The dark blue sedan was nearly invisible in the dark of Saturday night as it crept along the drive to Allender Manor without any lights on. It rolled slowly up to the front entrance of the towering gothic house unnoticed, then its quiet idle ended at the hand of Coltan, who killed the ignition as he scoped out the manor through the driver's side window. He knew that somewhere behind the softly lit arched windows and silent walls of the great house was the mark he wanted, the one whose file had cautioned with bold red letters under her photo: Dangerous.

    The other marks' files carried no such warnings. In fact, the young man's file, Willem Corbin Allender, had little more than a picture, name, and date of birth; so Coltan had left the others to the amateurs sent to him by Merrick. This mark though, he hoped, might prove to be a challenge. Wearing his maroon leather jumpsuit and black ski mask, he got out of the car with two of Merrick's men who were also adorned with similar masks. He silently motioned for them to sneak around the manor and find a way in through the back, then as they disappeared alongside the manor with assault rifles in hand, he stealthily approached the front door.

    Shade was on her way from the kitchen to the entertainment room with a can of soda when an unusual thud disrupted the calmness of a nearby hallway, grabbing her attention. She stopped, becoming completely still to zone in on the sound as she stared off in its direction. After a few seconds of curious listening, she decided to venture down the hallway to check it out, being prompted to investigate by a slight case of boredom that being home alone on a Saturday night inflicted.

    Flipping on the lights as she entered the hallway, Shade immediately noticed a tall potted plant lying across the floor, having fallen over from its post near the wall. She walked over and knelt down beside the plant, examining its wide, heavy pot that now poured soil onto the wooden hallway floor from being turned over. The pot was too sturdy of a base to have allowed the plant to just fall over on its own. She stood, leaving her soda on the floor, and took a more suspicious look around the hallway. 

    Suddenly, at the end of the hallway farthest away, a masked man stepped into sight with his assault rifle aimed at Shade. She tensed, eyeing the intruder with a threatening stare that her dark eyes made even more menacing as she became more concerned about his intentions than who he was. She was about to zoom into action when another man rushed up behind her, grabbing her in a securing bear hug as she tried only briefly to wiggle free. Settling calmly into the man's trapping embrace she kept her eyes on the fellow with the gun, assessing his body language as he began to walk toward her.

    The moment Shade was waiting for came when the gunman relaxed his rifle, letting its barrel fall away from her as he got confident in his partner's grip on her. Simultaneously and with blinding speed, she stomped the foot of her captor and stunned him with a backwards head butt, weakening his hold as he reacted to the sharp pain in his foot and the painful reality of a badly broken nose. She then bolted out of her captor's arms and past the gunman in a blur with a brutal close line that upended the man, sending him through a complete back flip before he crashed hard onto the floor, unconscious with his rifle landing near him.

    Shade turned, cutting her dark eyes purposefully back to her captor with a vengeful scowl. The man, still reeling from the broken nose that he covered protectively with one hand as it bled through his ski mask, reached clumsily with his other hand for a rifle hanging at his side by a shoulder strap. Shade streaked back to the man, sliding to a stop in a perfectly formed karate kick that connected with the man's chest, sending him flying out of the hallway with a deflating grunt and colliding into a distant wall which he bounced off of, falling to the floor in a heap.

    Shade felt another presence behind her so she whirled around and found Coltan standing beyond the fallen gunman. He was grinning to himself behind his black mask that allowed only his calculating eyes to be seen, pleased that his ploy to use Merrick's lackeys to flush out Shade had worked so well. He had missed the confrontations, but the beaten, unconscious men littering the floor was what he had expected. He pulled the gloves on his hands tight as he started toward Shade, stepping coldly over the gunman.

    Shade poised herself for another fight, sizing up Coltan with an unimpressed look as he strutted toward her. He stopped at what he considered a safe distance, being just out of arms reach as he eyed the lethal beauty before him. He was finding it hard to believe that such feminine allure and devastating force could go hand in hand. The two studied each other for a moment longer.

    "These must be your runts," Shade finally quipped, hoping to antagonize the leather clad intruder.

    Coltan chuckled. "I think you'll find that I'm the big dog," he boasted. 

    Shade cocked an eyebrow over a taunting smirk, then said,"And I think you'll find that to me...it doesn't matter who you are."

    Coltan chuckled again, then tried to catch Shade off guard with a sudden step and punch in her direction that ended in her disappearing in a blur before his shocked eyes. He felt a tap on his shoulder that made him alertly spin around to find Shade waiting for him with a wickedly sly grin. Before he could blink she unleashed a barrage of streaking punches that pummeled him down the hallway as he desperately backed away, trying to evade her inhuman assault while raising his arms to block her attack.

    Shade's blurry punches riddled Coltan's upper body, sending shockwaves of pain throughout his overwhelmed nervous system. Grossly outmatched and on the verge of succumbing to Shade's punishing attack, Coltan instinctively reached for a small dial embedded in his jumpsuit near his hip. Twisting the dial brought the conductor-lined seams of his suit alive with a powerful burst of arcing electricity that grabbed hold of Shade when her next punch landed, jolting her body with fiercely contracting pain that her high pitched shriek attested to. The torturing volts coursed through Shade's entire body for several seconds, until the charge dissipated and she dropped to Coltan's feet, out cold.

    Coltan slumped from the pain still radiating through his body as he stared sharply down at Shade's lifeless body, stunned at what had just occurred. His mind raced with disbelief as he struggled to comprehend what manner of human being lay at his feet. With a hurting grimace behind his ski mask he unzipped his jumpsuit far enough to pull a small pistol from a shoulder holster which he trained on Shade with a trembling hand in case she had any more surprises in store for him. He tried to rationalize what he had just experienced, something he would never have believed otherwise, but his inability to fathom explanations beyond what he considered natural crippled his reasoning. 

    The doorbell rang out inside the manor, sending a startled alarm through Coltan as he snapped his head around in the direction of the front door. His shaken thoughts clamored for a course of action. He rushed over to one of the fallen men and removed a couple of large zip-ties from their gear which he quickly used to bind Shade's hands and feet. After a patient wait the doorbell sounded again, so Coltan moved cautiously in the direction of the front door, pistol in hand, to discover who waited on the other side.

    By the time the door was in sight the doorbell sounded one more time and before he could reach the door it began to open slowly inward. Coltan hastily snuck up behind the door and hid behind it as it opened further inward. He heard a woman's voice call out,"Hello? Corbin? Shade? Anybody?" 

    Amanda stepped into the manor, dressed ravishingly for a night on the town with Corbin, and staring curiously down the strangely empty entrance. Her vampiric senses alerted her to unfamiliar scents that she assumed belonged to whoever came in the dark blue sedan parked outside that she didn't recognize, and deeper into the manor she detected the distinct aroma of fresh blood. One scent in particular was strong, close. Amanda followed the foreign scent with her nose to the door at her side, which rested open near the inside wall.

    She started to pull the door to when Coltan burst out from behind it with his pistol drawn. Amanda reacted instantly, grabbing Coltan's gun hand and wrenching it away as he fired off a stray round, then she gripped him by the throat with her other hand and easily pushed him back against the wall, lifting him several inches off the floor as her seductive features twisted in an instance to the unnatural visage of an agitated vampire. She hissed through exposed fangs at Coltan, who struggled vainly against her immovable hold as his eyes widened in fear.

    "Who are you? What have you done with the people who live here?" she demanded with a demonic change to her voice. 

    Coltan didn't answer. He fought for breath in her increasingly tight grip around his throat. Growing restless with worry each passing second, Amanda decided to stop wasting what could be precious time if someone she cared for was in danger. With the flick of her wrist she effortlessly snapped Coltan's neck, rendering him lifeless as she let his body drop to the floor in a pile. She turned her attention to the other trails of scents, to the blood she so keenly sensed, then she streaked away in the direction they shared.

    Amanda came to the unconscious heap of Shade's assailant, finding the blood she'd smelled soaked into the ski mask covering his face, then she looked down the hallway to see two more bodies lying on the floor. Shade's profile was unmistakable, the long tails of the zip-ties around her hands and feet revealed disturbing intentions. Amanda zoomed over to her as quickly as her superhuman speed would allow.