Cesare woke to the quiet beeping of his alarm. Looking around, his eyes skipped over the trapped door. He'd shaped a block of explosive around the mid-point in the wood, enough punch to take out half the house. Slipping out of bed, he debated on whether he should do his routine of meditation and yoga.
Sighing, he shifted easily into the beginning pose of Ashtanga Yoga. Anchoring to the ground, rolling along the balls of his feet, the asana slowly grew, thoughts pooling into the shape of body, mind molding to the posture. It didn't matter if today would be his last, only the dead rest.
Heat grew in the corners of his body, muscles tightening under the force of the stretches. Sweat trickled down his face and back as he flowed from one position to the next, outside himself, and yet closer to the primal truth of his existence. Ashtanga Yoga was about more than the rotting flesh you inhabited. It encompassed the diamond sharp mind, illuminated by the twistingly cruel soul, threaded by spiteful animal need, the you born in the hideous heart of the divine.
Collapsing into himself, limbs folded, relaxing into the meditation, breathing steadying with unconscious ease. The image of Beth formed in his mind scape. Its angular base arching into an organic strip running up and into a roof, open on one side. Wandering around the image in his mind, he sought its secrets.
Aleph had been new beginnings, full of endless potential and brutal insight. Even after using the parasite, Cesare was no closer to understanding what fey thoughts had bridged the distance between them. It was more than being new, it was isolation, pride, towering arrogance, and bone deep loneliness. It existed in the caverns of his soul, a breathing thing pulsing with macabre life, shreddingly ravenous.
Beth wasn't like Aleph. Its form was a fortress of walls. It called to mind a cave in the mountain of eternity, hard rock shutting out the world. The impregnable power of the earth surrounding you, an embrace of the eternal mother. Hard angles coupled with organic curves teased the eye with images of hearth and home. Not a modern thing, those treacherously abusive dens that birthed mangled hearts, but the homes of primeval beings born in the earth, housed in her bones. Something eternal and everlasting.
Flowing to his feet, Cesare luxuriated in the tattered peace that clung to his mind. Kneeling beside the door, he deftly disarmed the pressure charge he'd set. Breaking the bombs down into component parts, he put plastic explosive back into baggies ready to be molded.
Opening the door to his room, he locked eyes with Andras as the man stepped out of the bathroom, traceries of steam hanging off the big man's body. His flesh was the sacrificed meat of a life lived running into the grinder. From the small puckered divots of bullets, to the silver thin slices of blades, he was anointed in the sacraments of Ares. Big in muscle and bulk, he had the body of a man who'd wedded violence at an early age.
All of that paled next to the sigils cut into his body. Carved through muscle and flesh with indiscriminate precision, the sigil lines were a ruthless finger wide, deep enough to ride the contours of the wet meat beneath. The deep groves sparkled with gold as if coated with dime store glitter. Cesare had noticed similar sigils on Beast and Dart when he'd worked on them last night.
"Enochian," Andras said, fingers tracing the sigil on his shoulder, eyes steady on Cesare. "Angelic script, it empowers and purifies us in the crusade against the unclean that defile god's creation."
"Looks as painful as hemorrhoids." The words slipped out before he could stop them. Clamping his mouth shut, he watched the man's face still at the blasphemy.
Andras burst out laughing. "Don't let the others hear you say that, or I may have to step in. I'm longer in the tooth with a more balanced view, the others would already have their knives in your guts." Smiling, Andras stepped away from the threshold.
Mr. Snake and Andras were digging in at a table set to feed a small army by the time Cesare had finished his shower. Helping himself to a plate, he listened as Snake updated Andras that the Dart and Beast might be up today. Pushing empty plates away, the two nursed cups of coffee, an unnatural, enforced silence falling over the table.
As Cesare finished his last bite, Andras stood up. "Snake, clean up here. I'm taking Cesare for a walk for that talk I promised." The lean man nodded, flicking a close look at Cesare before clearing the table
Following the big man outside, Cesare stood on the porch with Andras as they looked over the farm. Taking in the place, Cesare decided it wasn't really a farm, more like a house with a lot of cleared land. Fields extended for a good distance before transforming into tangled woods of dark shadows. It was a place out of time, a farm that wasn't farmed, a base for a people fighting and dying for a world that might be. Only the past and future had meaning here.
"We don't come to this part of the world often, but I love it. If there was a retirement for bastards, I'd want a place like this." In that moment the killer was like any man, old from too much blood and hard times, longing for a time when they weren't crushed under duties. Sighing, the man started walking across the field.
"Why'd you come for me?" Cesare asked, adjusting the duffel across his back, tightening straps so it rode closer to his body.
He met Andras eyes steadily as the man took his measure. "You don't like dancing, that's a good trait in a man, but it won't make you popular. I was ordered to come for you by the Lord of the Morning." Shaking his head, the man looked out at the forest. "I've worked for my Lord for decades, across every continent that graces Gods land, but I've never had a mission like this. My Lord made the objective clear, and how far I could go to achieve it."
"You won against Beast because she couldn't use her Anima Fratris Sui. I was given three rules. First, you weren't to be killed under any circumstances. Second, you were a guest, not a hostage. Third, I could only bring people I knew I could trust and had to keep the hunting pack as small as possible." Andras lead the way to a tiny game trail disappearing into the woods.
"Why?" Cesare asked the man's back.
"I asked the same question. I've killed kids like you my whole life, Cesare. Cut them open, skinned them alive, crushed babies' heads under my boots, impaled pregnant woman to stamp out the breeders of filth, and I've never been given those orders. I kill monsters; I don't serve them dinner." Andras pushed aside a branch, holding it for Cesare to pass.
Falling into step with Cesare, the man looked around the quiet wood. It was dark under the canopy, trees choking off the faded sunlight. A gloom ridden forest, tangled branches weaving into each other above their heads, stranglers knots intent on feasting on the sun. Murderous need played out in cloaking shadows trees moving in a slow dance of death. A forest is a collection of winners, each tree a testament to lethal intention, hundreds of trees sprout but only killers survive.
Stopping, the man gave Cesare a probing look. "The Lord of the Morning told me you weren't Umbrae Lunae or of the Angelic Host and yet aren't human. I didn't understand then and I don't understand now. But I'm a soldier, I don't need to understand, I only need to do what I'm told."
"Not human any longer?" Cesare questioned, wrestling with the new information.
Looking back, Andras eyes were hooded. "No, you were born inhuman. He was clear, even made sure I understood in case you asked. My Lord was adamant that you understand, you were never human," Andras said, studying Cesare for a long minute.
"I was sent to offer you a place in the Lord of the Mornings court," Andras said.
Stopping, Cesare blinked at the man in shock. "I thought you killed monsters?"
Smiling, the man picked a branch off the ground, hands slowly stripping it of bark. "We do, but you're not a monster. There's only one God, and he rules in heaven. Monsters were created from unclean things, pestilence ridden diseases that pervert Gods creation. Your school is a maggot ridden corpse in need of burning. The world must be returned to God's favored creation, humanity."
Drawing on the ground with the stripped stick, Andras continued, "Every monster feeds on humanity, parasites living off the purity of humanity. They devour humanities meat, souls, and emotions. They're a plague upon Gods earth. I've seen them giggling as they feasted on the still beating hearts of babes. Watched as they devoured souls to prolong their own unnatural lives. Rooms filled with people used as meat for nightmares, butchered for the delicacy of hidden parts. The kids you go to school look like people, but it's a lie. Cut them deep enough, and you'll see souls of festering pus." Andras eyes shown with a zealousness that burned with unholy light.
"What happens when they're all gone?"
Smiling, Andras set the stick down. "That's the mission of the Angelic Host. They are the sword of Heaven, sent to cleanse the world of darkness. Once that task's done, God will restore the world to the paradise it was before the snakes came." Taking a step closer, the man's voice compressed, emotions turning hard and bright, a cutting laser that punished the eyes. "Humanity was here first. Jealous of Gods world and the perfection of humanity, eldritch horrors from beyond the void made the monsters. God's creation was perfect, made from his immaculate form, the unclean formed twisted abominations out of pieces of themselves and humanity. Their creations flooded the world, desecrating it with every step while their monstrous creators embattled God in heaven. Fighting the abominations back into the stygian depths, God turned his eyes to his creation and sent the Angelic Host to save us."
Cesare looked around the forest. At the best of times he wasn't a god person, and this certainly wasn't that time. The man had been nice so far, well as nice as kidnapper could be. Cesare sure wasn't going to go popping off when Andras held all the cards.
Andras nodded to himself, hand coming down on Cesare's shoulder. "I know it's a lot to take in. Why don't we go back to the farm and you can ask questions along the way?" Suiting action to words, they started back.
"I don't know what your Lord wants from me," Cesare said, feeling better with each step they walked.
"My Lord doesn't extend an invitation to join his retinue on a whim. He sees something special in you. Your something new after thousands of years, something without a connection to the abominations cast from this reality or God."
"So, he wants a pet?" Cesare asked.
Andras was silent for a long time as they passed from the forest into the field. "I thought that too when I first heard about you. What could a boy have to bring to the Angelic Host? But you savaged four of my best with little effort. Granted, we were held back by the boundaries the Lord of the Morning put on us, but that fight was enough for me to realize why my Lord wants you."
Turning, he clasped Cesare's shoulder. "You're the next wave in the war, your tactics, your way of thinking. In history there are nodes of potential housed in people, turning points in the world, individuals gifted with the power to enact real change. You're that node. We've been winning this war for centuries, pushing farther and farther into their territory, burning their holes and killing their maggot children. With you on our side, we can finish it."
They were insane, utterly and completely Koo Koo for Cocoa Puffs. It wasn't the religious crusade, hell, most of the world was on one kind of crusade or another. Cesare didn't even mind the guy killed babies and children. It wasn't like Andras invented genocide. Hitler killed the young to deny the Jewish people another generation. Genghis Khan killed children and raped woman so only his seed would flourish. Australians stole aborigine children and raised them white trying to exterminate a culture they hated. Native Americans had their children stolen by Christians in a systematic attempt to kill their ways, root and branch. It was harder to find a people that hadn't tried to commit genocide.
The Hounds weren't fighting for land or riches, they were fighting for the world. They either exterminated the Umbrae Lunae or were exterminated by them. There was no middle ground, nothing between them but the dead. Anathema to each other, they were locked on a path of world domination.
Cesare understood, even appreciated the tactical decision to target children. But if they thought he'd be some kind of radical change for them, they were crazy, err, crazier. Cesare couldn't even save himself; he sure didn't have an interest in saving the Hounds. Standing as a lone sentinel in that deep river of apathy was Alexandra's story, they were her enemies, that meant they were his.