Moon Cursed

by Lori Handeland

  “Don’t worry,” Marty said. “The constable will be so inundated with the work this mess is going to cause, he won’t have time to bother you.”

  “He’ll need a statement.”

  “I already took it.” Marty stopped the car. “All you have to do is sign. Once I type it up.”

  Kris put her hand on her brother’s. “Thanks.”

  “I’m not going to disappear on you, Kris.” His eyes, so like her own, were earnest, and for the first time in a long time she believed every word that he said. “I promise.”

  “What the hell?” Alan Mac pounded a huge fist on Marty’s window.

  Marty winked, and they got out of the car.

  As Alan Mac was a guardian and would no doubt hear the truth from Liam anyway, Marty told it. Together they got their stories straight while Kris continued to stare at the loch. She couldn’t help herself; she needed to see Liam. But he didn’t appear.

  The constable assured Kris that Jamaica would be okay. She’d come out of her coma and named Dougal Scott as her attacker. He’d have been in big trouble even if he hadn’t kidnapped Kris.

  “Why would he leave her alive?” Kris wondered. “She’d seen him.”

  “She should have died.” Fury suffused Alan Mac’s pale face. “Anyone other than her would have.”

  “Magic?” Kris guessed, and he nodded.

  “Idiot had no idea the power he was messing with. He’s lucky she didn’t incinerate him.”

  “That would have required a sacrifice.”

  “Something she would never do again.” Alan Mac looked away. “I wouldnae have been so generous.”

  Kris heard admiration in his voice. She tilted her head, narrowed her eyes, then smiled. Maybe something more.

  “Without a sacrifice, how did she have the power to save herself?” Kris asked.

  “Blood magic,” Alan Mac said. “Less powerful, but effective enough to keep her breathing until someone else could.”

  “Blood?” Kris began, then understood. Jamaica had used her own. There’d no doubt been plenty of it. “Ass,” she spat.

  “Aye,” Alan Mac agreed. “If he wasnae dead, I might have killed him myself.”

  “I don’t understand why he hurt her,” Kris continued. “Dougal knew Liam was Nessie. He didn’t need Jamaica to tell him.”

  Alan Mac snorted. “As if she ever would.”

  “Then why?”

  “She suspected Dougal was up t’ no good, and she confronted him. But crazy folk are wily, and he—” Alan Mac’s voice broke. He remained silent a moment, cleared his throat, and continued. “She should have come t’ me. But the woman takes her guardian duties seriously.”

  “She took the same vows you did,” Kris pointed out.

  “That’s exactly what she said.”

  At last Marty and Alan Mac left. Kris tried to sleep but was unable to. Even when darkness fell and the night stretched on and on, she sat at the window with her gaze on the water.

  But Liam didn’t come.

  As dawn threatened, she left the cottage and went to the loch. Sooner or later he’d show up.

  She’d be there when he did.

  *

  Liam watched Kris watch the water. He hadn’t planned to go near her again. She’d nearly died because of him. If she had, he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to go on.

  Although he had no idea how not to.

  But when she came to the shore he found himself drawn from the trees where he’d always blended so well with the shadows. Perhaps if he let her tell him to his face that there was no chance for them, maybe then his foolish heart would cease to yearn.

  Liar, he thought. He was no more able to stay away from her now than he’d been able to the first night they’d met.

  She looked up as he approached. Liam stumbled, from both the beauty of her smile and its existence. Shouldn’t she be frowning, shouting, perhaps throwing things?

  “Kris?” he whispered.

  “You saved me.” She took a step toward him, but he stiffened and took a step back.

  “I killed a man.” He clenched his fingers into fists. “I enjoyed it.”

  Kris tilted her head. “You think that makes you a monster?”

  “I didnae have to be made a monster. A monster is what I am.”

  Not even a rustle sounded from the grass as a third voice disturbed the gloaming: “Tell me more.”

  Kris cursed, her gaze going past Liam. “Do you ever knock on a door, walk up a road, wait for a damn invitation? Or do you always lurk about, then appear from nowhere with a gun?”

  Liam didn’t need to turn to know that Edward Mandenauer had come.

  This time for him.

  *

  Kris’s heart was pounding so fast she nearly missed the old man’s response.

  “I hardly appeared out of nowhere. And if I didn’t lurk, I’d never find out anything at all.” His gaze went to Liam, who still had his back to Edward, eyes on Kris. “For instance, the identity of a monster that has just killed a man.”

  She saw the intent on Edward’s face and threw herself in front of Liam as the gun came up.

  “Kris.” Now Liam turned, picking her up bodily and hoisting her out of the way. “He can’t hurt me.”

  “No?” Mandenauer’s bushy white brows lifted. “How very interesting.”

  “He’s done nothing wrong,” Kris said softly.

  “Killing a man and enjoying it is not wrong?”

  “He ended a serial killer.”

  “Kudos,” Mandenauer drawled, faded gaze still on Liam as if he were the last slice of dessert at a chocolate buffet. “It is not the killing I mind so much as the enjoying of it.”

  “Dougal Scott was a serial killer,” Kris said. “We may never know how many people he murdered. He beat Jamaica Blue nearly to death, and he planned to kill me, film it, and blame Nessie.”

  “Diabolical.” Edward still didn’t lower the gun. “Unfortunately, I cannot let a monster that has killed remain on the loose. He may have developed a taste for it.”

  “He didn’t,” Kris said.

  “Nevertheless—”

  “I won’t let you hurt him.”

  Edward managed, just barely, to keep his lips from twitching. “My dear, you won’t be able to stop me.”

  “I won’t have to. His curse does that.”

  The old man’s eyes glittered. “How so?”

  “He was cursed to eternal torment. If he can be killed, not very eternal.”

  Liam continued to hover, tense and ready, between Kris and the ancient Jäger-Sucher.

  “Remarkable.” Edward stared at Liam as if he were a fly in a web. “We will have to find a place to study you. A more controlled environment.”

  Liam sighed. “All right.”

  “Like hell!” Kris stepped in front of him again. Again he moved her out of the way. “He’s not putting you in a fishbowl. He’s not going to experiment on you like he’s Mengele,” she spat.

  Edward’s eyes narrowed.

  “I am a monster, mo bhilis. I have killed. Not only today, not only Dougal, but hundreds and for centuries.”

  “Shut up, Liam,” she said, but her words held no heat. She heard the truth in his voice even before he admitted it.

  “I’ve wanted to die for a long time now.”

  She turned, taking his hands, staring into his face. “Even now that you have me?”

  Hope lit his eyes, but it faded fast. “Believe that I love you. But ye’ll never know for sure, and neither will I, if what ye feel for me is true or a result of my magic.”

  “I feel it; doesn’t that make it real?”

  He shook his head.

  “Come along now,” Edward ordered.

  “He can’t. It’s—” Kris glanced past Liam’s shoulder, and her eyes widened.

  “Liam,” she whispered. “The sun.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Liam spun, then stood blinking in the bright light of a sun he hadn’t seen with human
eyes in centuries.

  “I thought you were moon cursed,” Edward said.

  “I thought I was, too.”

  Kris took Liam’s hand again. For the first time, his wasn’t noticeably cooler than hers. This time their skin temperature was the same.

  She peered at their linked fingers. “What happened?”

  “I dinnae know.”

  Kris turned to Mandenauer. “Ever hear of anything like this?”

  “Curses can be broken.” His already-wrinkled brow wrinkled even more. “Usually the one who cast the curse is needed in order to remove it.”

  “What if they’re dead?”

  “You raise them.”

  “Raise them,” Kris repeated. “Huh?”

  “Voodoo. Magic.”

  “Maybe Jamaica—” Kris began.

  “No,” Liam interrupted. “I forbid her to break her vow for me. And she’s hurt, weak. She couldnae.”

  Mandenauer pulled out a cell phone and pressed a single button. Someone on the other end must have answered, because he began to speak without benefit of “hello.” “Have you found another way to break a curse beyond having it removed by the one who originated it?”

  He listened, then shut the phone without benefit of “good-bye.” “According to my expert on curses, some can be removed by wiping out the line that did the cursing.” He turned to address Liam. “In other words, every ancestor of the witch that cursed you must die.”

  Liam grimaced and said, “I wouldnae,” at the same time Kris murmured, “Uh-oh.”

  Edward brought up the gun again.

  “I would never take another life to ease my own,” Liam insisted before Kris could speak.

  “Dougal,” Kris managed, both fear and hope in her eyes. “He said he was the last of his line.”

  “Convenient,” Mandenauer murmured.

  Liam ignored him. “How could they all be gone?”

  “They must be.” Kris lifted her chin to the eastern sky. “You’re you.”

  Liam studied his hands, his arms, his legs, as if he expected them still to disappear as he morphed into a seal-skinned lake monster. “I dinnae understand.”

  “There is much in this world that is not understood.” Mandenauer put up the gun. “Which is why I find it so remarkable.” He actually winked at Kris. “I may never leave.”

  “Is this permanent?” Liam asked.

  “I have never known a curse to skip a day,” the old man observed. “Have you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’re mortal now,” Mandenauer said. “Be careful. It takes some getting used to.”

  Edward turned and strolled toward the trees. As soon as he walked into their shadows, he seemed to disappear.

  Liam stared at the sky. He couldn’t seem to get enough of the sight of the sun.

  “I love you,” she murmured, then waited for Liam to repeat that her love wasn’t real. Except she knew the truth.

  Love was love. If you felt it, it existed, no matter how the emotion had come about.

  He lowered his gaze, and her heart took one large thump, then began to whirl. He gathered her into his arms, and he kissed her, his lips now as warm as his hands. And while she’d liked their chill, she discovered she enjoyed the warmth just as much.

  His eyes, too, were different. Certainly they still held sadness, a few shadows, and probably always would, but they were brighter, lighter. They seemed to look forward instead of forever back, and his next words proved it.

  “Marry me.” Not a question, more of a command.

  “You believe I love you?”

  “I do.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  He indicated the sun with a jerk of his chin. “Ye still feel the same way about me now as ye did when the sun slept?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That I’m standing here on two legs in its light means I’m no longer Nessie, nor the kelpie that seduced. Any spell ye may have been under is broken. I’m a man. And a man cannae make someone love.”

  “No, he can’t,” she agreed.

  “Then ye’ll marry me?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Confusion flickered over his beautiful face. “I thought ye loved me.”

  “I do. But, Liam—” She took a breath, let it out slow and long. “Where will we live? What will we do? How—?”

  “Not now,” he interrupted. “I’ll spend a lifetime”—wonder spread over his face—“an actual lifetime, making amends for what I once did. But for now—” He kissed her again, putting a stop to every question but one. “Will ye let me make love t’ ye in the sun?”

  Later, after they’d run laughing across the road, carrying pieces of their clothing, pulling grass out of places grass should not be, Kris lay in bed with her head on Liam’s shoulder.

  “I’m glad you’re you,” she said. “But kind of sorry about Nessie. The tourist trade will take a nasty hit.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Kris drew back so she could see his face; there’d been something in his voice.…

  “I never said I was the only thing down there.”

  Read on for an excerpt from Lori Handeland’s next book

  CRAVE THE MOON

  Coming soon from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  “You got another letter from moldy, old Dr. Mecate.”

  Gina O’Neil glanced up from grooming a horse to discover her best friend, Jase McCord, holding up a brilliantly white business-sized envelope. She knew exactly what business it contained. How could she not, considering the obstinate Dr. Mecate had sent her at least half a dozen others just like it?

  It would behoove you to allow me to dig on your property.

  What in hell was a behoove?

  Proving my academic theory would increase the cachet of your establishment.

  She had the same question about cachet.

  I would be happy to advance remuneration.

  Who talked like that?

  “Helloo.” Jase waved the envelope back and forth, his wide, high cheek–boned face softened by the chip in his front tooth that he’d gotten when he was bucked from a horse at the age of eight. His face, combined with his compact but well-honed body, made him look like a marauding Ute warrior, which was exactly what he would have been if born in a previous century. “What should I—?”

  Gina snatched the envelope from his hand. “I’ll take care of it.” In the same way she’d taken care of all the others.

  Direct deposit into the trash can.

  Gina turned back to Lady Belle, and Jase, sensing her mood, left.

  Nahua Springs Ranch was not only Gina’s home but her inheritance. Once one of the most respected quarter horse ranches in Colorado, Nahua Springs had become, after the death of Gina’s parents nearly ten years ago, one of far too many dude ranches in the area. Nevertheless, they’d done all right. Until recently.

  Recently she’d begun to receive as many letters from bill collectors as she did from Dr. Mecate. Certainly his remuneration would be welcome, considering their financial difficulties. Unfortunately what he wanted from her was something Gina couldn’t give.

  If she opened the letter, she knew what she’d find. A request for her to let him search for Aztec ruins on her property.

  She couldn’t do that. What if his search took him there? What if he found … it?

  She couldn’t let that happen.

  Gina crossed to the open back doorway, drawing in a deep breath of spring air as she stared at the ebony roll of the distant mountains and the spring grass tinged silver by the wisp of a moon.

  Giiiiii-naaaa!

  Sometimes the wind called her name. Sometimes the coyotes. Sometimes she even heard her name in the calls of the wolves that were never, ever there.

  The singsong trill haunted her, reminding her of all she had lost. She’d come to the conclusion that the call was her conscience, shouting out the last word her parents had ever uttered in an attempt to make sure she remembered, as if she c
ould ever forget, that they had died because of her.

  Everything had both started and ended in that cavern beneath the earth.

  “Kids will be kids,” she murmured, echoing her father’s inevitable pronouncement whenever she and Jase had gotten into trouble.

  Let them roam, Betsy. What good is having this place if she can’t run free like we did?

  Gina’s parents had been childhood sweethearts. Boring, if you left out the star-crossed nature of their relationship—Betsy the daughter of the ranch owner and Pete the son of the foreman. Everyone on the ranch had considered them as close as brother and sister. When Betsy’s father had found out they were closer, he’d threatened to send her to college on the East coast, right after used his bullwhip on Pete.

  The reality of his coming grandchild had ended both the threat of a whipping and any hope of college. Not that Betsy had cared. She’d loved the ranch as much as Pete had, as much as Gina did now.

  Gina and Jase had been kids that day, heading straight for the place Jase’s granddad, Isaac, had warned them against.

  At the end of Lonely Deer Trail the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao sleeps. You must never, ever walk there.

  According to Isaac, the Tangwaci Cin-au’-ao was an evil spirit of such power that whoever went anywhere near it died. Basically, he was the Ute Angel of Death, and he lived at their place. What fifteen-year-old could resist that?

  Certainly not Gina.

  She’d become obsessed with the end of Lonely Deer Trail. She’d crept closer and closer. She’d taken pictures of the flat plain that dropped into nowhere, yet a tree seemed to grow out of the sky. And when that sky filled with dawn or dusk, the tree seemed to catch fire.

  How could anyone not want to explore that?

  Jase hadn’t wanted to go, but she’d teased him unmercifully. In the end, he’d given in, as she’d known he would. And to Jase’s credit, he’d never once said: I told you so.

  Not when the earth had crumpled beneath them.

  Not when they’d tried to climb out and only succeeded in pulling an avalanche of summer-dried ground back in.

  Not when they’d been buried alive, unable to move, barely able to breathe.

  Not even when they’d both understood they would die there.

  Because if Gina’s sleep was disturbed by the ghostly, singsong trill, if on occasion the wind also called her name, if she felt every morning in that instant before she awoke the same thing she’d felt in that cavern—the stirring of something demonic, the reaching of its deformed hand in a mad game of Duck, Duck, Goose—pointing first at Gina, then at Jase, before settling its death-claw on her parents, well …