Chapter Text
The pack was running.
The pack was running, blind and deafened from each other, mad with grief and poison and pain, down endless corridors and galleries hung with screeching, jeering paintings.
The pack was running, and their snouts were full of poison, and their mouths were filled with their own blood.
The pack was running-
The woods were empty, dark, and deep.
It wasn’t natural for woods to be so empty. The woods on the other side of Stiles’ hometown were dense with life: squirrels chattering in the canopies and birds swooping and singing and bugs buzzing and the tap-tap-tap of woodpeckers hunting for lunch and deer snapping twigs and frightening themselves half to death and rabbits running from foxes running from dragonets-
-even the rich, invisible liveliness of decay, laying down its own quilt of sound-
That was what a wood was supposed to be, not like this, all cold and still with the trees more like statues than living things. The Hollow Wood was wrong, and it made Stiles feel like an intruder just for breathing its flavorless air.
Though it was true that Stiles really, really wasn't supposed to be here; no one was. There were signs hammered in every dozen yards on the fence along the border, and two on either side of the arboreal yawn that opened up to reveal the dirt trod tongue of a road Stiles had very regrettably wandered from at least an hour ago.
Everyone in Beacon prayed every summer that the woods would grow enough to close over that part of the road, so that travelers would be forced to go around instead of going missing, but it never did. The only thing that ever changed about this wood was the color of the leaves that never bothered to fall.
Thirty or so acres of forest and it never changed a bit. The silhouette of trees on the edge of town had been the exact same since Stiles was old enough to toddle over and almost get himself lost for good before the nearest responsible adult scooped him up and away.
He'd found his way here at last, in spite of them all. Here Stiles was, in the gloomy almost-dark, tired and hungry and goose-pimpled and wet from when he'd fallen into the creek he'd been trying to stone-hop across. Was he proud of himself? He was not.
Embarrassed. Stiles was humiliated to a degree that threatened to be fatal. All because he had thought he'd seen a butterfly, which was, assuming he ever found his way home, going to be an especially stupid excuse to present to his dad.
But he'd been sure it was a new kind of butterfly - black, with two big, red false eyes on each wing - and Lydia Martin had been collecting bug corpses all summer and would have obviously been very impressed if Stiles presented her with an undiscovered species, and of course you couldn't expect a butterfly to indulge you by sticking to the road, so he'd-
So Stiles veered off, chasing his daydream into the trees and then into a creek and now he was going to die and his body would become an object of curiosity centuries later because things didn't even decompose properly in these weird, terrible woods, and-
-and there was a light ahead.
Foxfire, Stiles thought, the first tendrils of panic curling down his spine. Well, shit.
At least a bog would be some real geography; if he could find a few of those and triangulate, it would be better than just walking past tree after identical, lifeless tree-
Wait.
Didn't foxfire flicker? But this light was steady and warm, and-
-window-shaped! Stiles shot forward with the last of his over-taxed strength, bursting through the undergrowth just to see a dozen lights gleaming in the dusk, warm and bright and rectangular. He picked up his pace, chanting, "people, people, people," under his breath, never pausing to consider whether it was really a good idea to trust his fate to the kind of person who took up residence in the middle of a cursed forest until he was nose-to-nose with the front gate.
It was not a welcoming gate. It stood two whole heads taller than Stiles without even counting the spikes, and Stiles had been accused more than once of possessing an almost unseemly gangliness. There was enough (actually, a lot more than enough) iron fancywork that the gate itself was nearly as impenetrable as the stone walls surrounding it, effectively concealing what lay behind it from everyone, but especially Stiles.
Stiles cleared his throat and ventured a "Hello?", hoping against hope for a friendly gardener who might be persuaded to let a handsome nonthreatening stranger come in and make use of any spare shirts or maps or hot dinners that happened to be lying about. This place had to have scores of gardeners - what little of the grounds Stiles could make out through all the elaborate scrollwork was a dozen times as well-kept as the grounds of the baron, who only had one aging gardener and a boy that came in to help whenever his father didn't need him at home.
"Uh." Stiles bit his lip, and he was about to try a much louder "Hello," when the gate swung open soundlessly on its well-oiled hinges. Stiles blinked, and looked around, hoping to spy a gardener. Or, even better, a laundry maid who happened to be transporting a pile of dry, freshly-laundered socks. His own squished in his boots as he crossed the threshold, still looking for whoever it was that had let him in.
There was no one there. The garden was as empty as it was immaculate, with all the hedges faultlessly trimmed and all the neat little stone pathways free from the disorder of use. Not even a breeze dared to rustle.
It couldn’t have been the wind that opened the gate; it was too heavy for that. And all the windows of the sprawling manor-house crouching on the lawn were bright and welcoming, casting pretty orange shadows of light onto the gravel. Stiles took a few tentative steps forwards, leaving mud tracks from his squelching boots all over the pristine pathway.
Oops.
Someone would probably be able to rinse that off.
The damage was already done, so Stiles kept going, furtively at first, as he glanced around for the secret opener of portals, and then trotting faster and faster when no one appeared to tell him off. He kept to the path, this time, since there were no butterflies around.
He’d learned his lesson. Even if those picturesque curves the path took around the occasional slim, graceful tree meant that it took him about twice as long to reach the front steps then it would have if he'd had the nerve to cut across the grass.
The doorknocker was big and bronze and imperious: a wolf's head but-not-quite, with the proportions all off and something wrong about the teeth. Those couldn't be real rubies set into the sockets, could they? They were the size of Stile's thumbnail, and he stood there for a long moment, wondering how much work it might take to pry them out.
If he'd had the sense not to get lost without his knife, Stiles might have tried his luck, and probably gotten his fingers bitten for his trouble. Instead, he raised the bar to knock, and found it slightly warmer than a piece of metal should have been on a cool day, as though someone else had just set it back down.
As though the knocker were a living thing, with a steady pulse carrying liquid heat through secret metal veins.
Or.
Or maybe Stiles was just so damned cold that anything he touched with his blueish fingertips would have had an uncanny warmth. He might have fallen into that bog after all. He might be hallucinating this entire thing as a pleasant diversion from suffocation.
It would be nice if his hallucination included something hot to drink.
This door opened all by itself. You could do that with rope and wire, if you had somewhere to hide, and there were hedges lining the walls. The entry way had a flounced table that could have hidden a very junior footman underneath it. It was all very plausible, but it seemed like a great deal of trouble to go through just to baffle a single late-night visitor.
A haunting or a demon or an invisible beast actually seemed like the more rational explanation.
Stiles took off his muddy boots before he went inside, and he also knotted the laces together and tucked them up under his arm so that ghosts couldn't steal them. "Hello?"
There was rustling off to the side, and when Stiles turned to look he saw a ball of red yarn bounce out from under the flounce of the table and start rolling purposefully towards an arch at the far side of the entryway.
"Ooo-kay?" Stiles shrugged, and followed after in his stocking feet.
A cat hiding down there next to the footman might have knocked out the ball of yarn, but Stiles was fairly sure that there was no cat alive who could have made the yarn roll up a big oak staircase. The first step came halfway up his shins. Yet there the ball went, bouncing impossibly upwards.
There was magic at work, here.
Real magic; something much bigger and grander than the household magic that had been Claudia Stilinski’s specialty. Something more mysterious than the small magics his mom had never been able to teach to Stiles, no matter how hard they'd both tried.
He’d been lightly devastated about that at the time, and moreso after she’d passed. Stiles had never even been able to magically light a fire or peel a potato, but here he was, in an ensorcelled manor.
Stiles beamed.
Nothing could have held him back from wanting to dig farther, and deeper; to tear into this place and see how it ticked. He wanted it so badly he could taste it, like honey on his tongue.
If that appetite got him eaten by a minotaur, well-
Well! Stiles had always known, deep down in his heart, that that was how he might go.
The yarn bounced merrily up the last flight of stairs and Stiles chased after it, vaulting up over the top steps to land on the perilous chasm between the stair runner and the pricelessly dense carpet filling the floor of the hall. The brief expanse of wood was so well-polished that it shone like glass.
Bright red yarn that didn’t remind Stiles of fresh blood in the least trailed past dozens of doors. Hundreds of doors. A hallway longer than a hallway had any right to be, and diverting down new, branching hallways often enough that Stiles knew without a doubt that he would starve to death before he ever found his way back out without help.
Eventually, the ball and Stiles both came to a halt in front of a wooden door identical to the dozens or thousands before it. The only difference was the bronze plaque reading 'Guest' that someone had hammered onto the front.
The half-unspooled ball of yarn ran up against the bottom of the door, and then rolled back around to bump in a pointed away (as pointed as a ball of wool could be) against Stiles’ ankles.
"Okay, okay! I understand," said Stiles, and then, for the first time since he'd set foot in the haunted manse, he opened up a door for himself.
It seemed that the enchanted manor housed its guests in what Stiles found to be a nearly offensive style of luxury.
He knew for a fact that even the local Baron didn't have crystal decanters or marble-topped dressers or carpets that felt like sinking into quicksand. There was an armoire that was at least as large as the bed-cubby Stiles had slept in as a child, and the wallpaper was so thickly drawn that it could have passed itself off as a tapestry.
Not that Stiles could see that much of the wallpaper; most of it was hidden by the gallery’s worth of paintings. These dozen or so canvases were all very large, very generously daubed, and they all depicted landscapes that Stiles could only dream of visiting.
Vast sweeping deserts, mountain tops sprinkled with little purple flowers, and foreign cities full of red silk and lit by paper lanterns. Crumbling castles overlooking the tempestuous, wine-dark sea. White temples on sundrenched hilltops and sylvan groves and someplace deep, and lush, with a thousand pairs of eyes peeking out at him.
The bed was big enough that Stiles could have comfortably shared it with three or four complete strangers.
Only one thing was missing: a mirror. It was a strange omission, because there was plenty of room on the front of the gigantic armoire, but it was one that left Stiles relieved. He didn't even want to think about how much the mirror that would match all this opulence might cost. Bad luck would be the least of his worries, if Stiles broke a mirror like that.
He was already afraid to touch anything more breakable than the bed hangings.
In fact, Stiles had taken this all in from the doorway, with his mouth hanging agape and hands knotted together behind his back like a child that had been threatened into good behavior.
There were hundreds of things that might shatter into expensive pieces if Stiles so much as looked at them wrong, and all he had in his pockets was half an apple core and some magnetized iron on a string (which, but the way, hadn't done a thing to ward of fey influence, thank you very much) and a lone walnut and a stone with a hole in it, and none of that was any kind of currency, unless whoever owned this place turned out to be a squirrel with expensive tastes.
But eventually his guide grew impatient, and the ball of yarn wound around Stiles’ ankles and gave such a sharp tug that he fell over chin first onto a rug that was thankfully even greener and softer than the pile of moss it must have been inspired by.
He laid there, defeated, just staring into the dense jungle of fibers and cursing silently until a pair of invisible hands had the audacity to pluck off his wet socks.
"Be careful," Stiles protested, elbowing himself over onto his back. "Those were made by the cleverest hands in seven kingdoms. They're irreplaceable."
(His mother had knitted him dozens of socks, feverishly, the year she'd died. "You go through them at such a pace, Mischief, that anyone would think you had nails for nails." That had been her favorite joke, and the only worry about his future that she had the strength to resolve.)
The same unseen hands that had stolen his socks unwound the yarn from around his ankles. Stiles stood, barefoot and steaming as the heat from a massive, marble fireplace began to dry out his damp clothes. Another door opened, without any help from the only pair of living hands present. There was another, smaller room behind it, all copper and gleaming green tile, and so over-decorated that Stiles only barely recognized the descriptions he’d read of a bathroom.
Transparent fingers plucked at his sleeves as they pushed him towards an enamel bathtub that was already full of hot water.
"I can undress myself, thank you." Stiles said, though he would have preferred not to do so in company. Who even knew how many pairs of invisible eyes were going to watch him take everything off? But the hands kept coming back whenever his own paused, and at last he gave in and undid his laces and tugged his trousers down his thighs so he could pull his shirt free, tossed that over his head, kicked off his pants, and stepped into the admittedly inviting tub.
Ahhhhh.
All that water he hadn't needed to lug in himself from the well was just the right temperature. Stiles felt the stress of the day melting off him like the fat off a stewed rabbit.
Bliss.
But he never could keep still for long, so after a moment of lying back and just letting all the glorious warmth soak into his bones, Stiles turned his attention to the line of stoppered glass bottles on the shelf next to the tub. He picked them up, one by one, reading the French labels with an eye out for words like 'basil' and 'thyme' so that he wouldn't accidentally make himself into a well-seasoned soup.
It didn’t help. There was at least one herb on every label, and his French had never been that good in the first place, so Stiles gave up and poured in half a bottle of the scent he’d liked best, resigning himself to deliciousness.
The tub exploded with bubbles that smelled like aniseed and orange when you popped them. Absolutely delighted, and giggling like a loon, Stiles sculpted them into a castle, and then he made himself a crown, and then he kicked his feet and swam imaginary laps across a channel.
Halfway through his sybaritic soak, the ghostly attendant did something that drained about half the water before producing a new bucket and pouring it in over Stiles’ head. His bubble kingdom fell apart around him, but Stiles just sat there and gasped at the glorious heat and the sheer, incomparable hedonism of it all.
Now he knew how Nero must have felt while he sat and watched Rome burn.
Stiles had never felt so clean in his life. He rose from the tub, Aphrodite himself, redolent with spices as a Christmas cake. A wandering spirit brought him a warm towel, and then a soft shirt and breeches and stockings and all the rest of it. All of it was much finer than anything he'd ever owned, or even anything he’d ever touched.
“What about the clothes I came in w-ah! Stop that. For the gods' sake, I can take a hint.”
They’d never get rid of him if they kept this up. And, even though the bath had been one of the most pleasant moments of his life, there was an unsettling edge to that thought that Stiles couldn’t shake.
Was this all just a different kind of foxfire, Stiles wondered, as he inexpertly tied a strip of ribbon around his throat. A more sophisticated kind of lure? Dragging in lost youths and cleaning them and dressing them, for-
-for what? Something that had to do with that enormous bed, maybe. And without very good intentions, though after making it all the way to twenty-three in nothing but his own company, the thought of anyone wanting to make carnal use of Stiles' body made him go a little plump in his borrowed trousers.
It didn’t help when one of the spirits abandoned all pretense and lopped a braid of yarn around Stiles' wrist, with a long hanging end that anyone could use as a leash. They tied ropes around the necks of cows, too, before they led them off to be butchered, Stiles thought, and he laughed, helplessly, to himself.
Exactly what kind of thirst might he have been brought in to slake?
As he was tugged back through the impossible labyrinth of hallways, Stiles' imagination provided him with increasingly debauched scenarios. There he would be, spread out on a huge oak table with an apple stuffed in his mouth. Sitting on the edge of it, swinging his bare legs and biting the apple in half while invisible hands reached towards him so they could put their fingers in his mouth and examine his teeth. Pushed down by those same hands, so someone could shove something else-
The table the spirit led Stiles to was almost exactly what he had so feverishly imagined: a banquet’s length of polished mahogany. A king's ransom in impossibly fine lace running down the center. No one seemed to want him to strip down and clamber up, nude, atop it. The stately chairs were all still tucked in, and, as far as Stiles could tell, he was alone with whoever or whatever held the end of his drooping leash.
A chair was pulled out near the middle of the table, right in front of the only set of plate and silverware that had even been set out, and Stiles obediently sat. His chair was ordinary enough, but the chair at the head of the table was enormous - if Stiles had been born as a set triplets, all three of him could have all comfortably shared that one seat.
That must be the seat his mysterious hosts used for all their ravishing. It was only natural that they’d need the extra space to keep all the nubile, long-legged youths from getting tangled together.
Or, perhaps, Stiles thought, watching in indignant amazement as something started setting down trays and platters full of more food than he could possibly eat in a week, he was only here to get some more meat on his bones before something ate him.
There was obviously no choice but to eat and drink until he made himself sick. The scents and the sights before him were that irresistible. It did occur to Stiles that this might all be more illusion, papering over stale grains and rainwater, or even thin air, but his suspicions didn't make him any less hungry.
You couldn't eat suspicions.
Instead, Stiles was forced to drink pale, delectable soup and sample dozens of artistically poached fish on beds of wilted greens. To take apart melting pink medallions of tender beef in pastry jackets with nothing but one of his dozen spoons. To carve slivers of breast from tiny birds dressed up just like fat geese.
He smeared ounce after ounce of something gray and savory and delicious on slices of soft, fresh bread, drank unforgettable wine from a crystal glass and devoured piles of strange fruits pickled in honey.
In short, Stiles ate like he was possessed until his stomach was so swollen that he had to sit back and beg for mercy. As he watched invisible hands whisk away platters that were still mostly full, Stiles sincerely hoped there was at least someone who could eat all the leftovers, like tangible servants, or maybe an enormous dog.
Something led him back to the guest room, at a very slow pace, because Stiles was rapidly falling asleep on his feet. The moment the door was shut behind him, and without even changing out of his borrowed clothing, Stiles collapsed into the quietest, the most comfortable, and the loneliest night of sleep he’d ever had.
There was a pot of chocolate and a plate of ham and sweet rolls on the table next to him when Stiles emerged from his cocoon of heavenly bedding. Despite the feast of the night before, he partook heartily of both, and the warmth of the chocolate helped chase away the cobwebs of a half-remembered nightmare.
After breakfast, and a splash in the basin, the armoire flung open its arms and offered Stiles a dazzling selection of fresh raiment.
Everything in it looked like the sort of thing a rich man would wear to impersonate his own gardeners for a fancy dress party. His own clothes were nowhere to be found, so Stiles resigned himself to finery, putting on buttery-soft buckskins and boots, a shirt with real pearl buttons, and the tunic had, for whatever reason, been beautifully embroidered with all the phases of the moon. He almost wished for the sudden appearance of an easily breakable mirror, just to see how good he looked.
Well. Stiles hoped he looked good.
It was a shame there was nothing but men’s clothing, and all magically in Stiles’ own size; he might have stolen something worthy of Lydia. That was, of course, always assuming that all this finery wouldn't turn to leaves the moment he stepped out of the cursed, hollow woods.
That might make it hard to sneak back into town.
"Uh. About my old clothes . . . Come, stop pulling so hard; you'll chafe my delicate skin. I'm coming, I just want to know what you did with my pants-"
He was leash-led back through all the hallways and back down the magnificent set of stairs. At the foot of them a leather bag was thrust into Stiles’ arms with the same transparent benevolence that had obscured everything ever since he’d set foot in the manor. It was clear that he was about to overstay his welcome, and though Stiles still had about a thousand burning questions, there was no one around with a mouth to answer them.
There were no answers in the bag, either; just more strong hints. Mostly travel rations. Someone had packed him dried strips of meat, a water sack, biscuits wrapped in wax paper, and, incongruously, a glass jar of cherries suspended in honey, looking like rubies in a golden crown.
Underneath it all was his own clothing. Stiles’ socks had been freshly laundered and wrapped up in a piece of silk, and the sight of such kindness made Stiles forget all his previous indignities. He murmured a soft, "Thank you," into thin air.
Sitting at the door were his own boots. They had been freshly cleaned and polished. Stiles thought about putting them on, but instead he reknotted the laces and hung them around his neck, over the leather strap of the travel bag. He turned and bowed on the threshold as the door opened up behind him.
“And thank you for your hospitality."
What would Lydia say, if she were in the situation? Something gracious, like the queen she was.
"I've, um. I've never enjoyed such a comfortable night outside of my own home."
Several hands nudged him, then, with a 'go now' sort of feeling that Stiles later wished he had taken more seriously, but he couldn't resist taking a final look around. The manor was different in the light of day. It might just have been his own exhaustion dazzling him last night, because now Stiles could see that the wear in the carpets and the hard work an army of spiders had done up in the corners and-
-there were scratches on the wood floor. Like something had walked across it. Something with claws like knives.
The ghosts wanted him to make like a tree and leave. Stiles’ instincts were beginning to shout in agreement. His mother had told him to listen to his instincts. (She'd been pale and sweating, focused on things Stiles couldn't see. "Listen to your own when you can't listen to mine.")
Instead of taking her advice, Stiles came to a stop on the final front step, stupid and stubborn and contrary as ever, shielding his eyes from the sun with one hand and picking at the rope around his wrist with the other.
Some hand tugged at the other end, urging him on, but Stiles yanked harder, and caught the loose end, quickly twisting it over and under the braid on his wrist until the tail of the yarn had disappeared from sight.
"I just want to take a stroll around the grounds before I go," Stiles promised, to reassure the ghosts, as he stepped onto the perfect path. "It was too dark last night to really appreciate the care that must go into this place. I bet you have hundreds of interesting specimens to show off, and what’s the point of a well-tended garden that no one ever sees?”
That seemed to give a mysterious hand on his forearm pause. Its grip went slightly slack.
“Come on. One turn around the grounds, and then I'll be out of your . . ." Stiles pursed his lips. "And then I’ll be gone. Really and truly. Cross my heart and . . . uh. Hope to fall into another creek. A muddy one, this time. With snapping turtles."
He felt the ghostly digits unwrap themselves, and he also felt a surge of resignation so potent that it almost crystallized in the air around them. Stronger opponents than whatever this thing was had likewise fallen under the onslaught of Stiles' persuasion. He had even won an argument with Lydia, once. Technically. Though she still hadn’t actually admitted-
"Is that a conservatory?"
Gravel sprayed everywhere as Stiles quickened his steps. "There's not even a lock!"
That was practically an engraved invitation.
Stiles pressed his nose against the sun-warmed door and tried to peer inside, but the glass was too thick and too wavy to make out anything but the dark silhouette of ivy climbing up the walls. Which just meant that absolutely anything could be in there. Pomegranate trees, or pitcher plants or cloudberries or prehistoric ferns or cacti or rare orchids-
Stiles pulled open the door.
-or roses.
Roses! Roses everywhere. Full red roses in mid autumn. Big, drowsy bees. Big roses. Huge.
Generally, Stiles liked wildflowers. Yarrow, and milkweed. Clover, and wild vervain. There was a trellis of honeysuckle against the wall of the forge that he feasted from every summer. But though he had never been particularly partial to them before, Stiles was drawn to these roses just like one of the fat bees.
They were easily the second or third prettiest things he'd ever seen: so well-blossomed that bushes drooped with them, with blooms so richly red that the center curls were nearly black. Their perfume was so heady that it transformed the hot air inside the greenhouse into a fine wine, and Stiles’ fingers itched to touch just one velvet petal.
Unbidden, unwary, his hands reached out and started ripping down the ripest. Thorns bit his fingers and petals fell around him like a rain shower.
He worked mindlessly as he walked past beds of vegetables and herbs; nine years old again, and weaving a crown of daisies to impress his first crush. The eggplants were as enormous as if an ostrich had laid them. There was a patch of real dragon lilies, and one of them shot out its seeds in an explosive red and orange burst aimed right at Stiles' ankles as he walked past.
"Wow." The half-finished crown of roses sat on his knees as Stiles crouched on his heels and watched a leaf curl up after he gave it a gentle poke. “Sorry, beautiful.”
Then something else caught his attention. A vine with deep purple flowers and thick furred leaves pulled Stiles across the greenhouse like a magnet as soon as he’d so much as glanced at them.
Flowers the color of royalty. It was obvious how perfect they'd look, tucked in among the roses. Stiles hadn't managed to pry loose any gemstones, but there was one thing he could do for the lady of his yet-to-be requited love, and that was to bring her a crown that was worthy of her.
Once again, Stiles' hands moved with barely the faintest whisper of intent. An urge as alien as it was artistic had possessed him. He didn’t even notice when the pollen bit at the skin of his fingertips, or when the few blossoms he clumsily crushed left angry red shadows across his palms.
All Stiles could see as he emerged from the greenhouse, the crown of flowers cradled against his chest, was a vision of roses set in Lydia’s red hair. There was always the chance that she might let him crown her himself, and Stiles was so distracted by the prospect of touching Lydia's hair that it took a growl like something from deep within the bowels of the earth to alert Stiles of the fact that he was no longer alone.
Very, very slowly, trying desperately to remember how you were supposed to place your feet before you started to run, he turned towards the source of the unholy noise.
And there, for the very first time, Stiles saw the Beast - standing less than a dozen yards away, dozens of hands high, with haunches that would eat the distance between them, black and huge and snarling, hot breath rolling out from his maw in a wave, eyes glowing red like coals in sockets the size of soup plates, a cacophony of fur and and horn and scale and feather, great claws - claws like knives - digging out chunks of the immaculate lawn-
-Stiles took this all in in an instant.
And promptly fell over backwards onto his ass.