"Friend or foe?" Ben asked.

"Could be either," Kale replied.
Lila, the Mo’o, is an important character in The Crystalline Vision, and a most unusual one. A Mo’o is a mythical being unique to the Hawaiian Islands. An article in Maui Magazine describes them this way.

“Most moʻo of legend are female, shapeshifters capable of appearing as beautiful maidens or water dragons. They dwell in caves, pools, and fishponds and are fierce guardians of freshwater sources. According to nineteenth-century Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau, when fires were lit on altars near their homes, the moʻo would appear: twelve- to thirty-foot-long reptiles, black as night, glistening in the water.”

Shapeshifter? Now we’re talkin’!
Well, you can imagine what happened next. She no sooner had my attention than Lila started talking. First she described mo’os in general – a dragon-like lizard up to 30 feet long or – a beautiful, seductive woman. In either form she can act as protector or destroyer.
Lila said that in her lizard form, her teeth are gigantic, like a tyrannosaurus rex,
but that her body is more like an iguana.
 

When she shapeshifts into a woman…
 
…Lila appears as a beautiful, seductive islander.
Poor Ben. Lila, the Mo’o is attached to him for better or for worse, like an animal spirit guide, or like those old cartoons in which an angel sits on one shoulder, a devil on the other, arguing their cases.
Ultimately, Lila makes Ben face his choices. It’s not easy. He’s resisted acknowledging everything invisible his whole life, and as CEO of the hottest tech company in town, he’s invested in the delusion. That won’t work for Lila, the Crystalline Grid, or the CyberShark investors. Ben must face what he finds inside and choose who he will be. If he makes the wrong choice? That wonderful CyberShark technology could turn from being a gift to humanity to being the instrument of its destruction!

 
The Crystalline Vision is available now with it’s original title and cover. It will be reborn April 27th as Protectors of the Grid, Book 1 of The Shaman Chronicles, available here now: https://tinyurl.com/CrystallineVision.
 
 

 
Although all books in the series are complete in themselves, your favorite characters continue their adventures in Protective Force,  available here:  https://tinyurl.com/ProtectiveForce. Book 2 will be reborn May 11th as Protectors of the Path, Book 2 of The Shaman Chronicles, 
 
 

 
 

And – for the first time in any dimension – Book 3, Protectors of the Water, will launch May 26th!

Stay tuned to learn how to preorder your copy.