When Night Comes In...

Reena was still staring fiercely at the band of Warriors that had swarmed into the Tavern. Why the hell had they picked Marcus' tavern to descend upon? His was one of the meanest. The whores were few, and old and tired, a year or two at the most from being tossed out on the streets. The dancers were awkward and unlovely. Ciara was the single exception. The only reason she danced there was because Markus did not demand that she sell her body as well as dance. He was an idiot, but he understood that the young flame haired beauty drew customers. He'd have liked her to whore as well. Reena was the only reason he didn't whine longer and harder.

And because he was a coward who loved his pathetic life, his tavern was basically the single one that actually kept brawls and brutality against the dancers and the whores down to almost non existent.

But his ale was pure swill, and he couldn't even get the pigs he owned to eat the remains of the food he served the unknowing.

His tavern was a dark, smoky, stinking shit hole. So why the hell had this band of Warriors chosen to stop here? It was obvious they had been off warmongering for which ever little lord they'd sworn casual fealty to. She could smell the blood and the stink of old adrenaline, long since discharged with sword and arrow and simple brute force. She knew this group of some dozen had been long away from any town, how ever small and rude. She could smell it and see it and sense it. It coated her body with thrumming, nervous energy. It tried to choke her, sliding insidious and deadly into her nose and down her throat.

All she could think was, maybe it's just that this is the first tavern they crossed. If they had come from the north, Markus' tavern WAS the first. Perhaps all they wanted was to gulp down a few tankards of strong ale, regain a little humanity, before they moved on to a better place.

If that was the case, then she and Ciara simply needed to sit quiet. And if Markus called for Ciara dance, he would be the very first one that Reena would give to her darkness! If he called attention to Ciara!

"We have to get out of here!" Reena hissed softly to her trembling friend. "Before Markus regains consciousness! He'll call for you to dance! You know he will."

"Reena I can't leave!" Ciara whimpered softly. "He'll put me out on the streets if I do, especially tonight, with this band of Warriors leaving him pissing terrified. Any other tavern...I won't whore Reena. I won't! I can't leave!"

Reena wanted to scream. She wanted to let the darkness take her; give her the strength to fling the heavy oak table they sat at whirling and flipping, a diversion to distract while she darted and dashed and ripped and rent, dancing her body between and around the bodies that would bleed and tear and fall dead. She didn't need her knife. When the darkness came together they melded into a weapon that could not be stopped. Kill them! Kill them all. Every one, any one. Take them all! Then grab Ciara, and run away...

Run away? To what? Run away where? If she did this thing, even if she killed every living creature, the town would know. They would know she had done it. And then where would they go?

Suddenly she wanted to cry. But she hadn't cried since the day she'd found her mother's brutalized, dead body smoldering in cinders.

"Ciara..."

"Maybe he'll stay fainted. I'm off in two hours, maybe..."

"Ciara!"

It was Markus, conscious again.

Innocent wide blue eyes met wildly glittering green-gold feral eyes, and Ciara voiced what Geneve had never dared. "Don't kill them. It will be all right. Just sit here and be quiet. It will be ok. Markus won't let..."

Reena snarled, deep and savage, her throat hurting with the unaccustomed sound.

"Markus will do NOTHING but hide behind his bar and watch you die!"

And suddenly, for all that she was so afraid that she expected to feel at any moment the hot nastiness of piss running down her legs, Ciara smiled. She had felt that "other" slither dance through her mind. It wasn't speaking so gently this time, but it didn't feel Berserker either. It was awake and it was avidly, savagely aware. But it wasn't in a rage. It was just there; waiting, and so, so hungry and needing, that Ciara almost felt pity.

"We're gonna be just fine, Reena." She promised, and stroked her friend's face. "I know Markus is a coward. I know he'd stand by and let me die. But you won't. And your darkness won't either. Because it told me. I belong to you. And you belong to the darkness." She grinned, cock sure and strangely exuberant, a look that Reena had never seen on her shy friend's face before, and then Ciara swung a leg over the bench in answer to Markus' second bellow. "He's here to. The one your darkness has been waiting for. It's gonna be amazing Reena, so very wonderfully amazing!"

Reena tried to lunge to her feet and grab Ciara, but the long cloak she wore, and the damned bench itself, that refused to push back, even though her earlier bellow had emptied it, defeated her. She stood for a second, arms windmilling, then her ass crashed back down onto the hard bench and she ended up smacking her face on the table as well.

Not good, not good! This is NOT good. What the hell is going on here?

Almost always, her darkness, when it came, it exploded into life. It blew into her and took over everything; her mind, her body. It simply filled her until she was nothing BUT her darkness. She wasn't Reena any more, not one tiny lick or shred. She was just killing, Berserker, wildlands filled darkness. She was judge, jury, executioner-just a vassal used to kill the Monsters.

The day she had stood in the rude shelter that housed her few animals, and watched that all important tool split gently in two, the darkness had been there. But just barely, way in the back of her mind. She tried not to think about that day, because it scared and confused her. But that magic, that power, that something that had filled her that horrible night in the wildlands-it had been there, and for one second, before she slammed down her mind gates, she'd known, it was giggling with all the joy of a carefree child!

And how was she to take that? What was she supposed to think about that? The darkness that caused her to explode and kill, to murder evil, that was burden enough. To think that the "essence" that took her over and controlled and directed her, was childlike enough to giggle? She'd have lost her mind if she hadn't locked that knowledge far and away.

"Who is this he?" She whispered softly to herself. "My darkness is speaking to Ciara?" Reena shuddered, terrified and sickened.

Ciara should not have to be sullied by that. She was still an innocent, for all that she'd seen and lived.

And why that smile, that joy that literally radiated from her. Leave Ciara be, Reena pleaded silently. You have me. I am your slave, your vassal, your puppet with no strings. You don't need her. I will stop trying to fight you. I will do anything you demand. I will kill at your command. Don't do this to her. Gods above and below, do not do this!

And the darkness whispered back.

"She is already mine. As you are mine. As this Warrior will be mine. Mine, and yours and hers. Together, the power of three as one. Two Berserker warriors, beings of blood and rage and retribution. An army you will raise up. A world you will set to rights. And there will be blood and screams and ripped and rendered flesh. There will be fury and there will be fire and the very bones and sinews of this corrupted land will be torn apart and put back together the way that was meant to be. This WILL be done!" the darkness that was in Reena finished on a sibilant hiss.

Staring unseeing, Reena nodded hard. "I will. I will do this thing. I will join with this Warrior you speak of, in any way, what ever I need to do. I will do it. But not Ciara. She is not a warrior."

"Think you your flame haired soul sister a worthless, weak coward?"

Reena snarled. "Don't you dare call her worthless or weak! Could a coward keep living this miserable life she clings to? Don't you dare..."

The darkness within Reena laughed, soft and sleek.

"Nooooo, no warrior this soft little blue eyed one." It purred. "This one the balm, the sweet soothing solace, the medicine to coat and put out the throbbing ache of my two Warrior's wounds. This one the glue that will hold all things together. Answer me this, my feral little wolf child of a weapon, would you die for her?"

"I would kill worlds and everything, anything living on them. I would die for her a thousand times." Reena panted.

"This I know already, my child. Three as one-and tonight, it begins!"

"NO!" Reena screamed, but the howl that should have brought the very walls down echoed only through her mind.

But when she shoved back against the bench, fighting to be free, it slid smoothly away as if greased. "Ciara!" She roared, and threw herself up and onto the table. She dove off that table, intending when she landed sure footed as always to sweep up her friend and get the hell out of both the tavern and this town. With enough water and food, they could probably, maybe, make it on foot to the next closest down. And if she could steal a horse or two, then...

But her cloak caught on a ragged splinter as she went over the rough table, and she stumbled when she landed. She saw Ciara gaping at her, frozen in mid dance, and then she was falling, cursing the darkness, screaming and swearing, until she slammed hard into a seated body.

Her head slammed into what felt like a brick wall, sending her wits and her vision dancing and stuttering. Vaguely she realized, no, not a wall, a Warrior's chest, one of THEM, and why am I sitting in his lap, and then hands were skating up her bare arms, fingers fisting in her hair to yank her head back.

And staring up, she saw...and the darkness exulted savagely.

"Mine! And mine!" It roared in her mind, sending her thoughts and everything else reeling. "My Warriors, my two. MINE!"

Reena would have screamed refusal, but the free hand not yanking her head back suddenly closed with rude male lust over a breast and her rage found a more immediate subject to vent upon. She flung herself free, yelping in pain, wondering how much of the waist length hair that had worked free of it's braid she'd just lost in that brutal grip.

"Don't! Gods Reena don't kill! Don't!"

She heard Cara's desperate shriek, and for some reason...had to obey. She didn't go for a weapon. And the darkness did not fill her to make her a weapon.

Instead she dumped the steaming pot of stew, just set down in front of this Warrior, into his lap. And when the almost as hulking huge man beside him rose up, reaching for her, she swung the heavy, now emptied pot against his skull and cold cocked him. Then she grabbed up the rock hard stale loaf of bread that had been delivered along with the stinking stew and slammed it down on the first one's head.

"Reena, run!" She vaguely heard Ciara yowling. "Run!"

And Reena ran as if all the creatures of the wildlands trod on her heels. She ran, while her darkness laughed, amused and aroused. Reena ran, knowing she really had no place to run.

She went back to her wasted little ruin of a farm. There was no other place to go. And the darkness had told her, that Ciara would come to her there, at the one place that had ever been home and happiness for either of them. She had to trust that voice. She did trust what the darkness promised. She simply did. It had only ever spoken to her that one time before, and that more an obnoxiously bratty giggle then a voice, but she believed. She had to. Because if the voice lied, then Ciara and every living thing in that wretched tavern had been cut down even as she ran.

But she never thought to wonder, would Ciara come alone?

Author note...forgive please. I realize this is a short offering. But I am still trying to wrest into clarity the whole three in one idea. Ciara was NOT supposed to be any thing more then a barely there side kick. Now suddenly I'm not sure which of the three I should be more worried about! But I have been dreaming about this story lately...and I think they'll hurt me if I don't get back to it!

So this is just a little bit of something, to let those who liked this story know I'm back working on it. And Reena's darkness...it's wicked!