Moon Cursed Read online

  A history she would be the first to record.

  “Sounds good to me.” Kris snatched her backpack, which contained her video camera, then followed Dougal to his car—something German; she was no good with makes and models. He held the door. Lucky, since she’d have gone straight to the wrong side of the automobile if left to her own devices.

  The drive to The Clansman retraced the route Kris had taken from Inverness along the shore of Loch Ness. The tea brown waters played hide-and-seek as they drove—there and then gone and then there again. All around, mountains of blue and gray battled with walls of evergreen for dominance.

  They made small talk. “Nice day.” “Beautiful weather.” “Do you like salmon?”

  Kris relaxed, thrilled not to have to think for a while. Dougal was easy to be around. He didn’t ask too many questions she was required to invent answers for.

  From the outside, The Clansman did not impress. If Kris had been driving, she’d have gone right past. They came around a curve and bam, there it was—the parking lot directly off the highway on one side, a small harbor on the other.

  The building itself was smaller than most country inns in America and consisted of weathered brown wood and sand-shaded bricks. To the rear, towering green trees covered a massive hill, which appeared to flow into the slowly darkening sky.

  Inside, however, the place was beautiful. There were cream walls with wood accents in the lobby. The carpet was a little busy, but she’d found that to be the case in many places of business. Kris had a feeling busy carpet didn’t show the dirt as clearly.

  The restaurant was even more lovely, with windows that looked out on the loch, a polished wood bar, bottles glistening in the setting sun, and lots of tables with comfortable, cushy chairs.

  Theirs was next to the window, and Kris found herself captivated by the long expanse of water. From here it almost looked blue.

  The waiter appeared before she could comment. “Would ye like something from the bar?”

  Dougal tilted a brow. “Whisky?”

  “I think no.” Kris smiled at the waiter. “Wine. Something white and dry. You choose.”

  He inclined his head, then turned to Dougal, who predictably ordered their best single-malt whisky.

  “Why does the loch seem blue?” Kris asked. “I know the water’s brown from the peat.”

  Dougal glanced in that direction. “In some places the reflection of the sky hits her just right; then you have…” He spread his hands forward and out.

  The waiter returned with their drinks, setting a glass of gorgeous golden wine in front of Kris. “This is Autumn Oak,” he said. “A Scottish wine.”

  Kris picked up her glass, sniffed, then sipped and nodded as she smiled. “Perfect.”

  “From the Cairn O’Mohr Winery,” he continued. “In Perthshire, near Errol, which is the center of our best fruit-growing area in the Carse of Gowrie.”

  “Okay.” Kris lifted her glass.

  He left with their appetizer orders—duck with raspberry sauce for Kris, seafood salad for Dougal.

  The wine was fantastic, the food excellent. After the duck, Kris ordered salmon with Cajun spices—who’d have thought?—lime and sun-roasted tomatoes. Dougal had lamb with mint-roasted potatoes, rosemary, and port.

  Kris made a face when he ordered it.

  “You don’t like port?” he asked.

  “I don’t like lamb.”

  “But they’re so cute,” he deadpanned.

  “Exactly.”

  “I’ve worked with sheep,” he said. “I prefer them on my plate. But veal—” Now Dougal made a face. “Baby cows with big brown eyes. How could you?”

  “I don’t,” Kris said. “Believe me.”

  She ate every last bite of her dinner and drank two glasses of wine. When the waiter suggested dessert, she puffed out her cheeks, but Dougal insisted she try the Pavlova, which was light, or the sorbet and berries, even lighter. With the promise of coffee as an accompaniment, Kris succumbed.

  Out on the loch, something moved.

  “Did you see that?” Kris stared at what appeared to be three humps bumping along halfway between this shore and the next.

  Dougal narrowed his eyes. “It’s a wake.”

  “From what?” Kris didn’t see a boat in either direction.

  Dougal lifted his chin, indicating the towering mountains. “Those actually continue into the loch and form a basin. When something makes waves, those waves come out.” He spread his hands, then stopped them dead as if they’d struck something solid. “They hit the rock, then come back again.” He brought his palms toward each other in a rippling movement. “Because Loch Ness is so big and deep, sometimes the boat, or whatever, that made the original wave is long gone before the ripple returns. By then the cause of those ripples has left more wakes, and when the reflected ones hit those coming in the other direction, you get humps.” He nodded at the window. “Like that.”

  Made sense. And Dougal’s matter-of-fact tone had Kris feeling foolish. Of course she’d seen a wake. What else could it have been?

  The waiter arrived with their desserts and coffee. As soon as the man finished, Dougal spoke softly: “Greater skeptics than you have been fooled by the loch.”

  “How did you know what I was thinking?”

  He shrugged. “Your face doesn’t lie.”

  Great. Not only was she unable to lie with her mouth, but her face gave her away, too. She shouldn’t be disappointed—after all, didn’t she loathe liars?—but she was.

  “Out there,” Dougal continued, “everything is deceptive. A wake, a tree, the reflection of a black-throated diver at dawn, or a red deer at dusk.”

  Kris let her lips curve as he listed some of the things people had seen and thought to be Nessie. How could any intelligent person believe in a fairy tale?

  She was nearly done with her sorbet, which she’d preferred to the small taste she’d had of Dougal’s Pavlova, when she again had the bizarre sense of being watched. She was used to the feeling—she was on television—so why did the sensation suddenly bother her?

  Dougal stared at the loch, scowling at what appeared to be a heavy log with a thick protruding branch that could easily have been mistaken for the head of a sea serpent, if you were inclined to mistake such things. If you were also inclined to paranoia, the log seemed to stare back.

  Kris peered around the room. Several people nursed drinks at the bar, but they all peered at the glittering bottles on the wall, no doubt deciding what they might have next.

  The other diners were occupied with their own fine meals. Not that one or two of them couldn’t have been staring at Kris a minute ago, then stopped. However, she still had that tickle at the base of her neck.

  She glanced over her shoulder just as a man left the dining room. There was something about him that made Kris get to her feet, mutter, “Ladies’ room,” and follow.

  *

  She lost him.

  How, she wasn’t quite sure. Kris had hustled across the restaurant as fast as her long skirt and clunky shoes would let her, and when she reached the place she’d last seen him the man was gone without a trace.

  There’d been something really familiar about the guy.

  Which made no sense. She was in Scotland. The only males she knew were Dougal, who’d been sitting with her; Liam, who was both shorter and more lithe than the figure she’d observed, and had black hair instead of light brown with streaks of gold; and Alan Mac, who was far too large to be mistaken for anyone but himself.

  She supposed she could include both Edward Mandenauer and Rob Cameron on her list, but both of them were much older than the guy she’d seen.

  So why did she feel as if she knew him?

  Might he be the man asking for her in Drumnadrochit? If so, he appeared to have found her.

  But then why would he leave?

  Kris was more than a little creeped out. She should have asked Dougal to come with her. He’d spoken with the guy. He’d know if
it were him.

  “Damn,” Kris muttered as she returned to the table. Cloak-and-dagger still not her thing.

  Dougal was in the process of paying the bill. Kris insisted on Dutch treat. Dougal protested.

  “We’re friends,” Kris pointed out. “And friends don’t let other friends pay the whole bill.”

  “My friends do,” Dougal muttered.

  Kris laughed and put down a few of the pounds sterling she had exchanged before getting on the plane. She’d have to find a bank tomorrow and do the same with the money Edward had given her. She hoped it wasn’t counterfeit.

  “The sun’s falling fast.” Dougal winked. “We should hurry to the loch before we miss her.”

  As they left the restaurant, then the building, Kris glanced around for any trace of the man she’d seen earlier. No luck.

  “This guy who was asking for me,” she began as they crossed the road and headed down the grassy bank. “What did he look like? Height? Weight? Hair?”

  Dougal frowned. “Shorter than me. Solid. But not fat. Muscles. Brown hair.”

  “Light brown? Highlights?”

  Dougal’s frown deepened. “Highlights?”

  “Streaks.” She waggled her fingers at the top of her head. “From the sun.” Or a bottle.

  “Ah.” He nodded, then stopped and tilted his head, thinking. “I don’t recall.”

  Kris rubbed between her eyes. “Eye color?”

  “I didn’t see.”

  Dougal would never make it as a cop. Luckily, he didn’t have to.

  “You know him?”

  They’d reached the shore of the loch and taken a seat on a conveniently placed bench.

  Kris wasn’t sure what to say. Dougal’s description was worthless. It both matched and did not the guy she’d seen at The Clansman. Someone she thought she might know, and then again she might not.

  “I’m not sure. If he comes by again, ask his name.”

  “I should have before. Sorry.”

  “It’s probably nothing.” And it probably was. Still, the whole thing made her squirrelly.

  Kris rested her video camera in her lap. They sat side by side, watching the loch, waiting for something that wasn’t going to come. Usually she was no good at waiting; she’d forever been impatient. Always on the go to anywhere but here, always searching for the next story or more information about this one.

  Which reminded her …

  “In your museum, you have an unfinished section.”

  Dougal nodded, still staring at the loch. “‘Supernatural Myths of Scotland.’ I’ve studied a lot of legends from all over the world, but they’re my favorite.”

  “But you don’t believe in the supernatural.”

  “Doesn’t matter what I believe. It matters what I can sell to those who do.”

  His cynical attitude should be grating; however, considering it mirrored her own, Kris couldn’t throw stones. Besides, his being a skeptic didn’t keep him from being the best-informed source of legendary info on Scotland—now that Edward was gone. Dougal was using the public’s gullibility to make a buck; he wouldn’t mind Kris picking his brain for the same reason.

  “Why don’t you sell me?” Kris murmured.

  His lips quirked—he knew she couldn’t be sold; still, he humored her. “One of the most interesting tales I’ve found is the wulver—a Scottish werewolf.”

  Kris straightened. Nearly everything she’d read about Mandenauer involved werewolves.

  “Body of a man covered in brown hair, head of a wolf.”

  Kris resisted the urge to say Ew!, because really, it went without saying.

  “How do you kill it?” she asked.

  “Kill it?” Dougal repeated, expression mystified. “Why? The wulver is benign.”

  “The wulver isn’t real,” Kris pointed out. “But if it were, I doubt any werewolf is benign.”

  Dougal shrugged. “In the legends, wulvers kept to themselves. Except when they were leaving fish on the windowsills of the poor.”

  A Robin Hood werewolf? Right.

  “What else you got?” Kris wanted to hear about the Scottish legends that might have led to the tale of Nessie. She’d discovered that hoaxers often followed local legends. Perhaps to more easily convince the residents that the hoax was the truth or perhaps because they had no imaginations of their own.

  “The Ceirean. Sea monster so large it ate seven whales.”

  That had possibilities.

  “The Fear Liath,” he continued. “An unseen presence that causes feelings of unease.”

  Kris glanced over her shoulder, suddenly doused with an increasingly familiar sense of unease.

  Dougal laughed. “Not real, remember? Besides, the Fear Liath haunts the mountains, not the seas.”

  “What are those?” Kris indicated the towering hills.

  “Good point. I’d considered leaving that one out of the display, but maybe I won’t. One of the main sections will be myths and legends that could actually be Nessie.”

  Bingo! Kris thought, and leaned in.

  “The kelpie has always been a front-runner,” Dougal continued, warming to his subject. “Here they call it Each-Uisge, a supernatural water horse. Transforms into a human and walks upon the earth. Lures the unsuspecting into the water, where they drown.”

  “Nessie’s not a horse.” Although there had been several reports of the monster with a mane.

  “Neither is a water horse. They’re massive. With tails that resemble the tail of a snake instead of horse and much shorter legs.”

  “What about a guivre?”

  Dougal considered this, brow furrowing. “A guivre is a French myth. Dragon-like creature that prowled medieval France. I’ve seen drawings. It resembles Nessie, except for the wings and breathing fire.” He sat up straighter, too. “They have horns, which a lot of Nessie sightings describe.”

  “And which most experts have pointed out resemble the autumn horns of a red deer.”

  “Aye,” Dougal said absently, Foghorn Leghorn resemblance firmly in place. “But they inhabit bodies of water and Scotland is a short trip from France.”

  “Especially if you have wings,” Kris pointed out.

  Dougal glanced at her, amusement brimming in his lovely gray eyes. It felt so good to be able to say what she thought instead of prevaricating so she wouldn’t have to lie.

  “Guivres are said to be very aggressive,” he continued. “They attack humans.”

  “And if they were real,” Kris said, “I’d be worried.”

  His amusement deepened. “I just meant that I wasn’t sure if I should add the guivre to my display on possible legends that created Nessie. She isn’t violent.” His gaze returned to the loch, where the water remained as smooth as glass.

  “See anything?”

  When Dougal didn’t answer, Kris turned to look at him and he kissed her.

  As kisses went, it wasn’t half-bad. His lips were firm but soft. His goatee tickled just a bit. Kris didn’t pull away, curious if perhaps the air in Scotland, or the water, would make her react to any kiss the way she’d reacted to Liam Grant’s.

  No such luck. While the kiss was pleasant, it left her uninterested in anything more. She certainly wasn’t possessed by the urge to get naked with Dougal right here and now.

  Should she be glad about that or sad?

  A huge splash erupted, as if something had been dropped into the water. Like a piano.

  Or a very large tail.

  Kris and Dougal broke apart, Kris reaching for her camera as both of them glanced toward the loch.

  But nothing was there.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Sorry about that,” Dougal said again as he dropped off Kris in front of her cottage. “It was just the…” He waved his hand toward the loch, where the moon reflected brilliant silver across a gently rolling surface.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Kris got out of the car, lifting her hand when Dougal would have followed. “As kisses go, it was nice.”
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  He winced. “Nice isn’t exactly what a guy’s hoping for.”

  “Better than disgusting.”

  Dougal laughed, and she felt better. She’d been afraid his kissing her, and her letting him, had ruined the friendship. And she wanted this friendship. She needed someone else in this Nessie-nuts town whom she could talk to.

  “No harm, no foul,” Kris continued. “Thanks for taking me to The Clansman, and thanks for the fantastic meal.”

  “You paid for your own.”

  “But I wouldn’t have known about the place if not for you. Too bad we didn’t see Nessie.”

  Dougal snorted, waved, then pulled away.

  His car negotiated the bend and disappeared. Strange, but the rumble of the motor seemed to disappear, too. Sounds behaved differently here. Must have something to do with the mountains, the water, the atmosphere. Who knew?

  Kris found her gaze drawn to the loch. It was too bad they hadn’t seen Nessie. If Kris was going to figure out this hoax, she needed to get a glimpse of the monster—or whatever was being used to depict the monster. How could she ever uncover the truth unless she saw with her own eyes the lie?

  The night was still except for the lap of the loch and some small animal–type rustles from the distant trees. Up on the hill, a pebble rolled slowly downward. Nothing to be alarmed about.

  So why was she suddenly alarmed?

  Because that feeling was back—the one where she just knew she was being watched.

  But the trees, the road, the loch, the cottage continued to loom empty and dark. All was silent; there was only a hint of a breeze.

  Kris began to turn, and pain exploded, right before the entire world faded to black.

  *

  Kris swam toward consciousness. The closer she got, the more her head hurt. The swoosh of the waves made her nauseous. And there was something about those waves she needed to remember. Something disturbing.

  It came to her in a burst of clarity so bright she winced as if lightning had flashed directly in front of her wide-open eyes. She’d been conked on the head, and now she was being carried.