Wolf Moon Rising (Beaux Rêve Coven 3)

Silent is the Knight

Big Bad Wolf

Enjoy an excerpt from another sexy shifter story, Bad Moon Rising…

“Wah-ah-ah-ah!”

DiDi Devereaux bounced her head to David Draiman’s gorilla-like chant. After she’d turned onto the small county road in a Louisiana bayou, she’d popped her Disturbed CD in the player. She liked listening to hard rock when she wrote a fight scene or needed a little courage. Raucous, masculine music rarely failed to rev her engines.

Unfortunately, the music wasn’t working its magic now.

Her headlights barely cut through the thick fog, forcing DiDi to ease off the accelerator as she peered over the steering wheel at the narrow donkey trail of a road. Twenty minutes earlier, she’d left the highway and knew she’d entered bayou country by the thick forest pressing against the road from both sides and the air’s muggy quality. She’d rolled down her windows because her AC fogged up the windshield, but she still had to swipe her palms against the glass to clear it enough to continue.

Why she’d decided to finish the journey at night, she didn’t know. But she never questioned an impulse, and never really regretted any of the mishaps she’d fallen into as a result of ignoring good advice. Many of her stories were born from those exact misadventures—and inspiration, of late, had become pretty thin. A road trip was just what she needed to “fill the well”.

On a whim, she’d removed the deed to the Gauthier House from her safe deposit box on Monday after moving her furniture into storage and letting her apartment go. When she’d first contemplated making a change, she’d been torn between seeking a summer rental in the Yukon and heading Down Under.

Then she’d remembered the property she’d inherited three years earlier. A dilapidated house in a section of boggy bayou with a dock that led into the swamps. The lawyer who’d handed her the deed and the keys had told her to sell it—or let it return to the land. No use fighting the age of the place because the restoration would be a money pit.

She’d been satisfied to let the document lay at the bottom of her safety deposit box, beneath her passport and a flash drive that stored every page of every book she’d ever written, just in case catastrophe hit and she had to start all over again. Nothing was more valuable to her than the dreams she’d created on paper, nothing was more meaningful. She’d sacrificed a lot to be where she was, edging toward the top of the bestsellers’ lists and finally getting those lucrative contracts that let her continue to feed her gypsy soul.

Now, she had money to sink into the old plantation house. Enough to pay for remodeling while she plunked away at a keyboard with an iPod in her ears as workers sawed and hammered around her.

She could make this new house work—if she ever found the damn place.

The clerk at the gas station fifteen miles back had told her she’d never find her way in the dark on these back roads, that she’d wind up hopelessly lost and he predicted not until some backwoods Cajun found her car in the swamp would the mystery of her death be solved.

He’d cheered up at that thought, saying he bet 20/20 might pay him for an interview. And the little prick had smirked as he said it. Which only made her mad and even more determined to forge ahead.

But things were looking bleak. She considered pulling to the side of the road at the first rest stop, if she ever found one, or at a widening of the road’s shoulder and sleeping in her car until the morning. Wouldn’t be the first time.

David D was giving her a headache, so she glanced down to eject the CD.

When she looked back up, something large and black darted into the road in front of her then stood there, caught in the headlights.

A scream lodged in her throat. She slammed on her brakes, causing her car to swerve onto the soft shoulder. Her tires caught the edge of the road and sank. Before she could compensate, her car left the road, crashing into the ditch. Water splashed up the hood and drowned her windshield in the wet onslaught and long grass.

Seconds later, the engine sputtered to a halt. The headlights dimmed. Then water seeped through the floorboard.

DiDi lifted her feet, clutched the steering wheel hard and closed her eyes. Just for a moment, just long enough to still the thoughts racing too fast through her mind to process.

The car was stuck. But the water wasn’t deep enough to drown her. She had time to react.

She flicked her ignition, but the starter sputtered. Using the battery alone, she lowered her window. Bending to her right, she reached toward the floor and swung her hand around until she caught the handle of her purse. Straightening, she clutched both sides of her window and climbed out.

She stepped into stagnant, swampy water that filled her shoes and soaked her jeans to the knees. “Shit. I hope the alligators won’t like the taste of me,” she muttered. “Or that whatever jumped in the road isn’t looking for dinner.”

In the distance, she heard the roar of an engine. Rescue. So she slung her purse over her shoulder, grabbed handfuls of the grass at the side of the ditch and crawled up to the road.

Headlights blinded her for a moment, but she lifted her hand, praying she wasn’t flagging down a serial killer. If she was, she hoped he’d spare her life long enough for him to tell her his story. Her mouth formed a grim smile as she straightened.

A car pulled alongside her, the passenger window whirred downward.

An emblem on the side of the car had her sighing with relief. A police car had halted beside her.

“Ma’am, do you need help?”

The soft southern inflections in the deep, rasping voice soothed her fears. She leaned down and braced her hands on the open passenger window to peer inside. “My car’s in the ditch,” she said, eyeing the large shadow of the man behind the wheel.