“That’s for Cally, fucker.”
The whole chamber fell quiet as the echoes faded and the ripples on the surface slowly stilled until the dead beast lay, just below the surface, in a once again flat, calm lake. The three men stood, weapons still aimed, looking down until they were sure the beast wasn’t going to make a final resurgent attack. The water was slowly tingeing red all around the body, and after a few minutes, it was obvious the creature was truly dead.
Banks took out his plugs. His ears rang, and they would for a while yet, but he wasn’t deaf, and heard Wiggins clearly enough.
“Fuck me, we’ve killed Nessie,” the private said. “That calls for a fag.”
Banks took two smokes when offered, lit one for himself, and took the other to where Seton sat, slumped at the base of the Pictish cross.
“Job’s done. It’s dead,” he said as he handed the smoke over and lit it for the older man when Seton put it to his bloodied lips. “How are you doing, wee man?”
“Bruised, battered, and bewildered,” Seton said out of the corner of his mouth. “But I guess I’ll live a bit longer yet. It’s a damned shame we had to kill the beast though.”
“It had to be done,” Banks replied, “after what went down back at the castle. And after those BBC men in the chopper, and Cally, and the wee lassie and the other missing woman and those campers from Foyers and that poor bloody polar bear in Kincraig and… ”
Seton put up a hand to stop him.
“I understand. I really do. But it was unique, a legend, a one of a kind thing we’ll never see the likes of again.”
“Don’t be too sure of that, wee man,” Wiggins shouted from along the ledge. “We’ve got incoming, Cap.”
They came from the far end of the loch, swimming fast and each leaving a v-shaped wake behind it. There were six of them, smaller than the one they’d just killed, but Banks gauged that each was at least 15 feet nose to tail, and they all showed the same distinctive three humps in the water. They formed a rough arrow-wedge as they swam, pointed directly at the ledge where the squad stood.
“Juveniles,” Seton said, with a degree of awe noticeable in his voice.
Banks saved asking how that was possible for later.
“We’re too exposed here to hold off an attack. Back to the stairwell, lads. We can control the terms of engagement from there. Seton, get behind us and up the steps a ways.”
The smaller beasts reached their dead kin just as Banks began to back away from the ledge. They swam around the corpse, as if confused, then, as if a silent command had gone through them, raised their heads as one and stared straight at him. He saw the same look in their eyes he’d seen in the big one minutes earlier; anger more than fear, and more than a little hunger.
At his back, Seton shouted out the old Gaelic command.
“Dhumna Ort! Dhumna Ort!”
The beasts ignored him and leapt forward and upward, throwing themselves out of the water and scrambling up the sheer rock face. Banks put three bullets in the left eye of the closest one, sending it back down to splash on top of its mother, then had to retreat fast, herding Seton ahead to where Hynd and Wiggins were covering them in the doorway of the stairwell.
“Get up those fucking steps when you’re told, auld man. These buggers aren’t listening to you. I don’t think the kids have had any schooling.”
He got Seton into the doorway and turned, just in time to see the beasts clamber over the ledge and come at them. He shoved his earplugs in deep again and raised his weapon as the beasts barked excitedly in unison.
- 15 -
“Remember, go for the headshots,” Banks shouted. “Center and sides.”
They all knew what the command meant; they each had a sector to defend with Wiggins on the left, Banks in the center, and Hynd on the right. The beasts gave them enough time for three hurried shots each. Wiggins put one of them down hard, Hynd wounded one in the shoulder, and Banks laid two bloody furrows along the back of a third, but the beasts had momentum on their side, and the squad had to retreat completely into the narrow doorway. Wiggins knelt down, Hynd crouched just above him, and Banks went up one step so that he could fire over Hynd’s head.
Wiggins put the closest beast down by putting three bullets down its throat when it tried to bite him. It fell at his feet, effectively making a barrier that the others had to clamber across. Banks helped Hynd put another down on top of that, blowing half its head away with six closely placed shots. That only left two, barking and howling out on the ledge behind the dead.
“Fire in the hole,” Wiggins shouted and pulled the pin on a stun grenade, lobbing it out over the dead beasts onto the ledge. The three men turned their backs and closed their eyes as the grenade went off with a blinding flash.
Wiggins was first to turn back. He jumped over the nearest dead things and Banks stepped down into the doorway just in time to see him finish off the two others where they lay, concussed and bleeding from eyes, nose, and ears on the rock shelf.
Seton came back down the steps to join them.
“You don’t need to come down if you don’t want to,” Banks said, taking out his earplugs for what he hoped would be the last time. “It’s a hell of a mess down here.”
The ledge was slick with blood, shards of skull and brain tissue that felt sticky underfoot, and the stench of piss, shit, and blood was almost overwhelming.
Wiggins and Hynd rolled all of the bodies off the shelf to splash down alongside their mother below and they all stood, watching the surface of the lake return to its previous flat calm.
“Are there any more of these buggers?” Wiggins asked Seton. “And where the fuck did they come from?”
Seton had picked his way through the gore to stand beside them.
“Whether there are more, I have no idea,” he said. “But I think the big one must have given birth when it came to full maturity, and did it fairly recently at that.”
“Bollocks,” Hynd said. “How could it get pregnant? There was only one of the fuckers.”
“Self-fertilization is my guess at that,” Seton replied. “One of the results of the alchemical quest is the perfect, immortal hermaphrodite. I think Crowley got closer than anyone ever imagined, at least for one of his experiments. And we also have a reason for the large one to have become so emboldened in recent times; it was hunting to feed its offspring. Otherwise, it would have stayed nocturnal and reclusive and we might never have known it was here.”
“And the young? They’d be hermaphrodite too?” Banks asked.
“In theory, yes.”
“And what if there are more? What do I tell my superiors about this bloody mess?”
Seton laughed.
“Tell them the loch will once again have its monsters, but they will be elusive as ever, staying mostly nocturnal and quiet, feeding on fish or maybe the odd seal. They won’t reach full size or maturity for a hundred years or more. It’ll be somebody else’s problem by then.”
They made the climb back up into the light in silence, each man lost in his own thoughts.
- 15 -
The real end to the affair came a week later.
Banks’ superior officer had survived the fiasco at the castle after Banks made a full report on their return to Lossiemouth. The incident in the car park was reported as a domestic terrorist incident, which kept the politicians happy as they had somebody concrete apart from themselves to take the blame. A team went down into the chamber under the house, found the dead beasts where Banks said they were, and then sealed the place up by pouring, in Wiggins’ words, a shitload of rock and concrete down any hole they found in the area.