“He took that well,” Anastasia said, body still flush against him. Letting her go, Cesare turned to Alexandra.

Taking a step closer, he reached for her shirt, the vampire stilling at the movement, neither helping nor hindering. Cesare held her trusting eyes for a moment before sliding his hand under the fabric to the cool flesh underneath. Large bruises were forming along ribs and across abdominal muscles. “A man like him doesn’t get mad at losing. He just works harder next time. We won this, but he’ll come back stronger and smarter.”

A blush climbed the vampire's cheeks as his hands caressed over the bruises under her shirt, searching for the telltale feel of subcutaneous bleeding. He kept away from her breasts, skirting the edge of her sports bra. Behind him, Anastasia gave a low growl of anger. “Why can’t he leave us alone?”

“You’re too big a prize for him to let go.” Cesare's fingers traced lightly over a bruise, probing to see if ribs were broken. The vampire’s milky skin was as smooth as silk with a tinge of cold that had his fingers itching for more. Moving around the vampire, he checked her back. “You’re the daughter of Lady Kali, and he’s already fucked your mom. Bagging mom and daughter would be enough but with the rest … he won’t stop until he’s made to stop.”

“He’s a pig. I don’t see how mother stands him,” Anastasia said, voice dripping with loathing.

Cesare's hand ghosted over the small of Alexandra’s back, a delicate shiver trembling through the vampire before she locked the feeling down. “Viktor's nothing more than a walking dildo to her, a living fuck toy she doesn’t have to put batteries in.”

Coming around the vampire, he gently traced her face, looking for damage. “You’re the only one who touches me,” Alexandra said with a vulnerable look. “You’re the only one that touches me because they want me to feel good. Those who aren’t terrified of me are like Viktor, they want my flesh, without me.” Pushing into his caress, she gave a low sound of pleasure. “You touch me to show you care, to comfort me when I hurt, to heal my wounds.”

Reaching up, she held his hand in a vice of velvet coated steel. Far from trying to take it back, he held her chilled face like the precious thing it was. His other hand stroked down her side in a soft caress before resting along an angry bruise.

“I don’t understand how you’re hurt,” Cesare said. Tendrils of seeking arousal quested through the vampire’s eyes as his fingers stroked across the painful bruise, lighting fires of want and need. The pain twisted around her pleasure transforming it into something beastly, a monster that craved the jagged embrace of pain, lapping at the bleeding wound of its pleasure. A low hiss slipped from Alexandra's lips, speaking of unquenchable hunger.

Heat flushing her cheeks, she met his wicked grin and cruel eyes. “Vampires aren’t like the dogs; we choose what we heal. If he thought he couldn’t hurt me, he'd focus on me.” Her other hand tentatively ran up Cesare’s arm in a shy caress of her own.

“Thank you. Once again, when I needed you, you were there. I can’t … tell you what that means to me,” Cesare said, fingers playing across the cadaverous chill of her skin, pushing just enough to send flares of painful pleasure through her. His grin widened as his hand gripped her side, knowing the burn of the pain scalded her, enjoying her pain. She met him fearlessly with her own masochistic need, a barbed coil that tore nerves open in bleeding pleasure.

“Heal yourself my fine tiger, my most beautiful killer. My body will always offer succor to you,” Cesare said, going back to the words of his oath, that she would never thirst as long as he had blood in his veins.

Pressing his hand into bruised flesh, a thrill of heat ran down his spine as the pain burst in her eyes, a low moaning hiss washing her breath across his face. “Heal yourself my vampire.” Blazing joy and raw arousal tore through her eyes in a tsunami of wanton cruelty.

Flesh quivered and reformed under his fingers, bruises disappearing in a flash of blood birthed power. With a last caressing touch, he pulled away. Anastasia looked between them, clouds of thoughts drifting through her eyes. She didn’t understand but she knew something deep and true tied them together, a bond built on pain and shadows, mangled minds and crippled souls stitched together.

Cesare wasn’t sure which of the fighters would’ve won. That said more than words ever could how good the vampire was. That she could stand toe to toe with a living legend and the outcome be owned by chance meant the stories about her weren’t only true, they were tattered shades of her savage reality, unworthy of its scarlet glory.

Realization reflected in Anastasia’s eyes. A new wariness bordering on fear shadowing her face. The knowledge that the vampire was deadlier than anything she’d ever faced, a creature so lethal that comparisons paled.

Cesare hungered for Alexandra with a needy want that gnawed at his guts. He wanted to fight her, test himself against her unassailable strength, to break her under his fists. To stand over her bleeding body, dominant and in the fullness of his power as she was broken into submission before him. He didn’t want to walk beside the lion, he wanted to own it.

Alexandra held his eyes. There was no need for words, they talked with the set of their eyes and the shift of their body. Two predators speaking a language old when the world was young and drenched in slaughter. For a timeless minute the lion faced off against the wolf, poised on the balls of their feet. Easing back, a lazy, challenging smile stretched across the vampire’s face, sensual and sultry, it promised everything, but only if he could shatter her utterly. It wouldn’t be enough to win by the skin of his teeth. He had to strip her down to the bedrock where bones broke and skin ruptured. Only when Cesare had dragged her into the wasteland of failure would she submit to his mastery.

Viktor came back in a black tank top and weathered black pants. “What the fuck! Get to cleaning!” Cesare looked around with a sigh, Alexandra and Victor hadn’t spared the room in their fight. The cages were overturned with weights scattered across the floor, barbells rolling in slow arcs.

They spent the rest of class picking up weights, resetting the lifting cage, and setting it up for the next class. There was nothing they could do about the workout bench Anastasia had turned to molten slag or the pockmarked floor and cracked heat fissures along the wall. Cesare rather thought they added character.

They split up outside Viktor’s class, the girls heading to electives and Cesare bound for his session with Tamlin. Taking the stairs two at a time he kept the heavy duffel close as he sprinted.

The wolf waited for him; eyes focused on the door. They locked together like pieces of a puzzle. Cesare threaded his hands through its luxurious sable hair, its deep rumble humming along his bones in a litany of comfort, his own growl sounding a counterpoint, the two forming a harmony all their own.

He didn’t know how long he stood with his hands buried in its fur, resting forehead to forehead with the great beast. “Eventful day?” Tamlin asked from behind him

Sighing, Cesare talked without turning. He was telling the wolf as much as explaining to his teacher, or maybe in his heart he’d already decided the wolf meant more to him than Tamlin ever could. Finishing, he left the wolf with a regret that sliced through them. It was a kind of heaven to feel the wolf in his hands.

Tamlin watched from a few feet away. “This could be good training.” Seeing the questioning look, Tamlin continued, “You think they’ll hunt you without weapons?”

Tamlin retreated onto the mat, beckoning Cesare to follow. “With my teaching, you’re accelerating in the arts at an exponential pace. To keep the bleeding edge, we must push you in new ways. They'll teach you the piercing thrusts of the trident, the slashing cuts of the sword, and the dancing danger of daggers. Learn from them as you work with them. Fight them. Hurt them. Learn the way of blade and spear, so when they come for you, they find you ready.”

Tamlin worked him hard, pushing Cesare to where ability and endurance wavered, grotesquely malformed. There was never going to be good enough, he'd keep pushing until Cesare cracked or beat him.

Sweating and sore, Cesare folded in on himself, hitting the ground with a wet slap as Tamlin stepped out of Cesare’s kingdom. The man’s eyes swept over his body with satisfaction. “You’re getting better, not good, but better,” the man said before stalking off.

It was all Cesare could do to focus on his breathing in a mad race to slow his frenzied heart. The man was a demon, but Cesare couldn’t argue with results or the pleasure Cesare took in fighting him. Levering himself up, he staggered over to the bucket and stripped.

Jerold was waiting in the hallway, the iceholes eyes darting to look inside the open door behind Cesare before it closed. Turning, Jerold walked away without a word of welcome.

“I know you don’t have any training with weapons or tactics, so don’t bother trying to teach them what you don’t know. I have the failures in the program cutting them time to work on basic movements.” Jerold paused as they sliced through the crowd of student’s, eyes sweeping over the mass. “I need you to teach them what I don’t have the time or luxury to, how to hurt others.”

The two guards at the entrance to the Ludus Noctis straightened to attention on sighting them, bending in awkward bows as they passed. The doors to the courtyard had been cleared of burning wreckage but hadn't been replaced. Jerold’s eyes rested on Cesare for a long minute as the two stepped through the scorched and blackened threshold.

Students were lined up in rows, regimented feet in between each kid, ruler straight rows edge sharp, ready and waiting for inspection. Ranks swept back to the far wall with each kid knowing where he stood, not just in his style but in the overall ranking. This was a place of brutal hierarchy; the only way forward was over the bodies of the people you trained with. In front, separate and yet part of the whole, were the best. The murmillo Cesare had seen in that long-ago exhibition.

Two boys bracketed the gladiatrix. On the face of it, they were a lot alike. The fighting stressed the body, shaping the meat to a mold. Repeated movements of sword, the weight of the shield, the training itself burned the body down, forging it into a pattern that couldn’t be anything else. Broad shoulders with hardened deltoids, wide chests that flowed down to naked arms of muscled glory. Silver scars ran over their bulging arms, kisses of blades that had come too close. Dressed in black leather pants and vests, they stood out from the brown of the others, marked out by the gladius that ran military straight from belt to knee along their leg. They weren't practice blades but live steel ready at hand. But that was where the similarities ended.

Long blonde hair done in dozens of braids flowed down the one on the lefts back, sun kissed tentacles, his blue eyes danced with humorous arrogance. Touched by glory he didn’t believe he was the baddest motherfucker and the prettiest, he knew he was. He'd been the one in the sun mask.

Darkly tanned the boy on the right had a grim, angry edge to him. Shaven bald, the boys head was an ebony field of sweat slick skull, right eye a milky, dead orb. He'd killed to be here, bathed his hands in the blood of children and taken that brutal lesson into his heart. This boy had no illusions at what he was, he owned that he as a child killer.

In pride of place, the gladiatrix stood between them. She wasn’t pretty or beautiful, possessing a sensuality that plucked at a man’s delicate bits. Dark hair just kissing her shoulders, the tanned skin of her body shone with clean sweat, she owned a raw pull of dark dreams and sweaty night. Opaque dark eyes gave nothing to the world, the mask she wore when she killed second to the one she wore in life.

“Primus Palus, Secondus Palus, Tertius Palus, and Quartus Palus, fall out to your Magisters.” Jerold's order was quiet, but it cracked like a gun shot in the still silence.

Without a word, the gladiator’s broke ranks, parting as Jerold lead Cesare into the mass. The murmillo fell into step behind the two of them, shooting Cesare doubtful looks. Spreading out through the courtyard, the gladiators knew where they were supposed to be, but their eyes watched from corners, tracking the trespasser that dared their den. Sparring, warming up, running the obstacle course, teaching, or hitting the wooden men, no one was out of place. Except Cesare.

They’d trained their lives to be here. To get this fragile, solitary chance, to show they were worth spending thousands on and taking to the pro’s. This was the culmination of years of bloody dreams, the goal after a lifetime of sacrifice and bloody offerings. These few years held the dreams of their parents, sidling’s, and friends with them, they’d rather die than fail.

All except the row of kids Jerold lead him too. Despite being here for months, they didn't belong. Fit and athletic, they lacked the dense muscles of gladiators. Swords and knives rode their hips, made of bamboo strips layered over each other. Only a few held wooden tridents planted in the ground next to them.

This part of the courtyard was away from everyone, a cast off corner for the unwanted. Broken equipment leaned against the walls; pieces of garbage thrown away to rot. A row of wooden men stood against the stone wall, weathered and old, gouges ripped through them, pockmarked with creeping mold, they leaned in decaying ranks, old soldiers who’d given their flesh to the cause, waiting patiently to be buried. It was a shit hole, a deliberate one, mean to put you in your place.

The kids’ faces ran from disgust to cool neutrality as they looked at Cesare. “Cesare is in charge until your mentors come for you, I expect you to behave as if you belonged here.” Turning away, his words came back to Cesare. “Keep them away from the gladiators, I don’t want them underfoot while we train.”

The kids were cut to ribbons by the casual dismissal, shoulders slumping, eyes finding the hard-packed ground. Not only had they been handed over as unwanted goods, but they’d been given to the smelly boy that pissed himself. The pariah of the school, the outsider that no one wanted. If there was a bottom, they’d broken it and hit the sewer.

“Umm, so hi, my name's …” The boys words trailed off under Cesare’s malice ridden eyes.

“I’m not here to know your names. I’m not here to be your friend. I don’t like you, and you'll never like me.” His words tainted the day, violating it with slaughter, mothers sickening and dying in pain filled agony, the death of a dream carefully nurtured. The kids shivered, eyes going wide as tendrils of fear filled them. They weren’t fighters, soft in all the wrong places, desire struggling against nature, lost in themselves. They were kids, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be fighters.

“You're here because someone broke you. You think learning to fight will help you bear the scars maiming your soul. And you're right.” His words tortured the air, a low, hurt whine coming from the world as syllables stropped across the strings of reality. Locked on him with the desperation of the unloved, the weak hung on his every breath. “I won’t teach you how to be a gladiator. I won’t teach you how to swing a sword or use a trident. I'll teach you how to break people, shatter them in mind and body. To become a calamity of violence men flinch away from. You'll leave here with the ability to disembowel your friends and savage your lovers. I'll turn you into abominations of slaughter.”

Straightening, the students looked at him with new appreciation. None of them had come here to learn to be gladiators. They’d come to find the respect the world had taken from them. To learn again what it meant to be safe, if only in their own skin. Nothing would save them from the vicious things that slithered in the light, their memories were proof of that truth.

“Who’s the best?” All eyes turned to a girl with a trident propped on her shoulder.

“Step up, let’s see what you can do,” Cesare said, walking over to the area clear of garbage, bare earth hard as concrete..

Looking around at the others, she gave a sigh as no one stepped in to take her place. She wasn’t big, maybe the size of Anastasia with none of her curves. Mousy brown hair tied back with a ribbon of blue marked her out from the faceless. “Sir, you don’t have a weapon.”

Taking in the concern that tightened her face, Cesare paced over to the palus. The wooden man was old and waterlogged, brittle from years of being beaten on by students, rot having long set into the gouges carved into its body. Snapping forward, his punch hit with shattering force, wood exploding in a hail of splinters.

Arcing up, his elbow rocketed into the head, blasting it off with a detonation of destroyed wood. Surging forward, his knee hammered the torso with a clap of thunder, wood shattering in a spray of chips against the wall.

He turned back to the awestruck kids, the wood was rotted, but that didn't lesson the lethality of the strikes. “My hands are flickering knives, arms cutting swords, elbows and knees hammers that destroy flesh and bone. My shines and forearms are my armor.”

Walking back onto the bare patch, he set his bag down at the edge before motioning for the girl to join him. The tridents points were rubber over bamboo, it could break bone if it hit right, but mostly welts and bruises were the only threat.

He was moving as she stepped into his bubble, the moment flowing over him with ruthless clarity. Jerking back at his sudden rush, she slapped her trident into place, tines stopping his charge. Pivoting, he side stepped the weapon, closing in on the girl. Stepping back, she lashed out with the butt end. Dropping under the staff, he went horizontal, body darting up as he entered her guard. His punch was a ghost of a whisper, but it still dropped her to the ground gasping.

Stepping back, he waited for her to get up. They went a few more times as he felt out the trident, getting an idea of what she could do. She was fast, but her weapon depended on situational awareness, you had to think several moves ahead to get the polearm in place. But he wasn’t here to teach her how to use a trident.

“Stop,” Cesar called out. Puffing and gulping, sweat slicking her hair, she looked like a landed fish. It had only been a few minutes, but a few minutes of sparring was like hours running. “You hesitate when you get close to connecting. How many people have you hit with that thing?”

Shaking her head, she struggled for breath. “They don’t let us practice against people. They just show us the dictata and push us at a palus.” Seeing his uncomprehending face, she looked down. “The dictata is a series of movements, attacks, defenses, that the transitions between. The palus are the wooden posts.”

She was scared. She’d never hurt anyone, not really. Maybe thrown a few punches on the playground but she'd hungered to see someone scream. “Take up your trident.” His tone had shifted into something cruel with a mean edge. Swallowing, she tightened her grip on the weapon, setting it into a ready stance. “Hit me in the face as hard as you can.” Vicious eyes captured and held her, binding her mind to his will.

Without thinking, she swung the butt end of the trident. The world flashed scarlet, pain stripping sight, as pain devoured his eyes. Warm, viscous blood dripped from split his lips. Holding the girl’s eyes with his, he walked up to her as terror twisted across her face.

Taking her hand he forced her fingers onto his lips, coating them in blood. “This is what it looks like. My blood's red, and it hurts like a bitch when I get hit. This is what you're learning. To fight, to cripple and maim.” Mesmerized by his words, her fingers traced the cut. “Never hesitate. The mantra of every fighter, hurt them before they hurt you, bleed them or they'll bleed you, be harder, meaner, because if you don't, it'll be you on the ground.”

She nodded, understanding settling into her bones. His fist flashed, hitting her jaw with a meaty crack that sent her to the ground on her hands and knees spitting blood. “Fuck!” Cesare grinned as the sloppy word slurred into the air.

She got to her feet on her own, picking up her trident as her glare settled on Cesare. “That’s what it feels like to bleed. To get hit so hard the world disappears in a flash of pain. You won’t die, you'll just bleed like everyone else.” He turned to the rest of the class. “You'll leave my class with bruises, welts, and blood dripping off you. If you don’t like it, you know where the door is, your old lives are waiting for you. Pressure makes diamonds or coal dust; you decide which you are.” He waited, letting them make the choice between a dream of what they could be and the reality of who they were now.

“Pair up and take a free shot. Your choice of place but put your all into it. If you don’t, I’ll step in and correct the pair of you." Uneasily eyeing him, they paired up and did it, they didn't like it, but they did it.

Cesare walked through the groups, pulling people out and sparring with them. He couldn’t teach them to fight with words and drills. You didn’t learn to fight by hitting a fucking post in the ground. You learned by fighting, soft flesh rupturing under your hands, the punishing pain of a mistake, these were the true teachers. It was pain and glory, agony and joy.

By the end, his fist had gotten to know their flesh. They didn’t look pretty now, sprawled on the ground in sweat-soaked lumps of aches and pain, dirty, bruised, and dribbling blood, satisfied smiles tight on their faces.

Seeing him get ready to leave, they got to their feet with needy expressions. “Tomorrow will be more of the same. Make sure to stretch after I leave. It won’t get easier, I’ll hurt you, bleed you, and enjoy every minute of it. What you make of the pain, is all you own.”

Cesare walked through the courtyard, watching the training gladiators. He'd never given them any thought but seeing them brought it home. They finished school and went to work, dedicating day after day to beating each other bruised and bloody. Pushing through aches, pain, and broken bones, they fought to strangle the dreams of their friends, each breath a battle to birth their starving dreams