Moon Cursed (33 page)

She was going to find out.

Kris scanned the shore—nothing, not even a body—before turning her gaze to the loch.

In this darkest hour when the moon had fallen and the sun was not even a hint upon the horizon, the water skated like black ice to the opposite shore. Waves sloshed, but she couldn’t see them or anything else. Not a boat. Not a log. Not a rock. Not a—

“Nessie!” she shouted, then picked up a stone and threw it with all her might into the darkness. “I know you’re out there. I know who you are.”

The stone hit.
Kerplunk.
The silence that followed seemed to roar in her ears. Kris began to speed walk down the shore. He couldn’t hide from her. Not forever.

“Liam!” she shouted. “Liam Grant!”

She reached a thick grove of trees. Beneath them the night loomed ever darker.
Fuck it!
she thought, and plunged inside.

“William! Billy! Whatever the hell your name is. Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

She felt like a fool, but she didn’t stop. She
wouldn’t
stop. Not until he faced her and told her the truth.

She reached Urquhart Castle. This time no one stood at the top. The wind wailed through the ruins like a banshee.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Are you deaf? Or maybe you’ve just got water in your ears. If you have ears.”

Kris paused, listened, heard nothing but the wind and the water. Still, she could have sworn—

She tilted her head, caught that wicked scent. He was here. Somewhere. The back of her neck even prickled.

Her gaze scraped the castle, the ruins, the loch, and the trees. Then suddenly she knew.

“You’re right behind me, aren’t you?”

CHAPTER 24

“I do have ears,
mo chridhe.
”

Kris spun. Liam couldn’t see her expression, but he heard the pain in her voice, even before it broke on the final word. “You don’t get to call me
mo
whatever.”

“My heart,” he whispered, and his chest ached.

Her chin came up. “You don’t have a heart.”

“I do, and it is yours. Forever.”

“I hear forever for you is really forever.”

He lowered his head. What could he say?

“What are you?” she asked.

He kept his gaze down, trying to breathe, hoping to die, knowing he couldn’t. When he didn’t answer, she muttered something vile, then reached into her pocket.

Curious, he followed the movement of her hand as it came toward him. She pressed the silver Celtic cross to his forearm, then snatched it back as if expecting flames.

But there were none.

“What—?” she began, and then stopped. Doubt lightened the word, crept into her stance. She didn’t want to believe whatever she’d been told, and if given a reason, she wouldn’t.

He could let her think what she would. They could continue on as they’d been. He’d done worse.

Liam opened his mouth—to tell her the truth or a lie; he never knew. Because before he could speak, a scream split the night.

Brilliant, terrified, and close.

Together they ran toward the sound, leaving behind forever the option of choice.

Liam reached the water’s edge first. The screams continued, but he saw no one anywhere near.

The water, the mountains, they magnified and distorted. The sounds that had seemed to come from here were in fact coming from—

“Over there.” Kris pointed. A lone woman bobbed in the water, crying out as she surfaced, gurgling as she went under.

“Shit.” Kris kicked off her boots, pulling her sweater over her head at the same time.

“No,” Liam said, and she paused, one arm out of the sweater, one arm still in.

“She’s drowning. We can’t just stand here.”

“It’s too cold and too far. Ye’ll die.”

“Not before she will.” Kris threw the sweater to the ground, the stark white of the T-shirt beneath shining against the dusky sky, then started on her pants.

“No,” he said again, eyes on the heavens. “Wait for it.”

She looked up, brow furrowed. “Wait for what?”

He hadn’t wanted it to be this way. If he was going to tell her his truth, he would have preferred to do so in a less shocking manner. But he didn’t have any choice.

Liam sprinted for the water, leaping from the shore as the sun burst over the horizon.

And he changed.

*   *   *

Liam went up as a man, came down as something else, seeming to pour forever from the air.

Gray, seal-like skin, a long, long neck, a bulky body, an even longer tail. He hit the water with a plunk, and the resulting spray became a geyser, soaking Kris from head to thigh.

She didn’t stumble back. She stayed right where she was, gaze melded to the creature as he sped across the loch in the direction of the still-bobbing, no longer shrieking, woman. She appeared exhausted past the point of survival. Without help, she would soon sink below.

“He’s Nessie,” Kris muttered, from lips that felt like wax.

She’d known, hadn’t she? She’d come searching for Liam to make him admit just that. Yet still she stood staring and shaking, while her mind circled ways to explain away what her eyes could plainly see. The human brain’s power for rationalization never ceased to amaze.

Nessie—no—
Liam
reached the woman in no time. Kris recalled reports of the monster’s incredible speed despite her great bulk. What else that had been reported about her—make that
him
—was true?

The creature sunk below the surface like stone, straight down, an impossibility that had also been reported before. However, the ripples formed by that huge body seemed to drag the woman down as well. Kris cried out as she disappeared from sight.

Had Kris been wrong? Had Nessie— Kris cursed. Had
Liam
pulled the woman under? Once he was a monster was he truly a monster? If so, then why had he saved her?

An instant later, the beast surfaced. The woman, obviously spent and nearly unconsciousness, clung to his back. The thing that was Liam slowly turned toward Kris and began to move.

Kris scanned the area. Was this woman another victim of the copycat serial killer? Or had she merely fallen in, then could not get out?

The latter seemed too far-fetched. How lame would you have to be to trip on the shore, fall into the water, thrash around until you were too far out to make it back on your own, then scream for help at a time of day—or almost night—when there was little chance of getting it?

This whole situation smelled worse than the oldest salmon in the loch.

All questions were put aside when Liam reached the shallows. Instead of dumping the woman’s body from his back, then nudging her toward the shore as he’d done the last time, he actually pulled himself onto land.

He was massive—the body of an elephant, the neck of a moray eel, and the head of a boa constrictor combined. When Kris moved forward to take the woman, she felt dwarfed, both frightened and humbled. This creature had existed for centuries. The things he had seen and done, the people he had encountered, all that he knew … she couldn’t get her mind around it. Nor the idea that she’d touched and kissed and—
admit it, Kris—loved
this being in his human form, was too much for her mind right now as well.

Something about her feelings, her responses, tickled the edge of her brain, and if Kris had had time to think, she might have drawn it out. But when she went to her knees in the mud and damp grass next to the woman, every thought but one fled her head.

“She isn’t breathing.”

Kris had taken CPR, but it had been a while and she’d never had to use it. Still, she found the steps coming back.

Clear the airway. Position the head. Pinch the nose. Mouth over mouth and exhale, one one thousand, then again, two one thousand. Check to see if she’d started to breathe on her own.

No.
Dammit!

Chest compressions. One and two and three and—

Kris reached thirty, breathed for the woman twice more, and went back to the compressions. By the time Kris thought to look for Nessie, the creature was gone.

The woman suddenly drew in a great, gasping breath and began to choke. Kris turned her on her side, and lake water poured forth like a river.

“What-what—?”

Kris pressed her back on the ground, which was cold and wet but all they had. Together they shivered violently enough to shake loose a few teeth. Kris would have given the woman her sweater, but it lay in the mud, as soaked as her hair.

“Stay still,” Kris said. “You nearly drowned.”

“I—” The woman lifted her hand to her head and winced. “Someone hit me.”

“That seems to be going around,” Kris muttered.

She glanced toward the road, hoping a car would happen by. The sun was up, but it was early yet.

“Then they were carrying me, but it was dark, and I couldnae see.”

Sounded familiar.

“Then I was in the water, and it was cold and deep and I couldnae get anywhere no matter how hard I tried.”

Kris remembered feeling the same way when she was in the loch, then—

“Nessie came,” the woman whispered. “Did ye see her?”

Lies
did
get easier the more they were told. Kris had no problem at all meeting the woman’s eyes and saying, “No.”

*   *   *

Just when Kris thought she’d have to leave the poor, shivering, in-and-out-of-consciousness woman alone in the mud while she went for help, Alan Mac and all his cronies arrived like the proverbial cavalry.

After giving her the same
seriously, you again?
glance, Alan Mac took over. The woman babbled about Nessie, but no one seemed to think this was odd. They all went about their business of helping the victim, securing the scene, then spiriting her away.

Luckily the EMTs, or whatever they were called in this country, had brought blankets. Kris grabbed two and tried to make her escape. But Alan Mac appeared at her side and took her arm. “What happened?”

“How did you know to come here? And with all of…” She lifted her chin to indicate the cavalry. “Them?”

He didn’t answer.

She turned her gaze to his, and she knew. Somehow Liam had gotten word to him. Perhaps Liam could shift back and forth at will, although why then …

Kris frowned at the slowly rising sun. Why had he said, “Wait for it”? Why hadn’t he jumped into the loch and saved the woman immediately?

Because he couldn’t. So how had he brought Alan Mac here so fast? Perhaps Liam was a talking lake monster.

Kris choked. This was all so ridiculous. Though nonetheless true.

She considered accusing Alan Mac of being a guardian, but that probably wasn’t the best idea. He guarded Nessie, had protected her—
him
—for who knows how long. What if protecting the monster included making sure that anyone who’d seen him change never saw that, or anything else, again?

Kris considered the chief constable. Did she really think he’d toss her in the deep to keep Liam safe?

Yes.

“The woman said Nessie saved her,” Kris blurted.

“Aye,” Alan Mac agreed, gaze intent on Kris’s face. “And what do you say?”

Kris shrugged. “I found her on the shore. She wasn’t breathing. I did CPR; then you showed up.”

“Mmm,” Alan Mac said. “I ken there is a bit more to it than that.”

“Said someone hit her on the head, dragged her to the water. Next thing she remembers, she was drowning.”

Alan Mac cursed. “I have to get back. I’ll drop ye at the cottage.”

Kris considered saying she’d walk, but her legs were still trembly, along with the rest of her. A September dawn in the Highlands was not the time to be soaked to the skin. If her lips weren’t actually blue, they soon would be.

So she climbed into his car, which smelled like old tennis shoes and bad coffee. Kris would have opened the window if she’d had the energy.

“What else is my victim going to tell me?” Alan Mac asked.

Kris sighed. Cops liked to have witnesses repeat their stories, see if anything new shook out, but this was tiresome. She was a reporter. She knew what he was up to.

She rapped her knuckles against her head. Then made her hand dive downward. “Splash,” she said, and used both hands to indicate just that.

Alan Mac rolled his eyes. “And then?”

“According to your victim, saved by the monster.”

“Yet ye saw nothing.”

Kris met his eyes. “Nothing but her.”

*   *   *

After the sun set, Liam climbed from the water and found the clothes he kept hidden for those times he waited too long and changed before he was able to disrobe. When that happened, the clothes he’d been wearing just disappeared.