Page 109 of Empire of Dark

My left arm lifted, cold metal twisting around my left wrist.

I flopped my head to the left, opening my eyes again. I lifted my right hand, pushing at him. “N-n-no. W-what are y-y-you?—”

“Shhhh.” His hand went to my forehead, his thumb rubbing along the skin between my eyebrows. “I’m not going to do anything to you. I’m trying to help you.”

The horrific pain that still throbbed through my head started to dissipate at his touch.

“Wh—what?”

“Shhhh.” The clamp slipped off my left hand, even as his right hand stayed on my head. Healing me. He was healing me.

“I’m going to get you out of here, but I need you able to walk a straight line.” His voice stayed in a low whisper. “I’m just taking away the pain so that can happen.”

“Ly-Lyle.” My head twisted to the right, searching for Lyle.

There. A table a distance away from me.

No sound from him because what sound could possibly represent this? A bloody stump. Head, torso, no arms, no legs. But still breathing. Still breathing for me.

Footsteps. Lots of them clomping along the stones.

“Brother, what are you doing here?”

The man next to me stood straight, looking over my body toward the entrance to the dank cell. His voice took on a hard edge. “What are you hoping to accomplish here, Cletus?”

With a slew of men filing into the cell behind him, Cletus looked from the new man to me. “Ahhh, you’re healing her—excellent. I need her healthy for this. I thought you were here for different purposes.” Glee lifted his voice into a high pitch. “T’was not even fun anymore, but with this, the fun is back. Thank you. You must stay to do this after each session I have with her. You must stay and watch. It is delightful how her body twitches under my command. What I can make it do from her brain.”

Bloody Judas.

The new man was healing me to torture me. Give me hope, then cruelly rip it away. More torture.

My sanity snapped.

In that instant, my arms finally free, I pushed myself upright on the table, my arms lifting as an unholy scream ripped from deep in the bowels of my lungs, my soul. A scream so loud and blinding it filled the space with a blazing orange light that shook the air, shook the stones around me.

On and on and on it poured out of me—all of the pain and torment my body had taken in manifesting in a searing energy that I’d never known.

My scream cut off abruptly, all energy spent, and I slumped back onto the table, unable to move.

An hour passed, maybe two, and the scent of scorched flesh singed my nostrils, prodding me awake.

Yet a strange stillness I didn’t recognize.

I opened my eyes.

Carnage all around me.

The man that had been healing me only to make me suffer. The men following Cletus into the room. Lyle.

All in various states of bones and mangled burnt flesh. Ash.

Lyle was an ash covered lump.

Where he was. No more.

After all he’d suffered—all I’d suffered—he was gone.

My body no longer my own, my mind shutting off, I reached down and freed myself from the shackles around my ankles.

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