Unbearable Read Online Free

with intelligence as he held his hand up for Nick to shake it. “I can’t get up from me chair,” he said. “Damn me legs t’hell. So yer must take me great-grand-daughter to ride with ye. Mairead, lass. Step over and say hello.”
    Mairead had the black eyes and hair and fair skin of the pure Celt, with a charming sprinkle of freckles across her nose. She looked to be in her early twenties but she also carried herself in a way that said ‘hunter’ without showing a single weapon. She sized us all up and her expression softened as she looked into Riley’s basket and stroked her cheek.
    Then she straightened up again with a snap, as if she had been caught out.
    “Mairead is in the family business,” Alasdair explained, although all three of us had already figured that out.
    “We’ve been monitoring all the sightings as we’ve come across them,” Mairead said, pulling a map across the table and pointing to a green space just to the west of New Galloway. There were red dots all around where her finger rested. “The sightings of what they’re calling a ‘creature’ have been in clusters around the Craigencallie peaks.” She smiled. “Some are saying that Nessie has travelled south.” Her smile faded. “The people who have gone missing were all in the same general area. If this is really yer gargoyles coming home to roost, then Craigencallie would make a good nest. It’s remote, especially now before the summer starts up properly. Caves, too. Some of them so old no one knows the way of them, anymore.”
    She looked at her great grandfather and spoke quickly and I was pleasantly surprised to find I remembered more Gaelic than I had thought. She asked him about weapons and he agreed we would need them and she should see to that.
    Mairead glanced at us once more. “My mother would be more than pleased to care for the bairn while we’re gone and I have gear at the house. We should go now, while the day is broad. We don’t want to be caught upon the crags when the sun sets.”
    * * * * *
    I had no intention of being left behind while Nick and Tally went off hunting, even though that had been the practice for many years. I had made Tally a promise to help her in any way I could to find Lirgon and Valdeg. I wanted to be there when it ended. I wanted closure on this as much as Nick and Tally did.
    No one argued when I pulled out a finely-made broad sword from the cache Mairead displayed for us and balanced it judiciously on my hand. It would do. I didn’t like using a strange weapon any more than they did, but they took longer over the choosing of theirs. Tally settled for a lighter, shorter stabbing sword, while Nick chose the heaviest, biggest sword in the pile.
    Mairead’s mother cooed and clucked over Riley, barely looking up as we selected more blades and tucked them away in our coats and clothing. No one took a gun even though there were semi-automatics and pistols in the big pile. Bullets are useless against demons and gargoyles.
    Mairead picked up a backpack that clinked and rustled. It sounded heavy even though she slung it over her shoulder as if it weighed nothing.
    Then we all piled back into Mairead’s Range Rover and drove out to the remote and lonely Craigencallie peaks.
    * * * * *
    We got there just before noon and even though it was nearly summer, the day was gray and overcast. The wind was cold and whistled around the raw rock thrusting up into the air above the moor-like land around it. There were tracts of trees where the forest met with farming land. The trees marched north, where they became the Galloway Forest.
    The proximity of trees and the game that could be found in among them, the isolation of the area and caves was an ideal combination. Nick looked around and nodded, taking it all in as we climbed up the lower slopes of the crag.
    Tally glanced at him. “Yes, I think so, too,” she said in agreement.
    Mairead was the only one of us not breathless when we reached the rocky face of