The Memory Puller (The Memory Puller Series Book 1)
The Memory Puller: Chapter 14

Lui ganeth, lui cathona. Lui ganeth, lui cathona,” Cassandra chanted softly in her dimly lit extraction room.

Her fingers massaged the temples of the supplicant reclined in her chair, her fifth and final for this Monday’s shift. She’d been flighty and distracted all day, her mind swirling with thoughts of Cora, the white-haired man, and the formula.

She attempted to clear her head and focus on her supplicant, a young man with a ruddy complexion and light ginger hair, likely only a few years older than Cassandra herself. She’d never served him, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t visited the Temple before. The session was coming to a close, and the last remnants of her anxiety ebbed as she extracted his tenth memory.

She’d obliviated twenty supplicants since she’d started performing the ritual. They were some of the worst experiences of her life. She’d never forgotten the supplicants’ faces, the shuddering breaths they took as soon as she touched them and said the words, the light dying in their eyes the instant their lids popped open.

Afterwards, it took her weeks to recover. Only the reassurances from Mother Superior, who was uncharacteristically supportive, had pulled her out of her stupor and convinced her to resume her duties.

Despite the ratio of only twenty obliviations out of the thousands of supplicants she’d served, Cassandra had yet to escape the dread that consumed her during the ritual. Still held her breath every time she lowered her hands towards a supplicant, sweat running down her neck and soaking her dress robes, her heart pounding.

The young man’s chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, with no hint of any complications as Cassandra pulled his final offered memory. He exhaled a long breath, signaling the end of the ritual, and his body sank further into the chair as his breathing slowed. Cassandra decanted the syrupy, golden light into the glass vial, then gathered up all ten memories and headed to the viewing chamber at the back of the room.

To view the first memory, Cassandra removed the cork from the vial and pressed the opening against the tattoo on her right wrist before a single kernel of light could escape. Holding the vial in place, she closed her eyes and whispered the second half of the chant.

“Mei ganeth, mei cathona. Mei ganeth, mei cathona.”

Into my mind. Into my body.

She was transported into the young man’s memory as a powerful surge of lust consumed her. Her eyes looked through his eyes, and her limbs, though motionless atop the table, felt as though they were moving with his. As if she were performing the actions she now saw in her mind.

His hand was clasped around a firm, apple-sized breast, forefinger and thumb pinching a pert pink nipple. He was trying not to finish too soon as she let out a screaming moan.

She was really enjoying herself.

He dipped his head and watched his cock plunge faster and faster into her tight wetness until the sensations overwhelmed him, and he spurted himself dry. Collapsing onto her chest, he buried his face in the soft crook of her neck.

She gripped his hair, a painful tug against his scalp, and yanked his head upright, expelling a breathy laugh.

“Quickest twenty drachas I ever earned, love,” she said, tossing her curly brown hair out of her face before kissing him on the lips. She shoved him onto his back and climbed out of the bed, then crossed the room, stopping before a window with a view of a red brick bell tower.

Cassandra’s cheeks burned with the young man’s shame as she pulled the vial from her wrist. The memory slithered out of her mind, releasing its grip on her body.

She corked the vial, didn’t even consider adding this memory to her wanton collection. All force, no finesse, as Tristan would’ve said.

Her thighs clenched at the thought of him. It was far too easy to imagine herself in the brunette’s position, sprawled across a bed as Tristan thrust into her.

She took a deep breath to exorcise the vision, difficult with her nerve endings throbbing in the aftermath of the young man’s climax.

The next memory poured ice water into her veins and banished all thoughts of the tempting Fae warrior. Cassandra said the words and closed her eyes as she began…

…walking down a black marble corridor. Sconces illuminated by Fae magic threw severe white triangles down the walls, and his footsteps echoed in the empty hallway. He held a tray laden with a bowl of lumpy stew, a hunk of bread, and a cup of water.

He arrived at a dead end, then turned into another hallway lined with steel doors. He approached the fourth door on the left, then balanced the tray in one hand as he pressed his thumb against the shiny black pad on the door handle.

The door swung open with a beep and a click, and he stepped into the cramped, pitch-black cell.

The temporary blindness heightened his other senses, and he was pummeled by the sour, acidic smell of an unwashed human body. The pounding of his heart filled the room, and underneath that, so faintly, the uneven, rasping breaths of the prisoner.

Panic rising, he flailed along the damp wall in search of the light switch. He found it and harsh, flickering light bathed the cell.

The prisoner sat in a chair in the corner, dull brown hair spilling down her back. He turned away and placed the tray upon the stained mattress.

Fingers dug into his arm, and he spun around, catching his knee on the edge of the bed and falling backward onto the tray. Globs of stew splattered the wall, and water soaked through the mattress. The prisoner hovered over him, hair shielding her face. Terror seized his lungs as he struggled to suck in a breath.

“I don’t have it,” the prisoner stated calmly. “Tell him I don’t have it.”

The prisoner yanked her muddy brown hair away from her face.

The memory dissolved from Cassandra’s mind as she dropped the glass vial and it rolled off the table, clattering to the stone floor. The vial was thick enough that it didn’t break, but kernels of light leaked from the open lid.

Cassandra would’ve shouted a few choice curse words, if she were capable of it.

She dashed from her seat, cork gripped in her hands, and dropped to her knees to catch the fleeing vial before the entire memory was destroyed. Just before the vial rolled into the door, she grabbed it and jammed the cork in.

Half the memory had dissipated. Cassandra hoped it was the first half.

Before she’d been so startled that she’d dropped the vial, Cassandra had been staring straight into the eyes of Sister Kouris.