Wednesday January 28th 2015

It was dark when he started down the spiral stairs of the Serpens Lacum. The plan was to surprise the girls and meet them in front of the Vulpes. Cesare checked his weapons with a shrug that settled his duffel along his back. He'd go through the check half a dozen times before he hit the door, paranoid was safe.

Hidden in a bit of shadow to the side, a student stood as Cesare stepped off the stairs. Straightening with animal grace, Blaez gave Cesare a lazy smile. Deep trenches wove their way across the man’s face, ropy scars bisecting it into a patchwork of discolored flesh. A brown bristle of hair covered the crisscrossing pattern incised into his skull.

The good-looking boy was gone, burned away in an inferno of molten silver and melting flesh. The crucible of agony had left an almost austere man in his place. Dark eyes permanently shadowed with torments hard knowledge eyed Cesare.

“I wanted to talk to you alone. The only time you’re not surrounded by the girls is when you’re here,” Blaez said with a snort of derision, spiteful eyes glittering queerly. “I don’t envy you those two.”

Cesare settled onto the balls of his feet. “What did you want?”

“I’m the one fighting Anastasia.”

“I know.” He’d figured it out weeks ago. Pantagruel was too much of a nobody and wasn’t a good bet on winning. The boy could take a lot of damage, but Anastasia was fast and smart. The dragon wouldn’t try Anastasia until he could see her fight. He’d last measured her months ago, too long for him to take the chance.

Far from being the last man standing, Blaez was always the one. The Thagirion's power depended on students thinking they were gods as much as it was on them being strong. Sports teams, politicians, rock stars, and cult leaders, all had the same need, and they handled it the same way, by creating their own legends.

Blaez and Anastasia had been the golden couple, they'd carried the dreams and envy of the student body. People had idealized them, living their fantasies through them. They’d embodied a myth the students had gleefully bought into. That myth had surged in strength when they’d broken up over an unknown but brutally violent event that left them scarred caricatures of who they’d been.

Now the two would tear each other apart in a storm of fire and blood. Jerold knew it would play like a Shakespearian tragedy. The students would be on tender hooks as they watched them fight, caught in a story wholly false but worth more than truth.

“You always were the clever one.” Stripped of anger, it was turned into a simple fact. “I wanted you to know, I won’t kill or humiliate her. I promised I’d never cross you, I meant it then, and I mean it now.”

A smile fought its way across Cesare’s face. It was already a done deal for the werewolf. Anastasia was as powerless as a firecracker against a bear. Unlike Abraxas who was wary of the time since he'd last seen her fight, Blaez was sure he knew everything he needed to.

Sidestepping around him, Cesare made his way down the hall, only stopping at the boy’s voice. “A word to the wise. I’m a wolf, leadership and power are carved into my bones. You’re a puppy leading a pack of feral dogs. Your less than a pet to them, a bit of fluff to play with while they wait for something real. They don’t respect you. How could they, when weakness is wedded to your discarded flesh?”

Cesare let him have the parting shot, not least because it was true. He wasn’t strong enough to lead. He could advise, push, and manipulate, but he didn’t own the strength to force them to obey. If they were human, it wouldn't matter, but they weren't. The first virtue of a leader was strength, everything else came after. That singular truth was bred into every beast birthed wet and crying into the darkness.

Was he ever going to be strong enough to demand their respect? He knew Anastasia liked him, maybe even loved him, but love wasn’t respect. Anastasia loved him the way rich girls loved little dogs. A pet she could play with and make cute noises at, an innocent, careless love, without attachment. Alexandra liked him as a friend, but a predator's respect is earned through blood. Until he broke her with his own hands, she'd never see an equal.

The werewolf’s words resounded through the chambers of his mind as he stared at the Vulpes. Two great fox’s snarled at the world, tails winding into woven braids that ran up the stairs as banisters. Taking a seat on the frosted stone of the steps, Cesare set his duffel down as a backrest.

There was a particular girl that got up this early. Timid and shy, thick glasses on their faces, with sharply intelligent eyes. He knew most of them, or at least he’d seen them in the cafeteria, heads down over textbooks, working feverishly on homework. They were dedicated to a future beyond the stones of Primrose, a world of endless possibilities for those that made the most of now. They shied away when they noticed him on the stairs, as if from a diseased dog rank with the effluvia of the sewers.

Quick footing it across campus, they cast nervous looks back to make sure the dog wasn’t following. Squirrels, innocent things that lived in a forever fear. They stayed alive by being faster than the maimers that stalked the light of day. Fear wasn't a weakness but a survival trait. They’d been normal kids before they got here. It was school that had branded fear into their bones, the instinctive terror of others.

Kids are sent to school to be looked after, not just their bodies, but minds and hearts. No one goes to school to be broken, maimed and mangled as years passed. Children transformed in the unholy halls of school, turned into fearful things that jumped at the slightest sound, birthed anew through terrors diseased womb. That's what schools produced, like some great disfiguring production plant.

The girls came out together, holding to opposite sides of the staircase. There was an easy grace to the distance that said without words, that while it might look like they were together, they weren't. They were so caught up in ignoring each other they didn’t notice him until they were almost on top of him.

“I thought I’d surprise you,” Cesare said.

“You succeeded,” Alexandra said dryly, taking her spot on his left without a look at the girl who slid into place on his right.

Nodding absently, Anastasia didn’t seem to care that he’d met her. This was a big day for her with everything on the line. She'd either rise as a goddess or fall as one of the forgotten. No matter what happened, it wouldn't stop her quest for power. But wanting and getting were different things.

Brushing his fingers across her hand, he gave an unspoken offer of comfort. Flinching, Anastasia made the rejection plain. The spike of pain was strangled, newborn and weak, it died unmourned in Cesare’s heart. He’d expected it, but like a diseased tooth, he couldn’t help running his tongue over it.

The cafeteria was busier than usual, with more than bookworms and insomniacs. Student’s eyes tracked Anastasia, excitement, interest, worship, and need, swelling pupils. Today would be another chapter in the myth they were creating around the akatharton.

Straightening, Anastasia met them head on. Faced with that melted landscape of torment, even the bravest dropped their heads. They couldn't take the weight of her eyes, the agonized knowledge that gave her an unfathomable look.

Hard and unforgiving, she threw herself into tutoring him. She used her own uncertainty to fuel an unrelenting push for perfection. Alexandra wasn't as forgiving of the harsh words as Cesare, glaring across at the other girl.

Worried and scared, Anastasia was looking for someone to hurt. To be close to someone is to be their victim, we carve our friends into strips of meat with slicing words and cutting observations, the stress of life pushing us to ever greater heights of cruelty. Those that love us put up with it, they weather our brutalities, knowing its meaningless, only the animal ripping through the skin of civilization.

The room filled quickly, stares doubling, tripling, and then getting two high for an easy count. Painfully taught and bound, the kids waited, fearing the climax of months. It was a storm front waiting to break, torrential rain ready to wash across their world, ripping up trees and foundations. Lightning would strike out of the dark that had birthed it, blowing apart the markers they’d depended on, change was coming in all its hoary glory.

With measured steps, Jerold walked in with the black clad Thagirion. Cesare welcomed the nights storm, the leading edges of chaos playing across his soul. But Jerold was a creature of law. Any change meant Jerold had failed. Glaring around the room with the Thagirion fanned out around him, he was an avalanche of frozen malice waiting for a body to bury.

“I wonder when they'll tell me who I’m fighting,” Anastasia asked, eyeing the killers.

“It's Blaez,” Cesare said, sipping his gut rot tea.

Whipping around, Anastasia’s face withered in the heat of her fury. Scars twisting, ridges falling along fault lines, she became the very avatar of raging, ghastly flame. “You knew. How long?”

Cesare grimaced at the powdered shit taste of the tea, Elizabeth had spoiled him with her exquisite blends. “I didn’t know, I guessed. This morning, Blaez confirmed it.” He cut off her abortion of a rant. “For weeks, that’s how long I’ve guessed.”

Snapping her mouth shut, she scowled at her tray. Spearing a sausage, she dismembered it into bits of waste. Dissected and discarded, the meat was a testament to an animal’s pointless death. “You could have told me.”

“I could have, maybe I should have.” Startled at the easy admission, her head jerked around to glare at him. “But you didn’t need to know, and it would have muddied your training.” Boiling on the inside, the cutting words were forming sharp on her tongue. “You would have worried about it, wanted to strategize, and wasted hours talking instead of working.”

She took his words in, the long hours they’d spent together bought him that much. But she wouldn't agree, she hungered to lash out and hurt someone, to release the tension that coiled in her. “I don’t belong to you. We’re not even dating. You need to stop trying to control me like I’m some kind of personnel fuck toy.” The last bit came out louder than she’d wanted, sounding through the room with the power of a gunshot.

The students stared at the three with wide eyed curiosity. Even the Thagirion watched with cold calculation. The trio had shown nothing but complete agreement when they were in public. Their problems were private, kept out of sight and hidden in the darkness between them. They had to be united, anything less was weakness to the ones hunting them.

Cesare sighed as he went back to his breakfast, reflexively laying his hand on Alexandra as the vampire opened her mouth to cut into Anastasia. His touch settled the murderess into her seat, hand stiff and claw like under his. Anastasia ducked her head, barely holding herself back from glaring at the watching students.

Silently, they finished breakfast before leaving the room. Anastasia stopped him as they walked down the hall. “I’m sorry, I just … you don't get to have your hand around my life’s throat. This is my life, my body, my dreams, I shouldn't have to wait for you to tell me.”

“You think now’s the time to do this?” More than sounds made by the throat of man, they were bound to evils beyond man. Soul deep hate warped the world with blessed evil, darkness in midday slid gleefully from his shadow. Blood spilled into a red sea, sharks swarming with glittering teeth and raw hunger. She took a step back under the malice of his words before catching herself.

“Listen up, because I’m only doing this once. So far, you’ve told me what you want and what you need. I don’t give a fuck what you want or need. I’m the one sinking hours into training you. I’m the one that goes through your numbers, analyzing the data to maximize your performance. I’m the one that spends my non-fucking existent free time making those meditations. I don’t care if we ever fuck, but this self-entitled shit stops here. You want to be your own person, then fucking train yourself.” The words left a skim of raw violence in the air, like a smear of blood across an old knife.

Anastasia backed away another step as his words stripped her to the bone, leaving only savage truth behind. The funk she’d been in for the past weeks, since that abortion of an argument cleared in an instant. He was the one that had gotten her here. He was the one working his ass off training her hour after hour. He’d been the one to wipe her ass and take care of her when everyone had thrown her away.

She might claw her dreams from the world without him, but she'd be back at square one. Worse than not knowing which trail to take in the forest, she’d be stranded in the middle of the Sahara with only the whispering sands for company. She might, just might, make it, but thousands had failed before her.

Stalking down the hallway, violence bled off him in strips of frayed cruelty. Sensing the tide, students skittered out of his way. Anastasia caught up quickly, darting eyes measuring him, calculating if she’d pushed one step too far, had made it personnel when it wasn’t.

“I’m sorry,” she said, a plea of twisted regret and hollow anger.

“I don’t care.” The three words tore through the air, quiet and vicious, utterly, unstoppably, true. “You want this life more than anything. Well, here you are princess, time to pay in flesh. You're right, we’re not fucking, and this isn’t a love story. You need to start wondering why I’m still here, because you’re not giving me a reason to stay.” The words were bitten off before he’d thought them through.