Tuesday February 10th 2015

In the hour of the wolf, the old Harley rumbled up to the gates of Primrose. They’d driven through darkness and over two states in the old Indian. Cesare could appreciate the history of the old bike, but it was a far cry from a car with heating and modern suspension.

Slightly ajar, the old gate creaked a whisper of welcome. It felt oddly like the place had left a light on for him. As if the land, steel, and stone had waited patiently for him, knowing in its eldritch way that he would return. What was that old line of Virgil’s ‘Wide the gates and easy the descent for hells gates stand open wide in welcome. But hard fought and treacherous is the ascent.’

Stepping off the bike, Cesare adjusted his duffel, using the movement to check his weapons. “A piece of advice kid,” Andras said, eyes never straying from the gates. Cesare hadn’t told him were to go, the man had known exactly were the school was. “If you have to choose between your heart and your honor, it’s better to choose your honor. No matter what you do, every heart gets broken.” Peeling out in a storm of gravel, Andras raced back the way he'd come.

Watching Andras leave, Cesare’s hand came down on the wolf that had crept up beside him. Like some great beast of darkness surfacing from the stygian waters of midnight, it had slipped from the forest. Its feral, wild glory saturated his soul as the wolf welcomed him back.

He wasn’t a good man, but according to the Andras he’d never been a man. What was honor to a wolf? Nothing but a word humans used to justify crooked truth and bloody sacrifice, enslaving others minds to cruel wills. A wolf knew its truth without having to be told, to chase prey across a darkened forest, the rush of scarlet from a new born's vein, tangled in sleep beneath the mother’s moon with the pack, these things were pure.

Turning his back on the world, he started down the path to the school. The wolf stretched out beside him, matching him step for step. This was how it should be. The wolf by his side, the moon standing coldly beautiful above, her soft light turning the land into a mystery waiting to be told. Branches transformed into grasping hands, leaves became searching eyes, the darkness hid skittering things that mocked the light of day. Bewitchingly treacherous, the moon was the keeper of mysteries, weaver of illusion, and Cesare loved her for it.

They walked with the easy step of people who are where they want to be. They were alike, the world had taken everything from Cesare, butchering him with scalpels of degradation and cleavers of humiliation until he was less than human, leaving him more animal than man. Cesare had more in common with the inky stain that walked next to him than the kids he went to school with. A place to lay his head and food on the horizon, it was enough.

Stepping into the shadows of the forest, the wolf disappeared in their depths like a rock into a still ocean. Cesare knew it was there, taking up residence in his mind, a support that never wavered, blessedly devoid of morality. The feeling diminished with each step away from the forest.

A figure rose from the steps of the Serpens Lacum. With his black coat open, he was a study in shades of sable. A void in the beauty of the night, restrictive, controlled, a being of ruthless logic. No matter the darkness he flaunted, he lacked its wild majesty of unbound chaos.

“I gave even odds you'd make it back. Some call that strength, but I don’t admire a cockroach for being hard to kill,” Abraxas said evenly.

“We haven’t moved against the Furies because we don’t need to. A frontal assault while tempting, won't yield satisfactory results. You're the only thing holding the girls together. The weak link stitching their flesh to one. Usually I’d take the regular method.” Taking in the campus with a languid look, the dragons eyes seemed deeper, darker than the night. “You’ll never guess how many kids are buried on these grounds, it’s a graveyard of the useless and unwanted.”

“You’ll be fighting in the Sanguinem Nativitate. You'll have to fight against an Umbrae Lunae worth the name. They'll slaughter you for the school to see, I'll make sure of it. You’ve done something remarkable here. Irresponsible, vile, and against the natural order, but remarkable,” Abraxas said, eyes resting on Cesare.

Sighing, Cesare struggled to hold onto his last give a fuck. It had been a long day even before walking the way here, all he'd wanted was a few hours’ sleep before getting up for class. This pecker wanted to talk the whole night away. “And the reason your telling me this, is?”

“To give you a chance to do the right thing. Turn around and walk away. Take what life you still have and live it far away in the filth of the humans. No one will ever know that you survived, you'll go down as a footnote, a lesson in what not to be. The girls you care for will drift back to their proper places,” Abraxas said.

Cesare's lips thinned, the barest baring of teeth, it was the misshapen son of a smile, lacking anything but savageness. “Why would I walk away when we’re winning? With every entitled, spoon fed, inbred son of a whore we put in the ground, your little empire fades like the bad taste it always was.”

Laughing quietly, the night quivered under the dragons bared power. “I’ll see you dead before that, even if I have to kill you myself. Collect the cockroaches, you’ll still be nothing but a step away from extinction. The Thagirion are the strongest, most influential Umbrae Lunae. We have the money, the connections, we are the powers of the Umbrae Lunae. Your kind prattle like old woman on the wonders of leading through merit, you don't understand breeding is its own merit. We command because we're lions, you follow because your meat. You were born less, a different breed, dumber, slower, unworthy of glory, your destinies are to be used by the chosen.” Abraxas turned, coat flaring out behind him like ominous wings. “Enjoy the night.”

Cesare cursed as the door opened and closed behind the serpent. In all the craziness with the Houndshe'd forgotten about curfew. The Thagirion had the power to override the locks. The Furies might be a contender for the power of the Thagirion but that didn’t mean the stones recognized them.

Shaking his head, Cesare claimed a corner on the landing beside the door. Shrugging deeper into his hoodie, he let his thoughts turn over the dragon’s words. Some of it was posturing, but there were truths that could be gleaned from the dross.

The doors slow push against his back, woke Cesare from the half doze he'd fallen into. Stretching painfully to his feet, he grimaced at the students startled curse. The pudgy kid looked at him in fear tinged wonder as Cesare slipped past him.

“Welcome back.” The soft words stilled Cesare, prodding him to look at the kid with new interest. Homely in a way that never touched cute, the boy was large pushing the edge of obese settling with good cheer into the realm of fat. It was the eyes Cesare remembered, full of defiant terror, brittle honor already cracking under the weight of cruelty. It had been months since Cesare had worn the boys pants. “I knew you’d come back. I knew you wouldn’t leave us.” The words were dropped worshipfully into the silence.

Giving the kid a nod, Cesare continued into the Serpens Lacum. The encounter stayed with him as he climbed the stairs to his room. The thoughts ground to a startled stop at his room. Notes were tapped to the door, clustered together like sheep on a cold night. Small, little more than a hand span, each bore a painfully hopeful message for his safe return.

Maybe the people they saved were zero’s, weak things that couldn't fight, cast off garbage of forgotten families. But the world was more than money and connections, it was souls, hearts, and minds. Cesare was destined to be a mongrel, but even a dog got to decide what it fought for.

He set the notes on the bare dresser, the papers standing out on the stripped surface as the too late blessings they were. Washing up in the deserted bathroom, Cesare had to admit it was nice to be thought of as something more than trash. Maybe it was another way he failed at being good. A good person would fight for the weak because it was right, Cesare did it for the cruel thrill of beating the shit out of bullies. Did the reasons matter to the people he helped? Would it have mattered to him? No, the only thing that mattered was the helping hand.

Cesare stopped on the threshold of the Serpens Lacum taking in the waiting figures at the bottom of the stairs. He'd thought they'd hook up at the cafeteria, Cesare never expected them to hold a silent vigil for him. Alexandra was buried in her iPad, silently mouthing bible verses in her quest to carve them into her soul. Anastasia leaned against the rail, headphones covering newly budding ears, eyes closed as she danced through a world all her own.

Neither looked up as the door closed behind him. Getting closer, he noticed the dark marks under their eyes from sleepless nights. There was a hard brittleness to their bodies, telling of painful thoughts compressed.

“Good Morning.” The words were spoken into the still pregnant silence that existed in that strange time of transitions. When burning light holds the land and nights only a gentle thought creeping from shadows. A fey time, a moment of brutal pasts and gentle beginnings, when what was, become what is.

Alexandra jerked upright, iPad hitting the ground with a clatter as she stared at him in shock. Anastasia ripped her headphones off, mirroring the vampires wonder, eyes running from the tip of his combat boots to still wet hair.

Leaping from the rail, Anastasia hit him in the chest, arms cinching around him as she buried her head in his chest. A deep, terrible shudder rippled through her, a thing born of black dreams and unbearable certainty strangled as the abomination it was, still wet from its womb. A future shrouded in misery and pain, garroted in its crib by his simple presence.

Wrapping her in his arms, Cesare's hand caressed down the back of her stubble coated skull. The air vibrated under his deep rumble as the last traceries of the ordeal faded from Cesare.

Alexandra was suddenly at his side, moving between blinks. Wondering eyes traced his face, trembling fingers pushing through his hair. “I thought you were gone, I thought I’d lost you, like I’d lost my .…”

Reaching out, Cesare wrapped an arm around the vampires shoulder, pulling her into his body, Alexandra's arms tightening around him. Flinching away from the other girl, Anastasia nuzzled into his other side as far from Alexandra as she could get.

Pushing into his side, the cold body of the vampire fit under his arm with a tentativeness that made him want to kill. No one should feel insecure about a hug. No one should go through life fearing touch. Alexandra gently wrapped her arms around him, pushing tightly into his starved frame, breathing in his scent, each movement the careful extension of a predator. It was like reaching out to a starving tiger, unsure if it would take the steak he offered or rip his face off instead.

Holding the girls, he was caught between the furnace hot heat of Anastasia and the cold chill of Alexandra. Opposites in temperament and needs, but they were his friends. It didn’t matter that they hated each other or would gladly kill the other if he wasn’t between them. The only thing he cared about was how they made him feel.

Slowly, they relaxed until they pulled away from him. “Viktor said he’d left you to die fighting the Hounds.”

Cesare nodded, already walking to school. He wasn’t going to wait to tell Elizabeth he was back. “That would explain the panic,” Cesare lightly teased.

Meeting his eyes, neither girl blushed at their reaction at finding him alive. But then, they had a lot riding on him. Cesare couldn't face the fact they might care for him in the same way he did them. That hope would only prove false, a mirage formed of desperation, sadistic desire, and twisted need.

“No one escapes the Hounds,” Alexandra stated.

“Unless you escaped the fight?” Walking with supernatural sureness across the uneven ground, Anastasia's eyes were trained on Cesare.

“No, they got me square. Once Viktor left, they cut my escape neat as you please,” Cesare said taking the stairs into the school with liquid leaps.

Gripping his shoulder, Alexandra easily pinned him in place. “How are you here?” She asked, hand tightening on his shoulder, unconsciously compressing the flesh with the power of a pneumatic clamp. Cesare looked into her furiously scared eyes; this had been hell for her. To have him taken by the Hounds like her sister must have clawed at her guts, waiting to see his pretty bits show up in a box as proof of his tortured end. It had to of been the slow stripping of the body of flesh, each piece pulled off slow and sure, until you were weeping raw flesh.

Cesare laid his hand over hers. “I’ll tell you, but only when we’re all present, and in a place I know can’t be overheard.” Reluctantly, she freed him from her grip.

This early in the morning, the hallways were empty, everyone either at breakfast or still in bed. Cesare wasn’t sure how far the news of his adventure had spread, but he was betting on it having made the rounds with the gossip mongers. Facing the seething mass of students with their probing eyes and flickering, lying tongues, could wait until he'd talked to the people he cared about. Even this early, Miss Raven's door was open, Cesare didn't know when she slept, but he'd never found her door closed to him.