Opening the door, he met Viktor’s manifest annoyance with an unconcerned roll of the eyes. “Since you hold the cards, you might as well lead the way,” Cesare said, pulling up the hood of his sweater.

Despite his resolve, Cesare looked back. Elizabeth stood in the threshold, worry etching lines onto her face. He sent her a reassuring smile that softened her worried face, maybe he had more love in him than he thought.

The two passed over the campus and onto the dirt track that was the only way in or out of the school. Neither felt the need to fill the time with talk. Cesare wasn’t sure how long this adventure would take, and he resented being taken from Elizabeth.

That it was dangerous didn’t move him as much as it should. The chance he'd be cornered and butchered for meat in some lonely hallway at school wasn't just probable it was expected. Terror couldn't be maintained, daily life ground down the edge leaving dull apathy. He'd either be smart enough to survive or it wouldn't be his problem anymore.

Walking along the forested path, Cesare felt the wolf shadowing them from the thick brush. A flash of furious yellow eyes echoed the towering rage that hammered his skull. He should be leaving with the wolf not with the half animal beside him. The wolf resented Viktor taking him, an ocean of rage stretched out across the mind as its eyes bored into the man.

Viktor’s life balanced for a long moment. An apex predator, there was no doubt in its stygian soul, supremely confident in the power of its body. Cesare walked alongside the man letting the choose. He didn’t hate Viktor, but he didn’t love him either. The wolf had been there when no one had, supported and cared for him when it had every reason to walk away, there wasn’t even a shadow of a chance Cesare would back the man.

Shadowing them to the end of the trail, the wolf gave a mournful howl into the air. Viktor pivoted, staring into the forest with a questing expression. The man might be a wild thing, but he wasn’t a wolf born from the earth’s pure places.

A lone pickup truck sat alone and unwanted along the road. Rust crawled over it in a creeping cancer, paint fading from cherry red to the worn-out color of old blood. War wounds dotted the steel, were a corner was taken too sharp or a husband had gotten lucky with a bat.

Cesare slumped into the passenger seat, hoody shadowing his face, duffel secured at his feet. The last time he’d left school, the world had offered a scarlet life to Cesare, high priest to the gods of slaughter, the tormented screams of his victims a mantle around his shoulders. He wondered if this trip would bear grotesque fruit.

The truck started with the rumble of well-loved steel. Whatever it might look like, it was pampered with the care reserved for vehicles polished to within an inch of their lives. An old country song came over the speakers, melancholy notes flowing over the soul like the caress of some weeping figure of death. The haunting tale of a man who'd tried to drink a broken heart away, until one night the bottle did just that, taking his life as its due.

Cesare watched the miles pass, mind falling into that trance you only find on long trips. Drifting, light, and disconnected, thoughts and feelings forming pictures that pranced in cavorting dances across the mind. This wasn’t where he wanted to be.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” Viktor asked, smirking over at Cesare.

Yawning, Cesare settled against his seat with closed eyes. “You ended my weekend without a word about where we’re going or what you want. You expect thanks?”

Turning the radio down, Viktor laughed quietly. “Usually the kids I bring along are more ….”

“Impressed,” Cesare finished for him.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but yeah. To be part of an adventure, see the world, and fight by my side, its all I can do to keep them from spinning apart.” Viktor said.

“Takes all kinds,” Cesare said dismissively.

Sighing, Viktor’s voice dropped. “This is going to be a fucking ball. You know you’re a real asshole.” The man snapped the radio off with a quick flick of the wrist. “Primrose isn’t just a school, it’s a safe house for the clans on the long slide to extinction. We collect kids who don’t have anyone, pick them up and give them a place to stay, teach them how to live on their own.” The sound of a beer can cracking open, filled the cab followed by a long swallow. “You want one?”

Cesare shook his head at the question, lips twisting with distaste. Taking another swallow, Viktor continued. “Sometimes we go out as a team, usually those missions involve the Illuminatior Aspis. We know when we get called into the office, it’s going to end in a blood bath. Most times the kids get caught in the crossfire and we end up with a bag of meat to take back to Primrose.”

The weight of those failed missions flooded the cab, drowning any words that might follow. Taking a long drink, the man started again, “Anyway, we do these missions to keep the clans alive, sometimes we get success stories, other times we don't. This one should be simple, we got word that a Doku no Hane's in Tacoma,” Viktor said it like it should mean something to Cesare.

“The Doku no Hane are, or were, thought to be extinct for the past hundred years after Hyakki Yagyopurged them from Japan. Some guys caught him in an alley and wanted more than the money he had on him. He poisoned them dead before taking off in the confusion. Hopefully, he’ll still be in the city,” Viktor said, adding as an afterthought. “You ever been to Tacoma?”

Opening his eyes, Cesare remembered days gone past, rainy nights, and rough streets. “Yeah, a few times. If he’s in the city, I’ll be able to find him,” Cesare said, counting up the places to check and the people he’d want to talk to. Tacoma hadn’t been the worst shit hole he’d lived in, but it sure as hell hadn’t been a fun place.

The thing that snagged his mind like a rusty hook, wasn't the technicolor vomit of memories that spewed unbidden into his mind, it was the scam. Sure, Primrose was saving kids, but that kind of favor always cost more than you thought. Once they got them into the unhallowed halls of the school, Cesare was sure the faculty branded gratefulness into their bones.

He lost himself in the travel, watching farms and towns pass outside the window, uncaring and yet strangely floating in the present, hours passing in silence as Viktor drove. Pulling a beer out from under the seat Viktor gave Cesare a sidelong look. “So, which one of them are you fucking?”

Cesare kept the surge of hate to himself, stripping it from his voice before letting words pass his lips. “I’m not fucking either of them.”

Viktor silently digested the sterilized answer. “Come on kid, they’re all but throwing it at you. It’s not like it’s getting fresher. What are you waiting for? An engraved invitation.”

Viktor didn't deserve an answer. Alexandra was destined for a vampiric lord and that wasn’t him. Anastasia was a maybe, but Cesare wasn't going there without something more between them than a good time. If they were meant to never be more than friends, it was better not to have a mistake like that between them.

“Listen, I know you don’t like me, and I don’t give a fuck. I can’t change the past, and I’m not sure I would if I could. I’ve known boys like you my whole life, full of golden promise and working their asses off to make the most of a bad hand. You got all the time in the world, until you got no time. Dead, maimed, and crippled, selling themselves as bit actors in another man’s play. You got to take life and squeeze it for what you can get.”

He took a long swallow, the beer clinking into the island between them. “You’ll never be more alive than when you stick your cock into a young thing like those two. You’ll know you're their first, that no matter who they have after, you’ve been there before. There’s nothing like it, and if you don’t take advantage of it, someone else will. Hell, it would be a crying shame not to.”

Despite his insistence to keep silent, his words slipped softly into the quiet. “Like you?”

Cesare watched Viktor’s slow smile in the window’s reflection. “Why not? I know how to treat a woman, and they don't have anyone giving them steady dick.”

Cesare nodded, relaxing back into a doze. He’d known the man hadn’t given up. Viktor didn’t have much of a chance, but someone had to win the lottery. If it’s one thing life had taught him, it was that most people lost everything, but a rare few won it all. It wasn't fair, but it was never meant to be.

They pulled over at a greasy spoon of a diner in a small, one lane town. It was the kind of place you can find anywhere. Way stations for drifters, truck drivers, and stray tourists. Some people called them home, but for most they were pit stops destined to be forgotten.

Stepping out of the truck, Cesare stretched the kinks out of his back. These kinds of places were usually as straight forward as you could get. They wanted your money, not your company. Happy if you were moving through, but if you looked like you might stay, the locals were more than glad to move you along.

Viktor slammed his door shut, eyes sweeping the parking lot and town with the easy confidence of a man who’s used to fighting. Viktor had a swagger to his walk, radiating a challenge to every man he came across, an open declaration of supremacy. Cesare fit snugly into the background, fading into nothing, eclipsed by Viktor’s shadow.

Following behind the man, Cesare caught the door to the diner as it came swinging back at him. Viktor commanded the diner’s attention with the casualness of a man who knows he’s both the strongest and best-looking man in town. Was it arrogance if true? Viktor hadn’t dressed up, that wasn’t the kind of guy he was. No smooth words or carefully groomed hair, he was half feral with the hardened musculature of a forged fighter.

Men’s eyes flinched away from Viktor’s uncompromising stare, tossing money on the table and making for the door. Viktor was trouble and the men knew it. The women met his eyes with flushed faces and cool appraisals that swept him from head to toe. He returned the favor with interest, taking careful assessment of each woman, like a man picking out a car for a test drive. Viktor wasn't looking to buy, he wanted to rent something fun with nice curves.

Taking a booth in the corner, Viktor put his back to the wall, muscles rippling along his arms as he set laid it along top of the rest. His core formed hills and valleys through the shirt. Eyeing each other, the waitresses passed calculating looks, a silent battle fought in shifts of face and body. When one stepped forward, the others sighed in defeat, heading back to their forgotten tables.

The chosen one made her way to the table with a welcoming smile and an even more welcoming sway to her hips. She was thicker than the others, her curves suiting a pretty woman in the warzone of middle age. Unbuttoned more than strictly proper, her uniform left bountiful breasts on the edge of spilling out of her top. Hanging at the bottom of that canyon of creamy flesh, was a tag with ‘Wendy’ across it.

“What can I get you, sugar?” Wendy asked, eyes caressing over Viktor’s body with an avid hungry look.

Smirking, Viktor eyed her ample charms. “Well … Wendy, I think I’d like the Big Meaty with a long glass of milk.”

Setting her hands on the table, Wendy leaned forward, giving them a look down her perilously tight blouse. Viktor's grin widened at the view she was offering. “I like that dish myself ... One Big and Meaty coming up, oh and your glass of milk.”

“And whatever the kid wants too,” Viktor added without raising his eyes from her breasts.

With a startled look, Wendy flushed red at having missed the quiet boy in gray. Cesare kept his face down over the menu, his words stripped of anything that could be called emotion. “I’ll take the Lumberjack Special and tea.” Wendy looked uneasily between the two, stuck between continuing to flirt with the hunk and not wanting to be slutty in front of the kid. Huffing, she walked away with a lot more giddy up in her ass than natural.

Viktor watched that ass like a dying man watches a glass of water drain into the desert. “That’s some prime real estate, kid.”

Looking the woman over, Cesare couldn’t say he felt anything. Not when he compared them to the girls. “So's the highway, but it's got less miles on it.”

“You’re a real asshole, you know that?” Viktor said without a trace of anger.

Relaxing back, Cesare gave a low laugh. “Because you’re such a fucking ray of sunshine, making a play for my friends?”

Viktor's laugh rolled through the diner. “Think of it as incentive to get between them legs kid. You know why me and Lady Kali get along so well?” That name coming from the cock sucking shit had Cesare’s hand tightening on his switchblade, the urge to thrust it into the man’s eye and stir his brains spiking through him.

Viktor watched him with the preternatural stillness born from distilled violence. “It really burns your chaps that I fuck her on the regular, doesn’t it? I’ve seen the way you look at her, that hunger in your eyes as you mind fuck her. Let me tell you something, she’s a hell of a ride, but then she’s had more cock than a boy with pretty lips in prison.” Viktor’s milk arrived with an alluring smile and a wink. There was no sign of Cesare’s tea.

“There’s a reason we've gotten along for all these years. We know the truth. Relationships between men and woman never get better than the first fuck. The first time you stick your dick into a woman's magical, you possess her, taking something she can't give to anyone else. You’ve violated her body, taking it as your own, it’s a moment of utter domination. You think you’re in love, most never realize it’s the moment you’re in love with, when you’ve taken a beautiful thing, and made it yours.” Viktor's eyes roamed the room in the steady habit of a trained soldier.

“Men think they love women, but we just want to take the power they have over us and make it our own. When you sheath yourself into that wet pussy and she loses control, when she’s nothing but a sleeve for your cock, in that moment, you’re a fucking god. Her power over you is shattered, the curtain pulled back from the powerful goddess, showing nothing but a fat balding whore. When you fill that sweet pussy up and claim her sacred place, you know she's your bitch. That feeling's what we really love.” The food came even if there still no sign of his tea.

Taking a bite, Viktor pointed at Cesare with the fork. “That’s why I fuck Lady Kali. She’s one of the most powerful beings in the world, and when I fuck her bent over in my bed, I know she’s nothing more than a wet hole. When my seed glazes her face, I know she’s not a goddess, just another fuck.” Viktor tore into his steak, taking long drinks of milk to wash it down.

“No man can understand a woman, and without understanding you can’t have anything real with them. I understand you. Under the table your fingering that knife of yours and measuring you chances of skull fucking me with it. You don’t like me talking about Lady Kali, because you got a hard on for her.” Shrugging, he continued. “I don’t care if you fuck her, but you’re a fool to think she'll be anything more. She chases guys the way I chase woman, for the thrill of the fuck. She'll say anything to bag you, and when you get clingy, she'll drop you like a used condom. She’s not capable of loving anything but herself, just like me.” Viktor's words stripped the day of its wondrous shadows, turning the mysterious and beautiful into a diseased thing of rotting perversions.

Finishing the last bite of his breakfast, Cesare slid the plate into the middle of the table, meeting the bastards challenging eyes. “I think you're full of shit. I think you can’t love anyone because you hate yourself. A mockery of a man, diseased in flesh and soul, an abortion barely worth the bullet to put it down, animals know more about love than your shit stained soul. You're pathetic unable to hold onto or inspire a love that endures, a crippled thing without the right to be called a man. I pity you almost as much as I pity the women you fuck.”

Viktor’s empty glass blew apart in an explosion of shards as he clenched his hand. Eyes bled to gold as the feral thing inside the man tore at the shell of humanity. Rage, incandescent and vicious, rose into a tower of hate in the man’s eyes.

“Dear god! Are you okay sugar?” Wendy screamed, running to the table with a towel. The words forced the man to leash his inner self. Brushing off the shards of glass, Viktor accepted the towel with a lame excuse he didn’t know his own strength.

He paid the tab, with an exchange of numbers between Viktor and Wendy. The truck roared to life, Viktor’s hands tightening on the steering wheel. “I’ve killed men for less.” Bloody and raw the threat snapped between them.

A smirk played across Cesare's lips. “What a petulant monster you are, lashing out at any hurt to your fragile pride. It must be painful to be a boy in a man’s body.” Viktor’s eyes flamed yellow and wild, steering wheel creaking under his unleashed fury before the yellow bled back into human range.

Viktor pulled out of the diner and hit the highway with a grim look, dedication to making this a short trip radiating off the quietly seething creature. In a way, Cesare agreed with Viktor.

A man can understand another man, shaped by the same knives, sharing instincts, needs, desires, and culture. Cesare had been stripped of that brotherhood, a life lived malformed and wrong, every step driven by savage needs, instincts born in survival, culture a thing for others, the manly ways of pride and strength dead ends for a starving kid on the streets. The broken couldn't even relate to each other, living mockeries of who they could've been, grotesque freaks uniquely beautiful in their deformity.