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There’s a goat outside of Melissa McCall’s house.
Scott’s helmet is dangling from its mouth by the chinstrap.
Now, on one hand, Scott doesn’t exactly need a helmet, but on the other hand, his mom might kill him if she ever saw him driving around town without one and his Alpha might kill him for doing something that could result in their exposure, and on the other other hand: it’s his fucking helmet.
“That doesn’t belong to you,” he tells the goat, inching forward. He wishes he had taken the livestock course Deaton suggested last semester. “Here, nice little goatie. Shh.”
The goat’s mouth shifts side-to-side and Scott winces at the audible snap of the clip. “Come on, dude, just hand it over.”
The goat takes a single step forward. Scott sucks in a breath, hand extending. “It’s fine,” he whispers, more to himself than the animal. “Everything is fine.”
One of his fingers touches the smooth, silver surface and the goat doesn’t move. Scott slowly exhales. Good. This is fine, this is —
The goat drops the helmet and screams. There’s no other word for it. It’s grating; nails on a chalkboard have nothing on the visceral, tangible screech that rips through his eardrums, sending shivers down Scott’s entire body. It’s blood-curdling: Lydia could take lessons.
Scott stumbles backward, hands flying to his ears. “What the fuck, what the fuck,” he chants.
“…and we have to do something about it,” Scott finishes, looking around the loft.
“Do we, though?” Stiles spreads his hands next to Derek. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ll check the bestiary, but —” he shrugs, “— I don’t think just ‘yelling goat’ is gonna pull much up.”
“You don’t get it,” Scott says fervently. “I’m pretty sure that thing was possessed.”
“As the resident expert on possession,” Stiles counters, grinning unrepentantly at Derek’s sudden frown, “this, I gotta see to believe.”
“It’s not funny,” Scott grouches.
Isaac shrugs. “It kind of is.”
“Aw, honey, I know it isn’t,” Allison says soothingly.
“Dude, just you wait.” Scott glowers at Isaac. “You’ll see.”
Isaac rolls his eyes, the traitor. “Yeah, I’ll see the big, bad, terrifying goat.”
“Hey —”
Derek interrupts Scott: “If anyone sees it, we’ll look into it, okay?”
That’s all he can ask for.
Allison leans up on her tip-toes outside of their house the next day, wrapping Isaac’s scarf around his neck and pressing a kiss to his cheek. He smiles down at her, then reaches out a hand to Scott. “Ready?” he asks.
Scott takes his hand with a smile of his own. He tosses the keys to Allison and leads Isaac around to the other side of the car, only — Isaac doesn’t follow.
Scott frowns as his arm goes taut, fully extended behind him. “Isaac?”
“Scott.” It’s a whisper. Scott turns.
Isaac’s eyes are huge, flicking between Scott and down at the goat attached to one end of his scarf. “Scott,” he repeats through clenched teeth, “look at its eyes.”
There is no white in the goat’s eyes. Instead, the sclera is entirely gold, angrily blazing, cut through by black, demonic-looking rectangles. The goat’s eyes roll in their sockets and Scott feels the pit of his stomach drop when they settle on him. It’s as though all of the warmth in the world has been consumed, sucked in through those horrifying, rectangular pits. The goat’s teeth, huge, blunt things extending from its lower jaw, gnash. Its white beard tangles with the fringe of Isaac’s scarf.
“Don’t move,” Scott whispers back.
“I’m not!” Isaac hisses, doing his best impression of a petrified angel statue.
The car starts up beside them, and they both jump.
“Jesus—” Scott gets out.
“Holy fu—” Isaac begins.
“I WILL KILL YOU AND ALL OF YOUR CHILDREN AND RAIN HELLFIRE DOWN ON EARTH,” the goat yells.
At least that’s what Scott assumes the noise means.
Scott pivots to the door, fingers scrabbling at the handle. Beside him, he can hear Isaac doing the same. He flings the door open and throws himself inside, slamming it behind him.
“Boys?” Allison asks. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” Isaac says, strangled. “No, it’s really not.”
“It looked at you.” Stiles glances between them, a pen caught between his lips. “The goat. It looked at you, then bleated — which is a totally normal thing for goats to do, by the way — and that’s enough for you to call us.”
“You don’t get it,” Isaac insists.
“It’s evil!” Scott exclaims.
“The goat,” Derek says. “The goat is evil.”
“That’s what they’re saying, o’Alpha ‘o mine,” Stiles says agreeably. He points with his half-chewed pen at Isaac. “You know goats are browsers, right? Maybe you shouldn’t wear such tempting things at goat-height. Those tassels are just asking for someone to bite them.”
“Putting aside the fact that you just victim-blamed Isaac’s apparel,” Allison drawls, “it’s now shown up outside two pack member’s homes. I think that warrants a little more gravity.”
“Fine, fine, fine,” Stiles grouses, throwing his hand up. Derek narrowly dodges getting whacked in the eye with the decimated pen cap. “I’ll do my research.”
Scott rubs at his eyes blearily as he leaves the bedroom and makes his way to the kitchen. He hates being the first one up, tried for ages to get out of it by convincing his partners that he was unable to use the coffee machine. He’s gotta use his cute, dumb puppy looks for something, after all.
“But they do make it better,” he grumbles to himself, clicking on the machine to start warming the water up before turning to the pantry.
He opens the door and reaches by habit for the coffee can. He frowns, hand sliding along the shelf where it belongs. It’s not there. He reaches overhead for the pull chord for the lights. His eyes scrunch closed at the sudden brightness, and he winces, head jerking back. When he opens his eyes, he blinks back the stars in his vision.
Then he screams.
“It was in our house, Stiles!” Scott paces in front of the couch in his living room. He’s still in his pajamas; they all are. It’s six in the morning, after all. “How did it get in? It doesn’t have opposable thumbs!”
“Your back door does have that push-down handle.”
“Which we lock,” Allison retorts.
Stiles heaves a massive yawn, glancing at Derek. “Are you sure it was there?”
“It was there!” Scott yells. “It was fucking there!”
Stiles raises his hands. “Listen, we’ve all had our share of hallucinations —”
Isaac interrupts, “I saw its hoof-prints in the spilled coffee.”
“Hmm,” Derek, ever-useful, says.
“Weird about the coffee,” Stiles muses. “Maybe it was just trying to eat the can.”
“Naw, man, I’ve done my research,” Scott says. He knows his eyes are huge, ringed by shadows. “Goats don’t actually eat tin cans, that’s just a myth.”
“Unless this one does,” Isaac says on an inhale. “A regular goat can’t actually digest tin, but this one? I wouldn’t put it past it.”
“Maybe…” Stiles bites at his thumbnail, brow furrowed. “I wonder if…” Derek reaches over to slap his hand away from his mouth, and Stiles transfers his glare to him. “Hey.”
“We’ve talked about that.”
Stiles smirks. “Yeah, but you like it.”
Derek’s cheeks darken in a blush, and Scott really, really does not have time for this. “Stiles!” he shouts. “We have a serious problem here.”
“You’re right,” Stiles says, apologetic. He glances to Derek before offering, “Look, you guys can stay over tonight. Surely nothing’s gonna mess with you at the loft, right?”
When Scott goes to leave the next day, there’s a message for him.
His heart pounds and he backs up into the apartment complex, sprints to the elevator. He can’t push the up button fast enough.
The entire ride up only serves to amp up his nerves. By the time he’s busting through Derek’s door, his pulse is racing and he’s sweating bullets.
“Scott?” Derek asks. Allison and Isaac look up from their seats at the table, and Stiles pokes his head around the doorway to the kitchen.
Scott gulps, his back plastered against the front door. “It left a message.”
“A message?” Stiles asks, mumbling through the spoon in his mouth. “How can a goat —”
“By fucking chewing it into the grass!” Scott explodes. “It chewed! Me! A message! In the grass!”
“What?” Allison asks, rising to her feet.
“Look for yourself.” Scott gestures toward the window. Everyone rushes over.
Isaac’s nose presses against the glass as he reads the message in soft, stilted words. “I'll get you, Scott Alfred McCall.”
“Is this what a heart attack feels like?” Scott wonders.
“I’m going to kill it,” Allison promises darkly.
“Smart goat,” Stiles comments.
When Scott comes back from work that afternoon, he’s accompanied by both of his partners. Allison wouldn’t let him go alone, and honestly, he didn’t try to convince her otherwise.
“He’s had the whole day to research.” Allison runs her hand down his arm softly as they get in the elevator.
“Surely he’s found something by now,” Isaac adds, even though Scott can smell Isaac’s anxiety.
The elevator pings when it reaches the top floor and they get out. Scott is unashamed to say they let Allison enter the hallway first, hand on her belt knife.
It’s clear, so they continue to Derek’s door, lock newly replaced after Scott’s entrance yesterday. Allison knocks.
There is no answer.
“They’re supposed to be here,” Isaac says slowly.
Scott nods. He knows.
Allison knocks again. “Derek? Stiles?”
Nothing.
“On three?” she asks.
They nod.
The new lock goes flying across the main room as Scott kicks the door down.
It hits the goat, who is standing on Derek’s chest, its diabolical, unholy mouth clamped around his neck, directly in one eye.
The goat topples over and Scott pauses in the doorway.
“Did I — did I just —”
“Don’t wait!” Allison yells, pushing past him. “Get it while it’s down!”
“No!”
They freeze halfway across the room. Allison has her knife in hand, her hair whipping to the front of her face as she skids to a stop. Scott’s claws are extended a half-step behind her, and Isaac’s following another step further.
“No, I —” Derek scrambles to his knees. Scott doesn’t see blood or a bite on his throat, though he only gets a moment’s glance as Derek spins to look down at the goat.
It’s lying on its side, all four legs extended straight. If Scott’s heart wasn’t pounding, he’d almost think it looked funny, kind of like those little fainting goat videos he used to find cute, before this reign of terror.
Derek leans forward and Isaac inhales sharply, whispering, “Careful!”
Derek reaches down and — cups the goat’s jaw?
One of the goat’s eyes slits open and Scott shudders as hell on earth is exposed. But Derek? Derek exhales in relief. “You’re okay,” he murmurs.
The goat blinks once, twice, and then its body twists, the air around it going blurry, and then Stiles is lying naked on the floor. He winces, one hand going to the red mark that’s rapidly blooming into a bruise around his eye. “Well that backfired,” he mutters.
Scott’s brain spins. “You —” he starts.
“What,” Isaac says more than asks.
“I’m going,” Allison says, “to kill you. Painfully.”
“Couldn’t you have aimed a little to the side, Scotty?” Stiles tries to blink his eye open. He looks stupid. Good. “I could headbutt a steel door all day long, but the eyes? Ouch.”
“You —” Scott says again.
“Murder,” Allison fumes. “Slow, painful murder.”
“Figures Stilinski would turn into a goat,” Isaac grumbles. “Stubborn assholes who chew on shit 24/7. So fitting.”
“He gets it!” Stiles crows approvingly.
“Bad habits in both forms,” Derek mutters.
Stiles sits up, eyes Allison cautiously, then grins wide and goes for it. “Come on, guys, don’t be mad. I was just kidding around!”
Scott’s not even a little sorry that he doesn’t stop Allison from tackling him.