Chapter Text
Stiles has a problem that he hasn’t really told anyone else about. Well, he would if he could have, but there really is no correct way to out yourself as a serial killer without getting locked up…
His first kill had transpired fairly early on, when he was about five. The neighbour’s cat had scratched his hand so he’d hit it with a rock… over and over again until he was covered in its blood. His mother had found him like that, smeared red with gore and leaning over the remains of the battered feline. She’d screamed at him, told him he was bad, and his father had grounded him for a whole month, threatening to put him in jail if he did anything like it again. They’d slowly moved on of course, but neither of his parents looked at him the same for a good while after that incident.
When the dementia began to take away his mother’s sanity, Stiles didn’t know how to react. He watched his father’s reactions, how his dad showed grief and did his best to mimic those expressions. Usually it didn’t work but, luckily, people took his lack of reaction as a sign of shock or misunderstanding. He was so young after all, how was he supposed to know what was really happening to his mother?
After a while of sitting beside his mother’s bed he began to grow bored though. He wasn’t allowed back to school; apparently the teachers didn’t think it would be the best place for a boy in his situation. For normal children this was supposed to be traumatic, but Stiles could muster little more than blank-indifference, maybe irritation if he tried hard enough. And his mother wasn’t helping.
Her state of mind had stripped all motherly instinct she had for him and, as a result, she was beginning to see him for the first time. She saw Stiles as the blank, emotionless slate he really was and was afraid of him.
At first her fear had excited him, it was new and the rush of power that came with it was all too exhilarating for an eight year old boy, but he soon grew tired of all the strange looks from the nurses. A person can only go around saying that their son wants to kill them for so long before people start to take notice. Stiles was young but the prospect of people finding out about his feelings- or lack of feelings- was terrifying to him. He remembered what had happened after the cat and he knew that if he was found out that it would be somehow worse this time.
So when his mother drifted off to sleep one night he left the room and, checking that there was no one outside, stole a needle and a bottle of something clear from the nurses’ trolley parked outside. He didn’t know what was in the bottle, looking back it was probably something harmless, but the half a syringe of air was more than enough to do the job.
His father was never the same after his mother died. They’d put her death down to her illness so there hadn’t been an autopsy and no reason for Stiles to be a suspect. He’d gotten away with it. He was eight and he’d already killed his first human. It was more than most killers could boast.
Things got bot better and worse as he grew. He learnt how to hide himself in a crowd and eventually blended in so well that even his father, the sheriff, couldn’t see behind his mask. Though that didn’t make things any easier, it did help him to understand people a little more. He wasn’t so reliant on guessing and dumb luck when it came to dealing with normal people anymore.
He spent a lot of his focus on suppressing the itch that had crawled under his skin ever since he’d killed his mother. It was a constant reminder of what he’d done and of just how much he’d liked it. Over the course of a couple of years he’d found ways of relieving it slightly- looking at his dad’s more gory crime scene photos helped, as did trapping and killing smaller forest creatures when he had the chance- but it never went away.
Three years after killing his mother, at the age of 11, Stiles killed again. It wasn’t planned, it had been a spur of the moment thing that his ADHD had driven, but it had happened none the less.
The day had been bright, too sunny to stay indoors, too hot to stay outside too long. He’d been cycling through the neighbourhood on his new bike when he’d come by a girl about his own age crying in the street. He (somehow, he wasn’t exactly the most charismatic of boys at that age) managed to lure her into the woods with the promise that he’d show her the stream where he caught frogs. She’d come along tearfully, brightening up at the prospect of an adventure and before long she was smiling and chatting away like they’d been friends forever. Stiles wasn’t sure how to react half the time but she didn’t seem to notice.
When they got to the stream Stiles smiled as he watched her inspect the clear water for a while. Her red hair and hazel eyes kept him transfixed as he observed the girl. He didn’t know what to do with her now he had her. It wasn’t until she turned away from him that something flipped in his brain and he pounced on her, pushing her head under that water of the stream. She struggled but he was bigger and stronger.
It was strange, as the life left her thin limbs, his body seemed to come alive. His heart picked up and the rush of adrenaline left him feeling almost drunk. The itch under his skin was all but gone and with its absence came a strange clarity. Stiles looked around the forest with fresh eyes; he could breathe for the first time since he’d killed his mother.
He left the body there, a rookie mistake but he didn’t know any better at the time, walking slowly back to his bike and heading home for dinner. They ate in comfortable silence but under Stiles’s skin was an almost electric current that made his heart beat faster and put a smile on his face.
The buzz didn’t last long though. The day after his first kill, his dad got the call that a girl (Lucy Morgan or whatever her name had been, he couldn’t quite remember) had been attacked in the woods. It hadn’t taken long for Stiles’s happy bubble to pop when he realised that there was a chance that he could actually be caught and go to jail. He was too young for jail.
He’d spent the next two weeks in a panicked state, listening in to all of his father’s phone calls when he could, reading any paper work his dad brought home and even going as far as to watch the news- something no boy should ever have to suffer through in his opinion.
After a fortnight of no leads with no breaks in the case though, things began to wind down. His father came home every night with a sad expression on his face and a slump in his shoulders. Stiles soon realised that he’d extremely been lucky. The night the body had spent in the water had probably washed away any forensic evidence and the fact that it had apparently rained that night had also helped.
He’d gotten away with it.
(Present Day)
“Another body’s been uncovered in the woods.” Lydia announced, strolling into their weekly pack meeting on six-inch heels that would have caused most women to run away screaming. How she could even walk on them, never mind strut, was another mystery Stiles couldn’t grasp. “That’s the third body they’ve found this week.”
“Aw, yes!” Erica whooped excitedly, fist pumping triumphantly.
“And why is that a good thing again?” asked Jackson as he came through the door just after Lydia, carrying the Chinese food they’d gone out to pick up.
Erica beamed at him, “Three bodies is the minimum victim count for a serial killer, duh!”
“I’m gonna ask again,” Jackson said, frowning, “why is that a good thing?”
Isaac nodded, “Yeah, surely a serial killer would be a bad thing for us. I mean, seriously, who do you think hunters are gonna blame for this?”
Derek looked up from where he’d been ignoring the bunch of unruly teenagers in his living room. He was about to say something but Allison cut him off, handing him a plate of food. “Unless the deaths are ruled animal attacks we don’t have to worry about much. Hunters don’t usually look into these types of cases because most of the time the killer really is human.” she said with a shrug, “My dad’s already called the morgue and apparently the wounds on the bodies were made with a knife, not claws.”
“That’s very reassuring.” Stiles muttered sarcastically, speaking for the first time.
He’d been unusually quiet for most of the pack meeting. The other’s probably just assumed he was apprehensive or something… not that he wasn’t, oh no, having three of the five bodies you stashed in the woods dug up by your dad is a very good excuse for apprehension. But the real reason for his silence was the simple fact that he wasn’t sure that he could comment on the subject without his heartbeat giving something away.
After his first real kill Stiles had buried his next few kills in a secluded part of the forest and it was these five victims that the police were now just starting to uncover. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the last two were brought to light. They were buried just meters apart after all.
These kills had been different from his first, who’d been left out in the open. Taken a little over six months apart, he’d used these next few victims to perfect his craft before moving onto better prey in towns surrounding Beacon Hills. They were the stepping stones that allowed him to graduate to a level most killers didn’t reach until their twenties or thirties.
What could he say? He was special… and it helped that his dad’s shift pattern also suited his needs perfectly. At times he could disappear for a day or two and his father would be none the wiser. He killed maybe once every few months now, a little dangerous considering the statistics, but he wasn’t too worried.
Over the years he’d managed to build up a bit of reputation outside of Beacon Hills for taking red-heads with big brown eyes and happy smiles. Age and gender didn’t really matter to him. Psychologically speaking, he guessed it had something to do with the girl he’d killed at the stream (was it Laura or Leah, he could never remember the name).
The papers had even given him a nickname after he’d accidentally gotten himself caught on CCTV, leaving a crime scene, with his red hoodie pulled up menacingly to cover his face.
They called him Little Red.
He hadn’t realised until after Scott was bitten how appropriate that name would be.
Any of his other bodies being discovered- even though it was impossible for most of them as they were little more than ash- wouldn’t have worried him. But these five were different. They were practically in his backyard. It wouldn’t take a genius to take one look at pics of the victims before they went into the ground, all fiery haired and dark eyed, and think ‘huh, maybe these were Little Red’s early kills? He probably lives in the area’.
If he hadn’t already, Stiles was sure his dad would link it back to the girl at the stream (had it been Leona, Lenore or Lesly?) and then things would get sticky.