Before Darkness There is Light

1. The target

*WARNING*: This chapter contains rude language, alcohol, clubs and drug usage.

Downing my cranberry vodka, I slid off the bar stool and seductively made my way over to the dance floor, swaying my hips left and right. Predatory gazes from all the men in the club made me giddy with power, as I threw my hands into the air and slowly let them travel down my neck and torso, swaying my hips in time to the music.

Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of good looking girls here tonight, but they were working the wrong way. They were practically throwing themselves at the hungry men, begging for attention. What men really needed is a challenge and I was giving them that.

You see, I wasn't your typical, ordinary, single girl looking for a good time at a fancy club and losing myself in alcohol. Oh, no. I was a demon. Yes, that's right. I was a demon from the pits of hell. Literally. And now you are wondering why the hell am I a demon? Long story short, I led a very bad life (smoking, drinking, drugs, and all that kind of stuff, you got me?) before I died and that's why I ended up in hell.

Yes, you head me right. I died. Well, murdered, actually. After my killer couldn't be found, my case was closed and left unsolved. So, one minute I was hitting the pavement because of a clean shot right through my head, and the next I was in some room that oddly looked like my father's study. But instead of my father being seated in his chair, I was greeted with an old man, somewhere in his eighties, in a painfully white suit and hair the matching color.

I stopped dancing and ran over to the bathrooms located on the dark side of the club. Whenever I thought of that night, it made me sick all over.

"Stop thinking about it, stop thinking about it." I willed myself. It was all useless. I threw myself into the cubicle, heaved up what was left in my stomach into the toilet and, finishing, closed the lid and sat on it, shaking. My mind whirled me back to that dreadful night.

The old man sat calmly in my father's chair. He beckoned me over with his finger and I hesitantly made my way over to him and sat in the very familiar leather chair.

"Am I dead?" I remember myself asking this white man.

"Yes, but not quite." His cryptic reply made me narrow my eyes and look around the room.

"Please fill out your application." He said, returning my attention.

Not touching the paper, I looked back at the man who was gazing at me silently. "What kind of fucking application? Where the fuck am I and who are you? If this is some kind of sick reality show, you can stop rolling it now and let me go." With that, I got up from the chair but was pushed right back with some invisible force. "What the fuck was that?" I breathed, looking at the man, who hasn't moved and regarded me with cool interest.

"This is not funny anymore, old man. Let me go right now. I have to be at a very important meeting soon, so you best not hold me back or I'll tell my father and God knows what will happen to you then."

"Actually, He does know what will happen to me. As for this important meeting you're so anxious to get too, can I take a safe guess and tell you that that meeting will take place in a trashy home with booze, drugs and boys?"

I started shaking with fear but didn't let his last words slip out from my mind, "Booze, old man? You know those kind of words?"