Moon Cursed (9 page)

Drawn by that voice on the wind, the moon in his hair, and a promise of warmth, she stepped closer. “
Why
are you here now?”

“D’ ye expect me to say I came to kill ye?”

“Did you?”

He laughed, short and sharp. Then he spun, grabbing her shoulders, and she had no choice but to steady herself by reaching for him. Her hands landed on his hips.

His blue eyes caught the light from above and shone like molten silver. “If I’d wanted t’ kill ye,” he whispered, “I’d have done it before, then tossed both you and the girl back to Nessie.”

She took a single step forward, surprising him, so his hands at her shoulders slid free, encircling her back and turning what had begun as imprisonment into an embrace.

“Then why
are
you here?” she repeated, every breath she took brushing her breasts against his chest in a rhythm as old as the sea.

He cursed in a language she didn’t understand—Gaelic most likely—and then he was kissing her as if he’d been denied such things for longer than either of them had been alive.

His mouth was cool, damp, like the loch, like the mist and the night. She opened, drinking him in as he had drunk the bright and shiny moon.

His tongue was warm when it stroked hers, igniting the heat she had craved. He tasted of desire, a flavor like the darkest chocolate; his hair was as smooth as satin sheets, and the way he smelled … He could be wearing a cologne called Wicked. Was there a cologne called Wicked?

She pressed against him. He was all sharp angles and sleek muscle, while she was just round and soft. That had always bothered her, being round instead of slim, soft instead of hard. Right now she couldn’t think why.

Her mind spun away on sensation. His skin blessedly cool against her hot, hot hands. His mouth so clever—a nip here, a caress there. Who would ever have believed that a bit of pain could bring so much pleasure?

His palm at her waist, his thumb stroked her belly. She arched, wishing he would lift that hand, that thumb, and—

He cupped her breast, the chill of his skin sifting through the cotton, making her nipple tighten even harder. When he brushed the tingling bud—back and forth, back and forth—mimicking the motion with his tongue against the tip of hers, she moaned.

Her hands in his hair clenched; she tilted his mouth just so. She’d forgotten where she was. She’d forgotten
who
she was. This man—
Liam
—had become the whole world.

Something splashed in the loch—close enough that she felt a hint of spray. An instant later they had both dropped their arms to their sides, disentangled their tongues, and taken one giant step backward.

Kris was trembling—from the cold, the shock, the lust, she wasn’t sure. Maybe all three.

“What was that?” she whispered.

“Sturgeon,” he said quickly.

She’d meant what was
that
in relation to the strange sense of need that seemed to overtake her whenever he came near. All she wanted to do was kiss him, touch him, and more.

She’d never been tempted by a stranger, seduced as if she had no will to resist a man whose name, until only moments ago, she had not even known.

The splash came again. Ripples spread toward the shore. “That sounds pretty big,” she said.

“They are.” Liam frowned at the water. “Big. The sturgeons. They can grow t’ be twenty feet long. Some have mistaken them for sharks.”

“Or lake monsters?” she murmured.

“Aye.”

“Do you believe in lake monsters?”

He glanced at her, and his lips, gorgeous, wet, and clever, quirked. “I think they could exist.”

“Do you think Nessie exists?”

His smile faded, and his deep blue gaze held hers. “I’ll not lie to ye. I’ve lived here all my life,” Liam continued, “and I have never once seen Nessie.”

Usually when someone said they wouldn’t lie, it was right before they lied their butts off, yet, strangely, she believed him.

“You’d be the one of the few in Drumnadrochit,” she said. “Or one of the few who admits it.”

“Aye,” he repeated, but she wasn’t sure which part of her statement he was agreeing with. Reaching out, he tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Best get inside before ye freeze, Kris.”

Her name, uttered in that low, sexy burr, made her shiver again, and she lifted her hands to rub at her bare arms. “Aren’t you cold?”

“Not anymore.”

“You could…” She paused. “Come in.”

He looked at the loch, a quick, sharp glance like he’d heard something, although she hadn’t. “I have to go.” He turned away.

“Wait.” Kris reached for his arm but let her hand fall back to her side before she touched him. She’d never been clingy—had learned long ago that clinging only made people run away faster—and she wasn’t going to start now.

Liam turned with a lift of one dark brow.

“Where do you live?” she asked. “What do you do?”

“Do?” he echoed.

Was that expression too American?

“For a job,” she clarified.

“Whatever comes along.”

Before she could ask what that meant or point out that he hadn’t answered either of her questions, he jogged down the shore, disappearing into the sudden darkness caused by the fall of the moon.

The eastern sky had begun to lighten. She should really go inside. Instead, Kris stayed right where she was, hugging herself for warmth and watching the sun rise.

As it burst over the horizon, all red and orange and yellow, a distant splash echoed across the murky expanse of the loch.

This one didn’t sound anything like a sturgeon.

CHAPTER 7

Kris had stayed up all night in the past. Studying. Working on
Hoax Hunters.
Talking with Lola. Crying because what was left of her family ignored her.

The latter hadn’t happened in quite a while. Neither her father nor her brother ever remembered her birthday; they seemed to have completely forgotten Christmas. After the third time June 8th had passed with no call, no card, no damn e-mail, Kris had snuffled through a bottle of champagne and vowed never to shed a tear over them again. So far she hadn’t.

It was a new experience, however, to remain awake all night because she’d found a dead body. She’d have to rank the experience just above the crying-over-Daddy episode.

Kris considered trying to sleep, but with the sun up and the birds tweeting and the loch lapping she doubted she’d have any luck. Instead she made a pot of the coffee she’d bought from Jamaica yesterday and sat in front of her computer to work.

She typed up what she’d learned so far, which wasn’t a helluva lot more than she’d already discovered from books and the Internet. Sure, she’d heard a few Nessie-sighting stories, but there were thousands of them. Besides, she’d come here to
debunk
the myth, not add to the lore that perpetrated it.

How was she going to catch the hoaxer in the act of hoaxing? With all the extra interest that would soon be focused on the loch now that two dead bodies had been found, she doubted anyone would be out and about creating mischief.

Although … she wouldn’t put it past the hoaxer to attach the blame for these drownings to the monster. What a perfect way to draw attention to their little lie. And if the deaths were later proved to be caused by something else, the doubt would always be there and the publicity would already have been had. The idea that Nessie had pulled a few unsuspecting folks to their deaths in the depths of the chilly water would only increase the whole “monster” cachet.

Kris sighed. She was going to be here a lot longer than she’d originally thought. She’d bet the rest of this fabulous coffee that until the drowning hoopla settled down there’d be no Nessie sightings. Luckily she now had enough money, courtesy of Edward, to remain here until the hoaxing started up again—then she’d pounce.

“Which reminds me.” Kris frowned at her computer, considering what she should Google first, hoping the Internet was in the mood to work right now. Thankfully, it was.

Edward Mandenauer
brought up very little, and none of it referred to an ancient German man who liked guns. Which was disturbing. Most people had
something
about them
somewhere
on the Internet. That he didn’t meant someone had removed it. Which leant credence to his claim of being backed by the U.S. government.

She tried
Jäger-Sucher
and received half a dozen online translation sites.
Hunter-searcher
only brought her hunting stores, adventure vacations, search-and-rescue units.

But she kept at it. Kris never would have gotten anywhere in life if she’d given up at the first hint of trouble.

She continued to feed words into the search engine. It wasn’t until she typed
old German man
with sharp, hard clicks of frustration that she actually found something worth reading.

From the
National Enquirer
:

Werewolves Attack Small Town in Northern Maine

Under siege during a terrible blizzard, the residents of Harper’s Landing watched their numbers dwindle as the number of werewolves increased.

They were saved when an old man with a heavy German accent walked out of the storm carrying guns and silver ammunition. Within days, every werewolf was dead and the old gentleman disappeared as mysteriously as he’d arrived.

“Werewolves,” she said. “Great.”

But she followed the lead, typing
werewolf
and following the amazing number of bizarre stories from there. In a helluva lot of them an old German man showed up, kicked ass, then disappeared.

Poof.

There were also several mentions of a white wolf that fought the sudden influx of freakishly smart, incredibly strong, and really pissed-off wolves, all of which seemed to sport human eyes.

That
was something she never wanted to see. And she wouldn’t, because—

“It’s all bullshit. They want to sell newspapers.”

None of the stories appeared in any publications of note. No tales of wolf packs in the
New York Times.
No white wolf popped up in the
Chicago Tribune.
There had been a few strange incidents mentioned in the
Times-Picayune,
but Kris had found that when you were dealing with New Orleans strange happened a lot.

However, she did notice that whenever the white wolf showed up a beautiful blond American woman did, too. When Kris traced that lead, she found connections to other weird tales—leopard shifters, zombies, Gypsies, and bizarre accounts of eagles and ravens and crows.

The abundance of scary stories involving Mandenauer and what had to be his
Jäger-Sucher
cohorts would have been troubling. If Kris believed them.

“I’m gonna have enough myths to bust for the rest of my hopefully very long life,” she murmured.

Someone knocked on the door. Kris, who’d been reading a report of a Navajo shape-shifting witch who could take the form of any animal whose skin he wore and had actually taken the shape of a man—the explanation for that was just too disgusting to contemplate, though she
had
been contemplating it—jumped to her feet at the sound, heart pounding.

Then she gave a shaky laugh. “Doubt there’s a Navajo shape-shifter anywhere around.” She moved toward the door. “ ’Cause first they’d have to exist.”

Nevertheless, she glanced out the front window. Dougal Scott stood on the doorstep.

“Hey,” he greeted. “I heard you found a body last night. You okay?”

He was dressed in his kilt, and the Scottish outfit combined with his very American way of speaking had Kris fighting back a ridiculous giggle, along with the longing for a man who dressed like an American and spoke like a Scot. She was starting to think that he existed in the same realm as skinwalkers, werewolves, and Nessie.

“Yes.” Kris opened the door wider so Dougal could come in, then pointed to the couch. She sat on the single chair to the left. “Didn’t get any sleep, but that’s happened before.”

“Why were you out wandering near the loch in the night? It can be dangerous.”

Kris could hardly say she’d been looking for a ghost, then been drawn to the loch by the reflection of the moon off a log and—

“You know someone by the name of Liam Grant?” she blurted.

“No,” Dougal said slowly. “There are Grants aplenty, of course, but none named Liam that I recall.” He tilted his head. “I think there might be Grants in Dores, which is nearer to Inverness.”

“Dores,” she repeated. “Okay.”

“Does he have something to do with the body?”

Kris contemplated Dougal. He seemed awfully interested in the body. Of course she’d learned over her years in television that a lot of people were ghouls.