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“You think God would unleash something like you?” Kris asked, then paused. She was constantly amazed at the things put on the earth by whatever force had put them there. A seducing, shifting, serial-killing kelpie?
Why the hell not?
“Go on,” she said.
“I was two natured.”
“Aren’t you still?”
He nodded. “But then I wasn’t human.”
“You still aren’t,” she muttered.
His face tightened—a flinch—before he continued. “I looked like a man, but that was just glamour. Magic to make me appealing.”
“Are you magicing me now?” Kris demanded. That would explain why even though she knew what he was, she still couldn’t stop staring at him. He was just too damn pretty.
“No need. I am human,” he insisted. “At least beneath the moon.”
“Beneath the moon,” she repeated, another piece clicking into place. “I’ve never seen you in the sunlight.”
“Ye have.” He lifted his chin to indicate the loch. “At dawn ye’ll find me there.”
“Monster by day, man by night?” she murmured. “That’s a little backward.”
“ ’Tis part of my punishment, my curse. Human beings live in the light. But not me. Never me.”
His voice was bereft. She couldn’t blame him. Never was a very long time.
Kris straightened. He might say he wasn’t working his voodoo on her, but something was going on. Why else would she have any sympathy for him?
“You drowned a witch’s daughter,” she said. He’d drowned a lot of daughters. Hundreds, maybe thousands. But the last one was the one who had changed everything.
“Aye. I didnae know, of course, who she was.”
“Would that have stopped you?”
“Doubtful. Though the curse was terrible. Is terrible,” he clarified. “But no more than I deserved.”
“She cursed you to be Nessie by day and a man by night,” Kris said. “What’s so damn bad about that?”
“She gave me human understanding. Morals. A conscience. Once I killed for the joy of it. Now…” The eyes he turned to her brimmed with agony. “I remember everything I did. All the time.”
Kris began to see the beauty, and the horror, of his curse.
Liam put his hands to his head and pressed as she had done earlier, as if he could make the memories, or perhaps the voices, stop. “Every woman. Every word. The begging, the pleading, my laughter. How it felt to touch them, to know what I would do to them in the end and to want that end as much as they wanted me.” He dropped his hands, now fists, against his thighs, pounding to the beat of each word. “I was a monster.”
She couldn’t argue.
He took several breaths, forcing his fingers to uncurl before he continued. “I’m moon cursed.”
“Seems to me that beneath the moon you aren’t cursed; you’re…” She waved her hand to indicate his beautiful face and gorgeous body.
“She cursed me to eternal torment beneath the moon. To understand the pain I gave, and feel it myself for all time. When I’m Nessie, I can think, but not like this.”
“Why bother with Nessie? Why not just curse you to live in human form, tormented and immortal?”
“Forever is a long time. Time heals, they say, though I havenae found that. But what if someday enough has passed, and I put my sins behind me? I could have a life. The life denied her daughter by me.”
