to keep himself restrained from approaching her, but he was afraid that if he went to her, she would stop talking or push him away.
“What happened?” he prodded gently.
“Instead of flowers, jewelry, and candy, he started leaving me birds, snakes, and finally, cats.” Nausea churned in Callie’s stomach as she recalled her daily offering of dead animals. “The letters became nastier, and he started promising to make me regret leaving him.”
Callie sniffled as she recalled the horrific spectacle of those broken animals lying on her doorstep. She cried over every one of them as she buried them in her backyard. He’d known how to upset her the most by bringing her those offerings.
“After the first week of flowers and candies, I went out and bought one of those doorbell camera things, and I had him on video for the first couple of visits. But then, he broke it. I bought another camera and put it up high so he couldn’t get to it, but he started wearing hoodies and keeping his face averted from it. After the second day of dead animals, I went to the police.”
“And what did they do?”
“They talked to him and told him to cut it out, but there wasn’t much they could do. I had him on video for the first couple of times, but though we all knew it was him, there was no proof once he started disguising himself.”
Unable to support herself anymore, Callie slid down the wall and drew her knees up to her chest. She looked up at Lucien, who remained five feet away from her. His eyes were a vivid red, and his fangs glinted, but she wasn’t scared of him anymore.
“Then, one day, he decided playing with dead animals wasn’t enough. He broke into my house while I was at work, and when I came home, he was waiting for me in my bedroom.”
Callie shuddered as she recalled walking in to find him sitting on her bed, in the middle of her things. He’d pulled out all her underwear and laid it out on the mattress. He was holding a pair when she entered.
She hadn’t known he was there or how he got in, and that was the creepiest thing of all. The police eventually discovered he’d pried open a basement window, out of view of her cameras, and climbed inside.
As she told him this, she saw the fury building inside him, but now that she’d started talking, she couldn’t stop. Every detail, every horrible second of it, poured from her like water flowing over Niagara Falls.
“I turned and ran, but before I made it to the front door, he was on me, beating me. As he battered me, he screamed that I’d betrayed him and he would make me pay. It was all so fast that I could barely react. I remember throwing my hands up to protect my face, but when he hit me in my stomach, they instinctively fell, and that was when he broke my nose.
“It was like a wild animal was on me, kicking me, hitting me, choking me.” Her hand touched her throat as she recalled his fingers squeezing it. “I was sure he was going to kill me, and I still don’t know what made him stop. I don’t know if he got cold feet in the end or heard something, but I woke later with a pounding headache, and I was so sore I could barely drag myself across the floor to where my cell phone had fallen out of my pocket.
“When I lifted it, I saw the broken screen, but I still managed to call nine-one-one. I tried speaking to the operator, but I’d lost my voice. I could only hit buttons in response to her questions, but it must have been enough because the police arrived at my house five minutes later.”
Lucien crouched down across from her and rested his fingers on the ground as he studied her. If he ever met this Carter, he’d beat him bloody before allowing him to recover and doing it all over again until the bastard finally died.
“What happened after that?” he asked.
“They took me to the hospital, and when I was able to, I wrote down his name. That took some time to do as I had a concussion and couldn’t really hold on to one thought at a time, but finally, I could tell them who did it, and they arrested him. I pressed charges. He was put in jail, but