|| You Can't Be Here
The bodies were almost too many to count.
Beacon Hills Memorial was amassed with panic and unsettling sensations as gurney after gurney was carted through the doors and down to the morgue, every one of them stuffed in black body bags to show that their souls were no longer there.
Although it had been Chris Argent who had discovered the heap of bodies buried underneath the town, Sheriff Stilinski filed the phone call under an anonymous tip.
Stuck with a cane to help him walk, Stilinski slowly joined Parrish by the elevator's, the young cop's eyes watching the bodies pass by.
Haunting and horrifying thoughts ran through Jordan's head, sending his stomach rolling.
"Parrish," Stilinski softly said. "Parrish look at me."
Jordan turned his head, his face riddled with anxiety.
"I know what you're thinking. The dream's coming true." The Sheriff shook his head. "It's not."
"Sheriff, there's twenty-three bodies," Jordan replied, voice low. "Twenty-three of them. And..."
Stilinski held up a finger. "Don't say it."
"She..."
"Jordan." Noah squeezed his shoulder, forcing him to look away from the bodies still running by. "She doesn't know what she's doing."
Jordan forced away tears lingering in his eyes, the dark image of the future that he had predicted for Beacon Hills burning behind his eyes.
"I want you to go back to the station and go through every missing person's report for the past two weeks," Stilinski told him. "That's what we do. You got it, Parrish?"
Jordan nodded softly, taking a step back from his boss.
Stilinski reached out before Jordan could get too far, his voice quiet. "We'll get her back."
"You can't promise that."
Sheriff Stilinski's eyes closed as Parrish parted, his dismay only lasting a moment before the elevator doors split open to reveal his son, Scott and Isaac.
All of their jaws slacked as the teens watched the continuous flow of body bags, knowledge of the perpetrator hanging overhead like slew of knives.
"Who found them?" Stiles asked, voice nearly taken from him as he looked to his father.
Stilinski sighed, turning to face them as he bared his weight down on his cane. "Argent. And he said the Doctors were down there. Allison spoke to one of them, asking about Jacy and where she was."
Isaac's brows furrowed. "Did they tell her?"
"They called her perfection," Stilinski said with a shrug. "That's all they would give her."
Scott let out a sharp breath. "That's terrifying."
"The ME said that the victims were killed somewhere else and then dumped in those tunnels."
"Hey, what if the Dread Doctors are hiding the bodies?" Scott asked.
Isaac's eyes narrowed. "Why would they do that? Couldn't it be her doing it when she falls out of the shift?"
"Maybe they're covering for...her." The words left Stiles' lips with distaste and difficultly, forcing himself forward. "Protecting it like a parent would. They spent so much time on her." He glanced to his father. "Perfecting her."
Stilinski sighed, a flash of Jacy holding a sleeping Stiles at his bedside passing behind his eyes. "I'm having a hard time believing that this is..." He shook his head. "I don't..."
"Everyone's having a hard time with it," Scott assured softly. "It seems impossible."
Disassociate and it will be easier to kill her.
Isaac cleared his throat. "If it's easier, we could always just refer to her as the Beast. I know that I don't know her well, but this clearly isn't her. Leaving her name out of it might make it easier."
"Well, we better figure out what to call Parrish," Stilinski said. "Because it looks like his dream is coming true, and it's his sister who's doing it." He rested his free hand on his belt, the other clutching his cane. "I need you guys to go back to school, okay? I know it's a lot to ask, especially because I know that you want to be out there looking for her, but there's a lot of heat coming down on Beacon Hills. More outsiders are going to try and come in and if anyone looks suspicious, it could change things forever."
No one wanted to admit that the change had already started.
It was chaos, pain, and it was going to destroy the town.
||
In the mid-morning hours, a warm diner that sat perfectly between Beacon Hills and San Francisco was late to wake. The customers were slow moving and enjoying their morning, taking in breakfast and conversation at a leisurely pace.
All but one.
Jacy Parrish sipped on a cup of coffee that was getting low, the quake in her hands not from caffeine on an empty stomach but instead of deep pit inside of her.
She had hoped that leaving the borders of Beacon Hills would offer her some kind of relief, but it did nothing to qualm her anxiety.
Jacy tapped an absent finger on the table, alone in her booth and well aware she was drawing the occasional stare from the locals of someone who appeared as nothing but a lost drifter trying to find her way. Everything about her was disheveled, from her hair tied up loosely to the well-loved joggers she had stolen from Stiles months before.
Her head shot up as the bell over the diner door chimed, thankful eyes finding a familiar face. She stood from her spot, holding back every desire to burst into tears as she embraced an aged version of herself.
Honey Dane squeezed her granddaughter tight, holding her out at arm's length to look her over. She ran a warm thumb along the girl's cheek, her smile sad but sweet. "Hi, darling."
Jacy barely made it back into her seat before she had to wipe under her eyes with her sleeve. "Thank you for coming, Nana."
"Of course, J," Honey replied. "Whenever you need me."
Jacy fell silent as the waitress returned, refilling her mug as she took a short order from Honey before disappearing. She gripped the mug for the warmth and soft safety that it gave her, knowing well aware that she should speak first but was unable to find her voice.
"So, I know pieces," Honey finally said, adding a creamer to her coffee. "Your mother reached out to me before you did." Her brows lifted the same as Jacy's. "Surprising, I know. There wasn't a lot that she felt comfortable sending over an email that someone could obtain, so she phrased it as more of a story. About the Beast of Gevaudan."
"About me."
Honey stared into the contents of her mug for a long pause. "I'd heard about the Dread Doctors before, but they were always like a fairytale, even for people like us."
"They're more like a nightmare." Jacy glanced out the window. "Like a fever dream."
"I should have known that this was going to happen."
Jacy's expression fell, the bags under her eyes even more prominent. "Why would you say that?"
"I wasn't sure when you were young," Honey admitted, resting her elbows on the table. "Our clairvoyance passes to every other generation, so you and Jordan would be easy to obtain it if triggered. But you...you are the golden child. Especially after your transformation to the loup fantome. How could the Doctors not go after you?" She closed her eyes for a moment. "I should have believed in them. I should have known."
Perfection.
The word hung over Jacy, daring to drop on her at any given moment.
She had heard them chanting it through a foggy haze, contained inside something much larger than herself. She was there, but she wasn't.
Honey reached across the table, taking Jacy's hands in hers. "You only have the morning hours, don't you? Only when the sun is up?"
Jacy nodded, flashes of the pain she felt before she blacked out burning under her skin.
"How many so far?"
The teen's lips quivered, eyes filling with tears. "Almost thirty," she said, voice cracking sharply as she pulled a hand back to wipe under her eyes. "They tell me what I've done when I wake." She shook her head. "I'm not there when it happens. I'm just...gone."
"Are you locked away when she takes over?" Honey asked. "You don't remember it?"
"I can see pieces sometimes," Jacy answered, swallowing hard. "But it's like I'm being possessed. I get jostled around and can hear the hum of the roar. It's like I'm being pulled in and out of sleep and I can barely open my eyes. Most times I can't. It's as if I was blindfolded with an audio tape running in the background."
"Have you heard her yet?"
Jacy's eyes narrowed slightly, growing ever more bloodshot. "What?"
Honey shot a hesitant look around the diner. "Annette. Have you heard her yet?"
"No, no she's gone," she replied. "I spoke to her last year but she freaked out on me. She didn't like Stiles. But she passed. I banished her. She's been gone ever since."
Honey shook her head, her sleek gray bun jostling ever so slightly. "But did she physically pass through you?"
Jacy paused, chewing on the inside of her lip for a moment. "No, she didn't. I used an iron capsule and her spirit exploded. She never turned up again."
"She might have just been a ghost to you, but she's infamous, and much stronger than the others," Nana told her. "It likely suspended her for a while, probably long enough for the Doctors to have moved in on Beacon Hills. But I'm not talking about how you speak to spirits as normal clairvoyance. I mean...inside your head."
Jacy's face slacked. "What?"
"Jacy, what the Doctors did to you...it wasn't just operations. Yes, they built you up because you met the impossible criteria, but they didn't do it for you. They turned you into something else, yes, but you do you realize what?"
"The Bea-"
Honey shook her head. "Not just that."
The bell over the diner door chimed, going unnoticed as Jacy's heart pounded in her chest.
"What do you mean?" she asked, voice low.
A throat cleared, a pair of boots coming to a stop just shy of their table.
Jacy's eyes lifted from her grandmother, falling on none other than her brother. Her jaw tightened. "What are you doing here?"
"Nana invited me," Jordan replied.
Honey held up her hands as she earned a sharp look from Jacy. "I'm sorry, darling. I don't live in Beacon Hills. I can't help as much as he can."
Jacy shook her head, rising from the booth. "He can't help me either." She barely warranted a glance in Jordan's direction, walking past him with special care to not be touched.
"Jacy. Jacy, come on," Jordan pleaded, the door of the diner nearly slammed in his face as he followed her outside. "Jacy, please."
The brunette held up her hands as she stopped around the back of her car, Jordan's patrol vehicle parked four spots down with their grandmother's sandwiched between them. "You can't be here."
"I can't be here?" Jordan scoffed, resting his hands on the hips of non-regulation jeans. "Jesus, Jace. Do you hear yourself? Who are you?"
"I don't know!" The words ripped from her throat, silencing the parking lot. "I don't know, Jordan. I don't know who I am anymore."
Jordan motioned a hand towards her, well aware she wanted him to stay far away. "You're a good person."
Jacy grimaced as she looked away, a tear streaking down her face. She wiped it way with the sleeve of her sweater, turning back to him but failing to make genuine eye contact. "I'm not. I'm far from it."
"That's not true and you know that. We all know that." Jordan took a step forward, his heart panging as she took a step back.
Seeing his sister in pain was destroying him.
"Argent said something that I think you need to hear," he told her. "Because it's something that I and everyone else who loves you believe to be completely true."
"What, that I'm single handedly killing off every person in Beacon Hills when I turn into a giant, ancient monster created by people hundreds of years old that survive off of body parts of other people?"
Jordan blinked several times, his shoulders dropping. "Jacy."
"Fine, if you're so intent on relaying one of Argent's motivating lines, then go on," she snapped, waving her hand.
"This isn't something that you're doing," Jordan calmly said. "This is something that's happening to you."
Jacy took a long pause, searching her brother's eyes. "The Beast wouldn't exist without me. No subject would have been viable to bring it back other than me. The Doctors stalked us for years. They planted Theo in my life to make it easier. They took me months before I ever knew. I helped choose the other kids that are now dead because they weren't strong enough. People that I was friends with. Hayden, Tracy."
"To be fair, they're not dead anymore," Jordan offered mildly. "Theo brought four of the chimeras back to make a pack."
"So, four kids cemented with mutated powers makes up for all of the people that I've killed?" she rebuffed bitterly. "I had the radio on the drive here. I know they found twenty-three of them in the tunnels."
"You haven't killed anyone, Jace. It's the Beast that's doing it."
Jacy shook her head. "What about Darren?"
The deputy's brows furrowed. "Your boss that tried to kill you last year? J, that was self-defense. He tried to kill you for a cash prize. Just the same with the other assassins that came after you and the pack. Those guys made their choice to kill for money and you all defended yourselves."
"Taking a human life isn't justified. Especially when that's all I do anymore."
Jordan shook his head. "What do you think I did when I was in Iraq? I didn't like it and I didn't want it, but I've killed people, too, Jacy. Everyone in this town has red in their ledger and all we can do it to try and make it better."
Jacy almost laughed. "And am I making it better for myself by killing more people?"
"It's not you."
"I am this thing. It's my body that changes into the Beast. Maybe I'm not conscious when it happens, but it's still me. The kanima was still Jackson."
"And they saved him!" Jordan nearly shouted. "Let us save you! Don't shut us out. You have the daylight hours to yourself, don't you?"
Honey cleared her throat, emerged from the diner and stepping down from the curb. "For now."
Jacy and Jordan exchanged short looks before focusing all of their attention on their grandmother.
"What do you mean by that, Nana?" Jordan asked.
"It's what I was about to tell Jacy before you showed up," Honey replied. "The Beast isn't the only thing that was resurrected by the Doctors. You say that you're mostly blacked out when you change, but there are blinks sometimes, right?"
Jacy nodded softly, brushing off the wetness of her cheeks. "Barely. I never see much."
"Have you seen a message left for you?" asked Honey. "A message only supernatural eyes could see?"
"I don't...I don't think so."
Honey's shoulder dropped as she processed the information. "I told you before that the Doctors built you into something, but I asked if you really realized what. Not just the Beast, but more. I asked if you've heard Annette speak yet, because that's a sign that it's about to happen."
"What the hell else could happen?" Jacy snapped, knowing she would regret her harsh words to her grandmother later. "What more is there?"
"Nana, we don't have time to be cryptic," Jordan told Honey, his voice much kinder. "If you know something, tell us."
Honey sighed. "Yes, the Doctors turned you into the Beast, but that isn't all of it. One of the Doctors dates back to the years that the original Beast, Annette, was active. Annette wanted infamy, and her attachment to the story was destroyed by her family so no one would ever know her name. They condemned her memory." She motioned a soft hand toward Jacy. "Your body is yours, yes, but after the transformation, it doesn't just belong to you."
Jacy's face contorted. "What?"
"They made you into a vessel, Jacy. The reason that I asked if you've heard her speaking to you is because she's there, in your head. She's waiting to remember. Her spirit was wiped when she was transferred to you, so for now she's sleeping."
Jordan's eyes were wide. "You said that when she speaks, it'll be a sign that something's about to happen. What is that something going to be?"
"When Annette remembers who she is, your body will no longer be shared. You still have the daylight hours, for now. But when she knows that she's more than just a passenger, she will take over entirely."
Jacy squinted at her grandmother, heart thudding in her ears. "There's an 'and' coming."
"And you will no longer exist."