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But Secret wouldn’t always be around. And I wasn’t the same naïve girl I’d been when she brought me out of the swamp four years earlier. She’d taught me to choose my battles wisely, and starting with this one wasn’t smart. I should leave Callum well enough alone.
“I appreciate that, sir.” Wilder nodded politely.
“But I didn’t ask you here to thank you.”
“Okay.” The younger wolf didn’t seem all too surprised by this, and I wondered if he’d been expecting to hear from Callum. I got the feeling I’d been kept out of the loop since I’d left for Tulane.
“I’m sure you’ve heard reports about the Church of Morning’s new initiative.” The name sounded like a curse word coming from Callum’s lips, as though it tasted bad on his tongue and he wanted to be rid of it.
“Yessir.”
“And I know you came to me last month out of concern for Hank.”
Wilder adjusted in his chair, and suddenly his arm was against mine, the heat from his skin a shock of warmth that made my hair stand on end. His whole body had gone tense, and with him so close I was able to feel the vibration of his worry. What had previously felt like an innocent comment now brought the weight of the world down on me.
I resisted the urge to take Wilder’s hand and squeeze it. Why the hell would I do something like that? I barely knew the guy, and certainly not well enough to hold his hand in front of my family. Yet the urge was there. I glanced at him and tried to convey a sense of comfort, though I still wasn’t sure what compelled me to.
I needed to know he was okay, and I got the feeling what we were about to hear would make him anything but.
“I received an email earlier today concerning the pack. When I didn’t respond, they sent me a follow-up. This just came through a few minutes ago.” Callum opened his laptop and pivoted the screen to face us, clicking the space bar to start a video. Ben and I were forced to lean over Wilder in order to get a clear view of the screen, and I used it as my excuse to brace against him, squeezing his wrist. I caught him glancing at me quickly before he turned his attention back to the screen.
A thirty-somethin
g blond man with a ruffled haircut, who should have been beside the definition of towheaded in the dictionary, smiled benevolently at the camera. He radiated the easy charm of a young pastor or a Sunday-school teacher, and everything about his appearance invited trust.
Naturally he made me uneasy.
He wore a white polo shirt embroidered in gold thread with the name “Church of Morning” and their emblem—which I recognized from my brief exposure to their past propaganda—the half circle of a sun coming over a horizon, like a child’s drawing.
“Good afternoon, Callum. My name is Timothy Deerling. I am the leader of the Church of Morning.”
The leader? From what little I’d learned about the Church in the past, I didn’t know they had a leader. They’d been around since we’d come out, but had long been more of a joke than anything to be worried about. Except now they were only getting national attention. They also covered their tracks well. No searches had turned up an address or suspected location of their church, and they broadcast their “sermons” through public access channels and a website video feed. YouTube was full of their videos, but those all featured actors in staged situations, interacting with werewolves and vampires straight out of a Bela Lugosi movie. So who was this Deerling guy? I hadn’t watched any of the sermons, which might explain why I didn’t know his name or face. It also didn’t escape my attention he’d said leader and not any traditional religious title.
“I have no doubt you’ve heard what my group has had to say, and I know we have not been the first. You and your army of abominations cannot be allowed to live amongst us unchecked any longer. I fear my threats may fall on deaf ears because of my less motivated predecessors. I know you may have ignored my earlier message, but let me assure you I mean to do precisely what I’ve promised.”
The whole time he spoke he continued to smile, making him appear more and more like a sociopath with each passing second.
“To prove to you I am a man of my word, I have brought a member of your pack to my compound.” The camera shifted, and instead of focusing on a plain white wall there was a row of squat metal cages, though the bars were much thicker than one would expect on a kennel.
My breath came up short, like my lungs were being squeezed by a vise and getting air in and out was a Herculean effort. I’d never been caged, but I had seen the outcome of captivity and what it did to animals and humans alike. No one deserved to be locked up in a cage that size. Or any size.
Shaky camera work made the scene jerk and become unfocused as we followed Timothy across the space. Briefly we were shown nothing but a concrete floor, and just as suddenly the camera panned back up and focused on one cage close up, Timothy squatting in front of it, out of arms reach.
It took me a minute to realize what we were looking at, but Wilder got there first.
“Son of a bitch.”
Dirty and disheveled was nothing new for Hank Shaw. In my few personal interactions with him—none of which I remembered fondly—he had smelled as bad as he looked. But once I understood I was seeing a man I knew crammed inside one of those too-small cages, I resisted the natural reaction to vomit all over the laptop.
Fighting a wave of bile in my throat before I was able to speak, I muttered, “Oh my God.” It was the only thing I could think to add to the conversation. No words of comfort sprang to mind.
He was more unshaven than usual, with perhaps a week’s worth of beard on his face. Aging facial hair on a werewolf was difficult because they could often grow hair much faster than the average man. But I had a good sense of Hank’s standard appearance, and he was hairier and rougher than was his norm.
Callum was as impassive as ever, and Ben seemed only casually interested, the way someone might be if they were driving past a car accident. I knew no one liked Hank, myself included, but their lack of empathy surprised me. I could write it off in Callum’s case since he’d already watched the video and there were no surprises here for him, but Ben should have shown at least some emotion. I couldn’t decide if I was more stunned or disappointed by the lack.
Timothy must have been allowing a dramatic pause for reaction because he hadn’t spoken the entire time we drank in the scene. This guy was a born showman, making me wonder why the Church wasn’t using him on a more regular basis. He had the kind of inoffensive handsomeness that lured people in en masse and invited trust where none was deserved.
Kind of like Ted Bundy.
