Page 25 of A Wicked Dance of Obsidian and Light (Echoes of Darkness #1)

I drift in and out of consciousness, completely losing the notion of time. At some point, my eyes fly open at the sound of someone coming down the stairs. It’s the vampire that attacked the woman in the alley and pulled her heart out of her chest. The one with the lanky body and raven hair, wearing the cheap-looking suit. He stalks toward me with an exaggerated lazy gait.

It would be more impressive if it weren’t so obvious that he rehearsed it in the mirror. I bet he saw it in a movie somewhere. Shadows obscure his face, and his shiny oxfords slap the stone floor loudly before he steps closer to me with a bottle of water and a piece of stale bread in his hand.

“You hellseekers like to act so high and mighty. Well, look at you now,” he says with a smug smirk, towering over me.

A muscle thrums in my jaw, and I arch an unimpressed eyebrow at him. “Big words coming from the guy who needed about ten other vampires to immobilize me. Get these shackles off me; let’s fight fair and square and see who comes out alive,” I snap.

He snorts. “You really think that’s going to work on me?” Crouching in front of my bent legs, he uncaps the water bottle and brings it to my mouth.

Even though I feel like I’ve been wandering beneath the blistering desert sun for days, I press my lips in a thin line, then jerk my head to the side. They already drugged me once in the alley, injecting me with God knows what. I can’t risk drinking something that might be spiked.

“You’re not thirsty?” he asks in a bored tone. When I don’t move my head, he sucks on his teeth, puts the cap back on the bottle, and throws it on the floor next to me. He shrugs. “Okay then. Suit yourself. I guess you’re not hungry either.” He discards the piece of bread next to the bottle as he stands, brushes off the lines in his pants, and turns on his heel.

“Wait,” I call out. “Why are you doing this?”

He turns to face me again. Then, he folds his arms in front of his chest. With a mocking tone, he says, “Aw, wouldn’t you like to know.”

“What do you want in exchange for the information?”

He laughs deep in his belly. “You really think you’re in the position to bargain with me?”

“There must be something you want…”

Tilting his head, he flashes his canines and zips through the air until he’s crouching with his nose pressed close to the side of my head, sniffing my blood-soaked hair. A repulsed shudder passes through my body. My fingers itch with the need to punch him, but I need to see how this plays out first. “Fuck. Your blood smells sweeter than any faerie I drank from. Might as well get a taste.”

“I’ll let you bite me if you tell me why you brought me here.”

He snickers. “Do you think I need your approval? I can just take what I want.”

“If you try to take my blood by force, I’m going to put up a hell of a fight. You saw me fighting in the alley. Wouldn’t it be nicer to have a willing participant? I might throw in another favor if you tell me,” I say as seductively as I can.

Ugh. I think I just threw up in my mouth.

A slimy smile spreads on his face. “Deal.”

I bat my eyelashes at him. “Can you tell me first? What if I pass out after you drink from me? I’ve never done this before.”

“Fine. But you’ll suck my cock too.”

Bile surges in my throat, and I bite hard on my tongue as I nod, pooling blood. I’d rather let someone skin me alive with a blunt knife and then pour boiling water on my exposed organs.

“There’s a bounty on your head. Congratulations. You, Iris Harper, are on Hell’s most wanted list,” he whispers in my ear.

My mind spins as soon as I register his words.

Dafuq?

I know I’m a hellseeker, but I’m one of many. It doesn’t make any sense. “Who put a bounty on me?”

He lifts a shoulder nonchalantly. “Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m just the middleman. I deliver you and get the money. Now pay up.”

I need to escape before he manages to hand me over to whatever demon put the bounty on me. “I need to pee first,” I blurt out.

Rolling his eyes, he stands, fishes a set of keys from his pants pocket, and comes closer. “Don’t even think of trying anything,” he fires back before using one of the keys to unlock the shackles around my wrists.

Bringing my hands in front of me, I let out a breath of relief as I start rubbing gently at the raw skin with my fingers.

“Stand up,” he commands.

As I push up, the room spins with me. Taking a deep breath that quickly backfires because my ribs stab me repeatedly in the lungs, I start walking at a snail’s pace.

“Hurry the fuck up, I don’t have all day, and I’m hungry,” he snaps and pushes me from behind.

Pretending to trip on my legs, I wait until he’s close enough and twirl on the balls of my feet, sending my fist flying in a powerful uppercut. The vampire’s head snaps back as he staggers on his feet.

He bares his fangs at me in a snarl. “You stupid bitch!” he bellows, then lunges at me at warp speed. I manage to get another punch in before he grabs me, spins me around, and puts me in a rear headlock. In the next second, he sinks his fangs in the juncture between my neck and shoulder. Blinding pain surges through me as his sharp teeth pierce my skin. He starts gobbling my blood like a leech. I lodge my fingers in the space between his forearm and my neck. Bending my knees at the same time, I move the center of gravity so I can throw him off me.

However, I never get the chance because all of a sudden, he lets me go. I stagger forward, almost face-planting, my movements restricted by the shackles around my ankles. At the last moment, I manage to find my balance and turn around. I’m ready to gouge his eyes out for biting me and drinking my blood. But my movements falter at the look on his face.

Both of his hands are around his throat as if he’s choking on something, his whole face scrunched in horror, his eyes as big as saucers. His veins are turning black as if poisoned blood is circulating through them. “Y-you…y-your blood. What a-are you?” he stammers. Before I can blink, he starts desiccating and disintegrating in front of my eyes until only a pile of dust is left. His clothes fall to the floor with a shuffling sound.

I’m frozen in place, my mouth agape and my heart galloping in my chest. Um, what the hell just happened? I rub my eyes and then blink a few times for good measure. Yup, he’s still toast. Well, I didn’t see that coming.

It takes more than a few minutes for my brain to finally catch up to the fact that this is my opportunity to escape. Dropping to my haunches, I dig into the trousers lying on the floor and get the keys he used earlier, then plant my ass on the cold slab of stone to unlock my shackles. After a few tries, I finally find the right key.

When they snap open, a breath of relief leaves my lungs, and I jump to my feet. The movement jostles my ribs, and my vision blurs at the edges slightly as I hiss in pain. I go to the bucket in the corner to take care of my business before ambling toward the stairs. I climb them carefully, listening to every sound. It’s not that easy, though, with the pulsing war drum in my ears.

Reaching the top of the stairs, I’m faced with a wooden door. It looks ancient. I curl my fingers around the rusty handle before pressing on it carefully. It’s locked. Luckily, I took the keys with me. I lodge one of the keys that looks big enough to fit into the lock and turn it slowly. The door opens with a soft creak, and I slide through the small opening, praying that no one is on the other side. I get out on a narrow hallway lit with sconces. The flickering candlelight casts creepy shadows on the walls. Relief washes over me when it’s clear I’m completely alone, and I close the door at my back.

Tip-toeing, I make my way through the hallway and pause in my tracks at the voices coming through a slightly ajar door on my right. I don’t even breathe as I approach it. The sound spilling from the room is filled with music and raucous laughter, echoing off the stone walls.

As I inch forward, I peek through the small gap. There’s a huge marble tomb at the back of the room. Cobwebs hang from it, dirt and grime thick on its surface. An ancient-looking angel statue is at its back, its wings chipped and looking as dirty and old as the tomb. I have to do a double take because next to it is a man tied to a cross in an x shape, naked and passed out, his skin ashen. Two vampires are feeding from him; the male latched to his neck while the female sucks on his wrist.

Music blasts from a speaker. A group of vampires dances lasciviously to the beat. Around ten more sit around a rickety wooden table in the corner, playing a card game—poker, if I’m not mistaken. They throw insults at each other and sip on an amber liquid in highball glasses.

My hand shoots out on its own accord, wrapping around the door handle. But I drop it when the realization that I can’t save the man twists my stomach into knots. I’m injured, and I have no weapons…I’ll get us both killed. Fuck. The only way I can help him is to escape and come back with reinforcements. I make a silent promise to the man that I’ll be back. Hopefully, it’s not going to be too late.

Clenching my jaw and steeling my resolve, I swallow hard and don’t even breathe as I bridge the gap from one side of the door to the other. A chair scrapes loudly on the stone floor. I freeze. The breath I’ve been holding turns into icicles inside my lungs. Time stretches painfully as a long second passes. Then another. Finally, someone says, “Move. It’s my turn to eat.”

My heart rate slows with a relieved huff as I continue tip-toeing in the dimly lit hallway. It ends in a spiraling set of stairs. Reaching the top, I encounter yet another closed door. This one is not locked, so I turn the handle. Light spills in the dark corridor through the small crack. It reveals the side of what seems to be an ornate altar. Judging by the decaying remnants of pews, the long-forgotten candles melted into grotesque wax sculptures, and the thick layers of dust that cover every surface, this is an abandoned church.

Stained-glass windows once adorned with vibrant depictions of saints and angels are boarded up. A few streaks of light filter through the gaps, casting eerie patterns on the dusty marble floor. Movement catches the corner of my eye. There’s a female vampire doing rounds. It’s the redhead from the alley. I wait for her to turn her back on me to open the door and slide through the crack as quickly as I can.

With my heart thundering in my ears, I duck around the corner and flatten myself to the wall. Moving on the balls of my feet, I crouch and hide behind a Virgin Mary statue. My eyes dart around in search of something I can use as a weapon. Through the small opening in the door, I could barely make out the space, but now I realize it’s more of an abandoned cathedral than a church. A towering, vaulted ceiling soars high above, adorned with once-glorious frescoes, now crumbled and faded by the passing of time.

There’s a jagged piece of wood that I could use as a stake, but it’s right in the middle of the nave, on the marble floor, so to get it, I would be exposing myself. Fuck . A wooden stake impaled into a vampire’s heart is not fatal, but it does put them in a temporary paralysis state until someone takes it out. I have to at least try and get it.

The vampire has now reached the massive wooden door of the entrance, still with her back to me. On my hands and knees, I shuffle to the pews on my right, then flatten myself to the wood. I lift my head over the bench. The vampire is now on my left, in the aisle opposite me, walking toward the altar but still close to the entrance. I duck and continue on my hands and knees on the aisle, using the pews as cover until I reach the center of the cathedral.

It’s now or never.

Sliding in the space between pews, I reach the nave. I peek over the wooden bench for the redhead, but I can’t see her anymore.

What the fuck? Where did she go?

A tsk, tsk, tsk sound from behind makes me whirl around so fast I get whiplash.

“Well, well, what do we have here? If it isn’t the little hellseeker bitch trying to escape.” She’s standing on the other end of the pew, looking at me with a Cheshire cat grin. She puts her fingers in her mouth and whistles like a referee, probably to alert the others. The loud, high-pitched sound bounces off the walls in waves.

My heart rattles against my ribcage, pumping adrenaline through my veins as I stand and launch myself in the air at the same time the vampire lunges at me. Right as my fingers wrap around the jagged piece of wood, she lands on top of me. The impact steals the breath from my lungs. Like a claw, her hand grabs the back of my head. Then her nails bite savagely into my scalp before she smashes my forehead into the marble floor.

Red-hot pain explodes in my nerve endings, and blood shoots out of my nose. My vision dims and blackens at the edges. I lose consciousness for a second, then come to in the next. Biting the inside of my cheek hard, I push through it, and tapping into the hellseeker strength, I send my elbow into her side. She lets go of my head with a sharp curse under her breath. Not wasting any time, I flip onto my back and impale the jagged piece of wood right through her heart. An anger-filled, ear-splitting shriek echoes in the vast space as the color drains from her skin. Her body turns to an unmoving corpse before it falls on top of me. She’s heavier than she looks, and the impact jolts my already battered ribs.

If the other vampires didn’t hear her whistle before, they surely heard the scream. I have to get out of here, now .

With a grunt, I push the redhead off me and jump up, ignoring the pain shooting from my ribs. Pumping my arms, I start running as fast as I can toward the massive wooden door.

C’mon, Iris! You’re so close.

Blurry figures zip through the air, and before I can reach the door, I’m completely surrounded by vampires with no idea where the hell they came from. There are at least thirty of them. I’m running so fast that when I halt, my momentum propels me forward, and I collide with a hard chest, bouncing off it slightly, bones rattling.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

My stomach takes a nosedive when I realize it’s the vampire that looks like a jacked-up professional wrestler.