Chapter Text
*****
Thomas ran down the dark hallway, frantically rattling every door he passed, hoping that it would offer him some sort of escape, but each remained stubbornly locked. He was gasping for breath, fear and exhaustion pushing him to the brink of collapse. He didn’t know how long he’d been running, how long he’d been trapped in this hellhole, but he knew that if he didn’t find a way out soon, she would get him just like she’d already gotten his friends.
“Thomas,” a soft voice sing-songed from down the hall. The teenager looked back, his eyes wide with terror. He shook the next door knob, his eyes still fixed behind him, and was startled when the door swung open beneath his hand. Gratefully he dove inside, slamming the door shut as soon as he was in the room and sliding home the bolt he found on the other side. Then he moved as far from the door as possible, crawling under a narrow cot that was on the opposite side of the room.
“Thomas,” the haunting voice came again, and the boy slapped his hands over his mouth to muffle a frightened sob. He closed his eyes and struggled desperately to remain silent in the vain hope that he would go unnoticed. Oh God, he really hoped that this was one big drug-induced hallucination, but he was pretty sure the pills he and his friends had been popping had worn off way back at the beginning of this nightmare.
The sound of the doorknob rattling made Thomas’ eyes shoot open. To his relief, the door remained closed and the rattling stopped. Maybe he was safe.
Then came the screech of metal as the bolt slid suddenly back. Thomas jumped at the noise and hit his head into the bed frame.
The door swung open and the softly glowing figure of a woman stood framed in the entrance. She was young, and had maybe once been pretty, but now her hair hung in greasy tangles around her face, dark circles ringed her eyes, and blackened teeth filled her mouth. She wore a ragged, dirty, white sack of a dress and her feet were bare. Around her neck was an angry, black bruise, and in her hand she held a scalpel, shining sinisterly in the light she emitted. Thomas could see the door across the hallway clearly through her thin, transparent form.
She smiled at him, a mad, gleeful expression. “You found my room, Thomas!” she told him as she stepped into the room and reached toward the teenager. Her face morphed suddenly, lips stretching wide to display a mouth full of sharp fangs. “Let’s play!” she hissed. The door slammed shut behind her, rattling the rusted metal numbers Thomas had missed when he so hurriedly pushed inside; 313. A second later the boy’s screams echoed down the empty hallway.
***
“Alright, Anderson, summarize,” Officer Morgan kept his eyes fixed ahead as they turned onto the road leading to the Sanatorium. Beside him, the rookie he was training flipped back through his small notebook to review the facts Morgan had just rattled off to him. The seasoned officer resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Damn kids. Morgan couldn’t wait for retirement.
“Uh,” Anderson had apparently found his place. “A passerby reported a group of teenagers acting strangely outside the old abandoned sanatorium. We’re supposed to check it out. The area is known to attract delinquents and squatters, so we’re probably looking at vandals or maybe drug users. But we should be prepared for anything-”
“Damn straight, be prepared for anything,” Morgan interrupted. “This town gets weirder by the day, kid.” They pulled up to the gate of the property, and the older cop frowned as the headlights illuminated several figures on the ground at the foot of the fence. “Just stay on alert, alright?” His eyes flickered to the dark building whose outline was barely discernible against the night sky. Could the place be any creepier? Why the hell did these damn kids think it was such a fun idea to hang out here?
As the two officers drew nearer they could make out five teenagers, boys and girls, sprawled around the gate. Some of the kids seemed to be unconscious, others were muttering softly to themselves.
Morgan approached the nearest, a boy sitting with his knees drawn up before him. His head hung down as he rocked slowly forward and back.
“Hey, what are guys doing?” Morgan barked with all the authority of his many years on the force. “It’s late; you should be at home.”
The boy looked up slowly, and Anderson cursed, taking a step back. The boy’s eyes were wide and blank as they stared up at the officers, unseeing. Bloody marks ran down his cheeks, as if someone had dragged their nails down his skin. “She took my eyes,” the boy said in a strange voice. “Molly took my eyes,” he raised his hands to his cheeks, touching just below his staring eyes, then suddenly dug his nails into his flesh. “Took Thomas’ eyes and hid them away, all cause she said she wanted to play!” he cackled. Blood began to drip down his face again. “Can you help me find my eyes?”
“Jesus,” Morgan breathed, lunging forward to grab the laughing teen’s hands and stop him from causing further damage. “Anderson, call for an ambulance and back-up. I don’t know what these kids are on, but we need help!” As the rookie hurried back to the patrol car, Morgan found his eyes drawn again to the looming Sanatorium. “Fucking Beacon Hills,” he muttered staring at the ominous building. “Just make it though Halloween, Morgan, and then it’s sweet retirement and time to get as far away from this fucking town as possible.”
*****
“Trick or treat!” Stiles sang out gleefully as the loft door opened. Almost immediately his grin darkened into a scowl when he realized who stood at the entrance.
“What the hell are you supposed to be?” Peter drawled, a brow arched snidely as he leaned against the door frame and looked the boy over critically.
“A werewolf. Obviously,” the teen answered huffily, gesturing with his hands to indicate the fuzzy ears that were sprouting from the top of his head and the artfully ragged, blood-stained clothes he wore. “What the hell is he doing here?” he called out over Peter’s shoulder as he pushed past the werewolf to enter Derek’s loft.
The sight that greeted him was not reassuring. Derek, Scott, and Isaac stood huddled around the table by the windows, intensely scrutinizing the papers that were scattered across its surface. Suddenly Stiles was getting the bad feeling that his Halloween was about to take a far more realistically creepy turn than he had hoped.
At the sound of the door closing behind him, Stiles glanced back, abruptly remembering that he probably shouldn’t turn his back on a psychopath. Peter was innocently walking toward the little assembly, but the man’s eyes were not-so-innocently fixed on the teen’s ass. For a second, Stiles’ heart sped up before he remembered that his costume also included a furry tail that had apparently drawn Peter’s attention. Probably in answer to the slight hiccup that Stiles’ heartbeat had made, the werewolf’s eyes flickered up from their scrutiny to meet the boy’s own. Peter smiled leeringly. The teen glared then turned sharply away. Trust Peter Hale to turn a perfectly standard costume into something suggestive, and no, Stiles was not going to get excited or rise to the bait. He’d recently come to the conclusion that he couldn’t possibly be attracted to the older man, because Peter Hale was a jerky … jerkface.
This conclusion was the result of the “training” he’d experienced from the man over the last month and a half. Contrary to his initial fears, there had been very little of the expected sexual harassment (much to his disappointment… wait, he meant delight, definitely delight). But there had been plenty of pain. Stiles couldn’t begin to count the number of times he had ended up on his ass or dead from exhaustion after a bout with Peter – the man was merciless. And sure Argent and Derek pushed him just as hard, but neither of them actually seemed to enjoy it the way Peter did. And no, it absolutely did not matter that Stiles was in the best physical shape of his life, that he was able to keep up on a lacrosse team comprised largely of players with superhuman abilities (to the point that Coach had made him a permanent member of the first-line), or that he no longer had any reason to feel insecure (not that he ever had) in the locker room surrounded by the legion of supermodels that were his friends. Not that Stiles was anywhere near supermodel material now, but he had abs people! Well, he had them when he took a deep breath anyway. But, no. Nope. None of that meant that he forgave the psychopath for the bruises, both physical and to his pride, that he’d suffered over the last weeks.
“Hanging out with teenagers because he has no life?” Derek suddenly suggested, startling Stiles from his thoughts. It took the teen a moment to refocus and work out that the alpha was answering his question about Peter’s presence.
“Ouch.” Peter placed a hand over his heart as if the words wounded. “This coming from the twenty-something who created an entire pack from those same teens.” Derek answered with a rude gesture. “And if you recall, I’d be out living my life, is you hadn’t called me. I’m doing this as a favor.”
“Aka, you were bored,” Derek muttered.
Peter ignored him and continued, directing his words at Stiles. “What’s Scott supposed to be then?”
“Werewolf victim,” Stiles answered off hand, glancing at his friend’s gruesome costume. Scott had done pretty well with the slashed and bloody clothes. And the fancy latex claw-wounds and mauled throat were nicely over the top. But none of that was important right now; Peter’s response to Derek seemed to be confirming Stiles’ worst fears. “Do not tell me we have to deal with some supernatural spook on Halloween!” he exclaimed in outrage.
“Okay,” the alpha replied shortly.
Stiles waited for a few long seconds, and when the younger Hale remained silent he sighed. “There’s a supernatural spook we have to deal with, isn’t there?”
Not deigning to look up at him, Derek answered, “Well, since you ask… yes.”
Peter gave his nephew a delighted grin. “You know, you give me hope sometimes.” Derek repeated his rude gesture. Ignoring this and glancing at Stiles instead, Peter asked in another aside, “What about Isaac?”
“Werewolf hunter,” was the succinct reply.
Peter’s brows slowly rose and he turned an unreadable gaze on the teen in question. Isaac was clad completely in black, he wore a leather jacket and combat boots, and a toy crossbow hung from his belt. When he noticed Peter’s stare, he raised his hands as if to disavow himself of wrongdoing. “It was Stiles’ idea,” he said defensively.
When Peter’s cool blue eyes transferred their kinda-terrifying gaze to Stiles the teen glared back defiantly, and he absolutely did not take a step away from the man. “Come on, it’s all role reversals. It’s funny.”
“Ah,” came the doubtful reply. Peter surveyed their costumes again. “Scott’s actually been a werewolf victim,” he said as if pointing out the flaw in that logic.
Scott shot a swift, cold glare at the man. “I’ve also been a werewolf hunter,” he reminded him.
“Oooh, burn. Get it … burn? Cause you did? Twice,” Stiles crowed, grinning at the creeper. He quickly took a few more steps away from Peter as the man turned a highly unimpressed look his way. “We can’t deal with any creepy critters today,” the teen hurriedly deflected, returning to the real issue at hand. “It’s Halloween! We’re going to Lydia’s party. Do you know how long I’ve waited to go to a Lydia Martin Halloween party? There’s bobbing for apples, and scantily clad girls, and candy, and did I mention the scantily clad girls? Everybody else is already there. We are supposed to be leaving to join them. Right now.” Stiles had just known that it would be a bad idea to meet at Derek’s before the party. Yeah, so it had been his bad idea – one last-ditch attempt to convince the antisocial alpha to join in on the revelry – but he blamed Scott and Isaac for agreeing with him.
“Nobody’s stopping you,” Derek told him. “You can go ahead. We’ll handle this.”
Stiles scowled. Oh no, they were not pulling that whole “leave Stiles behind” bullshit again. “And ruin the costume theme we had planned?” he quipped. “I don’t think so. It’s all or nothing.” He sighed. “What’ve we got?”
“Did you hear anything from your dad recently about the Beacon Hills Sanatorium?” Scott asked. The Sanatorium was an old, decades-abandoned insane asylum a few blocks from Beacon Hills Memorial. It had been a favorite spot of homeless people, delinquents, and the occasional group of teenagers fulfilling dares for as long as Stiles could remember. There was also a thoroughly unfounded rumor that the place was haunted by the tortured spirits of former patients, a ridiculous story considering the Sanatorium had been noted as one of the most humane in the country and its closing had far more to do with budget cuts than nefarious practices.
Stiles dredged his memory. Honestly, he’d been a little too exhausted recently to keep up with his dad’s case files. He’d figured that anything truly horrific would stand out anyway. Apparently he needed to start paying more attention again. “Just something about finding some stoners outside the building who needed to be taken to the hospital,” he finally came up with.
Scott nodded. “Yeah, my mom dealt with them. She said they were out of their minds, like institutional-level crazy. And they kept babbling about ghosts.”
“Ghosts? Seriously?” His lips twitched and he looked around incredulously, half-expecting to see the others burst into laughter. “So we’re ruining Halloween because a bunch of potheads ODed and thought they saw some ghosts in a creepy abandoned building?”
“No,” Derek answered with a glare. “We’re looking into it, because those potheads are the latest in more than a half-dozen similar incidents in the surrounding area.”
“Come on, I’d have heard something about that from my dad,” Stiles challenged.
Peter shrugged. “Most of them were probably dismissed because they were homeless people who were already known to have mental issues.”
“See!”
“But,” Derek overrode him, “I don’t think the group of honor students from the junior high who have been in the psych ward at Beacon General since last week fit that stereotype, do you?”
Stiles shut up.
“When this last group came in, my mom heard about the other incidents from another nurse and put two and two together,” Scott explained. “It seems worth checking out before someone else gets hurt.”
God damn it! Stiles hated when Scott gave him the sad puppy-dog eyes – they always made him feel like he needed to go rescue kittens from trees, or donate to a local charity, or something equally noble. He was screwed – goodbye Halloween. “So how do we deal with ghosts?” he sighed. Scott flashed him a grateful smile.
“We don’t,” Peter answered. “This is just reconnaissance; that’s why we’re not bothering the others. Once we know for sure that there’s a ghost, we’ll call Deaton in. That’s more his area of expertise.”
“Veterinarians handle ghosts?” Stiles asked. He knew Deaton was the master of weird knowledge, but what exactly made the man more qualified to deal with ghosts than a werewolf? Maybe he could finally get some answers on Deaton’s mysterious background. He’d only been asking Derek and Scott for the last year after all. By this time he was pretty sure that neither of them had a clue.
“No,” Peter told him, “but emissaries do.” At the matching expressions of confusion on Stiles’, Scott’s, and Isaac’s faces, and the slight twitch from Derek, the older werewolf sighed in exasperation. “You didn’t know he was an emissary,” he said to the alpha.
“I suspected,” Derek replied defensively.
“But you didn’t know. And you let the man negotiate the treaty with the Argents?”
“I suspected,” Derek growled again. “I remembered he was a friend of my mother’s and I was willing to wait until he was ready to share that information. In the meantime, I trusted him as an ally who was as interested in peace as I was.”
Peter expressed his opinion of this sentiment with a roll of his eyes.
Isaac raised a hand, interrupting the bickering between nephew and uncle. “Umm. So what’s an emissary?”
Peter sighed again. “What do you know about druids?” he asked.
Fifteen minutes later they’d been given a hurried overview of druids, emissaries, and their role in pack dynamics. Well, Stiles thought, that certainly explained a lot about the mysterious vet.
“So if Deaton is the master of all the magical mojo,” the teen questioned, “why aren’t we just handing this off to him and going on to Lydia’s party?” Hey, Stiles was nothing if not persistent in his desires.
“Did you listen to a word I said?” Peter asked in annoyance. “Druids are all about maintaining the balance. They serve as advisors and allies. They rarely get directly involved, and they definitely don’t jump at every rumor of supernatural weirdness. We need to be sure that it’s actually a ghost – something which disrupts the balance of its surroundings by its very nature. Once we’ve confirmed that, then we can ask Deaton to look into it.” He gave the three teens an assessing look. “I think we need to add some supernatural lore to the training schedule – you’re all woefully lacking in knowledge.” Stiles wasn’t the only one who shifted uncomfortably at that threat; Scott and Isaac looked distinctly uneager. On the rare occasions that Peter decided to teach the young beta wolves, there was usually a dramatic increase in the number of broken bones. Apparently he felt the wolves’ healing abilities entitled him to go a little harder on them than he did on Stiles. If that was how the physical training went, they all shuddered to think how scholarly training with the older wolf might go.
“So what’s the plan?” Stiles hurriedly changed the subject.
“My mom was able to get copies of the building’s blueprints from the hospital archives.” Scott jumped on the diversion with relief and pointed to the sheets spread across the table. “She said that the best she could get from the victims, before they all started screaming unintelligibly, was something about room 313.” Scott tapped a square on one of the blueprints.
“Room 313?” Stiles asked. “Isn’t that the room that supposedly housed ‘Mad Molly’?”
“Yeah.” Isaac nodded, his face set in thought as he tried to recall the old story. “I think you’re right!” Scott too was nodding with growing certainty.
When Derek and Peter only looked confused, Stiles rolled his eyes. “It’s a stupid story about a patient who was, like, criminally insane. She supposedly gouged out a bunch of orderlies’ and nurses’ eyes or something before hanging herself in her room - 313. It’s complete bullshit, of course. I checked the police records when I was 11, no deaths or reports of serious violence ever occurred in that building.”
Peter gave him a knowing smirk. “What an odd thing to look into at such a young age. Unless…did someone maybe tell you some ghost stories and give you nightmares, Stiles?”
The teen felt his face heat up. “Shut up,” he snarled. “The point is, 313 is the room at the center of half the stories about that place, but nothing actually happened there.”
“Well, something’s happening now,” Derek said. “And the sooner we find out what, the sooner you can get to your party. Bring the blueprints,” he told Scott. “Stiles, you’re driving.”
“Aww man,” the teen grumbled. “Why do we always take my car to the creepy places?”
“Because if we have to ram something or drive over something, we’d rather it be with your piece of crap Jeep and not one of our new cars. Obviously,” Peter told him, his blue eyes dancing. Stiles glared.
“I’ll take my motorcycle,” Scott volunteered.
“Thanks buddy.” Not that that was going to do much more than cut down on the cramped quarters in the Jeep, but it was the thought that counted.
They trooped from the loft. Somehow Stiles ended up near the back of their ragged line, with Peter bringing up the rear. Because the teen was keeping a wary watch on the man from the corner of his eye (and definitely not admiring him in his sweet leather jacket), Stiles realized that Peter was once more staring at his ass … no, his tail. Feeling suddenly mischievous, Stiles slid a hand to the wire threaded along the top of his pants and gave it a twist. The tail swished. Peter stopped dead and blinked at the unexpected movement. Suddenly his eyes flickered up to lock with Stiles’ and they flared a brilliant, electric blue. Whoops.
Stiles quickly looked away and hurried to catch up to Scott and the others. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d just done, but he sure as heck wasn’t sticking around to find out. He planned to put as much distance between himself and the creeper as possible. Of course, as they piled into his Jeep, Peter somehow ended up sitting in the passenger seat next to Stiles. How the heck had he managed that when Mr. Alpha-Derek was riding with them and didn’t look particularly pleased to be sitting in the back? Stiles gave the wolf a hard look, and Peter simply smiled enigmatically and started fiddling with Stiles’ radio until Derek barked at him to stop.
When they pulled up in front of the Sanatorium twenty minutes later, all thoughts of the distracting werewolf beside him fled from Stiles’ mind, replaced by a sensation of dread at the sight of the oppressive building looming ahead. It had been a bit of a mishmash building even in its heyday, part brick and mortar from the turn of the century, part concrete slab from the fifties. Now all of it was cracked and deteriorated, the windows shattered and gaping like hungry mouths, the paint peeling in ragged strips, and the metal rusting in bloody streaks. The sun setting behind it had already plunged the building’s front into deep, ominous shadows. It was totally something straight out of a horror movie.
“Okaaay,” Stiles drawled as he climbed from the Jeep and stared at the crumbling structure. “That is way creepier than I remember.” He could suddenly believe that ghosts haunted the echoing halls within and he shook his head to dislodge the stupid image from his mind. Beside him Scott and Isaac nodded nervously in agreement, Derek gave the building an assessing look, and Peter just seemed bored.
“Alright!” Stiles suddenly clapped his hands, making Scott and Isaac jump. He grinned in the face of their glares and reached back into his Jeep to haul a duffel bag from under his seat.
“If we’re going to do this, then everybody needs to follow the rules.”
“Rules?” Scott asked as they cautiously approached the chained gate restricting access to the property.
As Derek raised a clawed hand to deal with the chain, Peter abruptly caught his wrist. In response to the alpha’s glare, the elder Hale gestured to the chain link fence beside the gate. “Why not use the entrance that others have already made and avoid attracting the attention of, oh, I don’t know, a passing police patrol?” The edge of the fence was curled up and with a slight push they were able to move a section wide enough for each of them to slip through easily.
“Yeah,” Stiles finally answered Scott after they were through the fence and making their way to the front of the building. “Horror movie rules.” He gazed around at their blank faces and sighed. “Come on, guys, the things to never, ever do if you want to make it to the end of the movie?” The others still seemed confused, except for Peter who was smirking at him. Of course he’d get it. The man was a horror movie.
They climbed the stairs to the main entrance, finding the door ominously ajar. Derek cautiously pushed it open and peered into the inky blackness before gesturing for them to follow him in. They stood for a moment in the silent dark, holding their breaths and listening for the slightest indication that they weren’t alone in the building.
Suddenly light sliced through the shadows, revealing a dirty, cracked hallway disappearing into the bowls of the Sanatorium. The others turned to glare at Stiles. “What?” he asked indignantly, shining his flashlight at them. “I don’t see in the dark.” The others sighed in resignation and started off down the hall, Scott squinting at the blueprints as he directed their course.
“So, what sort of rules are we talking about?” Isaac suddenly asked after ten minutes of quiet, slow, nerve-racking travel through the halls. At the incredulous looks from everyone except Stiles, he shrugged. “You know, just in case.”
“Ignore them, padawan. You are wise to seek knowledge,” Stiles proclaimed haughtily. In a more offhand tone, he continued, “The rules are things like, don’t investigate that strange noise in the dark basement or attic, or you’ll probably die. Don’t say ‘Who’s there?’ or ‘I’ll be right back’, or you’ll probably die. Don’t do drugs or have sex, or you’ll probably die.” Sometimes his mouth said things before his brain could think the better of it.
Peter grinned. “Well at least you’ll be safe then.”
Stiles glared, hoping the dark hid his blush, though he doubted it from the smug look on Peter’s face. “Don’t be the jerk,” he snarled, “or you’ll die.” No “probably” involved this time.
“Don’t be the smartass,” Peter answered back, a disturbing twinkle in his eyes, “or you’ll die.” He looked Stiles over, then added, “Or don’t wear plaid; you’ll definitely die.”
Stiles resisted the urge to snarl at the older werewolf. He grumpily adjusted the ragged plaid shirt he wore over his “blood-stained” white T-shirt, and caught Isaac glancing between him and Peter with a very odd look on his face. “What?” he growled. Isaac shook his head and remained silent. Derek and Scott were both too focused on navigating to pay much attention to the snarking conversation, for which Stiles was unusually grateful, though a little back-up from his bro might have been useful.
Stiles decided to press on with the rules; after all, ignoring Peter really was the best policy. “Most importantly,” he said, purposely looking away from the dancing blue eyes at his side, “never, ever, under any circumstances-” His flashlight went out abruptly, plunging the hallway into a blackness darker than night. A second later Stiles’ light flickered back to life. “…split up,” Stiles finished, staring around the shadowed corridor in which he now stood utterly and completely alone. “Fuck.”