With slow deliberation, Abraxas turned to face Cesare. Scales blacker than night armored its face, edges bleeding iridescence in the half light of the room. Smooth as a snake, the dragons alienness sent an atavistic shiver down Cesare’s spine.

“You can’t save him. You’re a cockroach, too stupid to run. Strutting around unknowing that the foot's coming down.” Smoke trails wove from its mouth, black eyes boring holes in Cesare. The dragons hand burned into Blaez’s flesh, the room filling with the sickly sweet smell of cooking meat.

“I don’t need to save him,” Cesare said, shrugging his bag off. “You don’t win a war by losing sight of the objective, it’s always been fucking the Thagirion. Kill him or let him go, I win either way.”

Round human orbs elongated, slicing down the middle. Slit pupils gleamed out of the dragon’s face with a snake’s dead stare. Sinuously, the dragon threw the wolf to the ground before gliding across the floor to Cesare. The crowd fled the area around Cesare.

“I could kill you.” The words flowed over each other in a sibilant hiss.

Cesare settled on his back foot, lowering his center of balance as Abraxas ghosted over the stone floors. The dragon was better than Cesare, in every way that counted. Better trained, stronger, faster, with a wealth of experience in killing. There was no way Cesare would win this fight.

Aleph burned through his senses, leaving them ash in its wake. Slicing through life, it peeled the skin off reality, triumphantly exposing the quivering organs behind the rotting flesh of the real. Painfully sharp, Aleph was merciless in its stark view, uncompromising in its all-seeing sight. Cesare’s blue eyes went void black, as Aleph claimed its due from his flesh.

Beth rolled through him along parasitic tendrils, its claiming shown in stygian black veins spider webbing across his body, owning the pathways of blood. Fiercely maternal, its influence penetrated skin, organs, and muscle. Putting herself before him, taking the brunt of every strike, enduring the pain of every hurt. He was her child; she'd do anything to save him from pain.

Red as molten lava, strength flooded his body, a torrent of hot power burning subtle pathways, heating his coal black heart red. Rearing up in his inner landscape, the golden serpent shed its white light across his soul. Rolling his shoulders, the power poured through him as he held the dragon’s eyes.

Entering Cesare’s kingdom, the dragon took the initiative with a snap kick. Never meant to hit, the kick was only a screen to keep Cesare from capitalizing on Abraxas closing the distance. Sliding around the kick, Cesare jerked back as a knife edged hand darted for his throat, the dragon slinking into place with cold calculation.

The dragon stayed with Cesare's off balance back pedal. A swift kick stabbed out, piercing into Cesare's thigh, sending the muscle into a spasm despite Beth shielding him from the worst of it. Flashing forward with a speed Cesare could never match, the dragon speared him between ribs, fingers diving deep, burning pokers digging through soft flesh.

Desperately, Cesare pulled back, lame leg wobbling. A bladed hand coated in black hot scales slashed across Cesare’s face, rocking his skull, splitting his lips, leaving a line of burnt flesh in its wake. Following up, Abraxas plunged armored fingers into Cesare’s stomach, tearing through hardened muscle, burying itself deep in his guts, without every breaking skin.

It was the ease that told the true tale. Strength and speed wedded to perfect technique, the butchering of an animal by an accomplished master. Cesare was only meat to the dragon, pieces of flesh strung together.

Breaking away, Cesare slid to the side, hoping to keep the dragon from pinning him in place. Knowing Cesare needed space, the dragon stripped him of it. Cutting into his side, the dragon tore open muscle, Cesare clenched down over the piercing pain that drove deep into his body. Not once did the dragon break skin, able to push into softness without ever shredding flesh.

Cesare’s head flashed back as his face was opened with another hot slash, blood trickling off his face. Locked onto him, the dragon unfurled a barrage of hate, hands cutting and diving at Cesare, lacerating flesh with burning blades of black steel, violating deep into tender places.

Stumbling back under the onslaught, Cesare frantically tried to defend himself. The dragon was simply better. Knowing a punch was coming meant less than nothing when it was faster than he could react, stronger than he could stop, and precise enough to cripple.

Lash marks of seared meat crisscrossed Cesare's face, eyes swelled shut, blood seeping from ripped eyelids. It didn’t blind Cesare, but Aleph's perfect vision couldn't help him here. Cesare wasn’t fast enough to make use of the information Aleph fed him.

Taking a step, the dragon closed the distance to only a few inches. Blurring in the air, his hands dove into Cesare’s body, sliding between ribs to tear at soft flesh, Cesare's body flinching from spears of heated scale.

Spitting blood and vomit, Cesare hit the stone floor with a wet sound. Blood and spit ran from his mouth, the smell of bile rising into the air. In Aleph's grip, he watched Abraxas look down on his broken body. The crowd radiated distant pity, satisfaction lighting their eyes with sadistic glee.

“Your nothing. You will always be nothing. I'll return you to the sewer you were spawned from.” Serene and at peace, the dragons lipless mouth stretched in a beatific smile.

Coughing and hacking, Cesare's laugh was the harsh, unholy cawing of ravens. Cancerously evil, the sound perverted the idea of humor. Bitter as still birth, dark as a child killer, as satisfied as a carrion bird worming its head into decaying guts. Shadows jittered and danced to its desecrating song. Shuddering, the boys shivered, moving together into clumps of comfort.

Turning his blind face up, Cesare stared at Abraxas, soaking in the dragon’s uneasy expression. Swollen and bleeding, his face was something only Quasimodo would love. Levering himself onto his hands and knees, Cesare vomited up a disgusting stew of blood and bile across the stone floor. The cruel rasping laugh spilling out in wet, tortured sprays.

Lurching up with a wobble, Cesare stared at Abraxas. “Go ahead. Do it.” The wet words dribbled out of his mouth in a spray of tainted spit. “Kill me, and lose everything.” Sick satisfaction threaded Cesare’s words. Blood trickled down his face in threads of scarlet, spit dripped off swollen lips running down his chin in red tainted streams.

Abraxas flared with anger, twin trails of smoke curling from his mouth as he readied himself to finish Cesare. “What do you think the Mistress will do when she finds you’ve killed me after her warnings? Or Miss Raven? You won’t be expelled; you’ll be staked for the ravens to pick clean.”

Stepping forward, a thrill of glee ran through Cesare at the dragon’s uneasy retreat. “Cast out without honor. Known as the destroyer of the Thagirion. You think Blaez is the betrayer, but it won’t be him that goes down in a storm of disgrace and dishonor. You think they’ll protect you when the Mistress comes for you?” Barking out a black laugh of hate, Cesare took in the watching boys with swollen, sightless eyes, the watchers flinching under the horror of his face.

“You’ll never hide this. When it comes out, I’ll be the hero, the one who tried to stop the rampaging fuck from killing his own teammate. And you’ll be nothing, a cast off thing with no morals, no future, just a mad creature that needed putting down.” Cesare felt his lips rip open as he smiled. “Go ahead you snake headed fuck, kill me. I go into the abyss with a smile, knowing I’ve won the war, and that I’ll be seeing you soon.” As the last words left his lips, Cesare spit a mouth full of bloody vomit laced spit across the dragon’s face.

Abraxas held himself rigidly still, uniform bulging and undulating under a tidal wave of homicidal fury. Heat haze blew off the dragon’s body in waves of scorched air. Cesare smirked into the abyss of burning death the dragon promised as the blast wave cooked the flesh of his face. Cruel and cold, the real dragon glared out from the illusion of humanity. Over weaning pride coupled with unrestrained power, a self confidence that lessened all before it.

Only self-interest propelled the thing in front of him. The world existed to glorify Abraxas. There were no victims in his life, only people of use. Abraxas lived in a world divinely created for Abraxas.

Clenching his hands, the dragon’s fingers popped like gun shots in the still room. Writhing and twisting, the dragon’s body slowly settled. Abraxas ruthlessly bottling the tornado of fire that had risen at the singularly most disgraceful act anyone had ever dared to violate him with.

“I will kill you.” Quiet and perfect in their sterilized neutrality, the words were the cold line of a razor, lethal and as sure as the sun. “But not today cockroach.” Pivoting, the dragon stalked out of the room, students stumbling over each other to get out of the incensed dragons way.

Sheer, bloody minded determination, kept Cesare on his feet. Bending down, he took up his duffel as a wave of dizziness swirled around him, the world rippling along its axis. Walking down the path the dragon had cleared in the crowd, Cesare kept his balance by equal parts will and stupidity.

He made his way slowly up the stair case. Bending down at the top, bile and blood spilled from his mouth as he lost the contents of his stomach. The harsh smell of vomit enfolded him in a caustic cloud. He knew the guy following him was watching but that was the least of his worries.

Taking each step as if it was his last, he shouldered the door to the bathroom open. Laying his bag down on a sink, he pulled out the things he'd need. Silently, the boy followed him, taking a seat at a sink down the way from Cesare.

Turning Aleph’s senses inward, Cesare studied the damage. The bruises went deep, some of them shading across organs. The armored fingers of the dragon had been more like being beaten with a baton than anything of flesh. Heated into hot pokers, they'd fucked him up good. A razor blade sliced open the swollen flesh around his eyes, letting the pupil peek through. He wouldn't be holding onto Aleph for the whole night. Sometime soon, he’d need to use his own eyes to find his way.

Taking out Elizabeth’s cream and some rags, Cesare cleaned his face as best he could under the eyes of the boy that had followed him from the fight. If Blaez had come to help, he was quickly finding that Cesare didn’t need it. The bruises would heal, both the ones he could see and the larger ones under his skin. The burns should be good in a weak or so with the help of Elizabeth's cream, they were more a psychological weapon than something to take a man down with.

“You going to do something about your neck?” Cesare asked, harsh and guttural, the words were sloppy from swollen lips.

Blaez touched his throat, wincing when his fingers ran over the livid red finger marks. “I’ll change latter.” The wolf grinned, humor never touching his grim eyes. Tonight, the wolf had seen what Cesare could really do.

“I’ve never understood why you stand between the meat grinder and some poor loser.” Blaez's words stood their ground between contempt and confusion.

“You think I should have left you to get strangled?” Cesare asked, carefully pronouncing the words past throbbing lips. “Because right now, I’m thinking I should have just kept walking.”

Blaez looked away with a shake of his head. “No, you saved my ass, and I’m grateful, but I don’t understand why you did it. You sure didn’t seem to give a fuck when you killed everything I loved.” Bitterly acidic, the reminder of all that Cesare had taken from the boy sent a flash of fury through the werewolf’s eyes before he tucked it away.

“Each time’s different; it might not seem like it, but I chose my battles carefully,” Cesare said, working the cream into the burning lines crisscrossing his face. “Tonight, there was no way I could lose. If Abraxas killed me, the Thagirion was dead as disco. He beats me up, and it’s one more victory for the Furies, showing we protect everyone. Anyway he turned, every step he took, was a win for me.”

“Your win or the girls. Because I can’t see how you dying is a win for you, Cesare,” Blaez said quietly into the room.

Pausing, Cesare held still for a long second before rubbing the lotion in. “There win, is my win.”

Uneasily, Blaez licked his lips, unsure how far to push a boy that held his life in his hands. “You’re not an idiot. No one that's played Abraxas the way you have can be that stupid. Yet here you are, cut up like a turkey dinner, tenderized like a nice steak, and all for two pieces of high school pussy. No matter if you part them pearly gates, you’ll never move in the circles they do. They’ll graduate and leave you behind, like so much useless baggage, taking their protection with them.”

Laughing quietly, Cesare worked on putting another layer of ointment on the bruises under his shirt. “I know. The best outcome I have is to die while I’m still in school. Then I’ll never have to deal with having to watch them walk away. I'd rather die while I’m high on lust and love than drowning in sorrow.”

Standing, Blaez headed for the door, his words coming back to Cesare. “I don’t understand you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t owe you.”