Page 1 of A Wicked Dance of Obsidian and Light (Echoes of Darkness #1)
“A woman was found dead in an alley in Ashville’s Raven District. It happened early this morning. A sanitation worker discovered the unidentified woman’s body behind a dumpster in the back alley of Ice Club. Now, a homicide investigation is underway. Theresa, our reporter, is outside the medical examiner’s office with new information. She also spoke to the early commuters who unfortunately saw the woman’s dead body before and after police arrived.
“That’s right, Nate and Andrea. The unidentified white woman, who is believed to be in her early twenties, was drugged and sexually assaulted before the attacker strangled her to death. But, the gruesome detail that shocked the witnesses was the message ‘demon whore’ carved onto the woman’s naked chest—”
“Ugh. What the fuck is wrong with people?” Samantha, my best friend, asks while shutting off the TV, indignation lacing her words. She’s propped against the mountain of decorative pillows on my bed, her legs crossed in front of her, sipping on a glass of white wine.
“That’s a weird thing to carve onto someone’s body,” I mumble pensively and pause with my hand on my closet door, then turn around to face Sam. “Isn’t this like the third woman found this year in a back alley with the same message carved onto their body? Could a human have found out about the presence of demons and gone crazy? Or maybe it was one of those overzealous religious fre—”
“Nope, I’m not doing this right now,” Sam interrupts me with a harrumph and points her eyes to the ceiling as if asking for divine intervention. “I already had the day from Hell with the flower deliveries being delayed, and I can’t talk about depressing shit.” She lets out an aggravated exhale and flits her gaze to me, her demeanor doing a one-eighty. “Soooo…do you think your secret admirer will send you a bouquet of flowers this year, too?” She waggles her eyebrows as she takes a sip of wine. “I bet he’s hot.”
“We don’t know if it’s a man, Sam. You bring me flowers all the time,” I shoot back while rummaging for the hellseeker gear in my closet. I take it out, pull the pants on, zip them up, and reach for the reinforced corset. Like leather, the gear makes the wearer feel nothing short of a badass, but luckily, it’s made out of sanctifiber and sturdy enough to withstand a demon fight. It also doesn’t creak with every step you take and doesn’t give you swamp ass when you run after a demon because, unlike leather, it’s actually breathable.
She rolls her mossy green eyes, tucking a fiery copper strand of hair behind her ear. “That’s because I own a flower boutique, you dumbass. Of course I bring you flowers all the time. C’mon, Iris…it has to be a man.”
“Man or no man, I honestly don’t care. I can’t wait to taste that chocolate again.” I sigh giddily, remembering the explosion of flavor on my tongue. Every single year on my birthday, without fault, ever since I woke up from the accident, someone has been sending me a big bouquet of irises and a box of black cherries soaked in liquor and dipped in the most decadent chocolate. They are the most delicious things I have ever tasted, and to say I’m obsessed with them would be an understatement. I could almost orgasm just by having a taste. I don’t even let Sam have more than one.
Opening the door to the bathroom, I step in front of the sink and look in the round vintage mirror while I start taking my makeup off. There’s only half an hour left before I have to go out on my shift, and wearing a full face of makeup while hunting demons doesn’t go hand in hand, especially if some of the disgusting tar-like blood gets on my face. I hate it when that happens.
A hellseeker shift usually involves going out at around ten p.m. and scouring for demons in the area of the city I am assigned that week until around four a.m., unless Grayson calls a meeting at the compound and sends me on a mission.
Sam follows me and props her hip in the door frame. “Speaking of your birthday. I have tomorrow all planned.” She takes a hearty sip from her almost empty glass.
I throw her a sidelong glance. “Can we just do something quiet at home?”
She folds her arms in front of her chest and pouts. “Yeah, not happening. It’s your twenty-third birthday, not your sixtieth. You desperately need to have some fun and let loose a little. There’s this new club that opened a month ago in the Raven district. It’s called Sin. It’s super exclusivist. The waiting list is like six months or something like that. I told you about Alex, right? He’s a bodyguard there and will get us in. I already told him we’re going.”
“It’s my birthday; don’t I have a say in it?” I grumble while splashing some water onto my face.
Sam stomps her foot, pointing an angry finger in my direction. “I swear to Hecate, Iris. If we don’t go out tomorrow night, I’m going to hex you to grow corpse flowers in your vagina, and cooties to go with them. When’s the last time you went out with me? I fucking miss you. I want us to have some fun together like we used to. You take your damn job way too seriously.”
My chest constricts and I saw my lip between my teeth, guilt washing over me at her words. Sam is right; I have been neglecting her lately. I scrunch my eyebrows, trying to think of the last time we went clubbing together or even went out, but I come out with nothing but demons.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, biatch. We’re going to go out tomorrow night whether you like it or not,” she declares, her full lips setting into a thin line, a glimmer in her eyes that promises to make good on her hex. I’m not afraid she’s going to actually hex me. She only means it when she wants to strongarm me into doing her a favor or when I royally piss her off. There was this one time a few years back when, after a nasty fight, I had moss growing on my armpits for an entire week until I apologized.
“Fine, we’ll go,” I concede. “But you do understand I have to take my job seriously, right? Being a hellseeker is not something I can take lightly, Sam—”
“We’re going to have so much fun!” she screams enthusiastically, jumping up and down on the balls of her feet until she reaches me. Then, she throws her arms around my neck, enveloping me in the heady smell of wisteria and jasmine that always clings to her skin.
A smile tugs at the corners of my lips as I hug her back. “Will you braid my hair? You do a far better job than I do.”
She disentangles herself from me. “Sure.”
We walk out of the bathroom into the small hallway, its walls full of framed pictures that remind me of every moment since I woke up from my accident, and we make our way to the living room.
The cyan couch is the first thing you see as you enter the eclectic one-bedroom apartment. There’s a small, wooden coffee table in front of it. An open-spaced kitchen is to the right, with cream-colored French-style counters and copper accents, the fridge the same color as the couch.
A table that sits a maximum of four people is placed in the middle of the kitchen, and potted plants are scattered all throughout the apartment, courtesy of Samantha. But most of them sit on the floor, near the white arched windows. I love those arched windows to death, and aside from the cheap price, a steal really, those windows were one of the main reasons I decided to buy the apartment. To the left of the entrance is the hallway, the bathroom door in the middle of the left wall, and at the end of the hallway is my bedroom.
Samantha was horrified when I first told her that I bought it and was going to move in. The peeling on the depressing yellow wallpaper-covered walls, and the dirty floors that had holes in them didn’t deter me. I’ve wanted to own a place that was my own for so long, and two years ago, I finally moved out of my aunt’s house. It was a lot of hard work, and Sam helped me renovate it. I bought new furniture, and we painted the walls. It was the only time I had used some of the money I inherited from my mother’s death.
Sam places the empty glass of wine in the sink and saunters toward the couch, sitting down with feline grace. As I pass the small wooden coffee table, my phone vibrates with an incoming text. I take it and plop down on the floor between Sam’s legs, resting my back on the couch so she can start French braiding my hair. I unlock the screen and tap on the text.
Grayson: Covetorax demons in the city. Track and kil l them.
“Who is it?” Sam asks and peeks down at the screen.
“Grayson. He’s sending me on a mission,” I respond.
“Isn’t he like a hundred years old or something? Does he even know how to text?”
I chuckle at her question, but she’s kind of right. “Honestly, he’s never texted me before and especially not for a mission,” I muse. As I said, when sending us on a mission, the head of the Ashville Order usually summons a meeting at the compound or calls to personally notify us about it, and that’s pretty rare, too. He usually assigns me missions with a higher level of difficulty, also, like hunting down draconic ravengers, souldrakes, or ghouls. These are the most dangerous demons that manage to slip through the cracks in the veil separating our worlds.
Covetorax demons are more suited for hellseekers who just finished their training at eighteen, since they’re pretty easy to kill. I don’t look too much into it, though; at the end of the day, a mission is still a mission, and it’s my duty to fulfill any job the Order gives me.
“Ouch!” I exclaim when Sam pulls too hard on a hair strand.
“Shush! You wanted me to do your hair, remember? Stop complaining,” she scolds me. “Anyway…maybe tomorrow night you’ll finally lose your virginity. Find a hot guy at the club, bring him home, fuck his brains out.”
Pursing my lips, I throw her an annoyed look over my shoulder. “I don’t even know what to say to that, Sam.”
“You don’t have to bring him home. Just fuck him in the bathroom, get it over with.”
I deadpan, “If I had a penny for every time you told me I should lose my virginity since we’ve met, I would be filthy rich by now.”
“Iris, you’re almost twenty-three years old, and you haven’t ever had sex. You’re wasting that body and those stripper tits of yours. You can’t keep waiting for Noah to come back. It’s been five years.” She exhales loudly as though the solitary state of my vagina aggravates her. “Do you have a hair tie?”
My jaw locks with anger, and the crippling sadness that hung to me like a black fog for an entire year after he left threatens to swallow me whole at the mere mention of Noah’s name. As much as I put up a strong front, him ghosting me still hurts like a bitch. “I’m not waiting for him to come back, Sam,” I say through clenched teeth and slide the hair tie I always wear off my wrist, handing it to her.
“Then prove it. Move on. He ghosted you five years ago, and you’re still living in the past…” She finishes my braid and secures it.
“No, I’m not. Are you done?” I bite back, harsher than I intended and totally proving her point. Noah is a very sensitive subject, even after all these years.
Sam sighs and hugs me from behind. “I’m sorry, okay? You know I love you. I just want to see you happy.” She plants a kiss on the side of my head and lets me go.
Pushing myself up from my sitting position on the floor, I stride to the entryway table where all my weapons are scattered. “I’m happy, Sam, truly. I have you, my aunt, and my job. I don’t need anything more,” I say as I place the whip in its holster at my belt and then position the rest of the weapons on my body. Luckily, hellseeker weapons are invisible to the human eye, otherwise I would surely give someone a heart attack or get arrested as soon as I stepped foot on the street.
Sam stands from the couch, takes her designer bag from the kitchen table, and joins me at the door. We both slide our shoes on at the same time, Sam her stilettoes and me my beloved, over-the-knee Dr. Martens combat boots. We get out of the apartment and descend the stairs, Sam’s heels making clicking sounds that echo loudly in the stairwell.
“Call me when you wake up?” Sam asks as she closes the front door of the building at her back.
“Yup,” I respond, popping the p .
“’Kay. I’ll come over and doll you up.” She hugs me quickly. “See you tomorrow. Love you,” she says over her shoulder, blows me a kiss, and starts walking toward her car.
“Love you too,” I shoot back and take a deep, cleansing breath, clearing my mind of the Noah fog and everything else. I have some covetorax demons to hunt down.