Page 18 of When Bones Whisper
“I’m going to try something,” Nathaniel intoned, his nostrils flaring when he glanced at her throat. Hesitantly, he took a step closer, and she winced.
“Try what?” she asked, her breath shaky.
“I’m going to drink from you, so I may access your memories and see for myself. I may not be able to see ghosts, but through your eyes, I can.”
“Wait…” her breath stammered. He couldn’t see the entire memory with her ancestor, at least not the part where she was told she’d need to sacrifice herself to complete the ritual to undo his curse. Else he would know she was lying about willingly performing the ritual and would lock her away. Any chance of escape would be gone. “I’m not comfortable with you going inside my head.”
He stepped closer and ran his hand over the back of her neck, sliding her head to the side. “I need to trust you, and this is the only way.”
“Have you never taken someone at their word?” she asked, leaning away from him.
“Yes, which is precisely why I don’t anymore. I do not do this lightly,” he said, grazing his finger over her freckled cheek. “We never allow our victims to live, but come what may of that, I must know for certain how to break my curse. Now, don’t scream. I don’t want to kill you, but if you act like prey, I might not be able to stop.”
She flinched, leaning away from his touch, but his words echoed in her mind.Do not act like prey.
He sat beside her, drawing her near with one arm around her waist and with the other, brushed a stray strand of hair from her neck.
A shudder wracked her body as his fangs scraped her throat. Squeezing her eyes shut, she braced herself for the pain.
“Keep your eyes closed,” he murmured against her, his fingers gliding over the crease of her waist.
Several loud pops sounded from his jaw, and the horrifying realization washed through her—his jaw was dislocating. The sharp edges of his fangs sunk into her throat with reckless abandon and she realized there were more than just two sets of fangs. No, there were several.
A whimper caressed the back of her throat, but she didn’t dare let it out. Biting down on her lip, she suppressed the screamvibrating her chest, and only a small, guttural groan escaped her mouth.
His warning circled her mind repeatedly.
A sharp pain sliced through flesh and muscle, drawing deeper until a rush of heat enveloped her from head to toe. His fingers tightened in her hair as he pulled it back from her scalp, angling her better.
So this was how it felt to be food.
Her entire body stiffened, her vision vignetting with wave after wave of dizziness until the world was spinning. There was relief in surrendering. Her body collapsed into him, her senses dimming until all she could focus on was the dark behind her eyes.
The world seemed to tilt on its axis as she began to lose consciousness, and that’s when she felt his presence inside her. It started with a spark blooming in her stomach, slowly pulsing outward until all she could feel was tingles all over her body.
A heavy weight crept into her mind, and she just knew it was him. It was as if his soul was inside of her, pressing against her mental barricades until they broke open and her memories flooded through.
The first memory Charlotte was plunged into washed over her like an icy splash of water. Mist surrounded her. She was back in the graveyard of her ancestors on the night she’d stolen the bones.
Watching from behind her eyes, she saw the conversation unfold between her and her ancestor about the curse. Nathanielwas there too, but not physically. He was a parasite in her head, observing with a sharpness that ached her skull. Yet, his harsh edges were softened inside her. She felt him squirm a little, a sense of unease surrounding his presence.
She was just glad she could make him feel a little uncomfortable too considering the violation. His tongue continued to glide over her wound, her blood pumping into his waiting mouth.
The words spilled from the ghost’s mouth about the curse, the Avery family, and Gertude.
As soon as she’d decided he’d heard enough, she forced herself to feel the pain she normally numbed, allowing into to take her in waves of agony, forcing them out of the memory and into another.
His consciousness toppled with her, into scenes that spiraling when her emotions shifted along with the visuals. They were falling through darkness before landing at Lovett Manor on the eve of the massacre.
“Not this.”
Her whisper echoed around her as she watched helplessly.
She pretended to be dead on the floor, her fingers twitching against the floorboards. She watched through cracked eyelids as her father’s grip on her sister’s throat tightened. The man she loved, the father who’d held her as a child and kissed her forehead every night before bed, was gone. His face was twisted into something demonic, and the blue of his eyes were rimmed with black, veining out from his pupils until darkness consumed his irises.
With a groan, she forced her way out of the memory, refusing to think about her father or that night again. Hope drowned out the dark thoughts Nathaniel was guiding her toward, and she reminded herself that the world was not that bad. While it was filled with suffering and bad people, there were also so many beautiful things.
Flashes of simpler days swept away the pain. In her mind’s eye, she watched herself dancing with her sister, of Alice’s hair cascading around like spun silk, golden under the candlelight. Another snippet of her holding Duke close at night, him purring against her, filled her up, then another, of the days where she dug her fingers deep into the soil of her garden, planting seeds and watching life grow around her.
