Aleyda Nyx sat behind a desk, her long legs crossed one over the other as she looked over the remains of the paperwork she had been working on. She scribbled her signature onto one last page and neatly stacked the papers before slipping them into a file. She stood and grabbed the coat nearby, pulling it over her slender but well-toned arms. She loosed her hair from beneath the coat and tossed the light curls back over her shoulders. She was what might consider tall for a woman, standing at nearly six feet tall. She was fit and well-toned, perhaps more so that one might expect from someone who, as far as everyone knew, spent most of her time behind a desk, whether it be at home or at the office.<br/><br/>The young woman grabbed her keys from inside her desk and dropped them into a small bag, which she pulled up to her shoulder before shutting the drawer and locking it. She tucked the aforementioned file under her arm and headed out of the room, shutting off the light before she closed the door to the large office and locked it behind her. "Mary, will you file this for me?" she held out the file to the secretary who sat behind a desk just outside of her personal office.<span style="font-style: italic">"Of course. Have a good night, Miss Nyx."</span>the middle-aged woman replied with a smile as she took the file and waved a good-bye, which Aleyda returned before heading out the door.<br/><br/>She headed down the stairs to the bottom floor and walked the several blocks to the loft where she lived. Once she reached the building she gave the guards a friendly smile and a wave before taking the stairs. She didn't have anything against elevators, per se, she simply preferred the stairs. Perhaps it was because she liked the extra activity, perhaps she had seen one too many incidences of someone getting trapped in an elevator, but whatever the reason, she chose to avoid them when possible. She took the long flight of stairs up to her floor, reaching into her bag and pulling out the keys. She unlocked the door and walked into the loft apartment, dropping the keys on the nearby table before removing her coat and hanging it, along with her bag, on the rack. She locked the door behind her, but rather than locking the nearly ten locks she had on the door, she only locked the one.<br/><br/>She wasn't quite sure why, but she was on alert this evening. She had a feeling that something was coming, but she didn't know what, exactly, it was. So why, then, had she left the door unlocked? Of course, it could be a number of things. She had made her fair share of enemies over the years, not just in her work as a lawyer, but also her side job. Not to mention that her family had apparently made a number of enemies before her birth, which she had inherited. Her family had all been murdered and she alone remained. She had managed to stay alive both by sheer cunning and will-power, and the skills she developed for hunting the things that go bump in the night. Her family had evidently made its fair share of enemies amongst the vampires, and it had gotten every one of them killed. They had been hunted and slaughtered like animals, all of them. Truthfully, she couldn't tell you how she had survived. She had been barely eight years old when it had happened. She remembered all of it, the slaughter, the blood shed, the lifeless bodies of those she loved most in the world. Her mother had hidden her, but they had found her. Why they didn't kill her then, she wasn't quite sure, but they didn't.<br/><br/>She had grown up on her own, fighting and working for everything she had gotten. She learned to fight, not just in a traditional sense but also to fight the supernatural. She wanted answers, she wanted, needed to know why her family had been slaughtered, what they had done to deserve that fate, and why she had been spared. She had long since made many of those involved pay for what they had done, after, of course, questioning them about whether or not they knew anything about why they had been ordered to do what they had done. Thus far her search hadn't brought many answers, but she developed quite a knack for killing vampires, and had become quite renown for her skills among vampires and hunters alike.<br/><br/>The young woman shed the work attire and slipped into something more comfortable and easier to move in. She opened a hidden compartment in her closet and pulled out a few small capsules, which she tucked away, and a few knives. She tucked two of the knives away just as she heard the faintest of sounds as someone fiddled with the doorknob. She held two knives, one in each hand, and slowly and quietly stood to her full height. She had left the lights off intentionally. She couldn't tell you why, but she could see exceptionally well in the dark, just as she could hear exceptionally well, move faster than one might expect from your average human. She attributed it to years of training because she didn't know what else to attribute it to, but somewhere inside she knew this was likely not the case.<br/><br/>She slipped into the shadows and peered out of the bedroom, into the living room where a man now stood. Rather than attack the man full-on, which would likely result in one of them ending up hurt or worse, she first chose a more diplomatic approach. "Why did you come here?" she questioned the man, a light accent coloring her voice. "You're not a vampire--" she commented more to herself than to him, "So who sent you?" she questioned curiously, although she didn't expect the man to answer her at all, but there was always the tiniest of chances that this didn't have to end in violence. It was a minute chance and she certainly wasn't holding out hope, but she had to try, even though in doing so she lost the element of surprise. "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter, anyways, does it? You came here to do a job, not to chat, eh?" she went on. "Well, come on, then. Attack me and let's get this over with, shall we?" the woman held the knives in her hands but made no move to take either a defensive or offensive stance until the man made a move.