A Shade of Vampire 80 A Veil of Dark - Bella Forrest Page 0,11

someone else among your peers comes to their senses and speaks. For us, it’s a matter of patience. For you, death awaits either way. One of you will talk. The real question here is… which one of you wants to do the talking?”

I glanced around, noticing the horror imprinted on the other Darklings’ faces. They couldn’t look away from Corbin’s hold on their companion. The young one’s legs flailed, his windpipe nearly crushed, but still… he resisted.

Twenty minutes went by with a combination of persuasive arguments and savage beatings, but the Darkling held on. There wasn’t much left of him, but I had to admit, his resilience was astounding. His eyes were swollen shut, red blotches spreading across his face, the flesh swelling from the flurry of punches he’d received.

He couldn’t even kneel anymore, leaning back into the Crimson guard’s shins for a bit of support.

“Where is Zoltan Shatal?” Corbin asked. I’d lost count of the number of times he’d asked this question. Yet again, the Darkling refused to speak.

Valaine exhaled sharply and stepped forward. She gripped his shoulder and held him up, effortlessly. There was strength in her I’d sometimes overlooked. This was a sobering reminder of how different she was from all the women I’d come across, especially among my vampire kind. Then again, Valaine was an Aeternae. One step higher on the evolutionary ladder.

Something changed in the Darkling. His expression shifted, a certain realization smoothing his face. Dread skewed his lips. My own blood ran cold, as the temperature seemed to drop.

“You will tell the truth,” Valaine said, her voice lower and deeper.

The air thickened, moisture filling my mouth as I swallowed, almost feeling the Darkling’s own crippling fear as he beheld Valaine. She stared him down. Shivers ran down my spine, and the Darkling quivered.

His lips parted.

“You will tell the truth,” Valaine repeated. “Or you will suffer pain unimaginable by most. I cannot convince you to speak… I am merely stating a fact. You will tell the truth, or you will discover that the pit here has no bottom. It is just endless agony. Darkness. Death that never comes, even though you pray for it.”

“Get her away from me!” the Darkling cried out. “For the love of all that is in this world, get her away from me! Get her away! Make it stop!” His cries turned to screams. Convulsions took over, and he shook as though he’d been electrocuted. “Make… it… stop!”

Valaine dropped him and moved back. The Darkling pulled himself into a fetal position, hands painfully bound behind his back, blood trickling from his cuts and his mouth. “Make it stop… Please, get her away… I’ll talk… I’ll tell you everything… Please…” He kept droning on, while Corbin and I exchanged concerned glances.

Briefly looking at Petra’s disciple, I noticed the glimmer of recognition in her dark blue eyes. She’d seen this before. It prompted me to pay more attention to Corbin—he was Valaine’s father, after all. There it was… the same knowledge, lingering in his smoldering gaze. He, too, had witnessed Valaine’s persuasive power before.

My skin tingled. “That was… impressive,” I managed.

“Well done, my dear daughter,” Corbin said, his voice low and flat.

Valaine sighed deeply. “Let’s hope it gets us something.”

“What did you do, exactly?” I asked, unwilling to let this pass. It wasn’t the first time that I found myself equally fascinated and terrified by her abilities, but this certainly took the cake. Clearly, Valaine had a special ability that set her ever so slightly apart from the other Aeternae. I’d seen her in beast-mode. I’d witnessed her talent in casting mazir magic. But this… this was something else entirely.

“I’m not sure,” Valaine murmured. “It’s just something I do to get the truth out of someone when nothing else works. It’s a little hard to describe.”

“Valaine is rare but not the only one. There were other Aeternae with her gift of persuasion,” Petra’s disciple said, a faint smile lingering on her oval face. “The energy inside her… it resonates with the mazir and it produces this effect. I have seen it before. Unfortunately, Valaine is the only Persuasive left—that’s what we used to call them. The last one I knew personally died before Valaine was born.”

“So, it’s a rarity among the Aeternae,” I concluded. It sounded a lot like mind-bending—but, then again, not really. Mind-bending of the Mara variety was basically extremely powerful hypnosis. Valaine’s skill was, as the disciple had called it, more along the lines of literal persuasion. She put the