Ashina Harrison swept into her apartment, barely holding her shit together.
Today had sucked beyond belief - it had sucked so much that she hadn't bothered to holster her two handguns yet. Instead she clung to them loosely, not quite believing she was home and safe.
She was beginning to feel like she would never be safe again. It had been a very bad day.
Her silver tinted blonde hair was in disarray around her face, escaping from the single braid hanging down her back. Her full lips were dry and cracked from the wind she'd been exposed to and her almond shaped eyes were red and puffy.
One arm, and a knee were scraped raw in places, bruised and bleeding in a way that she knew should be causing her a great amount of pain.
Thank god for adrenaline.
She slammed the door shut, sliding the deadbolt locks home, attaching the chain, and kicking the floor lock into place. With that she turned and slid her back down the wall, tucking her legs in tight to her chest, loosely hanging her wrists and the gleaming guns over her knees.
Sitting there on the floor she finally bowed her head and gave in to the pressure to cry. She didn't indulge in the huge heaving sobs that she wanted to. Instead she closed her eyes and silently let the tears come, running down her face and dropping on to her tee-shirt unchecked.
She didn't notice the dark form crouched on her balcony, peering in through the window at her.
Taking a shuddering breath Ashina picked herself up off the ground, moving like a 900 year old woman. All of her bones hurt.
She holstered one gun at her hip and placed the other on her dining room table, undoing the straps on her shoulder holster and casting a dispassionate gaze around her empty home. It looked like a show-home, devoid of a single personal touch to prove that a person lived there. She liked it that way.
Her eyes narrowed at the bar of dim light coming from under her bedroom door. She hadn't left the light on in her room.
Placing her holster on the table she picked up her gun, folding herself against the wall like a shadow, ignoring the blood that smeared from her arm onto the paintwork. She would have to clean those grazes. She did a quick sweep of the apartment as she approached the bedroom, the kitchen, bathroom, and main living areas were all clear.
Ashina dropped into a low crouch at her door nudging it open with the nose of her gun. The room was empty, but her nose picked up a familiar scent. She felt a brush of too cool air against the back of her neck, and whirled to face the open room.
With a gasp she found herself face to face with the Death Walker she wanted to see least in the world right then. He stayed her gun with a quick palm as she brought it around to fire, still in attack mode. With an annoyed exhalation she lowered the gun and stepped around the tall man.
"Christ Aaron, what the hell do you think you are playing at. I told you what I'd do to you if you snuck into my apartment again." Ashina snapped.
She stalked to the table and placed the gun onto it, then set about removing her hip holster and gun with angry movements.
"Pup..." He said in greeting, taking in her disheveled appearance.
"I decided that your threat was physically impossible for a woman to carry through on, so I disregarded it. Anyway, what happened to hello? Nice to see you Aaron. What brings you to my apartment in the middle of the night, Aaron?" He asked watching her carefully.
"Screw that. We have a problem." Ashina snapped, perching herself on one of her sofa's arms.
Aaron slid into an arm chair, his inky black hair shimmering insubstantial sliver with the movement, as if a gust of wind had disturbed it. The moment he was still his hair settled back against the nape of his neck, solid once-more.
Neither of them had bothered to turn a light on and his eyes gleamed a reflective silver at her across the dark room. She paid it no notice - her eyes were probably gleaming amber from the streetlights below them.
Ashina was a shapeshifter. She could shift her human form into her wolf form at a moments notice. Without thinking she had adopted the wolf's eyes for better sight in the dark, along with it's more sensitive nose, and advanced hearing.
Aaron on the other hand was something entirely different. He was a Death Walker, a rare and dying race. They lived for hundreds of years, and had an uncanny ability to kill. The name came about because it was said that they were the living embodiment of Death, walking amongst human, shifter, and other.
Ashina didn't know much about Aaron's history, but she did know he'd once been the property of the political elite - the Changers Council and the Royal Family were the sole reason Death Walkers were so rare. They caught them at a young age, binding them to a handler, and using them to enact punishment on shifters who didn't follow orders.
When a Death Walker was bound to another they were limited to a certain number of kills, once the individual had reached that quota he or she would become insubstantial, slowly fading away to nothingness.
Aaron was over two hundred years old now (which is why he still felt comfortable calling a twenty four year old woman 'Pup'), and he had escaped his 'service' some time ago - although she didn't know the details she did know that it was near impossible to do.
Aaron lifted an eyebrow indicating that he was listening, and waiting for an explanation.
"Simon is dead. The seer... Ruby, she's dead too."
Ashina and Simon had been undercover for the past year, protecting a seer and relaying information from her to Aaron.
Aaron closed his eyes for the moment. They had been so close. He had been working for a very long time on trying to assemble a new mixed race council. The old corrupted council had taken far too many liberties with it's power. It condoned slavery, killed freely, terrorized whomever it felt like in order to amass power and wealth, ignored the suffering of humans at the hands of Shifter and other, and treated it's people with casual disregard