Read Online The Last Girl by Kitty Thomas - Free Book Online Page A

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