laptop, his face illuminated by the blue glow. He was cross-referencing his father’s ‘cold cases - weird’ files with utility reports, his fingers flying over the keys. “Okay, so get this,” he muttered, more to himself than to them. “The night of… the night it happened. There was a localized power flicker on the grid feeding this sector.” He tapped the screen. “And it’s happened three other times in the last eighteen months. Once the night those joggers were mauled in the preserve—official report: bear attack, no bear ever found. Once when that homeless guy was found under the bridge… and once two weeks ago. Over on the east side.”
Derek pushed off the wall, interest sharpening his gaze. “Two weeks ago? What happened?”
“Nothing,” Stiles said, frowning. “That’s the thing. Police blotter shows a noise complaint. A resident reported hearing screams and something ‘big’ knocking over their trash cans. Cops found nothing. Wrote it off as kids or a raccoon.” He chewed his lip. “But a power flicker at the same time… that’s not a raccoon. That’s a surge. Like something big drawing a massive amount of energy, or… disrupting it.”
He pulled up a map, superimposing the four locations. They formed a rough, widening circle. “It’s not random. It’s learning. Or getting braver.” He looked up, his face pale in the monitor light. “The last one, two weeks ago… that’s in a densely populated residential area. Not the woods. Not a dark garage. Someone’s backyard.”
A cold understanding settled in the room. The pattern Stiles saw wasn’t of a beast lurking in shadows. It was of something testing its environment, moving closer to the heart of the everyday world.
“Kate,” Derek said, the word a low growl. “If she’s retracing steps, she’s a target. She’s walking right into its new playground.”
Stiles was already grabbing his keys. “I’ll find her. She mentioned the garage last night, right? She might have gone back there.”
“You’re not going alone,” Scott started, but Stiles was already heading for the door.
“I’ll be faster on my own. I’ll call you the second I have her.” He was gone before they could argue, the heavy metal door clanging shut behind him.
The drive to the garage was a blur of neon signs and waking city traffic. Stiles’s mind raced faster than his jeep. The key fob Kate found felt significant, a tangible piece of the real world intruding on the nightmare. He had to warn her.
He found the garage, saw the torn police tape. His jeep screeched to a halt. “Kate?” His voice echoed through the concrete levels, unanswered. He took the stairs two at a time to Level 3.
Bay 77 was empty. But there, on the ground near where he knew she would have been standing, was a single, fresh scuff mark from a shoe heel. And a few feet away, a small, dark smear on the concrete. He crouched, touched it. Damp. Not oil. It smelled metallic, coppery.
Blood.
His own blood went cold. It was fresh.
“Kate!” he yelled, panic slicing through him. He spun, checking the stairwell, the shadows behind pillars, the dark mouths of the lower levels. Nothing. No struggle, no other signs. Just that one scuff, and the small, terrible smear.
His phone felt heavy as a brick as he pulled it out, his fingers shaking. He hit Derek’s contact. It rang once, twice.
“Did you find her?” Derek’s voice was all immediate tension.
Stiles stood in the hollow silence of the garage, staring at the blood. His voice, when it came, was hollow, stripped of all its usual energy. “She’s gone.”