Calculatingly Wise

16

Stiles rushed to the station due to the fact that Tracy had been seen there. Scott had gone off to help the sheriff and Stiles saw Tessa and Lydia lying on the ground with Kira applying pressure to their wounds. Stiles hesitated and Theo called to him. He pulled off his belt and wrapped it as a tourniquet around Lydia's wound. Stiles did the same to Tessa.

Stiles pushed Tessa's hair back, hoping she'd wake, but she didn't. He frantically checked her pulse to feel one and relaxed slightly.

He heard ambulance sirens in the distance and looked down at the blonde. "You're going to be okay, Tess. You're gonna be just fine."

Stiles glanced to Lydia and she nodded. "Stiles, I'm fine. Tessa will be fine. Help Tracy. Find Tracy. Go."

Theo reassured the panicking boy. "It's okay. They're all right."

Stiles didn't want to leave either of them, especially Tessa. He should have gone with her. But it was too late to change that.

"Come on, Stiles," Scott said as Stiles got up and followed him down to the basement.

When they got there, they saw Malia standing over Tracy's body. The first thing she said was, "It wasn't me."

"What the hell happened to her?" Scott asked.

Malia hesitated a moment before saying, "There were these people... They had masks. Um, there... There were... Three of them. I think there were three."

"What... What are you talking about?" Stiles asked in a slightly impatient tone.

Malia continued stammering. "They were strong, Stiles. They had a weapon. Stiles, I didn't do this."

"Okay." He nodded.

Deaton looked at them. "She's not changing back. We're going to need to get her out of here."

Sheriff Stilinski shook his head. "What, hey... Absolutely not. This is a crime scene. We call the coroner."

Deaton glanced at the sheriff. "I think the coroner might be very confused by this girl's severed reptilian tail."

"I don't care..."

"You should. Unless you're prepared to hold a press conference announcing the presence of supernatural creatures in Beacon Hills."

Stiles looked at the sheriff. "Dad, he's right."

"Maybe at the clinic we can figure out how to change her back, then call the coroner? There's a line... There's a line we have to draw."

"Dad, you've already crossed it. More than once."

"Sheriff, please," Deaton said. "Let me help. I've dealt with things like this before."

Sheriff nodded and relented. "Just do it fast."

The moment Stiles was able to leave, he rushed to the hospital. "Melissa! How-"

"Stiles," Melissa replied. "Calm down."

"How bad is it?"

"Could have been worse. Theo, nice going on that tourniquet. You probably saved her life. You too, Stiles. You gave Tessa a fighting chance." Melissa looked to see Scott and Liam appear and then said, "All right. They're about to go into surgery. So it's going to be awhile. Any other supernatural details that I need to know about or do we just stitch them up and hope for the best?"

Kira stepped closer to Melissa. "It was the tail."

Scott nodded. "Yeah, Tracy cut them with the tail, if that makes a difference."

Melissa nodded. "Okay."

She walked away and Malia said, "But it wasn't just Tracy. There were others. The guys in masks."

Stiles didn't want to wait at the hospital, so he made his way to his house and Malia followed. When they got there, they got up to his room and he walked over to his murder board. He wrote "Masked" and "Tracy Stewart" on the board.

Malia noticed something and erased the part about the Desert Wolf.

Stiles got a text from Melissa that Tessa and Lydia were out of surgery and turned to Malia. "You good?"

She nodded. "Go check on your friends."

He drove to the hospital and entered the hospital and ran into Melissa. "Where is she?"

Melissa led him to Tessa's room and he saw her lying unconscious in her bed.

He stared at her unconscious figure. True feelings, at least on his end, hadn't been admitted, but seeing her lying unconscious in a hospital bed made him want to spout everything he felt about her.

He shook his head. He had a girlfriend.

Tessa's eyes fluttered open and she focused on the boy who was hopelessly in love with her. "You worried about me, Stilinski?"

"Always, Tess," he said quietly.

"Well, you don't have to worry. I'm okay."

Melissa entered and said, "It's time to go, Stiles. I'll watch over her."

Stiles nodded and made his way to the school. He met his friends in the library and they turned to him. "Did you get in to see Lydia or Tessa?"

Stiles shook his head. "No. I saw Tessa earlier, but I can't get back in to see her. I tried using my free period, but they're still in the ICU and no one outside family is allowed in. But Melissa's been updating me on them. The advantage of having a nurse in your corner whose niece is injured."

Malia slammed a book on the table and said, "We got one thing." It was the Bestiary.

Kira looked at Malia. "Anything in here about half-werewolves, half-kanimas?"

"The Chimera," Scott said.

"Um, what?" Stiles asked with a frown.

"Chimera," Scott repeated. "It's a creature made of incongruous parts. And if Liam said he found two burial sites, it means Tracy's not the only one."

"Who's the second one?" Kira wondered. "And why would they bury them?"

"Deaton thinks it's part of their process."

"The people in masks," Malia stated, remembering what she'd seen the previous night.

Stiles felt his eyes closing and he didn't fight oncoming sleep.

Malia woke Stiles up and after giving her a nod of thanks, he headed out to his Jeep.

The engine began smoking and Stiles lifted the hood. He wrapped duct tape around another hose. He quickly brushed away the thought of Tessa saying something rudely sarcastic, which put him at ease oddly enough. He felt something slam onto his shoulder and cried out in pain.