It was a cold winter night, and pure white snow fell, unsullied by the world's filth. However, I would stain it a beautiful sanguine before the night was through. One of my contacts received a request from an agent in the FBI, one Isaac Blackburn, to track down a human trafficking organization. Apparently, they're backed by some influential figures, so this had to be cleaned up 'off the books,' so to speak. Not that I particularly cared; if you hurt children, I. Will. Kill. You. It's one of the few things I've kept from when I was still human. Father always loved children, so I can keep my withering humanity alive by protecting them. I'm not sure I understand love anymore, but safeguarding the young is one of the few things my beast and I can agree on.

As I approached the unassuming warehouse, I tied my long onyx hair back into a ponytail and stretched my senses into my shadow and slid it under the door. In the monochrome of shadow-sight, I spied upon four men sitting at a table playing poker while standing watch. There's no way I could make it through the warehouse with traditional stealth, so Russian stealth it was.

My shadow rose from the ground and shrouded my features in shadows darker than black. As the familiar chill of oblivion slithered over my skin, I pulled my weapons from their sheaths; a jian in my right hand and Sig Saur 226 in my left. Kicking the door off its hinges, I flowed into the room as a malicious shade and placed a bullet in the left-most man's head. Cries of alarm sounded as he fell, but the Dark Mother will not be denied her due. The three remaining traffickers drew and fired, their bullets flying wide from surprise. I rushed forward, and in the blink of an eye, the steel of my jian met flesh, coating me in the heart-blood of a dying man. The two remaining thugs empty their magazines, and a moment later, sharp stinging agony bloomed from the twin holes in my gut.

Pain is an excellent teacher but hurting the nightmarish creature of darkness is generally ill-advised. I lashed out with my sword severing one gunman's arm at the elbow. I kicked his knee hard and was rewarded with a satisfying snap.

The horrified scream of the last man pulled my attention to my next prey. Fear had rooted him in place, so I leisurely strode up to him, staring into his eyes as I slowly pressed my blade against his throat.

"Where are you keeping those whom you have taken?" the voice that spilled from my lips was not my own. It was a deep gravely thing that belonged to my darker half.

"Will you spare me?"

"The only choice is if you wish to die swiftly or slowly in terrible agony." I push harder against his neck, leading him to a wall, and let a smile slip into my voice. "Chose, boy. How will you die?"

I dropped his exsanguinated corpse a few minutes later and made my way to the main office. A large oak desk and some filing cabinets dominated the room, likely for the front they were using. But what captured my attention was the bookshelf that lined one wall. As I pulled the three books, my victim indicated a deep thunk resounded, and a section of the bookshelf swung back, revealing stairs leading down to the earth's bowels.

The dull glow of the running lights illuminating the concrete tunnel while muffled sobs drifted up to me. What awaited me at the bottom of the staircase was nothing short of a mortal depiction of hell. Cages lined the room, and the battered people in them wore little more than rags. There was little in the way of sanitation besides a hose mounted near the door. I pulled a burner phone from my pocket and headed upstairs to send off a text.

This time, when I entered the secret prison, I flicked the light switch. I had dismissed my monstrous visage in favor of a more mundane disguise but was still coated in rapidly drying blood. Every last pair of eyes was locked on me; despite their obvious terror, no one uttered a single sound.

"I'm setting you all free. Federal agents will be here soon to take care of you." I looked around, expecting a response, but none was forthcoming. Sighing at their reasonable distrust, I moved from cage to cage, unlocking the doors with a ring of keys that I took off the corpses upstairs. As the realization that their torment was through set in, these abused men and women began softly weeping. In the last cage, however, there was a young boy, no older than six. He was underweight, filthy, and had a fever wracking his tiny body. I stepped inside this cage and stood over the boy looking at me with dull eyes. "Do you want to live, Child?"

The boy didn't even have the strength to speak, but the tenacious little kine flopped his arm in my direction.

I smiled softly, "I'll take that as a 'yes.'" I leaned down and picked the boy up. "I'll leave the exit open, but I recommend staying put." Having said my peace, I vanished into the night.