Beasthood (The Hidden Blood Series #1) BY A.Z. Green
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Ivan for all of his hard work and support.
Also to Krystal, Hellvis, Mel, Navz and all the Bump in the Night crew.
You know who you are.
~Prologue - Lose~
Saturday January 16th, 2010, 3:13 a.m.
Barker residence
She screamed, holding up her hands that were smeared with the fresh blood gushing from between her legs.
The smell sickened her to her stomach. The fresh images of the nightmare were branded to her eyeballs. She couldn’t escape it, not even now, when she was wide awake.
The blood, the pain, the soaked sheets, the sweat and stench were real. The life that had once been growing inside of her had fizzled away. Taken from her. Gone forever.
The nightmare had come to life.
With all that to absorb, as she sat there panting in horror, her only natural reaction was to shriek again. The sound was a deafening, chilling, heart-wrenching cry of a mother grieving for the child she had lost.
Though it had never been her child to lose...
~Chapter 1 - Patronize~
One year later...
Tuesday May 3rd, 2011, 10:00 a.m.
Therapist's office
Jaz's Diary
My name is Jaz. Or Jasmine if you are my parents and only my parents.
Call me it on pain of death. :)
Though you won’t will you? Because you’re a diary. Yes, I’ve decided -surrendered would actually be more accurate- to join the journal crew and write everything down about my ‘wonderful’ life. So here we are.
Where should I start?
Well, I’m twenty-one. Just turned. My birthday was last month. April 1st. Don’t get me started on how April Fools' has screwed up my hopes of getting any decent, none-joke presents for a change. I’ve long accepted that it’s a toss-up of fate.
I’ve just finished university. Did psychology for three years. Kinda got bored of it after six months but stuck it out, and it paid off. I’m not smart but I’m good at stuffing random knowledge into my head even if I don’t have a clue what it all means. When it’s needed, I spit it back out like a walking, talking encyclopaedia. People assume I’m smart and so far, I’ve managed to convince them I am.
I live with my mum and dad. They’re sweet and caring, though they can be -especially my mother- a little overprotective at times. More than most parents. And I’m not just saying that because I’m biased.
But I love them.
I’m only writing that because otherwise I’ll start scribbling how much I hate them right now. I’m not gonna go down that route. Not yet anyway.
And as you can see, my writing is a little bit obnoxious because of it. But hey, it's my diary, I can write what and how I want.
On the positive side: I have friends. Several in fact, but only two who I can really call my best friends.
Lisa and Ellie.
I’ve known Lisa since I was in primary school. We clicked straight away when she let me borrow her sparkly pink pen.
She’s beautiful. Blonde straight hair, skinny, big tits. The kind that girls shoot envious looks at and every guy does a 180-degree head spin, staring so long -even when they're walking or jogging- that they end up falling over or bashing into things. I've been a witness to it more than once. Though she's pretty humble about it, and doesn't use it to get her own way. Not on purpose anyway.
Appearance-wise, I probably bring down her street cred, but no one would ever say that to her face. Anyone disses her best friend gets a black eye. Bethany Granger -who I managed to get stuck with through college and uni- is proof of that.
Bethany was always a bullying bitch to me and I put up with it for as long as I can remember. But on the first day of uni, she started hassling me and saying some really nasty things right in front of Lisa. I bet she's regretted it ever since. Lisa has a punch like a wrecking ball.
Ellie, I met in year 7 when I went to secondary school. She was in the same college as me and Lisa but then went to a different uni because it had better art facilities. Her drawings are amazing.
She’s always been pretty, even through the awkward early teenage years. Big brown eyes with long dark lashes, brown hair, olive skin, tall and boyish.
The one thing about her that you can always rely on is her- occasionally annoying- habit of telling the absolute truth, sometimes to her or somebody else's detriment. But she keeps a secret like it's her own. She never blabs to anyone. That’s why Lisa got on with her so much when they first met.
I was so pleased and relieved when I discovered my two best friends from different eras got on so well together.
They fight like an old married couple but they stick it out through thick and thin.