pull me closer {teen wolf}

22

"What are we doing at an animal clinic?" I asked, following Scott.

"Apparently, it's not only an animal clinic," Scott replied.

"Excuse me?!" I called, walking inside towards the back. On the table was a dead man with claw marks that ripped his flesh.

"Scott?" the man asked. He was bald with a short goatee and wore a button-up shirt all the way to his neck. "What happened?"

"Derek," Scott replied. "You were my first thought."

"And who's this?" he asked.

"A friend of mine," Scott answered.

"You two came at a difficult time... " he said, grabbing things out of the cabinet. "They're coming back so we don't have much time to talk," he said, pouring alcohol on a cotton ball.

"Uh, what is that?" Scott asked warily. And stupidly.

"Rubbing alcohol," he said. "You don't want it to get infected, do you? And you'll heal the same. Just not as quickly because of Derek. Do you need any medical- "

"I'm good," I said. "Uh, how do you know all of this?" I asked as he patched him up.

"It's a long story," he said. "What I can tell you is that I know about your kind. Your kind... I can help. This... this is something different." I glanced at the dead man.

"Do you know what did it?" Scott asked.

"No... but the Argents will," he said. "And this is the crucial part. They'll have some kind of record or book. It'll have descriptions, histories, notations of all the things they've discovered."

"What - All the things?" Scott questioned and glanced at me. "How many different things are there?"

I heard cars pull up and car doors shut. Deaton led us back through one door to hide. We both stood on one side of the double door, listening in. I saw Gerard Argent walk inside.

"Hello, Alan, it's been a while," he greeted. "Last I heard, you had retired."

"Last I heard you followed a code of conduct," Deaton retorted.

"If you hadn't noticed, this body is one of ours," Allison's father said.

"I did. I also noticed the gunpowder residue on his fingertips," he responded. "So don't assume I'll be swayed by your philosophy just cause I'll answer a few questions."

"He was only twenty-four," Mr. Argent stated.

"Killers come in all ages."

"All ages, sizes, shapes," Gerard added. "It's the last one that concerns us."

"How about you tell us what you found," Argent said.

"See this cut? Precise. Almost surgical. This isn't the wound that killed him. This had a more... interesting purpose."

"Relating to the spine?"

"That's right. Whatever made this cut was laced with a paralytic toxin potent enough to disable all motor functions. These are the cause of death. Notice the patterns on each side?"

"Five, for each finger."

"Each claw," Gerard corrected.

"As you can see, it dug in, slashed upward, eviscerating the lungs and slicing through the bone of the rib cage with ease."

"Have you ever seen anything like this before? Any idea what killed him?"

"No," he answered. "But I can tell you it's fast, remarkably strong, and has the capacity to render its victims essentially helpless within seconds."