#about || dani

[beyondallrules]

I’m not a woman who often looks back. I measure actions by results, and peering into the past rarely yields any. Reflecting on something that hurts you only prolongs your pain, and when death is involved, the pain is often compounded by a relentless sense of guilt that attacks the moment you start to heal, as if duration of grief somehow proves the depth of your love for the person you lost. If that were true, I’d have to grieve Dancer forever.

[beyondallrules]

I’d been trained to kill at the age of nine.                    Before then I’d killed without training.

[beyondallrules]

She has the eyes of a killer.

Green with golden flecks, backlit by cold fire.

She lives in high alert. I've yet to see her relax and I've been watching her a long time.

I know the monsters, the horrors she endured to become what she is. I know the legend: kept in a cage for years, betrayed, unloved, unwanted, trained as an assassin, used as a weapon, lost for time uncounted in the Silvers, forgotten.

Loved once.

He died.

Scars inside and out; she wears them well.

Self-possessed. Inhumanly strong. Highly intelligent. Mission-driven, judge, jury and executioner. Still...champion of the helpless and downtrodden she understands -- and who will never understand her. Once you've killed, you're rarely understood except, perhaps, by others who've also taken that dark detour.

She watches over Dublin, protects its inhabitants, especially the children.

Ah, yes, the eyes of a killer but...

The heart of a saint gone vigilante.

Assuming one could get anywhere near it.

Men obsess over her. She has a healthy appetite but never stays the night.

She chooses, she burns up their sheets, she leaves.

She conceals her stone-cold behind an array of expressions yet her eyes remain remote, moving restlessly, seeing everything, assessing everyone: foe or irrelevant? On exceedingly rare occasion, if she deems one worth it: friend.

Then those killer eyes shine.

Earn an assassin's loyalty, you have a full pardon.

I'm going to need a full pardon.

[beyondallrules]

The woman moves through dark streets, thick with fog blown off the sea. Dusk cloaks her in mist and shadow as if she’s a secret the night has sworn an oath to protect. Moonlight illuminates wet cobblestones and rain-streaked windows but glances off her as if deflected by an invisible cloak. Like the Shades, she’s a smudge in the darkness. Born of long and unforgettable habit, she avoids the pale yellow pools of streetlamps. Better to see than be seen. Being heard is another thing. Sound skitters and reverberates, and unless one is a highly skilled hunter, it’s difficult to secure the target in one’s crosshairs by noise alone.

She can do it. She’s as infamous as the legendary Queen’s Huntsman. She’s never missed her mark. Her enemy isn’t so skilled. The one she seeks tonight is sloppy, blinded by gluttonous appetite, but to lure it she’s not enough. She needs an attractive, sexually viable man. Stiletto heels that gleam silver kick gusts of fog into lacy, sharp-edged patterns as she strides through Temple Bar toward Chester’s nightclub, where she will select her bait. She’s dressed to kill, weapons concealed: gun strapped to her thigh, knives flush to her skin, a sexy chain of a belt that distracts the male eye as it swings at her hips, a lethal garrote. The ricochet of her shoes on pavement is loud, deliberate. She knows she’s difficult to see and at the moment desires to be accessible.

Immediacy is efficiency.

Contempt for death is her way of life.

Nothing touches her.

To be touched is weakness.

As she turns down an alley, mist swirls back from long, bare, lightly oiled legs, the edgy hem and neckline of a black spandex dress, the supple body of a dancer, long hair pulled back in a high ponytail, the serene face of a stone-cold killer, before enveloping her again. She’s beautiful.

It’s a weapon.

She has suffered the worst the world has to offer. And thrived. She’s compiled a list of names. And will hunt them one by one. When at last the fog parts upon the face of her enemy, she will have no mercy. This world had none for her.

[beyondallrules]

“I stretched to my full height and kissed him. Like I kissed Dancer. Soft, sensual butterfly wings against his lips. Unlike the last kiss I gave Ryodan, this wasn’t one to provoke or challenge or say “Fuck you—can’t touch this.” It was a kiss that said simply, “I see you and admire you and want you to live.”

[beyondallrules]

“He kissed me like I was the empire he was sworn to protect and would die a thousand deaths to keep secure. He kissed me like I was a woman with a deep dark wildness that needed to be fed and he knew just how to do it. He kissed me like he was dying and this was the last kiss he would ever taste. Then his kiss changed and his tongue was velvet and silk as he kissed me like I was fine bone china that needed exacting care and gentleness. Then the storm built in both of us and I ground myself against him, and he was searching with his kiss and his hands sliding down to my ass for the part of me that was a savage animal and so was he and we were going to forget the world and “become two primal, uncomplicated beasts fucking as if the universe depended on our passion to fuel it. And I was pretty sure we could. I felt something building in me, a hunger that was exhilarated to be alive and knew it could come out and play as hard as it wanted because I could never break this man. Not even with all my superpowers. I could dump every bit of myself on him and never have to worry about giving him a heart attack or breaking a bone or giving him a black eye by accident. He could handle anything. My high temper, my need for adventure and stimulation, my intellect, rages, and rants, my sheer physical strength, even the darkness of my shadow-self. He was a broad-shouldered beast. He was hard and capable and permanent and had an immortal heart. A frenzy of lust exploded inside me and I met the savagery of his kiss with all the savagery in my soul, and there is one fuck of a lot of it.”

[beyondallrules]

“One day, kid, you'll be willing to mortgage your fucking soul for somebody.” “I don't think you should say fucking around me. In case you forgot, I'm only fourteen, And news flash, dude,I've got no soul. There aren't any banks. And there isn't any currency. Ergo. Never. Going. To. Happen.” “I'm not sure you could be any more full of yourself.” I cut him a smug look. “I'm willing to try.”

[beyondallrules]

“Stop. Vibrating." Ryodan plucks a paper out of the air and slaps it back down on his desk. I wonder if he cleans it. How many tushes have been on that thing? I'm never touching it again. "Can't help it," I say around a mouthful of candy bar. I know what I look like: a smudge of black leather and hair. "It happens when I get really excited. The more excited I get, the more I vibrate." "Now there's a thought," Lor says. "If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again," Ryodan says. "Just saying, boss," Lor says. "You can't tell me you didn't think it, too.”