Page 92 of Sweet Nightmares
“You know why I can’t, Jane.” He raised a manicured brow.
The ringleader vampire whirled her around and cupped her face between her hands. His gaze was evil, but his hold on her body wasn’t nearly as harsh as she’d expected it to be.
Jane sucked in a breath, desperately trying to get ahold of her magic. But it was like training to lift an ancient statue in the Gilded Museum all by herself.
With his sharp, retractable claw, the vampire pricked her jaw, and blood bubbled out before he dipped his fingernail into it and placed the blood on her tongue.
“Where is the second Blood Mirror?” His jaw tightened after the words, and he clamped down so hard that she heard his teeth rock together.
Jane pinched her lips shut. She would not tell. She’d die before allowing that information to slip. She expected to feel the familiar tug of compulsion, the undeniable hold, but it didn’t come.
Nothing—absolutely nothing—happened.
“Hmm, compulsion doesn’t work on Nightmare’s whore.” Gideon’s atrocious smile widened even further. “Good to know.” Gideon took two steps forward and clutched her jaw tightly as the ringleader held her shoulders tightly. “Tell me where the mirrors are.”
“No.”
“Tell me, Jane.” He squeezed her face harder.
“I will never tell you. You’ll have to kill me.”
“That can be arranged,” Gideon snarled, holding his hand out to another vampire, who handed him a dagger by the hilt. “But first, I think I’ll try to torture it out of you.”
He slowly took the blade out of its sheath and held it in front of Jane. Showing all the angles of the blade. “Hold her tight.”
She felt the vampire behind her nod in agreement just before Gideon slammed the knife into her stomach. At first, it felt like only a punch, a brutal force hitting her stomach, and it wasn’t until Gideon twisted that pain spiked through her. Horrific pain.
Her knees buckled, and a whimper escaped her lips.
The ringleader held her up, steadying her body. Into her ear, he whispered, “Hold true.” Jane didn’t know what he meant by that, but he pulled her tighter into his chest. “You’re okay. It’s just pain.”
His hand slid from her shoulder into her hair and cupped her nape, nearly massaging her head as he went.
The ringleader was trying to comfort her.
“Where are they?” Gideon asked again, sliding the knife out and plunging it back in again and again to different parts of her torso.
Jane let out a cry, and her knees could no longer hold her. Instead of trying to hold her up, the ringleader let her fall to the floor, but he went with her, holding her tight, almost as if cradling her.
“Why?” she whispered so only the vampires could hear her.
His lips touched her ear. “Most of us don’t have a choice. He holds our Blood Paintings.”
A vampire’s only weakness. The objects the Blood Mirrors held. The reason Jane would never tell another soul where the mirrors were. If someone got their hands on a vampire’s Blood Painting, they would control them as thoroughly as Nightmare had controlled her.
“You can fight this, Jane,” he breathed into her neck. “Fight this, you’re a fucking Wind Witch. An Ashelle prophesied to save the world. Fight him.”
Jane pinched her eyes shut and tried to call upon her magic. It was hard, but it tried to fight, to budge the statue, and it worked— rocking just a little bit, as she called it.
But it wasn’t enough.
Her head drooped, and she coughed, blood coming out of her mouth.
Gideon knelt and lifted her chin, softly saying, “This can all end if you tell me where those mirrors are.”
Jane gritted her teeth, the taste of blood lingering in her mouth. “No.”
“You are strong, but you won’t always be.” Gideon touched her forehead with the heel of his hand, and a rush of magic followed through her, mending all her wounds and healing her.
