Katerina Gard

Rift of Cailleach

Born to a loving family in Moscow, Russia, Katerina’s life was turned upside down when her parents were murdered by what she remembers as a horrific monster of darkness and ice. When the creature found young Katerina, age eight at the time, hiding in her closet, it did not kill her. Instead, it smothered her in an endless cold that she thought she would never escape. She awoke to find herself in a hospital, with the medical staff putting her silence down as post-traumatic stress. For a few years after the event, she remained in foster care until on the eve of her 12th birthday she ran away, becoming a street orphan.
Years later Katerina joined the Russian military, moving into the Spetsnaz soon after. She gained a reputation as an accomplished but ruthless soldier. But after a mission went sideways, she was used as a scapegoat and discharged from the military on trumped-up charges, landing himself on the road to Chyorny delʹfin, one of Russia’s toughest prisons. On route, a Russian drug cartel looking for one of their own ambushed her prison transport. The resulting crash awoke the frozen seed planted within her years before, unleashing something dark with Katerina: a deadly beast that hungered for revenge.
When she next awoke she found himself in a small abandoned shack with Ian Hughes, CEO of Monoc Securities, sitting in the corner, his single, cold, grey steel eye gazing right at the ex-soldier. The businessman explained that he had found the Russian in a small field not far from the crash, half delirious and half frozen from the cold, covered in blood, none of it her own. The other prisoners and the drug cartel members had all been torn apart, as if by some wild animal. Hughes explained that he knew better. He then offered Katerina a job.
Since that day Katerina has worked for Hughes, her current assignment placing her in a semi-permanent position advising Donovan Slate on matters of security, both mundane and supernatural. It is her job to ensure that no threat, present or future, troubles Slate. She is willing to go to extremes to ensure that remains the case, including going so far as to hire bloodthirsty mercenaries.
However, what she takes the most pleasure in is the thrill hunting down and eliminating the transgressor herself. A day doesn't go by where Katerina doesn't feel the call of the hunt crying out to her. She craves the exhilaration that comes with putting her life on the line, whether it be on the battlefield or the streets of the City, hunting down her latest prey. It takes almost all her self control to keep her beast in check, making it all the more dangerous when it finally gets loose.