Shifters, Beasts, and Monsters (7 page)

“No one seems to know whether the lords of Mallochbirn
conjure the beast or simply control it, but even the laird himself doesn’t deny
that he is involved.”

“I see.” This all fit nicely with the stories she’d
heard from Gramma Molly. Although her grandmother hadn’t mentioned the
sacrificial maiden.

“So, Miss Beaton, what do you think now?”

“I think I need to check it out.” With reluctance, Kate
informed Prince that her lap would no longer be available. The big cat
gracefully leapt down. As he did, he sent her a message:

The sea creature likes you
.

She often didn’t understand the thoughts of animals,
which weren’t verbal in the usual sense. They sent her images, sounds and
smells, many of which she couldn’t clearly perceive. She was probably misinterpreting
what the kitty meant. How did it even know any sea creatures? Cats rarely went
swimming.

Chapter Three

The villagers were celebrating. Whiskey was being passed
around, and there was a good deal of boisterous chatter. Someone played a fiddle
and someone else banged on a drum as the villagers performed Scottish dances. People
seemed surprised to see Kate among them, but to anyone who asked, she mentioned
her grandparents. That seemed to make her acceptable to them. She suspected,
though, that the amount of whiskey being consumed was contributing to her warm
welcome. In the morning, they might feel differently about her.

She met the young woman who had been chosen in this
year’s lottery. Effie was her name, and she was about the same age as Kate. She
was quite a flirt, and the young men were hanging around her, urging her to
share her kisses before the sea monster assailed her with its big slobbery
tongue.

Effie, who was liberally downing the local brew,
retorted, “Legend claims he has a far more talented tongue than any of you lot!”

Kate sipped at the whiskey every time it came around.
It was strong. She soon began to feel lightheaded.

As it grew darker, the mood on the beach changed. The
lighthearted banter turned raucous and there was a violent edge to it that made
her uneasy. The laughter of the women was shrill, and the shouts of the men
back and forth to each other were harsh and rough.

“The moon is up,” someone yelled. “It’s time. Effie!
Enough with the drink now, lass, off you go.”

Effie squealed, still excited about all the attention
she was receiving. “Let’s go, lads. Row me out to the island and let me see if
this monster’s really as good a lover as the other girls claim.”

The women pushed her forward, and Effie was surrounded
by a pack of men, who all grabbed at her. She struggled playfully and yelled, “Get
yer fat hands off me. I’m not that drunk. I can walk to the boat.”

Kate noticed that although they stopped manhandling
her, they still crowded close. Some of them touched Effie in inappropriate
places, which only made the girl laugh harder. She was bundled into the rowboat
and rowed out a short distance to a tiny island. It was little more than a
large rock sticking out of the surf a few yards from shore. The rock had a spit
of sand facing seaward, with waves breaking fiercely over some submerged rocks.
The men had brought ropes, and they looped them around rocky outcroppings to
secure Effie against the rock.

Watching along with the others on the beach, Kate was struck
by the weird drama of the scene unfolding before her. When Effie was well and
truly tied, her arms raised over her head and her hips and legs tightly bound
to the rock, she seemed to realize that she was in a predicament. She began to
struggle in earnest against the ropes. She started asking the men to untie her,
then begging them to do so.

They laughed at her. The mood grew even darker, and
Kate began to feel queasy. Maybe she shouldn’t have joined in the festivities
tonight. She was a stranger here, and this was all a bit over the top. Several
of the men around Effie were touching her hair, her mouth, her breasts, her
thighs. They began pulling at her clothing—a pretty dress that the girl
had obviously chosen for the occasion. Were they going to strip it off her?
This might be difficult, given all the rope they had wound around her.

Kate felt indignation for Effie, but that wasn’t all
she felt. Unaccountably, as she watched, an insidious heat built in the deep
recesses of her belly. It moved lower, between her legs. Jeez, she was getting
wet. In a crazy way, she envied Effie. How would it feel, she wondered, if they
were doing that to her?

The taboo, the forbidden had always excited her.

Before the men could strip Effie completely, there
arose a sibilant hum. The strange vibration crept in from the sea, rising in
volume and intensity. In the distance, the waters seemed to glow. Something was
speeding toward them. Kate felt the force of a jumble of powerful emotions—lust,
rage, and fury—barreling toward them out of the night.

She stared out to sea with everybody else. Holy shit. What
the hell was that? The waters were parting for it, and, as it moved, it left a
wake of phosphorescence glimmering on the surface.

There was a stirring in the crowd, a low murmur of
sound, and finally shouts and screams.

“He comes! The sea dragon!”

“The monster!”

“The Zrakon is rising from the sea!”

The men pawing Effie leapt away and flung themselves
into the boat. They rowed frantically back to shore. As for Effie, she started
screaming, her voice rising high and shrill.

Shit! Were they abandoning her out there? The poor
girl was obviously terrified. Kate could never bear to hear the sound of a
fellow creature in pain or fear. Without thinking, she rushed toward the water.
It was one thing to play the part of a sacrificial maiden, but something else
entirely to
be
one.

Effie, no longer so proud to be the center of the
villagers’ attention, wasn’t a willing participant in the ritual any more. Kate
didn’t understand what was happening, but it was clear that no one was doing
anything to help her. She still couldn’t see what the thing in the sea was, but
it was heading straight for Effie, and the weird humming sound was getting
louder.

She raced to the rowboat. The villagers backed away
when they saw her coming. She confronted a group consisting of three of the
village’s strongest young men. “Come on, we have to get her off that rock.
Quickly! Help me!”

The men looked at one another uneasily, but did not
move. A couple of them had just come back from the rock, and they didn’t look
in any mood to return.

“Tis the Zrakon,” one of them hissed. “He canna be
resisted.”

“She chose it,” another muttered. “If she tries to
take back her choice, the monster will come for us instead.”

Kate shook her head vigorously. The Zrakon? The thing
even had a name. “Don’t be absurd. It’s probably a whale or maybe even a giant
squid. It can’t come ashore, but it might hurt Effie, the way she’s bound
practically in the water.”

In truth, she did not know whether whales would hurt
anyone, but what if it was a shark? The sea was too cold for those, wasn’t it?
Didn’t sharks stick to warmer water? She was already splashing into the
breakers. One young man followed her, only to yell at her, grab her arm and try
to hold her back. She jerked away from him, and he didn’t follow her any
deeper. She didn’t need the boat, she realized. Effie’s rock was only a short
distance away and the water was freezing, but not too deep.

The surf was rough, but she persevered. She dragged
herself onto the mini-island before the sea monster, or whatever it was, was
able to get there.

 Effie was wailing, tears pouring down her flushed
cheeks. “I’ve changed my mind, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to be taken
by something
that
big!”

Kate spoke softly to her, telling her not to cry, and to
hold still while she cut the rope that bound her. But the blade of her Swiss
Army Knife was not sharp, and it seemed to take an age to saw through the rope.
If only she had one of those huge, nasty dirks like Ross Malloch.

All the while, the creature was surging closer, its
angry hiss much louder now as it sped toward the sacrificial rock. She wasn’t
going to make it, Kate realized. She cast a quick glance over her shoulder. The
thing was almost upon them. Dammit! There wasn’t enough time!

The rope parted and Effie tore herself free. She leapt
down and scrambled back through the thigh-high water toward the villagers, who
still hadn’t lifted a finger to help. As Kate whirled to follow, a mighty wave
crashed over her, and she stumbled and fell to her knees. The massive shoulders
of the sea monster rose out of the water. Standing on reptile legs, he stalked
through the surf foaming around the small islet. He opened his mouth and showed
his great teeth to the crowd. His roar was like a clap of thunder. As it died
away, Kate could hear people moaning. The creature pounded on his chest and
roared again.

He turned from the scattering crowd and looked down on
Kate, who had managed to stand up again. She was drenched and shivering. Huge
eyes glittered like silver as they considered her. One more ground-shaking stride
and he was looming over her.

Holy shit. What
was
this thing? The beast they
called Zrakon was easily 10 feet tall. He seemed to gain height as he stood
there, as if to make himself more imposing, more magnificent. His massive tail
curved around him and slashed the water, sending spray all over them. She
backed up until she felt something hard smash into her spine. The rock.

Oh no. I have become the sacrifice.

Chapter Four

Whatever the beast was, it was not a whale. Squinting
through her tangled hair, which the wind was whipping around her face, Kate hoped
for a miracle. This thing was either a demon from hell or a real-life sea
dragon. His head was reptilian, with a high, ridged forehead, a broad, flat
snout and a thick-lipped mouth that was hinged like a snake’s to open
extra-wide. His vertically-slit eyes were enormous.

His neck was long and graceful, thickening into
massive shoulders from which emerged two humanoid arms. His paws ended in blunt
claws. Tentacles crisscrossed like laces across his
breast.

His torso was roughly the shape of a man’s from the
hips to the shoulders. His massive haunches supported powerful-looking legs and
huge webbed feet. His thick tail tapered behind him, ending in a flipper-like
fin that curled around his legs. Along his spine were several fins, and folded
flat behind his shoulders were two leathery structures that might be
vestiges
of wings.

Why would sea creatures need wings? Or legs, for that
matter? The legend she had heard from her Gramma claimed that sea dragons were
the descendants of airborne, fire-breathing dragons. After committing some
nameless crime, they had been banished to the seas where their fires had been
extinguished forever.

But it was neither the reptilian legs nor the vestiges
of wings that truly alarmed her. That honor went to the mammoth appendage
protruding from between the creature’s hips. She had seen the phallus of a
stallion once, as he had been ready to mount a mare. This was larger, thicker,
and covered with what appeared to be coarse, fleshy spikes along its length.
Worse, as the creature stalked her, its cock twitched and grew even larger. Shit.
Surely it hadn’t meant to use that thing on Effie? It would have killed her.

Not on Effie. You spared Effie that torture, you
little idiot. The monster intends to use it on you.

Kate liked to think of herself as brave and capable of
dealing sensibly with things that would alarm other women. But never in her
life had she faced anything like this.

She inched away from him, even though she had nowhere
to go. The rock was at her back. The rough ropes that had bound Effie were
dangling there. The entire island seemed to shake with each step as his
powerful back legs crashed into the sand. He was rearing over her now, smelling
of brine, seaweed, and something else that was male and musky. His arms, if
they were arms, slammed into the rock on either side of her shoulders, caging
her. She could feel the heat of his body, which seemed remarkably warm for
something that had just swum in from the freezing northern seas.

Unlike a fish or a whale, the Zrakon had a forward-looking
face, with his eyes on either side of his long ridged snout. He was definitely
more dragon-like than fish-like. His jaw cracked as he opened it and roared
with a sound that shook both the island and her heart.

Please don’t let me faint,
Kate
prayed. She was already lightheaded from the Scotch, and her terror was making
her legs feel as if they were about to collapse. If she was about to die, she
would prefer to face death standing, with her head held high.

The creature dropped its snout toward her neck and she
steeled herself to have her throat ripped out. But it seemed to be sniffing
her. Dear God. It crunched closer. She could feel the tip of its huge twitching
penis pressing hard against her belly.

She spared a thought for all the guys whose advances
she had refused in recent months. For some reason she’d been off men. As she’d laughingly
told her friends, her vibrator didn’t make a lot of silly demands. Now it
seemed absurd that she’d been so celibate lately. Raped by a demon monster? Was
this her fate because of all the males she had rejected?

The monster was looking her over with what she would
swear was a man’s lust. No, it was far more ferocious than that. He swung one
of his arms at her and she flinched, sure she was about to be struck and
killed. But the claw seized the neckline of her dress and ripped it away in one
savage motion. It flung the tatters into the sea and let out a bellow. Shaking,
she looked down at herself, expecting to see lacerations on her skin, but there
were none. Those demon hands came at her again, wrenching away her bra.

He had fingers, she realized, as she teetered between
humiliation and terror. Their movements were deft despite all his drama. The
digits touched her breasts with some delicacy, leaving her to wonder if this
creature felt women up regularly. They slid down over her flesh, leaving
tingles, not wounds. They were rougher in texture than a man’s fingers, but
they did not injure her. The tip of one blunt claw stroked her nipple. It felt surprisingly
good. She gave a little gasp as her nipple turned hard. An erotic charge shot
down into her core, and she could feel herself blush. Her heart was still
pounding, but not entirely from fear. There was something wildly sensual about
this.

The digit moved away, trailing farther down over her
belly. When the dragon’s hand reached the elastic at the top of her bikini
panties, he made another rapid jerk, tearing her fragile panties to shreds and
leaving her naked. Then he studied her body with his flat, silver eyes.

Great, she thought. I’ve been stripped by a sea dragon,
and the damn creature is arousing me. Were the villagers still watching this
spectacle? Probably.

Kate forced herself to raise her chin and meet the
monster’s gaze. A strange look passed between them. She could see his raging
lust, but she could swear she saw intelligence there, too. And she seemed to
hear Gramma Molly’s voice telling her, “You have the gift. You can touch the
heart and mind of any creature, if you just learn to believe in yourself.”

The sea creature likes you,
the
cat had told her.

She drew a deep breath and opened her mind. She could
link with the primitive brains of other animals, so why not this one?

Maintaining eye contact, she sent a golden thread
towards the creature, envisioning it as a tendril of light that approached and joined
her mind to his. She felt a jolt of contact. Then, not a thread, but a golden
tunnel opened between them—much larger and more vivid than anything she
had ever glimpsed when trying to match affinities with pets. As she entered
this tunnel, she seemed to fly. The sounds of the waves and the howls of the
creature slid into the background as she sensed intelligence, organization,
reason, power.

And then, she sensed astonishment. The great tail
slapped the water and sent another wave crashing over her. She clung to the
rock and bit her lip to keep from screaming as loudly as Effie.

You can touch my mind?

His words weren’t spoken, but thought. She could hear
the sea dragon’s phrase in her own mind. Like telepathy.

Whoa. She hadn’t expected it to work. She answered by
speaking aloud. “So it seems.”

What are you doing here?

She had the impression that the “you” was emphasized,
as in why
you
and not that yummy village girl?

“Um, I’m not the sacrifice. I cut her free.”

You took her place? Why?

“
No one else would help her. I
didn’t intend to take her place. You came before I could flee.
”

Intentional or not, here you are.

“It’s all a big mix-up. I’m really sorry. Maybe you
could return some other night?”

She sensed amusement from the monster.
It’s
Midsummer’s Eve. We won’t get another one of those for an entire year.

“A year can pass quickly sometimes.”

The creature growled. His huge eyes were flicking over
her naked flesh.
I am hungry now!

Despite the implication that she was about to become
Zrakon prey, Kate was aware that this exchange was remarkable. Animals, even
large animals, could not form coherent questions or answers. They didn’t have
sophisticated forms of language. When she bonded with animals, what she chiefly
sensed from them was imagery and emotion.

But he—the monster—understood her when she
spoke. How was that possible? Was he some sort of supernatural creature? A
demon? Was he about to bear her down to hell? She didn’t even believe in hell!

Conscious that she might not have too many more
moments on this earth, Kate tried to answer him with dignity. “I’m the wrong sort
of sacrifice. I’m a traveler and a foreigner. I don’t share the customs of your
people.”

The beast’s gigantic head tilted to one side and he
seemed to be examining her with some attention.
What is a foreigner doing
on a rock in the Highlands on Midsummer’s Eve?

“I’m half Scottish. My grandmother came from this region.
Anyway, I’m a guest. Surely you’re aware of the ancient laws of hospitality.
Even mythical creatures respect them.”

Next you’re going to tell me that these ancient
laws forbid me to fuck you.

She drew a deep breath. “I doubt you’d find me
appealing.”

You do look skinny.
My
intention was to ravish a buxom village girl, who would have been whiskey-sloshed
and compliant.

 “
I hardly think Effie wanted to
be raped.”

Effie, was it?
She heard a
loud sound that sounded like sea dragon laughter.
She would have enjoyed
herself hugely, and had a fine tale to tell her grandchildren. It is most
ungracious of you, lass, to interfere with my pleasures.

Was she hallucinating this? Maybe she was having imaginary
fancies as she died. Like “walk into the light,” but personally tailored for a
woman who was fond of animals and folklore.

 
One of his huge clawed
hands reached out and touched her on the shoulder. His silvery eyes looked
speculative.
Are you a virgin?

If she hadn’t been so scared, she’d have laughed. “No.
If the sacrifice has to be a virgin, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”

 It is a great misconception that we expect
virgins as the sacrifice. A lusty, experienced girl is preferable.
His
metallic eyes glanced downwards at his own erect phallus.
All human women
are virgins to the Zrakon.

Kate thought it wise not to respond to that
understatement. The sea dragon gave a thunderous growl. He reached out again with
one of his dragon fingers and ran it over her flesh, from her breasts to the
thatch of dark brown hair between her legs. She flinched from his touch, but
she was fascinated by it. Once again, it sent pleasurable shivers through her.
This is what comes, she thought breathlessly, of being intrigued with the
forbidden—you end up contemplating some sort of monster sex!

I want you. But this doesn’t feel quite right.
The
creature sounded puzzled.
It’s not enough. You are different. There
should be more. Much more.

More what? She clung to the idea that there was
something wrong. “So, you’ll let me go?”

No. We’re going for a swim.

Kate tried again to retreat. “I’m not a very good
swimmer.”

I am.
The two vertical rows
of tentacles that laced down the front of his chest unlaced and opened.
Do
what I tell you.

Kate stared at the iridescent rainbow-colored scales
in front of her. His hide was quite beautiful, close up. She sensed that he
wanted her to step forward into his briny embrace. “The sea is cold. I’ll
freeze.”

I will cradle you against my chest and belly,
holding you in my laced tentacles. You will be warm there.

“I don’t really—”

Just above the top two tentacles, you can see a
stubby bud. It channels air from my lungs. You must press your face there and take
it into your mouth. You will share my air. I can hold
my
breath under water for a hundred times longer than you can.

“I’m fine right here, thank you.”

 I’m taking you to the keep.

She frowned. The only keep around here was Mallochbirn
Castle. A sudden suspicion seared her. “This has something to do with Ross Malloch,
doesn’t it? Is he controlling you somehow?”

He growled.
It’s complicated.

“I’ve been forbidden by your master to visit his
castle.”

There was another rumble of what she suspected was
Zrakon laughter, and then he
lunged forward. He had grown tired of
the debate.

Kate felt his tentacles close around her, caging her.
She expected them to feel cold and slimy, but they were warm and dry. Despite
her puny struggles, she was drawn tightly against the giant pectoral muscles of
the sea dragon. His muscles rippled against her flesh. He was immensely strong.
He was briny, like the sea.