Elizabeth turned to him with a wry smile. “Jerold feels we should talk about the meeting before we take it to the Mistress.”

They’d kept the deal to themselves, but it had gone south when it was leaked to the Thagirion. Jerold had fought with everything he had to get at Cesare, but Cesare was trickier, meaner, and ruthlessly amoral. Tactics that would make Jerold turn away in disgust jockeyed for position in Cesare’s mind, lacking only opportunity.

What had been good news for the Furies was a nightmare for Jerold. They were in a fight for resources, a soldier for Cesare was one lost to Jerold. The backing of a rogue group of thugs was bad enough, but if Cerberus became a recognized part of the school, it would hold a hell of a lot more weight with the alumni, faculty, and student body.

“Cerberus has been banned from becoming an official club for centuries, with good reason.” Jerold’s blue eyes never left Cesare. “Cerberus is a radical movement, fighting to exterminate several races. As a group of militants, they’ve been linked to bombings, massacre’s, child killings, and cannibalism. It’s for these reasons they’ve been found unsuitable for inclusion into the ranks of groups approved by Primrose.”

Cesare caught Sampson’s furious eyes, the boys mouth opening in anger, ready and willing to defend the group he’d given his life to. Sampson closed his mouth under Cesare’s steady look. Once the fighter was settled, Cesare turned his attention to Jerold, disregarding the others wondering looks at the interaction between the boys.

“That’s not the reason they were cast out,” Cesare said, it was the caress of darkness across cool skin, velvet and dangerous, slipping into the heart with venomous glee. “They were set aside for one reason, power. Primrose couldn’t guarantee control of Cerberus, and if they couldn’t control it, they wouldn't let it's seed fall in fertile ground. It was easier to pit the gangs against each other than earn their loyalty.”

Cesare eyed the man, in his beautiful black suit, clean creases as tight as razors, perfectly parted hair without a strand out of place. Everything about the man spoke of obsessive control. A need to impose order onto the chaos of life and the hungers of the soul.

Meeting Jerold’s eyes, Cesare felt his lips peel back in a malicious smirk. “But for you, it’s more than that. You hate them, don’t you? For being everything you can’t be, for having the balls to be true to themselves instead of this repressed, anal retentive fuck in front of me.” Homicidal fury flared in the cold thing’s eyes. Sarah’s hand tightened on the man’s arm, anger clean and pure, flashing in her eyes at the insult to her man.

“We’re all monsters at our core, ravenous things that savage and devour friend and foe. That’s our glory, our horrifying beauty. Nightmares made flesh, glittering abominations of wonder that dance through Luna’s elusive light.” His hand ran down Alexandra’s golden hair, her low hiss of pleasure cutting the air. “You run from who you are, chain it down and subjugate it to a civilized mind, flood its pristine darkness with cancerous light. You’ve lost the truth of your soul, while we embrace ours.”

“They’re beasts.” It was a simple declaration of contempt.

Pushing against his hand, the vampire let let out a low hiss, threatening even in its joy. Alexandra would never be anything less than unpredictably violent, but she was fully herself in all its psychotic wonder. “You say that like it’s an insult, something to run away from or master.” Cesare’s smile widened. “Run from who you are, run far and wide, but you'll never escape. You’ll only tear yourself in two making a mockery out of who you were meant to be.”

Anger surged in Jerold, body trembling under the force of the emotions twisting his heart, threads of corruption squirming snake like under his skin. Sarah held him still, but her eyes never left Cesare. Whatever she'd expected, it hadn’t been a fight over the nature of the Umbrae Lunae.

In almost perfect synchronicity the girls moved with him, walking away from the confrontation. Elizabeth waited for him to pass before falling in at his side, mouth twitching with an amused smile. Despite her lighthearted mood, her eyes were shocked and serious.

“I thought you didn’t agree with Cerberus,” Sampson asked.

Cesare glanced at him before looking away. “You never asked.”

“I’m asking now,” Sampson said, quietly intense eyes studying Cesare.

“Your idiots,” Cesare said flatly. “Cerberus is focused on getting their land back, taking vengeance for a past you’ll never change. Your so intent on winning the war, you don’t realize your losing something you’ll never get back.” Cesare looked over at Sampson. “When was the last time you spent a full day in your true form? Or went an hour without second guessing your instincts? You’re losing your truth, sacrificing who you are to win a war that won’t ever give you what you want.”

Cesare looked away from the boy’s troubled face. “Every day you're losing more of your soul, giving it up to change into what you think will win the war. You don’t celebrate being Umbrae Lunae, there’s no glory in your life, no joy in what you are. Instead, you’ve savaged your soul, butchered your traditions to stitch together a caricature of humanity.” Cesare stopped, eyes narrowing in thought, voice turning thoughtful. “Never forget what you’re fighting for. Never lose sight of why you bleed. What’s the point of winning if you lose everything worth fighting for?”

Sampson opened his mouth, anger contorting his face, he stopped as uneasiness flooded into angers place. The truth of the words didn’t make them easier to bear, it was the special cruelty of truth that it came with no gentleness. Lies were velvet and silk, truth the cruel hand that tightened a fist around your balls. Cesare could see how hard it was for the boy to listen to the words that attacked something he loved enough to die for. If their spots were reversed, Cesare would already be at the guy’s throat. But then, if Sampson stepped wrong, Anastasia would turn the boy to charcoal.

Cerberus was fighting a war they couldn’t win. They’d lost a long time ago, only bitter rage and unquenchable lose pushing them forward. Humanity had spread too far, too fast, eclipsing the Umbrae Lunae. The few fey things born to Luna’s glory were tigers trying to fight a tide of army ants. There was no way to win, but they could still thrive. All they had to do was climb above it, focus on their people and culture, before their future died with their past.

Blaez walked around the corner, eyes jumping to Cesare even as he took in the others. A quizzical eyebrow rose as he caught sight of Jerold and Sarah.

“I’m thinking your canceling our training for the day,” Blaez said dryly as Cesare pulled up in front of him.

“You can use the rest,” Cesare said, hesitating briefly before answering the question in the boy’s eyes, a question Blaez would never ask. “We’re going to get Cerberus recognized as an official club.”

The boy’s eyes widened, a low whistle coming from between his teeth. “There hasn’t been a new club in, fuck, I don’t know how long.” No one counted the Furies, blood soaked and murderously driven, they used the rules for clubs but ruthlessly refused to obey them. Blaez eyes widened as realization dawned. “You're heading up to talk to the Mistress.” He whispered in terrified reverence.

“She’s the only one with the power to put it in place,” Cesare confirmed.

Blaez stepped back, fear stripping the color from his face. “We’ll met up tomorrow, it a full fuck off on doing that shit again.” The boy gave a respectful nod before walking quickly away.

It wasn’t lost on Cesare that the entire time Blaez had talked, his eyes had never strayed to Anastasia. Not once during the conversation had the wolf looked at the stunning girl next to Cesare. Blaez and him worked under rules barbed with poison razors, some had been spoken, others remained quietly in the background, understood but never commented on.

The first rule was the one that could never be broken and would never be spoken out loud. Blaez was never to talk about Anastasia, never to talk to her, his eyes didn’t drift to her or his mouth utter her name. Any breach of those rules would see the boy dead. Something’s couldn't be undone and the wolf’s relationship with Anastasia was one of them.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Anastasia, he trusted her as much as he trusted anyone. No, the problem was Cesare knew his worth. He was a trained dog, funny, interesting, and comical, but ultimately disposable. A mutt was unwanted, untrained, loud, and abrasive, and he'd go the way of every mutt in the end, left along the road as she drove away. Cesare wanted to hold that moment off for as long as possible, and that meant keeping Blaez away.

They reached the stairs quicker than Elizabeth liked. “Since you’ve come here, I’ve climbed these torturous things more times than I’ve ever had to in the decade before.” Sighing, she climbed slowly, manifestly unwilling to hurry for anyone or thing.

Cesare grinned as the round teacher sighed in appreciation of the slow climb. That was one person who wouldn't complain about Elizabeth’s decision to take the climb easy.

The others went along with varying degrees of irritation, but none were as put out as Jerold. Even if the man pushed forward, he’d be doing it with only Sarah as company. The rest weren’t going anywhere without Cesare, and it would be a cold day in Hades before Cesare left Elizabeth. Carefully managed frustration flashed like sunlit ice in Jerold’s eyes.

The others looked between the two. Cesare was barely more than a boy, burned by life’s black humor, nothing but muscle, tendon, and bone, wedded to a spiteful soul. His uniform draped over him, making him look more child than man. Only the look in his eyes marked him out as neither boy nor man, the cold blue eyes held the emptiness of a sharks.

Jerold was Cesare’s opposite, strong, controlled, and ruthlessly practical. Control radiated from him with the confidence of a man who'd mastered mind and body. Teacher, fighter, lover, and monster, decades of hard work had crafted the man into something admirable. Jerold had realized his full potential, possessing the power of a finished blade, everything realized in one magnificent work of art.

Jerold was a devotee of order. In command of himself and his environment, the man had built his life through hard work and sacrifice. He wanted to be part of society, craved the prestige of being looked up to and admired, more than that, he thought he was good.

Cesare was chaos, he followed only his own rules uncaring for the demand of others, destruction in its purest form, he moved through the world shattering the mighty with frightening impunity. He didn’t believe in good, he only believed in flesh. For those people Cesare loved, he would commit any act.

Despite having every advantage, Jerold was losing a war against something that never should've been a threat. Unformed, broken by life, tormented by man and monster alike, Cesare had still been one step ahead of the man. Part of that was sheer potential, Cesare was little more than a newborn, yet his potential was terrifying. He'd taken to the Umbrae Lunae like a shark to a school of fish.

Speculation ran through the groups eyes as they felt the tension between the two men. Some of them were active fighters in the war between the two, others were only bit players, but they knew they were seeing the future of the school. Jerold wanted it to stay the way it had been for centuries, while Cesare was dragging its savaged body into a future only he could see.

Caught in their own thoughts, no one felt the need to talk. They’d all chosen sides, some for loyalty, ambition, or even love, but none of them knew what the future held. Those that could adapt would thrive, the tide would break the rest on the rocks.

Coming to the final landing, Elizabeth took a deep breath, wiping at her sweat stained face. She was still in full Goth mode and wasn’t going to walk into a meeting with the Mistress in smeared makeup. Looking a question at him, she paused to let him check her over.

Skin the pale of the newly dead, her lips were tinged with a bruised blue color that gave her the look of the recently drowned. Dark, almost black purple eye shadow turned her warm eyes into velvet black. Sable hair flowed down her back in a wave of dark radiance.

“Beautiful as always.” Cesare said, uncaring at the judging watchers. He'd be damned if he'd hide his love. Everyone that mattered to him already knew, and the rest were little more than meat.

Flushing, Elizabeth looked away from the raw reality in his eyes. “You mean for a middle-aged teacher,” she said, giving a light self-deprecating laugh. It was the kind of laugh that hid the truth. She thought she was past her time, nothing but an overweight woman that had long ago lost beautiful.

Shaking his head, Cesare met her eyes. “No. I mean that your beautiful. Lush and wonderful, a bloom in its prime and a joy to look on. You’re everything a man dreams of, the kind of woman we spend our lives looking for and never find.” Dark and silken, the words caressed the air with cold currents, laying bare his love for the woman that colored red under his eyes.

“If you’re done, we have a meeting to attend,” Jerold said, pushing through with Sarah at his side.

“No sense of romance,” Cesare said with a small smile. A brief burst of nervous laughter split the air as the tension broke.

The bare room passed in only a few steps, black door standing open in Jerold’s wake. Passing the threshold, the things aura embraced him with icy, ravenous need. Locking his knees, he continued into the room, avoiding the eyes of the thing that sat behind the desk.

This close to the Mistress, the air was pressurized, heavy, suffocating as if possessed of malignant life seeking only to strangle the living. Cesare had to focus to pull the viscous air into his lungs. The fractured parts of his soul whined in pain, resonating to the alien song of the Mistresses appetite.

Steeling himself, Cesare faced the devouring eyes of the abomination. She was a creature of hard planes and sharp edges, but all that faded away next to her monstrous eyes. Plucking at his soul with needy little fingers, thin little digits pushing and prying, a violating touch saturated with diseased desire.

“It’s rare that people come seeking me,” the Mistress said, eyes boring into Cesare. “Why do you come, man child?”

The others faded into a surreal background, its monstrous reality turning the world into a faded painting. The Mistress was a whirlpool of dark, swirling currents, it was all Cesare could do to set himself against the undertow. A slow ribbon of hot blood seeped from his nose, winding down and dripping off his lips, the copper taste flooding his mouth. Legs trembled under the gravity of the thing’s existence, he locked his knees to keep standing.

“To make Cerberus an official part of the school,” Cesare answered, dismissing the ribbon of blood that dripped from his chin.

“You would have me give them sanction for their rites in my school? To allow them to grow their power in the blessed rays of the moon instead of scurrying for the crumbs in the sun?” No emotion colored the things voice, cold and simple, it scraped across the mind like sandpaper, leaving weeping blood in its wake.

“I would have you keep your promise instead of paying lip service to it.” The words dripped with the power of the lost, melancholy insanity threaded through the shadows, snakes of black despair and pain. Tendrils of shadow stretched from the corners of the room, spreading across the floor in a pool of sable.

The pressure ramped up around him, clothes tightening under the unrelenting weight of her stare, eyes of black shredding the world as her interest peaked. Cesare’s left leg spasmed, shaking with weakness as his body betrayed him. “You created this school as a refuge for Umbrae Lunae, where they could feel welcome. When have you ever held to that? You let the Christians practice but without the protection they’d need to survive the student body. You’re forcing Cerberus into the sun. How welcome do you think they feel when the Thagirion come calling for their pound of flesh? Cast into a pile of rejects, how many of them do you think will send their kids here?”

“There are reasons why they’ve never been allowed to practice openly. Reasons of security. If letting them feel welcome is the price of keeping other students safe, that’s a price we’re willing to pay.” Jerold chocked out, words ghosting into the air, strangled by the Mistresses aura. A wet smack sounded as the teacher’s knees hit the stones, blood flowing freely from his nose and ears. Even if he wasn’t under the direct stare, just the wake of it was enough to cripple him.

“That's the stupidest shit,” Cesare said hoarsely into the dead, sterile air, eyes never wavering from the two voids that ate at his soul from behind the desk. “Allies are trusted, degrading others and keeping them as slaves will make sure they stay a threat. Instead of reaching out to groups that could cement the safety of this place, you bring in the divisions that exist outside. Primrose mirrors the fractured society you exist in, instead of being the model of what you could be.”

It studied him for a time that could be seconds or hours. “Once you give them power, you won't be able to take it back.”

“That’s the argument of an idiot.” The words bit into the air with savage cruelty. “Dead men hold no power. If they betray me, I'll drown the grass in their blood, create a forest of the dead, poison and break them. But that's not today.”

Silence held the room, no one wanting to step into what had become a personal meeting between the two entities. They'd come here hoping to support Cesare or destroy him, but except for Jerold's abortion of a comment, it had been between Cesare and the Mistress. Everyone knew in that moment that their presence meant nothing. Cesare was used to living alone too long for numbers to mean a wet shit on what he’d lay his flesh on the line for. The Mistress annihilated armies, zero plus zero, was always zero.

“Granted.” The word was all Cesare needed or wanted. Turning, he wasn’t surprised to see everyone else already making their way out or gone. He’d expected more, maybe a threat to keep them in line, but that wasn’t its way.

There was no doubt who controlled Primrose. With the power to erase anyone or thing from existence, it held the world at bay by being a singular abomination beyond measure.

Jerold and Sarah left without looking back, the woman talking earnestly into the cold man’s ear. The war wasn’t going the way Jerold wanted, and desperate people did wicked things. It would depend on what meant more, the school or his life.

“You think he’ll back down?” Elizabeth asked quietly, her own eyes on the empty doorway.

“He’s certainly hurting for options. He’s a rule follower, but is that more important than his convictions?” Cesare shrugged with a half-smile. “Anyone can be radicalized; all they have to do is wake up and decide what they believe is worth dying for.”

Her eyes darkened with anger. “You think he might attack you?”

Starting for the door, his words were quiet in the stillness. “I think if he wants to join the line of people looking to murder me, he’s more than welcome to.”

The words warped the faces of the women, the truth shaking them to the core. They knew Cesare wasn’t universally loved, but they didn’t live in the pressure cooker he did. The dangers that were constants in his life were nothing to them. Some hunters he knew, Abraxas, murmillo’s, Scythians, even parts of Cerberus.

He’d twisted their lives, taken things that were stable and changed them beyond all recognition. That he’d done it for his own aims and goals was never in doubt, that it stabilized their power bases was incidental to his ambitions. They were wise enough to understand he unleashed chaos, radical, destructive change that could forge them a new world or cast them into the darkness of the abyss. Many wanted to strangle the baby while it was still a babe rather than see what it grew into.

Walking down the stairs, the group was quiet. It was a sobering thing to know the boy you walked beside was living on borrowed time. It shouldn’t have been a shock to the girls, not after all they’d seen but they’d never really grasped how tenuous his life was.

Sampson hesitated on the ground floor, eyeing the fat little teacher scurrying away from the Furies. Stopping, the boy turned and met Cesare’s eyes. “Cerberus made a vow that we’d support you. I know we haven’t seen eye to eye before, but for me that’s past.” Swallowing, the boys eyes gleamed with unshed tears. “I never thought I’d see the day we’d be welcomed at Primrose. I'd never met Animus until today, never seen or heard him speak. He's a god to us, someone to worship, not a person we call. He came to meet you, to talk to you, he swore a blood oath with you.” Searching Cesare's eyes, an awe gripped the boy. “He told me to have your back. If you need us, we'll be there.” The boy gave a nod before turning smartly and walking away.

“I think he meant that,” Alexandra said, her words drawing slow nods from the other woman.”

“My mother’s talked about the Three. Given her … association with one of them … she’s had dealings with them over the centuries. They come from a different time, when they give their word, they mean it in spirit and deed. If Animus says Cerberus will come to Cesare’s call, then they’ll damn well come or he’ll cut them down.”

Cesare watched Alexandra struggle with the idea. There was history between her people and Cerberus going back to before the Cleansing War. Blood, death, and carnage had buried thousands. They’d never be friends, no matter the words Animus had spoken; Alexandra would die before she asked for the dog’s help. But Cesare had gotten what he wanted from Cerberus, immunity for the vampire that stood at his side.

Elizabeth left them shortly after Sampson, she still had work to get done. People thought a teaching job was a cushy gig, but they didn’t understand the reality. They stayed long after classes ended, correcting papers, working on lesson planes, getting the school room cleaned. Being a teacher wasn’t a job you did just at school, it was something you took home with you. A teaching job was a 24/7 thing that never quit.

Cesare knew Elizabeth almost never went up to her apartment until well after 9. She didn’t take work home, because she didn’t have a home. The classroom and the campus were her places, the apartment only a shell she slept in. Watching her go back to a life that was lonely and thankless he couldn’t help wishing … so many things.