Editing Shade (section)

==Background==

For the first 12 years of her life she thought she was a perfectly normal girl with a dorky dad who worked in the basement. Her mom had been in some kind of accident while she was carrying Gwen, and had been left in a coma, but she would get better. She made up all kinds of stories about what kind of person her mother was - her dad wouldn't talk about it.

When she was twelve, she got into a fight with another girl at school. She slapped her, and the girl nearly died. Her father withdrew her from school, and sat her down to tell her things he should have said sooner.

He was a vampire. No, he didn’t kill people. He had never killed anyone, even if self-defense. Her mother was the bow and gadget using her Artimis. She had killed people, including the Prince of the city, saving his life when he wouldn’t compromise his principles. They had married.

They had been attacked. Allies of the Prince

She had been badly injured saving his life, and he was useless. Gwen’s dad stopped explaining things to her for a time, as red tracks traveled down his face.

He told her that she was a Dhampir, though their were many different kinds of Dhampir so that wasn’t really explaining. She was what happened when a vampire used enough life force to, to live, for a few minutes. She shouldn’t worry about it though – she was only a little stronger then a normal human and shouldn’t grow any stonger, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. He would find her another school.

She grew stronger. And stonger. More and more – until the vampiric portion of her nature could no longer be fed from her own life force. Her father couldn’t help, vampires reanimated the blood they fed on, and then fed on the life of that blood, burning it out in the process. While soon ways of creating a dhampir left them able to do the same, she wasn’t one of them. She was dying. 

Except, she found a way. Her hunger, she found she could externalize it. She could feed directly on life.

So she made herself a costume, and found a mask. She drained the life force of thugs and criminals, and her father watched helplessly.

He was always helpless.