Silvern | Stiles Stilinski (Book 2)

Chapter Five: IED

'So, the Walcott's were the first. At least the first that we know about. Four murders: Sean, his brother, and their parents. They were killed by a professional assassin called The Mute. Weapon of choice, a military tomahawk. But then The Mute was killed by Peter Hale after he tried to blow up Derek with a Claymore mine. Next was Demarco, he delivered a keg to the party at Lydia's lake house and got decapitated outside his car. And then last night, twenty-three-year-old Carrie Hudson, 'Stiles explained to us.

Scott nodded. 'It's a dead pool, a hit list of supernatural creatures,' he unfolded a piece of paper and showed it to the Sheriff, 'This is only part of it, the rest still has to be decoded.'

Stilinski frowned, 'Who found this list?'

'Lydia.'

'How?'

Stiles paused, 'She wrote it. Actually, she transcribed it without realising it.'

The Sheriff nodded, 'Banshee?'

'Banshee.'

'Beautiful,' the man grimaced, 'Alright, what are these numbers next to the names?'

Stiles nodded, 'We're getting to that. First, you need to know that the code was broken with a cipher key.'

Stilinski frowned, 'Wait. You mean, like a... like a key word?'

'It's actually a name.'

'Allison,' I sighed, looking at Scott sadly.

A heavy silence descended on the room before Stiles spoke, 'Her name broke a third of the list.'

Scott looked down at the list again, 'And now we think there's two other cipher keys.'

'Which will give us the rest of the names. Okay, so how do we get the cipher keys?'

'Same way we got the code.'

I spoke up, 'Lydia, she's been at the lake house all weekend, trying to find the other two key words.'

Stiles grabbed a pen, beginning to cross out the names of the people who had already been killed. 'You didn't know about Demarco or Carrie?' Stilinski asked, 'And what about these other two names on the list? Uh, Kayleen Bettcher and Elias Town. They werewolves too?'

'I don't know, but Deaton said that the Nemeton would draw supernatural creatures here,' Scott sighed.

Stilinski frowned, 'Here being Beacon Hills or Beacon County? The population of Beacon Hills is just under thirty-thousand-'

'And dropping,' Stiles interrupted.

His dad looked at him disapprovingly before continuing, 'But if we're talking Beacon County, then you're looking at close to five-hundred-thousand. Look, how many werewolves, banshees, kitsunes, and whatever the hell else is out there are we talking about? And what happens if the next cipher key uncovers not twelve names, but a hundred?'

Stiles shook his head,' We don't think there would be that many. There's a limit. '

'Because of the numbers,' Scott pointed to the list, 'We think that once we decode the names, the numbers will add up to one hundred and Seventeen.'

'One hundred and seventeen what?'

'Million,' Scott said as Stiles began to write letters next to each of the numbers, a K for thousand and an M for million. He paused for a moment and glanced at me when he got to my name, I was worth eighteen million dollars.

He finished with a sigh, 'One-hundred and seventeen million dollars, Dad. Stolen from the Hale vault and is being used by someone to finance all these murders.'