Stiles piloted through the rest of his morning classes with a sort of numb bewilderment. The Sheriff's Department was dispatched immediately once the body was found, and the area was cordoned off. There was a general announcement by the Principal about how the Track and Field area was not available for student use for the rest of the day, and if anyone had any questions or problems, to be excused from class and go to the guidance counselor.

The voice had barely finished crackling over the PA when Stiles raised his hand. There was no way he could continue sitting through US History without going barking mad.

"Yes Mr. Stilinski?"

"I was one of those first on scene with the dead vic, and I'm feeling very emotional right now. I think I need to see Ms. Morrell."

Mr. Westover grimaced and narrowed his eyes, but there was no way he could legitimately say no to Stiles.

"Fine, Mr. Stilinski, you maybe excused."

Stiles swept all the crap from his desk into his backpack, then bounded from the room with a fierce sort of joy. He was really sorry about the kid's death, but he had more important things to do: find out why he was chosen. Was it his dog? His sexual status? His...his..hair...like Lydia's swishing just ahead of him.

"We need to have a conversation now, Lydia."

Lydia twirled on her ridiculously high heels - seriously, how did she stalk about the school in such tall shoes? - and faced Stiles. He was proud of himself for not falling to her well shod feet at the sight of her strawberry blonde hair billowing behind her like a romance novel heroine, while the short tight leather skirt inched up to scandalous levels. His heart, already racing from the drama of finding the murdered kid and his bouncing thoughts, picked up in speed until he feared he might stroke out or something.

"Stiles, I don't have time for your histrionics right now. I'm running late for class as it is."

"There is a serial killer going around, Alpha wolves prowling, and dead bodies turning up on school grounds, and you don't think that's a little more important than your trip into lets forget Jackson abandoned me land where you bang whatever hot guy struts into your path?"

The sound of her hand cracking across his face was loud, but Stiles knew he deserved it. He was a little out of line about that last bit, even if it was true. His mother had once told him if he didn't have anything nice to say, then talk about something else until the urge to say not nice things went away, but obviously he hadn't learned that lesson too well.

"Wait, Lydia, I'm sorry!" He risked life and limb by grabbing her elbow and stalling her forward march. "I'm a little stressed right now but it's no excuse for taking it out on you."

"No, you really don't Stiles. I'm not a slut!"

"I never said you were. Just, you know, not very picky."

"And that's your last chance, Stilinski."

"Hey, it's not my fault you are choosing to ban - er hang out with one of the Alpha twins!"

"What about the Alphas?"

"You know, Ethan and Aidan, twin hotties who're totally Alpha douches. Didn't Scott or Allison tell you?"

The look on Lydia's face told Stiles they hadn't, even as she sputtered an "Oh yeah, uh right, Alpha Twins."

Fuck my life, he thought despairingly. While it had seemed prudent last year to keep Lydia out of the loop, she'd been caught up too much in the magic and werewolf bullshit to be left out now. Stiles was going to murder Scott and look very harshly at Allison for not letting her know about the murdering psychopath she was letting into her panties.

"Just be careful, okay? We think they're sniffing around to find a way to hurt Scott."

"So Aidan came on to me because he's more interested in Scott, and not because I'm gorgeous, intelligent, and great in bed?"

"Uh, yeah, so I, um -"

"That's what I thought. Don't you ever imply a guy is with me for any other reason than to have sex with me!"

"Um, okay?" Stiles shook his head a little, completely at sea on how to deal with Lydia's ego. Change of subject, STAT! "I'm sure you've heard there was another body found today. And it was the dude who brought his little dog to see Dr. D the other night."

"And I'm supposed to get from that inference that you think the new cycle might be...owners with little dogs? I'm not getting rid of Prada."

"I'm not asking you to! I mean, maybe you should just, you know, let someone dog sit her for a while. Just until this blows over, ya know?"

"Stiles, I'm not really sure how much Aderall or caffeine you've consumed today, but get this. You can't make any suppositions using only one point of data; this guy is the first to show up dead and just happens to own a small dog. For all you know, him owning a dog wasn't the point, but a convenient way to kidnap him."

"Yeah, it was a little weird he went to the vet's office so late at night. I mean, I didn't even know Dr. Deaton had late hours. I know he's the only vet in town -"

"No he's not. I take Prada to Dr. Sinclair over on Baker Street."

"We have another vet?"

"Stiles."

"Okay, okay, sorry. My point is, I need your help Lyds -"

"- Don't call me that."

"Lydia Martin, you are my only hope."

"Are you quotingStar Wars to me?"

Stiles had to stop for a moment, awestruck at the combination of beauty, wit, and pop-culture knowledge. "Marry me."

"No."

"Date me?"

"Not gonna happen, Stiles."

"Help me?"

"You have two dead bodies -"

"Four actually."

Lydia stopped, her hand on the door. "Four?"

"The kid you found, a girl abducted from her birthday party, and some girl in the woods. The guy today made number four. And they're dying in completely ritualistic ways, three bodies per cycle and three wounds on the bodies, all types of trauma that would kill someone individually. There's something oddly familiar about the way they're dying."

"Anything magical?"

I zoned out and became one with a tree that a dead boy was hanging from. Does that count? I'm experiencing the regeneration of an Alpha wolf as he's torn apart in battle, somehow neither of us dying or me even showing signs of something happening. I don't think that has anything to do with the bodies, but I think I might have actual magical abilities, more than what Dr. Deaton described four months ago.

"I don't think so?" I don't know?

"Then let the authorities handle them."

"Someone like my father."

"No, I mean, your actual father. He's Sheriff of this town for a reason, Stiles. Let him do his job."

"But he could get hurt."

"People are already getting hurt." Her voice softened, though her expression didn't. "You obviously don't think wolves are involved, otherwise you would've already said, and there's no proof of any magical signature, so why not just let someone who actually knows what they're doing take over?"

Stiles could only watch her walk away as always having the last word.

Because I have a gut feeling this is so much worse than anything we've dealt with so far.

Suddenly his skin felt too tight and his clothes itchy. Stiles longed to tear them from his body and race nude through the woods, feeling the air against his skin even as he became one with the earth beneath his feet.

Intent on heading towards the Preserve, the long sprawling wooded area that encompassed most of the town, he nearly walked past a display of photos and candles littering the hallway. Annoyed, he glared at the collection, only registering then that it was the face of the dead boy he'd found earlier and whose name was apparently Kyle as written across the banner taped to his locker.

"How the hell did they get this together so fast?" He muttered to himself, even as he scoped out the different photos detailing the life Kyle had left behind. There were a lot of shots of him with the same blonde girl so she must be his girlfriend. And she would know if he were a virgin or not.

A warning tingle in his bones yanked him from his contemplation of the altar to death, and he turned instinctively, just in time to see Boyd passing by.

"Vernon! Hi! Hey! When did you get back?"

The arched brow and dead pan expression was so reminiscent of Derek, Stiles almost asked if facial muscle control was inherited though the bite.

"Don't call me that. Why do you care, Stiliniski?"

"Well, you're, you know, and I'm you know."

"I'm on my way to class and you're annoying me."

"We're -" Stiles leaned in to drop his voice to a whisper, "Forces that fight in the night together."

"No, what we are, are two people standing in the hall that happen to share the same air space through no fault of my own."

There wasn't a hint of Beta Gold, yet Stiles could sense the way Boyd's skin was starting to ripple with hair as his emotions stirred the change.

"Hey, now, now calm down big guy. I didn't mean to upset you. I just wanted to know if you knew this dude," he frantically thumbed over his shoulder at Kyle's locker. It was meant as a diversion since Beacon Hills High was large enough to house several hundred kids, and there was no way one person would know all the students.

But Boyd's expression altered from blank stone face to a shallow sense of pity. "Yeah, we were in ROTC together."

"That's great! You were friends? You know things about him."

"What I know is he's a murdered kid found this morning and we happened to belong to the same program. My only friend is dead."

"And what, Cora is chopped liver?"

Stiles winced, completely expecting a hand to shove him into the locker bay after that somewhat insensitive comment. He just seemed determined to alienate everyone around him today. Probably not a good time to bring up the other wolf trapped inside the vault with him while he was incarcerated. Boyd, however, wasn't Derek, or Isaac, or even Jackson, so he just huffed angrily before stalking away.

"Good talk, Boyd!" Stiles called out before dashing down the hall in the opposite direction, towards the parking lot. Just as he was passing the Front Desk hallway, making sure to walk slowly so as not to garner attention, he noticed his dad and Tara standing in an office with a thin blonde girl. The same blonde he'd seen peppered throughout Kyle's memorial pictures posted on his locker.

It was easy to slouch down to peek through the office window though he couldn't hear anything the girl said regardless of the open door. The Sheriff casually looked over and Stiles hunkered down and turned his back to the window, hoping his dad hadn't seen him. Fortunately for him, Kyle's girlfriend exited through the door right then, and stood there for a moment trying to control her sobs.

"Ashley, hey can I ask you a question?" Stiles replicated the Sheriff's gentle if no-nonsense voice he always used when questioning upset witnesses, and was gratified when the teenager nodded. Her bright blue eyes were reddened with the strain of crying, and she visibly trembled, but she willingly stepped further down the hallway.

"This is going to sound really odd, and I apologize for asking it at a time like this, but it's important."

"Do I know you?"

"No, but I knew Kyle, we were in ROTC together."

Stiles mentally winced and apologized to the universe for his (necessary) lie.

"Oh. I don't know anything about who killed him."

"Uh, no, that's not what I need to know." Stiles drew a deep breath. "Did you – together- you know – with Kyle?"

"Huh?"

"Was Kyle a virgin?"

At least Ashley didn't put the same amount of force into her slap as Lydia. Stiles doubted his face was even red from her palm.

"Stiles Stilinski, you should be ashamed of yourself accosting this poor girl," Tara, his dad's Deputy, spat at him as she wrapped an arm around Ashley. "C'mon I'll take you home."

It was hard watching his only lead walk away and Stiles wracked his brain trying to think of how he could find out more about Kyle's background. Was it because he was a virgin? Why did the killer take him!

"What the hell are you doing here, Stiles?"

The furious whisper-yell broke through his increasingly chaotic thoughts, and Stiles looked up into his dad's angry face.

"Whatever you think you're doing, stop. And I mean it. I'm telling you this as your Sheriff, not as your father." He pointed at the office, where a group of men Stiles hadn't noticed stood. "That's the California FBI Liaison. We've had enough deaths here they've finally decided to send in a Task Force out of D.C. because they think we might have an actual serial killer on our hands. And I don't want my teenaged son who happens to be at every crime scene to get noticed by them. It wouldn't be a good thing."

"Dad, you don't think I'm responsible do you?"

The Sheriff sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. "Of course not, Stiles. I know you. I've raised you. You have an unhealthy fascination with dead things and are often strange, but it doesn't add up to serial killer. They, on the other hand, have no clue who you are really other than a kid who lurks and appears to have a lot of knowledge he shouldn't have on these cases."

"I'm, I'm just trying to find the pattern."

"It's not your job to do that, son."

"But, Heather -"

His dad finally eased from angry to sorrowful as if memories of his life-long friend flashed through his mind.

"Stiles, just go back to class, please, and leave this investigation up to the authorities. I promise you we'll find the sick son-of-a-bitch who took her."

He nodded, slumping his shoulders in resignation, and grabbed his stuff from the chair.

"I'll see you at home?"

"I don't know when I'll be off. With the skeleton crew and these new murders -"

Stiles held up a hand to stop the flow of words. Ever since Kanima-Jackson killed nearly the entire Sheriff's department, the remaining few who were lucky enough to have that night off were working overtime to make up the lack despite having help from nearby Butte County.

"I'll leave food in the fridge for you."

"You're a good kid, Stiles. Don't ever think I don't know that."

Lying to his dad was becoming harder and harder, especially since Stiles had knowledge the Sheriff didn't, and he could help close this case a lot quicker than the FBI Task Force. In fact, having even more strangers tramping around their town would probably do more harm than good because the forces at work here wouldn't play nicely.

The ride to his house was fraught with tension as he kept glancing in the mirrors, hoping not to spot any department cars or any wolves. His nerves couldn't take another confrontation with anyone right now.

Clopping upstairs, Stiles threw his book bag in the corner, and went to his knees in his closet as he pushed aside dirty clothes so he could pull out the steamer trunk his mother brought when she emigrated to America.

Upon first glance, it looked like it only housed his old comic books and various toy models, but beneath it all was a false bottom that stored stuff he truly wanted to keep hidden. Before the bite, Stiles stored what little print porn he had, but since then, it became the cubby hole to store all his esoteric materials and magical aides.

When Dr. Deaton had first started training him, Stiles had received a few books rife with spells and recipes he was expected to memorize. He was explicitly told not to photo-copy the material, which Stiles didn't. Instead, he painstakingly rewrote each one in a separate journal he bought just for it; but even more prized than his spell book, were the xeroxed copies of the Argent Bestiary. Before they slipped the USB back to Gerard, Stiles had made sure to duplicate it on his own USB stick, and later downloaded the pages. While he had great faith in technology, he also figured it would be handy to have physical copy he could add his own notes to. It didn't seem too far-fetched to eventually write a companion copy meant just for werewolf use.

He scanned through the pages, not sure what he was looking for, but knew it was information he had read before that stuck in his head. Wiki and Google were great and all, but he had to wade through crap to find even a glimmer of relevant data, and even then he couldn't be sure if it was even true or not.

It was then, his mind spinning, that his eyes caught on a significant chapter header.

Druids.

A/N: You may or may not have noticed that I sort of played with Stiles' timeline during the day. I felt it was more impactful if he ran into Lydia and Boyd prior to his talk with Ashley and his dad, a more natural progression to him leaving school to see Deaton. It just seemed strange to me that he would be content to go through his day with all the questions and theories floating in his head. So...I took artistic license and arranged it to my liking.