Teased from the earliest days, over her albino looks. She had developed an aversion not just to the painful sunlight, but to any bright light, she might be seen in. Those times she had to be out during the day, then she dressed as a leper, her face and eyes wrapped behind the wound strips of cloth that let her see but kept the searing sun at bay. Her hands gloved and wrapped.

Lately, she had started feeling the shadows, knowing them before she saw them.

  Olivia loved the night. Her lithe form slipping from darkest shadow to hidden recess as she followed the fools with too much money and too little sense as they staggered drunkenly from the slum bars to their hilltop mansions.  

This one now, stopping to piss in an alley. She glided up behind him, her lead filled leather sap crashing into his temple. She caught the body as he fell, snoring. Taking purse, rings, dagger, and that heavy silver necklace with the pretty thumb sized sapphire he so loved to show the ladies.

The night places, those that sought the custom of people after dusk and before dawn, the dim and smoky Inns and gambling dens, the shops buying and selling to those desiring anonymity, they knew her well.

Selling the Nobles fancy dagger and sapphire necklace had filled her purse until she drank or gambled it all away again.

Old Cedric, her fence had information for her the next night,

"Listen Livy girl. It makes no difference to me where these goods come from, but you cannot be bringing the Nobles down on us like this!"

"What do you mean? It was a simple bash-and-dash."

"Did you have to tear him apart like that? They found parts of him a good seven or eight paces away! Now his daddy has sent troops looking for you."

"Tear him apart? I don't even carry a blade. Bah, he was snoring pretty when I left his sorry ass."

"I don't want to hear it! If it happens again, you'll be taking your business elsewhere! Now get!"

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That very night as Olivia had doubled her fortune twice on the dice tables. She let everything ride on one final roll. Her luck vanishing as the dice came up snake-eyes, all her coin vanished likewise.

As across town, in a dark alley, the prostitute Plump Mary and her John were getting down to business. When with a quiet mad giggle as of a hyena, the shadows came alive, and unseen claws and teeth tore the still intimate couple, never even having a chance to cry out, into dripping gobbets scattered wide.

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Olivia was bent over her latest victim. His purse in her hand. When she felt the shadow a mere few steps away watching her. She stared into the shadows heart and saw nothing, but she could feel it there. The darkness thickened and impenetrable. The intent regard seeming to look completely through her. Then a few breaths later the intensity lessened and the night returned to normal, and she dashed off with the plump purse.

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A few night later as the moon hit new, and clouds scudded, brokenly masking the stars. Nurse Crenshaw walked through the recovery wing in Bedlam, the patients here just days from going home cured. She walked her rounds with a candle as her only light. Hearing what sounded like someone laughing in their sleep, Crenshaw turned to look. Tripping, as something grabbed her from under one of the beds, she stumbled, hitting the arm holding the candle on something reaching from the dark, spilling it from her hand. Insane laughter sprang up on all sides as the Nurse, and her four patients screamed hopelessly.

Investigators assumed the murders were done by one of the patients, but they didn't understand how he had torn himself apart on a locked ward, with the key still around what remained of the nurse's neck.

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Olivia peeled herself from her snoring drunken lover and wiped herself clean. He had been sweet, buying her drinks and dinner after the dice again stole her last coin. Ah, well, there was always some fool willing to give her more to feed to the tables.

Looking out she saw she still had hours until dawn. Forgoing her leper wraps she headed for her basement apartment, some few minutes away.

Arriving home, safe from the sun, she read by candlelight for an hour then pulled up the blankets and blew out the light.

She awoke with a start. The watcher was back, she looked into the dark and saw not a trace. It watched her, and she watched back, feeling it more intensely all the time. Reaching for the lucifers she kept next to the bed she struck one, the flare filling the small room. Instantly the watched feeling fled from the light.

Seeing nothing in the small room, she blew out the match and curled up to go back to sleep. In the dim light, it was impossible to make out the long parallel scratches dug into the flagstones of the flooring.

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In the bright of day little Tommy Baker was playing hide and seek with other five and six-year-olds. He crawled through the small opening to the dark and shadowed space under the floor of his parents Bakery.

The screams that dragged on brought his parents. The rivulet of red streaming out brought the Guard.

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Olivia was stalking a prime fish tonight. She barely had the coin to pay her weekly rent and nightly meal. So was out earlier than normal. The streets full, but Olivia always found safe shadows to move in. The Dark gathering thicker where she hid. The still setting sun leaving shadows that seemed to reach out to her and guide her to them, as she followed her prey. This goldsmith had delivered a barrow full of shiny gold plates and cups to one of the nob mansions, and with full dark soon upon them was scurrying home.

Reaching to lift a purse almost too heavy to carry, she felt the watcher return, there just three paces away, in the dark behind a rain barrel. Then she felt a second watcher this one from a hollow under a leaning stack of crates. Then a third watcher, from behind her. Spinning she tried to watch all three back, admitting defeat she ran, leaving the goldsmith's heavy purse behind, resting between ring-covered hands. Insane voices laughing with glee, tearing and cracking noises the only things that pursued her.

She didn't stop until she was in her room, a wedge jammed under the door. She hadn't felt real fear in a long time, now fear was left far behind, in favor of sheer terror as she saw the four slashes in her cloak that had been so sharp and fast she hadn't felt a tug.

Hours later she drifted into sleep, to awake with the sunset to see the heavy purse on the bed beside her. The rings she had been going to take there with the purse, still on the fingers of two severed hands.

Wedge still firmly under the door, boards firmly nailed over the window, there was no way that anyone could have gotten in, yet someone had...

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She spent the next night sleeping in the arms of an adventurer passing through. Waking to find a noble woman's clutch purse and her bloody jewelry on the chair by the bed. She had to seduce the adventurer all over again that morning, to send him back to sleep so she could hide the 'gifts'.

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For a month the gifts continued. Olivia had given up gambling and drinking. Only leaving her room to pay the rent or buy a meal. Wherever she went, public or private, she could feel a shadow watching, often more than one.

She pawned only the common items to the lesser known fences. Avoiding the people that knew her. The guards were out in force hunting the murderer and thief who was leaving only slaughter behind them.

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She woke to feel the three shadows all on the pallet with her. Her blankets over her head these days prevented her from looking to see what she knew wouldn't be there.

She felt them reach out to her, her blanket pulled down until it was off her feet. Keeping her eyes closed tight, she felt as they somehow gently stroked her face and down her body. Never more than feather light, their hands even seemed to slip behind her to pass into the Dark between the mattress and her. The fear passing, their touch is oddly comforting, their whispers lulling her.

What seemed ages later the watchers faded away and striking a match she lit the candle.

Looking about the room she saw a garment over her lone chair, looking to herself she saw her clothes that she had worn to bed were now shredded ribbons. Even the new hard leather boots were torn apart.

Looking to the chair she saw a single piece suit of the thinnest, supplest leather she had ever imagined. Hardened soles, gloves that folded back, a hood that would cover her hair and a veil that could completely cover her face.

She pulled it on, the gloves down, the hood up, and closing the veil. Looking through the veil her dim room was lit as bright as daylight. The three watchers sitting there indistinct in the dim candle light.

Not sure why she blew out the candle. If anything the room grew brighter. The watchers now clear she saw were female shapes dressed as she was now. Razor claws tipping their fingers. Looking to her own fingers, she saw short and duller claw, claws that could still part the walls of reality itself to let her step through. They were whispering to her of the secrets they knew. No matter how a secret started, no matter how long or where it had existed, all secrets in the end return to the Dark. A tree listening in the sun to every tale a breeze carried, would one day fall and become soil in the dark under the grass. Even the all-seeing Sun high overhead would one day be nothing more than a cold coal drifting in the Dark. The bravest hero, most learned scholar, most treacherous brigand, all must return to the Dark of the grave, bearing their secrets with them.

As she listened, her mind dazed, her giggle joining theirs. Two of the timeless figures took an arm each in their ferocious hands and proceeded by the third, they went walking the secret paths behind the world. Any shadow dark enough could be an entrance or exit.

Then they showed her the secrets left along the paths by a hundred thousand cultures from a million worlds, some toys, some monsters, some armies, some entire cultures, and worlds, all lost and long forgotten secrets, now just part of the Dark. An Army of Secrets could wait on the paths at her back as she awaited the perfect moment to strike from a shadow dark enough.

They had struck and killed not out of hunger or need, but because all things in the dark are already theirs. Olivia drew their attention and had unknowingly pulled them here not because she was in the dark. No, it was because the dark was in her, spoke to her, would in the fullness of time become her, as she became one of them, a secret herself.

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So keep a light on in the dark lest they wander by. Curious of some secret hidden near, finding a shadow dark enough there and finding you too close...