When the Fairy Tale is Shattered, the Nightmare Returns.

Scott and Stiles were sitting in a tree. A very, uncomfortable tree. They had been there for twenty minutes, watching Red through her bedroom window. Scott found this disturbing but Stiles said it was necessary for a stake out when cars weren't involved.

"Dude," Scott hissed "she hasn't done anything. Let's just go home. Before her dad shoots us."

"That's Allison's dad."

"Oh, right."

"Look, she's-wait,no. She's just getting her things together for school tomorrow. How do you think she's getting to school? Because I can drive her. If she's not, like, a werecat or something."

"STILES? We're here to make sure that she isn't going to be dangerous to any one. Not to see how responsive she'd be to your advances. And what the hell is a werecat?"

"I read about them in one of Deaton's book." Stiles said proudly. He had begged Deaton to let him help last week ,after they had rid the town of a homicidal darach and an equally scary pack of alphas, and Deaton had made him his 'apprentice'. It pretty much consisted of him reading gigantic, dusty books. Stiles had never been happier, if he was honest.

"Hey, Stiles?" Scott murmured slowly, "What is she doing?"Stiles leaned farther out of the tree, almost dislodging himself so that Scott had to frantically clutch the back of his shirt to keep him in the tree.

Red had placed a large poster board on her bed, she had out a few markers and was drawing something. Before Stiles could postulate some insane theory Red stood from the bed and walked to the window, poster in hand. In big black and blue letters it read:

WHY ARE YOU IN MY TREE?

Her brows were raised and a tiny smirk was placed on her face. Stiles had scrambled back, knocking into Scott who was already unsteady because of his shock. Combining Stiles' weight and his own embarrassment, Scott fell. Red let out a scream of fear that wasn't audible to the Stiles, only Scott. He twisted through the air and, more like one of Stiles' werecats than the alpha werewolf he was, landed on his feet in a crouch.

Red stared, seemingly shocked, then her lips pursed ,like Scott had personally just kicked a puppy, and she hastily slipped her curtains closed. Scott rose quickly, tipping his head to the side. What was that? He had heard her scream for him when he fell, hadn't he? Why didn't any girl he liked act...more...normal-ish?

"Dude!" Stiles hissed, scrambling/falling out of the tree,"What was that? Do you want her suspecting that you're a freakin' supernatural creature!?"

"That was my fault?"

"Yes!"

"We were only up there because you thought she was a werecat, which you still haven't fully explained to me, and now she's gonna think that we are freaks. The creepy, stalker kind!"

"Well, I put up with your angsty, teenage werewolf bull crap. You can take the blame on this one."

"Whatever, bro. Let's just go back to your house and see if your dad left us any pizza." Scott laughed.

Stiles nodded and started walking, noticing after about ten feet that Scott hadn't followed. He was staring up at her bedroom window with a forlorn face. "Scott, dude? You okay?"

"No ,I mean, yeah fine. Let's go." Scott clapped his shoulder as he went over to him. Walking to Stiles' house Scott kept looking back. Not once, not three times, nineteen times. Nineteen times. Stiles counted.

Stiles followed his best friend into the house, almost sighing out loud. He found another Allison. After a week of being utterly single. I hate him, just a little bit.
*******
Red was sitting on her bed, contemplating the decision she had in front of her. Her gut was screaming at her furiously, there was no way that this would end well. And she barely new Scott, or Stiles, so why she should put her neck on the line? And Scott was a werewolf, the alpha werewolf! She couldn't be thinking this. The music wasn't that loud but she tried focusing on it so she could reconcile herself with what she was, almost positively, going to do.

Case is closed, you're back into focus.
The jury's out, you're closing in.
This battle of mind over matter's spent.
This scar. This scar is not permanent.
Choices of chances, or what sinks in water.
Your secret's out, what you held within.
You've found your plague, your cancer, stop.
I bet you've got something clever.

This house is caving in. Your last words, caught trembling.
Decisions, make decisions for your fate.
Your choice is the chance that you have to take.
Burn, stop. Your time is up. You've found all of the answers
so take a breath and end this chapter,
I'll bring the fire if you bring the water.

Red stares at her iPod, her freaking music knew that she had already made a decision and that there was no going back, awesome.

Looks like she gets to have a heart to heart with her cousin tomorrow.

**************************

A dark blue Toyota pulls into Beacon Hills High School. A girl with dark brown hair,dark eyes and pale skin is driving, seemingly distracted. As she parks, her phone buzzes with a text. A small smile curls slightly across her face as she sees the name.

Isaac: Good morning, beautiful. I'm gonna b late for 1st period, but I'll b there. Don't worry. See you soon.

She forgets for a moment why she was so preoccupied. Allison sighed and tugged at the braid her hair was in. Her dad had been weird since yesterday morning, it had been a paranoid weird. He didn't let her go to Lydia's and insisted they bond. Which consisted of him following her around the apartment whenever she left her room and periodically checking up on her whenever she hid from him in her room. He had almost insisted on driving her but she slid out before he could grab his keys.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the passenger side door opening and someone getting in. That someone happened to be a beautiful blonde with piercing bright blue eyes and creamy skin. But the act of stranger getting into her car wasn't what shocked her, it was the fact that she wasn't a stranger at all.

"Dare?" Allison gasped/whispered. Allison hadn't seen Dharma since they were nine, playing with dolls and giggling about Uncle Jesse on Full House, but she still recognized her. They had called her Dare because it fit her personality and was close enough to her name that her mom wouldn't through a fit( her mother was odd about people being called by their proper names).' Dare' had made sense because she hadn't been afraid of anything and if you dared her to do anything she would do it.

"I'm glad to see you still recognize me. Uncle Chris must just be getting senile or somethings."

"Uncle...when did you see my dad?"

"Yesterday morning. You weren't home, though."

Allison felt stunned. She had been staying the night with Lydia, but it made sense now. Why her dad had become so clingy and paranoid. More hunters had come to town. "No, I was at a friend's."

"I'm guessing Lydia Martin's."

Allison went very still. "How did you-"

"We know everything, Alli. That's why we're here. An assessment."

"An assessment? What's an assessment?"

"You don't know anything, do you? God, you're screwed. No wonder they're going to kill people. Ignorance and stupidity runs pretty deep, it's a hard thing to dispatch."

Allison felt a pit of rage, part of the darkness that had hollowed out part of her heart just last week, spring to life. "If that's a threat you better back off. I will not have these people endangered. I will destroy you. And, I can. I will."

During her little mini-speech, Red's expression had turned to a mix self-hatred and condescension. "You'll destroy me? You'll destroy me? Just because you've seen people die, because your mother died,you think you can dish it out. You're ready for the real world because you and your makeshift pack stopped some steroid pumped mutts and a deformed witch-thing? You'll be destroyed. You've never had to kill, to ignore a friend's plea for mercy, to go on like nothing had changed, to make yourselfbelieve that nothing had actually changed." Red's snarling monologue had slowly turned into a whispered secret. She quickly composed herself to finish "That is the part that will kill you. The moving on. You don't know enough. You've done nothing to prepare for something of this magnitude."

"Then what do I do, give up? Give in? Stand back? I can't and I won't. I'll just be destroyed I guess, I faced the dark before. I can do it again, Dare."

"You'll be destroyed without help. I didn't say that I wouldn't help. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"Why?"

Red went through all the answers she had in her brain, rattling around, looking for an escape: Scott, Scott and Stiles, more Scott. But there was something more, a need for something that came along with the image of a bloodied body and a knife in a familiar,pale hand.

"I've done things I'm not proud of." A flash of Stiles' face came to her mind, pulling a quote from a superhero movie along with it. "I have red in my ledger, I'd like to wipe it out." But a sinister hiss from her own mind to finish that little scene for her, but can you? Can you wipe out that much red? Her heart clenched in remembrance, but she did what she told Allison she was going to have to do to survive, she kept going like nothing had ever happened.

Allison gave her a steady look "What do I have to do?"

Red's smirk came back to her face. A little surprised that Allison had trusted her, or seemingly trusted her, so quickly. "First things first, the name isn't Dare anymore. It's Red." Dare was a little girl. Red was a determined hunter. And, this was her hunt.

**************************

The Jeep came squealing into the student lot, drawing the attention of the freshman who had not yet become attuned to the oncoming of Stilinski's jeep. The engine shuddered as the driver shut it down, almost seeming to be thanking him.

"Stiles," Scott admonished with a laugh "You have got to get your car looked at."

Stiles slipped from behind the wheel, disgruntled, before answering. "The last time I took in my baby to get looked at, I was paralyzed and the mechanic was crushed to death because of Matt controlling lizard Jackson. I'm not opening myself up to something like that, again."

"Stiles-"

"MCCALL!" a man's voice shouted from across the lawn, cutting Scott's reply off. Coach Finstock stood there, beckoning with one index finger. "Come 'ere ,McCall! Don't make me ask twice ,buddy." Scott gulped, waved to Stiles and took off toward Coach, shouting a good bye over his shoulder. Stiles shook his head in sympathy, it probably had something to do with Scott's D in Economics.

Before he could head inside, he saw something that made him start putting together a puzzle in his head. Allison was walking in, not surprising or disturbing, but who she was walking in with was. A new, but recognizable blonde was walking in with her. Red.

A theory he had been making since her display of Olympic athletics in his house came flowing together. He was always right, of course, but a bad taste was filling his mouth. She was overly agile, she was very interested in the murders, her reaction to Scott's fall-angry not worried-, and now her already knowing Allison after a day of being here? None of it added up, unless you stretched it....

Then, it hit him. Sophomore year, Jackson had mentioned Allison's last name meant silver to Scott. Maybe, just maybe...

Scrambling with his phone, Stiles googled Lamarck. A few things came up but one made his heart start stuttering and his breath catch in his throat. The world tilted, the familiar taste of a panic attack bubbling up into his mouth. Those little words were throwing his world back into instability.

Northern wolfsbane, also known as yellow or Lamarck's wolfsbane...

Nothing mattered after that.

She had to be related to Allison, which made everything make perfect, horrifying, terrible sense. Even her nick name.

Red; Little Red Riding Hood. Ironic, because she was the predator in this story.

Red Lamarck was a werewolf hunter.

The world flipped as he realized that their peace had to be over, that nothing could be normal, that his best friend was screwed again.

Because Scott was already falling for another werewolf hunter.

"Ah, hellllllllll..." Stiles slurred as the dark emptiness ,that had burrowed into his chest last week when he gave himself as a substitute for his father, rose up and combined with the panic, frustration and fear he was already feeling overwhelmed him and pulled him into darkness.