Needed By The Highlander - Rebecca Preston Page 0,92
on our hands.”
She bit her lip as she followed him, her blade in her hand. After all this, she was beginning to worry that it was a false alarm — that whatever she’d heard out there wasn’t a Kelpie at all. What if they headed out there to find nothing but the sunrise? Well, she could think of worse ways to spend a sunrise, she thought with a smile, gazing at Niall’s back. But it would be better for both of them, overall, if this turned out to be a dead Kelpie.
“My word,” Niall breathed, coming to a dead stop as they reached the dock closest to Helen’s window. “Either that’s a Kelpie, or someone’s lost a prized steed…”
Her eyes widened as she gazed down at the dock. Sure enough, the dark shape she’d seen from her window was still there. It was lying dead still in the cool early morning air, and as the sky steadily went from black to gray, she could see just well enough to make out more details of the creature. It looked for all the world like an enormous horse — dark gray in color, if not black, with sleek, gleaming muscles under its silky coat. Even knowing what it was — what a dangerous creature it was, how many deaths it and its friends had caused — she felt a strange longing to stroke its shoulder, to feel the soft touch of its skin… she shivered a little.
“I feel — I know what it is, but I still feel like I want to pet it,” she murmured to Niall, who was staring down at the Kelpie with a similarly spellbound expression.
He shook himself. “I know what you mean,” he said softly. “The Fae have an unbelievable charm, that’s for sure. Part of their magic.. part of why they’re so deadly, when they want to be.”
She thought of Maggie, the irascible old woman’s surprising charm, how likable she was. A shiver ran down her spine. Was Maggie’s charm part Fae magic? Had she cast glamour on herself to make her seem less monstrous? She turned her attention back to the Kelpie, not liking where that particular train of thought was going.
Niall had knelt down next to the creature, clearly keeping his distance as he reached down with the tip of his unsheathed sword to lift a few strands of the creature’s mane. Just as Maggie had described it, the horse’s mane and tail both looked like they were dripping wet, just out of the water — even though the rest of the dock around them was dry. As he lifted the strands, she gasped a little — tendrils of smoke rose up from the strands, and the thick stench of burning hair reached her nose as the hair crumbled into dust beneath the touch of the iron. Niall sat back, clearly satisfied by his little experiment.
“Aye, this is a Fae creature and no mistake,” he said softly. Then he reached down with one fingertip, pressed it to the creature’s neck, and quickly yanked it away. He nodded, clearly pleased with the results of the experiment. “It’s safe to touch.”
“It’s dead,” she said, blinking. “Surely that would make it safe…”
“Not always,” he said. “I’ve heard legends of creatures like these — not Kelpies exactly, but water horses. They appear to people in fields close to bodies of water, beautiful things, and encourage them to get on their backs. But once they do, their skin becomes like thick glue, and their riders can’t get off. Then they drag them to the bottom of the nearest body of water and absorb them.”
“Where did you hear that?” she asked, her voice low as she stared down at the creature before them. Aside from its wet mane and tail, with its eyes closed it looked just like a regular horse.
“A man in a tavern,” he said with a chuckle. “He was missing a hand, and he offered to tell me the tale in exchange for a round of ales for him and his mates. I was happy enough to oblige — and the story was well worth the coin. He said that as a child, he and his friends had encountered a beautiful white horse in a field, a horse that had seemed so sweet and friendly… tempting it with handfuls of sweet grass, they’d quickly befriended it. It nuzzled at their faces and almost seemed to want to play with them, frolicking across the meadow and whickering joyfully