Cesare left without another word. One hallway over, he found the girls waiting for him. They straightened; all traces of youth stripped from their face as they met his grim eyes. He tossed the packet to Anastasia without stopping, a darting look at the papers all Alexandra needed to know the score.
"They're being sold around campus." Anastasia's head jerked up at his word's, eyes flaring with black power.
"Who?" The word scorched the air, riding a heat wave that sent clothes fluttering in a breeze of unleashed fury.
Instead of answering, he looked at the girls. "This is going to get messy. Either you're all in or you need to walk." His eyes rested on the vampire. This wasn't her fight; she didn't have a stake in this game.
Alexandra met his eyes without a flinch. "If you're in, I've got your back." Something tight in his chest gave a bit at her words.
"You know, I'm in," Anastasia said, more than down for payback.
"This ain't a kill. I expect both of you to take your cue from me. We're going to teach a lesson, not get killed or thrown out of school." They nodded as he paused. "Good. Greg is the one selling the packets, and he's mine."
Anastasia opened her mouth, protest hot on her tongue as the blast wave of heat ratcheted up. Cesare rolled over the unspoken protest. "I know you want him, but this ain't your kind of work. You'd cripple, you don't have the skills to torture."
Anastasia met his eyes for a hot minute before ducking her head. "He should suffer for what he's done." Her hands tightened, black sparks spitting from the tongues of flame wreathing her fingers.
"And he will, more than you could bring yourself to inflict. I need you backing my play, or I'll never get close enough." His eyes moved to Alexandra as she nodded understanding.
He knew where the guy would be, Greg was a gladiator and they practiced every day after school. His people wouldn't hand him over, and they'd have the home turf advantage. Where you fought was as much a weapon as what you had in hand. You either used the battlefield or were buried in it.
This wasn't a good idea; it was an all-over shit plan. Attacking a superior force in their stronghold was a good way to get your ass stomped. But this was different, they needed to make a statement. To show the school they couldn't be fucked with. That it didn't matter who you were or where you came from, to go against them was to court pain.
The gladiator's area wasn't officially off limits. But everyone knew if you got caught on their turf, you'd be lucky to get off with a beating. The Thagirion ruled the school, but even they walked carefully around a group trained to kill for fun and profit.
Anastasia stalked on his right, eyes flashing with malignant power. Already pulling the Ebon Flame to the surface, she was ready to unleash the Serpent's Flame at a moment's notice. From tip to hilt she was a bolt of hate looking to lose
Alexandra ghosted over the stone's, eyes searching the corridor for someone to hit. Coiled power wedded to deadly intent; this fight would be harder for her than Anastasia. Not because she was any less lethal, but because she'd need to hold back to keep from killing. You didn't deploy soldiers to keep the peace, soldiers weren't glorified cops. A soldier killed, nothing more and nothing less. But there was no one he'd rather have at his side.
Rounding a corner, they came into sight of the two unofficial guards that marked the gladiator's territory. Dressed in the school uniform, they lounged at the end of the hallway. The two First Years straightened as the three came down the hallway.
One of them stepped forward after sharing an uneasy look with the other guard. "You …" Swallowing, the boy tried again. "You can't go past this point." His words wavered and cracked, eyes skittering over the trio.
"Anastasia?" Cesare said.
The akathartons hands blurred up, twin streams of super-heated flame hissing and snapping down the hallway, stygian streaks of murderous power. The black torrents slammed into the wall with a thump that boomed down the corridor. Splashing across gray stone, the flames left scarred molten spots behind. The boys hit the ground with whimpers spilling from their lips, raw heat blasted over them from the weeping red wounds in the stone.
They breezed past the two guards without a backward look. The gladiator's territory wasn't big. A collection of hallways and locker rooms surrounded the beating heart of the place. His words reached out to the girls, binding them to him. "These guys are gladiators, trained to fight. But only with weapons, take the steel from their hands and they're no different from pork chops off the street." Pausing, Cesare weighed his words. "Fighters aren't killers. These guys kill when they have to, but it's not part of them."
Thigh thick planks banded with blackened iron guarded the courtyard at the center of the gladiator's kingdom. They hadn't been locked this century; a simple push would open the doors enough to slip through. Cesare gestured at the door as he quirked an eyebrow at Anastasia.
Her mouth stretched in a wicked smile, black cancerous flames gathered around her hands, gaining weight, glittering with distilled spite. Each tongue of hate greedily ate at the fabric of the world with unholy needs. Surging forward, they blew the door apart, flaming chunks of burned and blazing wood bursting into the courtyard. Red flame ran over the arch, their blackened hearts a silent homage to the evil that birthed them. Stepping over the blasted remains of the door, they entered the gladiator's den.
The courtyard was full of gladiators and wannabes. The sweat and scuffed uniforms of leather training armor formed an illusion of solidarity, hiding the clicks that formed along the fracture lines of belief, attitude, and money. Hard dirt the consistency of rock, the courtyard had long since lost all trace of green, beaten to death beneath the gladiator's feet.
Invisible lines marked the kingdoms of style. Wooden men stood along one side for sword practice. Long rotating machines with projecting sticks gave staff wielders something to work against. Strange hedgehog targets dotted a space for the net throwers. Scarred with lacerations, the equipment was stained dark by sun and rain. This was a brutal place where bones were broken and blood shed. Hanging over it was a smell Cesare was intimately familiar with, sweat, need, and ambition.
The fighters stopped, stepping away from equipment or backing up from sparring partners, bristling with the instinctive anger of animals defending their squalid plot of land. Like quicksilver, the groups ran together, separate clicks disappearing in response to an outside threat. A crescent of brown leather and sweat streaked muscle formed in front of the trio. Tossing the book of pornography on the ground, Cesare's word swept across the area with the power of a challenge. "Greg."
Swaggering forward, a Third Year broke ranks. His stained armor was almost black with sweat, the tanned flesh moving like skin as he bent down and swiped the booklet off the ground. Thumbing through the pages, the boy gave a low whistle of appreciation. "You pissed because someone pounded the whore's holes, or that they didn't bend you over?" His head tipped back as he laughed.
Time stilled, the moment crystalizing as the power of Aleph swallowed Cesare. Drowning in its essence, he finally saw it for what it was. Here was the flayer of skin, showing the weeping wet muscle beneath, the true face of meat. It was more than just beginnings; it was heart and soul burned, distilled into something molten and pure. All dross smelted away in the cauldron of ancient truth, the purified remains poured into a mold not of your making. A thing deformed into a beautifully maimed image. Iron was nothing until it was forged into a sword, its weakness turned sharper than betrayal's smile. Cesare finally knew why he'd failed.
He'd been trying to hold on to who he was. Hoarding parts of himself in the hopes of tricking the cauldron. But it would never accept a tricksome bitch, a void of faith, with only cynicism to offer. The eternal flaw that ran jagged down his soul was the reason for his failure, his lack of faith.
But here and now, he needed to be something more than a loser. No one cared what he wanted if he didn't have the power to make it happen. The powerless were silent sheep, quietly hoping as the powerful slaughtered their families, dictated their lives, and fed on the flesh of everything they loved. The girls would make it out, even if they had to wash the walls with blood and flame. But if he wanted to walk beside them, he had to be more than he was.
In that eternal second, the alien insanity known as Aleph struck. Infecting his mind, threading through his soul and body with tendrils of obsidian darkness. It joined with him, horribly intimate, desecrating the meat of his body, consecrating it to nameless things of depraved needs. It was nothing more than a taste, a mere pinch of its power, a poisonous joy that would keep him coming back.
Aleph was the first of things. It wasn't a sound, it was the breath before sound. Everything that came after, whether god or man, was fundamentally different from the incomprehensible intelligence. It stood starkly against the background of reality. It's very uniqueness, the source of its power. It looked at existence in a way that couldn't be duplicated. There were only two things in life, what it was and everything else.
It was like putting glasses on for the first time, the world focused around Cesare in all its crude, repulsive glory. Cesare felt every Umbrae Lunae in the courtyard with godlike completeness. He knew how far away they were from him, the distance between themselves and the person next to them, could feel their race, each marked by a twisted resonance of soul, individuals in lines of abominations. It wasn't sight, hearing, taste, touch, or smell, each of those offered only a splinter of reality. This sense combined them into one whole, reality in all its horrible grace.
Shunting the wonder aside, his body was already in motion. The new sense wouldn't win the fight for him. Head back, the boy was laughing along with the others. Cesare could see the muscles in his jaw flex, tendons tightening in sheaths of red meat and maggot white fat. Splayed open and quivering, realities secrets were laid bare to his eyes. He couldn't see the future, but he saw truth of the moment, and that let him see where it led.
Cesare's inside kick knocked the boys knee out of joint, tearing ligaments. The boys' laughter was maimed into an agonized yell. Pirouetting under the man's wind milling arm, Cesare came up behind him. Grabbing his arm, he locked it in place before wrenching it out of its socket. The scream rose high and girlish through the air. The boy hit the ground with a thump, a keening sound of agony piercing the air.
No one was laughing now. The courtyard vibrated with fury, a low growling thrummed from the mass of boys and girls. Raising his hand, Cesare pointed to where Greg was, way in the back, hiding behind lines of gladiators. With Aleph riding his flesh, there was nothing beyond Cesare's un-sight. "We've come for you, Greg." The words sounded into the violence stained air, cutting the growls off with sterile precision. Starting in surprise, Greg sighed in defeat, pushing through the gladiators with Dan behind him.
A girl muscled through the packed ranks of fighters, breaking free from the bulwark. She towered over the others, not only in height but in sheer muscular mass. Her vest left her massively built shoulders bare, powerful arms swung easy at her sides, hands never far from the two machetes that rode her hips with casual familiarity. Dark, bristly hair, cut short in military fashion, gave her a soldier's hardness.
The shock wasn't her size, but the ropy carvings that ran over her shoulders and down her arms. Deep canyons gouged into weak flesh were smeared with matte black pigment, whirls and loops flowing around muscle, accentuating her physique. Hidden in abstract tribal barbs and blades, Cesare could just make out the snarling images of bears.
Disdain ran off the amazon while girls broke from the mass of fighters and onto the barren land between the groups. A few were decorated in flesh disfiguring carvings like her, but the majority were bare. The final group entered the no man's land with Greg and Dan between them. Whether an offering or a sacrifice was anyone's guess. "I won't have my people put down because you're measuring cocks with the Thagirion." Her voice was rough with a sweet lilt just under the surface.
"We appreciate that, now if you will just step …" Cesare started.
She ran over his words as if he'd never spoken. "You can have him …If you can take him." Stepping forward at the challenge, he noticed Alexandra had drifted away from his side, giving herself room to work. Anastasia fanned out on the other side, lining up angles to cook as many as possible with her first blast. The machete lover's eyes moved over Alexandra and Anastasia with a queer, differential shine. Bowing her head in respect, her words were for them. "Pardon me Ladies, but I said what I mean. He has to take them."
Alexandra glared at the girl, eyes taking on a dangerous glint. "You want him to fight two trained gladiators."
Mrs. Machete's smile widened, showing blunt teeth as her eyes lit with vindictiveness. "He struts around like a bantam rooster, while hiding behind his betters. Let him come and claim what he wants with his own hands." A rumble of agreement swept through the gladiators at her words.
It was the way of the gladiator. You fought your own fights; you stood on the field of slaughter and met your enemy with blade bared to the sun and the gods. In their world, if you couldn't take what you wanted, you didn't deserve it. A man that used others to fight their battles was cowardice masquerading as strength.
"We could take him," Anastasia said. The Ebon Flame covered her hands in dense tongues of depravity, perverse tendrils caressing her skin.
The girl's eyes swept over Anastasia with an awe reserved for rock stars. "Yes, you could." There was no doubt in the girl's voice. "And it'll prove he's worth less than his pencil dick, a boot licker best put in its place. He struts and preens like hot shit, when he's only the shit you stepped in." Her eyes locked on Cesare with a deep and abiding hatred. "We know the truth; we remember when he came to class with piss running down his legs. He was nothing then, and he's less now."
Only because he knew her was he able to catch Alexandra as she flashed past him. His hand griped her shoulder. There was no way he could hold her back, no, she'd stopped because she was his friend. Flinching back from Alexandra's falcon's stare, Mrs Machete dropped her eyes, unable to face the vampire's promise.
"No." His word stopped Anastasia on his other side. She was too far away for him to reach, but a word spoken in that tone touched her. Sable snakes of venomous spite writhed around her arms; eyes of torturous barbarity shone at Cesare. "She's right, everyone needs to prove themselves."
The girls gave him identical scowls. Under a sea of anger, fear reached up like a titan from the depths. He understood the fear, but he still stepped onto the butcher's field between the two groups. There was no way to make them happy about him going into a fight with everything stacked against him. It wasn't a secret that they were the muscle. Either of them could paint the walls with the dead and dying. While he was going to struggle to take out two gladiators. It had never bothered him, and he wouldn't let it start now. One day he'd be as strong as them. That day just wasn't today.
Wearing only a pair of leather pants, Sampson watched from the edge of the gladiators. Steam rose from the boys sweat slick chest while fading winter light formed a stained glass window of scars across his chest. Shallow cuts radiated out from impact zones, deep valleys in the meat of his body. This was a man who'd beaten men to death with his own hands.
Arrayed around the pugilist were the members of Cerberus. Mimicking their leader with open chests and short cut hair, they looked like what they were, a paramilitary group hiding in plain sight. Silent and still, they watched Cesare with hungry anticipation. They wanted to see him fall, it was a hunger bordering on sexual.
Cesare's eyes picked out the other groups, the factions that always formed. Big and small, they had two things in common, none of them were as strong as Mrs. Machete's faction or as serious as Cerberus, those two held themselves apart through disciplined muscle. They were something more than social clicks. Each had a purpose that bound its members to it, a reason for being that meant more than blood or bone.
Greg and Dan walked forward, meeting Cesare step for step. Reluctance dogged Greg's steps, creating a dragging shuffle speaking of shit choices. He was a hustler, a sidewinder, sly in hand and thought, and there was no profit in this fight. If Greg won, Alexandra would tear him apart. There wasn't a person here that could stop her, and that was only if Anastasia didn't flash fry him first. If he lost to Cesare, he'd lose his standing in this group of Darwinian savages, falling into the mud and shit with the losers. But to back out would open the floodgates. Gladiators didn't tolerate cowardice in their own, and that's all they'd see.
Setting his feet lightly, Cesare gave Dan a once over. Fear rode the boy hard, powering the jittery steps he was took. Incised with the scars of what it meant to fuck with Cesare, Dan had learned the hard way what crossing the cruel boy cost. While the others had rumors, Dan knew. The problem was there was no way out.
Cesare waited in the middle of the warzone. The moment enfolded Cesare, but it was a transformed thing. The trance depended on senses, the constant flow of information, taken in and acted on without thought. Flow was the engine of the dance, guiding the steps, creating a living thing that existed for the blinking of an eye, a dying animal composed of blazing moments of no-thought. But senses are born in the wet meat of the body, pulpy membranes of firing nerves, birthed of rotting flesh, they tell splinters of reality. Muddied lies born in corrupted soil, you never knew truth from lie.
Cesare had never realized how much the failure of flesh violated the dance. Like a boy grown on mealy bread, he'd eaten worms with relish. The pulsating moment with all its seducing lies, quicksand facts, and heat haze mirages, was revealed as the gaudy whore it had always been. Crystalline pure, the moment shone around him in precise, exacting detail. He knew where Anastasia was, could feel each step she moved as she kept her angle of fire clear. He felt the shifting of muscles as Alexandra settled her back foot, bracing for a dash forward. The diamond hard clarity radiated from him, every movement and person sending ripples through the tapestry of existence.
The sense cut off just beyond the courtyard, creating a world within a world. Cesare let his body relax as the trance pulled him deep into himself. The sense of Aleph focused, narrowing down to just the few feet of his kingdom. The easy transition bled the last of his tension away.
Cesare felt the bodies of the others, smelled the rotting molecules of flesh, tasted the sweat that coated skin, his fingers caressed intimately over their bodies. Soul and body, the two elements twisted together into a singularity of person as unique as a super nova in a night sky. Used to fighting together, the two gladiators didn't need words, breaking apart with practiced ease.
Dan circled around Cesare, Greg edging closer along the boundary of Cesare's territory. A tight smile creased Cesare's face as Dan vanished from his field of vision. It wasn't hard to do; Cesare had taken to wearing his gray clothes after he worked out with Tamlin. With his hood up, he had the field of vision of a crossed eyed possum with none of the cuteness.
Normally that would matter, but Aleph rode his rotting carcass today. Tendrils of the void pulsed through his body, gifting Cesare with brutal vision. He knew where Dan was, every footstep, every breath and heartbeat that fluttered through the creature's chest. There was nothing hidden from Aleph's all-seeing eye.
Greg's eyes drifted across Cesare, covertly checking Dan's progress. They wanted to get him into a pincer move. Even if Cesare knew their plan it would still work, he couldn't keep them both in sight. Satisfied, Greg stepped into Cesare's territory.
Cesare was moving even as Greg's foot touched down. Flowing forward, the moment pulled him to the side, avoiding Dan's rush from behind and the kick meant for his spine. It wasn't just avoidance; it put the angle in Cesare's favor. His hook kick stretched out in a blur, catching Greg in the middle, folding the boy over and stumbling back under the force.
Twisting, Cesare avoided Dan's grasping hands, turning into the man's guard. Unleashing an onslaught of knifing jabs, Cesare worked Dan's guard. Each punch was little more than an irritant, combined they were a punishing force that sent the boy into retreat.
Back stepping, Dan looked to disengage. Side stepping, Cesare flowed out of the path of the two-fisted hammer Greg sent through the space he'd been in. Dropping into a serpentine crouch, Cesare rocketed up into Dan's space, the bony spear of his knee piercing the boy's stomach. Muscles tore, organs squishing under blunt force, a clipped scream burst from Dan's lips, threads of blood spilling from split, mangled lips.
Turning quick as a viper, his hands darted around Greg's head, clenching with punishing force. Surging up, his knees impacted into the soft flesh of Greg's face, skin rupturing under the unrelenting beating. With a wrench, Cesare twisted, throwing the boy into Dan's path. Caught unprepared, both boys went down in a tangle of limbs.
Slowly the two broke apart, fear and anger warring across their souls. Deadly with steel, they'd never sacrificed hours and days to savage gods for the brutal gifts of a flesh artist. They were used to steel in their hands, that killing thrill of a razor edge at the ready, the tensile beauty of a thing created to kill.
The boys separated. This time they didn't bother trying to get behind Cesare. Greg wiped the blood from his lips, spitting the rest onto the hard-packed ground. With long limbed strides, Dan put distance between himself and Greg.
Greg's hands came up in a classic defense, hiding his face as best he could, light on his feet as he pranced forward. Circling around, Dan kept his distance, keeping his back foot braced for a sudden rush. Cesare could see the gladiator's muscle, feel the strain in the tendon, the readiness along the arch of the foot. Greg would tie him up while Dan moved in to pin him.
Cesare surged forward to meet Greg. Tossing out a few jabs, Greg tried to keep Cesare from getting close. Weaving between the quick punches, his inside kick to the knee ripped open Greg's legs, throwing him off balance and exposed. Sliding into that second of defenselessness, body twisting, every muscle aligning, Cesare's elbow smashed through what was left of Greg's guard, laying the white of his skull open in a spray of blood.
Stumbling side wise, Greg wavered from side to side, blood spilling across his face, birthing a butcher's mask. Sweeping out, Cesare leg caught the drug dealer behind the calf, rocketing the leg out from under the boy. Air born for a fraction of a second, Greg hit the ground with an explosion, the thump sounding loud in the silence.
Cesare turned in time to lock with Dan. It was an insanely stupid move, but plans made under fire usually were. Dan had almost no training in hand to hand, and less in grappling. Dan had fought a few guys where it went to the ground, his superior strength and combat experience insuring his dominance. But this time he was going up against someone trained and irredeemably ruthless.
Dan's hands came down on Cesare's shoulders, nothing more than a scared boys attempt at control. A swift spearing blow to Dan's right armpit transformed muscle and bone into useless meat. Taking possession of the left arm, Cesare turned, snugging his back into the gladiator, laying the locked arm along his shoulder. Power built in the feet, running up his legs, gaining momentum in the coils of his core as hands clenched down with bone breaking force. Savagely twisting Dan's arm, Cesare ripped it out of its socket, reverberations radiating with blinding agony through Dan as Cesare felt a beatific smile grace his face. Resounding through the courtyard, Dan's screams hit the walls, echoing back, the torment laying over each other in a symphony of agony.
Crouched down with one hand touching the ground, a high-pitched whine whistled between Greg's mangled lips. Skin writhed, bunching into folds that twitched with mad purpose, vomit green coloring streaking his skin. Nose elongating and fattening, flesh sagged like molten wax left too long, spots of black cancerous necrosis bloomed across the thing's face.
Hair lengthened, growing glossy with grease, scummy strands dangling down the thing's back. Swampy, greenish black lips pulled back from pockmarked, rotting teeth. Racing forward, Cesare's foot lashed out in a blur, shattering Greg's teeth like glass, rocketing its head back. In mid transformation, Greg hadn't tapped into his full monstrous strength. Cesare straddled the thing's chest, pinning its arms under him. Fists rained down in a storm of savage blows, disfiguring its face, splattering watery, black and red streaks across the ground.
Skin rippled, changing under his frantic assault. The smooth softness of human morphing into a leathery, sagging thing that resisted his fists. Breaking Cesare's hold with casual power, the creature snatched at him with long talons, slick with moldy poison. Cesare's switchblade opened in a snick lost in the fury of the fight. Twirling it in his hand, the switchblade came down in a flash of steel, spearing the back of the venomous hand. Piercing sagging flesh, the blade staked the hand to the ground, arm tight across Greg's chest. Screaming in pain, the creature thrashed under Cesare, but it wasn't brave enough to rip its hand free of the blade.
Pain and fear were proper weapons, invisible, unbreakable, as twisted as the poisoned words of a lover's betrayal. They were the knives that flayed its hide, butchering the monster into a half-skinned rabbit. An animal would sacrifice the hand and go for Cesare's throat. But as monstrous as Greg was, it didn't own the feral instincts of a killer. It had fed gluttonously from the corrupting disease of civilization with all its maimed logic, traded its wild beauty for a fluffy bed and porn.
"You are one ugly son of a backward bitch." A vicious hiss slipped from Greg's puss weeping lips, but it stopped struggling.
Waddles of vomit green flesh drooped over its face. Spots of rotting meat dotted the loose skin. Moldy black tissue flaked off, exposing weeping raw sores underneath. Its large bulbous nose was slicked with seeping lesions while milky eyes cried viscous green fluid that hissed as it hit the ground. He was one nasty fucker; it was no surprise why he kept his mendacium in place.
"I think we can agree I won this round," Cesare said, rocking the switchblade from side to side.
"Agreed." Riding the smell of rotting meat and fermenting shit, the words hissed out from jagged teeth.
"I'm glad we had this meeting." Twisting the knife, Cesare smiled into the thing's screaming sewer of a mouth. "You knew I'd come for my pound of flesh. You knew the cost of fucking with mine. Why?"
Roiling in their sockets, its milky eyes trickled green poison down its cheeks. "I had to."
Pushing the blade another inch sliced into the twisted thing's flesh. The high scream resounded with unspeakable pain as it bounced back from the walls of the courtyard. "Who?" Greg's lips tightened as his face hardened in stubbornness born of fears back alley bitch, terror. "I won't pretend you're walking out of this intact. I'm going to rip my knife through your hand and there's nothing you can do about that. But you get to decide if I go between the webbing, leaving you with a hand that works. Or, I can tear it out to the side and leave you with dead meat." Greg had fucked up; he'd hurt someone Cesare loved. There was no forgiveness for that, no excuse that would hold off crippling retribution. A lesson had to be taught. That Cesare would revel in the sadistic pleasure of it was beside the point.
Shuddering, the thing agreed. "Abraxas told me what to do." It was a whisper heard only by Cesare and meant only for him.
"Now that wasn't so bad, was it? You're going to make a full confession, but you're going to take credit for the scheme. I want everything, the woman's name, how you doctored the photos, who the guys are. Everything." Leaning forward, he stared into the Greg's soured milk eyes, breathing in the smell of wet, diseased shit that boiled from its mouth. "You'd better fucking convince me it wasn't her or I'll come back and take those pretty white eyes of yours. You got me?" Nodding frantically, Greg pushed back into the ground, trying to get away from Cesare.
In one flowing motion, Cesare tore his blade through the sagging flesh of the thing's hand as he stood. The razor-sharp blade sliced muscle and skin, passing through the webbing of its fingers.
Wailing, Greg curled around his crippled hand as his pain filled cries sounded through the silent courtyard. Dan was a whimpering mass behind Cesare, whispering quietly to himself as he laid on his side, tears streaking his face. Two broken boys over their heads, strutting around with puffed up chests, playing at being monsters. True monsters didn't need to advertise.
Cesare swept his eyes over the gladiators. Everyone here was a fighter, and when pushed, a killer. Many had spent their lives forging themselves into living weapons, beasts that fought and killed on command. Hammered into grotesque mockeries of children, less than animals, they were weapons for greedy hands. Empathy was a dim memory of times gone by, a luxury cast aside for raw, bloody aggression.
Cesare met the eyes of the fighters, collecting a few nods of respect, more sneers of contempt, while the majority watched with cold calculation. In their world, everyone was a threat. They were always seeking weakness, constantly on the lookout for someone trying to take what they'd bled for.
Mrs. Machete eyed him, hands settling on her machete's as she shifted onto the balls of her feet. It hung there, the moment drawing taut with anger, resentment, and menace, quivering as tight as stranglers wire. She was close enough to make a go of it. Her eyes focused behind him to where Alexandra was coming up on his back.
Mrs. Machete relaxed, hands resting on the well-worn leather wraps of her blades but without the kinetic stillness of an attack waiting to happen. She wouldn't get more than a foot before Alexandra tore her apart. It didn't matter how fast you thought you were when facing a vampire.
Stopping beside him, Alexandra kept her eyes trained on Mrs. Machete. They weren't really that different in build with Alexandra being a little shorter with larger breasts. Where the gladiator was heavy muscle slapped onto a tanks frame, the vampire was sculpted art. Alexandra had built a body of lean, hardened strength. She wore her muscles with the grace of a panther, elegantly coiled death wedded to psychotic instincts. The gladiator was a bear, a lot of power if it hit you, but without the flowing grace and speed of a predator caged to a carnivore's life. Bear's weren't killers, they were opportunity hunters, willing to eat anything to get by. They didn't live or die on deaths mercies like a predator.
Eyeing the crowd, Anastasia slipped into place at his side. It was an unconscious division of threat, the vampire taking eminent threats while the akatharton dealt with the mob. "Did you get what you needed?" she asked, eyes never lifting from the gladiators.
Cesare nodded. Like a signal, Aleph drifted away, the godlike sense of place fading as his own senses surged into the void it left. Crystalline clarity stripped from his mind's eye; a scummy taint of shit filtered the world as his eyes regained supremacy.
"Did you?" Cesare asked. He'd needed the information and the payback for what they'd done, but his anger was a candle against the inferno of her hate.
An almost sexual satiation radiated from her as she took in the mewling sacks of bleeding meat sprawled on the ground. They'd paid the price for their hubris in challenging the Lady of Ruin. "Yeah, I think I did."
Stepping onto the field of carnage, Sampson left the safety of the sidelines. He stopped after only a few steps, those bare handful of feet enough to mark him out. There was no point in pushing the girls. They'd just seen their friend walk into a grinder that he had no right to walk out of.
Alexandra didn't take well to being pushed at the best of times; she was far more comfortable doing the pushing. She'd been forced to watch as some nothing of a gladiator forced Cesare into a fight he couldn't win. Riding the ragged edge of her temper, she was looking for someone to take it out on. Man, woman, kid, monster, or god, it didn't matter. If she was upset, someone would bleed for it. It wasn't that violence didn't solve anything; it was that violence solved everything.
Anastasia wasn't focused on Sampson at all. If the guy attacked, Anastasia had no chance of beating the vampire to the punch. Her strength was in frying people like chicken at range. If any of the gladiators got froggy and jumped, they'd find themselves dead before they landed. Black obsidian flames ran thick and heavy over her hands, the hunger to defile and devour rippling under her skin.
She'd watched Cesare get split open like a pig, and never forgiven herself for it. There was no way she'd go through that again. If the fight had gone bad for even a second, Greg and Dan would be ash. Her and Cesare were in a bad place, but that didn't change her loyalty.
Sampson's eyes darted between the girls. "You should go before Jerold comes." He took in the two maimed kids with a sense of satisfaction. Dan whimpered into the dirt, arm flopping grotesquely across his body. Greg's hand was ruined meat, bleeding out on the ground. "Looks like a training accident to me."
It came to Cesare as he watched the rest of the gladiators nod silent approval. Before they were Jerold's students, before they were kids, they were gladiators. Each possessed of a fierce individuality, competitive in a way that made a hyena seem easy going. They ate, drank, and shat, being the best, not the best in a team but the best period. In their world, you didn't cry about losing. You were strong enough to take what you wanted, or you didn't deserve it.
Stepping over the still smoldering wreckage of the door, they left the way they'd come. How long that door had stood was anyone's guess, but all it had taken was being on the wrong side of Anastasia's temper for it to be annihilated. There was a lesson in that.
Stalking at his side, Alexandra smoothly swept the hallway with watchful eyes. Easy and ready, Anastasia's hands flickered with stygian flame, their corrupting hunger glaring out of her eyes.
The child guards cringed back from the three of them, eyes darting to the charred spots above the arch. Black and ugly, the liquefied stone was a silent testament that it didn't matter who you were or what you thought your place was. All that mattered was the power to bitch slap reality.
Coming out of the school, they stopped on the landing and breathed in the cold air. Soft as a ghost, Alexandra laid her hand on his arm. The tentative touch ached with meaning. As a rule, she didn't touch people. Not because she feared the world or hated being touched, no, it was the opposite. You can't be rejected if you never reach beyond yourself. "You did well in there. I was proud to walk beside you."
"Do you ever think I'm using you?" Cesare asked, eyes looking out over the campus.
Flushing with rage, Alexandra grasped his meaning. "No. Never. I've never felt that you hide behind me. In fact, it's the opposite. I wish you'd let me face the charge for once." Hesitating, she continued softly. "You're not as strong as I am, but that doesn't mean anything to me. You're not my friend because you're strong, you're my friend because you care about me. That's more important than how many people you can kill or how tough you are."
He wanted to live life on his terms and the thought that he depended on the girls to fight his battles rubbed him the wrong way. They were important to him, but that didn't mean he wanted his life to be dictated by their strength. He wanted to be their equal, and while the day he could stand shoulder to shoulder with them wasn't today. That didn't mean it wasn't coming.