Friday November 7th 2014

Cerberus blocked the stairs of the Serpens Lacum. Primed and ready for a fight, they were rolling five rows deep without an inch between them. They watched him come without a word, a mass of muscled hate with every reason to want him dead.

“Your bitch's going to get a surprise tonight.” The voice was hidden in the crowd of soldiers.

“What would that be?”

“She had to keep pushing. Couldn't back off and suck the dick like she should. They’ll break her alter and smear it with shit. Fucking whore will see what she gets when she sets foot where she doesn't belong. Let’s see how she likes it when someone shits on her faith.” Venomous smiles cut across their faces. “You thought you won. Big man covering us in shit. You thought it was over.” He bolted for the Vulpes, chased by their laughter.

It had already been a full day, working out with Viktor, fighting with Tamlin, and then training with Anastasia. He’d been looking forward to a hot bath, not a sprint across campus with sore muscles. He hit the trail behind the Vulpes at a dead run.

The clearing opened up in front of him, empty and holy. Gulping air, his knees hit the ground with a thump, the stitch in his side twisting with a vicious burn. He pushed the pain aside, thoughts running fast. Should he ambush them on the trail or in the clearing? There were advantages to each, but he had to decide soon. It depended on who they sent. Blaez would butcher him on the trail, the wolf owned the forest. On the other hand, the cover would cripple Pantagruel.

When Blaez walked into the clearing, a small, tight smile spread across Cesare's face. It didn’t last—it never does. Anastasia stepped into the clearing behind the wolf. Malicious glee danced in the wolf’s eyes. “Well, well, well, looks like Fenris gave me a gift.” Horror etched itself on Anastasia's face as she took in Cesare.

Blaez smiled, eyes sweeping the clearing for surprises. “I’ll give you the chance to crawl away, cockroach.” Anastasia shot Cesare a pleading look.

“Can’t do that. How about we find a teacher and talk it over with them?” In the pain soaked darkness, it was the last defying hiss of a cornered cat, the poisoned curse of a dying man. Barbed and twisted, the words brought something slaughterous into the clearing, the holiness of the clearing embracing its blood-drenched cousin.

A sexual satisfaction saturated Blaez’s smile, the deep pleasure of sheathing himself in a woman. “Nice to see your baby teeth, too bad it’s too late. This'll be fun, for me.”

Cesare tossed the three-pack of fog horns onto the grass. Sound exploded into the silent clearing, rupturing the stillness with savage delight. The Thagirion flinched back, hands jumping to their ears at the hammer of noise. The ear plugs Cesare had in smoothed out the hard edges.

Eyes threaded with pain, Blaez pushed through the punishing wall of sound. Beyond the bounds of safe, the volume slaughtered the filament of its ears. Anastasia was the more dangerous of the two. Her long-range attacks could destroy the entire plan, but one look reassured him. She waited on the sidelines, eyes darting between the two boys.

Teeth gritted, lips pulled back in a snarl, the wolf pushed forward even as spikes of pain drove into his skull. At ten feet, the wolf rushed him. Yellow with eyeshine, the animal glared out of the human lie. The moment enfolded Cesare in its cold precision. Stupid with pain and fury, Bleaz was out of step with the moment. The wild haymaker was telegraphed in a thousand ways. Ducking under it, Cesare’s jab thudded into the wolf’s face. It would’ve put Anastasia on her back foot, but the wolf shrugged it off with a grin.

Swinging for the fences, Blaez came forward with another looping punch. The moment pulled Cesare back enough to let it pass, a forward kick snapping into the charging wolf’s center mass. The wolf stepped back, mastering rage and pain. His stance took on a professional polish.

The moment changed around Cesare. Two jabs cut into Cesare with only blurs of force to announce their arrival. The third one sent Cesare onto his back foot, dazed with the world tilting on its axis.

Shooting back, Cesare’s jabs were nowhere near as fast or polished. Blaez smirked as he slipped between them, his right hook cracking Cesare’s ribs. The wolf snuck in a left that ripped into Cesare’s kidneys as he stepped out of the pocket.

A trickle of blood leaked from the wolf’s ears. But even with the sound tearing the wolfs tender flesh, Cesare was losing. The few months of training was nothing compared to the time Blaez had put in. He was too fast, his tells hidden in polished ability.

Rushing forward, Cesare let out a side-swiping kick. Blaez tensed his body, taking the kick without a wince. But it got Cesare what he needed— close. Blaez’s rabbit jab split Cesare’s lips, blood flooding Cesare’s mouth with the taste of copper.

An uppercut folded Cesare in two. Blaez was still for one frozen second, with his fist planted in Cesare’s stomach. Cesare clamped his hands along the wolf’s arm, a twist tore tendons. The crack of breaking bone rose above the shrill horns.

The werewolf’s arm flopped at his side, his mouth open in a scream drowned out by the horns. Cesare erupted with a slashing elbow, cutting across the boy’s face in a spray of blood. The second elbow came from below, cracking into its jaw. Blaez stumbled back, eyes unfocused, legs wobbly.

Cesare was moving with him as blood dripped down Blaez’s face. Clenching the back of the wolf's head, he forced it down, locking it in place. Knees rocketed up into the imprisoned wolf’s face, soft tissue ruptured, delicate cartilage shattering under the hammers of bone.

With an explosion of power, Blaez burst out of the clench. His face was a ruined wreck of cracked cheek bones, a smeared lump of shattered flesh where his nose had been, split lips spilled blood tainted spit from his chin, cuts spider webbed across pale flesh.

“Blaez, don’t!” Anastasia screamed, but it was too late. Clothes shredded under the energetic force of the change. Twirling around, Cesare had seconds to grab the stick staked into the ground behind him. It was the one thing that could save him.

Yanking the stick out of the ground, he turned, knowing he was too late. The claw caught him just above the hip, a meat hook of bone tearing flesh. His abdominal muscles ripped apart as the wolf carved a trench into Cesare’s breastbone, bisecting his pectoral muscle. The claw burst free of his body in an eruption of flesh and blood with Blaez's howl of glee owning the night.

The force of the attack threw Cesare back, the stick thudding into the werewolf's shoulder as Cesare went airborne. With three-liter bottles duct taped to it, the staff exploded in a rain of red dust, silver stars shining through the rusty cloud. Powdered white phosphorous in a liquid agent burst into incandescent flame, igniting the thermite in the air.

Cold flushed through Cesare as he watched the thermite hell engulf the wolf’s body. The silver melted, running into trenches carved by molten iron. Eyes that had flamed with fury melted, skin vaporizing into ash, muscle crisping in the flash frying of meat.

A cold feeling swept over Cesare, sinking into his veins, burrowing into bones. Frozen and cold, his heart was a great drum sounding out slower and slower. Intestines pushed out of his abdomen, organs expanding into the midnight air. Darkness carried him down into the icy embrace of nothingness.

Elizabeth Raven

Elizabeth laid the last test paper on top of the pile. While they frowned on spending your off time in your classroom, she had nowhere else to go. The other teachers had places to be, friends or lovers waiting for them in the small apartments they gave resident teachers. The apartments were nice, but without anyone to share them with, they felt more like a prison than a home.

She’d done what she could, plants hung from hooks and cascaded from shelves, anything to give the space life. The pictures on the walls showed another person's life. A smiling woman that excelled at college, friends clustered around her as she walked through a campus known the world over. Hiking photos dotted small tables and marked the walls, woman and men smiling with Elizabeth in the middle as they explored dozens of forests and national parks. It had never changed the lonely feeling of coming home alone with no one to cook for and no one to care about how her day went.

She’d had such hopes when she’d first come to Primrose as a student. They had ripped some from her, others became too painful to hold on to. Her strongest, most treasured dreams had died lonely and starving in the dark corners of her soul, leaving hollow places that ached in the winter. The prejudice had entrenched itself deeper, year after year, no matter how nice she was, no matter how many times she refused to back down. Nothing broke the impenetrable wall of disgust. And yet, after getting her Master’s, she’d come back to the abattoir.

She stared out across the campus, wondering—not for the first time—why. This place had killed her dreams, cut into her soul and deformed it with its knives and hate. Her dream of finding an Umbrae Lunae that could love a Chthonic had died on Primrose’s sacrificial alter. This crucible of pain had consumed any hope she had that the Chthonic’s would find a place with the Umbrae Lunae. They’d ripped the dream of having friends from her heart with gleeful laughs. But she’d still come back.

College had been better with her hiding what she was, along with all the other Umbrae Lunae. The humans had accepted her for the mask she wore. Lying wasn't the best way to make friends, but it had been her only way. She'd explored relationships, found friends to confide in, dated and explored the human world until it was her world too. Even now, she kept in touch with the friends she'd made in that time of deception and discovery.

She’d come back because this was the butcher that had made her. The place that scorned her, that hated and despised her, was the only place she could be herself. The human world offered only a life of lies, with betrayal a careless word away. Better to live a hard truth than a happy lie. And for the past years that had been born out year after year. Some people had touched her life briefly, but nothing had broken the ruthless truth she lived.

Now everything was different. A scrawny, mutt of a kid with muddy brown hair, ugly in the way of the malformed. Another child born from concrete, a forgotten son lost in the world. Vaguely sad in the way of other people’s problems, he was easily forgotten in the day's rush. Until you met his unremarkable brown eyes. They possessed the gripping intensity of a boy that had lived his own code despite life’s brutality.

He was the reason she spent her time in this room. Her apartment had more comforts, but no memories of Cesare. Here she could touch the memories that formed the friendship she had with the boy.

Panicked cawing wrenched her out of her thoughts. It was the two ravens that had taken a liking to Cesare. Well, the flock as a whole had taken a liking to him, but those two seemed to find him endlessly entertaining, much like a shiny bit twisting in the air. They’d taken to following him at odd times to see what he’d get into next. They hit the windowsill with thumps, their distress catching as the other birds took up the panicked call. Only two things came through, Cesare and hurt.

Elizabeth's power swept through her. Few Chthonic mastered the Alia Natura. It took a certain mindset; the ability to surrender to something greater than your ego, a trust that went beyond bone. The blocks she kept on her power fell before the wave of primal essence with the ease of long practice. With gentle savagery, it unraveled her in mind and body, reshaping her into the animals she loved.

She poured out of the window in a cloud of ravens. In this form, she was more than Chthonic, more than any single entity. She was everywhere, the world coming to her from dozens of eyes. A piece of her existed in every raven, they were all around her and she was all of them. Her wings beat in the dozens, muscles strained against night air, making thousands of adjustments every second. The world was a vast expanse of sky, freedom a living thing caressing her bodies. Pity filled her heart for the worms that crawled on the ground. They could never know the grace of flying, blinded things of petty needs.

The others drew her to the clearing where the Order of the Dragon’s altar was. She had too many memories of abuse to be a friend to the Christians, but she’d done her duty. The protections she’d laid down would bar even an enraged dragon while summoning her on a moment's notice. Something had gone wrong because nothing had tripped the wards.

The clearing was drenched with dark pools of blood, scorch marks marring the grass she’d raised from the earth. Pieces of shining metal gleamed up at her like stars from the pitted ground. Wheeling around, she headed back to the school.

She reformed outside of the infirmary, the world snapping into focus with a wrench of perception. It was always a loss to be bound to one body again, and a deep relief to make it back. Too many had died over the centuries for her to take its power for granted.

The infirmary was the singular reason there weren’t more fatalities during the school year. New parents thought the four doctors and twelve nurses were overkill, but they hadn’t seen what a gang of Umbrae Lunae did for fun.

She stepped into controlled chaos. A group of doctors and nurses bolted for the ICU with a gurney between them. Feral, wet screams erupted down the hall from another group of nurses and doctors. Elizabeth froze in horror as she got a look at what they were containing. It was Blaez in Kveldulf. The nine-foot avatar of butchery shook his head from side to side, snapping at the doctors and nurses that surrounded him.

His face was a charred ruin: black ears melted off, milky trails of what used to be his eyes staining his face, flesh hanging in burnt threads. Liquefied lips twitched and crawled as flesh fought to regenerate. Howling, Blaez clawed trenches into his body, tearing out steaming chunks of his own flesh, scattering quivering bits of meat and blood across the circling nurses.

The werewolf dug for the incandescent silver nova’s that blazed deep in the meat of its body. Mewling in pain, he sliced his claw across the burned flesh of its face, carving a thick slab of writhing meat off his muzzle. Long claws, deadly scythes of death on the battle field, were never designed for surgery. The sickly sweet smell of cooked meat drowned out the smell of antiseptic.

Off to the side, Alexandra watched with a satisfied smile. Stained black with blood, her uniform was a shroud of carnage. Pale hands crusted in scarlet married the lone streak of blood smeared across her cheek bone.

Anastasia leaned against the far wall, looking as though it was the only thing holding her up. Horror etched her face as she watched the wolf root into his guts. Its fist disappeared into the belly as Bleaz gave a whine of tortured pain. Skin writhed as its own regeneration worked to heal the damage the wolf inflicted. Plaintive screams hit the walls, coming back twisted and barbed with agony.

“Can't you restrain him?” Elizabeth asked Alexandra. A werewolf was strong but a trained vampire was a force of nature.

“If I touch him, I’ll skin him slow and salt the cur.” Elizabeth flinched back from the casual promise of layered malice.

Blaez sent a nurse rocketing into the wall with a backhand. A doctor rushed to the crumpled nurse with a curse. “Where the fuck's Sarah?!”

“Right here.” Sarah’s pink pajamas shimmered in the sterile light. Even here, walls dripping with flesh and blood, she kept her back straight, each step as sure as if she was on the dance floor. Jerold followed behind her in slacks paired with a blindingly white shirt. Cold, lethal eyes settled on the wolf, ready to put him down if he threatened his love.

Milky strings of white stretched maggoty tendrils through Sarah’s dark eyes. Voraciously, the white conquered her eyes, turning them into opalescent orbs. Streaks of white swept through her hair as she drew on her power. Truth devouring the lie she lived in.

“Calm, young wolf.” Shivering through the air, the command had an almost physical presence. The wolf settled instantly, Sarah's dominon stripping Bleaz of his will. “Change, child. Push the animal down and regain your humanity.”

Blaez shrunk, flesh ripped, bones snapped and reformed into the weakness of humanity. Naked and human, he looked even worse. Bare white bone showed through blackened muscle, charred flesh flooded with blood as the change stripped him of the regenerative blessing of the Kveldulf. Nurses scrambled to get him onto a gurney. They had him strapped down and medicated within seconds, already on the move to an operating table.

“Why did they …?” Anastasia’s half heard question was answered by a nurse whizzing by with biohazard gloves and bleach.

“The silver has to be extracted, otherwise it’ll kill him. Can't do that when he’s in full form. The flesh creeps and crawls, trying to regenerate as you cut into it. Nasty business,” The nurse said as she scrubbed away at blood splatters and gobbets quickly decomposing meat on the walls.

“What happened?” Sarah asked into the quiet.

Anastasia slid down the wall, wrapping her arms around her knees. “It was right after training ... Abraxas was waiting for me on the path to the Vulpes with the Thagirion. He told us to move the altar tonight. He thought he could use it to make Alexandra back off.” She sighed as her head thumped back into the wall. “It went to hell. Cesare was waiting for us. Blaez ... he’s wanted a piece of Cesare for months and this was his shot. Blaez still offered to let him go, but Cesare wouldn’t. Said he’d only step aside if a teacher told him to.” Tears ran down her face from memories new and cruel.

“Why didn’t that stop you? It's his right to ask for arbitration,” Jerold said, cold eyes fixed on the broken girl.

A sharp bark of bitter laughter was his answer. “Blaez wasn't going to back off. There was no way he’d let Cesare leave that clearing. Cesare knew it, too. He set off some kind of horn thing before they clenched. The sound must’ve affected Blaez, because Cesare was beating his ass into the ground. After months of being punked by Cesare, it was one step too far. He lost it and changed. Cesare grabbed something out of the ground behind him, but Blaez was too quick, caught him with a claw. Just not quick enough. Cesare still hit him with the stick … then Blaez burst into flame.”

“When I arrived, the fire was out,” Alexandra said, eyes focused down the hall where they’d taken the first gurney. “I got Cesare here while she helped the dog.”

“When they get out, we can get to the bottom of it,” Jerold said.

Alexandra sneered at the teacher with naked contempt. “You don't get it.” The teacher’s eyes widened at the flat finality of her words. Fear raced up Elizabeth's spine at the dead look in Alexandra's eyes. “I carried him in my arms because it was the only way to keep his guts from dragging on the ground.” Anastasia lurched to the side, retching onto the floor. The biting smell of fresh vomit filled the hallway. “Her fuck buddy eviscerated him from hip to shoulder. It was all I could do to gather his guts and not leave a trail behind me.”

A pregnant silence permeated the hall. While the Sanguine Nativitate was deadly, the school itself was safe … at least in theory. There’d be a mass exodus of students when it got out the Thagirion had gutted a kid. Most of the Umbrae Lunae were stronger than humans, but a mile below the Thagirion. The stronger you were, the rarer your race. The Thagirion mandate was to protect the weaker students from being preyed on, a mission given to them by the Mistress herself centuries ago. The backlash at having a student killed by the ones bound by honor to protect them would have repercussions far beyond the school.

“We’ll need to keep them separate. Make sure the Thagirion doesn’t make the situation worse. We can't have Cesare dying in the hospital due to an ... accident. I'll inform the Mistress and make the calls to Blaez and Anastasia’s parents,” Jerold said.

Sarah's voice was quiet. “If he dies ...”

A bolt of pure panic skittered down Elizabeth’s spine at the words. No, there was no way he'd die. The world had created a prison for her, bars barbed with poisoned words, walls of hate, it had condemned her as unworthy of touch. Cesare had beat back the mad cruelty of her loneliness with the midnight darkness of his soul. He was the only one to every fight for her.

Elizabeth cut Sarah off savagely. “He won’t.” Shocked, Sarah gave her a searching look. Elizabeth met her eyes, filling her thoughts with a sick plant she was working on. Sarah promised she never went into others heads without permission, but it was a lie Elizabeth had never bought.

“You should get cleaned up,” Elizabeth said, as Alexandra fell into step next to her.

The vampire gave Elizabeth a sidelong look. “I want to be here if he ...”

Elizabeth sighed. “He won't die.” She wouldn’t let him leave her, not today, not ever. “You don’t know him if you think being eviscerated would keep him down. Instead, think of how he'll react when he wakes up and sees you covered in blood.”

When Alexandra came back, she’d changed into white sweatpants and a pale blue shirt. Dressed for comfort, she folded her legs under her as she took a seat and pulled out a tablet to read. Elizabeth appreciated the ease of having your library at your fingertips, but it lacked the elegance of a well bound book. The weight of it in your hands, the smell of the pages, the way a good book became a best friend, something that could be depended on when everything deserted you. It was a feeling she knew Cesare shared.

Thinking of him brought it home. She was waiting to hear if he’d live or die. The man that had taken beating after beating to be with her. The irritating boy that wouldn’t take no for an answer. She treasured him in a way she’d never loved anyone. That it wasn’t the love he wanted didn’t make it less.

Alexandra’s lips moved over the familiar words of the bible. She wasn’t so much reading as burning the passages into her soul. Reciting the familiar verses made them more than words, it gave them life, seeds planted in the soil of the soul ready to take root.

Both women straightened when the door opened. The doctor's hair stuck up in crazed sweat-slick spikes, deep shadows entrenched themselves under his eyes from hours keeping a child’s guts in his stomach. “I wasn't sure anyone would be here. You’re here for Cesare?” He sighed at their nods before slumping into a chair with a solid thump. “I've dealt with a lot of injuries, but this was my first evisceration. The claw came in the left hip, tearing through the abdominal muscles, avoiding the aorta by less than an inch. Lucky that, otherwise he would’ve bled out before he arrived. It bisected one of his ribs and carved a trench into his breastbone, separating his pectoral muscle on the way. Shock is the threat now. When the body undergoes that much trauma, it draws blood from the extremities into the torso. The problem is that the body considers the head an extremity.” His eyes wandered blearily, the long day taking its toll.

“What are you trying to say? That he may not wake up?” Alexandra was a touch faster than Elizabeth in getting it out.

He focused on them with visible effort, a yawn cracking his jaw. “Well, it's not good. If he were human, we'd be looking at brain damage if he woke up at all. Being Umbrae Lunae, I think he’ll wake up in a few hours. We're stronger, more resistant to killing wounds. Do either of you know about the other scars?” He asked, eyes sharpening.

Elizabeth exchanged a look with Alexandra, both shaking their heads. “I’ll talk to him about those later than.” With a grunt, the doctor pushed to his feet. “They’re getting him settled into his room. If you'll follow me, I’ll lead you in.”

The doctor dropped them off at the nurse’s desk. Getting pictures of Elizabeth and Alexandra, the nurse printed out badges. Handing over the badges, the woman walked them down the corridor. “Please keep the badges on you at all times. If you don't have them, we'll have to ask you to leave. Given the current circumstances, I’d recommend you lock the door behind you and only open it if it’s one of the staff.”

The room had neutral toned walls, a plain beige bedspread, and a door leading into a bathroom. Early morning sunlight came in through the lone window. The smell of antiseptic saturated the purgatory, an undercurrent of death and pain crawling under the caustic smell.

Laid out on the bed, Cesare was attached to an ECG machine and an IV drip. Still damp from the quick cleaning the nurses had given him, his hair dripped across his pillow. The hospital gown and the bedspread left only his head and hands free, blue veins spider webbed across maggot pale skin. He looked twelve years old, and a small twelve years at that.

The sight gripped Elizabeth and Alexandra, neither able to step beyond the threshold. Cesare was a lot of things, most of them unpleasant. But he’d never seemed like a child, always owning an adults presence, an elder soul going through the motions of a teenager. The half dead body shattered the illusion they'd wanted to see.

The nurse’s words carried back to them as she tucked in the covers. “We expect him to come around in the next few hours.” She looked back at the two of them, eyes narrowed in thought. “It's normal, if that helps. He's lost a lot of blood and gone through a tremendous stress. The body ... well, it only looks strong.” Elizabeth pushed the lock button behind the nurse as she left.

They moved as one, each claiming a side of the bed. Elizabeth’s fingers trembled as she ran them through the hair he’d promised to never cut for her. It had only been an offhand comment that she liked his hair long, but he’d taken it to heart. Every time she touched it, she remembered that feeling, the warmth of knowing he was doing it for her. She loved his hair, loved moving her fingers through the silky strands. It had started a muddy brown but as the months passed it had darkened and birthed threads of red.

Her fingers ghosted over his face, the cold clammy skin making something tighten painfully in her heart. Blinking back tears, she choked on the sob that fought to come out. He'd never seemed small. Oh, young, yes. That he had always looked, but never a child and never weak. To her, he’d always seemed made of stone. You could throw him, kick him, cut him, and hammer on him, but he still stood. Maybe worse for wear, but still standing, indomitable in his willingness to put his body on the line for what he believed, unconquerable in his single-mindedness to be with her. Goddess, it hurt to see him like this. To see the man, she …

Elizabeth took a seat with a sigh of relief. Alexandra had moved closer to Cesare, hands running through his hair with a wistful look. Caught in the moment, her face reflected raw longing as she traced his jaw. Maybe it was the first time she’d ever touched him, as a woman who loves a man instead of as a friend.