Bad Moon Rising

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Book excerpt

Prologue

She walked in with the bags of groceries slung over her arm and immediately knew something about the house was off.

Fiona carried her groceries into the galley kitchen and dropped the bags on the butcher-block countertop. The day’s mail sat in a neat stack atop the bread box. She sorted through it and rolled her eyes in disgust. Bills, bills, and more bills—most with bright red lettering that meant “past due and in need of immediate attention.”

“What are they going to turn off now, Elliot? The water, the cable, or the gas?” she mumbled to herself as she glanced around the living room for her husband, who’d beaten her home. His car was in the drive, he’d collected the mail, and the television was blasting a baseball game, but he was nowhere in sight.

Fiona dropped her keys on the hall table with her purse and glanced down the broad, carpeted expanse toward the light coming from their bedroom. She kicked off her shoes and headed in that direction. What was he doing in the bedroom when he had the TV on out here?

Her mouth fell open in shock when she saw the answer. Her husband, Elliot Clegg, was sprawled naked on his back across their king-size bed with his young blonde assistant, Lindsey, astraddle his crotch, riding him like a jockey at the Belmont Stakes.

“What the hell is going on here, Elliot?” Fiona managed in an awkward squeak as she stepped into the room.

She watched as her husband tossed the naked blonde off his wilting erection onto the other side of the bed—Fiona’s side of the bed—and jumped to his feet. “What are you doing home, Fi? I didn’t expect you ‘til later this afternoon.”

Fiona glared at the young woman, who scrambled to find her clothing. “That’s obvious,” she said and flung open the closet doors to rummage for her bags.

“What do you think you’re doing, Fi?” Elliot demanded when his wife began pulling her clothes from the hangers and stuffing them into the bags.

“Something I should have done a long time ago, Elliot.”

Elliot grabbed Fiona’s arm with a dark, suntanned hand. “She doesn’t mean anything to me, Fiona,” he said, “I was just blowing off a little steam.”

Fiona watched Lindsey’s mouth fall open as the blonde stared at Elliot. “Oh, yah,” Fiona snarled as she zipped one bag and went into the bathroom to scoop toiletries and makeup into the other one, “and I bet I know what the little blonde twat was blowing.”

Elliot let out a long breath. “Where do you think you’re going to go, Fiona?” he asked. “There’s no money in the bank, and the cards are maxed out again. You won’t be able to get a hotel.”

“So, what’s new about that?” She glared at her husband of twenty years, who stood in the bathroom doorway. “Don’t worry about me, Elliot. I got paid today.”

“But that money has to go toward the house payment, electric bill, and —”

“And you’re on your own with that now, Elliot,” Fiona said with a shrug as she pushed past her husband into the bedroom, where Lindsey was slipping her stockinged feet into a pair of very expensive pumps. “Maybe you can get the blonde twat here to cover your bills for you like I’ve been doing for the past twenty years.” Fiona kicked the left Prada from Lindsey’s manicured reach. “I’m sure I paid for those, too,” she said to the glowering blonde, “but they look too big for my feet, so you can keep them.” Fiona tossed the shoe back at the wide-eyed young woman. “You can keep him, too.”

With both bags in her hands and tears stinging her eyes, Fiona grabbed her purse and keys. “I’ll come for the rest of my things in a few days,” she choked out over her shoulder before stepping out into the bright Louisiana sunshine.

Frustrated tears streamed down Fiona’s face as she drove into St. Elizabeth. What was she supposed to do now? School would be out for the summer in a few weeks. What was she supposed to do with her summer? She certainly wouldn’t be working at Clegg Marine, Elliot’s fancy boat dealership—without a salary—the way she had every summer and holiday since it had opened.

Chapter One

Fiona stared at the bright moon casting a glow over the rippling, dark waters of Black Bayou as she sat on a log and washed the soft, cool mud from between her bare toes.

The cool water felt good on her tired feet. It had been another long day at her shop, The Bread of Life Book Store and Coffee Shoppe, in St. Elizabeth, Louisiana. The town sat on the bank of the large Black Bayou and had been there since settlers from Canada had made their way south down the river systems at the time of the Louisiana Purchase in the early eighteenth century. Fiona was one of the Black Bayou Witches, though she’d never been allowed to develop her talents.

Fiona flinched when she heard a large cat scream in the wooded swampland across the black-topped road from where she sat. Panthers were said to roam those woods, though Fiona had never seen one. Many things Fiona had never seen were supposed to roam the swamplands around Black Bayou—things she never wanted to see.

“I suppose I’d better get going before you decide to show yourself,” Fiona said to herself and the elusive panther as she pushed her tired fifty-five-year-old body up off the log and slipped back into her cheap but comfortable shoes.

“Elliot’s blonde twat can keep her damned Pradas. They weren’t made for someone who stands on her feet all day anyhow.” Fiona inhaled the sweet, jasmine-scented breeze as she stepped up onto the warm asphalt road. The tall cypresses moved in the breeze, and Fiona could hear the branches creak the way her knees did as they moved.

Something else grabbed her attention, and Fiona jerked her head to stare back into the dark woods. It wasn’t the cat, she was certain. This felt very different to Fiona. She reached out with her DuBois senses to attempt to find the origin, but it eluded her.

Annette DuBois, Fiona’s late mother, had been born a member of one of the original founding families of St. Elizabeth—the DuBois. The family had fled France in the sixteenth century to escape the Inquisition and then fled Canada for the same reason in the eighteenth. The Church’s hounds could be relentless when they caught a scent.

The DuBois and the Rubidoux had settled in the remote wilds around Black Bayou along with a few other magical families. Some who’d traveled from Canada had migrated on to New Orleans or the Caribbean Islands to settle and practice their beliefs. They were families of natural witches who still practiced the old goddess-based religion of Europe and could collect power from the living world around them. This had drawn the attention of the Inquisition in Europe, and in fear for their lives, the families had fled their homes in France for the freedom and safety of the New World across the Atlantic.

This was Fiona’s heritage—something in her genes—but she’d been forbidden by her father, Arthur Carlisle, to study and practice her abilities. Her mother had begged and pleaded with her husband to at least give her daughter the basics, so she wouldn’t harm herself or others with her abilities, but Arthur had stood firm, and Annette had given her daughter very little tutoring.

Fiona could sense the living world around her to a finer degree than others, but she had no idea how to use it to her or any other’s advantage.

She had gotten her first period when she was twelve, and along with the changes in her body had come the first inkling of her natural abilities. Fiona had realized she could sense things others around her could not. She could sense the cricket crawling up Sister Mary Joseph’s black habit as she sat bored in history class and the neighbor’s cat in the tree outside her window. She could also sense the little frog the cat was hunting.

Fiona had been thrilled when she realized she could warn the little frog of the danger or urge the cricket to move faster up the sister’s habit until the nun jumped to her feet screaming in an effort to rid herself of the creature.

Books had been Fiona’s solace as a child. She'd had a library card at St. Elizabeth’s Public Library and checked out books on every subject. She had been thrilled when she found a section on witchcraft in the library, but after reading only two books on the subject, she had realized they’d been written by charlatans who knew nothing about the subject of real magic.

She'd continued to experiment, and one afternoon when the class bully, Susan Waters, had begun to torment Fiona about belonging to one of the notorious witch families in St. Elizabeth, she had reached out and punched the hateful girl with everything she had. She hadn't used her fist, however, and this punch wouldn’t leave a physical mark. Fiona had punched the bully with the force she’d gathered within herself. The girl had fallen to the floor holding her head and writhed in pain.

“You’re just jealous you can’t do that,” Fiona had whispered to the girl rolling and slobbering on the classroom floor.

“She used her witchcraft on me, Sister,” Susan had called to Sister Mary Joseph as she pulled herself to her feet using her classroom desk. “She’s an evil witch like the ones you warn us about, Sister, and she should be burned at the stake or hung.”

The nun had grabbed Fiona. She’d taught at St. Agnes’s for decades and had heard the stories about the witches of the Black Bayou. “What horrible spell did you cast on poor Susan, Fiona?” The nun had held her crucifix up the way Fiona had seen people do in old vampire movies to ward off evil.

Fiona had laughed at the ridiculousness of it. She couldn’t help herself. She'd bared her eye teeth like fangs and hissed at the woman warding herself with the crucifix.

“Get to the Father’s office, witch,” the Sister had ordered and pointed to the door with her gnarled, trembling finger.

The old priest who ran the school had given Fiona three swats with a wooden paddle and ordered her to recite a dozen Hail Marys every night for a month.

“Your Goddess Mary won’t listen to my prayer, Father,” Fiona had taunted the old man with a grin. “She’s afraid of mine.”

The Priest’s mouth had fallen open. He’d expelled Fiona for the remainder of the term and called her father to come and pick her up. Arthur Carlisle had not been happy. He’d beaten Fiona with his belt, restricted her to her room, and called her every vile name that had come to his mind.

Her mother had been more forgiving. Annette had just begun to show the first signs of the disease that would take her life in four years—ovarian cancer. “What did you do to that girl exactly, Fiona?”

Fiona didn’t have the words to explain what she’d done to the obnoxious bully. “I punched with my power,” she’d finally said in explanation.

Annette had grinned. “You realize you could have hurt her badly by doing that.”

“I meant to hurt her badly,” Fiona had said, “but I think I only gave her a headache.”

Annette had arched her brow and grinned at her daughter with pride. “A headache that might last a very long time.”

“Good. Maybe she’ll leave me alone now.”

Annette had smiled at her daughter. “I’m sure she will, sweetheart, but you must learn to control your temper.” Annette had taken Fiona in her arms. “I wish I could teach you what you need to know,” she’d told her daughter with a sigh, “but your father has forbidden me.” Annette had frowned. “And taunting that insipid old priest was probably a mistake, too.” She'd winked then, and Fiona had known her mother wasn’t angry with her.

“Why, Mama? Why can’t I learn the DuBois magic?”

“You know about the people who live out on the island, right?”

“The Rubidoux,” Fiona had said with a nod of her red head, “the bad witches.”

“That’s why.” Annette had stood and left Fiona’s room without elaborating.

Fiona had glanced out at the empty spot in the Bayou where the Rubidoux Island had once stood and the waves lapping at the pavement caused by the water that had risen since the island’s sinking two years ago.

A schism had come between the two families, and the Rubidoux had moved to the island at some point early in the history of St. Elizabeth, but Fiona hadn’t had a clear understanding about it at that early age. Her father, a staunch Catholic, had forbidden her mother to associate with her family or induct Fiona into the practices of the DuBois.

It was common practice for a man to change his name to DuBois when he married a woman from that family, but Arthur Carlisle had refused and had insisted Fiona be given his name at her birth. Annette had agreed, and although she’d never changed her name to her husband’s, Fiona was christened Fiona Elizabeth Carlisle at St. Agnes’s Catholic Church a month after her birth.

Her furious father had all but disowned her when Fiona took legal steps after her mother’s death and she’d come of legal age to change her name to DuBois. She’d wanted to honor the woman she knew regretted keeping her from her family heritage and who had slipped her books by authors who knew what they were writing about when she could.

Fiona came back to the present and stepped to the side of the road when she saw the lights of a car come up behind her. “Damnit,” she swore when her canvas sneakers sunk into soupy, black mud.

The vehicle stopped, and Fiona heard the whir of an electric window coming down. She turned her head to see the handsome face of Deputy Charlie Broussard smiling at her from his Parish Police vehicle.