When Night Comes In

"I'm so tired of killing Ciara. I want it to stop, but where can I go, what can I do? How do I find a place that has no Monsters to let the night out? I can't exactly go live out in the wild lands? Well I suppose I could, but I don't think I could get mad enough at a bear or a wolf to defend myself."

Ciara blinked her sky blue eyes for a moment. "Huh? Oh, the darkness!"

Reena nodded dejectedly, her chin cradled in one long fingered hand. "Hell, I like animals, I wouldn't want to go all night on one. Well maybe if it was chewing my arm off or something. But I like them a damn site better then I like fucking people. Except for you Cia, you know I love you." Reena hastened to add as her friend's open, innocent eyes started to tinge dark with a shade of hurt.

"You better!" Ciara snapped a bit hotly. "You're all I've got!"

Reena leaned close to give her friend a brief, but nearly bone crushing hug.

"And you're all I have."

Since Geneve had died, Ciara was the only human Reena had ever been touched by or touched in return that she hadn't killed. Or at least grievously injured. Sometimes she could pull in the darkness that tiny, needed bit. Once in a great rarity she could even get back enough human to turn and run. Normally though she simply killed whatever called the darkness. That not a one of her victims had ever been an innocent-that most of them could have easily given the devil himself a run for the money in regards to evil and horrific acts gave her little solace.

She was a murderer, a killer of men. It was as simple as that.

This cursed darkness used her to become judge, jury and executioner upon any who's act of evil was so foul as to call up Reena's darkness. All she could do was try to avoid such acts. Because she sure as hell wasn't allowed to turn her back on them. But the bitch of the matter was, simply and succinctly, evil sure as shit seemed to reign.

When the butchery had ended that night four years ago, the first thing she had done was bury her mother, as deep as her thirteen year body allowed her to dig. Deep enough that the animals wouldn't smell Geneve. She had first cleansed her mother of the copious blood that streaked and coated the tiny, frail body.

Geneve had only owned that one shabby dress, so Reena had found the nicest blanket that the slaughtered mercenaries had owned amongst them, and tenderly wrapped her mother in the warm folds, easily lifting her mother's diminutive body. When it was done, she stood there staring down at the freshly turned earth. I should say something, she thought vaguely. But she had no words to say.

So she stood there, while the moon tracked over her head, it's slithery beams twining and writhing about the stiff limbs of the soul it had claimed. She stood there. And then dropped smoothly to her knees and laid both palms down flat on the raw earth, her heart twisting with a moment's raw agony that she thought might just slay her, as her mother's murderer's hadn't managed.

She dropped her head and stared, hurting, that her mother was there, buried so shallowly in the cold ground to rot and feed the maggots. No grandious marker to put an X to the spot. No one to mourn, or even remember her other then Reena. But maybe, just maybe, this embrace was kinder then any of the ones that had proceeded it. No one would ever hurt Geneve again, after all, how could they? Mother was safe from all of them, the monsters and the almost decent ones. Mother was sleeping now.

Her fingers curled to take up a handful of dirt, holding it tight in her grip for a moment before letting it fall free. She found her words. "I loved you mother. I love you. Always and until I can finally go to sleep with you...I will love you!"

Then she stood, and moving about the camp, coldly and methodically searched every body for coin and valuables. She took all that they had, and considered it poor justice. After all, hadn't this camp taken from her the one, the only thing that she had? So she took warm blankets, a good cloak, and all the food she could gather. She took all that she could find, all that she could use, all that she could carry. She took water. And she took her hate and the darkness and left that cursed place.

She went back to the only place she had known. She went back to the village. She moved into a rude, mean little hut that had been left to fall down upon itself when the elderly farmer who owned it died of some sickness. And she waited for that sickness to take her. When it didn't, she sighed, and went to work in his gardens, coaxing back into captivity the few animals that hadn't died of the farmers demise; a handful of chickens, two scrawny goats, and a cow that she grew to loathe as much as the creature obviously hated her.

She managed to last a year before she had to slip into the village to have an important farm tool fixed.

She went at a time she figured she could avoid people, avoid trouble. And she turned an alley corner and came upon blue eyed, auburn haired Ciara fighting desperately and fiercely against the four men trying to rape her.

For one cold, crystal clear moment all froze, the four men, the two woman...

Even as callous, wicked eyes began to gleam with pleasurable thoughts of not one, but two women to rape, the darkness came and the killing started all over again. The men were down, bloody, broken and lifeless, in less then a minute. And Reena was bent over in a corner vomiting violently, trying to spew out the poison as quickly as she could, desperate to get away, to run, to escape. No more frail, fragile Geneve's for her. Not ever. Then the commotion got through to her. The tender little thing she'd assumed to be curled in a wailing, whimpering ball was bouncing around the bodies screaming like a drunken fish wife and kicking the shit out of the fallen bodies.

"Goat fucking, shit eating, cock sucking son's of syphilis ridden whores! Mother fucking brainless bastard dickwads!"

Reena straightened up in surprise, the nausea knocked out of her by the shock of watching the tiny figure apparently intent on killing her would be rapists all over again. The girl finally ran out of new curses, and started repeating her favorites. That was when Reena heard the voices rapidly approaching. She had dealt her death in complete silence. This girl was being anything but quiet.

She ran over to the girl and grabbed her arm. "We gotta get out of here!"

The girl savagely kicked a fallen body one more time then whirled. "Follow me. My room is just a few streets over."

And that was how she met Ciara. Ciarra became her link to the village. On Ciarra's one day off from tavern dancing, which was all she did, she'd fiercely snapped, no whoring, she would make the trip to Reena's little hovel and bring her the things Reena needed from the village. It was never much. Reena didn't need much. The farm took care of her, even that damned evil tempered hateful cow.

The two girls would spend the day together. It was the only true good that either had in their life. On one of her day's off Ciara managed to convince Reena that coming to the tavern could be safe.

"You just slip in through the kitchen. I have friends there, if I tell them you're coming it will be fine. They can show you where to sit. No one will notice you. And Markus, well he is a total fool, but he's also a coward who hates the kind of brawling that goes on in most Taverns. He has almost as many men employed to keep the peace as he has customers. I've been working there over two years, and there has never yet been a single punch thrown. No one would dare."

It took Ciara months to convince Reena.

She had tried a time or two to make some small errand into the village, not really happy or easy with this dependency on Ciara. But evil reigned strong, did it not? She went three times in the day.

And killed a fat merchant as he was involved in kicking to death a twelve year old boy who worked in his stables. The second time it was a man of the church who was trying to strangle his mistress after she told him she was with child and begged him not to abandon her. The third time, a husband who'd tired of his wife and was trying to throw her down a steep, narrow set of stairs. That had been a bad one. Reena had exploded through the window, the husband had released the wife, who had nearly gone backwards down the stairs thanks to the sudden lack of support. Reena had snatched the woman back, then turned and ripped the man's throat out with her nails, and turning, threw herself back out the window, sickened and shamed that the woman had looked more afraid of her then of the dying man who had ten seconds before been intending to murder her.

She went once, at night. And killed half a dozen before she wrenched her mind free enough to run like all the hounds of hell were baying for her blood.

So yes, it took Ciara a very long time to convince her friend that Reena could visit the Tavern where Ciara danced without bodies being the price of admission. The tavern Markus owned did have one thing to be said for it. It was the very last building on the edge of the village. If Reena approached it from that side she could be slipping inside so fast that the chance of meeting any one to call forth the darkness was very unlikely.

And Reena ached with loneliness. She had no idea why that should be, considering she honestly did hate everyone other then Ciara. But she was missing something. It wasn't her mother. Of course she missed Geneve. But that wasn't the hole, the emptiness that needed to be fitted with something.

Reena needed something, and the darkness whispered to her as she slept. The Tavern, go to the Tavern. It will be there, that which we need. It's coming, always every closer, slowly coming. It needs us to but does not yet know. It's so cold, this thing we need, so cruel and closed up and so alone. Hates even harder then you, my moon swept child. Kills even faster then we could ever dream. And it's coming, here, to us, to the Tavern. To find you, to see you, to know that it needs you.

And then the darkness sighed, like a mother dealing with the latest transgression of a head strong, naughty child. And you will dump wretched, nasty stew in it's lap and knock it out cold with a loaf of stone stale bread!

Reena had been slipping like a sleek, sly shadow into the Tavern for three or four month now. And somehow the customers knew. Perhaps one or two had seen-something. Whatever it was that had been seen or sensed, they left Reena to exist as if she wasn't even there. Unless she did something to alarm them.

It was hot in the Tavern, and smelly to, but Ciara was on her break and she and Reena were huddling close whispering into ears, taking unspoken comfort in simple physical closeness. They sat close, pressing against the other from hip to knee. Ciara's head resting on her friend's shoulder, Reena's arm wrapped about the other girl's waist. Their free hands meshed and mated, the fingers moving and dancing with nervous energy.

It was a sight that should have appeared sensual and sexual to the crude men sitting all around the two young women. It wasn't. The men would not dare to try to take it as such. There was love there in the cuddling of the completely opposite, lovely young girls. But it wasn't a carnal love.

To be a human is to need, to crave, to search out touch . We are not animals, we can not be fobbed and fooled with a rude bottle and a crudely stuffed toy form to huddle against.
We need to have contact with our others. Even if we feel that we hate almost everyone, there must be one single soul that we can melt against with a soft sigh and an unspoken plea that begs, touch me, see me, let me remember that I am human. It is those few among us that shy from that touch, that don't seem to need it or want it...those are our human animals.

Neither girl was yet, that far lost. Not even Reena, with her darkness trapped within.

Something had given these two to the other. Reena never spoke of it, but she rather thought it was her darkness. She had been standing there in the even ruder, rougher building that was shelter for the animals, and turned at a noise to watch the two parts smoothly part and fall gently to the straw strewn floor. She had gawked for a moment.

"Ah shit." She finally whined. "Can't just stay backed the fuck off?"

She had thought about begging, don't do this to me, whatever your plans...just don't. But she had an idea she would not be listened to, so just kept silent. And that next night went.

And now she was whispering to Ciara in the Tavern.

"I can't dance. I'm too tall and skinny to be pretty. I'd hate spending the whole day in a Tavern serving swill to swine. And you know I'd kill the first drunk to grab my butt."

Ciara frowned in deep thought. It depressed Reena a bit to realize that the fierce frown only improved the sweetly pretty face.

"And I don't want to cook or clean so being a servant is out as well." Reena added.

"Maybe you should get married?" Ciara suggested. "Uh..I mean..."

"Hah!" Reena roared with such savage scorn that it cleared the entire table.

Markus glowered from his spot behind the bar. Still wondering why the hell it was that a scrawny seventeen year old could send grown men skittering in such a frantic manner.

"I told you. I'm not pretty. Men want pretty wives. That and boobs." Reena grumbled. "I don't have big boobs either. And then we get into the whole, husband gets mad and decides to beat me to death and me and the darkness rip him to shreds. I think we need to forget that idea."

Ciara tried to think of things they hadn't already agreed were hopeless.

Reena glanced up at her friend and shrugged. "There's just no place for me anywhere. It's ok, I've always known that. I think maybe I kinda wish they had whipped both mom and me to death...back then. It would have been better."

Ciara had never met Geneve of course, but she loved the woman for the love she had so obviously felt for Reena. Reena was her only friend, the only thing Ciara cared about. The only good thing she had.

Her arm was whipping up, beyond her controlling. She knew she was going to slap Reena's face with all the force she could manage. Reena would make a wish to take those stories of a mother who'd loved away from Ciara? Reena would wish herself away from Ciara, leaving Ciara never having a friend? It meant so little-Ciara meant so little-there was a scream of pain and rage and rebuttal rising in her throat.

And then the Tavern doors blew inward and Ciara fell off her stool and ended up slapping her own face.

She watched dazed as Reena dove beneath the table. An instant later an arm darted out and snatched her, dragging her there as well as a body rolled to cover her own. Reena's eyes looked down into Ciara's with desperate, miserable, cornered panic.

"Go out the kitchen door!" Reena panted, her eyes darting frantic. "If there's danger to you the darkness will come. You'll be safe! They won't hurt you. Nothing will hurt you. I won't let it!"

Ciara stared up wildly at her only friend, and fought the urge to explode into hysterical sobbing. She was so, so glad that she had fallen off that crude stool and slapped her own face before she could slap Reena's.

This only friend, her sister of the soul, might have dreams of never having been. But Ciara realized that as long as Reena and Ciara were in this world, Reena would protect her with all that she had, even accepting, welcoming the darkness if it came to keep Ciara safe.

And then Markus, that fat, sweating buffoon of a man, poked his head over the bar, swallowed noisily, and choked out "Warriors of the land. My house is yours. Well met and welcome."

Then the bloody nitwit passed out cold behind his sturdy bar. And wasn't that just...something.

Reena crawled out from under the table, gently pulling Ciara along. They both got resettled. And Ciara realized an interesting fact. She wanted suddenly, to kill something! She had a feeling this was not a good development. Ciara gave Reena a fierce look, knowing that her friend was busy looking over the band of Warriors that had entered.

Listen here, you darkness thing you, Ciara hissed silently. You cause Reena enough trouble. She's going to be really mad if you mess with me! You better just back off or I'm telling on you!

Ciara moaned, dropping her head onto the table. Oh that was priceless. Let's just sound like a five year old telling mommy the big kids took my candy.

There was a soft noise, sounding almost like a gentle laugh, dancing through Ciara's mind. Little one, a voice whispered, she is mine, and you belong to her through the bonds of love. Did you really think you would be able to stand at a distance? There was another peal of that gentle laughter, and then Ciara's mind was her once again her own.

Gentle? She thought. How in hell can the thing that gives Reena the ability to kill 24 trained mercenaries come off sounding gentle to me? She looked once again at her one friend.

Oh shit. Reena, I think we're both in a world of trouble now!

*

Last lil author's note...case ya all missed it...Bane just blew in through those wretched Tavern doors. And that wench Ciara somehow managed to worm herself a bit more of a place in the story then I meant for her.