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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, g
aze 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.
