Gem tasted blood as she bit down on her tongue and the inside of her cheek. The coppery taste of her own blood made her want to throw up but she refused to scream. She would not give this woman satisfaction! She was sitting in a wooden kitchen chair, her hands tied behind her back and her legs tied to the legs of the chair. Blood dripped from her arms onto the floor where the woman sliced at her forearms and biceps. Drops of blood dripped onto her cheeks from the strands of hair that was plastered to her forehead. She wasn’t sure where those came from. Pain radiated through her whole body, and she’d lost count of the places that the woman had cut or burned. She moved so fast that Gem’s vampire body hardly had time to heal in between the rounds of torture. On top of that, she’d not fed for
