Page 17 of Loved to Death

He forced his eyes down to the floor the way Jeffrey would have when confessing a wrongdoing. “I’m sorry I spoke to you the way I did. I know you didn’t mean to turn me into one of the undead, and I realize that you didn’t have to help me at all. I-I appreciate you teaching me how to survive.”

She came to stand in front of him and put her hand on his chin to force eye contact. Her eyes were narrowed with suspicion. “You’d better not be using kind words as a way to try and escape again.”

“No, of course not.” He reached out his hand and caressed the side of her face. “I’m going to do my best to make you happy, and”—he had to swallow to get the rest out—“follow your lead.” Her expression hadn’t changed, so he added, “Not having the constant hunger has helped me to see things in a different light. I don’t want to fight with you anymore.” He let his hand drop. “I hope you’ll be patient with me.”

Polly slowly nodded. “If you’re truly going to stop fighting me at every turn, we’ll both be much happier.”

He nodded, knowing that she’d certainly be happier, even if he was miserable.

***

Over the next fortnight, Thomas bided his time. He followed Polly’s lead without questioning her orders. He didn’t try to leave her side, he didn’t recoil from her touch, he drank the disgusting animal blood without complaint, and he lived with the growing hunger without whining. In response, Polly showered him with affection and praise for his good behavior. He tried to accept the praise graciously even though her tone was often patronizing.

She touched him often over those two weeks but thankfully never in an overtly sexual way. He could force himself to accept her touch but he couldn’t force himself to enjoy it. Being passive all the time pushed his sex drive so far down that he doubted he’d be physically capable of an erection from her touch alone. He was dreading the loss of control that he knew would come the next time he fed on human blood. He wanted the mental strength to stop feeding before he killed again, and he wanted the willpower to refuse her advances in the heat of the moment.

When they awoke on the fifteenth day after the farmhouse incident and crawled out of their shared grave, Polly said, “Tonight we’ll go to town to feed. Then we’ll travel east.”

“Will we be looking for a drunkard outside of a bar this time?” he asked, pulling his clothes out of the saddlebags and shaking the dirt out of his hair.

They were on the outskirts of Oregon City in a small wooded area. “Probably. But we haven’t been to town yet, so if I see a better opportunity, we’ll take it.”

He nodded. The pain in his guts from hunger was becoming unbearable, and he knew he’d have no control once he sank his teeth into a neck. He’d been worrying about this moment every night since the incident two weeks ago and knew the time had come. Once he was fully dressed, he asked, “Polly?”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever bitten your victims on the wrist instead of the neck?”

“No. That would only prolong their suffering.”

“Do you think it would prolong our pleasure?” he asked, hoping that would get her interested in trying. “Or would it make it less pleasurable and easier for us to stop before we kill?”

She glared. “I don’t know, but it’s a bad idea either way. We kill because we have to. Prolonging suffering for our own gain would be unnecessarily cruel. Besides, we don’t want to stop before we kill them because they would then become a witness to our crime.”

“But what if it wasn’t a crime? If we paid a couple of whores enough money and got their approval, and then stopped feeding before we killed them, it wouldn’t be a crime.”

“That, my boy, is a sure-fire way to get us both killed. I can see the wanted posters with our faces on them already.”

Swallowing what little was left of his pride, Thomas got on his knees in the dirt and looked up at her. “Please, Polly. Will you think it over? Maybe not for tonight but for the future. We could have human blood every night if we didn’t have to kill. We could have whores that we went to regularly all over Oregon. Travel and feed every night in a different town, and move in a big circle that would last roughly a month.”

Polly shook her head. “And where do you propose we get the money to pay these whores? We have money now because we steal from the people we kill, but that would quickly run out if we no longer killed.”

Her argument gave him pause. How could he have overlooked the money while coming up with the plan? Growing up wealthy had its downfalls. “We could steal without killing,” he suggested.

She put her hands on the sides of his face, kissed his forehead, and then petted his hair as she spoke. “That is a very bad plan. I know you don’t want to kill anymore, but it will get easier with time. I promise.”

“I don’t want it to get easier,” he replied, feeling close to tears.

“And yet, it will.” She grasped his shoulder and pulled on him to stand. “Come. You’ll feel better once we feed.”

That night, they stumbled across two drunk men trying to find their way home from the saloon. Polly easily lured the men away from town and into the woods by playing innocent and asking them for help.

The euphoria hit as soon as Thomas sank his teeth into his victim and when Polly shoved him to the ground and climbed atop him, the release of tension was exquisite. But once he came back to his senses and realized he’d committed the same exact heinous act yet again, a tiny piece of his soul shriveled and died.

Chapter Seven

1877, Montana Territory

Thomas put his foot in the stirrup and got on the horse before holding a hand out to Polly. Once she was in place in front of him, she took the reins and got the horse moving. They were between settlements traveling east toward Dillon, and the short summer nights left little time for finding potential victims.

---