From the Ashes

prologue

Drip, drip, drop.....

I'd like to say that was water dripping to the disney song, but my life isn't some disney story really, I was never the maiden sitting waiting for her man to save the day or even those brave ones that said a big fuck you to fate and went their own way.

I was just the normal young girl that outgrew the fairytales in life and then saw too much for anyone to not be fucked up mentally, but then we all change as we grow up, we mature and we grow. I grew up fast at fourteen when I watched my family mowed down and slaughtered by a fraction of the underbelly we ruled, my mother, father, older sister and my strong big brother, all died in a meeting that was meant to be a friendly talk about joining our family with theirs through marriage, archaic I know, but in our world that is how most families did it. We were warriors, we were killers, well at least the men were, us females were made to rule the homes and be strong stands for our men.

Except for my family, they taught us to be strong and how to fight and how to shift enough to use our full potential, yes you read that right, I said shift. The world is a mixture of humans and supernaturals, we live by family factions ruling our lands much like mafias of old, but it's not like you read in those books where you have wolves running free, people finding so called soulmates etc, when i was a child i wished that was how it was but nope, we are just people who can shift and use those talents to hold our lands and keep our people safe. Females that can shift were usually used for breeding, but our parents didn't believe in this and taught us, pushed us so we would have protection always, my mum was a right pusher for females to come out the home, but this did not help us that day, we were not prepared for them to betray us ..

They were a family that had been an ally for years, friends to my parents or so they thought. I was not meant to be there that day, I was too young to be in the room so I was meant to be in the forest training, but being that I had just been taught how to fully shift into my scrawny wolf form I had raced back and wiggled into the secret tunnels that ran through the house that only family knew about, I wanted to see a meeting in person. But instead I watched my family all be shot down and butchered by our supposed allies.

Running away from the scene that day a man in black caught me in the woods, my trainer. He trained us all to be who we were meant to be, rumour was that he was the one that trained our parents and even our grandparents, he was old... but young looking.

He had heard and figured what had happened, he ran with me that day. We saw on the news that night through my tears, the news saying that my family had been attacked with their allies by an unknown force but miraculously the allies were the only ones that survived, and I was kidnapped. Everyone believed them, life was now a dangerous game, I went from a pampered warrior to an orphan on the run in one afternoon.

If I was alone or weaker I think I would have died with my family as all I wanted was revenge and to show the world what happened that day not the lies they sucked up.

My trainer saved me multiple times back then, he trained me harder, trained me like a son was to be trained and I got more skilled and stronger than most, faked my death so they would stop looking for me and introduced me to the truths in his world, he was the head of a assassins guild, the underbelly of the underbelly that I thought was the only one. Every assassin had their skills and they helped different factions that were deemed to be of use for the future, some as just assassins though. We had wolves like me, but from the lower levels, vampires, low level demons and even a few sirens, they were very skilled in seduction kills.

What felt like years later but was only a couple years, when the memory of my family's massacre was still fresh in some minds, a team of us including me and my trainer took my family's killers by surprise and got my revenge, we had all the proof they were the ones that killed my family that day, and faked evidence they had killed me. We killed all but the patriarch of the family and his heir, left them trussed up and the evidence was left that fingered them as the killers, we watched from a distance as they were taken in and trialed for their crimes, and watched as the new head family, Lycaon put them to public execution.

On that day the past died and I was reborn as the assassin Nix, over the last ten years since the day my family's killers were brought to justice I have become the best of the best, the nightmare the nightmares hide from. And that brings me back to the drip, drip , drop......

I fucked up and I let a mark get away, I failed for the first time and that has never happened before, but I cleaned up my mess, but not before the ones I had been chasing had taken a girl from the Lycaons, they had lined up young woman for their sons to woo and choose as play things in a game of who will be lucky enough to become their plaything for life, blugh. But this fucker in front of me deserves worse after raping and torturing this poor girl for sport, till she committed suicide in her dingy room.

As I sit here with the mark hanging by his toes from the ceiling, bleeding from multiple small cuts all along his body, enough to hurt but not kill. Drip, drip, drop.

Dressed in all black and my head fully covered he can only see my green eyes looking at him in disdain.

"Nix, Man, please I'm only a hired hand, like you buddy!" coughing blood up from the beating I may have given him earlier, fucker thinks I am a man, but then again everyone does. We have kept it that way since it was assumed, my hair always hidden and wearing binding and loose but constrained outfits to stay sexless, or male as they assume.

After getting all the details without saying a word and using my claws I had pulled out, I give the man in front of me the death he truly deserved, a slow and very painfully drawn out one.

Looking in the CCTV camera that watched the whole scene play out, I knew in my soul this assignment will change things, but as I sat there listening to the blood slowly drip to its last drip I could only feel excitement for the chase ahead, It will take me a long time after this moment to fully understand how wrong that excitement was and that I truly should have been scared.