"DID YOU BRING HIM?" questioned Gerard Argent when Allison, Scott, and April walked into his room where he was kept in the Beacon Hills Nursing Home. He turned around in his wheel chair so that they could see the black blood pouring from his nose. "Oh. Oh, come in, Scott, and give an old man something for his pain. Oh, and Miss Sharpe. I see you've healed spectacularly."

The blonde girl glared at him as she recalled the wrist and neck injuries that she sustained because of him grabbing her and holding a knife to her throat. Allison whispered to the werewolf, "You don't have to do this."

April had decided to come with Allison and Scott because she had had nothing better to do that day, and she wanted to feel like she was doing something to help the problem ever though she wasn't actually doing anything.

 "If you want me to talk, this is how it's going to happen," the old man told them.
Scott walked over to the man slowly and grabbed him arm violently, staring him right in the eyes so that he knew that he was serious. "If I do this, you have to tell us everything you know. Everything."

Then, his veins turned black as Gerard's head tilted back. The Argent man groaned as his pain was taken away by the boy in front of him. Despite the fact that they had beat him, he still found ways to manipulate them. 

"They found a third body?" he asked after the teenagers told him everything about the sacrifices and all of the deaths that were happening. They wanted to see if he knew anything about what was happening.

"Another doctor. Right after Scott found Deaton," his granddaughter confirmed with a small nod. 

"Right after?" he quizzed with raised eyebrows, and then he looked past them at nothing in particular as he muttered, "Almost like it was expected that he's survive..."

The McCall boy looked at him in confusion. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"How do you know your dark Druid isn't your wise veterinarian himself? Maybe he knew you'd find him. Maybe he planned it that way," the hunter responded suspiciously. 

Scott shook his head, quickly shutting the idea down. "He would never let anyone innocent die."

"Don't be so sure," the old man informed them with a small smirk that was making the Sharpe girl uncomfortably. "You'd be surprised how far some people would go to get rid of someone like Deucalion."

"Or someone like you?" the werewolf scoffed.

"I don't go easily, though, do I?" the man said with an amused expression before gesturing to the fluid coming from almost every hole in his face. "You know, Scott, you've made me something of a celebrity here. I'm a medical mystery. The cancer is now virtually undetectable, but the doctors have no clue why my body keeps producing and ejecting this bizarre black fluid."

Scott growled lowly and angrily since he was not actually telling them anything before he told him firmly. "I did what you wanted me to do. Tell us how to beat him."

"You can't. I've tried," Gerard informed them, and April rolled her eyes in annoyance. Why the hell were they there if there was no way to defeat Deucalion?

"Then this is a complete waste of time. He doesn't know anything," Allison exclaimed dramatically, voicing the blonde girl's thoughts as she opened the door again. She looked to her ex. "Sorry you did this. Let's go."

April nodded. "Yeah, let's go, Scott." They all began to head back out the door, and that was when Gerard yelled for them to stop.

"Wait! I can tell you one thing. Deucalion may have lost his eyes, but he's not always blind."

《❀》

GERARD FINISHED TELLING THEM ABOUT some weird werewolf meeting that happened years earlier. "They were all there. Ennis, Kali, Deucalion, each with their own packs before they'd killed them all and decided to form their little all-star team."

"But they didn't all live here, did they?" Allison asked him.

"No, but there was an exceptionally powerful Alpha who did live here — she had a capacity to shapeshift that was rare among her kind, that made her something of a leader. The kind of person that they would go to for advice and guidance," he announced. "Talia Hale."

Talia, Derek's mother, was one of the very rare werewolves that could become an actual wolf. She was the Alpha of the Hale pack, and she held meetings with other packs to discuss their werewolf business.

As he continued his story, April sat down on one of the many chairs because she had the feeling that they were going to be there for a little while. She kind of zoned out when he got to a part about him and Chris finding some symbol, and Allison asked, "How does he know all about Celtic symbols and Druids?"

"Know thy enemy, Allison," the Argent man explained to her. "The older wolves had a relationship with the Druids. They called them emissaries. Do you know the myth of Lycaon?" 

"I know it's where we get the word 'lycanthropy,'" the Sharpe girl pointed out, proud that she actually knew something about what he was talking about. They all looked over to her, and she sunk down in her seat.

Gerard continued, "According to myth, some Greek citizens believed they owed their lives more to Prometheus than to the gods of Olympus, and some followers even took names to honor the Titans instead of the gods."

"Like Deucalion," Scott muttered.

"The son of Prometheus," the hunter said after nodding at the McCall boy and confirming his statement. "Lycaon didn't just refuse to honor the gods-- he challenged them. He invited Zeus to a banquet and then tried to serve him the flesh of a human being. Angered, Zeus blew the place apart with lightning bolts and then punished Lycaon and his sons by turning them into wolves. The part that's lesser known is how Lycaon sought out the Druids to help turn him back to human."

April furrowed her eyebrows, leaning forward in her seat and resting her elbows on her knees. "Why Druids?" They all glanced at her, surprised that she asked a good question."

"The belief was that the ancient Druids knew how to shapeshift. They couldn't make Lycaon and his sons human again, but they did teach them how to shift back and forth. And so, the Druids became important advisors to the packs," the old man said.

After more and more boring talking, he went on, "I wasn't really surprised when Deaton came to arrange a meeting with Deucalion. As William Blake said, 'Any sinister person who means to be your enemy always starts by trying to become your friend.'"

"How do you know he wasn't there to make peace?" Allison questioned with raised eyebrows.

"Because I'm not an idiot!" the hunter shouted, banging his fist on a table next to him and causing the Sharpe girl jump a little bit. That made him smile smugly. "Do you know the Sanskrit fable of the Scorpion and the Turtle?"

"Yeah. The Scorpion asks the Turtle for a ride across the river..." the werewolf trailed off.

Gerard nodded along before he continued for him. "And when the Scorpion stings the Turtle, dooming them both, what does he say to explain his behavior?"

"'It's my nature,'" Scott answered, and a look of realization passed his and Allison's face. April had not really been paying attention, so she was still confused. 

"I know a Werewolf's nature. I knew exactly what was coming..." the man sneered bitterly, looking off into the distance as if he was remembering what happened in his past. "A trap." 

Allison asked him, "They attacked you?"

"It was an ambush," the old man told them, but April was pretty sure that the werewolves actually wanted peace. The hunters were the ones that ambushed them. She did not know why they were even listening to this liar of a guy.

He continued his story, and the blonde girl tuned him out until he said one very important detail. Scott looked up at the old man in slight shock. "He sees as a wolf?"

"Maybe we can use that against him," the Argent girl suggested, and the three teenagers got up and grabbed their bags as they got ready to leave. They needed to bring that information back fast.

"Scott," the man called from his wheelchair, causing them to pause and look over at him, waiting for him to speak so that they could get going. "Oh, I think about you sometimes, Scott. I do! I wonder, what if I'd done things differently? Getting the bite to cure my cancer? And I wonder when it became my nature to believe most things couldn't be asked for, but had to be taken."

The McCall boy sighed as he looked down at the poor excuse for a man. "The whole time that you were telling your story, I was listening to your heartbeat. It never went up. It never went down. It was steady the whole time."

"Because I was telling the truth!" Gerard insisted.

"Or because you're a really good liar," the werewolf countered. He leaned down and grabbed the man's hand, gripping so hard that cracking noises could be heard from where April was standing across the room. He grunted out aggressively, "If you lied, and it gets people hurt, I'll be back to take away more than just your pain."

Then, they left with information that could be really helpful.