Needed By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Highlander Forever Book 5)

by Rebecca Preston

  Then the fishermen in front of her parted, and Helen gasped as she laid eyes on the Loch Ness Monster for the first time.

  The creature was between two docks. Its long neck was twisting as it thrashed its body, bellowing in pain — and it wasn’t long before she figured out what the trouble was. There was a net, caught around the place where its long, sinuous neck joined onto its body. She could just see powerful flippers at the four corners of its low body, propelling it as it thrashed back and forth, and its tail was whipping back and forth, too. It had already done considerable damage to several boats moored in the dock, but that didn’t seem to be stopping it — it bellowed in pain again, thrashing its neck, trying to get the net off of its back as though it was burning it.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, shocked. “Why is it here in daylight? How is that net hurting it?”

  But Niall wasn’t listening — he was growling in rage, his eyes locked on the ten men with spears — most of whom looked downright frightened to be there, clearly not having counted on the Monster’s tenacity. It was grimly obvious what had happened — they’d crept down in the dead of the night to lure the Monster close (she saw several pails of fish sitting on the dock — bait?) before throwing that net onto its neck. And sure enough, she looked closely at the net as the Monster crashed into water again with another roar — it was tipped with iron hooks that were holding it tight around the poor creature’s neck. She remembered the way the Kelpie’s mane had singed and shriveled up when it came into contact with iron, and she gasped, imagining with the iron hooks must be doing to the poor creature’s flesh.

  “Perry! You damned fool!” Niall’s voice, a furious shout — and she whipped around to see Perry, looking frightened but unrepentant, an iron spear in his hands. Then he turned — and started running. Niall roared in fury, but as he did, the Monster uttered a low, heartbroken sound — and she saw him make a decision. Growling in rage, he turned — and in one staggering gesture, leapt onto the Monster’s back. She gasped, starting forward, terrified that she’d drown him — but oddly, the Monster froze in the water, poised as it was to bash its great body against the docks again. She could hear him murmuring to her as he reached for the net, wordless entreaties not to hurt him, to stay still for just moment…

  Finally, he pulled the net loose, and even from her position on the dock Helen could see the deep, deep wounds it had left in the creature’s neck, sizzling as though they’d been burned there, and dripping with a dark substance that must have been blood. The Monster roared, its frightened eyes turning to the line of men with iron spears who had turned to watch Niall in shock — and Helen screamed as she saw the Monster flinch away from the men with spears, flinging Niall from its back in the process. He hit the wreckage of one of the ships, grabbing hold of the mast to stop himself from falling into the water — and then the Monster was gone, leaving only the destroyed boats and the frantic lapping of water in its wake.

  “Seize them,” Niall roared.

  He was holding his arm to his side, and she could see blood from here — but she quickly lost sight of him in the chaos of the fishermen leaping to grab hold of the men with iron spears, all of whom looked a little shellshocked by what had happened. Had they been expecting that, she wondered sickly. Had they been expecting to watch an innocent creature scream and writhe in pain? It was obvious what had happened — Perry had led his little band of fools down to the docks with iron weapons, having heard from the Castle folk that Faerie creatures were weak to iron. They’d lured the creature in — and clearly tried to kill it, if that net was anything to go by. She was grateful that they hadn’t managed it — at least, not yet. She had no idea how serious those wounds were, or how long it would take the Monster to heal from them.

  The fishermen grabbed as many of the men with spears as they could — it seemed two or three had managed to escape, along with Perry. Soon enough, the guards appeared from the castle wall, having spied the disturbance from up above, and when the situation had been explained, the men were dragged up to the Castle to be imprisoned in the dungeons until such time as it was decided what to do with them.

  That left a crowd of distressed fishermen, standing around the wreckage of several fishing boats, and Niall, who looked shellshocked and very much the worse for wear, his arm bleeding profusely.

  “Must have slammed it into the broken mast,” he said through gritted teeth as she looked at the wound, trying to pull the fabric of his tunic away from it. “It’ll be fine.”

  “Let me look at it,” she said sharply. “First aid training was part of my FBI qualification. I can bandage it for you, at least.”

  “The men —”

  “Brendan knows what happened. Let him do his job.” She asked a nearby servant to bring a pail of hot water to Niall’s quarters and dragged the man inside, forcing him to sit down. He was shaking, his eyes wild, and she knew shock when she saw it. “Niall. I want you to focus.”

  “Can’t. Those fools — Perry MacCullen — I have to get after him, have to track him down before he does anything more stupid—”

  “He’s done what he wanted to do,” she said rapidly, gently easing his shirt from his shoulders to get it away from his wounded warm. “He’s hurt the Monster. But thanks to you, he didn’t kill her. So for now, you can just sit here and let me tend to your wound.”

  He took a deep breath — then looked at her gratefully. “You’re right, as always, Helen.”

  “It’s a hard burden,” she said primly — then she bent to press a quick kiss to his forehead.

  He smiled at her, a real smile, his eyes twinkling, and she breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that he was on the way back to her. “I can’t believe they came for her like that,” he said softly.

  Then a familiar voice interrupted him. “Came for who?”

  Eamon, standing in the doorway to his room, bleary-eyed but intensely curious. Helen bit her lip, not sure what to tell the boy — but Niall didn’t seem worried. He invited the little boy over — Eamon hopped up onto a chair and peered with unbothered curiosity at his father’s injured arm.

  “Did you do something silly?” he asked brightly — and Helen burst out laughing, taking a seat as the laughter blew through her. Niall chuckled too, reaching out with his uninjured arm to tousle Eamon’s hair.

  “For once, little man, your da wasn’t the one being silly.”

  Chapter 46

  Helen recovered from her fit of laughter, gasping for breath, as Niall began to tell Eamon the story of what had happened with the Loch Ness Monster. He was surprisingly honest with the boy, providing more details than Helen might have for a small child — but Eamon made it clear that he was comfortable with this level of detail, nodding thoughtfully as Niall explained that Perry and his men had behaved that way because they were angry, and not thinking clearly.

  “That’s why it’s so important, when we feel angry, to take a minute to try to calm down,” he said seriously, looking straight into Eamon’s eyes. “Because it’s okay to feel angry, but we should wait until we’re feeling better before we do anything. Otherwise, people get hurt.”

  “Like you,” Eamon said, his eyes full of understanding at the simple lesson conveyed by the story and the bleeding arm before him. “And the Monster.”

  “Aye, exactly.”

  “Is the Monster okay?” he asked, looking worried. “Should we sent her some bandages?”

  “She’ll be able to take care of herself just fine,” Niall said reassuringly, though Helen could tell that that was the part of his story he wasn’t quite sure of. “But maybe when she’s all better we’ll catch her some fish, what about that?”

  “I’m gonna catch her a hundred fish,” Eamon said resolutely. “No. A thousand!”

  “I tell you what you could do instead,” Niall said thoughtfully, his eyes flicking to Helen. “Why don’t you spend some time in the castle today with Helen, while we work on fixing up the docks? Then we can talk about fishing for the Monster.”<
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  Eamon nodded, happy with this, but Helen bit her lip. It was clear from the look on Niall’s face — and from what had happened — that he wasn’t going to be happy with Eamon being anywhere near the water for a good long while. She was itching to talk with Niall about what this event meant for them — for the Kelpies, for the safety of the people of the castle — but she didn’t want to frighten the little boy sitting at the table, peering so inquisitively at his father’s injury.

  At least he isn’t squeamish about wounds, she thought with some amusement.

  Thankfully, the servants chose that moment to appear with a pail of warm water and a clean cloth to bathe Niall’s wound. It was his right arm that was injured, and he was right-handed, so Helen swatted aside his attempt to do the work himself, scolding him for not letting her help. Eamon seemed very curious about what she was doing, so she talked him through the process of bandaging the wound.

  “We have to clean it before we put the bandage on,” she explained, dabbing gently at the wound. Thankfully, there were no splinters of wood in it — it was just a matter of cleaning out any lingering dirt. “Otherwise it might get infected.”

  “Why?” Eamon wanted to know.

  “There are these tiny, tiny things called bacteria on everything,” she explained, realizing belatedly that she was telling Eamon something that wouldn’t be discovered for hundreds of years. “Our bodies can usually protect us from them — they don’t harm us when they’re just on our skin, for example — but if we eat them, or let them get into wounds, they can cause a lot of trouble.”

  Eamon’s eyes widened. “Tiny monsters?”

  “That’s right,” she said, glancing up at Niall, who also seemed intrigued by what she was saying. “They’re incredibly small — too small to see with your eyes.”

  “Then how do you know they’re there?”

  How to explain a microscope to a four-year-old from the sixteenth century? She shrugged. “People from where I’m from invented a special machine that lets you see very small things.”

  He nodded, satisfied with this. Then he toddled off to his room, clearly of the opinion that now the bandages were going on, the excitement was over. Niall watched him go — then looked back up at Helen with a fascinated expression. “Is all that true? Or was that a story for Eamon?”

  “It’s a simplification, but yeah,” she said, shrugging.

  “So that’s why wounds go rotten sometimes,” he mused.

  “Yeah. That’s why it’s so important to keep them clean when they’re healing.”

  “Maggie always says that,” he said thoughtfully. “I thought it was superstition, or Fae habit, or something of the sort.”

  Helen wondered how much of Fae trickery had scientifically verifiable origins. Was that something she could talk to Maggie about, or would the woman take offence at her attempts to understand the ineffable Fae? Hard to tell, with Maggie. She seemed to pivot from friendly, to scary at the drop of a hat. But thinking of the old woman sent a pang of worry through her.

  “Speaking of Maggie,” she said softly. “How furious is she going to be about the Monster?”

  Niall shut his eyes briefly as she finished bandaging his arm. “I hadn’t thought of that. I think we’ve a storm coming, all of us.”

  “It wasn’t our fault,” she said softly, biting her lip. “We did everything we could to stop Perry…”

  “I have a feeling she won’t see it that way,” he said with a sigh. “Maggie’s a little more sympathetic than most, but the Fae have this troubling habit of seeing all humans as being — well, allied. I suppose we do the same thing, when we blame Seelie Fae for the actions of the Unseelie.”

  Helen sighed. “So Maggie will be angry with us for allowing the Monster to come to harm? Because to Fae, all humans are responsible for the actions of all other humans?”

  “Something like that, yes. But it’s not Maggie I’m worried about,” Niall said with a frown. “It’s the Seelie Fae more generally. Even the Sidhe might be upset we allowed their ally to come to harm… I’m not sure.”

  Helen took a deep breath. “Whatever the case — we should go up to breakfast. We both need to eat something and figure out what we’re going to do about all this. And I’d imagine you’ll need to make a report to the Laird.”

  “Oh, aye. I’m sure he’s heard forty versions of the story by now,” Niall said distractedly. “Given how these fishermen gossip…”

  “We were lucky so many of them were there,” she said simply. “And that so many of them were on our side. Who knows how much harm Perry might’ve done to the creature if the fishermen hadn’t protected her?”

  “I don’t feel especially lucky,” Niall admitted dourly. “But you’re right. It could have been a lot better… but it also could’ve been a lot worse.”

  They fetched Eamon and headed up for breakfast. The castle, predictably, was abuzz with stories of what had happened that morning on the Loch. Niall headed for the high table to talk with Donal, who was already deep in conversation with Brendan and Malcolm and quickly beckoned the Niall over to join them, concern on his face when he saw Niall’s bandaged arm.

  Helen considered joining them — but before she could, she found herself swarmed by worried servants, bursting with questions about what had happened. Was the Monster okay? Had Perry MacCullen really killed it with an iron spear? Touched by their clear affection for the creature, she grabbed some food for herself and Eamon as she told a quick version of the real story, over and over again — the Monster was wounded, but not fatally, and though Perry and a handful of his men had gotten away, the majority had been caught and imprisoned.

  “Aye, they’re in the dungeons,” said one of the servants, a smug look on her face. “My brother’s a fisherman, he hauled one of them in himself.”

  “That’s good. Serves them right to rot down there,” another servant snapped.

  Eamon was wide-eyed, listening to these tales with clear fascination. At least he was entertained. By the time they’d finished their breakfast, Helen was feeling a little drained — telling the same story over and over again was exhausting.

  Niall came over to them once they’d eaten, took a seat beside them and quickly squeezed Helen to his side in a comforting hug. It was a pleasant little reminder of the night they’d spent together — had it really only been last night? It felt like a thousand years had passed since then, with the Monster and the chaos on the docks.

  “Donal has the full story now,” he told her, not waiting for her to ask — she appreciated being filled in so promptly. It made her feel like part of the team, not just an assistant. “He’d heard a hundred versions, as I expected, but we got it straightened out. The eight men who were on Perry’s side are in the dungeons now, awaiting trial or similar. Donal hasn’t decided what to do with them. I’ve got a few ideas,” Niall said dangerously, “but it would be best to wait until cooler heads prevail, I reckon.”

  “Probably for the best,” she said gently with a smile. “Any word of Perry?”

  “Donal’s put the word out in the castle and the village that he’s a wanted man,” Niall said firmly, a murderous look on his face. “The fishermen were able to identify his three henchmen, too — the ones who got away with him. It’ll only be a matter of time until someone turns them in.”

  “That’s good.” Helen sighed. “We ought to have kept him in the dungeons when we had him…”

  “Aye, I’ve been thinking the same thing myself,” Niall said with a scowl. “I was so eager to give him the benefit of the doubt, what with the loss of his brothers turning his head… but it’s clear he’s rotten to the core. Still, I hope… maybe it’s daft of me, but there’s still a chance he might see the light. He didn’t look thrilled, when he was looking at that poor creature thrashing about in the docks.”

  “I don’t think that’s daft,” Helen said softly, reaching out to touch his hand, pleased by the new intimacy between them that allowed for little gestures like that. “I
think it’s good, that you want to believe the best about your friend.” Still, thinking of the way the man had spoken to her those weeks ago in the dungeon… she didn’t share Niall’s hope that Perry could be redeemed somehow. Still, stranger things had happened, hadn’t they? “Maybe he’ll turn himself in.”

  “Aye, I wouldn’t count on it,” Niall said with a frown. “But we’ve got bigger problems to deal with. With the Monster injured, Donal’s worried that the Kelpies will press their advantage — and I’m inclined to agree with him. She was doing important work, hunting them. I don’t know how serious the injury was, or how long it’ll take to heal, but Donal’s doubling up the patrols for safety, and he’s warned all the fishermen to keep a sharp eye on each other when they’re working, even if that means not travelling as far.” He sighed. “It’s going to cut even further into their catches… it might be a lean winter if these keeps up.”

  “Better than losing more men,” Helen said, squeezing his hand.

  He nodded, sighing. “It’s just hard to look on the bright side. What else could go wrong?”

  And as though those words were a cue (or a curse), the doors to the dining hall flew open. Helen spun around, shocked to see none other than Old Maggie standing there, looking considerably taller than she usually did — with an expression of vivid fury on her wrinkled old face. The dining hall fell silent in the wake of her entrance, and Helen took a deep breath.

  “You were saying?” she whispered to Niall.

  Chapter 47

  “Laird Donal!” Maggie boomed from the doorway.

  Helen had spent a fair bit of time around the old woman — she’d always known her to be kind, friendly — a little unpredictable, true, with an irascible streak that showed when she got impatient, but in general, a warm person who she trusted. The Maggie she saw before her now was a completely different person. This Maggie was full of cold anger — this Maggie was ready to fight every single man in that dining hall… and if Helen was a betting woman, she knew where her money would be in that fight. It seemed she wasn’t alone in this feeling — though there were guards ringing the Great Hall, none of them seemed particularly interested in tangling with Maggie. They were glancing sideways at each other, deeply uncomfortable expressions on their faces, as though wondering who had the courage to confront the furious Fae woman standing in their midst.