This is the first part of a two or three part series. The first two remain unfinished, obviously, so please bear with me as I continue to update! :)  
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>     I couldn't believe that I was half-dressed and still groggy from my rude
>     awakening.  After my friend Sophia had shaken me to consciousness, 
>     blathering about a vision of Draven Francois being back in town and 
>     residing in the old house, I hadn't even bothered to strap on my 
>     leather boots. Instead, I kissed her small forehead blearily, slipped 
>     my platinum-hilted rapier into the sheath I had sewn into my old 
>     over-coat, and traipsed barefoot out into the streets. The street lamps 
>     hurt my eyes as I hurried along the sidewalk beneath them, their glow 
>     only reaching out so far before the spaces of shadow between each spot 
>     of light reigned supreme, eventually giving way to those dim fingers of 
>     absurdly dull yellow. 
>     
>     I thought of Sophia, the little girl who had been orphaned when her
>     mother committed suicide by hanging herself. I had taken her into my 
>     own apartment, continued to school her at home; I was only nineteen at 
>     the time, her elder by a mere five years, but I loved her like I had 
>     loved my sisters and I worked three jobs to keep her healthy and fed, 
>     to provide her with what she needed and the things I had never 
>     understood to give to my sisters. If I died tonight, who would take 
>     care of her? Who would buy her favorite kind of billowing muslin 
>     skirts, the kind I had slipped into before leaving? Most importantly, 
>     who would love her as I did; I who had been orphaned by death as well 
>     and more hideously than any sane person could believe? 
>     
>     Her small heart-shaped face flashed in my head, her long blonde hair in
>     knots and tangles despite my incessant brushing it. Her small 
>     blue-green eyes stared coolly at me in her unnerving fashion and though 
>     I had been walking for almost ten minutes, I almost turned back around. 
>     
>     
>     I haven't thought this through, my mind warned me. I'm half asleep and I
>     don't see the logic in doing this now. Enough, whispered a tiny voice 
>     of anger, it must be tonight or never. 
>     
>     Abruptly, the sidewalk ended, greeted bumpily by the ill-laid asphalt.
>     My bare feet slapped against its surface, loudly announcing my 
>     existence in the still quiet of midnight. I quickly veered to the right 
>     side of the street, and stopped in front of an ordinary-looking house. 
>     
>     The darkness around it made the grey paint look almost black; the white
>     trimming of the original Victorian scroll work glowed eerily in the 
>     dim, cloud-filtered moonlight; and I ascended the four concrete steps 
>     leading onto the property. As I stepped onto the lawn, my feet and 
>     ankles disappearing into the thick grass growing there, a soft light 
>     grew in the window of the second story balcony. 
>     
>     I sighed heavily, knowing that as soon as I entered this house, my
>     chances of getting back out of it would be slimmer than the miracle 
>     chance I had been given to be here in the first place. Heavy clouds 
>     shifted in the sky, illuminating the simple cement square of porch for 
>     a moment before collapsing again against the weak light of the half 
>     moon; but I did not need to see it to know it was there. I knew this 
>     house well, provided that the monster now dwelling in it hadn't moved 
>     the walls in the past four years. 
>     
>     Shaking my head slightly, my elbow-length white hair slipped from its
>     hastily fashioned pony-tail, spilled down over the brocade over-coat I 
>     had wrenched on in my hurry to get here. I ran a finger over the cold 
>     metal of hilt of my sword hidden against my back, and, satisfied that I 
>     might at least die fighting, I proceeded to make my way into the house 
>     that had so recently belonged to me and my family. 
>     
>     The stairs were unlit, so my hands groped  the wooden banister and the
>     uneven stones on the walls. I counted the stairs under my breath, 
>     concentrating on whether it was twelve steps or thirteen. It had been 
>     such a long time since I had been on these steps; at the time, I had 
>     been running down them, screaming like a typical young girl of sixteen. 
>     
>     
>     It was on these stairs that the body parts of my parents and my little
>     twin sisters had been strewn carelessly. I had come home from a 
>     particularly nasty day at school to find a dark-haired stranger 
>     carrying on in the living room about certain plants that could help my 
>     elderly father's arthritis, explaining that this or that herb could 
>     somehow defeat my little sisters' deafness. 
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