Page 94 of Sweet Nightmares
Jane clenched her fists, and with all the energy she had left, she spat on him.
He wiped her saliva off his face with a slight chuckle and turned the vampire holding Jane. “Suck her dry. Make sure you get every last drop. I don’t want any hint of drugs found in her system.”
A deep snarl rumbled in the vampire’s chest, and she felt it as much as she heard it. She also felt the fight in his muscles. He didn’t want to do it. But, like anyone under compulsion, he had to.
“At least tell me the name of the man who is going to kill me,” she said, her voice light and bright, happy and cheerful.
Fucking drugs.
“Aeris,” his breath caressed her neck. “My little mouse, I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
As the words left her mouth, his fangs plunged into her neck, and he drank and drank and drank. With each gulp, her body grew weaker and weaker and weaker.
She leaned into him and allowed him to cradle her body as he killed her, seeking as much comfort as she could in death. And he gave it, pulling her close with one arm and stroking gentle circles on her back with the other.
Jane was born to die horrifically, just like her parents. So she wasn’t surprised to be looking death in the face. Whatdidsurprise her was whose face it was—and how much it destroyed her, knowing she had been so cruelly betrayed.
But her surprises weren’t over because a girl, another of her closest friends, appeared in her vision. At first, Jane thought she might be there to help, but then all she did was hold her hand, sniffle, and say, “I am so sorry, Jane.”
“You too?” The words were merely mouthed with no sound escaping because her body was no longer capable of speaking.
The girl stifled a cry. “I am so, so sorry. He’s just—”
But Jane would never know what her other traitor said because it was at that moment when the drugs fully kicked in, and her mind was consumed with wicked pleasure and glittering hallucinations. In some way, Jane was thankful to be rid of the pain. Both mental and physical.
She heard one more command in her joyous haze—or at least she thought it was a command. One could never know, really.
In her dreamlike state, her mind shifted to her Nightmare, to the man formed from muscles and brooding. She closed her eyes and saw him as a sea of wisping colors. She was in a flowing, white dress, and he was in his signature black suit, but they looked more like abstract paintings than people.
But she touched his face and spoke to him one last time.
But what could one say to the person who had become their everything? What could be said? She didn’t know.
So the ghost-like version of herself whispered to the ghost-like version of him, “I will miss you, my Sweet Nightmare.”
“When you’re done, mutilate her face. Make it harder to recognize her. Then throw her body into the bay.”
Gideon’s dark voice cut through her fever dream just before true darkness slipped into her mind, and her eyes lost sight, but she didn’t stop seeing. Jane looked down on herself—her lifeless body?— as if she were a ghost hovering above.
Aeris slammed her face into the marble hard, but he only smashed in one side, possibly out of protest. Then he and the lady traitor took her body to the Marina District and threw her body over a dock and into the water.
The female ran off and expected Aeris to follow, but he didn’t. He looked down at the water for a long moment before checking behind him and diving in.
Aeris pulled her body to shore. He caressed her broken face and whispered into the wind. “I will try to keep her safe from a distance.”
Jane wanted to hold on longer to see more—to hold on to life—but she was dead, and she had been since she’d lost consciousness. Now, she was just a ghost with a fraying tether to life.
And as much as she wanted to stay, she couldn’t.
Her time was up, and her foresight was proved to be correct.
She was destined to die a horrific and early death.
Chapter Thirty-One
Nightmare
