The Undead Heart (#1 in the Blood Thirst Series) Read online

“I really rather you just take me home. I’m not feeling very well.”

  It wasn’t a lie. The emotions that she was feeling from him were making her nauseous.

  “Later”, he had said, not taking his eyes off the road as he turned onto a two lane road that led into the country.

  “Take me home.”

  “Not yet.”

  She could feel the fear starting to crawl in her stomach. He had driven for ten minutes before pulling into the dark parking lot of an old abandoned building. She had known something was horribly wrong and reached for the door handle to get out of the car.

  “Don’t,” he had said grabbing her arm.

  “Please, just let me out,” she begged.

  “Come on. You knew we were going to do this,” he said pulling her towards him.

  “No. I don’t want to do this. Let me go!” she’d yelled and slapped him. She felt rage and hatred fill him, and he punched her in the face.

  “What did you think I took you out for, you stupid bitch?!” he snarled and punched her in the face again.

  “No, please! Don’t!” she had cried, trying to push him away from her.

  “Stop fighting.”

  When she kept pushing him, he had punched her three times in the ribs. She couldn’t breathe well enough to fight him much after that. He had reached over her and pulled the lever that laid the seat back. When he climbed on top of her, she had tried weakly to push him away again.

  “I said stop it!” he had snapped at her and brought his fist down on her collar bone.

  It had felt like she had been hit by a hammer, and she stopped moving. He had ripped her shirt open and undid the clasp on the front of her bra. She had lain as still as she could as he groped her breast.

  “Nice, let’s see the rest,” he had said pulling her skirt up.

  He tore her panties from her body and stuck his fingers inside her. She could feel a sick excitement running through him. He had slid his pants down and was rubbing himself on her leg as his fingers dug deeper insider.

  “Ready?” he had grunted.

  “No, please,” she’d begged him again with what little breath she could pull into her lungs.

  He had ignored her pleas and, as he thrust roughly into her body, she had felt her flesh rip. He thrust harder and harder, and an agonizing pain stabbed through her as something inside her cracked. She wanted to scream but couldn’t draw enough breath. She had lain under him gagging on the blood that was running down her throat. He had reached up and wrapped his hand around her throat.

  “Tell me how much you like it,” he had groaned.

  She couldn’t talk through the pain and was terrified that he was going to kill her. She could hear him panting and feel his hot breath on her face. Some unknown time later, she felt him shudder. He rolled back over into the driver’s seat and pulled up his pants.

  “That was as good as I thought it would be,” he had said.

  All she could do was lay there and cry, completely helpless and ashamed.

  “If you tell anyone what happened tonight, I’ll kill you. I don’t want anyone to know that I fucked a freak like you, now get the hell out of my car.”

  When she hadn’t moved, he had reached across her and opened the door.

  “Remember what I said, bitch,” he had said and pushed her out of the car. He had thrown her panties out after her and drove away.

  She didn’t know how long she had lain there in the dark before she was able to make herself get up. She had had to stumble three miles to get to the closest pay phone to call Bev’s dorm room.

  When Bev had answered, she had barely been able to tell her where she was. Fifteen minutes later, Bev had slid her car to a stop in the parking lot of the gas station that Beck had called her from.

  “Oh my, God! What happened to you, Beck?!” Bev had screamed when she had seen her.

  “Alex. He, he…” she had tried to say but couldn’t finish. She could feel blood running down her face and her thighs, and she couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Let’s get you to the hospital. You can tell me what happened on the way.”

  On the way to the hospital, she had gasped out in little breaths what Alex had done.

  “SON OF A BITCH!” Bev yelled, speeding into the emergency room parking lot. “We’ll call the police when we get inside.”

  “No! I don’t want to call the police,” she’d panted in pain.

  “My ass we’re not calling the police. Look at what he did to you!” Bev yelled, pointing at Beck’s reflection in a hospital window. She’d seen that she was covered in blood, bruises, and dirt. “You have a choice. We can call the police on him for what he has done to you, or you can let his family call the police on me when I kill him!” Bev had said, walking her through the emergency room doors. “We need help over here!” Bev screamed and a nurse had come running to them.

  “What happened?” the nurse asked.

  Bev had looked at her, and Beck nodded her head.

  “Call the police,” Bev had said. “We need to report a rape.”

  The doctors had taken swabs of the fluids in her and x-rayed her whole body. She’d had a broken nose, a fractured cheek bone, two cracked ribs, a broken collar bone, several tears in her vaginal wall, a bruised cervix, and a fractured pelvic bone. They had given her I.V. pain killers, and she’d been talking to Det. Eaton when her parents came in.

  “What is going on,” her mother snapped when they came in the room.

  “Alex Whitman raped Beck,” Bev said, and explained what had happened.

  “Thank you for coming Detective, but we won’t be pressing any charges,” her father said.

  Det. Eaton had looked up from the notebook he had been writing in. “Excuse me?”

  “There has been a misunderstanding,” her mother said.

  “A misunderstanding?” Beck asked.

  “If you didn’t want to have sex with him, then you shouldn’t have gone out with him,” her father said. “You’re not going to put that poor boy in jail because you changed your mind later.”

  Det. Eaton had looked at her parents like they were bugs.

  “Changed her mind? What is wrong with you? That ‘poor boy’ broke six of her bones!” Bev yelled.

  “It’s her own fault, and we won’t have her humiliating us by taking this to court,” her mother said.

  “It is not up you, Ma’am. Your daughter is the one who was clearly attacked. It is up to her whether or not she wants to file charges,” Det. Eaton had said coldly, and then turned back to Beck. “Do you want to press charges?”

  “I do,” she’d said, and he had nodded at her.

  “You’re telling me that, because she lies about being raped, that we have to go to court?” her mother asked.

  It was more than Bev could take, and she reached out and slapped the hell out of their mother.

  “I want her arrested,” her mother demanded.

  “For what?” Det. Eaton asked calmly.

  “For assault!” her mother yelled.

  “I didn’t see an assault,” Det. Eaton said.

  Her mother’s mouth had fallen open in shock.

  “What I do see,” Det. Eaton continued, “is you harassing a victim of a violent crime. If you don’t leave now, then I’m going to have to arrest you for interfering with an investigation. If I hear that you in any way badger this young woman after she leaves this hospital, then I will personally arrest you for obstruction of justice and tampering with a witness. Do you understand me?”

  “But she is our daughter,” her father said.

  “Not tonight. Now get the hell out of here,” Det. Eaton said, and her parents had stormed out of the room.

  “Thank you,” Bev said.

  “My pleasure. I’m going to go file the charges and get a warrant for Whitman’s arrest. I’ll have him picked up within the hour. You’re doing the right thing here, and don’t let those people tell you any differently. Now try to get some rest.”

  ***r />
  “One year of probation?! You have got to be shitting me?!” Bev had screamed into the phone two months later. “Yes, I understand. I understand that I should have killed him myself instead of relying on you for any kind of justice!” Bev screamed and slammed the phone down.

  “Bad news?” she had asked. She had just walked in the house and only caught the end of the conversation. They had been waiting for the judge to hand down a decision on the case, and it hadn’t sounded as if things had gone well.

  “We should have went with a jury trial.”

  They had foregone a jury trial and opted instead to have the case heard by a judge in a closed court. She had still had to take the stand and recount the events of the night of the rape just not in front of a whole courtroom full of strangers.

  Only the people that had been involved in the case had been allowed in the courtroom. The D.A. had allowed Bev to stay in the courtroom as morale support for Beck.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “The D.A. accepted a plea agreement from the defense. Alex has pleaded guilty to Assault in the First Degree in return for the rape charge being dropped. He was given a two year suspended sentence and one year of probation. They dropped the restraining order. He can go back to school now, Beck.”

  She sank slowly into a kitchen chair. “He won’t spend any time in jail at all?”

  “None,” Bev growled. “Not one Goddamned day.”

  “So, we did it all for nothing. Calling the police, going to court, it was all for nothing?”

  “I could tell you a bunch of bullshit about how you standing up for yourself will help some unknown girl in some unknown future stand up for herself, too. But that’s all it would be; bullshit. Yes, we did it for nothing. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Bev had said, and snagged her keys off of the wall before heading for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Alex should be leaving the courthouse in a minute. I’m going to run over him.”

  “Bev, no, don’t do it!” she yelled.

  “Why not? He deserves to be punished, and the court is obviously incapable of doing it. He’s getting away with it, damn it!”

  “I know he is, but you being in prison isn’t going to help me.”

  “I’d be out in no time. He got a year of probation for beating, raping, and throwing you out of a car. That means I should get about three years for murder. I’d be out on parole in fifteen months.”

  She had to smile at how Bev’s pre-law brain had worked.

  “We don’t have that kind of luck. If you killed Alex, they would probably give you a lethal injection, electrocute you, and then hang you just to make sure you’re dead. Please, just let it go, Bev. For me?”

  “Fine,” Bev had said after a few seconds and tossed her keys onto the table. “What are we going to do about your school? He could be back at school as early as tomorrow. We could get you transferred to another school.”

  “No, I’m not going to do that just because he’s there. I didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not going to let him chase me away. I don’t have any classes with him anyway, so I won’t have to see him that much. I’ll just have to deal with it.”

  “Okay, but I’m taking you to school every morning and picking you up every afternoon. If I see him say so much as a single word to you, I swear before God, I’m running him down.”

  But she had had nothing to worry about. Alex Whitman never spoke to her again. She’d walked past him a few times in the halls, and when she had been unlucky enough to catch his eye, he would flash an evil smile at her, but no more than that. When that happened, she had just looked in the other direction and kept walking.

  ***

  She hadn’t realized that she had been staring at Alex until he looked over at her and gave her that evil smirk. She knew what that smirk meant. It was his way of telling her that he had gotten away with it.

  God, she fucking hated him! She snapped her head back around to the front and found herself looking directly at ‘The Man’ again, and he looked…angry? He looked slowly from her to Alex and back to her again. She had no idea what he looked so mad about, but she knew it was somehow about her.

  She tore her gaze from his and found Bev’s face in the crowd. Bev was glaring at Alex with murder in her eyes. Bev had never gotten over what Alex had done, and how the law had failed them. Bev had wanted to drop out of law school after Alex’s plea agreement, but Beck wouldn’t let her do it. She knew that Bev had always wanted to be a lawyer, and Beck hadn’t wanted what had happened to take that away from her. Alex had taken enough away from them.

  Bev had stayed at Austin Peay in pre-law, but had lost all of the zeal she had once had for it. Beck glanced back at ‘The Man’ and saw that he too, was glaring at Alex with hatred in his eyes. All she wanted to do was get out of there. When her name was called, she took her diploma, and threw her cap with the rest of her graduating class. When looked back out into the crowd. ‘The Man’ was gone.

  Chapter Two

  The wait to go to college was the longest four months of her life. She was just weeks away from getting out of her parents house forever, and time seemed to be dragging by. Both she and Bev were upset that they would be so far apart from each other. She would be in North Carolina at Duke while Bev remained in Clarksville at Austin Peay. They consoled each other with the fact that they would talk to each other every day on the phone. That, and North Carolina was only a few hours’ drive, so that they could visit each other whenever they wanted made it bearable.

  “I’ll come and stay with you at your new apartment every holiday and summer break,” she promised Bev.

  “And I’ll come and take you to Florida for your first Spring Break,” Bev said.

  They’d spent most of the time they had left together buying the things she was going to need for college. They’d bought books, pencils, pens, paper, folders, and binders. She’d also bought a lot of decorations for her dorm room, and Bev insisted on buying her new clothes.

  “I don’t need new clothes. The ones I have are fine.”

  “The ones you have are old. You haven’t bought any new clothes for a year.”

  “Not buying new clothes for a year is not a criminal offense, Bev,” she said with a smile.

  “It should be! People need to change their style occasionally, even if they buy their clothes at thrift stores. People should have something different every now and then. It makes you feel better.”

  “I don’t need to feel better. I feel fine now. My clothes are in good condition, and they still fit. I don’t need new ones.”

  “Thank God it’s not up to you, and you do need new clothes, because you don’t have any. I knew you were going to give me shit about this so I burned all of your old clothes after you went to bed last night.”

  “You didn’t!” she yelled.

  “Oh, yes I did. Backyard, starter fluid, match, poof, gone!” Bev said gleefully.

  She threw the back door open and saw a black lump that used to be her clothes, melted in the middle of the yard.

  “How could you?” she gasped.

  “It wasn’t that hard.” Bev said dryly. “I’ve known how to strike a match for quite some time.”

  “That was an evil thing to do.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?” Bev said, not sounding one bit ashamed of herself. “So now you don’t have a choice. Let’s go get your new wardrobe.”

  Bev picked out nearly everything that they bought. Most of it wasn’t what Beck would have picked out for herself, but she had found that once Bev got into her shopping groove, it was easier to just let her have her way.

  “You needed new clothes anyway. How were you going to find a nice, eligible, college guy wearing those old rags you had?”

  “We’ve been over this, Bev. There is not going to be ‘a nice college guy’ for me. I’m just not interested in dating.”

  They had had this conversation many times before, and she wished that Bev would just let it go,
but knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Come on, Beck, I know what happened to you was horrible, but you can’t spend your life alone because of it. If you don’t let it go, you’re going to turn into a hermit.”

  “I’m not going to turn into a hermit, and I really don’t mind being alone.”

  “That’s not the point. You can’t let Alex fucking Whitman take anymore of your life away from you than he already has.”

  “He’s not. Look, I don’t think about what happened much anymore, but it did happen, and I can’t just act like it didn’t. It changed me, and there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “I know you’ll get passed this, you are the strongest person I’ve ever known,” Bev said quietly.

  “I am a strong person. Strong enough that I don’t need a man in my life to make me happy. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.”

  “I know you will. And I know that you’ll find the right man someday.”

  “Maybe,” she said, but she only said it to make Bev happy.

  She knew there was no ‘right man’ for her, and she was fine with that. Life had changed, and she had adjusted. She didn’t want a man. She had no more childish dreams of a Knight in Shining Armor sweeping her off her feet. There were things to fill her life with other than a man. She was comfortable with that; she just wished that Bev could be, too.

  ***

  It was the night before she was supposed to leave, and her nerves were shot. Her parents had waited for Bev to leave and started in on her about college.

  “Can’t you study art or business? Can’t you at least try to act normal?” her mother, Lisa, asked.

  “No, I can’t. I’m not normal. You have told me my whole life how abnormal I am. I’ve accepted it, you should too.”

  “Do you have to humiliate us with everything you do?” her father snapped.

  “Yeah, I do. Apparently, it’s my job. Everything about me embarrasses you.”

  “I don’t see how it’s any of your business where I go to college or what I study. It’s not as if you’re paying for it.”