The Last Girl

by Kitty Thomas

  I open my eyes and jump to find Christian sitting on the bed beside me. I hadn’t noticed—and still don’t notice—any dip in the mattress besides my own body weight. Maybe it’s one of those beds you can jump up and down on without spilling your wine.

  I watch, wary, as his fingertips caress the side of my cheek, brushing the hair out of my face and behind my ear. His thumb traces over my lower lip and I close my eyes because he’s too pretty. If this moment could be frozen and I could step back to a place of safety and look at it, even knowing the truth, it would be so tempting to see the pretty wrapping and forget the contents underneath.

  “Did you sleep well?”

  I’m scared this is a trick, but his face seems open and non-threatening. I don’t detect any malevolence lurking in his eyes just now.

  He sighs. “Juliette, please never do something so foolish during the day. When I’m tired and the day is draining my energy, I become very difficult to deal with. If you intend to misbehave, you’ll be safer if you do it at night when I have better energy reserves and have rested. Do you understand?”

  I nod, afraid to even speak right now. This reads like classic abuser to me. I’m so sorry. It’ll never happen again. You make me beat you. I don’t know why you make me do these things to you.

  I’ve always thought of abusive lovers as suffering from mental illness. It scares the hell out of me to think I’m living with a mentally ill vampire. Either one of those outcomes would be bad enough, but both together is more than I can handle.

  “Are you hungry? You should eat before it gets cold. I just brought it up.”

  I didn’t notice the tray of food because he’d taken up my entire field of vision and I was too filled with panic to look at anything but him. I glance at the tray. Eggs. Bacon. Milk. Seriously?

  “Is this some sort of trick?”

  He looks at me oddly as if he really can’t figure out why I would say such a thing. “Why would it be a trick? I have to feed you.” I wait for him to say duh and am relieved when the Valley Girl speak doesn’t pass through his lips.

  “I mean... I’m allowed to eat this?” It seems so fattening and bad for me. Somewhere in my mind I realize how stupid this is—eating frosting on a daily basis and cringing over the evil of actual food.

  “Why wouldn’t you be? It’s all organic. The eggs come from pasture-raised chickens, bacon from pastured pigs. The milk is organic, pastured, and raw.”

  He reminds me of those people who buy super-expensive organic pet food for their cats and dress them up. I’ve never seen someone so anal retentive about food, especially food he either won’t or can’t consume himself. Food is expensive in general anyway. I wonder how much money he plans to spend to keep feeding me like this. At least he’s not making me subsist on bread and water or beans in a can. I can also be assured he has no intention of poisoning me, given that I’m his food source.

  Thinking of how much keeping me like a pet is going to cost, I’m also curious as to the magic of compound interest over his lifetime. I think about this for a while, but then I backtrack, one of the words he just said finally registering in my mind.

  My nose wrinkles at the prospect. “Raw? Gross. And won’t I get sick?”

  “Of course not. This is the cleanest food you’ll ever eat. And you can’t get sick with me here. I could just give you my blood.”

  The agony of earlier in the day blooms fresh in my mind. Sure, he can heal me, but will he? I’ve already seen he’s willing to withhold his blood to terrorize me when it suits his purpose.

  “Eat. I’ll be back soon. I need to feed.”

  My mind races at that. If I haven’t misunderstood him, it seems like he’s planning to go feed from someone else while I eat. I don’t relish the idea of his fangs in my throat again after this morning, but at the same time, I can’t stop the images of the prostitute from popping into my mind.

  “A-are you going to kill?” Why did I ask? I don’t want to know. Questioning him seems like a quick way to more pain, but he only looks at me mildly without any sign of being offended.

  “That’s highly doubtful. Last night was an object lesson. I told you. Unless we’re hunting animals in the wild, we often don’t kill our prey. It’s too much clean-up, and if too many bodies start popping up, it gets dangerous. Even if they’re only whores.”

  I recoil at the word. Sure, that’s what she was. Calling her a prostitute would be as laughable as saying she was an escort. But she’s dead now, and it seems beyond wrong to throw around words like whore when she probably hasn’t even been found. I wonder if it’s true that there is no one who will mourn her. Maybe me. I mourn her a little. I think. Or maybe I’m mourning me, because what she got from Christian, while horrific, was quick. I’m stuck with him long term. That idea crawls inside me, feeling like fangs ripping at me from underneath my skin.

  He locks the door behind him, and I’m left alone with my breakfast. He’s right, it’s the cleanest thing I will ever eat, which is a weird thing to say, considering part of what’s on my plate came from a pig—a decidedly unclean animal. The food tastes fresh in a way it hasn’t before. The eggs are definitely different. And the milk.

  I’ve drunk a lot of milk in my time. I took the whole it does a body good propaganda to heart. But this is... incredible. Saying clean again would be redundant, but I’m no longer concerned about pathogens in the milk. Even without Christian’s blood, it’s like the dairy equivalent of a mountain spring.

  I wonder if it’s the quality of the food, Christian’s blood enhancing my senses, or some combination. I don’t think my hearing seems inordinately sharper right now or my sense of smell. So it’s probably the food itself. It’s boggling to me that food like this was always available while I was eating peanut butter and jelly on white bread in complete ignorance.

  I savor the meal like a hedonistic reveler at a Bacchanalia, trying not to think about the demon coming back later or what he might do to me in the night, where we might go, who he might kill. I wish he fell dead each morning, like some vampire myths where nothing can wake them in the day.

  I wish I could be certain of that one block of time where I would be safe with no chance of him waking and coming for me. If what he told me when I woke is true, then he’s scarier in the daylight. The fear I might inadvertently wake him even if not out of disobedience, has taken root and won’t let go.

  The door opens just as I’m finishing the last bit of eggs on my plate. I think he put cheese in them. They have that sharp tang like the scrambled eggs my grandmother used to make. It took me years to figure out the secret ingredient that made them magical was shredded sharp cheddar.

  I can’t help the way my body pulls away from him, as if a few inches of movement impedes a being so fast and strong, but it’s reflexive. I know he sees it; he notices all my flinches and cringes. He’s far too perceptive for me to hide these reactions from him. Maybe if he’d been a human captor, I could bullshit my way to longer survival.

  But Christian isn’t some random psychotic so stuck in his own head he doesn’t really see me. He sees me, and that’s the scariest thing of all. He knows my deepest secrets and hopes and fears because he’s listened in on my brain for years.

  He stands in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, observing me. “Finish your milk,” he says, as if I’m some child—and compared to him, I am. But I obediently gulp it down. Now isn’t the time to be petulant over something stupid. I’m afraid after this morning that he’s too emotionally unhinged and out of control. Anything could set him off. If he isn’t in absolute control of himself, he could easily kill me, but that’s what he told me from the outset. It isn’t a matter of if he’ll lose control and end me, but when.

  A part of me wonders why I want to prolong it. Before I can go farther down that path, Christian is on me. His weight presses me down on the bed and his face is buried in my neck. At first I think he intends to feed even though I’m sure he did that already, but he’s not feeding. H
e’s licking the side of my neck. Kissing. Nibbling.

  The sensation is like a tickling feather. It shoots shivers down my spine and, horribly, a moan escapes my throat before I can stop it. It wasn’t like this with Devon. In all the making out we did, I thought something must be wrong with me. He never elicited that electrical feeling. Not once.

  I’d only decided to give up my virginity to him because we’d been going out so long it was becoming embarrassing not to have done the deed already, and I was starting to think there was something fundamentally wrong with me. All of my friends kept asking, and I felt like such a prude for saying “not yet, not yet.”

  One girl even suggested perhaps Devon was gay. I’d been mortified. The idea that I was his beard and too stupid to know it bothered me more than having sex with a man who couldn’t make me spark.

  Christian is still nibbling, light little bites with flat teeth. One of his hands cradles the back of my neck in a proprietary way. His other hand trails down the side of my cheek, then over my neck, then onward until he’s stroking underneath the satin chemise I slept in, caressing my breast through the slippery fabric

  I know I’m wet. I’m only usually this wet right after an orgasm brought by my own fingers. My whole body feels like it’s on fire, and I realize it’s shame: shame that he’s having this effect on me after how he’s scared me, taken my life away, locked me up, killed someone right in front of me without remorse. But my body can’t be reasoned with. It wants nothing more than to be filled in every way by this man, no matter what he’s done to me or to others.

  His demeanor is different than how he was with the prostitute. There is nothing rough in the way he’s stroking me, nothing demanding in his kiss as his lips move to caress over mine. I suck in a breath at the unexpected entry of his tongue. My brain has gone all fuzzy. I wonder if his effect on me is a vampire thing, but he already said he can’t control my mind. Maybe my body isn’t so immune. Every nerve ending fires in response to him, as if he can crook a finger and make the whole of me arch closer, begging for more of his touch.

  I don’t want to feel this. It was bad enough to crave his bite after the pain ebbed, and to crave his blood out of a basic need for survival. But to crave his hands and mouth on me. It’s just not right. I wish it was already morning so he’d leave me to my confused and troubled thoughts. But it won’t be that way.

  This isn’t Devon, a man I can put off for months. I know it’s happening right here and right now. Whatever charming nod to foreplay he’s making shouldn’t confuse me that he’s a gentleman. The arousal flares brighter as the image of him taking the prostitute from behind rises in my mind. I squeeze my eyes closed to try to shut that image out. It shouldn’t make me hotter for him. Whatever this is, it isn’t me. I repeat this mantra over and over in my mind because this can’t be who I am.

  To give in so readily to his darkness surely makes me just as bad. Is it lack of power or opportunity that has left me innocent? I can no longer delude myself into believing everything inside me is clean and pure. As his hand leaves my breast, skims over my belly, and moves beneath my panties, my hips jerk in response to him, and I know I’m not so sweet.

  “That’s it, pet. I knew it would be this way,” he murmurs against my skin.

  My friends would be disturbed by what’s going on in my head right now, but when you see the depth of danger and depravity Christian has shown he’s capable of, when you’re with a creature that shouldn’t exist that could so easily snuff out your life, anything not horrible and painful is welcome and appreciated. Good food. Nice accommodations. A gentle kind of molestation.

  No one with any sense in their head chooses to undergo any degree of torture if the only thing they have to do is spread their legs to make it stop. I don’t care how much self-worth they think they have or how much of a fighter they think they are. Real life doesn’t work that way.

  At least this is what I tell myself as I whimper and spread my legs a little wider, giving him better access. Some switch inside him flips and he goes from considerate lover to primal beast in a millisecond. He shoves the chemise up over my hips and pulls my panties aside, then I’m on my hands and knees on the bed, and I don’t know how I got there. The room turns a burning cold. I’m not sure if it’s my own fear coming to life, or Christian, or an overactive imagination.

  He’s behind me now. The room is silent except for his heaving breaths. For a moment I experience a touch of vertigo and have the brief sensation that the room is breathing. I can almost feel the expanding and contraction of the walls. But no, that’s my own breath I’m feeling. I’m grateful to be feeling it. It means I’m still here, still alive.

  Christian grips my shoulder and with one sharp thrust, he’s inside me. I cry out at the pain and the shame of losing my virginity to a monster that only seconds ago my body welcomed and coaxed closer with each undulation of my hips.

  He pulls me off the bed, bending me back against his chest, his arms wrapped around me, his head buried in my neck, breathing me in. Our breath starts to blend into one thing. I don’t know if he’s matching my pace or if I’m matching his, but we are in sync. Despite everything, I have a moment of transcendence. I feel one with everything, and my logical brain isn’t active to tell me how wrong it all is. The pain flowers out like a lotus blossom and then transforms into a deep yearning.

  He is both the disease and the cure.

  With that thought, the transcendent moment fades as quickly as it came on and I spend the next several minutes berating myself for feeling that way with him. He didn’t give me any choices. It’s a cruel joke of the universe that the one person who makes me come alive is himself dead. And evil. His very existence defies all moral laws and all known laws of physics. Yet here he is and here I am, and our bodies keep grinding together. And despite my best efforts not to feel more, a pleasurable sensation is growing inside me. I feel unmade, remade, desecrated, reborn. And I can’t think which of those I wish was untrue the most.

  Despite convincing myself anyone chooses pleasure—at least with pain I don’t have to feel guilt. If I love him inside me then is it still against my will? Does my will exist in even the most abstract sense in this vampire’s home?

  As if in answer, offering me penance for my sins, fangs dig into my throat, taking my breath from me, searing me with another wave of agony. Then it all transforms and I come so hard I nearly pass out. I shout out “Christian” without meaning to. I wonder if I’m going to get in trouble for calling him by his first name, but he only chuckles against my throat as he spills into me.

  Now that the orgasm has passed, I’m scared again. I think about the prostitute, and it’s not an inappropriate moment of arousal, because the moment that aroused me was punctuated later by her death. I hover in limbo, terrified he won’t stop drinking, and I’ll be just like her, just another cold body that served a vampire’s purpose. But he does stop, and a moment later his bleeding wrist is in front of my mouth.

  “Drink.” That word again. In the space of a day it has become the best and worst word in the English language. A word I fear I won’t hear and at the same time fear I’ll hear too often.

  I’m scared about what daily vampire blood will do to me. It doesn’t seem like he took as much as last time, so is it really necessary? I don’t feel weak. Nothing hurts now. Maybe I shouldn’t.

  “C-can’t I just drink every other day? Or when you take too much?”

  He pulls away and spins me to face him, his eyes narrowing. “It’s a gift. You’ll deny me the pleasure of giving my pet gifts?”

  This could go very bad very fast, so I backtrack. “N-no. I’m sorry. Please, that’s not what I meant. I’m just... ” I’m afraid to tell him. The only ace I have to play is the thoughts bound tightly inside my own head. The only thing in me that he can’t get to.

  “Just... ” he prods. His eyes look so angry and black that I can’t think of an appropriate lie, so the truth spills forth in its absence.

  “I�
��m afraid of what so much vampire blood will do to me.”

  I look away because he knows I’m rejecting what he is. He knows it disgusts me, and in his place, I might be angry about it, too. He can’t help his nature. It’s instinctive. It’s not personal.

  It’s like a tiger or a wolf. Humans don’t moralize those creatures for their instincts. So why should I judge Christian that way? But I knew the answer even before the question formed in my mind—because he’s shaped too human and my moral code for anything that looks human is bound up in what humanity considers right and wrong. I can’t help feeling that way, and I don’t expect the sentiment to ever change.

  His look mirrors my own disgust, and I don’t like it when the shoe is on the other foot. My mind screams that I’m the good one. The last thing I deserve is his scorn.

  “It will do nothing but heal you and make you feel good. It won’t make you a vampire. It won’t make you evil. And you will drink it when I give it to you. Or have you already forgotten this morning when I withheld? I should think you’d be happy to be offered such a gift instead of the pain and terror I offered you this morning. Or did a few hours of sleep wipe that reality away?”

  I don’t say anything because the last thing I want is a frequent repeat of this morning. Instead, I put my mouth against his wrist and take the offering he’s presented. He pets my hair with his other hand.

  Maybe everything I know about vampires is wrong. Maybe he was never human. Maybe he’s a god, instead. Or a demon. I have a feeling our human words for things: god, angel, demon, vampire... they’re just words. They don’t really mean anything because we don’t know what the hell we’re talking about.

  “Good girl,” he whispers against my hair.

  He pulls his wrist away and I lay my forehead against the satin pillows, exhausted. I’m still not used to this schedule shift. Despite frequent insomnia, my body is confused by the changes.