"My name is Marshall Ivanokov, and I am a huntress of demons and vampires. I am 24 years old, and I have been hunting for six years, and to your world - your society - I am presumed dead. But to their world, the world of evil, I am very much alive. That's why they've been after me. They’ve been tracking me for over a year, due to an event that they call the Chicago Massacre. I prefer to call it personal vengeance. Honestly, I didn’t have much against vampires until then; I mostly just dealt with hunting demons. Still, they caught me up with me, and it turns out that they hate me almost as much as I hate them.” –Marshall Ivanokov

Marshall double-checked to make sure that everything in her apartment was turned off before she left for the night. Lights, the stove, the radio, and her laptop had all been disconnected or otherwise shut down. She shut and locked the windows before grabbing her messenger bag and coat. She locked the door before she headed down the six flights of stairs and into the streets of Des Moines.

The air was hot and humid from a rainstorm that had occurred during the late afternoon hours. Shiny puddles of grimy water pooled up along the sidewalks and the sides of the streets, and steam was still rising from the hot streets. Clouds still loomed overhead.

Marshall pulled her coat closed to try and delay the accumulation of moisture on her skin. The humidity made her uncomfortable, especially that damned scar she had on the left side of her chest. She preferred to leave the mark exposed, but on nights where moisture and muggy temperature clouded the air and fogged the mind, it tended to be quite a hassle.

The still-cloudy sky overhead flashed suddenly with lightning and thunder, which made her flinch involuntarily. After being struck by lightning twice in her life, Marshall had successfully developed a loathing for loud noises and electrically induced pain.

The later it got, the more desolate and dark the city became. Streets grew steadily more deserted, and when it started to drizzle again, she felt even more alone. But as she turned down a familiar alleyway, the feeling of being alone vanished.

Marshall was being watched. She could feel that her every move was being observed, from her stride to the swinging of her arms. She felt eyes on her. They were the eyes of someone who was cloaked in shadows to the point that mortal eyes could not perceive them.

Marshall concentrated on her pace, trying not to appear fazed by the supernatural presence. It moved as she moved, mimicking her in every way. She wasn't being watched. She was being taunted.

Slowly, carefully, Marshall reached inside of her jacket and withdrew a long, silver blade. In the darkness of the quickening downpour, the long dagger looked like nothing more than a sliver of light. She was excited; she could already feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins.

The unseen follower seemed to be growing closer, and so she decided on a whim to stop. It stopped as well. Quickly, she turned around. “Come out and play, bitch,” she called out into the shadowy emptiness, “If you want to fight, stop hiding and we’ll have some fun.”

The inky black shadows seemed to come alive suddenly, writhing violently with movement. From either side of the alley, no less than eight figures materialized from the still morphing shadows.

Vampires.

"Maybe I should have worded those last few sentences differently,” Marshall said, switching her dagger to her right hand and pulling a pistol out of her messenger bag quickly, “I should have pluralized my words. So rude of me.” She quickly raised the pistol and fired two shots at the nearest vampires.

They moved quickly in every direction, to the point that it was difficult to keep up with the movements of just one. Marshall managed to get a lock on one of them, and she pulled the trigger; he fell to the ground, paralyzed by the sting of consecrated silver. Still, it seemed like the more she took down, the more materialized from the shadows around her. She realized in a single moment that she was not prey, but rather a true target; they had found her at last, and now they meant to kill her.

Ten vampires soon grew to twenty, and soon to twenty-five, until Marshall could no longer keep up. They ran silently through the streets, moving gracefully through the dark thunderstorm and then vanishing without a trace. Before she could get away, one of them latched onto her neck and bit her; the sting was sharp, but not unfamiliar. She threw him off of her after stabbing him with her dagger and casting him away.

Feeling her neck, Marshall realized that she was bleeding severely. She had also acquired several gashes across her face and arms. Her jacket was torn and stained with fresh blood. After being assaulted again, she felt something in her crack, and when she tried to run again, she found it much more difficult; she seemed to have fractured a rib.

Due to her inability to run effectively, Marshall soon found herself to be surrounded by two dozen vampires. Realizing the magnitude of her situation, she threw down her blade and pistol which were kicked away by one of the vampires and quickly retrieved by another. One of the men stepped forward to address her, “Marshall Ivanokov.”

"Twenty-five against one,” she breathed in an oxygen deprived voice, “That’s hardly fair. And didn’t your mother ever teach you not to hit girls?” For a split second, it looked as though he might strike her, but instead, he merely laughed.

"Your mother should have taught you that it is okay to surrender when you’re outnumbered,” he replied, leering at her. Marshall simply shrugged and put her hands in her pockets. “She did, as a matter of fact,” she said, gripping the glass vial tightly, “Fortunately, years of dealing with you people has taught me to run when you’re least expected to.”

In one swift, sweeping moment, Marshall withdrew the vial from her pocket and threw it to the ground, shattering it. Before any of the vampires had realized what had happened, a thick smoke began to fill the air, making it difficult to breathe and almost impossible to see. Marshall elbowed her way through the crowd of the confused vampires and broke into a run again.

Marshall knew that, if she stopped, she would be caught and surely killed. Still, running was almost unbearable due to the pain in her chest and the heavily bleeding wounds. She could hardly see anything in the worsening storm, and the temperature had dropped significantly; she was numbed to the bone.

A black puddle splashed loudly under contact with her left combat boot. The pain in her body grew exponentially as she fought to keep her breathing steady and deep. Her heart was beating furiously; she felt it pumping blood through her entire body. Every scar on her body burned as though they were fresh wounds, dragging her nearly to the point of hallucination.

There were muffled shouts from nearby as Marshall turned a corner. “Fan out and find her! Don’t let her get away!” With what little remained of her strength, she increased her speed.

Much too soon for her liking, shadows were chasing her again, catching up to her despite the fact that she was running as fast as she could. One of the vampires, maybe more, would be on top of her in mere seconds. Reaching to her side to see if her bag was still there, Marshall grabbed the first thing she could reach. It was another dagger, identical to the one she had relinquished just minutes before.

Someone grabbed her from behind, choking her and slowing her run to a complete stop. The voice of the man who spoke was raspy and gravelly as he hissed, “Die, bitch.” With a yell and every ounce of strength she could muster, she forced the vampire off of his feet, and, miraculously over her head, sending him crashing to the ground. “Burn in hell!” she yelled, plunging the blade into his heart with all of her might.

Blood filled the street washing away toward the nearby storm drain, and the dying vampire kept struggling, fighting the burn of the poison on the blade. He fought hard against Marshall, sinking his sharp fingernails into her skin and scratching her furiously. She pinned him with her knees, which bought her enough time to stab him several more times and slash his skin until he was finally dead.

As she stood up, she pulled the knife from the body for the final time. She kicked the corpse as hard as she could before growling, “I said burn in hell.” She heard a screech from nearby, and in a flash, she was running again.

There were more shouts from behind her, and someone yelled loudly, “No! She’s killed Mark! Someone shoot her!” The outcry was followed by a sharp pain in the back of her neck. It hurt like a bee sting, but she knew she had been hit with a tranquilizer.

Marshall could feel the poison flowing through her the way she might feel a hot drink warming her up after being out in the snow. Whatever they had hit her with was strong; she could feel the effects already. Liquefied narcotics, no doubt, but smart though they were for trying such a maneuver, she was already a step ahead of them.

Many chemicals that are available to the general public could be found in Marshall’s apartment. She was as close to a chemist as possible, but she had never finished school. She like to think of herself as an underground anesthesiologist, but she mostly just worked with plants and pharmaceutical drugs. Nevertheless, she had broken into a few laboratories over the years and always yielded good results, and she planned to continue her work in her favored fields of botany and chemistry. She tested most of her experiments on herself, and as a result, she was quite tolerant to many chemical and organic concoctions.

Marshall began to feel a bit drowsy, but her will to escape her pursuers overpowered the irritating fatigue. She no longer felt the cold. She no longer felt anything at all. She could not see the rain, or the ground, or the walls of the buildings around her. She had no idea where she was, but when she reached the end of the street, she saw her potential salvation. Across a very old, very large cemetery was a church. If she could only get inside to some holy water, then she could douse herself in it, and the vampires would not dare come near her.

With every passing second, Marshall knew that the ones that chased her would soon be within an arm’s reach of her. Twice more, she felt the prick of needles in her skin; again in her neck and then once in her shoulder. She tried to shrug it off, but she could feel the intoxicants taking their toll on her. She did not have much time left, of that she was certain.

As she dragged forward through the cemetery, the graves that surrounded her quickly became blurred masses of gray and black and white. She touched them, using them as split second crutches to support her weight. They felt nearly intangible, though the cold stone and marble seemed to leave a feeling of simultaneous burning and freezing on her fingertips. She darted across the parking lot and up the front steps of the church.

Climbing the stairs, Marshall clutched the bleeding bite mark on her neck. She looked back to see that a dozen vampires had slowed to a walk and now approached her from the parking lot. She grabbed the front door and pulled. Locked. With the last few seconds of energy that was left in her, she beat on the door and shouted, “Priest! Let me in! I need a priest!” Then her world crumbled around her, turning black. The vampires grabbed her and pulled her into the abyss of shadow. Marshall lost all consciousness and all sense of recollection.