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He’d been killing my kind since the world thought we were nothing more than Hollywood horror movie fodder. And if he’d known the whole time, he’d kept the truth to himself for seven years. Timothy Deerling wasn’t a crusader, trying to protect humans from werewolves.
I’d thought he was a psycho from the get go.
Now I knew how right I was.
“Why?” I knew no answer he gave would satisfy me, but I wanted to know what he was telling his people to convince them.
“They’re sacrifices. We kill them to keep the rest of you animals at bay. By purifying the bodies, the demons stay away.”
I was right. The answer did nothing to calm my rage.
I stooped down and picked up the knife, slipping it through the back of my belt.
“One last question.”
Anderson blinked at me, nodding stupidly.
“Where are my fucking shoes?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Outside, the sun was starting to set, casting the area around the cabin in a gloomy purple hue. The trees had been allowed to grow wild around the small structure, and they blotted out what remained of the sunlight.
Using a piece of two-by-four, I wedged the door shut. It wouldn’t keep Anderson trapped there long, but I also suspected he wouldn’t be in a big hurry to come after me.
My head was swimming, a combination of coming down off the magic and something else. Like the early morning outside the church, my brain felt like it had been wrapped in gauze. Everything I’d just experienced was more like a crazy dream fading away at dawn, instead of a real memory. I might need to cut back on the magic once we got out of this town.
Anderson didn’t have my shoes, so I padded barefoot around the perimeter of the cabin, trying to ignore the pain from my feet. When I was a child, I had run through the woods without shoes all the time. I’d been accustomed to it, with thick skin on my soles. Even in the swamp I had learned to adjust to walking through the boggy areas and enjoy the feel of moss and muck between my toes.
Since settling back into human society, though, my feet had gotten delicate. The smallest twigs and rocks made me wince in pain.
A beat-up truck was parked next to the shack, but a quick glance inside showed no signs of keys. I could have gone back in and demanded them from Anderson, but he might have been able to find another weapon in my short absence. The knife had been stored in there, after all. God knew what else he had hidden in his little shop of horrors.
“Fuck.” I slammed the truck door shut.
If I couldn’t take it, I sure as hell wasn’t going to let him. I used my new knife to slash each of the four tires, listening with sick satisfaction as the air hissed out of them.
I’d like to see him follow me now.
I peered through the backseat window to see if there was anything else worth taking. Nada. He clearly hadn’t been expecting to run into any difficulties when he came out here.
He also hadn’t been alone.
There’d been at least three distinctive voices when Wilder and I had been attacked, not counting the little girl. And where was Deerling? We’d come into the woods looking for his car, but I was fairly certain he hadn’t been among those who grabbed us. So where were the others?
Toying with the knife, I decided to keep it in my hand rather than stowing it. Without knowing what I was up against, I would much rather have a weapon easily accessible. Speaking of weapons, I wondered what had become of the gun I’d been carrying when I entered the woods.
It was probably with my shoes somewhere.
A path led away from the cabin, winding into the woods before it twisted out of sight. I heard nothing to suggest any other people were around, but I couldn’t hear anything. No birds, no insects. The only sounds were my anxious short breaths and the wind rustling the leaves overhead.
In the dim light I thought I might be able to take the path and remain undetected, but since I didn’t know what was waiting at the other end, I suspected it might be smarter to hide among the trees. I also had no way to gauge direction. I hadn’t been a Girl Scout, so even if the sun had been high above me, I wouldn’t have been able to guess which way was north. When I’d lived in the swamps of Maurepas, I hadn’t relied on a traditional sense of direction. I knew familiar locations and smells.
None of that was going to help me here. The air was thick with the cloying scent of magnolia, the sun had gone down, and nothing around me looked remarkable at all. Trees and more trees. I could try to find the highway, but unless I heard car sounds, I would be just as likely to get lost as to find my way back to civilization.
Being lost in the woods didn’t frighten me. I was used to alone time, and I could fend for myself against predators. The night would get cool, but not cold enough to be dangerous, since werewolves ran hot at the best of times.
I was more worried about what my absence would mean for everyone else. Cash and Wilder would be worried. They might have even gone to the police by now. It all depended on what Wilder had said when he got back to the motel.
