Amirah Novak

[Amirah]

NAME: Amirah Novak.
NICKNAMES: Mirah. You better not call her that if you don't know her well, though.
RACE: Werewolf; pureborn.
OCCUPATION: Rogue; Bounty Hunter.
GENDER: Female.
SKIN COLOUR: Caucasian; tanned.
NATIONALITY: Polish/Arabic.
AGE: 468.
CLOTHING: Leather, to be blunt. Amirah wears a full, maroon leather outfit when she is hunting with matching gloves that slide up underneath the cuffs of the long sleeved top; it started out as a practical outfit in the old days, she needed something easy to clean and easy to move in, with no extraneous sleeves of skirts or other nonsensical things that would get in her way, then it became something more of a symbol, giving an incredibly intimidating first impression, especially to people who know that she's looking for them. It is a basic leather body suit which fastens up the front of the torso and has slightly darker but still matching outer pieces in the form of a neck and shoulder guard, a buckled bodice piece and a thigh mounted holster. While her lifestyle doesn't exactly lend itself well to a lot of possessions or a lot of clothes in general she does own a suitable amount of casual things such as jeans and shirts that she can wear from day to day and blend into the human world a little better. Amirah has exactly one dress; sometimes she has to run recon in bars and clubs and that's when the dress comes out, it's a class black number which never fails to turn heads.
HEIGHT: 5'8".
WEIGHT: 136lbs.
TATTOOS: Amirah has an incredibly intricate glove-tattoo on her right hand, from her fingertips and almost to her elbow; it was applied over the course of several months in her youth and is Arabic in style. Only under touch can someone tell that the lines of the tattoo are actually raised from her skin and are, in fact, incredibly intricate scars from silver burning that she has since covered up with ink. Along her ribs she has six Arabic words, a different one following the line of each rib, three on each side; they are the names of her children (Emir, Teodore, Daniela, Erland, Andris and Kamil).

PIERCINGS: None.
JEWELLRY: Amirah collects vampire teeth; she pulls fangs out of significant victims and keeps them, some of them end up on a chain that she wears every so often.
BODY MODIFICATIONS: Given her occupation and the span of her life thus far it shouldn't be a shock that Amirah has a number of scars and she can recount how she got each and every one of them; she's spent hours over the course of her life stitching herself up, sometimes more messily than others, leaving some less than pretty marks. There is some faint scarring that is clearly supernatural in nature on the fleshy undersides of her upperarms; bite marks from vampires or more specifically from a vampire.

WOLF FORM
BUILD: Though Amirah's wolf form is very much a traditional looking one in terms of having a lot in common with the wild counterparts of her race she is capable of both two and four legged movement, having the correct joints to achieve such motion and also having a suitably strong build to support it. Indeed her wolf form is well muscled all over, being lighter and powerful to look at and extremely resilient and robust in a combat situation. While she is certainly a large creature she is not slow or encumbered by her weight and powerful muscles, Amirah can clock a very fast pace when running at full speed.
HEIGHT: Bipedal; 7’9”. Quadruped; 5’6”
WEIGHT: 302lbs.
HAIR: Black all over and generally about an inch at its shortest on her body, though a fair bit shorter around her face. Amirah sports a long, thick mane down her back and joining with her tail which is also thick and bushy and aids her balance where the mane protects her spine from attack.
EYES: Pale gold.
DEFINING MARKS: Bushy tail, very wolfen features and uniformly black coat.

PACK
PACK: None.
POSITION: N/A.
TERRITORY: N/A.

HAIR
Length: Approximately shoulder length, though Amirah has allowed her bangs to grown out a little longer than the rest of her hair to frame her face. In the past she has worn her extremely long, past her waist but after she broke free of captivity she had it cut by the wolf who recused her regularly to maintain a style similar to what it is now.
Style: Amirah practically never ties her hair back, she keeps it loose and in generally good condition though often times her jobs can last weeks at a time and if she happens to be moving around a lot during that period her hair is usually the first thing to show signs long hours on the road and very little sleep, becoming unkempt and wild. It doesn't bother Amirah so much, she quite likes the look her targets get in their eyes when she finally catches them, looking half-feral.
Colour: Blonde.

FACIAL HAIR
Length: N/A.
Style: N/A.

EYES
Color: Green.
Oddities: Like the rest of her race with considerable control of their wolves, Amirah's eyes will wane or flash the colour of her wolf when she is feeling strong emotions like anger or grief, and she can also trigger the change in colour to challenge or intimidate.

PERSONALITY: Fierce, brazen and resilient Amirah is not now nor has she ever been afraid to speak her mind; she has a tendency to say just exactly what is on it and get herself into trouble which makes it a good thing that she can take care of herself. Amirah rarely does as she's told by anyone, especially people who think they're superior to her thanks to her arrogant independence and doesn't hold herself to pack laws unless she's in a pack territory, which she largely avoids anyway. However Amirah does tend to be able to keep the big picture in mind and when necessary she is able to think first and shoot her mouth of second, though frankly that's an infrequent occurrence. At first she can come across as cold and angry, she asserts herself with aggression and a common disregard for the feelings of others and that's not a front, she largely doesn't care much about other people but Amirah does have something of a bleeding-heart when it comes to sob stories and it's not all that hard for someone with doe eyes to win her over. That can land her in trouble along with her act-first-speak-second attitude and approach to life a lot of the time, especially when emotions are involved whether they be positive or negative because when she feels, she feels strongly. Despite her wilder side Amirah has a strong protective streak that tends to put blinders on her in terms of danger, it’s not that she doesn’t have a sense of self preservation -- obviously so, as she's been hunting down the nastiest characters in the supernatural word for decades -- but more that it’s overridden by a belligerent need to safeguard those younger, smaller or weaker than herself, regardless of species.

Amirah is an incredibly determined woman as well, she sets herself a goal and will bulldozer pretty much anyone or anything to get to it. While she does have a moral compass and isn't in the business of killing innocent bystanders she definitely feels that in some cases a means-to-an-end approach is the best way to get results and that can apply to many situations. Blunt and unable to abide people wasting her time she can come across as a real bitch sometimes, not that she cares. In a way she can set herself up for a fall in this way however, she doesn't like to see the impossible, she doesn't like to believe in the impossible because if she did then she would have to concede that her life's mission is not achievable and that is simply something that she cannot admit to herself, it would essentially take away her reason for living and while that's not a healthy way for anyone to spend their existence it is, frankly, all she has. To the point where if she were to actually do as she has set out to do Amirah would find herself lost afterwards, with no cause to crusade for.

Having quite a charismatic character underneath all those prickly barbs she easily attracts people, and not always in a sexual way; more often it tends to be platonic attraction, like-minded people may find her easy to talk to because of it, or just easy to be around in silence. It's not that she doesn't like people either, because generally speaking she does, they are part of life and she feels very lucky to have the opportunity to live freely as she does, but she isn't very good at socialising. Despite that quality of her personality Amirah has known little in the way of affection or closeness in her life, not in any healthy way at least; she was conceived as part of a breeding program, she was raised by a vampire, mentally and physically abused and indoctrinated to think that she deserved it and even liked it. Through this unconventional and unique life she has experienced near crippling loss to the point that she wouldn't really know how to become close to another person even if she wanted to, the vampire who bred, raised and trained her overshadows her life to this day, in a twisted way she both loathes him with exhaustive effort and misses him in the way a child misses a parent, something she hates herself for and tries to bury. The truth of the matter is that when -- or perhaps if -- she finally comes face to face against Marek, there's no telling whether or not Amirah could deal that final blow and kill the vampire who has tormented her life and her dreams for centuries, she would like to think that nothing could stop her, but she, better than anyone, is aware of his powers of persuasion and his ability to break down everything good, just and determined about a person.

After all this time alone she is completely self-sufficient but she also understands and accepts how a pack works, able to adapt into both dynamics at the drop of the hat, in fact she’s a very adaptable individual, able to roll with the punches and change with the times.

WEAKNESSES: Like any of her kind, Amirah's main weakness is her innate allergy to silver; it physically burns her skin upon touch and can cause her to become dizzy and nauseated. This can be fatal depending upon length of exposure and the type of contact. Physical she is incredibly strong and toned, even for her age making most of her real weaknesses mental in nature. Vampires are a clear button for her and she doesn't they to hide that fact; she hates them and would kill one as soon as look at them, she doesn't care if they shop at blood banks or if they live far away from humans, to her they are a blight upon the world and she would gladly be rid of every single one of them; it's projecting at its most basic, because really she hates one vampire in particular but her fury and list for his head on a spike is such that any other vampire falls into the category of enemy for her. In some ways it blinds her, obviously, she doesn't even try to see the person the vampire might be, they are just a pair of fangs to her and this resolute hate has certainly gotten her into her fair share of tight situations over the years.

ABILITIES: As a lycanthrope Amirah enjoys all the perks of her kind; heightened senses, stamina, speed, the capacity to jump huge distances without breaking sweat and a superhuman healing speed. With her age also comes the ability to control her change during the three nights a month when the moon's pull is the strongest and indeed change at will any other day of the month. From a young age she has been trained and tested in a variety of combat skills, her ability to shift quickly from woman to wolf was honed early on in her life and her ability to the resist the moon similarly. Perhaps a more unique skill is that Amirah knows how to torture information out of vampires with brutal efficiency and maximum agony; it might seem straight forwards but they have an incredible pain threshold thanks to their dead bodies so it's about knowing the right techniques to get the job done. Controlled Burning. Extracting fangs. Dismemberment. Amirah has done them all, she has an iron stomach and nerves of steel and will happily cause a vampire who knows something she wants to know unimaginable pain in order to get it. As a result of her vastly nomadic life Amirah speaks several languages; English, Polish, Arabic (various dialects), Mandarin, Russian, Congolese, French, Italian and German.

WEAPONS: Blades are Amirah's true passion, she can wield a gun if she has to but frankly she can throw a knife as far as she could shoot a bullet, they might be a fraction slower than a bullet, even when thrown at full tilt by a werewolf, but they're quiet and not half as messy. In addition, Amirah carries around a pair of metal tooth extractors; in special cases she de-fangs vampires before she kills them. In terms of firearms she owns four in two matching pairs but very rare has them all on her person at one time, and one M4 rifle, just in case she literally needs to bring out the big guns for a job.

PRIZED POSSESSIONS: Amirah's sentimentality is such that she does not own anything she considers prized for fear of losing it or having it taken away, broken or ruined somehow; her tattoos are the prized things she holds dear, her children's names and memories are with her always in that way. While she drives a large, modern SUV it's just a vehicle to her, a way to get from A to B. Amirah does value her engraved knives, however.

HOME(S): Amirah is nomadic, she doesn't call any single place home for long but while she works in Los Angeles she is staying at the Red Tree Inn, on Rayne's side of the city.

HISTORY: In what is now known as Syria, Marek, a vampire of mysterious origin and creation ran a vast werewolf breeding program; frowned upon by some of his kind and exalted by others who came to him for pets and guard dogs made out of his trained, pure animals he picked his breeding pairs very carefully in order to create a distilled, perfect werewolf. That wolf, his pinnacle of his long years of work, was Amirah Novak.

Before she died Karima Novak birthed fourteen children before the final claimed her life. Amirah was little more than a child herself at the time but she felt the impact just as her siblings did even if she already knew better than to show it. Born the eleventh child she was his favourite from the very beginning, with beautiful blonde hair and striking green eyes, his early, rigorous tests showed Amirah to be the strongest wolf he had ever bred, more so than her siblings, a handful of which didn't even survive into adolescence under the stresses and strains he put the creatures through. It was Marek's intent to keep his prized wolf for himself; an eighth generation pureborn female she would eventually become the mother of a new generation, passing on her strong genes to her offspring but unlike her mother he would not allow the process to exhaust her, he would not reap crops from her year after long year, instead she would bear just a small handful of children who would fetch an astounding price, or better yet become his personal, tiny pack.

Before she could provide this small group of ninth generation wolves though, Amirah had to be broken in sufficiently; she was not just the strongest and fastest wolf he had ever managed to breed from her infancy onwards but she was stubborn too, hard-headed and prone to back talking. Perhaps it was the early influence of her mother, seeing how Marek had take a shine to her eleventh child, or perhaps it was simply that as selective as he was with his breeding Marek could not eradicate the tenaciously obstinate streak in the female wolves. It took fifty years to indoctrinate Amirah to his liking. In the early years he was heavy handed, we would beat her into unconsciousness for bad behaviour and talking back, he hung her from chains, starved her and over the course of sometime worked on an incredibly intricate silver burn design on her right hand and arm; using molten silver he would pipe the metal into her flesh only to remove it when it had cooled an hardened, it was dangerous, yes, he knew that, but the pain was such that Amirah became docile for weeks at a time and he liked her so much better when she was obedient. As the years went by his approach softened as she complied and softened to him, by the time she was fifty she was loyal and devoted. Marek would have her brought to his bed frequently to sleep beside her, using her body heat to remind him of mortal times long since passed, sometimes he would even feed from her, being careful not to allow himself to become sick or weak due to ingesting her blood, but wanting, needing the sensation of having her essence within him. In his own way he loved her, Amirah was pure, the final product of his complex breeding tree, his centuries of toil had brought her to him and he thought her perfect. Marek was confident that no matter what she would always be his.

It was soon after her fifty-first birthday that she was finally put to breeding. It had taken him some time to find a suitable first 'mate' for her, though his use of the word was massively skewed, with no regards for what it meant to wolves. Fridrik was an Icelandic male with three generations of pure blood in him, he was tall and broad, very strong and smart and just right he felt for his Amirah, they both had blonde hair and pale skin and Marek was pleased that her children by him would come out with her complexion. Amirah thought nothing of being asked to breed with this male, she thought little on her own in fact, her thoughts were Marek's thoughts, her desires were his, she lived to please him and having known nothing of the world outside of the estate she had been raised on for fifty years re was no reason for her to question anything at all. Fridrik was as obedient and docile as she was, and within a month she was with child. Emir was born, a beautiful, healthy baby boy and Amirah was overjoyed to see that Marek was so pleased with the result of the union. He monitored Emir for the next few years of his young life to see what he might have picked up from his mother's sublime genes, allowing her to raise the boy until he was three and Marek grew tired. Emir was not perfect, it was not good enough. Amirah needed a better, stronger mate.

Marek spent eight years searching for the next candidate. Emir was separated from his mother and trained as any other wolf born into his breeding den would be, worst of all his mother didn't much care, she had blinders on to everything but what she had been trained to see and think and feel; the fact that she never saw Fridrik again didn't bother her, nor did the torturous noises she could hear at night from her own son's mouth. Those eight years were long for Marek though, while Amirah was obedient and timeless he grew impatient and he frequently bedded her, basking in his triumph with her. Finally though, finally he found the right male for her. A Russian wolf this time. Ilari was not fair haired, but he was a much better, older and stronger wolf for Amriah. They had twins, a boy and a girl called Teodor and Daniela. Again they were strong, good children and the pregnancy and birth were wonderful things to behold. Not to the vampire's satisfaction though. Amirah's third 'mate' was Adrian and they quickly bore two sons in quick succession, Erland and Andris but by now it was clear that nothing that came of these unions was going to satisfy the vampire master; simply put Amirah's children were not half as special as she was, he began to draw the conclusion that in reaching the very height of perfection with her any children she bore would be like starting from the bottom and having to build up again.

That didn't stop him from choosing her a fourth though. When she was in her mid-eighties Marek tried one final time to obtain offspring that would match or even surpass the mother. This turned out to be his fatal mistake and the unravelling of all his hard work.

Richard was an English wolf of considerable strength and age, in fact he was a senior fighter in a pack that had been captured as a gift for the vampire breeder. No matter what Marek tried he couldn't break the male and he realised that this could make him the perfect fit for Amirah who had herself been such a hard woman to bring around to his machinations. Still unbroken he set Richard up with Amirah though nothing happened that could result in children. Seeing this relatively young female wolf, Richard became determined to destroy the breeding grounds that the vampire had created, but more than that he saw something in Amirah, he saw the potential to save her. Richard told her about the outside world every opportunity he got and Marek gave him plenty, eager to see what would come of the two strong wolves; the female was so naive and incredulous, she didn;t believe him at first when he explained to her that packs were run by wolves for wolves, that there was no vampire masters and that they raised their own children, that they could keep their own children. Months of this followed with no offspring to speak of and when it turned into a year Marek's patience began to wane; he had spent centuries cultivating the perfect combination of genes and so he was able to wait but Amirah blurred all the edges. Richard told Amirah that he wanted to escape and he wanted to take her with him. In those long months she has begun to awaken, to shake off some of the mental conditioning and tortures, and somehow he had seen something in her that caused him to care. Amirah felt things she had never felt before when she looked at him and agreed to leave.

Whilst the vampire was away delivering one of the bred and broken wolves they took their chance, taking only what they could carry and nothing that would hinder them, they broke out from the compound and escaped, running hard and running far, just trying to get away from the awful place that had been Amirah's only home, the only place she had ever known.

It was incredible, the world she found outside the walls of the estate. Richard would tell her about this tree or that mountain range as they went, he would explain about human customs and wolfen ones and when the change came upon her every lunar cycle he cared for her and made sure she didn't hurt anyone, not even herself. They slept on the ground at night, on grass and moss, things she had never felt before. Amirah exalted herself in everything, it was all new and incredible to her, she swam in lakes, dragged him into rivers and climbed trees to cast her eyes down vast valleys and as freedom took hold of her and Richard exposed her to the world she began to fall in love with him in earnest. His devotion to her was not in question either, he opted not to go back to his pack, though they visited it together so that they would know he was all right and could hear the story of what happened. Amirah experienced a short dose of pack life but it never sat well with her, it left her with a bitter taste, it was too similar to her youth and she meant no disrespect by that, she told Richard, but she was so enamoured with the rolling hills and endless horizons that the idea of going back to walls and basements made her sick.

They were together, travelling that way so as not to become complacent or predictable for over forty years, growing in affection and closeness the whole time until they were indisputable a couple. They settled for a time in the mountains of Switzerland, away from packs and people, knowing they would have to move on as Amirah told him it was inevitable that Marek was looking for her. There she fell pregnant again, this time, for the first time, she felt true joy at the prospect of being a mother, joy for herself.

It was the birth of her sixth child that wrought the final breaking point. While the birth was not complicated given her practice, nor was it long by werewolf standards, it was painful and emotionally draining, more so than ever before. Richard held her hands, encouraged her, told her he loved her and that she better hurry it up so they could meet their baby -- which earned him a hearty punch and a weak, sweat-drenched laugh -- but in the moment that Amirah held her first freely born child in her arms she realised how awful the things that had been done to her were, she clung onto her daughter, swaddled in cloth and wailed for her other children. Richard in turn cradled her gently, telling her over and over that they would find a way to rescue her other children too, they would figure something out together, he wouldn't let her hurt the way she was hurting forever. They would fix things.

It was a painful few years for Amirah. Knowing that she had essentially abandoned four children to the mercies of Marek ate at her constantly, she hated herself for what she had become while with him, that she had been so weak and spineless that her own offspring, her own blood had meant nothing to her. She and Richard planned that as soon as they felt their daughter was old enough to go and live with Richard's old pack they would make her safe and go to rescue the other children. So they raised their daughter, Kamil, in near perfect harmony, moving twice before she was five in order to maintain their secrecy. It wasn't to be enough, sadly.

Amirah was at loathe to ever leave her daughter for any length of time but she trusted Richard like no other, and she needed to walk and be at peace for a while as much as he needed to spend time with the child one-on-one, and so the mother walked down into the nearest town to buy the few things that they didn't or couldn't grow themselves, reflecting on her life and how it had changed, how grateful she was that Richard had opened her eyes to the real world. But when she returned that night it was to a dark building and Richard's body on the floor, already going cold. Raging, in unspeakable agony and terrified for the whereabouts of her daughter, Amirah began her frantic search and found Kamil outside and in the hands of a vampire she had hoped never to see again lest it were his head on a platter. The toddler cried openly, her cheeks were red, Amirah could see that the vampire had struck her and it didn't matter that she was wildly out-manned and out-gunned by the presence of his wolves and vampire minions, Amirah rushed at him, wanting to tear his heart out through his chest for daring to lay a finger on her baby.

Before she could get close enough he broke Kamil's little neck.

Amirah collapsed as if her strings had been cut, scrabbling over her daughter's body, screaming over and over again while Marek watched her from high above. When she moved to attack him, shifting on the spot with the desire to tear him to shreds it took five men, three of them wolves to subdue her, a rain of punches rendering her unconscious. Perhaps it was rage that woke her up so soon after such a beating, perhaps it was the world ending, soul crushing grief that did it, but whatever it was when Amirah woke up near dawn in a wagon she wasted no time in breaking free of the chains that bound her and using the incredible skills that Marek himself had taught her to break free. Literally. Amirah broke the wagon in two, smashing her way out of one side and then tossing one of the wolves that tried to hinder her through the other, killing three enemies with nothing more than her bare hands before she ran off into the night again.

There was no chance to get to Marek that night, he was too well defended and even she knew through the haze of broken-hearted wrath that she had to first survive and then have her revenge.

Bloody and sick it was days before she felt safe enough to rest and let the grief come upon her properly. Desperately she wanted to return to her home and bury Richard and the tiny body of her daughter, in a copse of trees she wrestled with the idea. Marek would have sent someone there to wait for her, he wouldn't have gone himself because he would be needed back in the breeding grounds to oversee the pregnancies and births that Amirah was certain were still going on. Cold and alone she thought of her siblings, some who were a century older than her and whom she had barely known, she thought of her children, the ones she had left behind and wondered which of them were now acting as breeding animals, or if they had already been sold, she wondered if her only daughter, Daniela was being used by Marek as she was being used. Amirah cried herself into sleep, or as close as she would come to it, more like a desperately needed state on unawareness, a defence mechanism spurred by exhaustion. In the morning she resolved to return to her old home and take care of the bodies. If Marek had sent men there to capture her she would kill them. Pure and simple. They were the enemy now, she didn't have time to open their eyes to the world around them, the world that they could not see; if they had been sent to do this, to bring her back then they would be Marek's most loyal anyway, his most indoctrinated and she would have no hope of waking them up even if she wanted to.

Sure enough wolves waited for her at the small, wooden house and she could smell the scent of decay from far away. To her horror one of the two male wolves that had been dispatched to wait at the homestead was her own older brother, Sami. It made her sick to her back teeth to see him there, she knew that Marek had planned this, thought it through and chosen him to torment her further. Now her plan to kill regardless of who had been sent for her stuck in her throat. Amirah watched from the trees, crouched on her haunches in a bloody, dirty dress, she wept silently, and wring her hands over it. When she circled around, thinking to lead them away and perhaps come back for Richard and Kamil she caught sight of her lovers body left out in the dirt and the anger and pain that swelled up again burned away any sense of compassion that had caused her hesitation. Amirah picked her opening and then attacked. Despite everything she went for the unknown male first, she tore his heart out with her bear hands, blind with rage, her limbs singing with it, adrenaline making her feel unstoppable. Sami though, he looked so much like their mother, so much like her too with the big green eyes and straw-blonde hair that when she pinned him down she found herself faltering once more, her emotions see-sawing all over the place. Amirah tried to reason with him, she tried to tell him that he had been brainwashed into this life but that he could be free, like her, they could escape together, they could free their siblings and her children, and his children too. They would get away, all of them and live without vampires and chains, with no silver and no starvation but he wouldn't hear it. Sami accused her of betrayal over and over again and screamed at her that her husband and bastard child had deserved their deaths, that she was a disgrace to their mother. It was accidental, when it happened, Amirah's intent shifted to getting away and looping back when she had lost Sami in the sprawling countryside, but they tumbled to the ground in a wrestle for control of his blade and when they came to a stop it had pierced his heart. For a few minutes he twitched and gurgled and then he died.

Amirah buried him alongside Richard and Kamil.

She changed her clothes and packed up what food they had in the house, digging up vegetable from the garden and picking fruit, she took Richard's knife with her and left without turning back. From then on Amirah moved nomadically, she camped outside and only started fires periodically to make sure she wasn't being tracked. All those skills that had been taught to her in her youth to make her the perfect wolf in Marek's eyes became useful again, though she loathed them, hated that everything she did could be traced back to that place. Amirah sank into a long and dark depression, only her anger lit it up and kept her going, she burned with the need to kill Marek, she ached with the desire to tear his body into chunks but still she moved further from him. First she had to be stronger, she had to be harder, she had to out think him too, not just overpower him. It occurred to her that she would never surpass his physical prowess, he would always have centuries on her in that regard but if she could free her siblings and her children, and their children, she could have an army against him and that, that would be his undoing.

For decades she hunted down her blood family. Some had been kept for breeding like Sami had and some had died when they were children, but others had been sold to other vampires, she knew, and that was where she would start. Katalijne, she learned, was in Russia having been sold to an old vampire who lived like a Tsar in a remote region in the north; chosen for her beauty and fluency in Russian she had been with him for some sixty years already by the time Amirah tracked her down. Kata was the female half of the first set of fraternal twins her mother had born, she and Veli had been split up some time in Amirah's youth, not so young that she couldn't remember them as a pair, but too early for her to have bonded with them either together or individually. Still, by this point Amirah's blind devotion to her blood relatives, to any of her blood relatives was such that she didn't care, it wasn't important, to her Kata and Veli needed to be reunited and that was what she intended to do; first she would liberate her sister and then together they would go after their brother. It couldn't be said that Amirah was stupid or impulsive, in point of fact she was incredibly intelligent and a master tactician, she knew that she couldn't and shouldn't do anything immediately or without thinking it through. There was only one of her after all and if she rushed into her rescue mission and was killed there would be no one to continue her work, there would be no one to save her siblings and her children because no one cared, not a single other soul in the world. Being a wolf she knew she had plenty of time, it could take decades or centuries for her to complete her mission, one that seemed to easy and quick to say but was more complex than imaginable.

Amirah spent weeks watching the palace-like structure from afar, she noted how many vampires came and went, the male who had bought Kata took frequent walks around his frozen grounds at night with a wolf she recognised as her sister at his side. In fact Amirah only ever saw her in wolf form and never as a human being. It sickened the younger sister, practically to her stomach. This vampire was literally keeping her beautiful sister as a pet, to walk at his side, to pet and feed as if she were a mindless creature. Looking back she should have seen the warning signs, that if Kata was always in wolf form it must have taken a toll mentally, she had been there for decades by the time Amirah came to her rescue, but at that time all she could think, all she could see was the indignity that was being done to her family and after her long weeks of waiting for an opening, learning the comings and goings and the numbers of the leeches she struck. Sneaking in with the intention of breaking out if she had to, not knowing how long she would need to get Kata to understand that they needed to leave, that she could be free and happy and they could liberate all the Novaks across the world, she decided to play it safe, though the wolf within her wanted nothing more than to destroy. Amirah stole in through thcellar and worked her way carefully to where her sister was kept. At first she didn't know what was worse, the fact that they didn't even lock her in the tiny room they had allocated her, or even chain her within it, or the fact that Kata didn't recognise her own sister at first. It drove a spike of pain unlike any other through the younger sister who crouched beside her sibling and begged her to change back to a woman just for a moment, just for a second so tey could talk. Kata wouldn't, or perhaps she had forgotten how, perhaps Marek had trained her specially, as a custom order for this vampire bastard and now Kata was just this, an incredibly beautiful wolf -- because she truly was, with fur so white and soft it looked pearly in the moonlight -- trapped this way by her masters.

When Amirah explained as simply as she could that she was there to rescue her, and that that needed to leave immediately she got no response, just a pair of big golden eyes blinking at her. Then she told Kata that they could kill every vampire in the place if she wanted, wouldn't she like to give them what they deserved for keeping her this way? The answer to that didn't need to be spoken, it was a clear no. Kata rose up and attacked Amirah at the mere mention of harm being done to her master.

So brutal was her initial strike that Kata almost killed her little sister, Amirah got out of the way just in time to save herself from a mortal wound and then she shifted too, the black wolf sweeping through her with the speed that had been beaten and branded into her as a young woman. The two wolves, opposite colours fought, though Amirah was trying to subdue her sister, now thinking in the snatched moments when she could form thoughts that if she could put Kata down, kill the vampires and then come back for her and steal her away from here everything would be alright. That never came to pass though. It was a brutal fight between two large and heavy wolves, though Kata was smaller and a lighter she was also faster where Amirah was a wrecking ball of destruction. They smashed through the lower levels, walls crumbling around them, pillars falling and bringing down mezzanines, vampires scattered out of their way at first, confusion filling the household before any sort of organisation could take place. Soon though the vampires did organise themselves with weapons and fire and Amirah knew she was in serious trouble. Kata wasn't letting up, not even a little and Amirah desperately didn't want to hurt her; she batted vampires out of the way with her paws, trampling many of them but they took to their vantage points on the level above the foyer where the wolves had careened into through a stone wall and rained their arrows down on the black wolf. An arrow buried itself close to her spine, too close. In the end it was her fear of hurting Kata that had her on the losing side of the battle, though she killed a lot of vampires that night. During the fray one of the torches the vampires had been using to try and herd the wolves away from where their lord and master had barricade himself away.

The place went up in flames.

Human again, Amirah dragged Kata towards the exit, both of them on the verge of collapse but Amirah the apparent victor, but she wouldn't go. Even with flames leaping hungrily around and the screams of vampires filling the air as they turned to ash Kata wouldn't leave; she tried to break from her sister's grasp, screaming indecipherable Russian at the top of her lungs, Amirah begged and pleaded in every way she knew how, her older sister would be killing herself if she went back inside but neither reason nor sisterly affection touched Kata and she eventually wrenched free from Amirah's grasp and disappeared into the flames. Amirah heard the sounds of her screaming and saw her willowy figure burning on the staircase for years after that, finding the scene waiting behind her eyes when she tried to sleep every single night.

In a frozen ditch, in agony both emotionally and physically Amirah dug the arrow from her back having run from the burning wreck of a building as long and hard as her feet would carry her. It seemed impossible sitting there, an insurmountable task. If all her siblings were so broken and blinded, loyal to whomever they called master how was she going to save any of them? How could she save someone who didn't want to be, or didn't evenknow they needed to be? It consumed her, this problem. For months and then years she wandered Europe, collecting information on the whereabouts of her siblings, agonising over what she was going to do, how she was going to get through to them.

Eventually she went back to Syria looking for the compound for the simple fact that she needed to see it with her own eyes. To her shock though she found it completely abandoned. Almost a century and a half had gone by since her escape with Richard but she hadn't been expecting to find that Marek had moved the wolves. Amirah investigated the vacant buildings with a heavy weariness settling in her and then a powerful new surge of rage. her children had been here, and for years she had operated under the knowledge that they were in one place, accounted for and that one day she would be able to return for them. Now she didn't know where they were on top of not knowing what state they were in. Suddenly it began to eat at her more than ever, whether they were breeders or not and if she had grandchildren by now, whether all of them had survived this long, there were so many questions, too many questions. Despondent, feeling wretched she kicked through the familiar territory, she went to her rooms, to Marek's rooms and found nothing, no furniture or papers, nothing at all. It was like the buildings reflected her perfectly; she felt as empty as they were.

That night Amirah stayed in the sand filled buildings, she couldn't sleep and she couldn't leave.

In the morning she finally tore herself away from the place where she had been born, the place she had been scarred forever with silver, used and abused by the vampire Marek and turned into a mindless, obedient fool. Somehow it solidified her will, if she had been determined before now she was doubly galvanised. There was little she could do but keep trying to liberate her siblings, even if she could only save one of them, if she could just make one of her brothers or sisters see the world the way it truly was instead of believe the lies they had been fed or bowing to the beatings they had taken then she would count the whole thing as a success and though the pain of losing Sami and Katalijne was raw still she had to tell herself that at least she had tried and at least they were at peace. Amirah had to believe they were at peace. It was better to be dead than to be under Marek's spell for one day longer. Searching for her family and for the vampire who destroyed so much of what she came to hold dear was not cheap however, and it was not quick, Amirah began to take bounties, collecting criminals and using the money to further her quest, killing vampires to fulfil her lust for blood and ash when she found them and more quickly when they provided little useful information. Over the years she grew incredibly adept at torturing the undead, finding those unique pressure points that their kind had and abusing them until they gave her the information she wanted, she extracted their fangs sometimes too, as if to demean and degrade them the way she had been demeaned and degraded as a young wolf.

As the world modernized around her Amirah learned to change with the times. She remained nomadic, she never settled in one country for very long and her work collecting bounties took her all over the globe where she kept her senses sharp for rumours of Marek and tales of the wolves he bred. Leads came and went some dry long before she got to the bottom of them and some of them completely false, she thought she came close to tracking down the new compound one year only to find it again deserted. All through the years her rage was twisted and waited, her grief and undeniable sorrow have hardened her and although she functions in the modern world she does little to try and understand it or to be part of it; Amirah Novak lives her life in the past in some ways, she is perpetually searching for a family that never truly existed to begin with, one that has none of the conventional bonds of love or friendship, but blood binds her to the wolves that Marek has tortured and brainwashed into submission and she will never, ever stop hunting him down or trying to free those she holds most dear and yet hardly knows.