Chapter 1: My Porch is Not a Lost and Found

Chapter 1: My Porch is Not a Lost and Found

The reek of ozone, cheap incense, and microwaved ghoul clung to my leather jacket like a desperate ghost. It was the signature perfume of “amateur hour,” and this particular wannabe necromancer had been deep in his apprenticeship. I kicked a stray femur back into the chalk circle, the bone clattering with a hollow finality.

“The warding circle is broken, the summoning sigil is disrupted, and your undead ‘minion’ is back to being just a collection of spare parts,” I grunted, holstering my silver-etched revolver. PEACEMAKER felt heavy, its familiar weight a cold comfort against my hip. “That’ll be five hundred sols. Cash.”

My client, a twitchy university student named Timmy with more ambition than sense, paled under the flickering emergency lights of his dorm basement. “F-five hundred? But you were only here for ten minutes!”

I gave him my best tired, dead-eyed stare. The one that said I’d seen things that would make a demon therapist quit. “You’re paying for the expertise, kid, not the time. You’re also paying for my silence, because the Enforcers would love to hear about unregistered arcane rituals on university property. Consider it a hazard fee.”

He fumbled in his pockets, producing a wad of crumpled bills that smelled faintly of desperation and ramen noodles. I counted it, pocketed it, and turned to leave without another word. The money wouldn't even cover last month's rent, but it was a start. All I wanted now was to get back to my apartment, pour a three-finger glass of whatever rotgut whiskey I had left, and forget that some people thought raising the dead was a viable hobby.

The rain was coming down in sheets, turning the neon glow of Neo-Veridia into a soupy, watercolour mess. The city was a monster of chrome and gargoyles, where Fae-run noodle bars sat next to vampire speakeasies, and troll bouncers checked IDs with a bored grunt. I pulled up the collar of my jacket, the enchanted leather shedding the downpour, and trudged through the slick streets of the Warrens, my home turf. It wasn't pretty, but it was mine.

My apartment was on the third floor of a crumbling brick tenement, tucked away above a grimy pawn shop. The fire escape that served as my staircase groaned under my weight. I was already tasting the burn of the whiskey when I saw her.

There was someone huddled on my porch. My hand went instantly to PEACEMAKER’s grip. My first thought was a junkie looking for a dry place to nod off. But as I got closer, the flickering light from the street below revealed details that were all wrong.

She was young, probably mid-twenties, with hair as white as bone and clothes that looked like they’d been through a shredder. But it was the tattoos that stopped me cold. Intricate blue runes snaked across every inch of visible skin—her arms, her neck, even her face. They weren't ink. They glowed with a soft, internal light, shifting and pulsing like a captured constellation.

And she was clutching something to her chest. A perfect cube of what looked like polished obsidian, about the size of a shoebox. It didn't reflect the neon; it seemed to drink the light, and I could feel a low thrumming from it even from ten feet away, a vibration that resonated deep in my teeth.

She looked up as I approached, her eyes wide with a terror so profound it was almost animalistic. “Please,” she whispered, her voice a ragged breath. “You have to help me.”

I let out a long, weary sigh. “Look, lady, you’ve got the wrong address. The charity shelter is three blocks down.”

My desire for a quiet night was evaporating faster than a vampire in sunlight.

“No,” she insisted, scrambling to her feet. The obsidian cube seemed to pulse brighter. “They told me to find the Slayer. They said you could protect it.”

That word. Slayer. Not many people knew it, and the ones who did knew not to use it lightly. Before I could ask who "they" were, a switch flipped behind my eyes. My Slayer’s Sight flared to life, a curse and a blessing I was born with. The world dissolved into a tapestry of auras. My own was a gritty, smoky grey. The girl in front of me shone with a brilliant, chaotic blue, a wild storm of ancient magic. And the cube… the cube was a black hole, a void in the spectrum of magic that sucked in all the light around it.

It was the other auras that made the hair on my arms stand up.

Three of them. Climbing the fire escape with unnatural silence. They were a sickly, dead-violet colour, the kind of aura I associated with things that had never drawn a breath. No heat, no life, just cold, predatory intent.

“Get inside,” I snarled, shoving the woman towards my apartment door.

She stumbled, fumbling with the cube. “Who—”

“Trouble. Now move!”

I kicked the door open and pushed her through, turning back just as the first figure vaulted over the railing. It was clad head-to-toe in grey, featureless robes, its face hidden by a deep cowl. It moved with a liquid grace that wasn’t human, a short, cruel-looking blade clutched in its hand.

There was no negotiation. No posturing. It lunged.

PEACEMAKER was in my hand before I’d even fully processed the thought. The hand cannon roared, the sound deafening in the narrow confines of the porch. The silver-etched bullet, packed with a consecrated iron core, struck the assassin in the chest.

There was no blood. The creature just… stopped. The violet aura flickered violently, and then the whole form dissolved into a cascade of fine grey dust, which the rain immediately began to wash away.

Two more vaulted onto the porch, flanking me. They moved in perfect, unnerving synchronicity. My Slayer’s Sight screamed warnings, showing me the weak points in their non-existent anatomy. I fired again, aiming for a knee, dropping one to the ground before putting a second round through its cowled head. It disintegrated just like the first.

The third one was on me. It was impossibly fast. The blade, glowing with that same violet energy, sliced through the air where my throat had been a split-second before. I threw myself back, stumbling into my own doorway. The woman—Elara, I’d learn later—cried out from behind me.

I raised PEACEMAKER for a final shot, but the assassin was too close, batting the gun aside with its forearm. The blade swung in a deadly arc towards my chest.

Suddenly, a brilliant flash of blue light erupted from the doorway. The runes on the woman’s skin blazed like supernovas. A shimmering, translucent barrier of geometric patterns snapped into existence between me and the assassin. The violet blade hit the shield with a screech of tortured metal and was thrown back.

The assassin was momentarily stunned by the unexpected defence. It was all the opening I needed. I slammed the heavy butt of my revolver into the side of its head, then followed up with a brutal kick to its chest, sending it stumbling back into the rain. I didn't give it a chance to recover. I fired my last shot, and the third pile of dust joined its brethren, swirling into the grimy puddles on my porch.

Silence fell, broken only by the hiss of the rain and my own ragged breathing. The air smelled of cordite, ozone, and wet dust.

I turned, leaning against the doorframe, and stared at the woman. She was huddled against the wall, clutching the obsidian cube so tightly her knuckles were white. The glowing runes on her skin were slowly dimming back to a soft pulse. Her wide, terrified eyes were fixed on the spot where the last assassin had vanished.

I looked from her to the dissolving piles of dust on my porch, then back to her. My hopes for a quiet night with a bottle of cheap whiskey were now as gone as the robed freaks. This wasn't just another Tuesday. This was the kind of trouble that got people erased.

“Okay,” I said, the word coming out as a low growl. I slammed the door shut, locking three deadbolts with practiced snaps. “My porch is not a lost and found for damsels in distress, and my welcome mat isn’t a graveyard. You’re going to sit down, and you’re going to tell me exactly what the hell you’ve brought to my door.”