Part 22 (1/2)

”He was? He was as evil as you?” she asked.

She stared Dayton down for a second more, then turned. ”Come on Winn, I gotta get some air. The stink of hypocrisy is choking me.”

She opened the door to the house and walked outside.

”If you harm her,” Winn said to Dayton as he turned to follow Deem, ”I'll kill you.”

”The skinwalker isn't my doing,” Dayton said. ”You two started that on your own.”

”I was in that bus, too, with Deem and her mother and aunt,” Winn said. ”Why hasn't it targeted me? It's funny that it only targeted Deem's family.”

”What you don't know could fill the world,” Dayton said. ”You don't even know yourself.”

”You really are a hypocrite,” Winn said.

”The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Dayton said. ”I don't expect a sodomite gentile like you to understand it. You're a far bigger threat to her than me, corrupting her spirit, destroying her chances at the celestial kingdom. She'd be better off if you'd just crawl back under that rock you came from.”

Winn turned and left Dayton standing alone in the entryway. Deem was already in the Jeep. Winn jumped into the vehicle, started it up, and backed out of the driveway.

”What was that about?” Deem asked.

”I wanted to threaten him,” Winn said. ”So I did.”

Deem smiled. ”It won't work with him,” she said. ”I know these people. They think they're above everything. Including the law. Everything I said to him in there was a waste. I shouldn't have come here.”

”Well, it felt good to say it,” Winn said. ”He called me a sodomite gentile.”

”Ha!” Deem said, laughing so hard spit flew from her lips and landed on the dashboard. ”In their world, that's the best insult they can come up with!”

”Yeah, 'motherf.u.c.ker' had much more panache,” Winn said.

Deem laughed even harder, slapping her hand against the dash.

”Did you see him recoil when you said it?” Winn asked. ”It was like you'd slapped him.”

”Oh G.o.d,” Deem said, trying to breathe. ”I really shouldn't think that's funny, with all that's going on. But I can't help it.”

Winn watched her laugh. It made him smile to see her let loose for a moment. ”It's been hours since you've had a Big Gulp,” Winn said. ”I'll bet you're really jonesing for one.”

”G.o.d, yes,” Deem said. ”And some food.”

”How about we just go to Home Plate and you can load up on soda there?”

”Sure,” Deem said, still giggling, struggling to breathe normally. ”Sodomite gentile!” she repeated, and burst into another round of laughter. ”Oh, I am so going to use that!”

”What was all that about robbers?” Winn asked Deem as they sat in a booth at the restaurant. He was guzzling a beer and she was sipping on Diet c.o.ke.

”Oh, you mean at Dayton's?” Deem asked.

”Yeah. You called the secret council 'gaddy-something robbers'. And Danites. What is all that?”

”I knew it would bother him,” Deem said. ”Gadianton Robbers. They're characters from the Book of Mormon. They were considered an evil, secret organization that would extort governments. Kind of like an organized crime syndicate, but really big.”

”It did bother him,” Winn said. ”I saw the look on his face when you brought it up. And Danites?”

”When the church was still in Missouri, before they moved to Utah, they were under heavy persecution from the locals. To fight back, Joseph Smith organized a secret group of people to do the church's dirty work. They operated in secret, and they were called Danites. The name comes from the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. Anyway, they'd fight back against the Missourians. It's what led Missouri to issue their extermination order.”

”Extermination order?” Winn asked. ”Extermination of what?”

”Mormons,” Deem said.

”A U.S. state issued an order to exterminate all Mormons?” Winn asked. ”I find that hard to believe.”

”You weren't paying attention in history cla.s.s,” Deem said. ”Missouri hated the Mormons. Especially when a Danite shot the Governor.”

”You're making this up!” Winn said as the food arrived and he dived into a patty melt.

”No, I'm not!” Deem said, pouring ketchup over her fries. ”The order wasn't rescinded until 1976. Anyway, when the Mormons moved to Utah in 1847, the Danites came with them. People think they took orders from Brigham Young, but since they operated in secret, no one knows. The rumors have always persisted though. Many people think they're still active today, controlled by the church. They clean up problems, put pressure on enemies of the church, that kind of thing.”

”Like Men in Black?” Winn asked.

”I guess, if Men in Black are even real.”

”Oh, they're real.”

”Here we go with the UFO s.h.i.+t again.”

”It's not s.h.i.+t, Deem.”

”Well, whatever. I have no idea if they exist or not. But think about this, Winn. We're both gifted, right? And we got it from our parents. My father was gifted, so was your mom. They got it from their parents, and so on. This goes way back. Who knows when it first started? Maybe it's existed from the very beginning. That means, throughout history, there have been gifted people operating in society, including the Mormon church, right? It's not just Dayton and my father. They've existed all along. This secret council that Dayton is part of might have been formed in the earliest days of Mormonism, and there's probably similar groups in other religions. Maybe that's what parts of Opus Dei are, to the Catholics. We just have to deal with it here because there's so many Mormons, kind of like how we have to deal with the mutations in the River because we're downwind. If we were back east, it might be a group of secret Catholics, or in the south, secret Baptists. When someone finds out they're gifted, and they're also part of a religion, they've got to balance it somehow. Make both halves work. The leaders of the regions wouldn't sanction it, that's for sure, so they operate in secret. Having the gift doesn't mean you ditch all of your religious beliefs.”

”You seem to have,” Winn said.

”Well, I'm different,” Deem said.

”Really?”

”Yeah, I always thought it was bulls.h.i.+t. It was easy to stop going. But it wasn't for my father.”

”Well, you obviously knew what to say to upset Dayton,” Winn said. ”He was furious.”

”Good, he p.i.s.sed me off,” Deem said, taking a bite of her hamburger.

”Do you think he had anything to do with the skinrunner?” Winn asked.

”I don't see how,” Deem said. ”You were turned on to that by your friend who drove the bus. I think the council just monitors things very closely. They might have a device that tells them if something paranormal occurs within a certain area. I don't know what the purpose of their secret council is, what they actually do. But part of it involves keeping an eye on anything unusual going on. We should talk to Claude about it, maybe he knows more.”

”We've got to finish off that skinrunner first,” Winn said. ”Your mother can't keep digging bones out of her skin forever.”