crazy people hang human skins from their rec room walls.”
I was shouting in the general direction of his voice, but he appeared out of the darkness, strolling down the center aisle of the church looking as well-groomed and tidy as he did in his video. Deerling was like an evil Ken doll who only came out of his packaging when people needed to see him in public. Like a weird android or something.
Man, if that had been the reality of it, I might have been relieved. Killer AI would be so much less repulsive to my mind than knowing a human being had been able to do this to another person.
Plus a robot could be put down by taking out his power source.
Though, I supposed, a human could be stopped the same way. It was just a bit bloodier.
“Human skins? My goodness, Sheriff, she does have an imagination on her, doesn’t she? Signs of a mental and emotional unbalance, I’d say. I’d recommend a psyche evaluation when you take her into custody. She could be a danger to herself or others.” He smirked at me.
Wilder hadn’t spoken since Timothy appeared, but I felt him now, close at my back. His presence alone calmed the flare-up of nerves I was feeling.
So Deerling and the sheriff wanted to play dumb? Fine. My boyfriend was a lawyer, my sister worked for an FBI task force, and my uncle was a goddamn king. I’d been raised to outsmart assholes like these.
As far as I could tell, neither of the men had realized the cameras were rolling. They were mounted far enough away from the pulpit the ready lights wouldn’t be obvious, and the crowd-facing camera was hidden so well even I didn’t know where it was.
If I could keep them focused on us long enough to get even a flimsy confession, that would be my best-case scenario.
“Was she pretty?” I held the fur up. “Did she have red hair, like your kids?”
Deerling stopped walking. His smirk faded.
Maybe I should have built up to the secret-family card, but I was in no mood to play games anymore. If he wanted to pretend I was crazy, I’d show him how crazy I could get.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. Six super cute kids. Beautiful mother. I bet the woman this fur came from looked a lot like her. I bet it made you mad, seeing a werewolf who looked so much like someone you loved, isn’t that right? How dare an animal make you feel things only a woman could? Was that it, Tim?” I used a dismissive nickname, hoping it would show him how little of my respect he was entitled to. “Maybe you had urges you didn’t like. Did you lust after her, the werewolf bitch?” I shook the fur at him, and he recoiled from me like I’d spit in his face.
This was working, but I didn’t know if it was enough to make him speak. I had to get him mad enough to lose control. So angry he would stop thinking and start shouting senseless threats.
I needed him to be so mad he got stupid.
“I know you like tying them up. That’s what you had them do to me. Did you tie her up so she couldn’t move, couldn’t fight you? Did you touch her?” Tears streamed down my cheeks, but I ignored them. I was disgusted by the thought of what he might have done to this woman, but the honest-to-God truth was my imagination had its limits, and those limits stopped short of what the real horrors probably were.
“Do I look like I would touch a filthy were-bitch?” he snapped. He lunged at me like he might rip the pelt out of my hands, but Wilder pulled me back, out of Deerling’s reach. I held tight to the fur. “Your kind isn’t worth the wood it would take to burn you. That’s what they did in the Middle Ages, you know? They burned witches and freaks. Cleaned the earth of scum like you.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Cleansing the world? Making it pure?”
“If I could rub the stain of your sin from the face of history, I would.”
Not quite. It was close, it was an acknowledgment, but it wasn’t a confession. I felt sick to my stomach subjecting myself, and anyone listening, to this hate speech. But it needed to be out there.
“You know the funny thing about the burnings you’re talking about? A lot of innocent