Emily Loizeau

Émilie began her life as the daughter of a well known Vintner just outside of Montpellier, France.  Her father had inherited the winery from his parents, and he and her mother had operated the business together, raising their daughter in an estate that came excruciatingly close to being the pastoral ideal.  From a very young age she'd been privately tutored and given the latitude to explore the disciplines and topics she most loved.  She took quickly to reading, but fell in love quickly with dance and gymnastics.  She proved to be a talented young gymnast and spent several years training to compete nationally, with a coach (one M. Jean Chauvin) who was only too happy to beam at her parents regarding their young "olympic prospect" as long as they continued to shell out the massive fees he demanded for his services.  Despite the relative seclusion of her early years, she always loved meeting new people and frequently came along with her parents on trips to Paris and beyond.  Her father, an inventive and creative man who's greatest flaw was to dote too greatly on his daughter, gifted the girl a hand stitched pillow on her seventh birthday.  He'd made it himself from her baby blanket, and told her playfully that it was stuffed full of all of his dreams for his daughter and that any time she held it she was hugging all of his love for her.  It was a moment she would never forget.  When she left home to train full time, it was the only thing she took with her besides her clothes.

Her dedication to gymnastics had begun the process of social isolation, and by the time she was seven years old her only true friend was another girl in her coach's tutelage.  Her name was Sylvie Voisin, an orphan whose talents their coach had discovered very accidentally.  He had been on a scouting trip through Paris when a then-eight-year-old Sylvie had attempted to pick pocket him.  He'd noticed his missing wallet was quickly enough to spot Sylvie as she climbed away like a monkey clambering up a tree.  It hadn't been hard to figure out where she was headed, and he'd gone straight to the orphanage to press complaint.  A police report was filed, but he'd agreed to drop all charges if they allowed him to tutor the girl in gymnastics (in exchange, of course for a portion of the public funds the city allotted to the girl's care).  She'd had a happy enough life, but Emily colored it in a way she'd never been able to on her own.  And when Sylvie told the story to Emily, it became a fantasy in which a charming and quick witted monkey had stealen a banana from the richest, baldest gorilla in the pack.  Nothing had ever made Emily laugh that hard in her life.

They had shared training and competition, always letting one another win in alternation to make sure neither ever felt left out.  And in the time they shared alone, they told each other fantastic stories of all kinds.  Sylvie, who was always the mischievous one, took delight in teaching Émilie everything she knew about sneaking and climbing and pickpocketing, skills she'd picked up on the streets as a younger girl.  Sylvie never ignored her, always knew right where she was going to be and teased her mercilessly for it.  And Émilie loved her like a sister.

This was her life until the day she turned 13.  She'd been participating in a youth competition coinciding with an olympic trial Sylvie had been invited to partake in when she was pulled out of the running on account of a "family crisis".  Sylvie had remained behind, blissfully unaware of what her friend was being told, winning a 2nd place position that, at the age of 16, entitled her to a spot on the French gymnastics squad.  Emily in the meanwhile was informed that both of her parents had been caught unaware in a fire that had started in the winery and spread rapidly across the estate.  She spent the entirety of that first night feeling a loneliness that would haunt her the rest of her days, crying softly and uselessly into the pillow that was the only thing of her fathers she still had.

The morning brought worse news.  Authorities suspected that the fire had in fact been started by M. Loizeau himself, the details of which impacted the girl less than the result: all of her family's assets had been frozen by the French government and Emily herself had become a ward of the state.  It hadn't taken long for Sylvie to demand to be taken back to her friend, her stint in olympic training cut short on account of the tragedy.  By the time she returned to the small dorm she and Emily shared, the damage had already been done.  Jean told them both that he had practically begged the officials to allow him to take custody of the girl and they'd they had finally relented, granting him guardianship over the girl (once again in exchange for a substantial monthly stipend).

The next two years saw Emily shrink into herself.  The bright gleam and enthusiasm she'd had for life faded until a dull ache of color on the border of an empty haze became the frame for her every interaction.  The passion and love for her gymnastics faded, her talent wasted by the dullness that began to pervade her.  And the more distant she became, the more she faded into the background?  The angrier and more aggressive her coach had become.  And over time, that anger twisted into a strange sort of hunger as he slowly watched Emily grew into a young woman.  Somewhere deep inside she noticed the change, but she'd been too empty to care.

In time, the routine of their makeshift family had become one of protracted, futile training sessions and the withdrawal of both girls into themselves.  It was a routine that last until the day before Sylvie's 18th birthday.  She had become the star prospect, but had frequently turned down opportunities to compete in order to watch over Emily as she'd withdrawn further and further from the people around her.  Drawn to some unseen breaking point and drunk (rather uncharacteristically) on cheap port, Jean had barged into their shared room with a grunt, looked intensely at Emily commanded the other girl to get out of his sight.  He slammed the door shut, locking it behind him as he turned and stared vacantly at the withdrawn orphan.  He swayed in the dark, his eyes narrowing as they grew hungry.  Biting his lip distractedly, he stepped towards her, terrible thoughts and angry words unchained by alcohol.  "You understand, don't you, just how much I've given you, don't you?  So very, very much.  And you…you've been nothing but a disappointment!  Taking everything!  Ruining everything!  So I think you…you should have to repay me.  Yes, I know exactly what you can do.  And then I won't be so angry anymore, would you like that?  But you must do exactly as I say.  Just stay quiet and listen, that shouldn't be too hard at all for you."  When she later recalled the night, the black patches in her memory always seemed peculiar.  She simply couldn't ever remember what happened in the moments after he'd removed his belt…

The next thing she remembered clearly was being pulled out of the room by Sylvie, who's torn tank top was covered in blood and sweat.  She'd barely noticed as she leaped over Jean, lying in a widening pool of his own blood, a small knife sticking out of the side of his head.  The pair fled quietly into the night and slipped silently out of their old lives and into something new.

With Emily in a state of constant shell shock, Sylvie took on the responsibility to take care of the girl as they avoided police and tried their best to survive.  The older girl quickly lapsed back into the petty crime she'd grown up relying on and the years spent sharing little tricks of the trade to Emily for fun suddenly became a matter of life and death.  They stole pocket change and bits of food from convenience stores as they train hopped their way into Estonia.  Emily, detached and dazed as they travelled, felt constantly like she was trapped in someone else's body, watching the movie of their life from behind borrow eyes.  She watched through those distant eyes as the girl learned to break into locked stores for food at night, watched as she learned to use stolen pocket knives to break locks, make small tools and on the worst days to cut the men who stalked them from time to time.

There were nights they were starving, nights they slept on stone slabs, days they spent doing nothing but avoiding police.  But some nights they stayed in fancy hotels, backpacks stuffed with stolen clothing, beautiful rings, delicious cakes stolen from an upscale bakery.  Most often they just survived.  And sometimes Sylvie would leave for a week at a time, asking Emily in a soft, kind voice to stay there and wait for her.  She came back every time without exception.

They lived that way, alley to alley, city to city, for the next year.  They worked side by side picking through crowds, watching each other's backs and sleeping side by side with one eye open.  Gradually, so very gradually, Emily began to speak again.  The bright light that once rested behind her eyes had gone so very dim but never quite went out, and as they talked, as they began to whisper not just about getting by today but wondering about tomorrow, as they started to share stories and hold hands and almost live something more than a shadow of a life, she was finally able to feel something that came close to normal.  Slowly coming out of that shell of safety was frightening, the pain of that long passed day still real, but as she reached out she could feel it recede until it managed to be nothing but a low, dull ache of a memory.  Little more than a beacon back through time to a rocky past.

And the more Emily recovered, the harder Sylvie pushed her.  As they travelled south into Italy they invented routines for short run cons and long term living arrangements, scouting empty townhouses, living in the vacant properties and pretending to be deposed royalty until the owners finally came home.  They were friends and partners through it all, and then on an August morning as they sat on a rooftop watching the sun set in purples and oranges over Naples…Emily turned to look at Sylvie, smiled at her like the precocious young girl she'd once been…and kissed her firmly on the lips.

They made natural lovers, already knowing the movements and curvature of one another's bodies.  They'd trained together, dreamed together, and Sylvie was the one person on earth that Emily trusted.  And in that flash their lives became something closer to a dream, even if it wouldn't last forever.  Two months later Sylvie announced she had to take another one of her famous away trips, but in famous style left behind nothing but a wicked smile, an envelope and a set of keys.

Inside the envelope had been a train ticket, what must have been a counterfeit passport and a slip of paper with a handwritten Austrian address circled with a heart.  Emily was shy but she wasn't slow, so she packed up what few things needed packing and took off for parts unknown.  It was only the second time she'd travelled through the alps and the only time she'd ever travelled without Sylvie by her side, and with relief she discovered not only that she felt joy with the passing of the mountains and the change of air, but also that she was capable of something like this on her own.

The address turned out to be a gorgeously appointed townhouse in Vienna, legally purchased under one of Sylvie's pseudonyms.  Emily had dropped her luggage, mouth turned up into the biggest grin as she looked about the foyer of the place.  A large bowl of white roses had been put out on a table at the base of the stairs, just in front of a small jewelry box.  Another small handwritten note on the front held only the words "Will you?  -S", and with a building joy in her heart she retrieved the slim silver ring and placed it on her hand.

The joy turned sour as the week passed with know sign of her now wife-to-be.  The week turned into two, then three, Emily's head wracked with the worst possible scenarios.  For once she vowed to ask the woman she loved where she'd gone, she had regained the strength for that.  But first she'd have to return…

Just before the passing of a month's time, an urgent banging at the front door caught Emily's attention.  It was the first time anyone had come knocking at night and she sprang downstairs, opening the door just in time to catch Sylvie's sly grin, bloodied and bruised as she collapsed on the front steps.  For once it was Emily's turn to watch over Sylvie, managing to get her inside and as comfortable as you could get a bloody mess of a woman.  She treated and bandaged all of Sylvie's wounds herself, watching over her in a near comatose state for nearly a week, once more acting practically out of body (but for once out of love instead of fear).

When Sylvie finally opened her eyes, the first thing she said (with a mischievous grin) was "So you like the ring?"  It was another week before she'd fully recovered, but as Emily had promised herself, once Sylvie was better she forced the subject of just where she'd been going for weeks at a time these past few years.  And unexpectedly, she got some answers…

Some of the details Sylvie couldn't say, asking Emily to trust her that some bits were better left unsaid for her safety, but what mattered was that she'd found a way for them to really make their way in the world.  Shortly after they'd fled France she'd been in the right place at the right time, stealing the right thing to run into a thief who'd been commissioned to steal the same book she'd been stuffing in her pack as she got ready to jolt from the passive mansion she was casing.  They'd duked it out, but Sylvie (always a scrappy fighter) had come out on top.  He'd directed her to his employer who had been impressed enough to pay her for the theft (in an account kept in escrow) and to offer her another contract in the future.

Sylvie's most recent job had gone terribly awry, however, when the partner to whom she'd been assigned had tripped an alarm system outside the vault they were trying to steal from.  They managed to grab the goods but not before getting attacked, the details of the encounter being imparted somewhat hazily (even deliberately, Emily suspected).  Either way, she had barely escaped with her life.  Her assigned partner had not.

The bright lining in the scenario was that her employer had extended Sylvie the liberty of inviting her actual partner to assist in their thefts, an invitation she hadn't taken lightly.  Emily took the time to soak it all in, watching the woman she loved relate the excitement and the  terror of the event with equal measure.  She reflected silently for a while before nodding and saying simply "I'm in."

From that point on they no longer relied on small thefts or little cons, their business was solely "High Profile Object Extraction" as Sylvie liked to call it when they were chatting about it in bed.  Emily moonlighted as a "security technology specialist" in order to scout and expand her skill set, becoming the tech counterpoint for Sylvie's expertise in forgery and lock picking.  A year spent "training" on lower impact jobs (with a month long break to get married and vacation in Hawaii) and the pair jumped into their now full-time jobs stealing high profile religious and artistic artifacts for private collectors and their employer both.

It was a lifestyle of excitement, challenge, danger and wealth.  There were jobs at the flow of things and each other in the ebbs.  It was an action movie romance, until tragedy struck.

Sylvie had been contacted by their employer, an urgent request relating to the events that brought Emily fully into the business in the first place.  An ancient Sumerian tablet of great value and rarity had been located and their skills were required to retrieve it.  They were to travel to Dubai and await further instructions.  And from the moment Sylvie had relayed the few details she had, Emily grew restless.  She had a bad feeling about the entire job and said so in no uncertain words.  But Sylvie just smiled and said those same few words she always did, "We've got this kid!"

Those words marked the beginning of the end.  Their journey for a change was full of difficulties, starting with their travel documentation (always impeccable forgeries) being subjected to extreme scrutiny by border officials.  Half of their equipment was lost by baggage handlers.  They found their communication gear had been broken in transit and their accommodations turned out to be little more than a run down two story shack just outside of the glistening commercial developments of the desert city.  On top of this Emily simply couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched or followed, but she never saw anything apart from out of the corner of her eye.

"Await further instructions" turned into a week with no communication whatsoever.  They tried passing the time by familiarizing themselves with the city at large, but they had little more than the first clue where to track this tablet down.  Taking to the streets they separately began to press whatever contacts they could find for information (a slow process for a pair that spoke no Arabic.)  They'd been ready to pack it all when they finally caught a radio cue that a data dump was incoming.  It was extremely out of the ordinary not to receive verbal confirmation of transmission first, but at least the trip stopped seeming like a waste of time.  They pulled down the data feed onto a laptop and began parsing the information.  Not much this time, just a few maps and a visual of the artifact in question, but it was definitely something.  Before the transmission cut, four static-laden words followed: "Al Fahidi, sub basement"  And that was all they had to go on.

Sylvie had not been deterred by the general oddity of the situation, and the pair was able to gear up quickly enough.  It was time to scout and "acquire".  The fort now housed the Dubai museum, and while her security scouting didn't show much challenge, clearly there were other forces at work and Emily was on guard.  An automatically sealing hermetic barrier was the biggest issue, apart from the constant feeling someone knew they were coming for the tablet.  Lacking information on the details of the job, Sylvie put together an extraction plan.  The late 1700's architecture of the exterior was the weak point.  They infiltrated at night by removing the mortar around a window accessing an archeological workspace in the west wing and Sylvie proceeded down into the vault area Emily remotely monitored the status of the automatic vault door.  When an alarm tripped, it was like seeing the story of her wife's botched job in action again.  The groaning sound of the vault crushing shut was followed by a frantic and whimpering Sylvie who handed Emily a knapsack before telling her to run.

As they fled through their improvised entryway, Sylvie was only able to gasp out a few quick words, "I only got a part of it," before freezing in place and grabbing a hold of Emily's arm.  Right ahead of them in their exit path was something that might have been a man once but was now something…else.  Grounds guards lay dead and dismembered around him and he stared with cold eyes, his flesh scaly and plated.  It was unlike anything Emily had ever seen before, and all she could do was stare at it.  She should have run, should have screamed, should have done anything, but she fell into shock at the sight, her mind completely unsure of how to process the scene playing out before her.

Sylvie, by contrast, resumed the role of action movie heroine.  Jumped into action she ran full clip towards the man, or whatever it was.  From a hidden compartment at her ankles she pulled out a series of blades that she'd never seen before, polished steel or silver and etched with strange symbols.  Sylvie took one look at Emily before leaping at the thing that might once have been a man, obviously intent on ending whatever life it had.  The man just cackled and struck out at the woman, who proceeded cut deeply across the thing's face.  The creature shrieked, charging forward blindly towards the edge of the museum wall, colliding with a violent and inhuman strength that knocked loose several large bits of masonry and shook the ground.  It's bloodied, angry maw widened as a piece of falling brickwork smashed into Emily's head.  The last thing she saw before being knocked unconscious was Sylvie's eyes looking right towards her as the man thrust forward a great, jagged arm and pierced her chest.

That was a year ago today.  On that night she'd been pulled from the wreckage of the lab by a group of men who'd been tracking a group of what they called "ritualists".  A cult of powerful individuals bonded to demons, they  and working in service of the collection of occult relics for an unknown purpose.  The templar had known the plot of their theft, they had known of the danger and the risk of attack, known what the pair had come to the museum for, and they had known what Sylvie truly was.  In the end it was the Templar known as Mr. White who explained it all to her as he offered her a choice with only one right answer.

Her wife had carried a genetic anomaly that made her what they called a Demon Hunter, a trait Emily did not share.  But her wive's secret operations conducted for their unknown "employer" had drawn the unwanted attention of a cult of

The choice was simple: contribute your talents to the Templar Order as a training member of Blackhaven and be protected from demonic retribution or die alone and unaided.

Once again through movie-lens eyes Emily watched herself nod and agree to join the order.