The Loch

Chapter 30

Brandy moved in with me that night. Having lost her home, all her worldly possessions, and her livelihood, she had nothing left.

She said it didn't matter, as long as she had me.

It was nearly 3:00 A.M., the summer sun already gray in the eastern horizon by the time we squirmed together between the crisp hotel sheets, our entwined naked bodies creating all the heat we'd need. Too exhausted to make love, I simply held her until she fell asleep, then I slipped out of bed and sat at the desk with my laptop.

I was exhausted. Sleep tugged at my brain, but I was too afraid to doze. The intensity of my night terrors had been increasing, and after what had just happened on Urquhart Bay, I was simply too exhausted to face them again. Images of my childhood drowning had now been replaced by something else, and this vision was even more terrifying because it was not of my past. In truth, I feared it was my destiny.

Stay awake until dawn. You'll rest easier in the daylight.

I forced myself to focus through the fatigue.

The last forty-eight hours had revealed new pieces of the Loch Ness puzzle, but they were swirling in my head, and I was too tired to think.

Organize your thoughts. Write them out so you can see them.

Activating the laptop, I began typing.

I stared at the screen, then cut and pasted, reorganizing my notes in what I surmised to be a chronological order.

Calum had said Adam Wallace was the first Black Knight. Strange that my father had never mentioned him. Whatever the Knights' primary mission, it had obviously included feeding the species referred to by both Calum and my father as Guivres.

Fast-forward to the construction of the A82 in the early 1930s. According to Calum and my own unpublished theories, dynamiting the basin had collapsed an underground river that served as a North Sea access way, trapping a few of the creatures within Loch Ness. Both Alban and Calum confirmed Nessie was the last of her kind in the Loch. Calum said he and his late wife fed the beast during winters. That made sense, since the fish population of Loch Ness in winter would not be enough to sustain such a large predator. Of course, it was also possible that the beast had adapted to Loch Ness winters by hibernating.

Since Loch Ness was not teeming with 60-foot creatures, the animal my father had called a Guivre was most likely a mutant. Under normal conditions, mutations can occur in one of every 100,000 creatures. Beta-blockers in the eel's bloodstream would decrease the animal's sex drive. If the Guivre was a mutant, it was most likely sterile, explaining why there was not a breeding population of its kind in the Loch.

Whatever Nessie was, she obviously preferred to inhabit the Loch's deepest waters—

— until last winter.

Somewhere in the Great Glen, oil was leaking, and it was finding its way into Loch Ness. Though still undiscovered by the water bailiff and Scotland's EPA, it had nevertheless altered an entire season's migration of fish. Since the spawning fish could only enter Loch Ness from the River Ness, that meant the oil was most likely deterring them before they reached the Bona Narrows.

The oil had also altered the disposition of the eel population and the Loch's last Guivre. The Black Knights were patrolling the shorelines at night, trying to keep the tourists safe from the agitated Anguilla — and Nessie? Was that their mission?

No, it had to be more than that.

Last winter, as a precaution, Calum Forrest had reinforced his croft's fencing and installed underwater lights, along with…

Stop!

I stared at the computer screen, reworking the last assumption in my head.

Yes, Calum's lights were designed to scare off the creature, but that fence was still kindling to something as huge as Nessie. I had assumed the fence had been reinforced, but maybe… maybe it was just newer than the rest of the perimeter.

Maybe Calum had been forced to replace the rear fence last winter after the creature had attacked his herd of sheep?

But Calum was filled with rage. He not only wanted to keep Nessie away, he wanted it dead.

"My wife, God rest her soul, often had tae feed it for me."

His wife? Had the monster killed his wife?

A shiver ran down my spine as I typed out:

Calum could have killed Nessie himself. He could have poisoned one of the sheep offerings, or lured the beast in close to shoot it, but he hadn't. The oath of the Black Knights had kept him from seeking revenge.

What mission could be so important?

And what had my father done to remove himself from the Order? So it was possible Tiani Brueggart wasn't Nessie's first victim, there was a good chance the monster had killed last winter. Angus was close friends with Calum Forrest. Fiercely loyal, the death of his friend's wife, if true, must have surely upset him. Was that the reason he'd been banished from the Templar? Had Angus attempted to kill Nessie against Alban MacDonald's orders?

I stared at the clue, and then, suddenly, everything hit me at once.

Johnny C.'s death was no accident, Angus had killed him to be with Theresa! But instead of pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter, my wily father had gone for broke. Knowing the creature was out there, knowing it would probably kill again, Angus had created his "Nessie defense," making himself a local legend while forcing the Black Knights to destroy the creature that had killed his best friend's wife.

It was a clever plan in its own sordid way, filled with risk and rewards. If Angus could prove the monster was out there, then he'd be found innocent and have Theresa Cialino, sharing in her inheritance. The two lovers would live happily ever after, while Angus still maintained his blood oath as a Black Knight.

All my father needed was to make sure a jury would find him innocent. To do that, he needed an expert on the case, one who not only could convince a jury that the monster really did exist, but someone who could even track it down.

And so, after seventeen years of silence, my father had reached out… and used me again!

Anger surged in my veins, tempered only by the fact that it had been my testimony that had exposed his lie.

I stared at my notes, still seething.

One monster was on the loose, the other was sitting in an Inverness jail cell, waiting to be released so he could spend the rest of his days with his mistress.

Angus had counted on using the scars of my childhood to play out his charade, but it had been my research, my testimony that might end up burying him!

And what would my role be in the rest of this unholy mess? With David dead, the Highland Council would most likely approach me again for help, but I had no interest in capturing the beast. As far as I was concerned, it was already captured, in a lake twenty-three miles long. The key was to find the oil leak, shut it down, and return the biology of the Loch to its normal state.

I kept staring at the words.

The left side of my brain finally took over, allowing the mental gear to tumble into place.

"Jesus, how could I have been so fucking blind!"

I clicked on the sonar array program, rewinding to the system's passive sonar recordings. The computer must have captured the monster's sonar signature earlier that evening, but I'd been too preoccupied to listen.

Locating the recording, I turned up the volume.

Blee-bloop… Blee-bloop… Blee-bloop… Blee-bloop …

My heart raced, my head swimming with the implications.

Blee-bloop… Blee-bloop… Blee-bloop… Blee-bloop …

"It is… it's the Bloop! How could I not see it? It was there, it was right there in front of me the whole time!"

Brandy stirred. "Zack? What's wrong?"

I leaped onto the bed. "I know, Brandy! I know what Nessie is! She's not a plesiosaur, she's not a dinosaur, she's not a sturgeon or a myth or even an ancestor of modern-day whales, but she is a precursor!"

"A precursor?" Brandy sat up in bed. "A precursor of what?"

"The Anguilla eel!"

"An Anguilla? Nah… how can that be? She's so big."

"It's Nature's way. The ancestors are always larger. Then evolution takes over, it adapts, it makes adjustments, based on environment and competition, and the availability of prey. Anguillas and these… these Guivres, for lack of a better name — they're both born in the Sargasso Sea."

"How dae ye know that?"

"Because Nessie's not the last Guivre, and she's not a mutant, her kind's not extinct! Her species still inhabits the Sargasso. The Navy tracked them on sonar, called them bloops, but no one knew what they were. It was the bloops, I mean the Guivres, that attacked the giant squid. Like Anguilla, they spawn in the Sargasso Sea, then the young drift on ocean currents back to Britain and the rest of Europe. Being smaller, Anguilla could follow the Ness River into the Loch every spring. The larger females leave in autumn when they're old enough to spawn, but their big cousins, these Guivres, they were always too large to access the Loch through the river, instead they followed the Ness Aquifer — an undiscovered, underground river that flows from Loch Ness into the North Sea. But the passage collapsed seventy years ago when the A82 was dynamited—"

"Trappin' Nessie?"

"Yes!" I paced the room, my mind on fire. "She must be a female. Female Anguilla grow really big, much bigger than the males, so the same probably holds true for Guivres. They leave Loch Ness when they're ready to spawn, returning to the Sargasso Sea. But Nessie's trapped, it's screwed up her biological clock. She can't spawn in freshwater, her DNA won't allow that, so instead, she just kept growing, getting larger and larger. She's a mutant, Brandy, and now she's become dangerous, her brain filled with lesions caused by an oil leak."

"Oil? I dinnae understand?"

"There's oil leaking somewhere into Loch Ness. My guess is it's seeping into the aquifer, which is why no one's discovered it. The eel that attacked me had lesions on its brain. It's not lethal, but it affects the animal's disposition. The oil's also preventing salmon and other fish from entering the Loch. It's affected the food chain, altering Nessie's diet!"

"Sweet Mary. Zack, how long will she live? How much bigger will she get?"

"I don't know. Anguilla die after they spawn, it's sort of a biological termination device. Who knows with these Guivres?"

"Geez, Zachary, ye really did it! Ye solved the mystery, everyone said ye would. But calm down, ye're makin' me crazy. Come an' sit by me."

I took several deep breaths, then crawled into bed with her, cuddling under the sheets.

"What are ye gonnae do then? Call a press conference?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure what good it would do at this point.

Science is one thing, but we've got a berserk animal on the loose. And it's… complicated."

"What do ye mean?"

"Angus lied. Nessie never killed Johnny C. Angus knew about the creature and used it as an alibi."

"Then he did murder Cialino?"

"Yes, and it was premeditated. If I don't produce this evidence, Angus walks away, Scot-free, as they say."

"But if ye tell the truth, yer father'll be found guilty."

"And most likely hanged."

She pulled me closer. "We're both exhausted. Get some sleep before ye decide anythin', a tired mind cannae think straight."

"I'm too pumped up to sleep."

She rolled over, her eyes seducing me as she climbed on top of me, pulling me into her warmth.

Our lovemaking soothed my brain fever, at least for the moment. When we were through, Brandy curled her back and buttocks against my chest and fell asleep. I put my arm around her and closed my eyes, comforted by her warmth and the arriving dawn.

Soaring through a watery graveyard. A flash of light. I am in a cavern. Alone. Enveloped by darkness. Not alone! Death whispers at me, growling in my brain. Stop! Stop! Stop!

I shot up in bed, bathed in sweat.

Brandy stood over me, trying to shake me awake.

"Zack! Zachary, look at me! Look at me, Zack, it was just another nightmare."

I turned and looked at her, consumed by fear, unable to find my voice.

"What was it then? What did ye dream?"

"I was in the monster's lair. It was dark and cold… cold like death. It seeped into my bones. It surrounded me, whispering into my brain. I couldn't see them, but something was out there, creeping in on me, and my flesh and my mind crawled in their presence. They encircled me… no escape—"

"Gees, yer whole body's tremblin'." She pulled me next to her and held me. "It was just a bad dream, Zack. It was just a nightmare." She was wrong, of course, for I knew what it was.

As True would say, it was my destiny.