Free Prey Drive by Wrath James White Page A

average.
    Joe paused in the doorway of the visitor’s room and staggered backward a few steps. “No. It can’t be.”
    “What’s wrong, Joseph? You see a ghost?”
    Behind the Spanish girl was a woman in her forties with the same long curly hair, the same dimpled cheeks and bow-shaped lips, the same voluptuous bosom, the same fiery, explosive aura. It was evidently the girl’s mother and she looked familiar. Joe remembered seeing her at the trial. She was Alicia’s mother. He shuffled forward as if in a daze, pulled out the metal folding chair, and sat down. With trembling hands, he picked up the phone and the woman on the other end did the same.
    “A-Alicia?”
    The woman shook her head slowly. Her eyes filled with tears and her bottom lip trembled. “No, you piece of shit. I’m her sister. Lana.”
    Joe turned to look at the older woman. She snatched the phone from Lana’s hand and hissed between clenched teeth. “Alicia was my daughter. You murdered her! I just want to know why. Why! At the trial, you said you loved her. How could you say you love her and do … do what you did to my baby?”
    The tears cascaded from her eyes. Her face creased and pinched in a grimace of pain, mouth snarled, brow furrowed.
    Joe looked away from her, and at Lana.
    Lana scowled in contempt and took the phone back from her mother.
    “Did you read my letters?” he asked.
    “No! I don’t want to read some bullshit you spent nights perfecting, picking just the rights words to make yourself sound better! I want you to tell me right here and right now. How the fuck could you do that to my sister?”
    Joe dropped his head and his lip trembled. A tear spilled from his eye and he quickly wiped it away. He took a deep breath, raised his head to look Lana in her eyes, and spoke. “I-I did love her. I was sick. It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t help myself. I loved her so much. You have to believe me. I still think about her.”
    “We don’t want to hear about you fantasizing about Alicia. You murdered and ate her. We just wanted to ask you why. We want to be able to find closure, to forgive you so we can move on. But we can’t do that until we know why you did it.”
    Joe struggled with the words. He could see Alicia so clearly in Lana’s face. Her voice even sounded similar. Her expression, full of pain and anger and fear, marred by his betrayal, was almost identical to the expression Alicia had worn when he began to cannibalize her breasts. Even with all the guilt and remorse Joe felt now, he couldn’t stop himself from staring at Lana’s breasts. He began to salivate and the monster awakened, hungry and mean.
    “She was just so beautiful, so sweet, so … so tragic,” Joe said.
    Lana dropped her head and cast a look toward her mother at the word “tragic.” The older woman nodded with her eyes down. They both knew what he meant by tragic. He was referring to Alicia’s late father and why he’d killed himself.
    “I fell in love with her the moment I saw her. She was going to help me fight this thing inside of me. She was going to help find a cure, but the longer I stayed with her, the harder these … urges were to resist. She was the most flawless, the most perfect woman I’d ever seen. I never wanted to hurt her.”
    Lana’s voice was softer now, less combative. “But you did. You did hurt her. You killed her. You fucking ate her alive, you sick fuck!”
    “She asked me to,” Joe replied.
    “What?” Lana and her mother asked in unison. Joe hadn’t testified on his own behalf at the trial. He’d sat sullenly beside his lawyer as expert after expert, including Professor Locke, testified to his mental state. This was the first time he’d spoken about Alicia to anyone other than the professor.
    “She asked me to eat her. She said she wanted to be part of me. ”
    Lana’s mother gasped and let out a moan like she’d lost her child all over again. She looked heavenward and clasped her hands in a position of