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“There’s one other problem,” she began, and the old man lifted his bushy white brows. “The silver knife that was found in the chest of the latest victim…” Kris pressed her lips together, not wanting to say the rest, but she had to. “Was probably mine.”
His brows crashed downward. “Whoever is behind the murders is aware you are looking into them.”
“I kind of got that as I was flying off the cliff and into the water.”
“So you conclude that a human is behind the attacks?”
“The ones on me, definitely.” Human hands had bonked her on the head, then attempted to drag her into the loch. Nessie could not have pushed Kris off the cliff when she’d been waiting below to pull her out.
“What about the bodies?”
“If there’s a body attached,” Kris said firmly, “Nessie isn’t involved.”
“Continue,” Mandenauer murmured in the tone of a professor with a brand-new but very promising student.
“If the monster were killing humans, she’d make certain they remained at the bottom of the loch. Why ask to be hunted any more than she’s already been?”
“You think Nessie possesses the intelligence to reason that far?”
“I think to avoid detection this long she’s gotta have human-level intelligence.”
Edward nodded slowly. “You’re right.”
“One thing I don’t get,” Kris continued. “Nessie’s legend is of a benign being that slowly trolls the loch and peeks out at the tourists now and again.”
“Saint Columba would disagree.”
“Considering that there have been no documented cases of monster attacks since, I’m thinking Columba used his tale of the monster to make a play for sainthood.”
Edward tilted his head. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“All the cases you mentioned involved a—,” Kris made quotes in the air with both hands, “bad monster. But Nessie, according to most reports, isn’t bad. So how is this case similar to the others?”
“Nessie isn’t really the legend.”
“Everyone knows that the Loch Ness Monster is called Nessie.”
“Only since the 1930s.” Mandenauer frowned, glanced down, rustled some papers, and squinted. “May 1933 to be exact. The Inverness Courier followed up on several sightings, and within the year Nessie was born.”
“But, according to Columba, Nessie has been here since the sixth century. Probably before.”
“The monster was here; however, the legend of Nessie was invented by the media. Before 1933, the locals called it the beastie. And they knew what it was.”
“What?” Kris asked.
“Of all the local legends the one that most fits is the tale of a supernatural water horse. Each Uisge.”
“Kelpie,” Kris murmured. “Except if Nessie is a shape-shifter, wouldn’t she have to be human some of the time?”
“Not necessarily. Monsters do not survive a million millennia without adapting—to time, to place, to climate. If they are very smart, they even encourage the wrong legend to be passed down, thereby ensuring that no one truly knows what they are, where they are, how to find them, or how to kill them. There are also variations within the legends themselves that relate to how they became what they are.”
“How?” Kris echoed.
“Some are born; some are cursed; some are engineered. Bitten. Injected. The possibilities are endless, and any one of them can alter that legend. Sometimes I think there are nearly as many kinds of werewolves as there are werewolves. And even though silver will kill most of them, with others it only pisses them off.”
Kris was beginning to understand why Mandenauer walked around armed for Armageddon. He never knew what he might face, where he might face it, or what he might need to kill it.
She began to wonder not only how he’d survived this long but also how he’d done so with his sanity intact. Although a week ago if an old man had told her how to kill werewolves and other assorted shape-shifters she would have been the first to call for psychiatric assistance. Now, though she couldn’t say with absolute certainty that she believed everything Edward said, she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
