Uncertainty - Stiles Stilinski [1]

thirty-one

"They're coming back, so we don't have much time to talk."

That was Deaton, talking really fast, something I wasn't used to. Normally, he was the one to speak calmly and slowly, kind of trying to comfort us or his patients. But he was in a rush this time. He grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol, nearly dropping it but manage to catch it in time.

"What is that?" Scott asked.

"Rubbing alcohol" I answered for him.

Deaton nodded and poured something of it on a cotton ball. "You don't want it to get infected, do you?" he asked while disinfecting our wounds. Scott and I both shook our heads. "You will heal the same, just not as quickly, because of Derek."

"Okay, how do you know all this? Actually, how... How do you know anything?" Scott asked. I remembered Scott still being unconscious when Deaton explained everything to me after Peter died.

"It's a longer story. What can I tell you is that I know about your kind. Your kind? I can help" he mumbled with the tape in his mouth. "This-" he said and pointed to the dead man on the table, "This is something different."

I stared at the body right in front of me. His torso was ripped with ten claw marks on it. I wondered who's body it was since I never really saw him around. "Well, do you know what did it?" I asked. "No, but the Argents will and this is the crucial part. They'll have a record or book. It will have descriptions, histories, notations of all the things that they've discovered."

"All the things? How many different things are there?" Scott questioned but Deaton couldn't reply anymore. We all heard a car pulling over and soon the door opening. I grabbed Scott's arm and dragged him with me in another room where we stated quiet.

I got on my knees and stared out of the door's window, recognizing Gerard and Chris Argent with another hunter who stepped in the room while Deaton said, "I think I need to buy a more prominent closed sign."

"Hello, Alan. It's been a while. The last I heard, you had retired" Gerard welcomed him. "Last I heard, you followed a code of conduct" Deaton responded.

"If you hadn't noticed, this body is one of ours" Chris interrupted them with his cold icy voice, sending a shiver down my spine.

"I did. I also noticed the gunpowder residue on his finger tips. So don't assume I will be swayed by your philosophy just because I will answer a few questions" Deaton remarked but once again Chris said something that didn't even make sense, "He was only twenty-four."

"Killers come in all ages" Deaton said.

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

"How about you tell us what you found?"

All four of them surrounded the table and waited for Deaton to explain what he thought. "See this cut? Precise. Almost surgical. This isn't the wound that killed him. This had a more interesting purpose" he explained as he turned the body's head to the left side, revealing a small cut at the back of his neck. "Relating to the spine" Gerard realized.

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

"Five for each finger" Chris replied but Gerard corrected him, "Each claw."

"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?" Chris asked.

"No" Deaton replied.

"Any idea at all what killed him?"