Making his way across the courtyard, Cesare noticed a scattering of girls stopping to glare at him. Atalanta's gang spread out through the disciplines of steel. He'd trampled one of their own, and they wanted a pound of flesh for the sin. Cesare respected that, but that didn't mean he'd let them take it.

The girls looked up as he turned the corner along the path to Raven's Rest. It had taken longer than usual, and the girls wore expressions of worried irritation. Seeing him whole and unblooded, the worry faded to anger at having been kept waiting. That lasted only as long as it took them to see the spears and bulging duffel bag.

Walking past the two, he led them into the corridor of thorns. Laying the spears on the table, Cesare unpacked the duffel. Drawn to the steel, Alexandra hefted a spear with a critical eye. Six feet of hollow steel copper wire spiraled around it from tip to base, it looked more like a long nail than a spear.

Pulling the footballs from the duffel, he lined the three balls up along the table. Neither girl reached for the leather wrapped things. They knew he liked to use common objects to carry heavy payloads of explosives. While he was confident handling explosives, he was the only one.

“Let’s start from the top,” Cesare said, taking a seat and opening the folder he'd set aside. “Anastasia, they have you set up against Matashichiro, an Enenra. From the files he can turn himself into sentient smoke. He kills by suffocating his victims or tearing them apart from the inside.”

“I looked the Enenra up.” Licking melted lips, she continued, “He's the go to guy to kill people like me. His form's intangible, there’s nothing for me to burn, freeze, melt, or electrocute.”

“Stop thinking of your power as one dimensional,” Cesare said as he handed over a football. “Think beyond individual moves. You can set fires, freeze liquids, melt support structures, or send electrical current into devices. We used the cave man method on Blaez to prove a point.”

Cesare opened a leather football along the seam, showing the clay he'd packed inside. “The Enenra forms a cloud of smoke, that leaves out melee attacks and energy based solutions. Since we know what it turns into, we know its weakness.” The girls waited, unwilling to take a chance on looking a fool by being wrong.

“Explosive force tears the fabric of air, creating a vacuum in the middle of the explosion. The reason the Enenra is resistant to attack is that traditional attacks don't disturb its body. The sudden rupture of several feet of its body will make even an untouchable creature fear.” Cruel and satisfied, Cesare's smile was edged with sadism.

Tossing a football from hand to hand, Anastasia judged the weight. Turning away from the akatharton with a smile, he looked across the table at Alexandra. “Your set against the captain. They're looking to take you out with their heavy.” She wasn't scared, but this wasn't a throw away fight.

“Seijuro is another elemental type in this case he’s a Raiju or Thunder Weasel.” Cesare smiled at the translation; he was interested in seeing what this guy looked like. “He forms into a creature of pure lightning. A mobile stew of corrosive energy. It's a perfect defense, and an unstoppable attack.”

Alexandra traced a finger down the spear. “Swords, axes, knives, not only melt on contact, but open a channel for the Raiju to explode into your body. I can throw spears all day long Cesare, but it won't mean a thing.”

“The Enenra and the Raiju are the same problem with different faces,” Cesare said, voice lowering in thought. “They stacked the deck by choosing two elementals, but they doubled down on stupid. Knowing how to defeat one is knowing how to beat the other.”

Alexandra looked at the spears and footballs for a long moment. “I don’t see how explosives are going to help.”

Picking up a spear, Cesare checked the copper welds. “Wrong question. The question is how to defeat the element, not the person. Lightning has one purpose, it seeks only one thing, to ground.” Alexandra’s eyes widened in understanding. “Nothing can change that basic need. You can't kill lightning, you can't cut lightning, but you can give it what it wants. You'll spear Seijuro to the ground, sheath his light in the earth.”

She hefted the spear with a new appreciation, the copper swirls catching her eye. “I’m supposed to throw these?”

Shaking his head, he grabbed one and stepped away from the table. “No. You'll stab into his form as he comes for you.” Alexandra's mouth opened in protest. “You don’t have to hit him; just get it in front of him. A lightning bolt is unstoppable, but it doesn’t turn on a dime. Once you have it close, he'll be drawn to the steel and discharged into the ground.”

Cesare set the spear down. “You have a lot on the line. Your opponents are motivated, trained, and lethal. They'll be coming for your blood. But they're flawed, nothing more than steppingstones, when the time comes, you'll bury them and walk away. From now until you win, we'll be training for your fights.”

Anastasia hefted her football, metal laces rasping across her fingers. “Are you still cutting out early to take dinner to Miss Raven?” she asked, avoiding Cesare’s eyes.

“Nothing's changed,” Cesare said.

Like he’d said, they had a lot riding on this fight. Now that the teams were targeting Anastasia, she needed to show she could take all comers. She needed to be a goddess in eye and mind. But a god was birthed in fear, cultivated terror offering up its bounty, she'd water the sterile ground with agony, feed it with slaughter, until it grew poisoned fruit, venomous plants devouring her enemies for her. If she didn’t win, her dreams died still born in the womb of her heart.

Alexandra was sitting in the same leaky boat. This was the first time they'd see her fight. Her image, prestige, and future, hung on killing a monster that stripped her of every advantage she'd trained for. The captain of the Hitokiri was tailor made to butcher the vampire. This fight would either prove she was a killer of nightmares or condemn her to being little more than a thug. That was nothing next to the crushing pressure of being the first of her race to fight in the Sanguinem Nativitate. This could be the first step to bringing her people into the blessed shadows or confirmation they belonged in the outcast places of the world.

None of that changed his plans. He’d found out that Elizabeth was staying late in her office and skipping meals. Cesare didn’t know why, but he wouldn't sit by and let her think she didn't have anyone. The fight was important but so was Elizabeth.

“Anastasia, I want you to meditate for an hour while I work with Alexandra,” Cesare said.

Taking up the spears and footballs, he headed for the range as the girls changed. Setting the spears in the ground, Cesare dumped a pile of rocks next to the weapons.

Coming up next to him, Alexandra eyed the rock he was bouncing in his hand. “You ever use a shield?”

There was a beat of surprise before she came back. “Yes.”

Cesare grinned. “Good, because that’s what the spears are, shields. Your job is to stop the rock with the spear.” Grimacing, she looked between the small rocks and the thin spears. “I'll have insulated gloves and boots for you, but they’re not here yet.” The humor drained from him. “Killer, you need to know that even with the insulation, you’re going to burn.”

He didn’t insult her by offering her an out. The more he understood himself, the better he understood her. He lived for times like this, when everything was against him and everyone thought they had him dead to rights. When something thought it could rip through him and make him eat shit. He lived for those fights, the challenge's that couldn't be turned away, with only survival as the prize.

Twirling the spear with easy grace, she met his eyes with an eager smile. “I’ve trained with the spear, it’s a good weapon to spit a weasel on.”

Sharing her grin, he motioned for her to head down range. He stopped her when she was far enough to get experience at dealing with the distance, but close enough that the speed of the rock wouldn’t have fallen off.

The first rock hit her face, skidding off flesh, it was enough for her to vamp out as she realized Cesare wouldn't hold back. He kept up a steady barrage of rocks, dodging would get her killed, she had to master deflecting. The rocks were smaller than the Raiju, but if you trained for hard and it was easy, that was good training.

By the end, she looked as good as when they'd started without a bruise marking her pale skin. It was something like what Anastasia had. A kind of armor, like the leathery hide of a rhino or the dense musculature of a silver back gorilla. It protected, shielding them from knives, fists, sticks, and small caliber bullets. You had to break that armor to hurt them, anything less was worthless. Which was why he'd never win in a real fight with her. He couldn't break that barrier except with the Enochian Blade.

“Practice the switch over between spears until the exchange is fluid,” Cesare said as he left her.

Anastasia waited for him with an eager light in her eyes. She knew Cesare held the keys to the power she hungered for, he was the road to greatness. He’d birthed more ways to use the Ebon Flame than her people had in the last hundred years.

It had taken her mother pointing it out for her to realize how special Cesare was, and it had terrified her when she'd faced the monstrous facts. Her mother was obsessed with him, demanding every detail of their training, prying out even the smallest, most intimate facts, seeking the key to the madness of his method. Lady Kali had a program running with everything she'd been able to get from Anastasia, but even with Anastasia's help over Winter Break, they hadn't broken the secret to his genius.

Anastasia caught the football with easy grace. “You’ll throw the football and once it’s in place, hit it with an electrical burst of Ebon Flame.”

Grinning, she gave a delighted laugh. “Flashy. I like it.”

He knew she would, and she’d understand the motive behind it too. Cesare could have rigged it to a detonator but having her shoot them out of the sky made it personal. It wasn't about winning. Her image was more important than one fight. Each fight was a steppingstone, but her image was the path.

“Let’s start by getting you used to throwing the football.” Tossing the ball up, he caught it heavily. “You already noticed the weight. I want you to get used to that weight before we move onto the shooting. If you can’t put the bomb where you want, we don’t have to worry about you hitting the ball.”

She nodded at his words. Cesare had stressed that it didn’t matter how big your gun was if you couldn’t hit what you aimed at. She’d been lucky to get opponents that hadn’t taken advantage of that weakness, but that luck wouldn’t last forever.

Tossing her the football, he started walking. “You ever tossed the ball around with your dad?” Cesare asked as he turned around, taking the heavy ball to the chest with a grunt of effort.

“He wasn’t into sports. He's a diplomat for the Andhērē Rosa, so not really around as much as I'd like. When he was, he focused on education, science, math, history, debate, English and foreign languages, beyond my classes he would set aside time for personal talks about the clans, sceptrums, imperiums, players and alliances of the Umbrae Lunae world. He would help pick out my classes to reflect real world benefits with an eye to not only what was learned but how it would look for college. He's a planner not a sports guy. You?” It was said before she’d given it thought, biting her lip as the words hung in the air.

Shrugging, he sent the heavy ball back at her. “Never had a father, so no one to play ball with. I’d find a soaked football now and then,” he said without anger.

Throwing it back and forth, Cesare moved around, careful to always do it when the ball was in the air returning to her. Forcing her to track him and ball. The multi-tasking critical to shooting the ball out of the air. She had to keep both the shot and the ball in her mind’s eye.

“I feel like we should be doing something,” Anastasia said, tossing the ball back at him.

Smiling, he caught the ball on the jog before tossing it back, making her dash for it. “We are doing something.”

“Shouldn’t I be shooting or … something other than playing catch?”

Accepting the ball, he danced to the side before hurling it back at her. “No. The plan depends on you being completely comfortable with its parts. This is the part we’re working on now,” Cesare said, grunting as the heavy ball impacted against his chest.

A seriousness came to her features as she settled at his words, the practice taking on a different light. Naturally athletic and in the prime of her physical life, she got into the exercise, realizing she needed to get this down as quick as she could. By the end of the hour, she was well on her way to having a decent spiral.

Meeting up with Alexandra at the corridor of thorns, he handed over the spears. “Sleep with them. Touch them. Be with them. When the time comes, they'll be the only things you’ll be able to rely on.” Alexandra nodded, already knowing how important it was to be as close to your weapon as possible. It had to be between you and your opponent, the thing that stopped the killing stroke from taking your head, the tip that ripped life from flesh. You had to trust it like you trusted no one else in life. With only the briefest hesitation, Anastasia kept hold of the football.

They headed to the Vulpes while he made his way through the dark corridors of the school. Only the library was open this late, the corridors silent and still, deserted of the mass of screaming monsters that filled it during the day. Walking into the cafeteria, he met the eyes of the staff, busy with their jobs, they gave him only the briefest of looks. Scrubbing floors, wiping down tables, and carefully cleaning every panel of the stained-glass window, this wasn't free time for them. No matter the love they showed the Lady of Snakes, Medusa still seemed sad to him.

He’d been surprised at the easy acceptance when he'd asked on Monday. At the time he’d been too happy at the permission to use the kitchen that he hadn’t asked any questions. Walking past the cafeteria line, he pushed open the far door.