Night of the Highland Dragon

by Isabel Cooper

  In the fog, the human figure gestured. The creatures leaped forward. The scene disintegrated around William, leaving him standing once again in a dark, rainy field, completely alone and never more relieved to be so.

  Quickly, he grabbed the rune chains and stuffed them back into his satchel, then darted for the edge of the cleared land. Only when he was in the forest, with a solid clump of pine and oak and undergrowth between him and any onlookers on Finlay’s land, did he let himself lean against one of the trees, catch his breath, and think.

  He had been right. The killer was human, or at least human-shaped. He wouldn’t have much luck convincing Judith of that, though. Even had the figure been alone, I saw a magic vision was not evidence she would readily accept. If he started talking about demons… There wasn’t an asylum nearby, but that would be all William would have to his advantage.

  “Demons” was likely the right word for the little things, he thought, while the forest around him rustled with the rain and the wind. Creatures that looked like that were almost certainly from the Outer Darkness. These no doubt had been summoned with blood sacrifice, probably the boy’s in Belholm, and kept fed on a steady though reduced diet of livestock. William had encountered a few similar creatures over his years of service and had more often seen their powers channeled through human vessels, but the thought was still enough to make him shiver.

  He didn’t want to think more about demons in the middle of the night, not in a forest where all the shadows looked far deeper than normal. William made a vain attempt to wring out his hat, then stepped out from the shelter of the tree.

  Instinct saved him. As in the past, he didn’t know if he’d seen movement out of the corner of his eye, heard a sound his conscious mind didn’t register, or even caught a whiff of a repulsive and alien scent. Without thinking, William turned and looked up.

  Blackness plummeted toward him, screeching.

  William leaped backward, but not quickly enough. Claws raked down the arm he threw up to protect his face, tearing effortlessly through the layers of coat, jacket, shirt, and skin. He felt no pain at first but knew that would change soon. He struck out and felt the claws vanish as a dark shape went flying toward a tree.

  Unluckily for William, it didn’t hit. It dropped to the ground and came up snarling, its teeth jagged and gleaming foully even in the darkness. The head of the creature was shaped vaguely like a cat’s but gaunt, the cheeks sunken around the too-wide mouth and hollow yellow eyes. Its body was long and flexible, with many sets of legs and a whipping razor-edged tail.

  The creature was bigger than the demons in his vision. Much bigger. Its head came to William’s thigh, and its body was at least two feet long. Collecting itself, it reared up on a foot or so of that length and screeched at him again. Even far away, William smelled a rankly sweet, burnt odor and felt the heat of the demon’s breath go through his clothes.

  The butt of his silver-loaded gun came easily to his hand, but the wet folds of his coat slowed him as he yanked the revolver free of its holster. His arm was starting to hurt now, sharp pain whose immediacy suggested that the demon’s claws hadn’t gone too deep, but which was an unwelcome distraction nonetheless. A burning sensation came with it, and when William inhaled, the smell was like the demon’s breath, but more acrid.

  Acid, he thought. Bloody wonderful.

  He fired. The demon sprang. The first bullet whistled through the air behind it and buried itself in a tree trunk. The second struck the creature in the hind flank, and it screamed a third time, now in genuine pain. William fanned the revolver and kept firing, counting down each bullet. He had six before he had to reload; his other gun was full of plain lead, which only worked on minor demons, and then not always. He didn’t know how minor this thing was, and alone in the silent, dark forest, he had no intention of taking chances before he needed to.

  Bullet number three hit the demon in the side. Blood, a sickly glowing shade of green, ran from that wound and the first, but the creature kept coming. The force of the shots knocked it back so that it landed just short of William. It reared again and swiped at him with four sets of talons. He dodged sideways, and this time, though his coat ripped, the blow didn’t carry through.

  “Get away,” he snarled back at the demon and kicked sideways, catching it in the face. Its teeth were formidable, but his boot leather was thick, and the blow caught the creature off guard. William heard crunching, saw the many-legged form scurry backward, and smiled, sickly satisfied with its pain.

  Now he had room to aim again. A breath let him fix the demon’s head in his sights. Another, and he pulled the trigger.

  Bonelessly, the creature twisted itself out of the way, and the bullet hit the ground.

  That was four. Two more bullets remained, and of course he’d had to block the demon’s first attack with his good arm. But now he had an idea.

  Before the demon could collect itself and come at him, William shot twice, aiming just a hair high the first time and low the second, fanning the revolver so that the two sounds were almost one. One missed, as he’d known it would, as the demon spun impossibly through space—right into the second bullet.

  Silver flared behind its eyes for an instant before its head split open. The gout of green blood was vast. A few drops hit William, sizzling on his coat. The creature’s body collapsed to the ground in the middle of a growing pool.

  William watched it for a minute, reloading his gun as fast as he could. Even in death or apparent death, demons could be tricky. He found a suitably long stick and nudged the body, gun in his other hand. The stick hissed as it made contact with the creature’s acidic blood, but the corpse didn’t move.

  Dead was dead in this case.

  He might have felt a sense of triumph, except that the demon’s master was probably still around. Such creatures did occasionally come through without being called, but those occasions were very rare, and with everything else happening in Loch Arach, an independent demon would be too great a coincidence.

  Either the demon’s master had sent it specifically after William, or it was here to guard the forest.

  William didn’t like the implications of either possibility. Also, his arm was bleeding, though not badly, and would probably hurt even more as his body stopped compensating for danger. His clothing was ruined in a damned conspicuous manner; he’d just shot six of his limited supply of silver bullets; and anyone wandering around the forest would have a very nasty surprise soon. Prudence suggested that he bury the demon and retrieve what bullets he could.

  The rain didn’t seem to be letting up at all, and he had nothing but his hands to dig with.

  No, he didn’t feel particularly triumphant.

  Twelve

  “Three mares in foal,” said Judith, gesturing to the stables as she and Agnes walked past, “and coming along well. Campbell’s beast did good work, though of course we’ve yet to see how they all turn out.”

  “Hoping for the color or the height?”

  “Neither—I like the line as it is. But they need new blood if they’re to stay healthy.” Judith nodded to a few of the grooms out forking hay and using the sunny day to mend fences and turned onto the path that led to the gardens. “Come to think of it, a wee bit of height might not be so bad. Stephen and Colin have an inch or two on me, and the lasses they’ve chosen are both tallish. I’d not want my niece’s feet dragging on the ground in a year or ten.”

  Agnes laughed. “Planning for her future already, are you?”

  “Oh, aye. What else would a proud auntie do?”

  “Teach her to ride, I’d think,” said Agnes, “and the others who come along as well. Or will you let their fathers do it and save your brothers’ pride?”

  “That? Never,” said Judith. She smiled and didn’t let the grin fade when she added, “As for the rest, we’ll see.”

  In a few years, wee Anna would be not-so
-wee any longer and coming up on her first transformations, which were always hard to control or contain. Like MacAlasdairs had done in Judith’s day, and as far back as family stories went, Stephen and Mina would come back to Loch Arach and settle there for a decade or two.

  That was fine. Judith would be happy to see her family as always—for as long as she could. Stephen’s return would be the first step in a transition, though. The wheel would turn, and her time to leave would come shortly after. When that had happened before, she’d never minded. This time, she was trying not to think about it.

  “Just hope they get their mothers’ temper,” said Agnes, saving Judith from her own mind. “The foals, that is. I dinna’ know if you’ve heard it, but Murray’s horse kicked his wife badly the other day. Dr. McKendry had to see her, poor thing, and she’s still abed from it. Cracked a rib or two, or so I hear.”

  “I hadn’t heard,” Judith said and made a note to stop by that house the next day. She had a vague mental picture of Murray’s gelding: middle-aged, fat, and as placid as her own horses most of the time. “Odd.”

  “Aye, well, you never can tell with animals. It’s a hard bit of luck for her. Claire says ’tis worse for her Mairi—the eldest, ye ken—but then, she would.”

  “A friend?”

  Agnes nodded. “And ’tis an ill wind that blows no good, I suppose. They werena’ speaking to each other until it happened. Had words, as lasses will do at that age. But Claire went over the moment she heard, and they’ve made it all up now.”

  “As lasses will do at that age,” Judith echoed. The gardens wound out in front of them—almost all dark greens and browns now, dotted with red and pink where fuchsias and roses still bloomed. Her ancestors had never gotten very elaborate out here, but there were a few stone paths between hedges. When the weather was fair, it was a nice place to wander with guests—particularly when she didn’t want to visit those guests at their homes because of who else she might encounter there.

  On that note, she looked over at Agnes. “The fight wasn’t about your lodger, was it?”

  “Oh no,” Agnes said, shaking her head so that the ostrich feathers on her best hat waved back and forth. “You’ll have forgotten your girlhood, m’lady. They’re all content with each other so long as none thinks she can have him for her own self, and he’s given none of them any sign of that.”

  “Arundell’s been a gentleman, then?”

  “Aye,” said Agnes, and then she hesitated. “Aye, he has.”

  “But?”

  “It’s nothing to do with the girls,” said Agnes, and relief unknotted a muscle between Judith’s shoulders. In addition to her earlier protective feelings, now that Arundell had kissed her, she would feel thoroughly ridiculous if he’d been trifling with girls Claire’s age. “And it could be that ’tis none of my business—each blade of grass keeps its own dew—”

  “But he’s your lodger, and it’s your roof,” said Judith.

  “Aye,” Agnes said again, but she drew it out more slowly this time and didn’t say anything immediately afterward, until the muscles in Judith’s back had begun to twist again.

  Judith was a patient woman. She always had been, in her own way, even when she’d been traveling the world outside Loch Arach. Most of the time, she was content to stay still and silent, and to let the prey come to her or the enemy step into her sights. But just then, she wanted to shake Agnes.

  Eventually, the other woman did talk.

  “You’ll recall a few nights past? When it rained so hard?”

  “Yes,” said Judith with a grimace. The hole in the castle roof, not quite fixed yet, had necessitated the hurried addition of a cooking pot to the furnishings of the room below. Luckily it was a spare bedroom without much that the water could damage, but it had been another reminder of how quickly time passed and how much there was to do before winter.

  “Well, he didna’ come in until late that evening. After dinner. I couldna’ say the time exactly, but it might have been nine or ten.”

  “City hours run late, I hear,” said Judith. “Later than that. Perhaps he was drinking with some of the lads.”

  “He does that at times,” said Agnes. “But never so late before, and never in the driving rain. I canna’ think who he’d been out with.”

  Judith shrugged, forcing herself to show a casualness she didn’t feel. “Women a bit older than Claire find him impressive, maybe,” she said, although a liaison didn’t seem the likeliest explanation either. Arundell had struck her as more discreet than to carry on at night that way, and fonder of his comforts than to come back through a downpour.

  “And so I thought at the time,” said Agnes. “But this morning, I saw the sleeve of his coat had been torn and mended. And then, when I did the washing, one of his jackets was mended in the same place, and I recall it being whole the last time. And there’s no reason for a guest of mine to do his own mending, which I told him when he took the rooms.”

  “No obvious reason, no,” Judith said. She gazed off over the gardens, not really seeing the plants or the forest beyond. “What did the tears look like?”

  Thinking, Agnes closed her eyes. “There were seven of them,” she said slowly, forehead wrinkled in concentration. “All on the forearm, just below the elbow. Long and thin, like. If there’d been fewer of them, or if they’d not been so orderly, I’d have said he’d fought a man with a knife.”

  “Don’t tell Claire that,” Judith responded automatically. “She’ll think it’s romantic. And we don’t have many knife fights up here.”

  “Aye, none that anyone’s talked about. Which they would. But—” Agnes’s eyes, open now, were troubled.

  It was a sense of trouble that Judith shared, particularly because her first impulse was to ask if Arundell was all right. If he hadn’t been, Agnes would have been talking about that for the last three quarters of an hour, and the question was therefore stupid. Judith also didn’t like the way her breath had caught in her throat when she’d thought of him being injured. He was an aggravating outsider, none of her concern beyond what trouble he caused in Loch Arach, and neither the lean strength of his body nor the sure heat of his kiss should change that.

  Having thus remonstrated with herself, she forced her mind down analytical paths. “If he hasn’t thrown out a shirt with a matching set of rips,” Judith said, “I’ll eat my hat. Or yours—it’d be less comfortable.”

  Agnes cast her eyes upward to the rim of her own creation of straw and ribbons and feathers, and then looked over at Judith’s simple brown velvet with a smile. “One day, m’lady, you’ll recollect which of us is supposed to be the staid and solemn widow,” she said and then sobered. “But if he’d mended the coat and the jacket, why not the shirt as well?”

  “Mending is one thing. Getting bloodstains out is another.”

  “Oh,” said Agnes, round-eyed and round-mouthed. “And perhaps he has been favoring the arm a bit of late. I’ve not noticed, but I’ve not been looking. Do you think he met with whatever killed Finlay’s ewe?”

  “I hope not, for his sake,” said Judith.

  If the creature they were looking for was actually an animal rather than a man or a demon, odds were good that it was mad. She’d seen a man—more a boy, though he’d been old enough to enlist—die of hydrophobia once. War wasn’t the only subject of her nightmares. She licked lips gone dry and asked, “Has he been in decent health since? No fever or headache?”

  “Not that I’ve seen, no. But it wouldna’ be so quick to set in,” said Agnes, her own face grave. She rallied then and said, “But the tears looked too long to be bites, though I’m not so much of a judge. And even if they were, there’s dogs as are mean without being mad, aye?”

  “That there are.” Judith shot her friend a grateful smile. If Arundell had gone poking around other people’s property the way he had with Finlay’s—especially if he hadn’t b
othered asking first—he could easily have run afoul of a dog doing its right and proper duty. “And even with what I told Claire, there are other creatures in these mountains that could damage a man. Wildcats, for instance. If he stumbled across a female with a set of late kittens, he’d be lucky to come back with all ten fingers and both eyes.”

  “We’d a barn cat like that,” said Agnes, “when I was a wee girl. My brother’s still got a scar on his wrist. Though I can’t see why he’d keep the matter so quiet, whatever happened.”

  “Neither do I,” said Judith. “And I don’t know why Arundell would have been wandering around where any such creature could get to him in the first place, especially in the rain and the dark.”

  She took a quick mental tally of the village women who might have been both alluring and willing, and came up with around a dozen. Of those, at least half had fathers or husbands who would take Arundell’s advances badly—and who would have been at home before nightfall, particularly in the rain. The others lived near the main village, not out anywhere wild. It was rare for lone human women to live much outside civilization. There was too much work that took physical strength, and there were too many predators, men included.

  Drinking at the Dragon would have put Arundell well in sight of Agnes’s house, not to mention a number of others. Most people kept their dogs fenced and tied on their own property. If a mad dog or a wildcat had been wandering the main street of Loch Arach, it would have damaged more than just Arundell, and more people than Agnes would have been discussing it.

  Agnes was talking again. “That said, it’s over now, and perhaps I shouldna’ have mentioned it. It’s not as though he’s harmed anyone but himself, whatever he was doing.”

  “No,” said Judith, and she thought, not yet.

  That might have been unfair. Arundell wasn’t just on holiday, but she didn’t know that what he was doing would hurt anyone. That was the problem. She didn’t know, and she couldn’t afford ignorance.