Right Beside You | Stiles Stilinski | Two

17 - What is Dangerous and What is Evil

The bestiary was, in fact, pretty nifty. Stiles, Scott and I left the pool to go out to the parking lot, and when we got back to the car, Scott pulled out his laptop and inserted the stolen thumb drive. It was filled with scans upon scans of what probably was, at some point, a physical book. There were plenty of gorgeous pictures, hand painted and detailed, that looked like they could be dated back to medieval times. I was left to marvel at just how old Allison's family was, how long they'd been doing this, just how screwed we were if they ever found out we'd seen this. The only problem was, of course, that none of us knew how to read texts from medieval France.

"Is that even a language?" Stiles groaned, staring at the intricate calligraphy with overwhelmed annoyance.

"Of course it is," I sighed. "Just not one any of us can read."

"How are we supposed to figure out what this thing is?" asked Scott.

I let the cursor hover over one of the paintings and shrugged. "Cross your fingers and hope the Argents were also really accurate artists?"

"It's called a kanima."

All three of us turned, with varied amounts of shock and anger, to stare at Derek. He was walking toward us solemnly, Erica in tow. Apparently, whatever he was going to do to "take care" of the pool area, it still wasn't as important as eavesdropping on our conversations.

"You knew the whole time," Stiles accused, but Derek shook his head.

"No. Only when it was confused by its reflection."

My eyebrows knitted together, lost for a moment until I remembered the large shard of mirror Scott had been holding before the lizard—the kanima had bailed. I'd been too busy saving Stiles to notice anything else. From the sounds of it, the creature had caught a glimpse of its own scaly face in the glass and been scared off.

"It doesn't know what it is," Scott concluded.

"Or who."

"Well what else do you know?" Stiles demanded.

Derek glared at him, obviously not appreciating the tone. He grit his teeth as he answered, "Just stories. Rumors."

"But it's like us?" Scott asked him.

"A shapeshifter, yes, but it's—it's not right. It's a..."

"An abomination," Stiles finished for him.

The answer took Derek by surprise, but he nodded in agreement.

So, something had corrupted the kanima's transformation. For one reason or another, it wasn't able to transform into its wolf form, or even the mutated wolf-bear that had been Peter's favored form. Instead, it was reptilian, and no one seemed to know why. That wasn't the real problem, of course. It didn't matter if they'd been born that way and come to Beacon Hills, whether it'd been created here, why it had scales instead of fur. What it boiled down to was the fact that it was still a they, a person just like Scott or Derek or Boyd or Erica. And they were killing people. We had to stop them, but without knowing who it was, that seemed nearly impossible.

Derek nodded to Erica and turned to leave, but Scott called him back.

"Derek! We need to work together on this. Maybe even tell the Argents."

"You trust them?!" Derek growled.

"Nobody trusts anyone! That's the problem! While we're here arguing about who's on what side, there's something scarier, stronger, and faster than any of us, and it's killing people! And we still don't know anything about it!"

"I know one thing. When I find it, I'm gonna kill it."

Derek turned on his heel and stormed away. He didn't even need to beckon Erica to follow. They climbed into the Camaro, leaving the three of us to stare after them in dismay. We had no help, no teamwork, no plan; just a name for the thing that was trying to kill us. We'd barely moved forward on the space that was still square one.