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What. The. Fuck.
It was like a Norman Rockwell painting as seen through the filtered lens of a doomsday cult.
The more I saw of Timothy Deerling’s carefully constructed world, the less I understood. The children around the table were clearly all related and most likely all belonging to the redheaded woman. Their ages seemed to vary enough that with a year or so between them, she could have mothered them all and still looked as young as she did.
I thought about Timothy’s beautiful pregnant wife kissing him goodbye on the front step of his house before he drove all the way out here to this. This…whatever it was. His other family? The little girl in the woods had talked about her daddy, and though I didn’t have any evidence she meant Deerling, I couldn’t help but notice a remarkable resemblance to Tim in the face of the oldest boy.
I had no idea what I was seeing here. It was too idyllic to process, considering I had almost been gutted less than a quarter mile away from where they were about to eat mashed potatoes and ham.
It would have been a picture postcard of familial bliss, except the woman’s faint smile faded as soon as the prayer was done and none of the children looked happy. They looked thin and wild, their hair and clothes unkempt. Not so cheery after all.
Josie had said Timothy and Shannon moved here five years ago, but some of the kids were much older, ten, twelve years old even. How long had they been out here, and why had the little girl said they would need to move if they were seen?
This was a bonus mystery I had no way to solve right now, but it left me feeling sick with worry about what was going on inside that house.
Moving the knife from one hand to the other, I wiped my sweaty palm against my pants leg. The scent of magnolia wasn’t as dense here. Perhaps I was getting closer to the road out. A girl could only hope.
I gave one final glance to the unhappy family scene in the sad excuse for a mansion and shook my head. Whatever sympathy I had for those people was diminished by the memory of the little girl watching with her dead-eyed, passive interest as I was attacked and dragged off to certain death.
How many others like me had she seen die? Deerling had been killing wolves all over the state since before she was born. Was it a normal part of her daily routine to see people executed? She hadn’t even flinched while I was beaten.
Male chatter echoed down the trail, Anderson’s voice among them now. I’d never be able to forget how he sounded as long as I lived. His scent, masked by the terrible body spray, might have been trickier, but I had smelled his fear.
He couldn’t hide from me.
I was just hoping I could hide from them.
“He’s going to be pissed when he finds out.”
“If we can find her, it won’t matter. We need to find her before she gets back to town.”
Anderson snorted, but when he spoke, his voice was unmistakably nervous. “And what if she does? It won’t matter. No one will believe anything she says.”
The sound of an open-handed slap was unmistakable. One of the other men had struck Anderson hard enough my own cheek burned in response. “You fucking idiot. How could you have told her anything?”
“Y-you weren’t there, man. You d-didn’t see it. She’s not like any of the others. I never seen anything like her before.”
“Are you new? You’ve killed their kind before. Gut and dump, Anderson. When she started talking, you should have slit her damned throat. They do that to slaughterhouse pigs so they won’t squeal. These bitches are the same.”
I clenched my hands, palms itching, and bit down on my lip so hard I thought I might draw blood. The urge to burst out of the trees and claw their eyes out with my bare human hands was so intense I almost tasted it.
It would be bitter, but the sweetness of my revenge was all the sugar I needed.
Whoa, there, crazy face.
I took several deep breaths through my nose and pressed my back to the tree. I’d been crouching long enough my thighs were starting to burn, but I didn’t dare sit in case the leaves beneath me crunched loud enough to draw attention.
Whatever was said or done next, I had to keep my shit together. It didn’t take a genius to realize my new fiery powers were activated by high emotion. Specifically by rage.
One flare-up would show them exactly where I was. It would be impossible to miss a fireball in the woods now that the sun was gone and the sky was the same purple of a fresh bruise.
I breathed as evenly as I could and imagined soothing things. I thought of the way light filtered through leaves in the swamp and turned them to green stained glass. I remembered the smell of Lina’s roast chicken and the way strawberry beer tasted. I tried to conjure an image of Cash’s smile, but got Wilder’s squinty-eyed smirk instead.
It didn’t matter, as long as it worked.
I told myself it was the werewolf in me, recognizing a pack connection, finding comfort in the familiar. My brain was lying to protect itself, and for now I didn’t care.
I pictured his eyes and their stupidly beautiful flecks of green.
