Page 41 of Sweet Nightmares (Wicked Mirrors #2)

Chapter Thirty

“ G ideon, I presume?” Jane said, eyes darting around the small room as ten vampires penned her in. Her legs felt like jelly, and her mind was hazy and unfocused, but she tried as hard as she could to stay standing and strong.

But she’d been drugged.

She had to have been.

She wanted to call on Nightmare, but she couldn’t. She’d severed their bond and broken it at maybe the worst possible moment.

One of the vampires had a malicious and hungry smile on his face—the ringleader from the vampire lair. He wanted to devour her like a snake eyeing its prey, getting ready to pounce.

Jane had been betrayed by one of her closest friends, but with her mind in an utter state of fog, she couldn’t grasp and hold onto their name.

The drugs were taking bits of her. But she knew the man who stood before her was her friend.

And the worst bit was that she never imagined Gideon would end up being close to her—would end up being someone she’d trusted so deeply.

It was unclear why her mind couldn’t grasp any names, save the one who murdered her parents. Maybe it was a sick trick of the drugs.

But here, her parents’ killer stood with his hands in his pockets, a sickening smile twisted on his face.

As he chuckled, his face morphed from what she knew to something else—into the man from her nightmares with dusty red hair, freckles, and hazel eyes—confirming her thoughts. This was indeed the true Gideon. He was still attractive with his true face, maybe even more so, but no kindness remained.

“You flew too close to the sun, my dear, and now you have discovered too much,” Gideon said, his once beautiful face twisting into horrors—and not the kind she cherished. “And you know the location of an object I very much want to possess.”

Jane took a hesitant step back, but the ringleader vampire was there just as she did, and she knocked into his sturdy, muscular chest. “Not so fast, little mouse,” he whispered, his voice vibrating against her ginger hair. “My food isn’t getting away from me this time.”

Jane’s knees wobbled, and she pulled at her magic as if she were ripping out her hair. But it, too, was unsteady. It, too, was drugged.

Fuck.

“Compel her to tell me where the second Blood Mirror is,” Gideon told her captor.

“What?” she spat. “You can’t do it yourself?”

“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.

He was healing her.

In doing so, he also decreased the barrier between her and her magic. He was giving her the means to fight.

Jane closed her eyes and let the healing soak through her. All the while, she sang to her magic, seducing it and calling its name, humming the tune of its favorite colors.

When the healing peaked, Jane opened her eyes, looked directly into Gideon’s azure eyes, and stole all the oxygen from the room—this time from all the vampires’ lungs, too.

They collectively fell to their knees, like birds hit by buckshot and falling out of the sky. They clutched their throats, drowning in the lack of oxygen.

With his last breath, her ally vampire croaked. “Good, fig—” before slumping to the side behind her.

Gideon cackled and clapped his hands, the knife still in his hand. “Oh, spectacular job. Unfortunately, that trick won’t work on me.”

Without warning, he slammed the knife once more into her lower belly and pulled it upward, ripping her open nearly seven inches.

A pain more horrific than anything she’d ever felt before tore through her.

Agony dripped through her blood. He pulled the knife out, dropped it on the floor, then from his pocket, he pulled out a pill and shoved it into her mouth and forced her to swallow.

The pill was slightly sweet and nutty. “No,” she whimpered. Not Mirror-Poppy .

Jane’s hold on her magic slipped, and air filled the room once more.

“I’ll ask once more. Where are they?”

“I will never give in to you.”

He laughed. “You know, I believe that.” He slid a hand slowly over her breast, giving it a tight squeeze as he traveled slowly, moving down to her stomach and hovering over the wound.

Healing once more spilled through her skin and muscles, but this time, it was far more isolated, only to the wound. Healing just her stab wound, but not the drugs he put into her system.

Jane reached out and tried to grab him, only managing to hit his pocket square and pull out a purple feather.

Gideon motioned with his chin at the vampire behind her as if saying, Do your job . The vampire complied and held her once more.

“Luckily for me,” Gideon’s words trilled off his tongue. “You have a sister with your same Witch abilities—albeit more dormant. And she’s always been far more amenable to me, even when she doesn’t want to be.”

“No. Do not dare—”

“Maybe I’ll seduce her and stick my cock inside her. She seemed so needy tonight. I’m sure she’ll tell me where the mirrors are as she screams my name with pleasure.”

“If you touch her—”

“What are you going to do, Sweetling? You’ll be dead. Are you going to haunt me?”

“I won’t need to haunt you. Nightmare will do that.”

He laughed maniacally. “What fun I can have with my nightmares.”

“You have no idea the horror you’ve just brought upon yourself with this.” Jane’s words began to slur as the drugs hit her system. She didn’t have much time left with her rational mind. “He will come for you.”

“No, he won’t.” Gideon’s smile was a noose wrapping around her neck. “He can’t. He made me, and I ensured he’d never be able to destroy me. It was a part of the deal, sweet Janey.”

“There is more than one way to destroy a person. He might not be able to kill you, but he will destroy you nonetheless.”

“He can try. But I am more powerful than a god. Especially one stuck inside a mirror—even more so now after I kill you.”

Warmth spread through her blood, and glitter rained inside her mind. Bright and fun, like a summer dance. The drugs…

Fuck . Part of her brain tried to hold on to reality.

“Well, Janey, it’s been truly fun knowing you, but I can see you’re fading.” He clutched her chin. “The last thing I want you to know before you die is I am going to make your baby sister cry… in so many ways.”

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. What did surprise 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.