Chapter 2.

The bar was a seedy, dead end hovel placed well away from the main street but Lanarta knew this is where she would find her prey. She had tracked the deamon here from the suburbs but wasn't quite sure who she was looking for. Most of the patrons were surrounded by the fog of ciggarette smoke and the low level lighting further obscured their faces.
Lanarta dug out a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her trench coat and went to the bar.
"Beer",
she order in a low, husky voice full of sex and sensuality. She took a match from a brick on the bar, struck it across the wall and lit her cigarette. The barman looked at her with more than a hint of lacivousness in his eyes. He handed Lanarta her beer and smiled, his thin, twisted lips locked in a grotesque grimace.
Lanarta didn't even bother to respond, she was used to men like that, men who would never be good enough to walk in her shadow, let alone touch her. In the end they were harmless, even if they tried anything she knew how to defend herself and they always came off worse.
She threw a note on the bar and sauntered over to a seat at an empty table. It was waiting time. She knew how to play the game, the hurry up and wait. She had been trained to ignore impatients and to wait for as long as it took. That was her father's doing. He had trained well.
Lanarta closed her eyes and atuned her senses to the energy in the room. That was all she could do when looking for a deamon, they had the ability to appear human in every aspect including eating and drinking but somehow they could never quite get the aura right. That's how Lanarta could tell. She sensed them. They all knew of her, of course, and took great delight in baiting her, leading her on a merry chase but with all that was at stake Lanarta couldn't afford not to chase anything up. That's when they'd make their move.
She felt, rater than heard a voice, calling her name. It was a faint echo in her head but it was there. Her scars began to burn, gently at first but moving up to a boiling, simmering rage. She wanted to call out, scream at the deamon to be gone but she knew it's was a trick, a test of her ability to stay cool under pressure.
'I feel you, I hear you where are you?'
Not words, but thoughts projected into the ether.
'Come and face me or are you afraid?'
'Lanarta, Lanarta, we are not afraid, never afraid. We know, we know.'
The voice was a mocking sneer, cold, calculated.
'We know, we know. We know you Lanarta, we have deafeted you once and we will do so again.'
The malice in the voice almost jolted Lanarta out of the conection but she remained controled and fought to keep her thoughts from spiriling out of order.
'If you have deafeated me fool, why do I still fight you? Why am I still here?'
A cold laugh echoed through Lanarta's brain, a harsh hacking thing full of malice and merryment at the confusion.
'You do not know yourself, child, or us. Go home to your father and sleep. You have no power over us.'
The conection was severed as quickly as it was made.
Lanarta desperatly searched for the deamon again and found that he was on the move. He had sliped out of the back door and was making his way down an alleyway that lead to the tenements. No doubt he was hungry and out for a feast. Lanarta drained her beer and followed the conection.

Chapter one.

It was a cold morning in early January when Lanarta left the house. She strode across the fields, her short, plum dyed hair glinting bright red in the early morning sun. Her body was wreathed in black leather, a cat suit surmounted by a dust jacket coming down to her ankles, her feet shod in black leather boots. She had decided to forgo her favoured method of transport, her bike, for a walk this morning. The paralel scars on her shoulders began to itch. She mused on the them as she absent-mindedly began to scratch. Her father said that she had be burnt in the orphanage where he found her, but she wasn't too sure about that. Each scar was exactly 8 inches long and lay in exactly the same place on each shoulder. Oh well, they were slightly ugly but not much more than a cosmetic floor. Lanarta didn't let them bother her anymore. If anything, they were an interesting party peice, atracting the attention of the great and the good.

She enjoyed walking, it was a great way to strech her long, lithe, legs. As she stood at 6 foot, her stride was as long as any man's and she was twice as strong, well in her proffesion she had to be. There was no margine for error, no room for weakness.
Her father had taught her that from the first. She was going into the family buisness. Odd that the family buisness surrounded fighting when her father was a Priest but Lanarta had learnt to stop questioning his wisdom years ago. She'd been adopted by him when she was 5 and he had been a part of her life for 20 years. She had never quite figured why he had picked her out of all the orphans. She wasn't the prettiest, or the strongest back then. If anything she would have described herself as a bit of a damp squib. She had been lanky, even then, a foundling unloved and unwanted by anyone but her father. He had taught her disipline over her body and mind for as long as she could remember, honing her psychic and physical gifts until she was as sharp as a pin. By the time she was 8 he had taught her to wield a dagger with deadly effincency, by the time she was 10 a short sword. At 12 she could use a long and by 15 she was acustom to using any weapon on to be found on the Medieval battle field. She was a true trooper, suited to her calling as part bounty hunter, part deamon hunter and she did her job job with ruthless efficancy and just a little hint of enjoyment.