Page 6 of Echo (A Monster’s Prey #2)

Her logic was that all religion and superstition was founded in some truth. People didn’t wake up one day and start tossing salt over their shoulder for no reason. We’ve just forgotten the reason. And if you don’t fully understand a rule, you had no business trying to break it.

Since I didn’t know the rules, it was best I touch nothing.

Someone was desperately trying to protect themselves from something. They were scared enough to put three locks on the door after putting protection around it. This room was meant to stay locked, and that was exactly how it would remain.

I turned to leave, and giant burlap sacks lining the left wall caught my attention. Salt. And even a few bags of those black rocks that Pearl made the paths around the farm with.

On the wall above it was a family tree, but it was too small to be accurate. Only to realize, there were no men on the tree and random names were circled.

My name was on the bottom, and I was one of the ones circled. The line above me skipped my mother, but had Ruby, Pearl, and Jade. Pearl’s name was circled with a year listed under, but the thru date wasn’t completed.

But it wasn’t her birthdate. There was a picture upstairs that predated it by thirteen years.

Grandma’s name was circled and crossed out. The name circled above them was my great-grandmother, and I found the end date for her and Pearl’s start date was only three days off. Same with the generation before it.

There was no date under my name.

Because this is about who owned the house. There was no date, because Pearl named me the next owner before she died.

I just needed a house. I had no desire to protect the world from whatever my family was trying to keep trapped. They could have warned a bitch.

On the wall with the door each house owner and some others were named with a list of traits and attributes, such as Pearl’s had a list of tall, blue eyes, shy. Someone noted a fifty-six percent chance for Pearl, whatever that meant.

What I found odd, was that my grandmother was given a seventy-six percent chance and she was the eldest, but hadn’t been given the house.

Seemed like an odd system.

I was the only one not marked as rejected on the wall. That wasn’t foreboding at all.

There was a list of good traits and bad traits.

“What the hell, Pearl?” No. This wasn’t Pearl. This was countless different handwritings and paint. Some places were faded to where I could barely read it in the darkness. This was generational, but no one had given me this part of the Rinah handbook.

I went over my own list beside my name.

Rinah blue eyes.

Brown hair.

Light pale skin.

Short.

Curvy.

Big mouth.

Big mouth and curvy was circled over and over again. I was assigned a distasteful ten percent chance. Kiss my curvy ass, Pearl.

If having a big ass got me a house to escape to, I couldn’t complain too much. But it was a bitch move to bypass her own son and closer female family members because I talked back and loved tacos.

“This family is so fucking weird.” I locked that shit back up how I found it. That was exactly why I didn’t want to go into a room in a house that wasn’t mine.

Congrats, that’s your creepy room now.

I could board that room up and pretend it didn’t exist. No problem.

“Ranger, we gotta get the family into therapy. The whole lot of them.”

He answered with a deep threatening growl that had me half running around the corner to find him. He was poised at the front door this time, ready to attack at a moment’s notice.

“What is it now?” As if he could answer.

God awful screeching dragged down the door, making my blood run cold. It was like nails on a chalkboard, or metal in a grinder. I was suddenly thankful that whatever this animal was, it was at the front door and not the back.

What was I supposed to do? Stay inside and hope that the thing went away.

I’d bet my last quarter there was a gun in here. There were too many animals running around for there not to be, but I hadn’t come across it yet.

The scratching grew louder and faster, as if the animal grew impatient waiting for its meal. Could whatever it was bust down the door?

No. The door was solid. It would hold through an assault from a bear. That was why I figured it was so thick and heavy.

Sweat gathered uncomfortably in all my creases despite that tidbit of logic. But I soothed myself in knowing that a bear or mountain lion wasn’t the worst animal to ever hunt me. I tip-toed across the hardwood as quietly as possible until I was right in front of the door.

It was strange that the front door didn’t have a glass pane to look out on the porch with, but occurrences like this were probably why. I touched my fingertips to the door, and the scratching halted.

I pressed my ear against it, listening for any sounds that would give away what was on the other side; sniffing. It was inhaling spurts of rapid breaths, like a hound dog looking for a raccoon. But the sound was coming from up too high and loudly to be a dog.

Whatever it was, was the size of a full grown man. My best guess was that it was that bear from earlier, and it had Ranger’s scent.

A soft growl rumbled on the other side of the door. A certain primal desire reverberated deep in its chest, and I knew that was a bad sign. It wanted to eat my dog.

Or me.

A groan of need made my breath catch in my chest. That wasn’t an animal.

A loud bang slammed against the door and knocked me backwards to my ass. The hinges screamed and hollered as the thing on the other side body checked it over and over again. Pictures fell as the entire front wall shook from the force.

I crawled backwards to put some space between me and the door, that I was no longer confident could hold. Ranger stood over me in a protective stance, growling and barking at the door.

Each time the body banged against the door hard, as whoever it was grew more frustrated that they couldn’t get to me. I bit my bottom lip until the metallic tang of blood filled my mouth.

It’s him. It’s Mark. I’ve done it this time.

My chest tightened until every single inhale was a struggle. I’d already known running would make him more violent. What was I thinking?

No. Don’t stay on the ground like a victim. Get up and find something to fight with, Maddie. It’s not over yet.

I scrambled to my feet and ran to the kitchen, fumbling with shaky fingers to get the big chef knife out of the block and grabbed the clean cast-iron skillet I’d left on the stove. Big bong and stabby stab was a solid plan of action.

It’d gotten me out of scrapes before.

Probably a bear would rip my throat out before I could get close enough to even try to do some damage, but that wasn’t any damn bear.

“Get off my fucking porch, before I chop your ass up and serve you as a bacon substitute.” I stomped back into the living room with more gumption than before. It was pure bluff. I tightened my fingers on the handles of my weapons to force them to stop shaking.

Mental breakdowns are for later.

The banging stopped, leaving the room uncomfortably quiet after all that noise. I held my position and waited on bated breath. I knew they were still there. Ranger continued to barked in alarm.

Psycho Ex meet Crazy Skillet Lady.

My heart pounded against my chest hard enough that I thought it would burst out.

I couldn’t hear my ragged breathing over Ranger’s loud barks.

That also meant I couldn’t hear anything moving on the porch.

I could only rely on Ranger’s signals. But after five minutes, there was still no banging, while Ranger was still going strong.

The phone was on the kitchen counter. My dad was too far away to do anything about this. If I called him, all he could do was worry. I could call the cops, but how stupid would I feel if it was indeed an animal? Panicking on day one. It wasn’t like cops had ever helped save me, anyway.

Whenever I called them on Mark, the day he sent me to the hospital, they blamed my dog for what happened.

That things got a little heated, and I overreacted.

‘A tiny girl like me gets scared easily when a big man gets angry.’ Completely ignorant of the fact that my father was a six-foot behemoth with a nasty nightlife enforcing rules for a motorcycle club and I had an ex-husband that was even worse.

Fuck it. I was better off saving myself.

I went over to the front window and took a deep, steadying breath. I pulled the curtains back, mentally preparing myself for anything I might see on the other side.

What I wasn’t prepared for was for the illuminating glow shining on an empty porch. I pressed my face against the glass like an idiot, to see further to the side. In case a genius ducked out of view, so I’d step out in some sense of false security.

But I couldn’t see anything.

I removed my face from the glass, then secured the curtains back over the window.

“Madison.” I heard my cousin Mary Ellen’s voice whisper on the other side. No fucking way. She’d made it clear she was headed back to the city.

I grabbed my phone and was about to dial her when Ranger suddenly went silent. He stared at the door, still ready, but slowly eased the tension out of his body.

Run.

Run where? My only other option was to go to places I’d already run away from. Where my dad would ask me a billion and one questions, then get his boys to ride to Miami when I finally crumbled and told him the truth. I didn’t want him catching a murder charge because of me.

He was always at risk of getting one on his own, anyway.

Maybe that was better than this. But this was an entire fucking house. This was not the kind of economy to turn your nose up at a house and a hundred acres.

I needed to reevaluate.