Chapter 14: Nessie

A night of debauchery followed. Clophan and his friends were wine-drunk as they gathered courage to fight off Silverhoof, with Jenny Greenteeth weaving between them, serving them wine and fish. Annis and I were dressed like strumpets, our curves gleaming like knives in the moonlight as a cutting wind blew.

"They are getting ready to summon Silverhoof," I whispered to Annis, making the signal to Samael and Peter in the reeds. They had their shotguns with adamant bullets from the priest ready, blessed with holy water.

"For revenge!" Clophan cried, then slit the throat of a Jenny Greenteeth and threw her into the water. She flailed like a hooked fish and sunk into Loch Linslear, dying the murky waters red.

In the distance came a great rumbling. There, Silverhoof rose out of the shadows, twice as large as Samael's roan, all muscle, with wicked sharp teeth and a crown of pond muck. Annis and I drew our swords. Clophan, ignoring us, charged, the men armed with magickal armaments from the Hellfire Club of their illegitimate fathers. I could swear I saw arrows fletched with the wulver teeth Annis had slayed.

"Now, Rangers!" I proclaimed as Clophan made the grave mistake of spearing the King Kelpie through the heart. Their flesh was mud, and he stuck to the side of the kelpie, slowly being drawn into Silverhoof's flesh.

"I – no – save me!" Clophan wailed, his pallid face even more pale. I crossed myself. We were too late, and his brashness had gotten the better of him. A Ranger could not defend everyone.

The other bar sinister bastards drew back, their finery stained in mud. Silverhoof charged, bones in his muddy body at the slain men, and Annis and I dove in with our swords, weaving around the throngs of running schoolboys and making a clear pathway for Peter and Samael's rifles.

"The Blood of the Dragon," Silverhoof hissed, his teeth chattering as he ate another schoolboy. "I have been waiting for you, Abigail MacKay. I must bring you to my Master."

I was up in the shit and mud and blood of it, salpeter on the air as the kelpie took a hit from Samael's rifle.

"Abby, no!" Samael bellowed, but it was to late. The King Kelpie was beyond the pale in strength, and had hitched me to his muddy back.

"Blast it all to Sheol!" I crowed, stabbing Silverhoof continuously in the skull to no avail. Like a ghost upon the water, he ran out to the island in the middle of Loch Linslear, a barren pine ground.

I heard the flutter of wings as I began to sink into the King Kelpie's sticky, muddy body. With a last desperate heave, I wrestled myself, half-sunk, off Silverhoof's atrociously repulsive body of corpses and muck. His eyes and skull gleamed hellfire blue, and Samael landed on the banks of the island, his Black Huntsman rifle at the ready, his wings outstretched, and quickly gathered me into his embrace. With one fell shot, clear now, Samael landed a bullet through Silverhoof's heart.

"Bastard," Samael grunted, but we were too late. From the great Loch came a fearsome monster that looked like a cross between a dragon and father's old books full of dinosaur bones – the plesiosaur.

"Nessie?" I asked, aghast as the Loch Ness Monster rose – the Crom Cruach. Samael fired shot after shot at the great beast, covered in jewels and thousands of eyes on its fins and skin, an eldritch horror. "So this is what is haunting me."

"BLOOD OF CAIN. I MUST FEAST ON YOUR FLESH TO ASCEND TO THE STARS," the Crom Cruach said. "I HAD SENT PUTHER AND REDELIA TO BRING YOU TO ME, BUT THEY THIRSTED AFTER IMMORTALITY AND SACRIFICED YOU TO MALAKH HA'MAVEAT FOR THEIR OWN GAINS, NOT KNOWING THEY WERE DIGGING THEIR GRAVE. AND NOW, YOU ARE THE LAST SEED OF QAYIN. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I HUNGER FOR YOUR HEART?"

I stared at the great beast as Samael ran out of artillery. He cursed, guarding me with his great white wings.

"Samael, this is my fight," I told him gently. He looked at me with great piercing loss in his eyes, cursing. "Give me your scythe, Samael, and summon my soul."

"I – what?" Samael asked, surprised. The Crom Cruach – Nessie – was seething as the waters boiled, his tail twitching. "Alright, my one true love. I know not what you plan."

My seventeen year old soul was summoned. She was in a silk dress of green, a kimono of sorts.

"You called? Ugh, what is that foul creature and stink in the air?"

"Dear little soul, I need you back. We must become one again," I said. "Samael, our bargain is over. I may not live after this night. We are dead either way."

Tears dotted Samael's eyes. He placed a deep, echoing kiss on my mouth as my soul and I joined hands.

"I understand, honey badger. The Black Moor calls."

In a great resonance, my soul and I became one. I was a woman of bone, decayed these past eight years – all that was left of my body now matching Samael's newly donned skeleton, with pennants of my putrid flesh flying.

"No Blood of the Dragon will I bear, great Crom Cruach. And no Cain scion will you slay. I am already dead, and a Reaper at that," I echoed, my voice a loud, wailing whisper as the flaps of rotten flesh on my breast beat in the harrowing wind.

Samael was sobbing, I now dead – everything he had ever feared – but I had, in truth, been living on borrowed time.

"No matter what beautiful form you take, I love you, Abigail MacKay," he said.

Together, we held his scythe, and speared a great gale of blue hellfire at the Crom Cruach. It was just enough, barely, to destroy this Leviathan. The sinful beast caught aflame, then sunk into the waters, turning to liquidous dust.

I looked at Samael, a corpse bride, and only shed blood in my eyes. We kissed, in wretchedness, then flew back to the shores of Loch Linslear.

Annis crossed herself, and Peter began to sob. "Ab – Abby, is that you? Oh, my poor sister!" She embraced me despite the stink of putrefaction on me.

"It is alright, Annis. Death has its uses. Now I may follow my husband wherever he goes," I said kindly, as Samael consoled Peter.

It was done.