Black Moon Rising

by Ann Simas

  BLACK MOON RISING

  DECEMBER 2016

  All rights reserved.

  ©2016 by Ann Simas

  Cover art and design ©2016 by Ann Simas

  Excerpt from Heaven Sent ©2015 by Ann Simas

  Except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without per-mission in writing from the publisher, Magic Moon Press, POB 41634, Eugene, OR 97404-0368. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Black Moon Rising is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events described herein, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9961490-3-7 (print book)

  Magic Moon Press . POB 41634 . Eugene, OR 97404-0368

  Edited by Nancy Jankow

  Three things cannot be long hidden:

  the sun, the moon, and the truth.

  — Buddha

  The Vision

  . . .

  The first vision came on Monday.

  At least Sunny thought it was a vision. Her eyes were wide open and she wasn’t sleeping, so she didn’t think it was a dream.

  A dense fog enshrouded her. She couldn’t move and when she opened her mouth, she couldn’t scream, let alone speak.

  What she saw was crystal clear.

  She was driving down College Avenue in bumper-to-bumper traffic, often at a snail’s pace. Up ahead, a young woman lay sprawled on the curb, her bicycle on top of her. No one stopped to help, but that just wasn’t the way Sunny did things. She put on her blinker, pulling in just shy of the bicyclist, and jumped out of her car, phone in hand.

  She hurried over to the young woman, but a moment later, a large truck hit the back of her SUV, pushing it directly onto Sunny and the bicyclist. The vision disappeared, just like that, but Sunny had no doubts of the outcome. She and the girl had not survived the impact.

  On Tuesday, a variation of the first vision appeared. This time, Sunny pulled her vehicle ahead of the downed bicyclist. A rubbernecker realized at the last minute that Sunny’s car was stationary in the bike lane, swerved right, and landed her vehicle right on top of Sunny and the girl. As before, the vision vanished abruptly, but Sunny knew the end result was the same as the day before.

  On Wednesday, the vision showed Sunny pulling into the next driveway and running back to help. That resulted in a multicar rear-end collision that netted the same fate for Sunny and the bicyclist and probably had sent someone from the traffic flow to the hospital.

  In Thursday’s vision, she pulled all the way into the parking lot behind the bicyclist. A car in the middle lane changed lanes without signaling, forcing a pickup in the outside lane closest to the bicyclist to swerve toward the curb to avoid impact. Sunny and the girl were directly in his path.

  On Friday, the vision changed yet again. Sunny pulled up just past the downed bicyclist and eased her vehicle up onto the curb, straddling the bike lane. She put on her flashers, got out, dropped her phone. She managed to get to the girl and offer assistance until she heard the sound of a siren from the approaching ambulance. And then she took off. Alive.

  Then came Saturday.

  This time, there was no vision.

  Only reality.

  Chapter 1

  . . .

  Traffic was a bitch. Sunshine Fyfe cursed a blue streak inside the confines of her older but sturdy and well-maintained Durango.

  Why today, of all days, did her plane have to be late arriving? And why today, of all days, did her mother, who was babysitting for her, have a gala event scheduled in an hour that she absolutely, positively could not miss? And why today, of all days, did the shortcut to her parents’ place, which took her tooling down Car Dealer Row, have to be bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go traffic?

  “Because, stupid,” she muttered, answering her last question aloud, “it’s rush hour and everyone’s trying to avoid bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go traffic just like you are!”

  She slapped her palm against the steering wheel. “Shit!”

  Fumbling in her purse for her phone, she took her eyes off the road for an instant. By the time she had her hand on the device and her eyes back on the road, a space the length of several vehicles had cleared in front of her. The opening gave her an unobstructed view of a bicyclist lying just ahead on the side of the road, her two-wheeled method of transportation a mangled mess on top of her.

  Sunny’s heart began to pound as a week’s parade of visions trampled through her memory.

  She momentarily debated her options. Incur her mother’s wrath or leave an injured person unattended on the side of the road? The debate was short-lived. Passing by as if she had seen nothing had not been one of the scenarios presented to her in the visions, nor was it an option Sunny seriously considered.

  Signaling, she pulled over into the gutter, ahead of the downed bicyclist, and eased the front wheel of her SUV up over the curb, then the back wheel. That left her half in the bike lane, but out of the traffic lane. She jammed her finger in the general vicinity of the emergency-flasher button, and despite the heavy traffic and the narrow space between the passing cars and her vehicle, managed to open her door enough to squeeze out. In the process, she dropped her phone. It bounced once then went straight out into traffic, where the next wheel ran over it with a sickening crunch.

  Muttering the f-bomb, Sunny hurried along, pressed against the side of her vehicle, until finally, she reached the relative safety of the curb. Why hadn’t she shoved the damned phone into her pocket? For crying out loud! She’d had fair warning what would happen if she didn’t.

  “Are you okay?” she asked the young woman, lifting the bike off of her, hoping not to cause her further injuries or discomfort. Blood poured from a wound somewhere on the right side of the girl’s head, liberally covering that side of her face and dripping profusely onto her white T-shirt. From personal experience, Sunny knew that head wounds usually bled a lot. This one, however, looked like a gusher. She tried not to freak.

  “I don’t know…my head hurts.” The young woman was pale and looked stunned. Tears pooled in her big brown eyes. “My bike! He hit my bike!”

  Sunny ripped off the colorful scarf she had around her neck, bunching it up as she handed it over. “Here, put this against your head wound. It might help stanch the bleeding.”

  The woman accepted it with trembling fingers.

  Upon closer inspection, Sunny decided the bicyclist looked younger than she’d originally guessed, maybe in her late teens. “I’m Sunny. What’s your name, sweetie?”

  “Della.”

  Sunny smiled at her, thinking, Keep calm, keep calm. Remaining calm herself would encourage the bicyclist to remain calm, too. “Do you think you’re hurt anywhere else?”

  “I don’t know. My right leg…hurts…bad.”

  Sunny glanced down, dismayed to see something sticking up out of the bloody denim just above the girl’s knee. Please, God, don’t let it be bone!

  “Okay, Della, I’m going to call an ambulance. You don’t happen to have a phone, do you?”

  “I do, but…battery’s dead,” Della said. “I think…going to be sick.” With that, she turned her head quickly and tossed her cookies all over her shoulder and into the grassy strip.

  Sunny kept a hand on the girl’s opposite shoulder, offering the only thing she could—comfort. When Della had finished, she helped her scoot away from the barf
, cognizant of the fact that she shouldn’t be moving an accident victim. Nonetheless, she couldn’t leave the girl to sit in her own puke. She whipped off the lightweight sweater she wore over her cotton tank and used it to wipe Della’s mouth and shoulder.

  “You’ll…ruin it,” Della protested.

  “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. Listen, I dropped my phone when I got out of my vehicle and it got run over, so I’m going to go up to the car dealership and call from there. Will you be okay while I’m gone?”

  Instead of an answer, big tears rolled down Della’s cheeks. She swiped at them with the trembling fingers of her free hand and nodded.

  Sunny straightened and bolted toward what she hoped was the dealership office. No sooner had she passed between two Honda sedans than a guy with a name badge approached her.

  “I called an ambulance,” he said in an unusually deep voice. “It’s on the way.”

  “Oh, thank you!” Sunny glanced at his name tag—JAMES MORGAN—before reversing direction.

  Once back at Della’s side, she knelt down and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. The car salesman loomed over them, not offering any assistance. “Della, are you doing okay?”

  “Not feeling…good. Kind of…light-headed.”

  “I’m not surprised. Hang in there, okay? The ambulance is on it’s way.” In fact, she could hear a siren and wondered how the emergency vehicle would make its way through the ridiculous traffic jam.

  “Need to…lie down.”

  “I’m not sure you should,” Sunny said. Throwing up most likely meant that Della had sustained a severe concussion. Blood, Sunny could deal with. Head trauma was a different matter. Weren’t you supposed to try and keep people with head injuries awake?

  “Feel like…going to….”

  If possible, Della went even whiter. The hand she used to hold the scarf up to her head wound fell limply to her side and she slumped forward. Sunny grasped her by the shoulders, righting her. She looked up at the car salesman. “Help me!”

  He backed away, holding his hands up in front of him. “No way! She’s covered in blood.”

  Disgusted with his craven attitude, Sunny eased Della gently to her back, debating the wisdom of turning the girl on her side in case she vomited again. What other option did she have? If Della choked to death on her own barf, it wouldn’t matter if the other injuries were exacerbated.

  Before she made the shift in Della’s position, she put two fingers against the girl’s carotid artery. She still had a pulse. Even though the sweater had the contents of Della’s stomach all over it, Sunny found a small clean section she used to pad the girl’s face from the grass.

  She glanced at her watch and looked up at the car salesman again. “Would you let me borrow your phone, so I can—?”

  “Are you nuts? Your hands are covered in blood and puke!”

  Realizing he was right, but pissed beyond belief at his ridiculous behavior, Sunny said, “Oh, for God’s sake, grow a pair!”

  For the moment it took him to register what she’d said, he glared daggers down at her. When the full import of her comment sank in, his expression grew ugly. He made half a lunge in her direction, his hands fisted, and snarled, “Fuck you!”

  Sunny recoiled, as if his words had breathed fire on her. Once she felt composed again, she stood, wiping her hands on her blue jeans, even as she back-stepped. “Look, since the ambulance is nearly here, I really need to get going—”

  Both his words and demeanor came across as threatening. “You better not leave!”

  “I have to. I have to go pick up—”

  “You’ll turn an accident into a felony,” he warned.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You leave the scene and it’ll be felony hit-and-run.”

  “I didn’t hit—”

  “I saw you!”

  “Look, I don’t know what your problem is, but I did no such thing!”

  The siren grew louder. Sunny glanced down the boulevard. Vehicles in all three lanes looked like bumper cars being driven by grade-schoolers, desperately and ineffectively trying to get out of the way of the ambulance. Finally, in obvious desperation, the red-and-white emergency vehicle climbed the curb and made the last one hundred feet half on the sidewalk, half on the grassy parkway strip. It stopped just short of a light standard.

  Confident Della would immediately get the medical care she needed, Sunny ran back to her Durango, opened the passenger door and extracted a business card from her purse. She hurriedly scribbled a note on the back and ran back to put it into Della’s pocket.

  The EMTs climbed out of their vehicle, grabbed their gear, and approached. Sunny ignored the car salesman and said to them, “Her name is Della. She just passed out, but before that, she vomited. I need to go.”

  And with that, Sunny Fyfe ran back to her vehicle and took advantage of the opportunity presented by the lookie-loo drivers. She pulled quickly into a nice open space in traffic, making a note of the time.

  Her mom was not going to be happy about this delay.

  She didn’t notice the car salesman pull a small pad out of his shirt pocket and a pen from his pants pocket, making a note of his own.

  Chapter 2

  . . .

  Sunny no sooner took the turnoff for Prairie Road than a police car swooped in behind her, siren blaring.

  “Shit and double shit!” she cried, putting on her signal and easing into the first parking lot she came to, which happened to be a 7-Eleven.

  She watched in the rear view mirrors as two officers approached her vehicle, one on each side. Both had their weapons drawn. Sunny lowered the window on the driver’s side and made sure both hands went immediately back on the top of the steering wheel. Her mother was addicted to crime TV, so Sunny had watched enough true-life cop shows growing up to know that when cops came at you with their guns out, you put your hands where they could see them. Otherwise, one false move and you might end up on a slab in the morgue.

  “Open the door from the outside, then step out of the vehicle and place your hands on top of your head,” said Cop One. “Keep them there.”

  Sunny felt like she was in one of her mother’s later-in-life B-grade movies, but she did exactly as she was told.

  Once she’d exited the Durango, Cop Two came around. He kept his weapon trained on her as Cop One said, “Turn and face the vehicle. Spread your legs.”

  Okay, this was getting to be too much. “Officer, would you mind telling me what kind of traffic infraction necessitates this kind of treatment?” she asked, trying to keep her tone polite, failing miserably.

  “Shut up!” he instructed as he holstered his weapon. He grabbed one of her arms, twisting it painfully behind her. He secured one end of a handcuff on her wrist, then grabbed her other arm roughly and repeated the process. He then put his meaty hand in the middle of her back and shoved her so hard into the Durango that she banged her face against the back window. She saw stars when her nose connected, felt the warm flow of blood when it began to drip down over her lips.

  And then the demeaning invasion of privacy began. He patted her roughly, everywhere. He put his hands where no other man had touched her for over two years. “Stop!” Sunny cried out. “Please stop! What are you doing? Why are you doing this?”

  He flipped her around and put his big fist right in the middle of her chest, shoving her back against the vehicle with more force than was necessary. She hit the back of her head this time and saw a whole new galaxy of stars.

  “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right….”

  At that point, Sunny zoned out. Miranda warning. He was reading the damned Miranda warning to her off a damned laminated card.

  She zoned back in when he used his hand to shove her against the vehicle again. His large appendage was splayed wide across her breasts, copping a feel under the guise of Mirandizing her. Apparently, it wasn’t the first time he
’d asked, “Do you understand the rights I have just read to you?”

  She nodded. She understood the rights, she just didn’t understand why the hell she needed to understand them.

  He leaned in close, his breath heavy with garlic and onions and, if she wasn’t mistaken, beer. His uniform had the cloying scent of stale cigarette smoke and his hand was still pressed firmly against her breasts. “With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”

  For a moment, her brain was crystal clear. Sunny straightened, wincing from the pain in her face, the back of her head, her shoulders. “Yes.”

  “What the fuck do you have to say for yourself, little girl?”

  Against her better judgment, Sunny parroted him. “What the fuck did you stop me for, little man?”

  He pulled his hand off her chest and fashioned it into fist he immediately aimed in her direction. Sunny knew without a doubt he would have hit her if his partner hadn’t stepped forward and grabbed his arm. “Enough,” Cop Two said. “I’ll put her in the unit. You call for a tow on the vehicle.”

  Cop One, however, wasn’t done with her. When Cop Two clasped his fingers around her upper arm and steered her toward the patrol car, Cop One put out his booted foot and tripped her. She slipped out of Cop Two’s loose grasp and fell face-first against the parking lot pavement.

  Sunny couldn’t move, couldn’t get up. Not even a culmination of the worst, most horrifying dreams she’d had over the course of her relatively short life, or the recent visions foretelling of her death, had been as bad as what was happening to her at this very moment.

  “Get up!” Cop One ordered.

  She saw his boot coming, felt it connect with her ribs. “Why?” she burbled through bloody lips. And then she lost consciousness.

  . . .

  The next thing Sunny knew, she was in an ambulance. She could only make out bits of the EMT’s conversation with the patrol officer riding alongside him. “Not necessary … kick … brutality … asshole … hit-and-run.”