| |
It hides in the shadows, waits in the desert, ready to pounce on any who enter its domain.
~~~
~~~
Please enjoy the Special Sneak Preview we offer below, or....
~~~
GRAB THE FULL EBOOK TODAY!
YOU’LL FIND LINKS TO YOUR FAVORITE RETAILER HERE:
The LORESTALKER Series at Evolved Publishing
~~~
Keep reading for....
PROLOGUE
~~~
The others whispered in the darkness, but Ana kept mostly to herself, nestling her baby against her bosom and praying that the journey would soon be over. An old, battery-operated radio crooned out the twangy tones of American country music from the floorboard of the van. She’d heard the song, but she couldn’t understand the lyrics. Without a watch, she could only guess as to how long she’d been sitting like this. Hours, surely, but many more lay ahead.
With her free hand, she clutched tightly to the strap of her canteen. The water would be crucial to her survival. Each of them had one, but the pattern on hers uniquely swirled with purple and gray camouflage. She’d probably already drank too much.
Her baby squirmed in her arms. Thankfully, as if sensing the danger himself, he’d hardly made a sound the entire trip. Still, Ana heard the murmurings in the dark. The rest of the refugees referred to her baby as desafortunado, but he gave her the strength to escape. He was far from unlucky.
The van jostled as it turned off the pavement onto rougher terrain. The whispering stopped, each of them waiting, worrying about what could happen next. Ana held her breath, trying to hear anything outside the thin metal walls around her, but she could make out nothing except the metallic tings of gravel striking the undercarriage.
There were soft gasps when the van came to a sudden, screeching stop. Like Ana, they all knew that they couldn’t possibly have arrived at their destination yet.
Within moments, the double doors swung open. A beam of light burst across the darkness, blinding Ana. The light searched the faces, one by one. Ana’s heart stopped when the light fell on her.
“Tú. Ven,” said the shadowed man on the other end of the flashlight.
Ana looked to those next to her, desperate to believe that he’d spoken to them instead, but all eyes were on her. When she didn’t immediately move to exit the van, the man grabbed her upper arm. Not hard, but forcefully enough that she moved without putting up a fight.
Meekly, she protested that they surely could not have arrived already. The man didn’t seem to care. Once Ana’s feet squarely hit the gravel, he retrieved her canteen and dropped it on the ground next to her. After slamming the van doors shut, he pointed up the road to the faint lights of a house sitting alone in the desert.
“Ve allí.”
“No,” she begged. “Este no fue el acuerdo.”
“Lo sé,” he admitted, casting his eyes downward. “Lo siento.”
With his half-hearted apology, he quickly rounded the van, jumped into the driver’s seat, and pulled away. Ana slammed her free hand against the doors and screamed before it surged out of her reach. Her baby, for the first time since they had crossed the border, cried.
As the taillights disappeared into the darkness, Ana scanned the horizon, hoping to find any semblance of civilization aside from the house at the end of the gravel road. She found nothing. Only the foreboding shadows of scrub trees and cacti barely visible under the light of a crescent moon. She pulled her baby closer to her chest, trying to decide whether she should walk into the darkness or towards the house.
Something moved in the corner of her eye. Near one of the small trees sat a dog — or a coyote —on its haunches, regarding her with a calm but unsettling stare. She turned towards it, taking in its size. Its form was bigger than she expected, surely larger than any coyote. But it wasn’t its size that stopped Ana’s breath; it was its strange, human-like face, flat and white, full of depth and understanding no animal could possess.
She took a step forward and screamed at the animal, but it did not falter. Her baby howled now, surely sensing her unease. The dog cocked its oddly-shaped head at the sound of the baby, then stood up. Not on all fours, as Ana expected, but on two strong, furry legs with knees that bent backwards.
It started towards her, and she ran.
Scrambling down the road, she was certain that anything under that house’s roof would be better than this abomination from hell. A kind of garbled crack sounded behind her, like a bone breaking underwater. Glancing back, she saw the creature was on all fours now, its limbs more canine even as its face remained ... wrong. Ana shrieked and stumbled down to one knee, stopping just short of smashing her baby into the ground.
Up in an instant, she rushed forward. The house sat only a few feet away. She could see the wooden steps, could feel the warm glow of the lights on her face even as she felt the dog gaining on her, nipping at her heels. She whispered a prayer and stretched her legs as far as they would go, advancing towards safety with every hurried step.
Then— it was gone.
She didn’t see it disappear, but could tell it was no longer there. Stopping at the bottom of the steps, she turned to make sure. She jumped at the sound of wings and cradled her baby tighter as an owl screeched over her head, cresting the peak of the roof and disappearing into the desert night.
The gravel road stretched back towards the highway, eerily desolate. Ana tried to catch her breath, her heart beating against the soft skin of her baby. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Her chest filled with dread at the prospect of whoever lived on the other side of this house’s front door. She had no choice, though. She needed shelter from the terrors of the desert.
Mustering her resolve, Ana slowly ascended the steps towards an empty porch. An old, beat-up swing hung silent and frozen in the still air. The window in the door had no coverings, giving her an unfettered view into a cozy-but-rustic cabin peppered with olive and mustard furniture. The mounted head of a buck stared at her from above the fireplace.
Shushing her baby, Ana raised a free hand to knock on the door, but before her knuckles met the hard wood, the door slid open with a creak. A man stood in the doorway, his elongated frame swallowing the light behind him, and bathing Ana in shadow.
She craned her neck, regarding him with dark brown eyes. Though she couldn’t make out all of his features, she could see a thin, graying mustache and old, kind eyes. His lips curled up into a welcoming smile as he widened his arms.
“Ana Marie! Bienvenida. Estoy tan contenta de que hayas llegado.”
His voice sounded familiar, though she didn’t recognize his silhouette. Still, she felt safe, as if this man could protect her from the horrors of the world. She stepped into his arms and he embraced her like family, careful to give the baby room to breathe.
He stroked the back of her head. “It’s okay, dear. Everything will be fine.”
She barely knew English, only understanding the word okay. But the tone of his voice felt genuine. He backed away from the hug and stepped aside.
“Ven. Rápida. It’s not safe out at this hour.”
Reluctant, Ana carried her baby across the threshold of the mysterious house, and into a new life.
CHAPTER 1
~~~
Campus seemed quieter than normal, abandoned by students holing up in their dorm rooms trying to learn a semester’s worth of material in a few days. Miriam liked it better this way. Though there were few trees to speak of on the outskirts of West Texas, she still enjoyed the scholastic beauty of the concrete and brick. Usually, though, drunk co-eds and childish pranks marred any such sanctity. Dobie Tech boasted the dubious distinction of being a “party school.”
She almost hated to leave campus when it was like this, but she also looked forward to her road trip. Miriam didn’t have a car of her own, so when she needed to go anywhere by car, she had no choice but to turn to her best friend, Macy Donner. Macy’s old beat-up Sentra wasn’t much to speak of, but it got the job done.
It sat on the curb now, its hazard lights flashing to deter parking attendants while Miriam loaded up for the trip. Macy rushed past Miriam and popped open the trunk.
“What if we get a case?” Macy asked, standing aside so that Miriam could heft up her bags.
“We dealt with the kraken over two months ago,” Miriam replied. “And we haven’t gotten a single call. Cryptids don’t just pop up every day.”
Macy shrugged. “I dunno. They seem to follow you.”
Miriam replied only with a faint smirk. It certainly felt that way sometimes, with two unbelievable encounters under her belt in just a couple of years. As thrilling as the hunt was, though, Miriam found herself enjoying the downtime, focusing on school and planning out a future of her own making. She’d get back to tracking monsters eventually, of course — it’s what she was made for — but everyone deserved a breather.
“At least tell me where you’re going,” Macy pleaded. “In case I need to come get you.”
“Nope,” Miriam said as she dropped her backpack in and closed the trunk. “It’s my super-secret study place. I need the quiet.”
“Yeah, but I hate when you go there. You don’t ever answer your texts.”
“No service. That’s the beauty of it.”
Macy pouted, a move she somehow pulled off without seeming infantile. “Fine. Keep your secrets.”
Miriam had fallen hopelessly behind in school after slaying the kraken in Cape Madre. She’d spent weeks studying the carcass, and her professors didn’t seem to want to count that towards her grade even though she made a valiant effort to convince them of the significance. Success wasn’t completely out of reach yet, but Miriam desperately wanted to get her head back above water. She didn’t like flirting with failure.
“I’ll check in,” Miriam relented. “Okay? I’ll call at least once. I promise. It’s only four days.”
Macy nodded and followed as Miriam rounded the car to the driver’s side. Dropping down into her seat, she looked up at Macy. “Tell Tanner good luck on his first final.”
“I’ll tell him,” Macy said. “If he’ll let me get close to him. He says I’m a distraction.”
One of many who would likely describe Macy that way.
Miriam closed the door, started the ignition and ratcheted the window down.
Macy stooped down to look inside. “Take care of my baby. She’s the only car I’ve got.”
“She’s the only car I’ve got, too, so don’t worry.”
Macy laughed in her effortless way. “All right. Well good luck then, I guess. See you Tuesday?”
“Yep. Tuesday.”
Macy stood and backed away, silently giving permission for Miriam to finally get on the road. The Sentra protested as she hit the gas, but quickly started down the path. She glanced in the rear-view mirror to see Macy standing in the road and waving, prompting Miriam to reciprocate.
As she put Dobie Tech’s sprawling campus behind her, Miriam shifted into solo mode. She’d learned to adequately approximate social interactions much better in recent months, but she still craved complete and utter aloneness. These study trips invigorated her, helped her navigate her normal life. She envisioned herself curled up on the old bed with a textbook in one hand and, though the weather seldom called for it, a warm mug of hot chocolate in the other.
Her secret destination lay in the deserts of West Texas, surrounded by scrub bushes and trees barely scraping by to survive. Her father’s abandoned ranch, where scorpions and rattlesnakes and coyotes stalked the shadows. She relished having no communication with the outside world, though that carried its own risks.
Of course, he had no idea that she visited the ranch so often, and would certainly forbid it. Since the death of her brother, Miriam and her father had become hopelessly estranged, and Skylar Brooks had gone to extreme measures to strip Miriam of everything he’d ever given her. That surely included access to the ranch, but the spare key still hid in the same place, and Miriam used it without guilt. She felt that it was the least the bastard could do for her.
Her father hadn’t been to the ranch in almost ten years, as far as she knew. He’d bought it to investigate reports of skinwalkers, which Miriam always thought ridiculous, even at the young age of twelve when they’d mounted the original expedition. She could believe in animals that science had never stumbled upon, but shapeshifters? Biology just didn’t support that. And a skinwalker wasn’t an animal anyway, if the Native American myths were to be believed. Miriam had no intention of putting stock in fairy tales about witches.
As she merged onto the highway, she smiled as the wind whipped through the window, stinging her face and tousling her hair. In a few hours she’d have to focus on biology textbooks, but for now she enjoyed the hum of the road and the blue expanse of the sky, empty but for a few scattered clouds.
Minutes melted into hours, Miriam’s serenity growing with each mile. It almost surprised her when she came upon the turn-off as quickly as she did. By then the sun was waning, basking the entire ranch in a wondrous shade of purple and orange.
The Sentra’s balding tires objected to the bumps, and the gravel sounded like it might shoot through the floorboard, but Miriam managed to make it up the driveway. As she drew closer, however, her bliss came crashing down: in her normal parking space sat an audacious yellow jeep.
Miriam swallowed hard, suddenly flush with heat and frustration. She threw the old car in reverse and gunned it as soon as she faced back towards the highway. The tires made an awful racket, struggling for traction. In the rear-view mirror, she saw someone step onto the old wooden porch – a person that she’d never met, but whose face she’d seen on her father’s website. A person her father had hired to replace his lost children. For two years, she’d managed to avoid contact with her father, and now she’d almost driven right into a confrontation with him.
She hoped she could just get away before her father came out and recognized her. With any luck, he would write her off as a lost tourist who’d turned down the wrong path. The man on the porch didn’t move, a perplexed look on his face as he watched her drive away.
Miriam took a deep breath. It would be embarrassing to explain why she’d decided to head back to campus, but any awkwardness there far outweighed the agony of having to deal with the painful memories of her childhood and of her dead brother. She could see the highway — and freedom from this disaster — just ahead.
Before she could make it through the stone pillars flanking the exit, though, another yellow jeep turned into the driveway, blocking her escape. Miriam stood on the brake and froze as her eyes met those of the jeep’s driver. His small, alert eyes still judged her as they always had, and he still had that silly handlebar mustache.
Miriam briefly wished she could teleport. There was no way out. All the ignored calls. All of the pleas filtered through Tanner. She couldn’t avoid it any longer, even though she didn’t feel ready to work through the issues between her and the man sitting in that jeep. Miriam would happily confront any vicious predator in the wild, but she had a knack for avoiding emotional pain, and her plans had called for her to ignore this forever.
Nevertheless, Miriam had inadvertently wandered into the Brooks family reunion from hell.
—-End of Special Sneak Preview—-
GRAB THE FULL EBOOK TODAY!
YOU’LL FIND LINKS TO YOUR FAVORITE RETAILER HERE:
The LORESTALKER Series at Evolved Publishing
~~~
Please keep reading for....
