Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [941]
How it shall end depends on you. You will decide.
“Go to hell,” she slurred, her voice thick and rusty.
Iron-strong fingers clamped onto her chin and wrenched her around to face him once more. The creature cocked his head, those catlike amber eyes emotionless as he drew in a rasping breath, then spoke through his bloodstained lips and fangs.
“Choose the course. There isn’t much time now.”
There was no impatience in the voice that growled so near her face, only a flat indifference. An apathy that seemed to say he truly didn’t care one way or the other what answer she gave him.
Rage boiled up inside her. She wanted to tell him to fuck off, to kill her and get it over with, if that’s what he meant to do. He wasn’t going to make her beg, damn it. Defiance churned in her gut, pushing anger up her parched throat and onto the very tip of her tongue.
But the words wouldn’t come.
She couldn’t ask him for death. Not even when death might be the only escape from the terror that held her now. The only escape from the pain of having lost the two people she’d loved the most and the seemingly pointless existence that was all she had left since they’d been gone.
He released her from his hard grasp and watched with maddening calm as she sagged back down to the floor. Time stretched, impossibly long. She struggled to summon her voice, to speak the word that would either free her or condemn her. Crouched near her still, he rocked back on his heels and cocked his head in silent consideration.
Then, to her horror and confusion, he extended his left arm and sliced one talonlike fingernail deep into the flesh above his wrist. Blood spilled from the wound, dripping wetly, scarlet raindrops falling to the wood planks below him. He thrust his finger into the open cut, digging into the muscle and tendons of his arm.
“Oh, Jesus. What are you doing?” Revulsion squeezed her senses. Her instincts clamored with the warning that something awful was about to happen—maybe even more awful than the horror of her captivity with this nightmarish being who’d taken her prisoner hours ago to feed off her blood. “Oh, my God. Please, no. What the hell are you doing?”
He didn’t reply. Didn’t even look at her until he’d withdrawn something minuscule from within his flesh and now held it pinched between his bloodied thumb and finger. He blinked slowly, a brief shuttering of his eyes before they pinned her in a hypnotic beam of amber light.
“Life or death,” the creature hissed, those ruthless eyes narrowing on her. He leaned toward her, blood still dripping from the self-inflicted wound in his forearm. “You must decide, right now.”
No, she thought desperately. No.
A rushing surge of fury rolled up from somewhere deep inside her. She couldn’t hold it down. Couldn’t bite back the burst of rage that climbed up her raw throat and exploded out of her mouth in a banshee scream.
“No!” She raised her fists and pounded on the hard, inhuman flesh of the creature’s bare shoulders. She thrashed and raged, railing at him with every ounce of strength she could summon, relishing in the pain of impact every time her blows landed on his body. “Damn you, no! Get the hell away from me! Don’t touch me!”
She beat her fists against him again, over and over. Still, he crept closer.
“Leave me alone, damn it! Get away!”
Her knuckles connected with his shoulders and the sides of his skull, blow after blow, even as a heavy darkness began to descend on her. It felt thick around her, a sodden shroud that made her movements sluggish, her thoughts muddled in her mind.
Her muscles slackened, refusing to cooperate. Yet still she pounded on the creature, striking slowly, as though she were throwing punches in the middle of a black, tar-filled ocean.
“No,” she moaned, eyes closed to the darkness that surrounded her. She kept sinking deeper. Farther and farther into a soundless, weightless, endless void. “No … let me go. Damn you … let me go …”
Then, when it seemed as though the darkness that enveloped her might never release her,