Bayou Blues by Sierra Dean Read Free Book Online Page A

by way of a well-stocked trust fund. Even if I did pay the bill for my car, it would be coming out of his pocket. Still, I didn’t like him taking the illusion of my independence away from me. It made me feel weak and incapable, and I hated for Ben and Wilder to see me as a spoiled princess.
    I bit my lip to keep from saying anything snarky and silently wished my sister was here to stand up for me.
    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-something 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