Loch Nessa

by Clare Kauter

  I turned to look at Henry and I could tell by the expression on his face that he’d come to the same conclusion.

  “Sorry,” I mouthed.

  He just raised his eyebrows a little and we both turned back to look at the wolf. Its fur wasn’t grey and white (and slightly red with dust and/or blood) like the wolves back home. This one was jet black and larger than the wolves I’d met. Its nose was wrinkled in a threatening snarl and the reflection of the flames in its eyes as it stared directly at us made it look possessed.

  I had no idea what to do. The wolf was stalking around the camp, sniffing the ground, but he hadn’t seen us – yet. If he realised there was a cloaking spell there, though, that meant he could break it. They weren’t impossible to penetrate, and while there were other wards up as well, once one was down it was just a matter of pelting the rest of them until they weakened and fell. It was like a suit of armour – the wards helped, but they weren’t impenetrable.

  Henry and I sat as still as we could, not daring to even breathe in case we made a noise. The garlic was probably masking our scents for now, but if the creature heard us move he would know for sure that there was someone in front of him. Wolves and shifters didn’t get along at the best of times, and in a place so oppressively cloaked in dark magic, this wolf was likely to be even more aggressive than usual.

  I sent my magical feelers forth to scope out the wolf. Now that we were out of the forest I didn’t have to work so hard to feel people out, which was lucky since I still wasn’t totally healed from the Dora. The second my magic passed through the ward (with no resistance, since I was on the inside of the spell), I could sense the dark energy rolling off the creature like mist off the sea. He had the same energy as the forest and the castle – the kind that felt like foil raking across your teeth. The shudder-inducing kind.

  His energy gave me the impression that he wouldn’t mind ripping open our stomachs and eating our entrails. I wasn’t familiar with this particular kind of magic, and as such I immediately distrusted it. He wasn’t a normal werewolf. He was jacked up on some sort of potion or occult ritual. My guess would be that it involved human sacrifice. You may think that that’s a claim without basis, but according to my magic tutor, Satan, you should always assume the worst when it comes to people who’ve fortified their magical abilities. I’d made the mistake of ignoring that advice with Dick and he’d tried to kill me. Pierre was the same. This wolf was bad news. And his pack, which was presumably lurking nearby, was even badder news.

  We couldn’t just sit here waiting. We needed to act before he decided to howl and call all his buddies to us. I reached for my backpack and lifted it into my lap as quietly as I could manage. Henry’s eyes widened and he shook his head aggressively.

  “Stop it,” he mouthed. “You’re going to get us killed.”

  I ignored him and gently opened the flap and then the drawstring at the top of the bag. There had to be something in here to get rid of the intruder. I slipped my hand in gently and began to feel around. Henry’s head shaking grew more frantic. My ignoring him grew more blatant. I continued to rifle. There had to be –

  Then my hand slipped and two glass bottles clanked together. In the eerie silence, the quiet noise of glass on glass sounded like a gunshot. The wolf’s ears pricked up and his head whipped in our direction as he began to growl. Henry’s mouth dropped open in disgusted disbelief and he continued shaking his head at me.

  “Oops,” I mouthed.

  The wolf threw his head back and howled.

  Almost instantly, a thundering noise came from the nearby forest and the next moment the camp was surrounded by growling, drooling wolves. Their fur was jet black and, like the first wolf, they were massive – nearly as tall as me. They looked musclier than normal wolves, like they were on steroids. (That’s what human sacrifices do for you, I guess. Although to be perfectly honest, my own murders hadn’t done a whole lot to get me toned up.)

  As one, the wolves ran at the ward, jaws snapping and claws slashing. There were scratches and flashes in the ward when they hit it, and I could see that already, just with that one hit, the ward was weakening. Henry stood and ran to one of the weakest points to hit it with another burst of energy, trying to keep the shield up. A nearby wolf sniffed the air and reeled back as if disgusted.

  “Shifter!” the wolf spat.

  Every wolf began to growl at that moment, and they all moved back to get a run up for the next attack.

  “A little help?” Henry hissed at me.

  “I’m trying to think!”

  “Less thinking, more casting!”

  Still searching through my bag, I said, “I must have something that I can use to get rid of them.”

  “Now might be a good time to use that Doomstone of yours,” Henry hissed.

  “I can’t,” I said. “The others are too close. They’ll know it was me.”

  “Nessa, in this situation, I’m happy to risk it.”

  “Well I’m not!”

  He rolled his eyes. “What’s the point of having it if you never use it?”

  “We can’t!”

  “Just tell them Ed’s working with a pack of wolves and he used the stone to attack us or something! Come on!”

  “I think I might have something better,” I said, still rummaging through my bag. A nearby wolf clawed the surface of the ward and streaks of light bled from the place he’d attacked like blood oozing from a wound. The barrier was weakening. I needed to hurry the hell up.

  “Hurry the hell up!” hissed Henry.

  Glaring at Henry, I poured the contents of my bag on the ground and began to sort through them. Henry came over to help me, blushing when his hand accidentally grazed a set of my underwear. His embarrassment was endearing in a pompous sort of way, but we didn’t have time for him to be so shy and retiring.

  “Help me!” I hissed.

  “I don’t know what you’re looking for!”

  “It’s –”

  I stopped speaking as my hands closed around the bundle of herbs I’d been searching for. It was a smudge of aconitum – also known as wolfsbane. Without hesitation, I threw the whole thing on the fire.

  Henry stared at me in horror for a moment. “Did you just –” Then it clicked. “Right, the smoke!”

  It began to burn, releasing an acrid cloud of smoke that carried a short distance. A nearby wolf yelped and jumped back, but the air was too still for the smoke to travel as much as we needed it to. The rest of the wolves were gearing up for another joint attack. I picked up a towel I’d tipped out of my bag and frantically tried to fan the smoke, to no avail.

  Henry rolled his eyes at me.

  “Are you a witch or not?” he asked in disbelief.

  “Barely,” I replied.

  He held his arms over his head and moved them each in opposing circular directions before bringing them down to point towards the fire. The smoke puffed out in a perfect circular ring like cigar smoke. The cloud reached the outskirts of the camp just as the wolves made contact with the ward and it fell.

  As they were hit by the smoke, the wolves began to yelp loudly. One howled and ran away with its tail between its legs. It didn’t take long for the others to follow. I steadied my breathing as I watched them retreat. After the wolves disappeared, I turned to Henry.

  “Teamwork,” I said. Henry rolled his eyes and began to cast wards over the camp again. I joined him in casting this time, hoping my death magic would help make the wards a bit stronger against the demon wolves from Hell.

  “I hope they don’t decide to come back any time soon,” I commented.

  Henry frowned. “Why?” he asked hesitantly, clearly not sure if he wanted to hear the answer.

  I bit my lip. “That was the last of the wolfsbane.”

  Henry looked up at the sky and murmured something that sounded a little bit like ‘Lord, give me strength,’ but when I asked him he denied it.

  “So basically if they decide to come back we’re screwed?” he
said. “Seeing as you’re refusing to use your secret weapon.”

  “As long as the others have the companion item, they can sense when I use the stone. I’d be thrown in jail and they’d never forgive me.”

  “You do realise that they tricked you into joining the coven for their own purposes, right?” he said.

  “I thought they were your friends.”

  “They are, but obviously I like you better or I would have turned you in.”

  “Well, even if they did trick me into joining the coven and force me into a blood pact that means I can never escape them, and even if that slightly makes me want to bash in their skulls with a hammer,” – Henry’s eyebrows were five storeys high by this point – “I still don’t want them to sense the stone with their companion item and figure out that I’ve been lying to them all this time.”

  “Maybe you should ask Ed to steal that companion item for you as well.”

  I rolled my eyes at him, not admitting that I’d considered the same thing myself.

  CHAPTER 20

  NEITHER HENRY nor I slept that night. Somehow we managed to survive the night with no further attacks from the wolves – or from anyone else. The garlic must have kept the vampires away, even if it had alerted the wolf pack to our presence. Either that or they were genuinely worried they’d contract vampire malaria from me and had decided not to risk it. I couldn’t believe that I’d actually managed to fool them with a made up disease. Or maybe it wasn’t a made up disease… After what Daisy had said about seeing a doctor, I didn’t know anymore. For Satan’s sake, was I going to have to get myself tested? Wait, no – with my weirdo magical blood (royal weirdo magical blood at that) that probably wasn’t a great idea. You never knew what they might find in my bloodstream. And that’s not to mention my recent use of Dora. That was definitely something I wanted to keep on the down-low.

  I shuddered at the memory of the Dora taking hold of my senses – the waves of pain racking my spine, the feeling of my skin burning away and my insides boiling down to sludge, the dissolving of my vision. While I had no desire to repeat that experience, we now had to go underwater in another lake and seeing as normal diving equipment was out, I suspected the witches would want me to take Dora once more. I was already feeling ill enough from the lack of sleep. I couldn’t even imagine taking that potion again.

  Henry caught the look on my face.

  “You OK?”

  I shook my head. “Not really,” I said. “I don’t want to go back underwater.”

  “The Dora?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea, either. I might just shift and go in alone.”

  I frowned. “Are you sure? Isn’t that dangerous?”

  He shrugged. “I can handle myself.”

  “But Nessie said this dragon was cranky. What if it attacks you?”

  He smiled, crossing his arms. “Are you worried about me?”

  “Of course I’m worried. If that dragon eats you, I’m left alone with two witches who can’t cast any spells while trying to rescue a third witch who seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “You talk about witches like you’re not one.”

  I groaned and picked up my backpack. “Oh man, don’t remind me.”

  He laughed quietly and put out the fire.

  Hecate and Daisy were already awake and packing up the tent, and despite the fact that they’d actually slept last night (jealous? Me?) they still looked sickly and exhausted. The Dora had really knocked them around. I wondered if they were even going to be able to make it the hundred metres or so from our camp to the water. Even if they could, I didn’t think they should risk taking the potion again. They already looked like the living dead. Another sip might finish them off.

  I wondered again why it hadn’t affected me so badly. My magic wasn’t light or dark, one or the other, but somewhere in between. Could that be it? They were strong witches with a lot more skills than me, so I doubted it came down to magical aptitude. Or maybe it was just another perk of being the king of whatever.

  While the others were still shuffling around the campsite packing up, I wandered down to the water’s edge. The lake was tiny, just as it had seemed when Nessie gave us the vision of the location. I wondered how a dragon could even fit in this loch. Nessie certainly wouldn’t have unless he was completely coiled up. His cousin must have been a lot smaller to make this place his home. I absent-mindedly picked up a rock and turned it over in my hand. It was flat and smooth from years of water erosion. The perfect kind of stone for skipping across the water’s surface.

  Looking over my shoulder, I could see that the others were still back at the camp. It was slow going today. Henry had to help the witches with every little thing. I suppose I could have helped them, but I was still annoyed with them for feeding me the Dora without my permission. And tricking me into making a blood-pact with the cult. Uh, coven. Sure, Daisy had brewed me up some tea to make me feel better, but she’d done that less out of the kindness of her heart and more out of obligation. She needed me to be at my best so I could defend her and Hecate from whatever might attack us next.

  Flexing my wrist, I pulled my arm back behind me before flicking it forward and slinging the rock towards the water. It flew further than I’d intended, carried by my anger, and sailed far too high to skim the water. After a large arc, gravity took hold and the rock hit the water with a loud splash, landing on one of its flat sides like it had bellyflopped. I glanced quickly back at the camp to see if the others had been watching, slightly embarrassed, but they weren’t looking in my direction. They’d finished packing up the camp and were beginning to walk towards me. I turned back to the loch.

  Watching the ripples dance across the surface of the water, I tried to get my anger under control with slow breathing. The water was calming and I breathed in time with its movements, wondering how long it would take for the waves from the rock to stop appearing. I frowned. It hadn’t been that big a splash, really. The ripples seemed to be staying for an inordinately long time, and rather than peter out, if anything they appeared to be growing larger.

  My stomach began to rekindle its relationship with gravity and I bit my lip, hoping that the waves didn’t mean anything, while knowing (of course) that they did. Something was moving below the surface.

  The ripples grew larger – less ripples, more waves – and I had to scramble back up the bank to prevent myself from getting wet up to my knees. Bubbles made their way to the surface, first small and then growing larger. The air above the loch seemed to shimmer like a mirage on a hot day, except here it was the exact opposite of hot. Instinctively I put my hand into my pocket and clutched the Doomstone, my safety net, but it was stone (ha) cold. Its magic was suppressed, and as I attempted to use my own magic to feel out what was happening, my power seemed to fizzle and fade away. The energy in the air was dampening my abilities.

  The waves grew larger still and I stepped backwards, slipping on a rock and landing flat on my bum. It hurt, but I didn’t have time to stop and whine about it. I scrambled back in a seated position as the bubbling water grew more and more choppy until finally a red, scaly head with fishy barbels on its face burst through the surface of the water. It shot up into the air, impossibly tall, while the lower half of its snake-like body remained submerged. The head glared down at me from on high before the creature started to bend towards me, mouth open, fangs on display.

  My backwards scramble grew more urgent as the dragon’s head shot towards me. A million thoughts raced through my head. Those teeth… Nessie was a herbivore, but did that mean his cousin was? They didn’t look that similar – could they be different species? I had no idea how dragon genealogy worked. I suspected that was the kind of thing they taught you when you undertook a dragonology degree as Alora had. Maybe this dragon was a meat eater. Maybe that’s what had happened to Alora. Maybe that’s exactly what was about to happen to me.

  The dragon was metres away now �
� a metre – a centimetre. He stopped close to my face, growling.

  How dare you throw rocks at me, you vile human? it roared.

  Sorry, I thought. I, uh, didn’t mean to get you.

  Oh, really? He sounded incredulous.

  I frowned. Yes, really. What kind of idiot would throw a rock at a dragon intentionally?

  He seemed to consider that for a moment. I don’t believe you. It landed right on my head.

  He placed his tiny little T-Rex arms on his hips. In another context it might have been amusing, but right now it didn’t seem so funny. Sure, he couldn’t reach me with his arms, but his teeth weren’t nearly so far away.

  I swear I wasn’t aiming for your head. Even if I’d seen you before I threw the rock, I promise my coordination’s not that good. I just wanted to skip the stone across the water.

  He ignored me. What brought you to my lair?

  Um, I was looking for you, actually. You see –

  You were looking for me?

  Yes, I –

  You admit you knew I was in this loch? His voice grew louder with each word.

  Uh, yes, I –

  And yet you claim you didn’t mean to throw that rock at me? he roared.

  I didn’t! I knew you were in the loch, yes, but –

  So you did know you were throwing it at me! You did it intentionally!

  I held the sides of my head with my hands. The dragon’s voice was so loud it felt like it was shaking my brain loose, but I didn’t know how to block the voice out. If he’d been speaking aloud I could have covered my ears, but it wasn’t like I could cover my mind.

  I – I didn’t mean –

  He bared his teeth and a waft of his breath hit me square in the face. I gagged at the scent of it. It was an acrid blend of sulphur and rotten fish. Yeah, this guy definitely wasn’t a vegetarian.