Broken Kiss (a Teen Wolf story)

Part 28

One Month Later

            Peter pulled his jacket on as he crossed the parking lot. He had a spring in his step, an honest to God spring. It was such a curious realization that he stopped to think about it. He'd been making progress in rebuilding contacts – only losing his temper twice during negotiations. Which meant he could be selective about the jobs he took and only hunt for items that interested him for people he didn't despise. The small luxury of being able to make choices. He was making better decisions, avoiding things that got him churning and threw him down the sorts of paths that ended in regret.

            It wasn't all Lydia. It helped, he conceded, to have someone to look forward to. Someone who lit up when she saw him, her green eyes sparking in a purely human way that had its own kind of power. Over him, at least. He'd been gone for three nights, only three. And he'd still sped home, staying only long enough to shower and change.

            "Peter."

            He glanced up, chastising himself for letting Derek sneak up on him. His nephew raised an eyebrow as he approached.

            "Am I interrupting something?" Derek he.

            "I was stopping to smell the roses. Appreciating every moment, like the wise man says."

            They both looked at a small pool of leaked oil, and the crushed fast food containers someone had tossed out a window.

            "They're like roses," Peter said.

            "No!" someone called out.

            Derek rolled his eyes as Stiles careened off of the side mirror of a truck.

            "We don't need his help." Stiles's eyes narrowed menacingly, but he stopped a half-step behind Derek.

            "Well." Peter clapped his hands together. "Now that that's decided, I'll be off."

            "What do you know about Anubis?" Derek asked.

            Peter paused, intrigued. "Egyptian god of the afterlife. Has the head of the jackal, which gives him a stunning profile but which he was probably depicted with due to the association of ancient shallow graves and jackals' propensity for scavenging. Why?"

            "He's here," Stiles said. "The grave-robbing dog face is here."

            "Something is here," Derek said evenly. "Pretending to be Anubis."

            "What do you mean 'pretending'?"

            "It's pulling hearts out of people and weighing them," Stiles volunteered. "One survivor said he was offering them perfect peace. All they had to do was pass through his gate. But we haven't found the gate. Not that there is a gate, because he's probably just a psychopath not really a jackal-headed Egyptian god. No offense."

            "What about that would offend me?" Peter asked, bemused.

            "Not, uh...not the psychopath part. Not that part. I didn't mean that part."

            He wasn't overly concerned with a fake god roaming Beacon Hills, but if the man was killing then he was affecting Lydia. Which wasn't acceptable.

            "Are the police close to catching him?" Peter asked.

            "Well, they were. I mean, my dad shot him. But then he ate one of the hearts, and that seemed to heal him. Anubis, not my dad. He's holed up at this old mansion out on Stamford. Not exactly the Temple of Doom, but it's pretty creepy."