“She must’ve freed him!” cried Blane, “Run, Izzy!”
Blane drew out his claymore, clashing his steel against the Bloody Baron’s iron-pike, their weapons smashing violently.
I bolted out into the tree line, running blindly, pushing through the underbrush, leaping over rocks, until I stopped before a fibrous tree. My heart thumped in my chest. Quickly I scrambled up the trunk, inching out onto a sturdy branch, wondering if I was going to become the Bloody Baron’s next meal. How the heck did he get out? I checked the lock. Lainahwyn could never get near the Bloody Baron’s iron pike. It had to be my lovely ex-boyfriend, Vyx, the meat head.
My butt teetered on the tree’s limb, wobbly, it felt like it was moving? The tree whispers grew louder, buzzing through the whole grove. Something was mad and it wasn’t the Bloody Baron or the Ghillie Dhu.
I squinted back toward the Ghillie Dhu. Blane was still fighting the Bloody Baron, thrashing their weapons while Anabel funneled through the earth below them.
The Bloody Baron lunged toward Blane, thrusting his black pike into his face. He swiftly arched his back, dodging his advance, and then shifted his torso to the side, swinging his double-edge sword full force at the Bloody Baron’s neck. The Bloody Baron zipped away from Blane’s steel ducking behind him, a cankerous laugh bellowed from his inky lips, wailing. But, it was too late for Blane to turn around. The Bloody Baron had caught him off guard with his cyber-speed, he thrust his pike into Blane’s muscular calf, piercing it through, buckling him over in agony, dropping to his knees, blood gushing out from his leg, splattering onto the ground.
“He’s going to get me,” I whimpered, listening to the rustling leaves, still whispering in the wind.
The Bloody Baron yanked out his pike from Blane’s leg, holding its soiled tip up to his nostrils, inhaling Blane’s rich blood, his lanky finger sliding through it, and then rolling it on his tongue. “Too bitter,” he hissed, spitting it out, studying Blane as he struggled to get back onto his feet.
Blane’s blade shot out, cutting through the air, striking the Bloody Baron in his forearm, cutting out a chunk of skin.
The Bloody Baron blinked, mesmerized at the black blood dribbling out of his arm. Tasting it, he grinned elatedly.
Raging, Blane flung his claymore, spinning around to meet the Bloody Baron’s iron rod, his metal boot kicked Blane in his stomach, knocking his sporran off his belt, its iron protection pouch now rolling in the mud. Blane crumpled to his knees, his body weakened, broken, as he lolled side to side.
The Bloody Baron circled Blane, lifting his pike high into the air and then plunging into his left shoulder, leaving him face down on the ground.
“Blane,” I whimpered, trembling inside.
♦♦♦
Anabel
Blane’s face scowled.
I don’t know why he gets so agitated when I use the Moon Pendant. I mean really, what’s the big deal?
“I feel fine,” I called back, laughing, “I didn’t have a bucket!” I mean seriously, what was I supposed to do? Carry the water back in the palm of my hands? We’d be there ‘til Christmas.
The ground under my feet began to rumble, shaking violently. Thick roots sprung out wildly from the Ghillie Dhu, tearing out of the damp soil, rapidly, speeding toward me. My mouth dropped open, terrified as the roots spun around me tightly, sealing me inside a dark wooden cocoon.
I screamed in terror, but no one could hear me.
Suddenly, my body dropped. I was burrowing deep into the earth, dirt spewing in my face, my body vibrating uncontrollably as I drilled deep into the subterranean world below.
The Moon Pendant’s third outer stones flickered on and off, igniting as it absorbed the energy of the earth. After a few minutes, I began to enjoy the thundering ride through the earth, rolling up and down like an underground roller coaster, until I blasted out of the ground, landing on my feet, covered in sweaty dirt, the powerful roots recoiling back to their origin.
“That was fun!” I laughed, thinking that Izzy and Blane would be waiting for me.
Instead, all I saw was Blane keeled over, lying in a pool of blood.
♦♦♦
Izzy
My throat tightened, fearing the Bloody Baron was about to dine on me as a late night snack. I shivered inside, knew I needed to be stronger. Usually I’d just run away from my problems or hit them dead on with a forceful fist, but out running the Bloody Baron was impossible.
I closed my eyes and thought of Fergus, imprisoned, chained to a damp wall tucked away within the Baobhan Sith’s lair. He wouldn’t run from the Bloody Baron.
I knew I could dish it out, but I really couldn’t take it. Years of being left alone, abandoned by my mother’s eyes, made me bitter inside, and I knew it. I was astonished that the Bloody Baron actually thought I was…
“Sweet,” said an eerie voice from below my tree branch, “sweet nectar,” he repeated again, rubbing his cap in his own blood, keeping himself from turning back into stone.
My stomach soured.
Cautiously, I crawled back toward the tree trunk, brushing against something that poked out at me. I flinched, whirling around, catching a set of chocolate brown eyes staring at me from the tree bark. I couldn’t believe it, this whole time I was sitting on a Dryad and I didn’t even know it. Leaning back I could see its delicate face, etched into its rugged bark, the way it spoke was like a soft breeze, stirring in the leaves.
I gulped.
Shifting along its long sturdy branch, the Dryad gestured toward a lifeless tree in a hollow, about twenty feet away, its bare branches shot out like spears, pointy and sharp. I quickly realized that the Dryads didn’t like the Bloody Baron either, and somehow they liked me. I nodded my head yes, back at him.
I scouted the area, there were hundreds of Dryads planted in the lush grove, hidden from plain sight, their bodies camouflaged as trees, or were they the actual trees? How could I have not seen them before? I figured it was time to act and make Fergus proud.
“Hey!” I called down. “Hey there, Baron! Don’t get so used to drinking your own blood when you can have mine!” I plastered a huge grin on my face, trying to make sure he saw all my pearly whites, and then I jingled my fingers at him as if I were smitten.
The Bloody Baron craned his neck up, a crooked smile crawling on his inky lips, flashing his razor sharp teeth. “Sweetest of the sweet!”
I cringed, rolling my eyes, what the heck was I doing?
The Dryad’s branch lurched out, coiling around his lethal pike, snatching the Bloody Baron’s iron-pike from his clasp, leaving him weaponless.
I sighed with a tinge of relief. At least the odds just got a little bit better.
I rolled onto my belly, hugging the tree tightly, and whipping down to the ground just behind the Bloody Baron. He spun around on his iron maiden boots, a demented sneer on his face.
Think fast, Izzy, this dude wants his chow and he wants it now!
“I’m not sure if you’re worth it though,” I said teasingly – and who am I kidding a bit sarcastically, too. I held out my arm, the pallid scar glistening against the shafts of moonlight. “This is high quality stuff running through my veins. You know? I don’t just let any Red Cap tap into it.”
The Bloody Baron curled his filthy upper lip up, snarling as he always does, and then his arms jerked out towards me. My body quickly buckled over, a wooden branch swept out from the Dryad, scooping me up and placing me back onto the chunky branch I was on before, just narrowly escaping the Bloody Baron.
“Thanks,” I said to the Dryad, as I swung through the air like a trapeze artist. I could hear them rustling, rowdy with their chatting as if they had some sort of plan.
I captured the creamy brown eyes of the Dryad again, his eyes shifting back and forth toward the razor-sharp tree, shooting out of the ground like a sword. I then understood what he wanted me to do.
The Bloody Baron fastened his jagged nails into the husky bark, scaling the Dryad�
�s body as if it were a skyscraper. No wonder they didn’t like him.
Another grey tree limb shot out, knocking the Bloody Baron off their friend’s trunk, propelling him high into the crisp air and landing him just a few feet shy of the lone tree.
My feet swiftly leapt from Dryad branch to Dryad branch, jumping into the air with a whimsical smile on my face, knowing the Dryads would catch me if I fell. I crouched down on a low branch above the Bloody Baron, his shifty eyes twitching violently as he gazed up at me.
“Working hard for your meal ticket?” I said with a sardonic smile, my eyebrows dancing up and down. “Eh? Baron?”
The Bloody Baron seethed.
Yeah, he didn’t like that! But, who cares? This demonic faery needed a lesson, after what he did to Blane. I pricked my finger with the tip of my ivory knife, allowing a drop of my delicious blood to dribble down into the Bloody Baron’s cap. He bolted straight up, euphoric, his body perking up with a drunken smile, writhing in the joy of my ‘sweetest of the sweet nectar.’
Hey, maybe I am sweet? Then I shook my head. Nah! who am I kidding?
I heard a whistling sound, roaring through the grove, turning my head, a few Dryads tree branches smacked into the Bloody Baron’s body, air-borne and free, arms flailing wildly, catapulting him up into the dead tree’s spear-like branches with a thud, impaling the center of his body into its splintered limb, puncturing him through his chest, he stood their immobile, secured to the tree’s wooden lance.
I hopped down in front of the Bloody Baron, his red eyes fluttering, his cap quickly drying out, his eyes circling back into his head as his chest oozed with murky blood.
I flipped out my iPhone, launching the faeland App, pressing on the history of the Red Cap. “As long as your cap is soaked in blood,” I read to the Bloody Baron, his arm strapped to his torso, trying to jerk up to reach his cap, “you will live.”
The Bloody Baron’s cap was mere seconds away from drying out. I glanced down at his feet slowly changing into stone.
I inhaled deeply through my nostrils and let out a loud sighed. What I was about to do, I truly did not know if it was good or bad, merciful or cruel, but I did it anyway.
I slid out my knife and thrust it deep into his chest, scraping out a small shallow hole.
The Bloody Baron looked at me horrified, his legs stiffening, transforming into solid rock. I swiped the parched cap off his head, rolling it between my fingers and cuffing it with my fist. My leg shuddered uncontrollably, rapidly, quivering with a tick I had, knowing what I was about to do.
I tilted my head back, staring at him with a devious smile and then buried his cap into his chest, soaking up all his own dark evil blood.
He cooed with pleasure, drinking in his own blood. “Nectar, sweet nectar…” he repeated, getting drunk on his own blood.
“You’re mad!” I said, shaking my head.
The stone creeping up his leg stopped, rescinding from his legs and feet, he slowly changed back into his cold, heartless flesh.
Sure, now the Bloody Baron was going to live forever.
Off his own damn blood!
Chapter 16
♦♦♦
Anabel
I sprang out of the Ghillie Dhu’s protective root covering, bouncing onto my feet.
“That was fun!” I laughed, noticing the long gashes and bruises on my forearms. I gazed around the grove, searching for Blane and Izzy.
Nothing.
Then I saw him.
Blane’s body was sprawled out in a puddle of silky blood, a sinister shadow floating over him. Lainahwyn dipped her lance-like nail into his thick blood, stirring it around, raising it to her puckered mouth, licking it off with one stroke of her forked tongue.
Her lunar eyes narrowed in on me. “Mother chose love and failed,” she snickered. “How bittersweet it will be to see your heart break when you can never be with the one you love?”
I gulped. Lainahwyn was spinning her web of lies again. I could be with Blane, I knew I could. But why did I feel a heavy weight in my heart?
Blood trickled down the seam of Lainahwyn’s mouth. “I will savor that moment.”
My rage surged through me. I had just had about enough of this Baobhan Sith. My hand elevated into the air, splaying my fingers out. The power of the Moon Pendant surged through my veins, electrifying my skin. I was just one command away from annihilating this evil from my world.
“No! Anabel,” Blane called out, lying on his side, moaning. “Let me be, I can never belong to you.”
But, he could. I know he could. How can I not have him? I had all the power of the Moon Pendant. I could have anything I wanted. Everything I wanted, including Blane.
“Get back!” I screamed at Lainahwyn, my eyes steadied on her creamy face.
Lainahwyn hissed and continued to huddle over Blane, amusing herself with his wound.
A flood of energy rippled through my skin, tickling my veins. Jagged stones scattered on the ground began to vibrate vigorously within their holes from my power, slowly levitating high above the dew-drenched grass.
“Its power feels good,” she purred as if she was egging me on.
“It does,” I agreed, whirling my hand in the air, hurling the rocks into in a spiraling cone, storming toward Lainahwyn’s wiry body, barely missing Blane. She jumped, prancing up like a deer onto a nearby moss covered boulder, the stones zooming past her.
“Did that last burst of energy, drain you?” she said mockingly.
The light green veins underneath the Moon Pendant slowly seeped into a putrid forest green, its decaying color flowing through my body, extending out to my fingertips, a highway of throbbing vascular tubing stinging through my pale skin, robbing me of my energy.
“Did you not know, until it is fully charged, it will parch you dry, helpless, useless. That is why the Sentinel warned you,” Lainahwyn smiled impishly. “So sad, it only gets worse each time you charge it.”
My body began to spasm, crippling with a searing pain. I crumpled down to the moist earth below, my eyes meeting Blane’s terrified gaze.
Lainahwyn lingered over Blane’s body, the back of her pasty hand caressing his cheek. “‘Tis a pity Danú didn’t assign a Sentinel of Light to Dunvarghan Castle sooner,” she said forebodingly. “They would have found it was ruled by a hideous family filled with lies, deceit, and murder.” Her spiteful gaze shot over to me. “A family named, MacAlpin!”
I struggled to center my eyes on Lainahwyn’s form, slithering above Blane’s limp body.
How could this be? I don’t understand. My family owned Dunvarghan Castle?
“For over a thousand years,” she continued hauntingly, as if she read my mind, “from a mere cottage, Dunvarghan Castle grew more and more powerful. Once, of course, they had a certain Fae prisoner.”
Lainahwyn swept across the luxurious grass, her emerald gown trailing behind her, soaking up the wet mist, her lithe silhouette crouching besides my powerless body, her fingernails flicking out like a sharp-edged steel blade. “Torturing her, using her magic, draining her powers,” her silky voice turned into a low seething growl, sliding the edge of her nail beneath the Moon Pendant’s silvery chain. “Now, it is payback time, MacAlpin!”
A crackling noise came from the cover of the forest. My body tingled, sensing it was, Izzy. Where had she been this whole time?
Her voice cried out over the canopy of the trees, “Pull!”
My eyes twinkled gazing into Lainahwyn’s silvery moon orbs. I knew what Izzy’s call meant, a sweet smiled crawled across my face.
Shifting my eyes upward, I saw the Bloody Baron’s iron pike skyrocketing through the air. I summoned up all my strength from the Moon Pendant, painful as it was, my body tensing and quaking in agony, steering the iron pike with all my residual energy toward Lainahwyn’s head.
Lainahwyn eyes bulged, alarmingly, she wailed out a horrifying shriek, its sound piercing the silence of the grove, and then she vanished into the mysterious night in a
plume of black smoke.
She was gone.
I turned onto my belly, scrapping across the thick grass until I reached Blane, my hand reaching out to touch his face.
His eyes met mine. “Doona love me, lass,” Blane pleaded.
“I’ll do whatever I like,” I said, choking back on a sob.
“Nay, you are the Guardian of the Moon Pendant. I am a Sentinel of Light.”
“So?” I said, stroking the blood off his sweaty brow.
His finger inched over to my hand, intertwining with mine, clasping around them tightly. “You doona know, lass,” he muttered under a labored breath. “I am no longer mortal, I doona age. My soul belongs to the Otherworld. I can never be released, unless by Danú herself.”
“I’ll find Danú and have her release you!”
His head dropped low, pressing his forehead against mine. “Lass, Anabel …A long time ago, I was on a great battlefield, men slashing swords, arrows showering down from the sky, blood and guts everywhere.”
“Sounds dreadful,” I said in a whisper, still recovering from the Moon Pendant’s last drain.
“I should’ve died,” he added, wincing in pain, “but I was whisked away by some unknown magic. I awoke on a golden boat alongside a dozen other warriors, chained together. We arrived in the Otherworld, summoned by Queen Maeve herself.”
“Queen Maeve?”
“Aye, pray you will not e’er see that demon. She stole warriors from the realm of man to create an army to do her bidding in the Otherworld.”
“But who is, Danú?”
“Aye, she is the Queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann. When I escaped from Queen Maeve, she found me and placed me here to protect the borders of the realm of the Fae and the realm of man. I am to stay here, until I go to Eternity.”
“If I keep the Portal open, we can go find, Danú,” I said desperately, “have her free you from your post.”
“We can never keep the Portal open, sweet lass,” Blane said, his eyes beginning to glaze over. “Aye, other demons will come, worse than, Lainahwyn.”
Guardian of the Moon Pendant Page 15
