But she did not leave for long. All those long weary winter nights she haunted me.
I did not believe in a God. But perhaps this was my punishment for weakness and failure.
And then, one night, the specter became flesh!
I had sent my servants all away, not wanting to see a face that wasn't Deliverance's, yet so sunk in gloom was I that when a cool white hand set a porcelain cup beside me, I didn't even think.
I took and drank.
For once I was only sipping one glass of cognac, preferring as I did sometimes to remember what I had lost with maximum pain and suffering.
So I was fully conscious when the poison hit me.
My limbs all locked up, with a terrifying rapidity that took out my toes first, then lower limbs, thighs, froze my cock, ran with electrifying power through my fingers and up my arms, and finally locked my jaw.
I slid sideways from the chair with no ability to stop my fall.
There was a crack as my ribs hit a nearby table and I landed with a resounding thud, on my back near the fireplace.
Dripping cognac from my shattered glass was soaking into my collar, the jagged glass jabbing me in the throat.
And as I was lying totally helpless on the ground, a shadow passed over me and I looked up into my former mistress's eyes.
The weeks had not been kind to her, eyes bloodshot, spidery purple veins splaying across her cheeks. She looked like a waxen doll that had been broken and put together too hastily.
"Gideon Nightshade," she rasped, and I could only stare.
Strangely, the name I had been so proud to win seemed tight, ill-fitting in her mouth.
"I never tookyoufor a cunt-snatched man," she hissed, her voice seeming to come from far away and yet near. "Deliverance was meant to be nothing more than a means to an end. Wealth to plunder. Of course you had to sample her cunt. That’s the kind of man you are. You take and dominate.”
She walked around me, her dress shapeless black garb, the hair that hadn't been permanently burned pulled back in a tight knot.
I could only watch with agonized eyes.
"But then you had tofavorher cunt. Be mastered by her cunt. And suddenly she was no longerdisposableto you. Suddenly there was one person the great Gideon Nightshade didn't want to kill."
She bent with a terrifying crack of bones, like her knee joints had been put in backwards, then drew a finger down my cheek, cold as ice, her nails long and jagged, the dirt of the grave inches deep in them.
"But that can be remedied by someone with a stronger will than you. For you aren't the only one with a knowledge of poisons."
And in the eleventh hour of my life, I felt repentance smite me. A tool used by me could be used against me. . . and the woman I loved.
My whole body was frozen in this helpless state, motionless with the drug she’d dosed me with, and the fire crackled merrily beside me, while Ada leered over me in a parody of domesticity.
How long would I be in this paralysis? I tried to gather the scattered remnants of my mind to catalogue all the poisons, leaves, and dangerous oils Ada might have knowledge of.
Would it wear off soon enough to stop her?
She bent down with a snap of her raw bones, drawing my cock from my pants and, to my horror, moving her twisted mouth over it.
"Then we will be as we were before. Lovers. And Grayspires will always belong to us."
Cold sweat broke out along my throat to feel her wet and sloppy mouth slobbering along my prick.
Her sucking had a mechanical feel, drool gathering along my balls. Up and down, up and down.
But my cock remained flaccid and uninterested as the minutes stretched on.
