With My Last Breath (Page 31)

Her back was hunched grotesquely, her hair white and stringy. Her face, however, was the worst. It looked like cracked gray porcelain. A thousand tiny web-like wrinkles began at her forehead and radiated to her chin, making her look like a corpse. I gasped, more out of surprise than actual fear and she smiled, stepping toward me, with eyes so faded that they looked like clouds.

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"Do I frighten you, Heleyne?" she asked throatily, reaching out to run one twisted finger down my cheek, trailing onto my neck. I steeled myself and remained still, enduring her frigid touch. She was as cold as a corpse, just as Alexi and Cadmus were.

Horror squeezed my heart. Was she soulless as well?

She felt my sudden apprehension and cocked her head, her wrinkled hand frozen on my shoulder. I felt a chill, but against all odds, managed to not move and kept my feet planted on the floor. She was the epitome of unnerving.

"You’re such a proud one, little keeper," she murmured into my ear. Her frosty breath hissed against my skin as her voice chilled my heart. Everything about her screamed danger. It raised the hair on my neck and she smiled.

"There will not be a next time because you will not be here to make another mistake," she announced coldly. Alarm caused my heart to pound wildly against my ribcage. The Fates had never done this before.

"What do you mean?" I asked shakily. "I must be here. I know my Daedal better than anyone. No one can handle her like I can."

She nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, in the past that has been the case," she agreed. "But you have shown that you are losing your edge. Ahmose will handle her. You will come with me. The people here will simply fear that you have been taken by intruders and they will search for you for awhile, but in the end, it will be as though you never existed here at all."

My heart thudded so loudly that I could hear it in the still night and I knew she could too. I had to think quickly, to get her to change her mind, but I couldn’t come up with a feasible retort. After a moment, I managed to think of something to stall.

"What will you do with me?"

With nimble quickness that I would never have thought that she possessed, she bounded back to my side, throwing me against the wall with supernatural strength.

With my head shoved against the hard stone, she sniffed at my face, my neck, my arms, my legs. All the while, her white hair straggled down her back over her arms and I could feel the evil emanating from her.

How I had never felt it when I had been in mortal form? It was thick in the air around her. Even a mortal should recognize her for the threat that she was, yet I never did. I had always wanted to believe her. As she pushed her face into mine, I ached to throw her off, to use my goddess strength to defend myself, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t reveal myself in such a way and so instead, I gritted my teeth as she continued to sniff at me.

Shoving my nightgown up, she licked my inner thigh, dragging her rough, cold tongue along the skin of my knee to the juncture of my thighs. She paused there, with her face buried in my nether region, keeping me pressed to her with one cold arm.

With her other hand, she used her long thumb nail to rip the bodice of my nightgown Courtney Cole 82

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and push it away, leaving me exposed and na**d as the light cotton material fell to the ground.

Goosebumps formed on every surface of my body in the night breeze, but I stood still, trying to force my face to remain expressionless as I willed my heart to calm.

Glancing up at me, Lachesis lingered over my belly before moving to my heart, pressing her ear to my ribcage and listening, holding her icy hands against my shoulder blades, before she licked the skin between my br**sts.

Burying her face between them, she inhaled. I held my breath, willing my heart, which was so close to her ear, to slow down. I didn’t want to tip my hand, because she would expect me to be frightened in this mortal body, but she didn’t need to know how much she truly unnerved me, either.

"So proud," she murmured, leaving my br**sts to pay close attention to my arm.

Lifting it, first she examined it and then she sniffed at it, following an invisible trail from my shoulder to my wrist. When she finally reached my pulse point, she froze with her nose against my skin. I felt my blood pulsing hard as my heart beat against her mouth.

"You’re lying about something, Keeper," she observed. "I can smell it. Along with your fear, I sense deceit. What are you hiding?"

Her cloudy eyes pierced mine as she stayed poised above my wrist. I fought to remain calm. This was the most unsettling situation I had ever been in. She was violating my personal dignity and there wasn’t a thing that I could do about it. Or that I should do about it, anyway.

"Nothing, Lachesis," I whispered. "I am lying about nothing. I am hiding nothing."

"You lie," she snarled and plunged her yellowed teeth into my wrist. I gasped and cried out, but rigidly kept my feet planted and forced myself to remain calm and frozen in place as the ancient witch drank my blood.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of her face. Her eyes were closed in pleasure as my blood streaked from the corners of her mouth. I could see the pulse beating in my arm, the vital blood pumping faster into her mouth with every second that I became more frightened. With every second, I felt weaker as she took more and more of my blood into her mouth.

"Stop," I murmured calmly. "Lachesis, stop. What are you doing?"

I had never been more proud of myself for exhibiting restraint. I wanted nothing more than to throw this old woman across the room. Yet I stood limply and allowed her to suck my very life away. There wasn’t anything else I could without tipping my hand.

Seconds turned into minutes and my body had begun to feel cold from blood loss before Lachesis finally complied with my request and dropped my arm, taking one step back.

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I gripped my wrist with my other hand tightly as I stared at her.

My blood streaked down her chin and her eyes were no longer cloudy. They were shiny and black and had a slightly crazed look in them as she studied me.

"You are lying, Harmonia. I tasted it." Harmonia.

Once again, my heart stilled with fear. Her eyes were shiny and glazed with pleasure, but in them was knowledge. She knew everything. She had drunk my blood to taste for lies. And I couldn’t control that. My own blood had given me away. She knew the truth.

I returned her stare coldly as she continued to study me.