Until you stared into those twin holes of blackness, felt their tendrils of need slither around your soul, you could never know how hard meeting a pair of eyes could be. Voice wavering and whispery, Anastasia pushed the words out. "I won't take a spot on the Thagirion, we're forming an alternative. We'll work within the system, without the need for special treatment."
The moorings on their souls twanged under the raw force of the Mistresses eyes. A low hiss sliced through the air as Alexandra locked her legs to keep from collapsing under the unrelenting pressure. Bracing herself as if in a storm, Anastasia gave a low, hurt sound. "You appear to have the backing of the requisite teacher necessary to form a club." A hot tendril of blood wound down Cesare's face, pinpricks ruptured in his eyes, bloody tears sliding down his face under the unearthly presence of the Mistress.
"We plan to join the Sanguinem Nativitate," Anastasia spat out, dry and desperate, voice rough with pain and fear. Jerold gave a low snarl with even Abraxas breaking out of his startled surprise to glare at the three of them. "My mother will sponsor us. While it's not commonly done, it's not against the rules to have two teams at the same school."
Jerold broke in, his voice frosting the air. "Not commonly done, more like never. You'd have to fight the Thagirion and the visiting team. It would undermine the school; the Thagirion would be forced to fight to even be seen. I won't ...."
"I'll allow it," the Mistress said, turning away and releasing them from her torturous presence. She walked away, and not a person raised a work to stop her. There were only two who could challenge her power, and both had gotten what they wanted.
Face contorted with fury, Jerold stood for a long minute, a low quiver possessing him as hate resounded off meat and bone. Pivoting, he scattered the Thagirion, Pantagruel and Abraxas quickly reforming around the primal ice creature as it stalked off the field.
Cesare stood over the mewling sack of meat on the ground. Flesh crawled across charred bones, muscles turning red and wet in growth. Failure was anathema to the Thagirion. They had cast aside Blaez as the trash he was. They couldn't kick him out, but they'd make it known he was nothing more than a dog.
"Cesare?" It was Anastasia. Still shaking from the encounter with the immortal, she'd stopped with the others when they noticed he wasn't walking with them. They watched with a question in their eyes as he stood over the werewolf.
He'd gleefully watched the Ebon Flame tear through the werewolf, burning him down to this thing of horror and raw flesh. Cesare had enjoyed with greedy hunger the werewolf's flaying, Blaez's degradation a cool water across the scars that still bled in Cesare's soul.
"If you want to change the school, you don't get to pick which shattered soul is worth protecting. If you only help the privileged few, you're not really protecting anyone," Cesare said as he kneeled next to the wolf, laying a hand on its scarred face in comfort. A deep rumble rose through Cesare, vibrating out into the air, speaking of family, dens dug deep in the earth, safety and peace. The werewolf quieted under his hand, giving a low whimper as it nuzzled into him.
The women surrounded him, watching as he caressed the scars that made up the melted ruin of its face. Cesare's growl deepened on its own, the sound calming the werewolf as it gave a hushed whine of pain. It wasn't words but emotions, feelings primitive and pure, something humanity had cast aside for poisoned words that meant less than the air they were painted on.
Seconds stretched to minutes as he cradled the werewolf in sounds of understanding. Cesare couldn't take the pain away, and wouldn't even if he could. He hated Blaez and lusted after his pain, but that didn't mean he couldn't help him. It was a tangled truth, a private thing as diseased as the rotting corpse of his morals. Twisting through his soul like barbed wire and rusted hooks was his hate for the privileged, and the burning need to help the rejects.
Cesare's fingers traced over the crawling flesh as it swathed the thing's muzzle, the long scarlet worm of its tongue lolling over jagged teeth. Mangled and melted skin flowed into deforming pink scars. The wolf stayed still under his hand, Cesare's deep growl washing over it, soothing the beast, giving it the strength to endure months of healing compressed into seconds of tortured agony.
Soon it was whole, and with a wrenching jerk the newly healed flesh fell off its body in slabs of rotting meat. Bones broke and reformed, the grotesque mockery birthing a blood slick human body. Gazing up at him from his own rotting meat, Blaez blinked in surprised wonder.
Pulling back, Cesare met the half mad eyes of the boy. "You stayed."
"I stayed," Cesare confirmed.
"I don't want your pity," Blaez snarled, hands fisting in the black ashes that blanketed the ground.
"You don't have it." The quiet words filled the silence. "You walked here on your own. Every selfish choice you made brought you here, every boy you beat the shit out of because you could, every girl's legs you spread without giving a fuck what it meant to her." Cesare gestured at the empty field. "No one has your back, because you've never given a fuck about anyone."
Standing, Cesare watched the wolf flow to his feet, feral eyes never leaving him. "I am what I am, and I like what I am. You think I want to be you? A homeless no one who pisses himself, a failure at life, marked by his stink and the asses he kisses. I'm a wolf, I take what I want."
Stepping away, Cesare gave Blaez a nod. "I don't care what you are. This is where you stand, right here, alone with no one and nothing. It's your best life, enjoy."
The group parted, letting the troubled werewolf leave. Nzinga watched Cesare with naked awe, a throbbing worship in her eyes. "I thought you hated him." Anastasia asked what they all wanted to know.
"I do. If I caught him talking to you, I'd skin him slow before I killed him." Her smile was chased away by a scowl. "But for a few minutes, he was broken without a fuck to his name." Shrugging, he eyed the others. "It didn't cost me anything."
Alexandra looked at him helplessly. "I never know what you're going to do. I would have bet my socks you'd never help the dog."
"And what do you think they would have thought if we'd walked away from the werewolf?" Cesare said, his eyes sweeping to the stragglers hidden in the shadows of the stands. They'd stayed and watched in silence as Cesare did what he could for a boy everyone knew he hated.
"How did you do it?" Nzinga asked quietly with an intensity Cesare couldn't place. Lady Kali's arched eyebrow arched at the question, embarrassment flooded Nzinga as she looked down in shame.
Lady Kali's people didn't talk out of turn. She demanded a level of professionalism that equaled her trust. Given the people she dealt with, the monsters she met, and the stakes that ruled her every word, she couldn't worry about a loose cannon acting on their own. The harem were some of the best in their fields and had the trust of a person who was a living goddess. But that didn't mean she couldn't replace them as easily as she'd picked them up. Every time Cesare had brushed up against the harem, they'd drawn sparks if not blood. Lady Kali liked it that way, but even she knew the naked malice had to be watched. Getting a saddle on a tiger was the easy part, it was getting off that was chancy.
"While out of turn, the question has merit," Elizabeth said with a telling glance at the bouda, memories of Nzinga's attack on Cesare lighting her eyes. "I was there after you set him on fire, they had to call Sarah in to restrain him."
Uneasily, Anastasia looked at Cesare. "He was … feral after the attack, dying by inches, I didn't get him to the hospital, just followed him there."
Lady Kali gave Nzinga a long look. "The brutality we are talking about can bring on the Occidere Rabidus. Are you saying he was close to the edge, Nzinga?" Giving a nod, the bouda raised its head, locking onto Cesare with a hungry look. Alexandra flowed across the ash covered ground, placing herself close to Cesare and at an angle to clench with the bouda should it get any ideas.
Measuring Cesare with dark eyes, Lady Kali didn't look like much, on the small side of five feet with a black t-shirt proclaiming, 'Ban Emo Bitch Boys in Anime!' across her pert breasts. But her eyes were those of a creature who'd seen civilizations born and die, had extinguished more than her fair share.
"She'd know, her people have the highest rate of Occidere Rabidus of any Na'wal. How did you calm him?" A thread of steel twisted through the casual question.
Shrugging, Cesare turned away from the immortal, making for the outside of the circle. This had taken a turn for the deadly. The harem tightened around the group, cutting off his path with grim smiles. He didn't have to look at Alexandra to know what she'd be doing, body relaxing and tensing as power rushed through her, ready and willing to cut a path for him. Anastasia watched the harem's play, but if anyone had learned from her past, it was her. She met his eyes, wicked black flames coiling down her hands as she took her spot at his side. Her eyes flared with flaming death as she glared at the harem.
Lady Kali watched from beyond the circle, letting it play out. She wanted to know the answer, or was just feeling spiteful for being ignored. They couldn't take the Dark Mother, but they could make it damn expensive in pain, flesh, and lives.
"I think that's enough." Elizabeth's voice was quiet, but the world shuddered under the force of her unleashed power. The harem stumbled as the earth rippled, eyes widening in fear. "Clear the way." They met her threat with hesitation. Silent as deaths step, a wave of ravens filled the air above them. Swirling in a spiral, they came to her silent call, casting flickering shadows onto the ground as their merciless eyes bore into the harem.
"All he has to do is answer the question," Lady Kali said, mouth flattening, beautiful dark eyes flashing with temper.
Elizabeth held Lady Kali's eyes as she clenched her fist. Dirt sprayed up around the harem, encasing each of them in tornados of soil, ash, and loam. Hundreds of black roots whipped and writhed in the heart of the small storms, wrapping around the cursing men and women, tearing through perfect suits, containing the creatures even as they shed their mendacium in a mad gambit against an eldritch horror beyond their existence.
The harem sunk into quicksand earth, pulled down by roots stronger than titanium cables. Frantically struggling, biting and clawing, their wails and growls ripped the air as their rage turned to terror. Flames burst around one of them, running over roots like water. Tentacles tipped with blades of ivory white struggled to pierce their way out of a cocoon of stygian roots. Massive muscles bulged in acts of desperate strength as roots snapped around throats. The roots were replaced as soon as they were cut, burned, or ripped from the earth. They were maggots against a mother that had birthed continents, less than nothing against her mastery of the earth and her children, hardly worth even her attention.
"You are the Lady of Destruction, but I am the Imperatrix Terra." Her voice resonated with fey power, resounding from crazed dimensions where only madness ruled, elder things moving purposefully to her call. Vibrating under their feet, the stadium pounded out a rising rhythm. Wind born from realms of insanity swirled in crazed currents around her, tendrils of obsidian hair drifting on their possessive hands. "You don't rule here. This land is mine. I stood aside once while your harem attacked him, I'll see them buried before I do that again."
The two powers faced each other in silence before Lady Kali nodded her surrender. "I'd win, but I'd lose everything I was fighting for." In the seconds the two had faced each other, the men and women of her harem were buried up to the bottom of their mouths, heads swathed in black roots that squirmed with eager purpose. "Will you release them?"
"This is the last time I'll tolerate this behavior. Use them against Cesare or any student, and I'll stop them, permanently. You exist on the earth's bounty, she feeds you, clothes you, and is the flesh you wear. An immortal parasite, is still a bug. Don't make me rouse your mother in anger, you won't survive." Elizabeth's threat carried an eldritch weight that sent the earth booming in sympathy.
It had been a long time since anyone had faced down Lady Kali, even longer since they had survived. But when you have your bodyguards fit to be buried alive, it gives you an incentive to be agreeable. Lady Kali gave a tight nod of understanding without a hint of agreement.
At Elizabeth's gesture, the roots spiraled off the heads of the harem. "They can dig themselves out."
Lady Kali opened her mouth, anger thinning her lips before she let it go. One of the men and two of the women had already dug themselves out, hunching over their brief graves with pale faces and wildly rolling eyes. Elizabeth watched them with cool disdain as they cowered away from her.
Sighing, Lady Kali addressed the harem, both the buried and free. "Dig each other out, we'll meet up later."
The ones that had broken out of their graves were happy to stay and dig the others out, anything that didn't involve being around the Chthonic. With caws of derision and disgust, the ravens harried the harem as they dug out their members. Perching on heads, pecking at hair, shuffling around the buried monsters, the little demons radiated gleeful satisfaction.
Sighing again, Lady Kali joined the group as they made for the exit. Instead of going back into the rune protected cavern, Elizabeth lead them up into the bleachers and out through the main entrance.
Passing between the aisles, Lady Kali sliced through the group with the dexterity of a teenager on a sugar high. Reaching his side despite her daughter's glare at being cut off, Kali took his hand with a winning smile. He didn't pause, hand tightening in reassurance.
Her relief was so tightly controlled it went unnoticed by everyone but him. You couldn't judge her based on human standards. She was from a time when things were different, a time of torture for fun and profit, rape the right of the strong, and children money grown at home.
She'd wanted an answer, and she'd been willing to fight to get it. Bullying to get her way was the rule of her world. If you didn't have the force to back your claim, you had nothing. She didn't feel guilt at trying to force him, not the slightest twinge at threatening his flesh. No, the only worry was how he'd take it after, because she knew he could never be like her. Never see the world the way she did.
She was a monster displaced in time, roaming the earth, feeding its wanton appetites. He couldn't understand that kind of power or the mindset that birthed it, but she didn't ask for understanding, only acceptance. That was why he could take her hand so easily while throwing her a smile.
People cheat, lie, they break and tear your soul apart, only to tell you they love you. Lady Kali was a lot of things, but she wasn't false in any way, shape, or form. She was simply Kali, nothing more or less. If he was strong enough, he could stand next to her and if he wasn't, she'd consume him. It was that simple.
It was easier to deal with it this way, raw and open, ugliness in your face with jagged teeth and rotting breath. What she wanted, she'd go after, tearing through anything or anyone in her way without a thought to consequences. You couldn't change a shark into a guppy. You had to learn to love the shark for what it was, not for what you wanted it to be.
Waiting just outside, Viktor leaned against a tree, the shade blurring the hard edges of his muscled bulk. A tight wife beater molded to his sculpted chest, showing off dense muscle hardened over decades of punishing wars. Faded blue jeans, old when Cesare was still eating from garbage's hugged powerful thighs. A tangled mane of tawny hair cascaded down his back, giving him a vaguely feral look. He was beautiful in a raw, masculine way, stripped of the trappings of civilized man. This wasn't the guy who held a woman's purse or went to baby showers, this was a man that fucked and fought with little between.
Pushing off from the tree, he stepped out of the shadows with lethal grace. A cool economy of motion marked his every move, perfect balance giving him a liquid walk. Danger radiated from the man, violence tightly leashed, decades of bloodletting carved into every line of his face.
The party stopped and watched sex on legs close the distance. Lady Kali's hand tightened on Cesare's, eyes flickering uneasily to him. Things had gone well today, at least as good as could be expected of two people birthed to cruelty and brutal instincts. Viktor had fucked that up. He was a glaring reminder of the wrongness between them.
"Hey," Viktor said, smirk playing across his lips. The man's eyes roamed over Elizabeth's ass, Anastasia's breasts, and the sheer power of Alexandra's body before settling on Lady Kali's petite body with a knowing look. A hunter looking at what was on offer