Winding Roads {A Creative Writing Journal}

Special Agent Stiles (W2R Round 8)

   Red Belt

    There's only one thing alive that can mangle a body like that, Stiles—or FBI Agent Stilinski—thought sourly. He rubbed a hand over his face in frustration, stubble scratching his calloused fingers.

     "Animal attack," Agent Kinch suggested matter-of-factly, shining his flashlight on the body or, more accurately, what remained of it.

     Stiles knew he should let the other agents draw their own conclusions and just follow their lead, but kneeling over a body in the middle of the woods at midnight had his intuition screaming. After accidentally dragging his best friend into the supernatural world back in high school, he worried that his two worlds would eventually collide on a case.

       While the rest of his team investigated this alleged animal attack, he'd have to track down the supernaturals in the area and find out who really killed this poor girl. Stiles resolved to call Derek whenever he got back to his apartment. The Beta always had some obscure connection to the werewolf packs in the States, and after his sister moved to South America and Isaac to France, he probably made connections in those areas too. Hopefully, the lone Hale could point him in the right direction.

     Medical Examiner Henrietta "Henry" Malkov knelt over the body, an intense gleam in her eye Stiles didn't like. She spread her hand over a series of slash marks, her red-painted nails shining like claws, and she slowly followed the wounds down the girl's shredded torso to her hip.

    "What you got, Henry?" Kinch asked.

      "Something else made these scratches," the ME mumbled, "No animal in this area could create marks like these."

   "You think someone made it look like an animal attack?" Agent Darcy, the third member of Kinch and Stiles' team, speculated, and Henry nodded.

    "I'd guess someone possibly attached several sharp objects to a pair of gloves and hacked away at this poor girl."

   Stiles knew he should say something. In recent weeks his team started catching on that his silence meant he knew more than he let on.

    "Like wielding a set of claws," he hummed, "But why go through all the trouble? Why not just shoot or stab her like a normal person?"

    Kinch raised an eyebrow. "I'd hardly think a normal person would result to murder in the first place, Stilinski."

    Stiles shrugged. If his FBI team ever set foot in Beacon Hills, they might think differently, especially if they ever found out about his high school excursions.

    "I'm just saying," he replied nonchalantly, "why go through all the trouble to make it appear like an animal attack when nothing living around here would come even close to a match?"

    Darcy sputtered a few theories, but Stiles had already tuned him out, opting instead to check the lunar cycles on his phone. As he feared, a full moon had commanded the sky last night, and the chances of this being a normal homicide plummeted. His number one suspect right now just became a newly bitten werewolf, and his need to call Derek rose to Priority One.

    "I'll know more once I do a full autopsy," Henry stated.

   The FBI agents watched as Henry's medical team loaded the body into the back of the ME's van and drive away. They had parked further down the strip, forcing them to trek down the empty country road in the middle of the night.

   Stiles felt his heart hammer in his chest as he glanced up at the waning gibbous moon. Too many nearly lethal hikes into the wooded Hale Preserve after dark had trained his senses to stand on constant alert, and right now it took everything in his power not to drop everything and book it.