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  Guardian of the Moon Pendant

  By Laura J. Williams

  Guardian of the Moon Pendant

  All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, magnetic, and photographic including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been take in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

  Copyright© 2012 by Laura J. Williams

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s amazing imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published July 2012

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  The Fae

  About the Author

  ♦♦♦

  Prologue

  I lay there sprawled out on a cold stone slab, tucked away deep inside the demon’s lair, spread-eagle, face-down, blood trickling from my mouth. The Màrmann hovered over me like vultures, swooping in, their mouths drooling, poking me with their sharp claws, testing to see if their prey was dead or alive, itching to get a taste of my most precious blood.

  I doubt the Màrmann ever had female blood before, let alone a MacAlpin; most of their food was wayward travelers, local Scots men or the naïve backpacker, lured by their demon’s hypnotic voice.

  I felt their hesitation, their boots shuffling side to side, lips smacking, even salivating, not knowing if I was as delicious as they thought I’d be. If only the Bloody Baron were here to let them know that indeed, my nectar was the sweetest of the sweet.

  But, seriously, it didn’t matter anymore.

  I was dead.

  Toast.

  End of the line.

  Kicked the bucket.

  Kaput!

  Lights out.

  Six feet under.

  It’s over, buddy.

  The End!

  The Grim Reaper had arrived, and he didn’t look like he was stopping by for crumpets and tea.

  So who cares if the Màrmann throw back a couple of pints of my blood? I didn’t need it. Drink up, I say! Follow it back with a beer chaser and a couple of nips of whiskey and we’ll make it my last happy hour! A final fare thee well party!

  Except now… I was the beverage of choice.

  Isn’t it funny how quickly things change?

  Chapter 1

  Suburbia, NY

  ♦♦♦

  Anabel

  I focused my eyes on the diamond ring, a commitment between myself and Edgar, my high school sweetheart, the only boy I had ever grown to love. It was delicate, thinly curved, a modest clear-cut diamond cradled within its setting, its molten golden color reflecting the sunlight’s rays, tickling my eyes.

  I swallowed hard, taking in a deep sharp breath, hoping it would relax my nerves, trying to suppress the butterflies in my stomach, hoping the feeling in my gut would go away or was utterly wrong.

  Edgar meant the world to me. He was the boy who followed me around before and after class in high school, searching for an excuse to be near me. At first I thought it was a little creepy, having someone follow you around all day, popping up in all my AP classes, planting his awkward self into the desk behind me, snickering uncontrollably at my jokes, but never quite making eye contact with me ever.

  I remember peering into my microscope in biology class, staring at a few colorful amoebas swimming around. When I had popped my head up again, there he was holding a formaldehyde frog on a grungy brown tray. All he said was, “Ready to kiss your Prince?” flashing his pearly whites. I burst out laughing, and since then we’ve never been apart.

  Bang!

  An earsplitting shot rang out, piercing my eardrums, its power throwing me back into my seat, rattling the pictures on my bedroom wall, and rustling the papers on my desk.

  “There she goes again!” I grumbled, gritting my teeth and rolling my eyes.

  I pushed the chair back from my desk, thundering across the room, jerking open the window and sticking my head out.

  “Mother!” I hollered, turning my head up toward the clear blue sky, a grey plume of smoke hovering outside the upstairs’ window, a foul stench of burning metal wafting through the sweet spring air.

  “Not now, dear,” she said hoarsely, sticking out her straggly mop of a head, her frizzy auburn hair poking out wildly like she stuck her finger into an electric socket. “There’s vermin moving in these bushes.”

  A silver barrel peeked out of the window, focusing on its next victim.

  “They’re called squirrels!” I yelled, plugging my fingers into my ears, before she pulled the trigger again.

  Bang!

  A flock of birds fluttered out of the trees in the backyard, rustling leaves and soaring into the cloudless sky.

  “A-hah! That’ll teach them vermin!” mother cackled.

  “Would you puh-lease stop shooting at anything that moves?” I begged. “Let the animals live in peace, mother. They’re not…”

  I paused.

  My ears prickled, hearing the pumping sound of pellet gun loading. Mother had switched from her double barrel shotgun to her air rifle to kill the squirrels. I blew out a frustrated breath and knew the mad woman upstairs wasn’t listening to me. Hastily, I slammed the window shut and walked away from the ruckus.

  For years my mother had some crazy notion in her head that there was something lurking on the edge of the forest just beyond our yard, staring at her with impish eyes. She had spent my whole childhood learning how to shoot and load a shotgun in five seconds flat.

  Instead of a swing set, we had a big red bull’s eye setup on a hay barrel in the backyard. I spent my childhood years learning how to shoot a bow and arrow, along with a slingshot, and even became a black belt in karate.

  I nestled back down at my honey oak desk, hoping my mother would lay off the firearms for a full minute. I scooped up a handful of response letters from my medical school applications, straightening them out by tapping them firmly against my desk, sliding them into a manila folder, and slipping it into my lower desk drawer, under the letter ‘M’ for medical school.

  I prided myself on my superior organizational skills. I grinned, knowing everything had a place and everything in its place. One must always have control of her life in order to move ahead, I reassured myself, lining up my pens in a flower jar next to my iMac, separating the black ones from the blue ones.

  Beep! Beep!

  My iMac rang. My heart jolted inside my chest. It was, Edgar.

  I ran the palms of my hands over my ponytail, smoothing back an
y wayward strands of red hair that may have escaped.

  I clicked on my Skype icon, launching his simple, yet adorable pasty white face across my monitor. Edgar smiled awkwardly, flashing his oversized teeth into the webcam, shifting uncomfortably in his seat as he adjusted the camera.

  “Luvey!” he chirped, pushing back his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose.

  A flush heated my cheeks, gazing into the caramel eyes of my fiancée.

  “I have everything planned, Edgar,” I said excitedly, thumbing through a bridal magazine with red Post-it flags jutting out from the sides, marking the pages that were important to our perfect wedding. “First, we’ll start with…”

  Bang!

  I cringed, slapping the heel of my hand against my forehead.

  “Your mother seems to be preoccupied with the extermination of any animal on your property,” stated Edgar in his matter-of-fact tone, his fingers splayed gingerly through his greasy black hair, exposing his Dumbo sized ears.

  “I know,” I said, feeling the blood drain from my face. I was so embarrassed. I wanted to drop my forehead flat onto the desk and bang it repeatedly. But I didn’t, as a lady doesn’t do that. So, I threw my shoulders back, aligning my torso with my seat and continued. “She’s obsessed with things that go bump in the night. And in the day, for that matter, anything that moves.”

  “No need to be ashamed, Luvey,” said Edgar politely. “Speaking of animals, perhaps, the two of you may be interested in my new ios App that I’m creating? It’s called animaland.” Edgar held up his iPhone, encased in a clear rubber cover, displaying a green striped UI screen for his ios App.

  “What does it do?” I asked, squinting into the monitor for a closer look.

  “You take a picture of an animal with the camera phone,” said Edgar, pressing a few of the purple buttons, “any animal, mind you, and it tells you exactly what biological species it is. It’s Family, Breed, if applicable, Traits and Characteristics, Life Expectancy… ”

  I know Edgar is a bit boring, but that’s what I love about him. He’s safe. I know what I get, and I always get what I expect. How perfect is that?

  I nodded my head with emphasis. “Wow! Does it work on dead ones?” I said sarcastically, pursing my lips to the side.

  “Of course!” Edgar said elatedly. He was always happy to talk about his latest Apps. “As long as it is located in North America. I’m also making it adaptable to other creatures, living or imaginary, such as, birds, insects, World of Warcraft characters, and even Star Trek aliens. It’s highly compatible with anything I choose. I just have to cross reference it to a new database.”

  I smiled at Edgar as he adjusted his suspenders and straightened out his bowtie.

  He was all mine, the big geek!

  My life was right on track. I had graduated early from college with a 4.0, a B.S. in Biology, pre-med, aced my MCAT’s with a perfect score of 45, got engaged to the smartest man in high school and was ready to get out of this hell hole of a house – far, far away from my crazy mother and my rebel sister, Izzy.

  I’d include my father, but ever since I was a child he’s never really been present in my life, always disconnected, staring into the TV like a zombie, snorting strange noises every now and then, and drinking beer. So, as far as I was concerned, he just took up extra space in the house and never really added to the family dynamics.

  In the fall, I’ll be attending medical school. Where? I didn’t know yet, but I was going and I was going to make it happen! And then next summer, in a year’s time, Edgar and I would be married. We’d live in the suburbs, a Victorian-style house with a slate roof, yellow siding with white trim, and a wide porch to sit out on, rocking back and forth on our swing chair, canoodling in the summer breeze, drinking homemade lemonade, watching our two children playing in the yard, one boy and one girl along with two chocolate Labradors. Yes, life was going precisely as I planned it, full steam ahead.

  “Listen, Luvey, I must go. I have to finish this work and submit it to the App store to get it accepted before the summer push. I hope you don’t mind?”

  “Not at all!”

  “Kisses,” said Edgar, pursing his big red lips together and smooching up against the camera.

  “Kisses,” I replied, lightly touching two fingers to my lips, pressing them against the flat screen.

  ♦

  I stepped into the kitchen littered with debris, a mound of chipped dishes piled up high in the sink, covered in an unknown slimy green goo, unleashing a stench so foul that even Oscar the Grouch would feel like it needed a nice spray of Febreze, a plethora of cabinets left open, its countertops coated with crumbs, empty beer cans, and an array of Doritos bags: Nacho Cheese, Cool Ranch, Taco, and Izzy’s favorite Spicy Sweet Chili.

  Oh, the horror of it all. I closed my eyes tightly, trying as hard as I could to forget what a pig sty I lived in. Unfortunately, sooner or later I had to open them up again and begin the cleansing process.

  I snapped into a cleaning frenzy, closing cabinets, scrubbing dishes, wiping up crumbs and tossing out as much garbage as I could find. I sighed when I was finished and even smiled, gazing around the kitchen as it sparkled.

  I then leered into the family room, warily, afraid of what monstrosity lived in there. My mother’s prized shotguns were mounted in a glass cabinet along the wall along with an array of wrist and hand slingshots. My father laid back in his recliner, catatonic, a simple white undershirt and a pair of boxers donned his hairy body as a soccer game flashed on the TV, his head tilted back, mouth wide open, snoring up a storm, his left arm drooping down toward the floor, a lone empty beer can dangling from his fingertips.

  I tip-toed into the living room, stealthily, studying my father’s burly arm. He had a couple of strange scars on his left arm, two deep indentations in a pasty white color, covered by his thick arm hair. I always wondered where he had gotten them from, perhaps from a war, not that I would ever know, he was never really coherent enough to tell me. I crouched down beside him, my fingertips cradling his empty beer can, quickly snatching it away from his clutch, then tossing it into the recyclable bin.

  The front door flew open and mother traipsed in, holding up a handful of dead squirrels in her hand, throwing their carcasses onto my clean countertop. “The little vermin are such suckers for a good decoy,” mother laughed through her crooked teeth. “What an excellent idea you had about using a bird feeder. Little vermin didn’t know what hit them!”

  A wave of nausea rose and fell in my stomach. How in the world was I ever related to this woman?

  “We’re gonna eat good tonight!” she bellowed in a hoarse voice, slamming down a handful of metallic pellets and slugs onto the countertop, an air rifle and shotgun slung snuggly behind her back.

  “Mother!”

  “Yes, dear?” she said with a shimmering smile, pinching my chin.

  My index finger pointing at the grey carcasses, their bodies stiff on the laminate countertop. “Dead animals and lead pellets should never, ever be put on a clean counter,” I said wide-eyed, my fist balled up on my hips, shaking my head back and forth.

  “What?” mother laughed, snatching up her grey rounds, holding them under my nose. “These? These are not lead!”

  I just blinked at her, not knowing what to say. I really didn’t care what type of evil ammunition she had. I just wanted it to be off my newly cleaned counter.

  “They’re iron slugs and pellets,” mother blurted out, curling her fingers around the dark grey bullets. “All my ammunition is iron.” Then she winked at me.

  The basement door swung open and out staggered the last of the living dead. Izzy sleepily shuffled into the kitchen, a pair of furry slippers sliding across the floor, a black beehive swirling down her colorless face, her eyelids heavy and half open, she wrenched open the refrigerator door, sticking her disheveled head into the ice-box, pulling out a pan of chewy brownies. “Yum,” she mumbled, still half asleep, plopping the tray down next to the dead bushy taile
d rodents. “The breakfast of champions!”

  Mother slapped the back of Izzy’s head hard.

  “Ow!” she cried, rubbing the lump on her head.

  “That’s for Anabel!” mother said sternly. She cozied up next to me, stroking my manicured pony tail softly. “When my dear, Anabel, gets her acceptance letter into Doctor School.”

  “Medical school,” I corrected her.

  Izzy’s face soured, rolling her blue eyes back into her head.

  Izzy always had some sort of annoyed smirk on her face. As she was my younger sister, I was supposed to love her, but it seemed hard to want to love someone who was so different than me. She used to be my little shadow, always wanting to do what I wanted to do, cleaning the house, baking cookies, organizing closets, labeling all the contents in the house, but things changed when we met Hilda the Gorilla, the local bully in town. Izzy didn’t want to do what I did anymore. She wanted to climb trees, jump into dirty piles of leaves, dive off cliffs, and roll around in the mud. One day, Hilda the Gorilla attacked me with two of her minions behind the local convenient store in town. Izzy just stood by watching, never raising a finger to protect me. I started karate soon after to defend myself. Since then, we just spent our whole lives fighting like wild animals.

  “Did the post come today?” asked mother, filling up a glass of water from the faucet.

  “It’s called mail here in America,” said Izzy boldly, cracking open a beer can and guzzling it down.

  I quickly snatched it out of her hands. “You are not twenty-one yet!” I scowled.

  “I’m legal in Scotland,” Izzy said nonchalantly, shrugging her shoulders, plopping down into a cushy armchair next to father, throwing her legs up and crossing them on the ottoman. “What’s on the boob tube?” she asked, scooping up the remote and surfing through the channels.

  I shook my head and yanked the front door open, scooping out the letters in the mailbox. I shuffled through a handful of letters, a long cardboard tube, and a few flyers from a few local pizza parlors. I read the name on the unusual cylinder, handing it to my mother. “This is for you.”

  Mother placed her water glass down, inching her fingers out slowly for the tube of mail, as if she didn’t want it at all.