Prey

By Britt Collins

Most people learn after the first mistake, two at the most. It took Lucas Ford three and now it might cost him his life.

Mistake number 1:

At eighteen years old he saw the unthinkable, a vampire. She told him her name is Victoria. He followed her through the woods and enviously watched as she drank from another. He fell in love.

Mistake number 2:

He told other people what he saw. From that moment on Lucas was labeled as crazy. After years of therapy and joining the army he was cured and beautiful, exotic Victoria—and his love for her—it all became a fading dream.

Mistake number 3:

He let twenty years pass, thinking she was a figment of his imagination. Now she’s here and very real and needs his help.

Vampires are under attack by a new kind of predator. They are no longer at the top of the food chain. Lucas is determined to find this twisted executioner before Victoria becomes the latest victim.

He’s more than willing to lose his life for her.

Prey is a 20,000-word novella.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deep Desires Press
• Release date: Mar 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370608362

Britt Collins

Britt Collins is an English journalist who writes for the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the Independent, Harper’s Bazaar, Condé Nast Traveller, and Billionaire.com. She has volunteered at animal sanctuaries around the world, from tending big cats and baboons in Namibia to wild horses in Nevada—a labor of love that has inspired features for the Guardian and the Sunday Times. While writing Sunday People, she has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for many international charities through her investigative animal-cruelty stories; as an activist, she has helped shut down controversial breeders of laboratory animals. She lives with her cats in London.

Book preview

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Prey

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

About Britt Collins

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Prey

Britt Collins

Copyright © 2018 by Britt Collins

Cover design copyright © 2018 by Story Perfect Dreamscape

All characters are age 18 and over.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Chapter One

The dead always look beautiful

Lucas Ford casts a dark shadow as he stands over the puddle of flesh on the stairwell. It oozes down over the top of the steps, then dissipates into the dripping blood and fatty tissue. At the top of the stairs, on the landing, is the decapitated head of a white female.

The head is the only solid piece of her left. Her features appear to have been soft with tempting, milky-white flesh, which she covered with too much makeup. Her face reminds him of a Geisha, pale, white, painted, and lacking emotion. Even her hair is done badly; she’s a bottle-blonde that needs a touch up. Not that it matters now; it’s splotchy with her blood. Still, even though he’s not sure of her age, her hair is the kind of dye job that a teenage girl would attempt without reading the directions completely.

Her soft red lips are in an eternal unanswered cry for help. Despite all of this, it’s her dead eyes that kept him gazing at her, mesmerizing him. They’re sea green, lifeless, and open to the world as if with her last gesture she wanted to embed the image of her demise in them.

He bends down and looks at the fleshy tissue on the concrete stairs, then back into her eyes. Come on, beautiful, tell me what happened to you. He’s never seen anything like this. Which is saying something, considering the strange occurrences in his life.

Her body, skin, bones, muscles are all in a liquid form, so why not her head? Was decapitation first, then acid poured onto her body? Had the killer also gotten lost in her eyes and didn’t want to destroy the head?

Lucas reaches out and touches the fleshy tissue on the stairs with the tip of his right index finger just as a familiar voice calls his name.

Ford, what the hell are you doing here?

Damn, he mumbles to himself. He needs more time. He’d been so enthralled with her that he tuned out everything around him. The area surrounding the crime scene is now filling up with cops and onlookers. He notices the medical examiner unloading his gear from the van.

Hesitantly, Lucas stands to his full six-foot-two, towering over the shorter, stockier, out of shape detective. How are you doing, Rogan? he says as he looks at the man who used to be one of his good friends.

I’m good. You know, if I was anyone else I’d have you arrested for contaminating evidence, obstruction of justice and for just being a crazy motherfucker, Rogan says as he flicks his cigarette bud onto the stairwell and then laughs.

Lucas feels a twitch in his left eye. He counts to ten in his head before he speaks. I’m not crazy — anymore. I have a healthy mind and body. I no longer see things that aren’t real.

From what you used to tell me and from what your mother has told me too, it’s not that easy for you.

There’s a touch of true concern in Rogan’s voice. Not the voice of sarcasm Lucas had expected.

Yeah, I know. This time everything is different for me. I have a new therapist, new medications too. I’m good. Lucas turns to walk away, only to have Rogan grab him by the arm.

"Tell me what you see here. You’ve always had an unnatural way of looking at things. You do observe things at a crime scene that the rest of us can’t. Whether you’re on medication or not, you were a damn good detective … damn good, for a while. Then things got to you."

Rogan looks him in the eyes. For a moment, Lucas sees a brief glimpse of why the two of them had once been best friends. Then Rogan betrayed him. He went to their superior and informed them about Lucas’s unstable behavior.

After a year and a half of being investigated, he was found to be unsuitable for his job. The ten years he spent on the police force vanished in a blink of an eye.

That was three years ago. He lost his career, all his benefits. The only positive thing to come out of it was that his unhappy marriage finally ended — even though she got everything in the divorce.

His major problem now is he still can’t shake the lingering need to protect and serve. He glares at Rogan. Going against all the anger and resentment that he feels inside of him, he decides to tell his former partner what he thinks about the crime scene. "The dead girl, from looking at her head, looks to be around nineteen, which means she’s probably sixteen. She hasn’t truly matured yet. She looks like a prostitute, which means she’s probably a runaway. Good teeth, decent skin, I don’t think she was a user. Her hair ... it’s breaking off, lack of nutrition along with self-dye jobs. She didn’t eat correctly; that could just be her age or else it could mean she lived out on the streets where meals were rare.

"I think she was decapitated first, then her body dissolved by a chemical. No toxic smells, no residue, only the body was liquefied. Whatever was used on her, it didn’t affect the area around her, not even the