Excerpt from my Y/A novel Keeper of the Sword

In the Beginning
Morgan Connelly’s cries for help sent icy fingers racing up fourteen-year-old Josh Cullen’s spine. They filtered through two grubby ears into his half-mad mind and pulled him back from a happy vision of home. Back to the reality of thick smoke, flames and the savage sea battle raging around him.

The image of her ghost white-face seared through his red-rimmed eyes and her screams made his stomach queasy. A crimson river flowed out of her left shoulder around the long black shaft protruding out of her dirty pink blouse. It ran down her arm and formed into a pool under her slumped body. For a minute that seemed to stretch forward into eternity, the limp figure of his best friend made Josh think that he was caught up in the middle of a nightmare.

Morgan’s sapphire eyes fluttered closed and for a long moment Josh thought she was dead. His last meal of fish and bread spurted out of his mouth, poured out his nose and mingled with the expanding red pool.

This never-ending moment of terror was too much for his young mind to comprehend and it retreated once again to the safe, secure haven of his classroom.
The events that had led him to this fateful hour of destruction flashed before his eyes. Starting with the day he discovered the ancient, leather bound volume.