Page 15 of Sweet Nightmares
“Please, she wouldn’t know anything.” Jane stepped toward him and reached out her arm.
Nightmare’s nostrils flared, and he turned his eyes back to his victim. “You will stay here.”
And as if in response to his words, ropes of light burst into the room and wrapped not just around the man’s body, but all of his family, too.
Nightmare was a light bender. Jane had only heard stories of few vampires of old who could do that. But vampires were extinct.
Right?
Nightmare turned on his heel, grabbed her by the upper arm, and walked her into a parlor off the dining room. “Explain.”
His voice was laced with compulsion, but she didn’t know what he wanted her to explain. “What?”
“The girl…”
Jane gritted her teeth tightly, but she couldn’t resist his magic. “She’s my sister, and she doesn’t know anything about Ash witches or diaries. She was four years old when our parents died, and if my parents knew, they never told me.”
Jane had told him everything that she thought he might want to know because she didn’t want to prolong the heat of his stare, which was burning into her like he might end her.
“So, you are an Ashelle?”
“I was… but I don’t have that name anymore.” It was part of the agreement with her uncle to keep Quinn safe.
“But you have their magic dormant in your veins.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“But you will.”
“Please don’t hurt my sister.”
His dark eyes flared. “I won’t… for now, since you were telling me the truth.”
As Nightmare returned to the dining room, Jane grasped a cabinet to help hold the weight of her body. Her knees wobbled, and she gulped. Nightmare knew about Quinn.
The only thing she cared about. Now he could use that knowledge for leverage.
Jane listened to the click of her footfalls as she re-entered the room, trying to calm herself. She knew what she was about to see would be as bad as any nightmare the man with the same name could create.
And she wasn’t wrong. As her foot hit the landing, she watched Nightmare break the man’s neck and turn on the rest of the family.
“You hold the Ash Witch secrets.” His attention was directed at the man’s oldest son, who had to be about nineteen. “The next time I return, you’d better have more information for me.”
That was the first time Jane watched Nightmare kill someone in front of her, but it would not be the last.
Part Two
The Broken Can’t Dance
Chapter Six
Age 23.
Murder had become far too mundane. In the past two years, Nightmare had murdered so many people in his quest to find Helene’s journal that Jane had lost count.
She still had little idea why the diary was essential, or who Helene even was. From the tiny parcels of information Jane had stitched together, she’d gathered that Helene was an Ash Witch—a being as mythical as a vampire. Ash Witches were ancient, and they had created vampires, who in turn created mirrors… which trapped ancient gods. That second bit, Jane wasn’t so sure about. The one fact she did know for sure—since it was taught in history classes—was that seven hundred years ago, when vampires were exterminated by humans, only mirrors remained, left to control the city through wicked bargains.
Ones like hers…
