Scott McCall's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

Scott and Stiles never made it to the locked case. They cut through the trees behind the school and stopped cold. Fresh prints pressed into the soft dirt. Four-toed. Clawed. Too neat to be a dog. Stiles crouched and held the black coin next to one. The jackal on the coin matched the shape in the ground. "These weren't here yesterday," Scott said. He pulled out his phone and snapped photos from every angle. The prints walked a straight line toward the road, then vanished. Scott already knew where they needed to go next. The animal clinic smelled like clean metal and old paper. Deaton spread the photos across the steel table and set the coin beside them. He studied both for a long time. "The print is jackal," he said. "But look at the stride. Too long. Bipedal in places." He tapped the coin's stamped doorway. "And this script isn't just decoration. It's a name." Deaton pulled a worn book from a shelf behind him, an orange-spined thing tucked between bright covers. He opened it to a marked page and turned it toward Scott. The same doorway. The same jackal. A word underneath in plain English. "Anubite," Deaton read. "A servant of the underworld god. Walks on two legs. Hunts on four. The coin is a marker. It leaves them on people it has chosen." Stiles went pale. Scott felt the cold coin in his pocket like a stone. The thing had a name now. It had a shape. And it had picked Stiles on purpose. "How do we stop it without killing it?" Scott asked. Deaton closed the book slowly. "You'd need its jars. The ones that hold its pieces. Find those, and you can bind it back." Scott took the book. He didn't say thank you. He just looked at Stiles and nodded once. The predator had a name. The next thing they needed was older, buried, and waiting somewhere they hadn't searched yet.