Page 123 of Bonetide

“God, no. The monster does not have that appetite.”

Thank god. I can deal with him eating people, but I draw the line at him being a rapist.

“So then why do you only eat women?”

He has a long sip of wine and sets the glass down. His gaze fixes on me with utter frankness.

“They taste better.”

I set my own glass down. “Excuse me?”

“I said, they taste better.” His expression is utterly serious.

“That’s…that’s the reason you kill women?”

“That’s the reason I eat women.” A small smile curls the corner of his mouth. “It’s why I eat you. Though I suppose that’s a little different.”

I blink at him. “You’re not joking?”

“I’m not joking. Men taste tough and bitter. Women are softer and sweeter. I’ll kill a man if I have to, but I’m not swallowing a single piece.”

I have to press my lips together to keep myself from either screaming, crying, or throwing up.

I stare at him and he looks back, but his face doesn’t change. He isn’t embarrassed—he was more embarrassed to admit I was the first lass he slept with in a hundred years—and he isn’t contrite. He’s been asked a factual question and given me the factual answer, and now he’s turning the stem of the wine glass and waiting to see what I do with the truth once again.

I let out a weak laugh, then pick up my wine and drink the rest in one go. Think I’m going to need the whole bottle now.

“If it makes you feel any better,” he begins, and I shoot him a look that says I don’t think that’s fucking possible, “it’s not my choice. Not here as the man sitting before you, the man you share your bed with. I prefer fish. Wine. Tea. The occasional venison.”

“So it’s the morse.”

“The what?” he says, his lip curling as in disgust.

“The morse. The man-horse. Or just the horse.”

“It’s not the horse either,” he says, still looking troubled by the use of the word morse. “The horse eats grass. Oats, if he finds them.”

I put my head in my hands. “I’m disgusted and confused and I’m not sure I want to be unconfused but…who is doing the killing and eating here?”

He finishes the rest of his wine and then pours us both more. “All this time, until your Effie passed, it’s been fairly easy to keep myself separate. There is the man, Alasdair MacCoinnich. Eachann, being the word the locals bestowed on whoever lives in the castle. That’s me. Then, there is the horse. And then there is the monster that lives in the loch. I can turn into either thing and those things can turn into each other, but when I am those things, there’s very little of me that is still a man, that still knows right from wrong, that still has some sort of morals. I am all of those things but rarely at the same time, you understand. Altogether, I am the each-uisage. The horse lures; the monster feeds.”

“And what does the man do?”

He holds the glass at his lips and gives me a wry smile. “He fucks.”

I shake my head as he drinks the wine. “You know, you’ve started a quick descent into vulgar language, you know that? What happened to Mr. Fucking Manners?”

I’m joking, because if I’m not laughing, I’m crying, but darkness passes over his features like a storm cloud. Suddenly he seems grave.

“That part of me is something I’m slowly losing,” he says in a quiet voice, and suddenly I’m reminded of what Mhairi said, that over time he would lose himself and his humanity completely and only the horse—and I suppose the monster—would remain. “The crudeness, the…appetite. I’m slipping a little. This year…this year I’ve lost enough of myself that I’ve let the man do the luring.”

I swallow hard, feeling something like worry and fear clawing at my chest.

“Well, we’ll do what we can so that doesn’t happen again,” I tell him. “Though I have to say, I like it when you’re crude.”

I add that last part for some levity, but it doesn’t work. He nods, but he doesn’t look like he believes it.

I’m at the kitchen sink washing dishes when I look up through the window at the loch as I always do, expecting to see Alasdair’s castle across the bay (where he goes, from time to time) and some birds floating on the water near the mussel beds by the opening to the loch.