The woman waited outside for them. Everyone’s eyes locked onto the two when they appeared. Still wearing her cocktail dress from last night, it was obvious where she'd slept.

Alexandra's face contorted with homicidal fury, a murderous rage that demanded brutal retribution. Just as quickly as it burst into existence, she hid it, eyes shuttering into blank professionalism. Knowing her so well, Cesare saw the cold flame behind her eyes, flickering and lighting the edges of her psychotic soul.

The other two were more controlled, emotions hidden behind dark eyes. Elizabeth frowned in disapproval but other than a strain around the eyes, she kept her feelings to herself. Contained and controlled, she'd learned long ago not to advertise her feelings.

Anastasia looked between them with cold brittleness. The akatharton cared for him, but she’d made it clear she'd never be his. They'd made no promises and even less commitment. While they danced the world moved on and he had to move with it.

Kali’s harem formed a crescent behind the three women, eyes alternating between boring into Cesare and looking at Kali in worshipful love. He’d prefer the hateful looks to the sickly sweet poisonous worship they heaped on Kali. That kind of thing was a cancer, rotting a relationship from the inside.

As Kali and Cesare stepped off the final stair, the harem moved to cut Cesare off from Kali. They didn't like anybody close to their goddess, but they hated Cesare being there. Seeing Kali come down the stairs with Cesare for the second time made them realize he might not be a passing fancy.

Kali was a goddess, all powerful, immortal, the sun that their lives revolved around. Her devouring sexual appetite was nothing more than a pagan gods right. They didn’t care if she wanted to fuck him, as long as she didn’t care for him. Cesare was a damnati, fit to be used and thrown away. For a goddess to care about something as low as him went against sense, rubbing their soft parts like sandpaper.

The problem was that the harem was outside the boundary of Cesare’s friends, and none of the women were in a mood to be accommodating. Alexandra turned on the incoming harem with a snarl, more than willing to vent her fury on any target that came within reach. Elizabeth arched one eyebrow as reality writhed around her, the power of the earth rising along with her temper.

Kali halted the harems advance with a hot eyed glare. A blast of carnage tainted heat washing over the group, grass flaming into incandescence under the assault. Shuddering, the harem ducked their heads under her punishing eyes. She wasn’t threatening to discipline them; she was promising to erase them from existence.

Cesare wondered how many Harab Serapel were killed by their harems. Weapons, tools, and food, Kali’s harem were kept in line by the beauty of their mistress, chained to her by the most mercurial of emotions, faith. When faith soured, it lashed out without restraint, maiming everything in its wake. Eyeing the savage looks the harem gave him, Cesare started calculating when this batch would make its move to bury him?

None of it mattered today, not when he already had a date with a killing machine. Kali stayed close to his side. Elizabeth claiming his other side, displacing the younger women. Young people were like flames dancing in the night, the older you got, the more you changed into a rock, hard, tough, sure of yourself in a way that shouldered youth aside.

People passed them, rushing to get seats for the fight of the year. That was saying something after the fight’s they’d seen this year. The newly founded Furies would go up against the Hive in a battle to the death, the killers of monsters would face two scions of power and the damnati. It was a fight you only see once a generation. Everyone wanted a good seat for the new chapter of bloody history made today.

Eyes danced over the group, awe, calculation, disgust, and anger, everyone had a take on the fight. Some wanted them to live, others would be gleefully happy to see them cut into wet meat, strangled with their own umbilical cords like unwanted girls.

Overcast with steel gray clouds shading the world, it was a day for tears. It suited the sober mood of the party. Each of them was caught in a trap of their own worries. It wasn’t just Cesare’s life on the line today, the others had better chance's, but that’s all it was, chance.

Coming down the stairs of woven dark roots, the earth walls enclosed them as the arch to the underworld stretched out before them. Black as death, the roots were a tapestry of life. Stygian symbols flowed along wood, of unity and strength, love and joy, beyond the ability of man to see. People are the bastard born things of existence, unable to truly accept each other, only ever serving petty interests and greedy, grasping hands.

Plants knew better. Plants could be one with each other without losing their truth. Each tree was part of a great work of art, an organism that breathed, lived, and flourished, not through individuality, but unity.

Pale runes flared at their approach; alien eyes born from madness, glossy orbs turning to their sordid rancid reality. Power warped the air, creating a heat shimmer that stretched the expanse of the archway. Uncaring, devoid of compassion or empathy, the runes radiated a chilling willingness to punish trespassers. A tendril of thought, gauzy and indistinct, ran over Cesare’s mind, confirming his identity before slinking back into the insane realm that birthed it.

Holding out his hand, Cesare met Michael’s eyes. As thin as a blade, Micheal's tailored suit fit his body perfectly. Lips thinning, the man struggled, muscles jumping along his chin. Coming forward, the lackey handed over Kali’s dressing bag with a grunt. A smirk slowly spread over Cesare’s face as he considered Micheal's hateful face.

Walking through the wards with Kali, the air shifted, pressurizing as the membrane sealed behind them. Moist and thick, the air brought the purity of the earth and growing things. Only darkness reigned in the deep hallway, pale runes shedding dim light. If the earth was the eternal mother than this was her womb, safe, warm, and ruthlessly loving.

Cesare’s life was an ocean of fighting dotted with small islands of safety. The women tried to be there for him, he could see it in the way they clustered around him, how they glared at the monsters grinning from the shadows. But life couldn’t be lived under another shield, it could only be faced alone. When it was all on the line was when he failed, when he needed to win, was when he fell short. It wasn’t a conspiracy, no great entity in the sky with a grudge to grind, he was simply a failure.

He’d won fights, come out on top more times than he should have. Cerberus, Scythians, Blaez, and Jerold, they’d drowned in his evil. One and all, they’d meant nothing to him. He couldn’t have what he wanted, because the people he wanted it from didn’t feel he was worth it. That was the truth of life, you only failed at what you wanted, the stuff that didn’t mean a wet shit came easy. Cruelty was wedded to existence, bound into its DNA.

Something about the roots and the dark set his feet on the inner labyrinth of his soul. It pulled at the melancholy that ran under his skin, serpents of spite slithering through his veins, demons flowing from dens to take their due of flesh. Cesare welcomed the evil as much as he hated them, they were the constants of his life, his greatest and most loathed friends. Kissing him with venomous fangs, they devoured his happiness with eager baneful eyes.

Entering the locker room, Kali took her dressing bag and headed to the bench to get dressed. Her pale back was almost luminescent in the dim light. Alexandra hefted her own bag and went to another corner. Turning to the table and away from the immortal’s ass, Cesare laid out the weapons, trying to keep his mind off the naked women.

Taking a seat in one of the plush, sable chairs, Anastasia slipped her headphones on. She'd follow his shadowed words down the crooked path to the inferno at her core. Immerse herself in the Ebon Flames hunger, joining her desires with its eternal, devouring need, fusing the two into one.

Alexandra came to the table, looking right in a way hard to pin down. Black combat boots arched up to mid-calf, laced tight and polished within an inch of their lives. Tactical pants were tucked into her boots, rough fabric tailored to fit her exceptional physique. A black tank top restrained and compressed her breasts, leaving the maggot pale skin of her shoulders and arms bare. Broader than most men's, massive shoulders relaxed and bunched, mounds of striated power forming arms that would shame a steroid junky. She was a titan of pure, physical power, a thing that could tear a man limb from limb.

The claymore cross dangled between her breasts, holding the light and shooting it back in brilliant darts of fury. The ring he’d made for her, steel polished by hand over hours and hours, shone from her hand. Composed of two nails twisted into a cross, the needle-sharp points cut the light with razor edges.

Laying a box on the table, Alexandra's fingers caressed across the glossy case. Lacquered black on black, a design only seen from shadows wove in and out of sight. A dragon wound around the wood in a flowing, serpentine shape, arching neck, claws, and face, hidden in the midnight of the box, only seen when light and dark met perfectly. It was a work of understated art, ancient and beautiful.

“My father made a trip to Japan in the mid 15th century. Every warrior finds a weapon that calls to his soul, the weapon that resonates with his deepest, most hateful self. For my father, it was the katana. Walking the night, he found a sword maker as mad as he was. He asked the insane shaper of metal souls to craft him a pair of swords. The shaper outdid himself; it's said the blades were cursed from the first blow to the last caress. Filled with the desire to kill, destined to bring ruin to any who wielded them. As he handed them over to my father, the sword maker warned him the blades were evil, possessed of a temper that could only taint the warrior that wielded them. He begged my father to destroy them.”

Hidden clasps opened as Alexandra lifted the lid off the box. Cradled in blood red silk, the katana and wakizashi were revealed in all their glory. Sheaths of lacquered black copied the design of the box, a lithe serpentine dragon winding up and around them. The hilts were wrapped in gold and black braids, twisting around each other in an incestuous death match as they marched down the hilt with stranglers knots. The guard was cut into the shape of a praying mantis, scythe like limbs held up in violence given form, gold plated steel shot through with tendrils of black corruption.

Alexandra's fingers trembled as they traced the sheaths. “These blades have killed more of my family than all the enemies we've fought. My brother killed his cheating wife and her lover before cutting open his own belly with this sword. My father killed his own son with this blade in a duel for control of the Order. For hundreds of years, my fathers kept them locked away, until he gifted them to me.” Her eyes locked with Cesare; in that moment, he knew her father had given them to her after her sister had died.

“Why?” Cesare asked, eyes never leaving the silent, tortured form of the vampire.

“He told me that only a greater curse could overcome the evil of the swords.” Consumed in each other, they'd forgotten the others in the room. “He meant me. That my life was a curse, not to me, but to everything I touch.”

Taking her shoulder, the cold of her flesh was like ice under his hand. “He was wrong,” Cesare said quietly, voice pulling at the threads in the darkened room. Pale light dimmed as the blackness of his soul called to the broken, forgotten shadows. “You’ve never been a curse, never been a burden. When I needed you, you were there. No piece of steel can change that; no past can alter what you’ve done for me.”

Alexandra stared at him for a long minute with eyes of jade stone before slowly nodding. Her hand caressed the hilt of the katana with the familiarity of an old lover, even in the depths of her story, with pain clawing at her soul, her hand had never wavered. “These blades are dangerous, infecting others with their madness. They're a blight to those around them, only ever birthing pain.”

Cesare pulled the vampire into his arms. Laying her head on his shoulder, her own arms tightened around him with a need that was at odds with her calm exterior. “You’re not talking about the blades,” Cesare whispered into golden hair. “You’re not a curse. I choose to be with you, and I chose to stay with you. You’re my finest blade. You will always have a place at my side.”

A low, hurt sound came from her as she buried her face in his neck, goose bumps rose where cold breath touched his pulse point. “No matter what?” Cesare felt her body tense as she forced the words out. “No matter who?” The words were a ghost of a whisper.

Cesare understood, she’d seen him coming down the stairs with Kali. The immortal hadn't hidden that she coveted Cesare and wanted to take him away from the school. More than willing to pay for tutors if he'd swear oaths of loyalty to Andhērē rōṣa. It would be slavery in all but name. How did one pay back someone that had given you everything? You don’t, you owe them for the rest of your life.

While Kali’s offer wasn’t something he'd contemplate, it was still on the table. For Alexandra, seeing him with Kali made the option real. When you only had one friend, they meant everything to you. When you had gone through life without one, they meant more than your breath.

Drawing a hand down her intricate braid, his words were loud enough for the others to hear. “I'll never turn my back on you. No matter what happens in life, the blood that's spilled, the horror you deal the world, or the tortured places I walk, I will never turn you away. Nothing will change that, no woman or man, no evil we do. My flesh will always be your home.”

Some of the tension released from her shoulders, leaning back, she searched his face. Letting the vampire go, he looked down at the two blades. There was no doubt the blades were beautiful, the tragedy that birthed them added an edge of dark radiance to their glory.