Ruin (A Monster’s Prey #4)

1. Chapter 1

Something followed me home.

I walked up the stone walkway under the new moon. The lights were off, not even the porch light illuminated the yard, as if the house was whispering that evil was waiting for me.

Ancient hunger radiated from inside and sent chills down my spine, stopping me in my tracks.

Wrong day. Wrong fucking house.

My truck was the only one in the driveway, and I hated the bitter tang that made it hard to swallow. Instead, I opened the door, grabbing a gun loaded with iron bullets.

On the outside, the house was pretty, perfect, and enshrouded in darkness.

That was fitting.

I ignored the mountain of newspapers resting on my doorstep as I opened the front door. Tangible proof of how long he’d been gone.

My key struggled to flip the lock, as if it had been years since the door opened, rather than a few weeks. It took a couple of cuss words and my body weight to get the door to swing inwards. My gun was at the ready before the stench of stagnant air hit me.

A soft cackle made my hair stand on end, but I couldn’t see anything in the thick shadows swallowing my living room whole.

I risked taking a hand off the gun to flip the switch. The sound echoed before the lights hummed on lazily. That was when the truth hit me.

The darkness hadn’t been hiding my home. It had simply highlighted the emptiness.

The hunger I’d sensed from outside flared, as if it knew its next meal had come into the room, and my shadow moved as if it was being sucked into the middle of the space.

My pulse spiked as I traced the movement to one of the only things in the room.

A box carved from elderwood, resting in the middle of the floor, on a white rug that my husband hadn’t taken with him.

The dark brown stain beside it was sprinkled with a shattered tea cup, where I’d spilt the remnants of the hemlock tea I’d drunk to escape the truth. My dead cell phone lay a foot away.

That was all that was left in my living room.

My involuntary vacation made me sloppy. I’d forgotten that I hadn’t finished the job before trying to take my life. The lights of the chandelier above flickered in warning.

You forgot me, I could almost hear it thinking.

Sloppy indeed.

At least this monster was already caged.

I put the gun into my waistband, bent to grab the newspapers on the ground, on the front step, and stepped deeper into my house.

He’d left our wedding pictures on the wall. No need to carry the lie of a happy marriage anymore.

Each of my footsteps inside disturbed the eerie stillness of the house.

It didn’t even feel like a home anymore. Maybe it never was.

The photo that saved my life hung on the wall, swinging slightly as if to bring attention to itself, instead of the nothingness around me. This was why you stayed.

From behind the glass, my two cousins, Esme and Willow smiled.

I took deep breaths the way my therapist taught me while I was locked up. The same kind I caught my cousin practicing all the time. I understood her better now.

My eyes went over the empty room again, and my stomach twisted until I was nauseous. How was I supposed to live here?

My heart pounded in my chest, making my breathing ragged in a way that had nothing to do with the trapped monster on the floor.

This suffocating feeling was easier to deal with while wearing a pair of grippy socks and a roommate that screamed about the devil.

Somewhere I hadn’t been tricked into the illusion of forever.

I leaned against the wall, glancing down at the newspapers in my hands to find something to ground myself to. Something that wasn’t the ruin of my life.

The top one was from the morning with a big, ugly headline: Seventeen suicides for this year’s graduating class. The tiny town is in shock.

Statistically improbable.

The softest thump from the box grabbed my attention again. It needed to be burned with salt.

These were things I knew how to handle. Not this weight sitting on my chest.

The concept of staying here was enough to make me nauseous. At least monsters didn’t pretend to love me.

Tears pricked my eyes and I grit my teeth.

My eyes flickered to my wedding photos again.

Fuck it.

I dropped all the other newspapers over the spilled tea stain, went to the kitchen, and poured an entire gas can around the wooden box. The wraith I’d trapped inside screamed as if it knew what was coming.

“Shut up,” I said and went to pack the little bit of personal belongings I had. A duffle bag of clothes and a handful of sentimental trinkets that illustrated how maybe this was never my safe space.

I found the spare gasoline in the garage and walked through my house, splashing it on the walls and over the ground. I probably should have stopped to think things through.

Thinking was hard though.

Doing was easier.

I made a trail all the way out the front door until the fumes could be smelled from a mile away.

I tossed the duffle bag, still on my shoulder, and the picture of my cousins in the back seat, then lit a match.

The familiar scent of sulfur hit my nose, and it felt more like home than those four walls ever did.

Don’t do it.

Why not? I didn’t have an answer for that.

He’s tossed everything aside. Why couldn’t I?

I threw the match through the open door.

The flames caught with a whoosh as I climbed into my truck. Warmth radiated through the old, worn leather of the steering wheel. The engine started up easily, like an old friend welcoming me home.

This was where I belonged.

The wraith in the box screamed from its prison, scraping against every nerve I had and sending goosebumps down my spine.

Now that job was finally done.

Time to move on to the next one.

I shifted into reverse as the other lights in the neighborhood turned on, making sure to give the burning house a stiff middle finger as I passed it.

Good riddance.