Page 6 of A Wicked Dance of Obsidian and Light (Echoes of Darkness #1)

Taking a few deep breaths in through my nose and expelling them through my mouth, I try to calm down. Obviously, fighting my way out didn’t do me any good, so I have to take this shower, listen to what he has to say, and leave.

Switching the water from cold to hot, I take off my soaked panties, throwing them in the corner of the walk-in shower. Is he going to let me leave just like that? He did save my life, and aside from the fact that he stopped all of my attempts to hit him, he only restrained me without retaliating. Not even a hair on my head is harmed. I took a pretty bad blow to my ego, though, because it was so freakin’ easy for him to immobilize me. He acted like I was an annoying insect, not a badass hellseeker.

I’ll have to call Grayson and tell him what happened.

Shit.

How in the world am I going to explain this to him? Maybe I should tell him in person. Closing my eyes under the spray of hot water and massaging my hair with the heavenly-scented shampoo I found on the shelf, I imagine how the conversation would go.

“Um…so Grayson, you know…the mission you gave me on Friday night to kill those covetorax demons? Yeah, I did kill them in the end, after I found out they tricked me and turned out to be draconic ravengers. Anyway, after I killed them, all of a sudden, the sky tore open, and very powerful shadow-like demons attacked me in the woods, and I almost died. Hold on, though, because the story gets even better. An Elite demon saved me. I know, funny, right? His name is Kaiden Black…yeah, the Kaiden Black. I also tried to dry fuck him against the wall like a cat in heat. Apparently, tattoos and rugged man looks are totally my kryptonite because I can’t seem to think straight when he is near or touching me.”

Just thinking again about how his body felt against mine makes me weak in the knees. I start banging my forehead on the glass of the walk-in shower. I’m a shameless hussy and didn’t even know it until this fucked up day. How I could act like that with someone I just met is beyond me—a demon on top of everything?

And you wanted him to kiss you, Iris. You almost begged him.

Oh, shut up!

I’m a twenty-three-year-old virgin, and I haven’t been interested in a guy long enough to lose my virginity until now. I thought the pink vibrator sitting in my nightstand drawer at home was enough to satisfy me, but all that went out the window five minutes into meeting a sexy Elite demon.

A demon Iris, a fucking demon.

I just wanted to go home after killing those draconic ravengers, stuff my face with a bowl of delicious carbonara, eat my weight in ice cream, and veg out on the couch. Was that too much to ask? Can’t a girl celebrate her birthday in peace?

Stepping out of the shower, I dry my body with a cloudlike, fluffy white towel that was hanging on a hook. Ugh , even his towels are perfect. I didn’t get to appreciate the bathroom until this moment since Kaiden brought me in like a sack of potatoes, and I was too angry to take in my surroundings. I was also hanging upside down, so there’s that.

The room is spacious, almost bigger than my apartment. You can fit around ten people in the walk-in shower, and they still wouldn’t touch each other. To my right, a golden chandelier hangs above a Victorian claw foot bathtub with beautiful golden accents, and I want to move in it and never leave. I have always wanted a claw foot bathtub like this one, but the bathroom in my small apartment looks like a matchbox next to Kaiden’s.

I could afford a more luxurious apartment with the money I inherited after my mother’s death. It feels wrong, though, to use that money as if I’m happy she’s dead. I won’t touch it unless it’s an emergency. The salary I get from the Order is enough to live a comfortable life.

The bathroom counters to my left and the wall behind are black, made out of marble, two oval-shaped sinks on top with golden faucets, and a huge, gilded mirror hanging from the wall above the counters. Judging by how luxurious everything looks, I don’t think that’s paint. The toilet is in another room, separated by a door. Jeez, talk about money . Of course he’s filthy rich, being the head of the Obsidian Conclave.

Turning to the sink closest to me, I rest my hands on its sides while looking at my reflection in the mirror. My skin is paler than usual, my eyes bloodshot, the red splotchy veins making the weird colors of my irises pop even more. I was born with a rare case of heterochromia, and ever since I could remember, people have always assumed I’m wearing contact lenses. They never believe me when I tell them the cerulean pale irises outlined by two violet rings are real.

Dark circles surround them, and I look like I haven’t slept in weeks…I guess brushing hands with death will do that to you. I rake my hand through the freshly washed ebony hair that sticks limply to my scalp, a stark contrast against my milk-colored skin.

I’m glad I don’t usually wear any makeup when I go out hunting. I bet I would have looked like a hot mess right now, with mascara running down my face and patches of foundation everywhere. Just the thought of sleeping with a full face of makeup makes my skin crawl.

Lowering my fingers to the center of my chest, I roll the pendant that’s resting there between the tips of my fingers. I wonder how the necklace survived the umbra attack since the onyx stone I had in the choker around my neck exploded. The golden pendant hangs from a delicate chain, and it’s shaped like angel wings with a round amethyst gemstone in the middle. The stone is the same color as the rings of violet surrounding the blue of my irises. It’s intricate and unique, and it’s the only tangible thing I have left from my life when my mother was still alive.

The hollowness I feel inside my chest like a gaping wound threatens to swallow me whole and take me under. It’s an empty space I filled with sadness and frustration at myself and at my weak mind over the passing years for not being able to remember her…or to even recognize myself. Thoughts about my lost past will come and go at different times of day, sometimes making me sick with how much I miss it, like a phantom limb, carrying its weight at all times. I snap my eyes shut, my very first memory after the accident assaulting my brain.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The blinding lights burn through my retinas, intensifying the pounding in the back of my head tenfold. My throat is raw, like I swallowed a million razor blades as the harsh antiseptic smell crawls up my nose. Pain. So much pain. Everywhere. Radiating from my leg all over my body. A moan breaks loose through my lips as I unsuccessfully try to move my fingers. It feels like I’m entirely encased in cement. So heavy. So hard to break through. If only I could rub my eyes a little. Make the image clearer.

The hazy fog of blurriness finally lifts from my eyes after what feels like an eternity, but I only see white. A white ceiling. A dozen little beeps and dripping sounds. Where am I? I’m lying on my back and have something attached to my right hand. I move my eyes to see what it is with the speed of a snail. A big needle protrudes from my wrist, and it’s attached to an IV drip. Am I in a hospital?

“Iris, can you hear me?” a voice I don’t recognize breaks through my lethargic thoughts.

Huh? Who is Iris?

I sluggishly turn my head to the left and realize that I’m not alone in the room. A slim, tall, brunette woman with kind hazel eyes in a white coat is talking to me.

“Iris, can you hear me?” she repeats. “Blink if you can hear me, please.”

I blink and look at her, confusion taking over my foggy mind. Iris? Is that my name? A sinking feeling of desperation unfurls in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know who I am. How did I get here? There’s something I need to remember. It’s important. My body shakes with the mental effort. I have to remember. I have to.

“You were in a car accident. You are now in the ICU at the Heartland General Hospital. You’ve been in a coma for two weeks—”

What?

No. No. No.

That’s impossible.

The doctor keeps talking, but her voice drowns in the jumbling thoughts inside my head. How can I not remember that I was in a car accident? I can’t even remember my name.

“…you are the only survivor of the accident. I’m sorry to say this, but your mother passed away. The injuries she endured were too severe.”

My heart rattles hard against my ribs as panic seizes my chest, folding my lungs in two. I’m surprised my ribs are not cracking under the pressure with how rapidly my heart is beating. Loud beeping sounds invade the room, their echoes bouncing off the walls.

“No! No! No!” I repeat in a broken whisper.

“Tachycardia! She’s having a panic attack. I need a sedative stat!”

As the gaping wound in my chest expands to a bottomless pit, tiredness seeps into my bones, pulling me under. Blankness takes over my eyes, and I wish I would stay in the void and never wake up.

Unfortunately, I did wake up after a few hours. Despair took over every little cell of my being when the doctors told me again what happened…that my mother was dead, and I told them I didn’t remember anything, that I couldn’t even remember my name or how I looked.

They held up a mirror to my face, and the stranger staring back at me with lifeless, strange-colored eyes, reflecting the empty soul that lay beneath, told me silently that it would have been easier if I were dead, too. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t remember significant details about my life, the void consuming me, my thoughts, my being. I was there when she died. I probably watched her take her last breath.

Strangely, I remembered current events like who the president was or the Pythagorean theorem, but nothing personal. The doctors said my mind was too shattered by what happened, and it protected itself from the trauma by not letting me remember the physical and emotional pain.

Eight years ago, we drove our car into a canyon. It left me with multiple internal injuries, scrapes, and cuts all over my body, a tibia-fibula fracture on my right leg, the bones sticking out of the skin on the side of my knee. My mother was found dead at the scene. Of course, the official cover-up version was that she died on the spot because of her injuries. The Order and I knew the truth, though. At the bottom of the canyon, a demon was waiting for us. The demon killed her, and it almost killed me too.

I found out the truth from my Aunt Josephine—the only family I have left—when she came for me at the hospital. Of course, there’s also my father, a human. My mother fell in love with a man, left the Order for him, and ran away, leaving everything behind and cutting ties with everyone, even her sister. No one knows who he is; my birth certificate holds only my mother’s name. If not for my aunt and the Order, I don’t think I would be a sane person right now. I had to stay in a mental facility owned by the Order for almost a year until the doctors cleared me to leave.

A year of therapy and group sessions did nothing for my memory loss. It only slightly helped me crawl out of the pit of despair my deep depression threw me into. The doctors told me that my memory might come back one day or possibly never would.

Eventually, I had to make peace with it. At least, that’s what I told everyone. I never did, though. The doubt and bitterness scraped with sharp claws at my heart’s walls until there was nothing left behind but rage and a taste for revenge that is never sated, no matter how many demons I kill.

How could I forget my rage, the very reason I am able to face the world every day? After all, that’s why I worked so hard on becoming a hellseeker, to avenge my mother’s death. To find the demon that killed her and to prevent others from having the same fate as her.

“You have to remember who you are, Iris! What the demons did to you and your mother. Everything they took from you,” I tell my reflection while clenching the sides of the sink, my fingers white from the pressure, and steeling my resolve further that I have to get out of here and forget all about Kaiden Black and his sinful body.