by J.M. Cagle
Daughter of Eden
Copyright 2014 JM Cagle
Other Books in the Daughter of Eden Series
Book Two: Protector of Man
Book Three: Children of the Fallen
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
About The Author
Other Books by This Author
Chapter 1
Joey ran hard through the park, trying to keep her eyes straight ahead, her head focused. Her ear buds were stuck firmly in place, her eyes tight on the path in front of her. The park was crowded, even for the first really warm Saturday morning this spring, but she was determined not to make eye contact. It was only when she made eye contact that the weird things began to happen.
She couldn’t remember when it had started. It seemed like it had always been a part of her reality. But lately it had gotten stronger, weirder. She could see things other people couldn’t. When she made eye contact with a person, it was like their faces slipped, revealing their real identity behind a mask. Sometimes it was little things, little secrets. Others it was dark, things that frightened her so completely that she was convinced she was about to find herself in the state hospital.
Right next to her mother.
An involuntary shudder spread through her body, beginning with her shoulders and making its way down her spine, all the way to her hips, her thighs, her toes. It made her stumble just a little. When she did, she saw a figure dart toward her. A man, not much older than her, with dirty blond hair and blue eyes that seemed to see right through everything he looked at.
She had seen him before.
She picked up her pace. She could feel him behind her, still following. For a week now, she continuously caught glimpses of him out of the corner of her eye—never enough to really see him but enough to give her an impression that he was not like everyone else. She didn’t see that thing with him, that insight, she saw with most people. It was as if there was a wall behind his face.
Not that she could see everyone. There were a few people she could not see. Like her grandmother. She had never been able to see past the familiarity of Dotty’s face. And that math teacher she had senior year. There had also been a few others: Bill, in college, the barista at her favorite coffee shop, and Jackson, her work husband.
But this guy . . . he was different from all of them.
She ran faster, Bruno Mars losing time with her tempo as he unwittingly continued to croon about regrets in her ears. Still she felt watched, felt as though someone was not just looking at her but looking through her. It made her palms sweat almost as much as her dripping forehead.
She didn’t pause as she came to the edge of the park. She stepped off the curb, tugging the ear buds from her ears, and jogged on the edge of the street, dodging speeding cars as she made her way toward her apartment building. Her heart pounded, as much from fear as from exertion, as she unlocked her door and let herself in, leaning against the door even after it was locked.
The apartment was empty, the stale scent of disuse tickling her nostrils. She walked into the living room, glancing around at the sparse furniture and the confined clutter of the work she had brought home with her last night. She still felt that odd sensation of being watched. The hairs at the back of her neck moved in the breeze of the ceiling fan, making the feeling that much more intense. She walked around the room, peeking into the kitchen and the tiny dining alcove before pausing at the door of her bedroom.
The bed was unmade, clothes scattered all over the floor. This was the only room that seemed to be occupied. It was the only room she had bothered to decorate in the three months she had lived here. Moving here had been a difficult decision because it required leaving the only home she had ever known. It also required putting her grandmother in a nursing home. The woman had to be in her eighties, though Dotty never really revealed her true age but had never seemed infirm until four months ago. She fell several times on their small ranch, nearly broke her hip once. It became clear quickly that she was no longer capable of being on her own during the hours of Joey’s workday and long commute. So she moved here to be close to both work and Dotty.
After all these years, it was Joey’s turn to be the caregiver.
Convinced she was in the apartment alone, Joey began peeling off her sweaty workout gear in preparation for a shower. Her eyes fell to the picture on her nightstand, the only childhood pictures she not only kept but cherished. It was of her, Dotty, and her mother. Joey was only three, sitting on the front porch of Dotty’s house between the two women. She was never quite sure what to think of the resemblance that was so obvious between her and her mother. They had the same dark hair, the same bouncing curls, the same complicated hazel eyes. They even had the same smile, not that her mother had smiled much in the twenty years since this picture was taken.
But this, the image in the picture, was a rare treasure. Eden could never stay in one place for long. She had a restless soul—at least that was how Dotty always explained it. Joey suspected her frequent absences had more to do with schizophrenia than a restless soul. This time, however, Eden spent an entire month, even took Joey to her first day of preschool like a proper mother. Joey could remember trips to the ice cream parlor, tickle fights after warm baths, games of hide and seek in the park. And this moment, a quiet moment shared with the last three surviving ladies of the Trevor family. It was monumental in part because it would never happen again.
Eden became a permanent inpatient at the state hospital a month after the picture was taken.
The picture captured all the happiness of that moment. It took some of the sting away from the bloody night three weeks, four nights later that would change all their lives irrevocably.
Joey put the picture down and dropped the last of her clothing as she made her way into the bathroom. The cool spray of the water felt like heaven on her overheated body. She closed her eyes and held her face up to the stream, her thoughts buried in the past. Eden had never been what one could consider a ‘normal’ person. She had always had her quirks, behaviors and beliefs that made her stand out in a crowd. Joey could vaguely recall some of the bedtime stories her mother had told her the few times she bothered to come around. Stories filled with mythical creatures: vampires, werewolves, and demons. She even mentioned angels on occasion, but her opinions of them were a little skewed as compared to the average Bible-thumper.
Eden had been convinced that angels meant to destroy the human race. She insisted they walked among humans, that they created natural disasters, wars, and famine in order to weaken the human spirit. It was only the other creatures, the demons and vampires, that wanted to help the humans to protect them from a disinterested God and vengeful, jealous angels.
Joey shook her head, even now, at the ridiculousness of it all.
Like demons and vampires would work together.
Joey dumped a palm full of shampoo into her hair and lathered, allowing the soap bubbles to run over her face as she scrubbed her nails into her scalp. She had a whole list of things she needed to do today. She hadn’t bought groceries since . . . well, since the day she moved in. And she needed to pay the electric bill, drop off her dry cleaning, and stop by the nursing home for her weekly game of Gin Rummy with Dotty. She also had three reports that needed to be reviewed and submitted to her principal on Monday. No time to luxuriate in a hot shower.
She stepped back to rinse her hair when she was suddenly filled with that sense of dread, that feeling that someone was watching her. She couldn’t open her eyes because of the soap on her face, but she was sure she wa
s no longer alone. She stretched her arms out, feeling all around her for a possible threat. There was nothing there. But still, that feeling persisted.
She turned, intent on rinsing the soap from her face, when she was suddenly hit from behind. Stars exploded behind her eyelids as her body flew forward with the momentum of the blow. She hit the wall just under the shower head. The sound of rushing water drowned out any sound there might have been behind her. She shoved a hand over her face, wiping away as much soap as she could to clear her vision. It didn’t help, since the constantly falling water only diluted and deluged her eyes with more soap.
“What do you want?” she asked in as steady a voice as she could manage.
There was no answer.
Joey reached for the shower door, but something cold and strong grabbed her wrist, twisting her arm behind her back. She cried out as she fell forward, her chest slamming into the wall with a breath-stealing suddenness.
I’m going to be raped, she thought with some shock.
She closed her eyes. She had never imagined this scenario—who would?—but if she had, she would have imagined an incapacitating fear. Instead, her fear evaporated the moment she realized what was happening. Now she felt centered; her thoughts crystal clear. She pushed against the thin wall of the shower, trying to decide how much weight it could take. If she braced her leg against it, maybe she could rear back, knock her attacker off his feet long enough to allow her to escape the shower stall. The door must be open. It was an old door, one of those that made a shuttering pop whenever it was opened. She must have left it open when she got in or she would have heard her attacker enter, even if her head was under water at the time.
That would make it easier to escape. At least, she hoped so.
As she prepared to move, the attacker pushed up against her. He was wearing something rough, something that seemed to prick at her skin like cactus snagging a plastic bag in the wind. And the shape was wrong. Not tall and lithe like a human male but sort of rounded in an odd, shapeless sort of way. It felt like he was wrapping himself around her, trying to absorb her with his body. A cold tingle began at the base of Joey’s spine, moving slowly inward and upward, the coldness moving through her belly into her chest. It was almost like an anesthetic injected into the spine that was slowly spreading its numbing power throughout her body.
Her legs became weak. Even as she screamed in her mind for her left leg to come up, for her foot to press against the wall, she couldn’t move. Her knees began to buckle. The attacker held her just under her chest as the numbness continued to spread. She could feel tingling begin in her fingers. She knew she would be in trouble very soon if she didn’t do something.
Her right arm was still trapped between his body and hers. Her left, however, was free. She reached down with the hopes of levering his arms off of her. But when she reached down to her chest, there was nothing there. She ran her hand all along her belly, her chest, but there was nothing. Yet she could feel the crushing pressure of his body.
“No, no . . .”
Schizophrenia, she knew, was hereditary. She had watched herself constantly for signs that it was beginning all through college. Her mother began showing symptoms in high school. She was sixteen when she became pregnant with Joey, a pregnancy she had always insisted was immaculate. It was six months before then that she began acting out, obsessing with the mythological.
Was Joey going insane? Would she wake in her bed and realize this was just a dream?
How could something intangible hold her so tightly?
She twisted, trying to wrench free, but she couldn’t even move an inch. She pushed backward, but whatever it was, the force holding her would not budge. She cried out in frustration, jerking in two different directions in quick succession in hopes of confusing whomever held her. It was all to no avail.
“Let me go!” she screamed.
Nothing.
The numbness was moving faster. Her fingertips were numb, as was the palm of both hands. She could feel the muscles of her chest freezing up, making each breath she took a struggle. Her knees were no longer holding her, her body actually lifted several inches, her toes dangling above the drain. Her head began to spin, and she knew she was going to lose consciousness.
She gasped, lifting her arm in a last-ditch effort to save herself. She slapped her dead palm against the wall, trying to get some leverage, to push backward. But it was like shoving her hand into a bowl of Jello. Nothing happened. It was futile.
She was going to die.
As darkness began to seep into her vision, she heard the familiar pop of the shower door opening. Her neck was numb now, so she could not turn to see what had caused it. She couldn’t even tell if her attacker was moving, if he was moving her. But then the pressure was gone. She fell to the floor of the shower, unable to move enough to keep the water from pooling near her mouth. She heard noises, heard the sound of glass breaking and heavy thuds slamming against something solid.
And then there were gentle hands on her back, lifting her head just as the blocked drain threatened to drown her.
“Are you okay?” a soft, deep voice asked.
She couldn’t answer. Everything was numb now. Her breathing was just an occasional gasp, like a fish out of water. But then a hand moved down the length of her spine and suddenly sensation returned with a painful prickle like her entire body had gone to sleep and circulation was just beginning to return. And her lungs began to work again. She drew in a deep breath, her head spinning with sudden oxygenation. Those same gentle hands rolled her over, and for a brief second she focused on a face, those pale blue eyes, before she finally succumbed to darkness.
