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“Guardian cult,” Kris guessed.
Marty blinked. “How did you know?”
“Edward got there ahead of you.”
>
“If you knew what they were,” Marty muttered, “why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know. It was just one of many theories. Why do you think that what your colleague encountered was the same as what’s going on in Drumnadrochit?”
“Because the guardians all had tattoos.”
“A lot of people do. That doesn’t mean they’re protecting a big squishy monster.”
Marty cast her an annoyed glance. “Let me finish, Squirt. The tattoos were the same as they are here.”
“Flippers and tails?”
“No, because this creature had fur and fangs and two heads.”
“I don’t even want to know what that is.”
“No,” Marty agreed. “You don’t. When I said ‘the same,’ I meant each guardian was tattooed with a different part of the monster. Separately they are nothing, but together they are invincible. Like that monster.”
“Interesting,” Kris murmured as her mind added two and two, then her heart began to thud fast and loud as it whispered, Four. “You’d think that maybe their … leader—”
Please let it be their leader.
“—would have the entire monster tattooed somewhere. Kind of like a lieutenant’s stripes.”
“No. The tattoo of the whole monster…” Marty paused to pocket his phone, and Kris had to clench her hands to keep from grabbing him and shaking the rest of the words out. “That’s only found on the monster itself.”
Kris’s thundering heart seemed to stop. Bam. She couldn’t even breathe.
“You see anything like that?” her brother asked.
Her heart started. Kris tried, and managed, to take a breath. Then she looked her brother right in the eye and said—
“No.”
*
Kris got rid of Marty. Later she wasn’t sure exactly how.
It didn’t matter, as long as he was gone and she was alone.
Somehow she made it back to the cottage. She was in shock. She knew that. Yet still she couldn’t snap out of it.
Only talking to Liam would do that.
Maybe.
More than likely talking to Liam would make her brain explode and then shock would be the least of her worries.
She waited all day and into the night. Dawn was only a short time away when her inertia broke. Obviously he wasn’t going to come to her. She’d have to go to him.
Except she had no idea how to find Liam. No idea where he lived or if he even had a place.
