How could he throw me away like this? I don’t understand. He went to so much trouble, and he’s ending it before it’s started. I have the inappropriate regret that I’ll die a virgin. Sure, I don’t want it to be Christian, and I don’t think I wanted it to be Devon, but it just seems like something I should have done in my life. And now I won’t have the chance.
It takes several painful minutes to crawl to the door. I don’t have a cell phone, but maybe Christian has a landline. If I can get through to an ambulance, maybe they can get here in time and get a transfusion to me. I move down the hall so slowly that at first I’m not sure if I’m moving at all.
After about fifteen minutes I make it to a parlor. There’s a little antique white phone sitting on a table. I pray it’s not just for show, that it actually works. I reach for the phone, but collapse before my hand can close around it. The pain gnaws at me, making me woozy.
I lay on the floor in the fetal position. This is it. And I was right next to a phone. I’m not sure I would have been able to make my voice work again—those operators ask too many questions. It would be too late anyway.
My eyes drift closed. I’m too weak to be upset, even though I know what this means.
“Drink.”
He’s moved so fast I didn’t know he was here. His bleeding wrist is shoved in my face, and if I don’t latch on, I know he’ll force feed me. If he wants me alive, I’ll be alive. I drink for what feels like forever, and he doesn’t move to stop me. He lets me drink until I’m finished.
I only manage to pull myself away when the panic sets in at what I’ve done.
“Why have you stopped? You need more.”
My lip trembles. My mind screams it’s too late. “I don’t want to be a vampire.” Tears are pouring down my face now. I think I’m more upset by this than anything else that’s happened to me here so far.
“Oh for God’s sake. You won’t be a vampire. I’d have to drain you nearly dry. I took enough to kill you, but not enough to turn you. You have plenty of your own blood. Now drink.”
I’m not sure if I believe him, but I don’t think I have a choice anyway, so I go back to drinking. A few more moments pass and he pulls his wrist gently away from me and seals his wound. Then he just holds me while I cry, his lips pressed against my forehead.
I don’t know if he intended to let me die and just couldn’t do it, or if it had been his plan to take me to the brink then bring me back all along. I’m not sure which idea upsets me most.
“Will you try to escape me again?” He’s speaking as someone might speak to a three-year-old that just touched a hot stove after being told it would burn.
“No, Master.”
“Good girl.”
He carries me to my room and deposits me on the bed. Now that strength is flowing through me, I notice something odd.
“I thought you couldn’t go out in sunlight.” What a liar.
“I can’t.”
“But… ” I point to the window. The drapes are open and the sun is shining in on him, illuminating his handsome face and making him look like an angel.
“It’s the UV in the sun. The light itself behind proper glass doesn’t harm me. You can’t get a sunburn sitting in front of a window, can you?”
“Oh.” Good point. Now I feel stupid.
“Try to get some sleep. You’ll need it.” The look he gives me is almost pity. I cling to that look because it’s the only shred of evidence I’ve had thus far that he might have a spark of humanity left, something that might keep me alive longer.
He gathers the hair pins and locks the door on his way out. Against all odds, I drift into a peaceful sleep, his powerful blood humming through my veins.
***
There is that moment when you first wake up and your dreams are still hovering like a fine mist in the air. For a tiny fragment of time you feel as though you could choose to live in either reality. In fact, in those seconds, as the dream replays in your mind, still so fresh, it seems more real, and this world seems unreal and fuzzy.
I want to make the choice to go back to the dream, to live there. I was icing sugar cookies in my mom’s bakery and licking the frosting off my fingers. She was singing some stupid song she used to sing to me as a child. The lyrics were just playing in my head, but now they’ve evaporated along with the day. Why can’t I remember that song now? It’s going to bug me.
I’m never having frosting again.
Christian’s insane diet rules don’t seem to allow for luxuries like whipped sugar in cheery pastel shades. That thought sits at the forefront of my mind, as if it’s the worst thing I can concentrate on and cope with at the moment. Somewhere underneath this sugary obsession is my mother’s face, caked in flour, but I dislodge that image to think about the cookies.
Finally I resign myself to reality. The bed was comfortable, the sheets softer than I could believe, a ridiculously high thread count—probably Egyptian cotton. The room has maintained a comfortable temperature and has all the amenities I could want. Entertainment. Food. A nice bathroom, because every girl needs a nice bathroom. But it’s all hollow and empty, all pretty pretend dress-up for the world I’m in now. A world of pain and blood and death, of vindictive, soulless evil, of things far worse than never tasting frosted sugar cookies again. Worse even than never seeing my mom again.
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. He’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.