September, Beacon Hills
The air tasted like dying summer and gasoline. Stiles Stilinski gripped the steering wheel of his blue Jeep like it was the only thing anchoring him to the planet. His heart was a frantic, trapped bird beating against his ribs—a stupid, human organ trying to escape a decision it already knew was doomed.
Just tell her. Three words. Eight letters. It's not astrophysics.
But it felt heavier. It felt like pulling his own skeleton out through his throat.
He'd practiced in the mirror, in the shower, during the agonizing tedium of Coach's Econ class. He'd crafted speeches full of wit and vulnerability, all of which evaporated the moment he pictured her face. Clary Fray's face. Not classically beautiful, but familiar in a way that felt like home. Freckles like a constellation he'd spent a lifetime mapping, green eyes that could go from soft to sharp in a blink, a smile that cracked the world open and let the light in.
He'd loved her since the sandbox. Since she'd handed him a gritty, drool-covered toy dinosaur and declared him her "co-president of the volcano." Scott had been there too, building a lopsided castle, but even then, it had been Stiles & Clary. A binary star system. Scott was the friendly, orbiting moon.
Stiles pulled up to the curb three houses down from hers, killing the engine. The silence rushed in, loud and accusing. Through the passenger window, he saw her house—the warm yellow light from the living room window, the swing on the porch where they'd spent a hundred nights talking about everything and nothing.
Go. Now. Before you invent a reason to drive away.
He got out. The street was quiet, the only sound the distant buzz of a lawnmower and the frantic rhythm of his own pulse in his ears. His hands were shaking. He shoved them into the pockets of his lacrosse shorts, feeling the familiar rough texture of the fabric, trying to ground himself.
He walked across the street and up to her house. His sneakers on the concrete path were too loud. Each step was a drumbeat counting down to his own humiliation or exaltation. He wasn't sure which was more terrifying.
Slowly, he went up the stairs, holding his fist up to knock on the door. He took a deep breath, the air catching in his throat. With three gentle knocks, he cleared his throat and took a step back, looking around the quiet neighborhood as if expecting an audience.
The door swung open.
There she was. In all her glory, standing in the doorway, backlit by the hall light. Her fair hair was piled up in a messy, perfect kind of up-do, yet strands of it cascaded down her face and neck. She was wearing a simple green dress that made her eyes look endless, and she had a light jacket slung over her arm.
A smile flashed across her face from beneath the renegade strands of hair. It created slight dimples and creases that moved her freckles. Even though it was gone quickly, replaced by a look of pleasant surprise, its ghost still hung in the air.
"Stiles!" she said, her voice laced with a happiness that sent a bolt of pure, stupid hope straight through his chest. "What are you doing here?"
Shaking his head, he felt a soft, involuntary smile touch the corners of his lips just from seeing her. "I just wanted to see you." He rolled his lips before moistening them with his tongue, suddenly parched. He gestured weakly to the porch swing. "Can we sit?"
"Of course."
They sat. The swing gave a familiar, gentle creak. He could smell her shampoo—something with apples and cinnamon. It was the scent of every study session, every movie marathon, every whispered secret in her basement.
He focused on his hands, clasped tightly in his lap. "This is going to sound crazy," he started, his voice barely above a murmur, "but I finally have the courage to say it, so please just… sit and listen."
She went perfectly still, her full attention on him. He could feel the weight of her gaze.
"There are so many things about me that you do know," he said, daring to lift his head slightly. "You know my real name is Mieczyslaw. You know my favorite color is blue. You know that my favorite Sour Patch Kid color is purple—and that you always get the purple ones in your pack because you know I'll trade you anything for them. You know that one of my guilty pleasure movies is Never Been Kissed." A soft grin was ghosting on her face as he listed each fact, her green eyes shining with affection. "You know almost everything there is to know about me."
He took a shuddering breath. The lump was back in his throat, bigger now. "But there's one thing. One thing that I've never said for anyone to hear, never even mumbled just to myself. There's only one thing I've kept to myself since meeting you when we were four and playing in the sandbox with Scott."
He looked right at her, trying to pour a lifetime of feeling into his gaze. "You don't know that I—"
HONK.
An obnoxious, sharp sound sliced through the quiet evening.
Both Stiles and Clary jerked their heads up, looking toward the street. A black Toyota Camry was parked right in front of her house.
Stiles's brain stuttered, misfiring. "Scott?" he asked, his brows furrowing as he turned back to Clary.
Her face fell, the light in her eyes dimming, replaced by something like guilt and panic. "Yeah…" she said slowly, her voice small. "I know it's a little weird for you, but he… he asked me out. We're supposed to go out tonight."
The words didn't compute. They entered his ears as noise, as static. Then their meaning detonated in the center of his being.
Asked me out.
Go out tonight.
A date.
His heart didn't sink; it vaporized. A vile, cold feeling crept up from his stomach, spreading through his veins like antifreeze. He pushed the impossible lump in his throat down, his voice desert-dry and quiet. "A date? He asked you out?"
"Yeah," she whispered, biting her lip nervously. "Earlier this… week. Three weeks ago, when I was watching you guys at lacrosse practice." She turned fully to him, her expression pleading. "I can get rid of him. Let you finish what you were saying. Please, Stiles, finish it."
But it was too late. The narrative had already rewritten itself in his head with brutal, cinematic clarity.
He was too late.
Scott had asked first. Scott, his best friend—kind, uncomplicated, good Scott—was here. In a car. To take his Clary on a date.
Scott was going to hold her hand. Scott was going to make her laugh with his dumb, sincere jokes. Scott was going to kiss her goodnight. He was going to be her boyfriend.
Stiles wasn't. And it was all because he was a coward. The fault was his and his alone. The realization was a white-hot brand of self-loathing.
He cleared his throat, the sound harsh in the stillness. He pulled away from her, physically and spiritually, and stood up. The movement felt robotic. "No. You should go. This… this wasn't that big of a deal anyway." He forced a casual shrug, shaking his head as if dismissing a minor inconvenience, trying to bury the cataclysm under a layer of brittle nonchalance.
Clary stood up swiftly, blocking his path. She saw right through him. She always did.
"It seemed like a big deal," she said fiercely, her eyes searching his. "You said you had something to tell me, and even if you were going to tell me you needed to use my phone charger, that would be more important to me than any date." She reached out, taking his hand in hers. Her skin was warm. Her thumb smoothed over his knuckles, a familiar, grounding gesture that now felt like torture. "You come before everyone else, you know that, Stiles."
His head dropped. He stared down at their joined hands. Her fingernails were painted black. A silver ring was on her pointer finger. As he looked, it finally clicked: the dress, the jacket, the slightly more deliberate makeup. She was dressed up. For Scott.
He looked back up at her, and as he went to force another smile, to acknowledge her beauty one last time, he saw Scott McCall getting out of his car, a hopeful, eager smile on his face as he walked toward them.
The sight was a physical blow.
Clearing his throat, Stiles pulled his hand from hers. He failed to notice the swift, deep hurt that flashed across her face at the rejection. "No, Clary. You have a date tonight, so go." He shook his head, his voice hardening with a finality he didn't feel but desperately needed to project. "I'm not gonna say it again. Please, just go."
Clary sighed, a sound of utter defeat. She nodded slowly, her shoulders slumping.
Scott bounded up the steps, his smile charming and oblivious. "Clary!" he said, his voice warm. He gave her a short, happy nod before turning to Stiles. "Hey, Stiles!" Genuine, friendly happiness. No guile. Just Scott.
It was unbearable.
"Scott," Stiles replied. He manufactured a small, tight smile that felt like a crack in his face. He discreetly pulled his hand the rest of the way from Clary's lingering grasp. "Uh, I should be going now. You two have a good night."
"Stiles…" Clary mumbled, a last, desperate plea. She didn't want this to end here, in this awful, unfinished silence.
But he was already moving. Even though every cell in his body screamed to turn back, to shove Scott down the steps and say the words, he didn't. He walked past her, past Scott, his eyes fixed on the ground. He went down the cement path, each step away from her feeling like a step off a cliff.
His head hung low, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, the frayed strings of his heart snapping one by one with every footfall. He came to the Jeep, yanked the driver's side door open, and slid inside.
The lump in his throat was now a solid, aching mass. He leaned his head against the headrest, squeezing his eyes shut, fighting the hot, shameful pressure behind them. He couldn't cry. Not here. Not now.
Against his better judgment, he looked over at her house.
Clary and Scott were talking on the porch. Scott said something, and Clary laughed—a small, polite sound that was nothing like her real laugh, but it was enough. From this distance, in the quiet of the car, he could almost hear it. The ghost of her laughter, the sound that was the backdrop to his happiest memories, now played on a loop of torment.
He had been so close. The words had been right there. He should have just said them.
She had looked at him like she knew. Like she was waiting.
He clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached. With a final, shattered glance, he started the Jeep. The engine roared to life, a loud, angry sound in the peaceful street. He didn't look in the rearview mirror as he pulled away. If he saw Scott opening the car door for her, he would have driven into a tree.
---
From a Silver BMW Down the Street
Emmy Stilinski watched it all through the lightly tinted window of her boyfriend Alec Wayland's car, her stomach a knot of cold fury and profound sadness.
Alec was droning on about lacrosse plays, his hand resting possessively on her thigh. She wasn't listening. She'd seen Stiles's Jeep parked down the street, seen him walk up to Clary's door with a hesitation that was utterly unlike her fiercely confident brother. She'd seen his posture on the swing—leaning forward, earnest, vulnerable.
And she'd seen Scott McCall ruin it.
She saw the light drain from Stiles's body language like a switch had been flipped. She saw Clary reach for him, and she saw him pull away—the ultimate Stilinski retreat into sarcasm and self-deprecation. She saw him walk to his car, a portrait of devastation.
And she saw Clary Fray, her best friend, get into Scott McCall's car.
A fresh wave of anger, sharp and bitter, washed over her. It was multifaceted, this anger.
At Scott, for being the nice, simple choice, for swooping in with his puppy-dog sincerity.
At Clary, for being so blind, for choosing the easy path over the messy, brilliant, complicated boy who had loved her forever.
At Jackson Whittemore, whose cruel games had taught her that love was a weapon, making her distrust Clary's choice on a fundamental level.
At herself, most of all. For being stuck in this stupid car with a boy she despised, watching her little brother's heart break from a distance, powerless to fix it because she'd spent three years building a wall between them.
"You okay, babe?" Alec asked, finally noticing her silence.
"Fine," she said, her voice the cool, polished tone she'd mastered. "Just tired. Let's just go to the party."
As Alec pulled away from the curb, Emmy kept her eyes on the empty space where Stiles's Jeep had been. The loneliness inside her expanded, a vast, silent ocean. She had lost her brother to his own world, and now, it seemed, she had lost her best friend, too.
---
The Preserve
Stiles didn't go home. The thought of facing his dad, of pretending everything was okay in their quiet, half-empty house, was impossible. He drove on autopilot, the streetlights of Beacon Hills giving way to the deep, consuming darkness of the Preserve.
He parked the Jeep haphazardly on a familiar dirt pull-off, killed the lights, and just sat. The silence here was different—alive with the rustle of leaves, the chirp of crickets, the distant call of an owl. It pressed in on him, amplifying the chaos in his head.
Idiot. Coward. Loser.
The words played on a loop, synchronized with the imagined sound of Clary's laugh for Scott.
He got out of the car, slamming the door with more force than necessary. The cool night air bit through his thin t-shirt. He started walking, not on a path, but into the woods, letting the underbrush snag on his shorts and scrape his legs. The physical discomfort was a welcome distraction from the gaping hole inside his chest.
He walked until his breath came in ragged gasps, until the lights of the town were completely swallowed by the trees. He walked until thinking and feeling blurred into one solid mass of pain.
He didn't see the ground give way.
One moment he was pushing through a thicket, the next, there was nothing under his feet. A short, sharp cry was torn from his throat as he fell, tumbling through root and rock and darkness.
The impact knocked the air from his lungs. He lay on his back, stunned, staring up at a patch of night sky visible through a hole far above. He'd fallen into some kind of sinkhole or cave entrance. Pain radiated from his ankle and ribs. He was probably hurt. He didn't care.
He just lay there, breathing in the dank, earthy smell, feeling the cool stone beneath him. The galaxy wheeled slowly in the circle of sky above, countless, uncaring stars.
What is the point? The thought was clear and cold, cutting through the haze of self-pity. What is the point of any of it?
His eyes, adjusting to the gloom, caught a faint gleam to his side. He turned his head. Against the wall of the small cavern, on a natural stone plinth, was an object.
It looked like a cup. But as he pushed himself up on his elbows, wincing, he saw it was carved from a human skull—the top sawn off to create a crude bowl. Inside it, a dark, viscous liquid reflected the starlight with a deep, unnatural crimson sheen.
It should have terrified him. It should have sent him scrambling back. But in his current state—heart hollowed out, body aching, soul numb—it just seemed… fitting. A skull cup in a hole in the world. A perfect metaphor.
A voice, not in his ears but in the very fabric of his mind, a dry whisper like shifting dust and ancient bone, spoke.
Drink.
It wasn't a command. It was an invitation. A solution.
Stiles didn't hesitate. There was no grand deliberation. There was only the void where his hope used to be, and this offering to fill it. He crawled the few feet to the plinth, his injured ankle screaming. He reached out, his fingers closing around the cool, smooth bone.
He lifted the skull-cup. The liquid within was thick, like syrup, and smelled of copper, ozone, and grave soil.
He brought it to his lips.
And he drank.
It was fire and ice. It was drowning and being born. It flooded down his throat and instead of filling his stomach, it unmade him. His body convulsed, arching off the cave floor. Visions, memories that were not his own, exploded behind his eyes.
…A little girl with dirt on her dress, sobbing over the bodies of her family, their bodies torn by fang and claw. Not just killed. Played with. The scent of wet wolf and arrogant power hanging in the air…
…A young woman, her eyes hard with grief and fury, studying forbidden texts. Not to heal, but to arm. Magic as a scalpel, then as a sword…
…A man with a kind smile. A cottage. Laughter. Two children with her eyes. A life, built from ashes. Happiness, fragile and real…
…And then, him. Not a monster from a shadow, but a man from the daylight. Beautiful, ancient, moving with a speed that was an insult to physics. He didn't feed. He diverted himself. He destroyed her second family not out of hunger, but because he could. Because their lives were a minor ephemeral beauty, and he was eternal. An Original. His cold, amused eyes were the last thing she saw before the darkness…
…Rage. Not hot, but cold. Colder than the void between stars. A rage not just at the vampire, but at the universe that allowed such creatures to exist alongside such fragile love. If the world was built on this cruel dichotomy, she would break the dichotomy. She would not become a monster to fight monsters. She would become something new. She would forge a power from her own annihilated love, a vampirism that drew strength not from life, but from dominion over all supernatural life. A True Vampire. A predator to end all predators…
…Centuries of hunting. Of consuming. Of feeling the essence of werewolves, fae, spirits, demons flood into her, their power becoming hers, their fear her sustenance. The exquisite pain of holy water, of sunlight, lessons to be overcome, weaknesses to be engineered out. She was perfecting herself. Becoming the ultimate…
The memories—her memories—the First True Vampire's memories—ended in a crescendo of transcendent, lonely power. Then, they were gone.
And so was Stiles Stilinski.
His heart stopped. His breathing ceased. The human boy died on the cold cave floor, the empty skull cup rolling from his limp fingers.
---
Death was not an end. It was an unlocking.
In the silent, timeless space after death, the second sleeper awoke.
The Void.
The Nogitsune spirit, nestled in his soul since birth, stirred from its dormancy. It had fed on his childhood anxieties, his frenetic energy, his cleverness. Now, it gorged on the profound despair of his heartbreak, the suicidal surrender of his final act. It tasted the immense, corrupt power of the True Vampire essence flooding the empty vessel.
And it merged.
The vampire provided the boundless physical power, the hunger, the thirst for blood and essence. The Void provided the mind. The love for chaos, the artistry of deception, the sensual appreciation for pain and fear. It wasn't a possession. It was a symphonic convergence. The True Vampire was the instrument; the Void Kitsune was the ruthless, brilliant composer.
Stiles's body began to reform.
Bones snapped back into place, knitting stronger than before. Torn ligaments wove themselves together with threads of darkness. His bruised ribs solidified, the bone taking on a subtle, obsidian sheen under the new flesh. The process was silent and swift.
He opened his eyes.
He was still in the cave, but he could see everything. He could see the individual grains of mineral in the rock walls. He could see the heat signatures of worms burrowing in the earth. He could see past the hole above, through the canopy, to the glittering tapestry of the galaxy, each star a distinct, fiery point. His hearing picked up the scuttle of a beetle fifty feet away, the drip of water deep in the earth, the distant, twin pulses of hearts from the direction of a campsite over a mile distant.
He sat up. The movement was effortless, fluid, powerful. He looked at his hands. They were his hands—long fingers, the familiar scar on his thumb from a childhood accident. But he could feel the potential in them. He could crush stone. He could tear metal.
And he was hungry.
A deep, primal, gnawing hunger that originated in his dead stomach and screamed through every cell. It was a thirst, a need for the hot, salty, life-giving river that the True Vampire memories promised. Blood. The Void within him thrilled at the prospect. It wasn't just sustenance; the act of taking it, of inspiring terror in the donor, was play.
He rose to his feet. His injured ankle was a forgotten memory. He looked up at the hole, ten feet above. Without a thought, he crouched and leapt. He shot upward, clearing the edge effortlessly, landing in a silent crouch on the soft forest floor.
The two heartbeats were louder now. A campsite. He could smell woodsmoke, cheap beer, sweat, and the intoxicating, coppery perfume of their blood.
The Void whispered, showing him paths of shadow, teaching him how to move without sound, how to make the very darkness cling to him. The Vampire strength coiled in his limbs.
He didn't run. He flowed through the trees, a phantom.
He found them at a small clearing—two college-age hikers, a man and a woman, laughing by a dying fire, passing a bottle.
They never saw him coming.
One moment, the man was reaching for the bottle. The next, a force like a speeding car lifted him off the ground and slammed him into the trunk of a massive redwood. The crack of his spine was loud and final. The woman had time to draw breath for a scream.
It died in her throat as Stiles was suddenly in front of her, his hand around her jaw, tilting her head back to expose the delicate, throbbing line of her neck. His eyes, which she saw in her last moments, were no longer warm amber. They were pits of darkness, flecked with distant, cold starlight and a ring of molten gold around the dilated pupils—the sign of the awakened Kitsune.
His lips pulled back. His canines, which had always been slightly pointed, elongated into sharp, brutal fangs. They were not delicate. They were tools for tearing, for opening a fountain.
He struck.
The sensation was beyond anything. The hot flood of blood into his mouth was not just nourishment; it was ecstasy. It was power, heat, life, and memory all rushing into him. He drank greedily, gulping down her essence, her biology-major worries, her love for her dog, the lingering taste of cheap wine on her tongue. The Void savored the exquisite terror that spiked in her blood just before the end, a final, flavorful note.
Her body grew cold and slack in his grasp. He let her drop, a husk, to the forest floor, her blood still warm on his lips.
The hunger, temporarily abated, roared back, sharper, more demanding. He turned to the man's body, the spine twisted at an impossible angle but the heart still giving a few last, weak pumps. Stiles was on him in an instant, fangs sinking into the carotid. This blood was different—adrenaline-sharp, male, tinged with the sour note of sudden agony. He drank until there was nothing but a hollow, dry pull.
He stood over the two pale bodies, licking the last drops of crimson from his lips. His skin, which had felt cold and dead, now hummed with stolen vitality. Strength, vibrant and terrible, sang in his veins. The physical power was intoxicating. But it was the act itself that truly awakened the second half of his nature.
As the last of the hot blood settled within him, the Void Kitsune stretched, fully aroused. It tasted the lingering echo of the woman's terror, the man's shock. It relished the intimacy of the violence, the beautiful, brutal efficiency of it. It was a flavor more complex than the life-force itself.
A game, the Void spirit mused, its thoughts now Stiles's thoughts. All of this… it's a game of hunger and fear. And we have just learned the first, most delicious rule.
Stiles looked down at his hands again. A few drops of blood stained his fingers. He brought them to his mouth, licking them clean with a slow, deliberate pass of his tongue. The metallic tang was glorious.
He could feel the two new souls inside him, tiny, muted sparks in the growing dark of his inner legion. He could summon their forms if he wished. He could use their knowledge. They were his first trophies.
A slow, unfamiliar smile touched his lips. It wasn't Stiles's lopsided, nervous grin. It was something colder, sharper, filled with a terrifying, intelligent curiosity and the afterglow of a first, perfect meal.
The pain of the porch was still there. The love for Clary was still there, a bright, aching scar. But it was now encased in something immense and ancient and hungry. It was no longer a weakness; it was a focus. A point of intense, personal interest in the eternal game.
He thought of Scott. Of his simple, happy smile as he took Clary away.
The Void whispered of interesting ways that jealousy could be expressed. The Vampire thirst whispered that Scott's blood would taste of loyalty and stolen affection—a vintage worth savoring.
He turned his back on the drained corpses and the dying fire. He had a life to return to. A performance to maintain. A father to protect. A sister… who he suddenly realized, with new, preternatural clarity, was drowning in her own silent, bloodless hell.
And a best friend who had taken what was his.
The hunger was sated for now, but it would return. It was a new, fundamental rhythm of his existence. The game, he decided as he melted back into the shadows, moving with impossible speed towards the lights of Beacon Hills, was indeed on. And he was now the most dangerous player on the board—a predator who needed to feed, and a trickster who loved to play with his food.
The hybrid was awake. And he was thirsty.