Edyn (The Essence Project Book 1) Read online

  "Eat," said Jophiel. "You’re going to need your strength."

  I pushed the tray away from me, clamping my lips shut in defiance. Sometimes my stubbornness got the better of me. I knew I needed to eat in order to get my strength back to use my power, but right now I just wanted to do anything I could to piss off Jophiel.

  He sighed. "So wasteful." Shaking his head, he added, "Very well, we’ll do another IV. I want you to mentally prepare yourself for the next week or so, and I do hope you’ll decide to eat something. This week will be the most demanding week of your life. You’re going to have to dig deep within yourself to get through it."

  I didn’t particularly care what he was saying to me. My head was spinning at the thought of Ryker, a whole life, just turning into nothing. An intense hatred washed over me in a way that I had never felt before. I had started truly hating Jophiel the moment his men shot Ryker, but this took it to a whole new level. In my head I could picture myself driving a knife upward into the spot between his chin and his neck, similarly to how Ryker had killed Asher in the Pits with the knife under his ribs. I could almost imagine his hot blood running down my arm.

  Jophiel’s hand banging down on the desk pulled me out of my head and back to his office, and I saw him standing across from me.

  "Are you even listening?" he demanded.

  I glared at him, praying somehow God would just strike him down dead where he was standing.

  "I said, let’s get moving. We have a lot to do today." He waited for me to rise.

  Slowly, I got up from my chair and let my eyes fall to the tray on his desk. I hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a butter knife on it. My hands found the edge of the desk, and I leaned on them with my head down, feigning defeat. As he walked around the edge of the desk, I snuck a glance at him. He was checking his phone, not paying attention to me for just that split second. I grabbed the butter knife and slid it into my pocket as I turned, one smooth motion that went undetected. It wasn’t much, but at least it was something.

  "Looks like Dirk will be arriving in the next few minutes. I’m going to get you set up in the lab, and then I’ll and go meet him." He continued walking towards the door, typing on his phone as he went.

  I gripped the knife in my pocket, my heart hammering in my chest. My palm was sweaty around it, and I wondered if I would even be able to manage to hold onto it.

  You could keep it for yourself, for later.

  But no, I didn’t want that. As much as I wanted to die, I wanted the man responsible for Ryker’s murder to pay for what he did, regardless of what would happen to me. They would probably strip me of my soul and kill me anyway, but at least Ryker’s killer would have to suffer first.

  I wondered for a moment. "So, what are you?"

  He stopped walking and turned to face me abruptly. Shock was written all over his face."What are you talking about?"

  "Easy, I was just wondering whether you’re Quintessent or Insentient yourself."

  His face relaxed. "Oh, right, of course." He turned and continued walking.

  "So? Are you going to answer me?" I asked impatiently.

  "What difference does it make to you?"

  "I’d just like to know is all." I replied, not revealing my intentions. When I took him out, I wanted to make sure he didn't have an Essence. I was going to send this bastard straight into nothing if it was the last thing I ever did.

  He kept walking for a minute, and I was about to ask again when he finally spoke, "I was born with a soul, but it was stolen from me."

  Good.

  It was then that it clicked. "So that’s why you’re so invested in this project, why you feel you have to steal other people's souls. You’re afraid."

  He turned so suddenly and had me pinned to the wall with his forearm across my throat before I could even react. "I," he growled, "am not afraid."

  I smirked, despite the fact that he was cutting off my oxygen. "Yes you are," I choked out. "You’re afraid of dying without a soul."

  He grabbed me by my hair and slammed my head back into the wall. My vision went white, then black for a moment, then returned in pixels.

  "You will watch your mouth, girl," his voice was pure evil, and it terrified me for a moment before I remembered the knife in my pocket.

  His face was just inches from mine, and he was so focused on cutting off my air supply that I seized my opportunity.

  "Let me make your fear a reality."

  His eyes went wide the second before I plunged the knife into his chest. I was aiming for his heart, and was unsure how close I came. He sputtered and staggered backwards. I had clearly missed my target since he was still on his feet. If I’d gotten his heart he would’ve hit the floor instantly. His face had gone completely white, and he ripped out the knife protruding from his chest.

  I watched for a moment in smug satisfaction as he fell to his knees. So desperately, I wanted to watch the life as it left his eyes, but I knew my time was short, and I needed to make a break for it. Turning, I ran down the hallway and found my way to the bank of elevators. I furiously jabbed the button, thinking stupidly that the more I pushed it, the faster the elevator would come. When it finally arrived, I bolted inside before the doors were even open all the way, and hit the close door button. I stared at the numbers for a moment before hitting the G*.

  Hopefully that’s the ground floor.

  The elevator rushed upwards, and an alarm sounded throughout the building. Soon after, the elevator slowed to a stop at my floor. As soon as the doors parted, however, I was met by Dirk and a group of soldiers surrounding a man with a black cloth sack over his head, and handcuffs on his wrists.

  "What the Hell…" Dirk started, drawing his gun.

  I was trapped. I had no weapons, and no place to go.

  Dirk closed the distance between us in two strides and hit me in the head with the butt of his gun. It knocked me to the ground and blurred my vision. The group of soldiers started shouting, and I could see that the man they were escorting was struggling against them with all of his strength.

  My ears were ringing, and my head was pounding. From my vantage point on the ground, I could see Dirk working to subdue the man they had in custody. I grabbed the rail around the elevator car and pulled myself up, trying to get to my feet. My feet made too much noise as I fought for my balance, and Dirk turned back around to me.

  The man was still fighting behind him, but he focused on me for a moment. "You, Edyn," he said, "Are more trouble than you’re worth. I’m sure Jophiel won’t mind if I assist with your experiments for today." He lifted his arm with the gun and aimed it at my right thigh.

  Bang.

  The bullet that had grazed me when I was running from them before was one thing, but this pain was something completely beyond what I ever could have imagined. I felt my femur shatter when the bullet found it, and crumpled to a heap on the floor, unable to support my weight. The agony was blinding me. It was consuming me. There was nothing else. I couldn’t see anything, and I prayed that he had somehow severed an artery and that I would bleed out in only a few moments. I wouldn’t get that lucky, though.

  The last thing I remembered before slipping away, was Ryker’s voice calling out to me. Maybe Jophiel had lied. Maybe he had gone to Heaven after all and was calling me to him on the other side.

  I couldn’t wait to see him again.

  * * *

  I was becoming really sick of being unconscious. Surely that couldn’t be good for my brain. I came to strapped down to that damned chair in the lab again all alone. My leg was on fire and throbbing uncontrollably. I could see that it was bandaged to stop the bleeding, at least. My mouth felt like I had tried to eat a huge spoonful of cinnamon, and I was desperate for some water. I could see a glass sitting next to a pitcher on the table beside me. My hands were restrained though, so I couldn’t reach for it. I would have to wait until someone came into the room.

  I didn’t have to wait long, though. A few moments later, the doors sli
d open, and to my shock and surprise, Jophiel walked gingerly into the room. My heart sank. I hadn’t killed him, and that may have been my only shot.

  He walked directly over to me, and picked up the water glass. For a moment, he just stood with it silently in his hand. Then he tilted his head back and drained it. He set it back on the table and leaned over me.

  "Very smart, Edyn," he said. "I won’t let my guard down around you a second time." He straightened up slowly, and turned his attention to my leg.

  My jeans had been torn where the wound was so that it could be tended to. Carefully, he pulled the medical tape from the edges of the bandage, and removed it. My thigh was screaming. I looked down and expected to see a gaping hole and mangled tissue. Instead, there was a small hole in the skin that was already partially filled in with new flesh.

  "Amazing," he said. "I never would have thought you would heal so fast from a wound as severe as that one. This next week is certainly going to be interesting."

  A chill ran down my spine when he spoke. "What do you mean by that?"

  Grinning, he said, "My dear, we want to study your ability to heal yourself. That means we are going to have to give you things to heal from. I’m going to take great pleasure in watching you feel every bit of it all. You won’t receive any pain medication, partially because I don’t know if it would hinder the healing process at all, and partially because after your little stunt, I want you to suffer."

  He appeared animalistic in that moment.

  My stomach turned.

  "I’ll be back in just a moment," he said and walked through the single door at the far end of the room.

  I can get through this.

  I can fight through the pain, and embrace it.

  I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how bad it really is.

  A moment later, the door opened and Dirk walked in with Jophiel and a younger female lab technician. Her black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she kept her eyes down as she walked. Pushing a cart in front of her, she trailed behind Dirk and Jophiel. Dirk must have said something amusing because Jophiel was laughing. His laughter was like music, but dark and somehow inhuman. Both men looked at me, and there was a demented look in Jophiel’s eyes.

  When they approached the chair, I glanced past them to see the cart the lab technician was pushing. On the top shelf I saw a variety of silver instruments glinting under the lights. There were several knives of varying sizes, two with serrated blades. I saw a scalpel, something that looked like an ice pick, a coil of thick nylon rope, and something with a small metal canister attached.

  "Today," Jophiel said, picking up the ice pick idly. "We’re just going to work with basic physical wounds. Start small, if you will. We’ll worry about chemical reactions and damage later."

  Dirk snickered, and Jophiel smirked at him. "Dirk, will you stand by her head and gag her for me?"

  Grabbing a leather strap off the cart, Dirk turned and fitted it between my teeth. I didn’t make it easy for him, but he had little trouble.

  "Good," Jophiel said. "Bite down on that when you need to. That’s the only luxury I’m giving you to make this more bearable. Although," he thought for a moment, "we may try without it later. I’m intrigued by the idea of you healing your tongue if you bite through it."

  If evil had a face…

  "Shall we?" He turned my arm over under the restraint, and then tightened it so much that I couldn’t even wiggle it.

  I knew my wrist would be bleeding by the end of it from being bound so tightly.

  He held the ice pick up in front of his face, examining the tip. "First we’ll start easy with just this. But then I’d like to compare this wound with one similarly made, although with heat added." Slowly he brought the tip down to the soft tissue in the middle of my forearm.

  He didn’t hesitate as he pressed it into my flesh, breaking through the skin. I cried out into the leather gag, and quickly swallowed as he pushed down harder. Blood was pooling around the ice pick and running in all directions over my pale skin. I turned away as he twisted the pick in further, struggling to hold back a whimper. Silent tears traitorously slid down my face.

  Jophiel moved away from me for a moment, and I turned my head back to look. The ice pick was standing vertically out of my arm, but starting to lean as gravity overpowered the hold my flesh had on it. Jophiel was looking for something on the cart. When he found it, he turned back to me. In his hands was a small, polished steel hammer.

  My eyes widened, and he smiled at the sight. He placed one hand on the handle of the ice pick to straighten it, and then looked at me for a few seconds before bringing the hammer down. I couldn’t stop myself from screaming this time. He hit the ice pick one, two, three more times, and I could feel the tip of it sinking deep in my bone. My heart was racing, and I was gasping for breath through the thick leather between my teeth.

  "Kate, if you would take a few radiographs of this for me please." He stepped aside so that the lab tech could approach me with a small machine.

  From several angles, she took images of my arm, the machine whirring in her hands. After each picture she took, the machine beeped, and a green light on top flashed red for a moment. When she was done, she pulled a card out of the machine and retreated beyond the door again.

  "Dirk, the screen please," Jophiel said.

  With a nod, Dirk walked behind me and came back wheeling a glass rectangle on the stand. He handed a tablet to Jophiel who hit a few buttons on its surface. The glass rectangle lit up, blocking the sight of the wall behind it. He tapped a few more times, and x-rays of my arm popped up on the left side of the screen. He selected the first one, and it showed exactly what I felt, a metal object protruding deeply from the bone. Swiping his finger, he brought another image to the middle. This one was taken from above the ice pick looking down. I could see a spiderweb of fractures radiating from the tip.

  "Good, good," he said, and I couldn’t fathom how this could possibly be good. Turning to me, he asked, "Would you like to see what your leg looked like when we first brought you in here?"

  Curiosity momentarily took over my senses, and I nodded.

  He tapped the screen a few times, and new radiographs appeared on the screen. When he selected one, I gasped, and it made him laugh. "Dirk did quite a number on you," he said.

  The image on the screen was hardly recognizable as bone. In the middle, there was a round metal object, presumably the bullet still in place. Surrounding it though were bone fragments of all sizes. I couldn’t even begin to figure out how something like that was supposed to heal without surgery, although I couldn’t imagine how they would put all those pieces back together anyway.

  "We’ll take more images of your leg in just a bit to look for changes. But for now," he handed the tablet back to Dirk. "I have a few more wounds that I would like to observe." He firmly grasped the ice pick and ripped it from my arm, pulling a scream from me along with it.

  Turning back to the cart, he picked up the device with the canister attached. He clicked a button, and a blue flame sparked to life. His hand holding the ice pick moved towards it until the end was fully engulfed in the flame. I could smell burning blood, my burning blood as it sizzled on the metal. It was a smokey metallic smell. He held it there for a few moments, rotating it slowly, until the metal glowed a bright orange.

  Clicking the lighter off, he walked around the chair to the other side of me. "Now, let’s compare," he said enthusiastically.

  He turned my right arm over like my left and secured it further. Wasting no time so the instrument wouldn’t cool, he plunged it into my good arm. For the first second when it touched my skin, it was agony, but then the heat changed. It radiated from my arm and flooded through me, like a welcome wave. That feeling, however, was short lived as he began hammering the ice pick further into my arm. I looked down and saw that below the blood, my skin had glowed just slightly and was already fading. Jophiel didn’t seem to notice. My abilities were a cruel joke. What w
as the point when they wouldn’t work when I needed them the most?

  "Kate," he called. "Come and take some images of this one please. And bring several doses of adrenaline with you."

  A moment later, Kate reemerged carrying several syringes and the card to the x-ray machine. She set the syringes down on the table and fired up the machine, replacing the card. It only took her a moment to take a few more radiographs of this arm before she removed the card and retreated again behind the door.

  Jophiel brought the new x-rays up on the screen and compared them to the ones from my left arm. "Interesting," he said.

  The images from my right arm were very similar, but there was something that looked like interference with the image. It looked like a milky substance radiating around the wound, atop the network of fractures.

  Jophiel passed the tablet back to Dirk and returned to yank the ice pick out of my arm. "It seems heat does have an extraordinary effect on you. I wonder what fire would do." He turned to Dirk standing near the screen. "Do you recall how to give IV injections, soldier?"

  Dirk nodded without a word.

  "Good, pick up one of those syringes for me. She may or may not pass out from this next test. If she does, give that to her to wake her back up."

  He wasn’t even going to allow me have the peace of blacking out. Reaching for the cart, Jophiel grabbed another leather strap. Grabbing my fingers, he flattened them against the chair and put the strap over the tips, holding my hand open. Then, he grabbed the lighter and clicked it to life.

  Sweat was covering every inch of me from the pain I was already experiencing, but my heart began racing faster at the sight of the flame. I tried to struggle against the restraints, but there was no point.

  He brought the blue flame down to the palm of my hand, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away as I braced myself for the anguish I knew was coming.

  It never did.

  I was expecting my hand to turn red and then black, but it did quite the opposite. The flame bit me initially, but quickly turned back into that flooding warmth, my palm turning quickly from bright red to blazing white. Joph held it there for a moment longer, but nothing else changed.