The woman he'd talked to on Monday stood up from scrubbing the floor with a grin. Knuckling her back, she motioned at the industrial stove and the things he'd asked for. "Steaks, green beans, two potatoes, and the spices you asked for. As requested, Mr. Nietzsche."
Shaking his head at the formality, he went to the stove, setting his duffel down by his side. The stove was the best money could buy, polished steel, industrial burners, cared for by loving hands that knew a replacement would be the years in the getting.
The prime cuts were expensive, worth more than the green he'd given the woman, the kind of meat kept for a butcher's favored customers. Setting them onto the chopping block, he laid down the spices, getting them coated he let the room warm the flesh. The pan sizzled as it hit high heat, ready to sear and seal the flavor in.
"Do a lot of students use the kitchens?" Keeping his eyes on the steak, the question was laid into the air with easy uncaring. He was curious, but he wasn't going to push.
Laughing softly, the woman walked to the end of the counter, wiping down the cutting surface as she talked. "We don't allow students to use the facilities without a teacher's permission and even then, the teacher has to be present."
She was dressed in the white uniform of the kitchen staff, draw pants tight over her middle-aged ass, with a top more sack than shirt. A hair net held back salt and pepper hair. She was like a million other woman, doing a hard job, day in and day out, with little if any gratitude from those they worked for.
Her face showed the wrinkles of a life lived in hard labor. "The first week you started the Furies, you helped my boy. He was one of the first to leave a note." Sadness shadowed her eyes. "He'd be embarrassed to Hades if he heard me telling you. But when he needed someone, you were there." She smiled, relief so stark in her eyes it seemed to open her soul.
"He'd been bullied since he started the year. Nothing like what you went through, with those horrible Na'wal, but it was enough. He's not a fighter like you. I tried to get him help, but Mr. Moreau said I had to talk to the Thagirion, as if they cared about anyone but themselves. I thought it would change when Mr. Moreau was put in charge of the Thagirion, but he told me they were too busy to deal boys learning their place."
"I didn't know the staff had kids attending Primrose," Cesare said, sautéing the beans.
"We don't like to advertise. We get a break on tuition for working at the school, but it's hard on the kids. They grow up seeing kids come to town in nice uniforms and money, they think when they go to school it'll be like that. Even if the other kids don't know they're staff kids, they know they aren't regular students." She sighed as she set the spray bottle down.
Looking over at him, she hesitated, "I know it won't mean much, but my son believes in you. You're all he talks about when he comes home on the weekends. What you've been doing, the people you've saved." Her eyes shone with a mother's love, complete and unstained by the treacheries of life. "That's what he calls it, saving. After he told me what he'd gone through and what he was thinking of doing, I can't help but say the same. We don't have anything to give you. We don't have a voice to cheer you on, but that doesn't mean we don't pray for you every night."
Cesare nodded, face heating in embarrassment. He didn't know what it was like to be saved, no one had ever come for him. All he knew was the soul crushing despair of knowing day after day the demons were his only friends. The shame as people walk by while your beaten, humiliated, and broken down by inches. The uncaring mass that would never stand for you, until you started believing you weren't worth standing up for.
One way or another, he'd lived that every day of his life. You know no one's coming, but you can't stop hoping. There came a point when the pain was so bad, you just wanted it to go away, when it hurt so bad anything was better than one more day.
No one had been there for him, but that didn't he couldn't be that for them. The glory of shadow after skin was burnt and blood wept from flayed skin, the difference between knowing no one cared, and the truth of someone beating blades back from flesh. Cesare finished the meal, taking the plates from the woman with a nod of thanks. "Sometimes the damage goes deeper than you see. Scars running so deep, they poison your soul, making you feel you deserved what was done to you." He stopped, as her eyes welled with tears.
"If you feel he needs more than just someone to stand for him, you tell him I'm tutoring a group of fighters at the Ludus Noctis and I'll take him in. Sometimes, learning to fight for yourself can heal what no one else can," Cesare said as he picked up the tray.
"Thank you." The tearful words caught him as he left.
He wasn't sure how he'd square that with Jerold, but that bridge wasn't crossed today. Pushing the thoughts back, he made his way through the dimly lit corridors. He had a more pressing problem. What the hell was he going to say to her?
Stopping outside the door, he waited as his heart slowly calmed. Sliding the tray to one hand, he reached for the handle with the other. Cold, questing tendrils of eldritch force latched onto flesh, alien eyes turned to him with an intelligence born in madness, insanity threading the air with snapping, crazed thoughts. A massive force pulsed from the door, hungry not to kill him, but to take his mind and soul, devour him beyond the gods ability to claim. Regretfully, the hulking power withdrew on recognizing his blood.
Opening the door, he met Elizabeth's startled eyes. The room was quiet except for the tired, disgruntled rustling of the ravens; the room drenched in nights sable blessing. Instead of turning on the lights, she'd lit beeswax candles and set them along the window sill.
Closing the door behind him, he walked into her Sanctuarium Virtutis. The heavy, moist air, enveloped his body, the rooms heart beat the slow tide of a primeval forest, a lazy thing of elder power. Resting just under the smell of beeswax, newly tilled loam coated the tongue thickly, the two twisting into something lush and full. Green vines dangling from interlaced branches, swaying on unseen breezes as currents of eldritch knowing flowed through the room.
"Dinner?" Cesare asked nervously.
Elizabeth looked down at her desk, taking in the books littering the surface in a warzone of knowledge. "It might've made more sense if you'd just invited me to dinner."
Chuckling lightly, Cesare gave a half shrug. "You would've said no," he said as he put two of the desks together, setting a plate on each. "Easier to ask forgiveness than beg permission."
Getting up from her seat with a low groan of effort, she looked at the food with annoyed gratitude. "I would have told you no." Elizabeth admitted as she took a seat. "These seats were a lot easier to get into when I was a teenager," she muttered to herself." How did you know I'd be here this late?" she asked, biting into a green bean with a groan of pleasure.
Cutting his steak, Cesare looked across the desks with a smile. "The students were talking. I think the theory was that you were sacrificing students." Leaning forward, he mock whispered. "If you're taking suggestions on victims, let me know." Shaking her head, she returned his smile reluctantly.
He asked about the classes she was taking, knowing they were the reason she was up so late. Passion aroused, she eagerly fell into the trap, relaxing into easy conversation. It was magical, not in the way of the Umbrae Lunae but in the way of the soul. The candles softened the world, blurring the edges of the real, time stilling as the nights gift turned the worlds razored truths into gentle lies. They whispered more than talked, the quiet voices people use when nights claimed the land and noise has fled.
"This is really good," Elizabeth said.
Remembering other nights, Cesare cut his steak. "You'd be surprised at the things you pick up tramping along highways."
Relaxing back, Elizabeth looked around in wonder. "It's been years since I've been in these desks. I remember them being more forgiving."
Smirking across the way, Cesare ran his eyes over her mature body. "I'm sure they've changed the desks since the last time you were sitting in them."
"That's nice of you to say, but I think it's more likely I've gained a few dozen pounds and all of its gone to my butt and belly." She smiled but shame shaded her eyes. "This was where my dream of my people being more than mercenaries died."
Cesare sipped at the tea she just happened to have in her office. He'd grinned when she pulled it out with a blush, he couldn't imagine her without a cup of tea close at hand.
"Why?" Cesare asked in genuine disbelief. "Your powerful, stronger than anything outside the abomination. You had to have been head and shoulders above the other students. I would've pegged you for a shoe in for the Thagirion."
Smiling bitterly, she looked into her dark cup of tea. "Has that helped Alexandra?" she asked quietly. "When I went to school, it was the same. They avoided me, not just for what I was but for what I could do. I've never been the life of the party Cesare, and while I didn't face the kind of attacks you did, that never stopped them from making my life hell. Being part of the Thagirion was never an option, no Chthonic has ever been allowed into their ranks. That's partly why I find it fitting I'm sponsoring a group dedicated to ending them."
"I came to this school with all the hopes in the world, and after only a week those dreams were butchered down to one, survival." She sipped her tea with eyes as dark and mysterious as Hecate's Cauldron. "Every day I struggled to hold onto who I was, my self-confidence, my heart, my soul. Week by week I huddled deeper into myself, curled around the dregs of my dreams. I'd gone from thinking I could change the world, to hoping I could make a life for myself outside the cage my people had put me in." A bark of caustic laughter erupted from her. "I'm pathetic."
"No, you're not." The words thrummed with care and dark longing. Fey currents of power swirled into vortexes at the pulsing power threading syllables. Capturing her eyes, he willed her to believe him. "You're a survivor. You did what you had to do, and you lived through it. That's a victory."
Elizabeth relaxed under his eyes, white knuckled fingers easing around her cup. "I settled on a simple dream. A teacher, like I always wanted, out in the world that hated me. Maybe I'd never make a difference, but I could refuse to run away."
She turned back to her dinner, cutting up a green bean. "I've never had anyone cook me dinner before. It's always been me who does the cooking." Eating the green bean, she smiled. "It's nice."
It was all too easy to imagine her like that. Spending hours getting the perfect dinner ready. Laying out clothes in anticipation, agonizing over getting the outfit right for her date. He could imagine the anxiety and hope battling in her eyes. The seeds of want that would send her picking out the perfect underwear and bra.
Had any of those nameless woman loved the her before him? He'd bleed for her, kill for her, and beg on the streets for her. There was almost nothing he wouldn't do, and yet none of it mattered. His devotion, love, slavery, whatever you wanted to call it didn't matter, he was too young and the wrong sex but mostly because she didn't feel for him the way he did her. It wasn't unfair, you had to expect fairness for that. Life was just a ravening animal that tortured and killed without concern or care for the meat gnashed between its teeth.
"What is a Child of the Earth?" Cesare asked.
Blowing across her hot tea, she met his eyes over the rim of the cup. "Who told you?"
"The one that trains me on how to fight," Cesare said, puzzled by the strange question.
Taking a slurping sip of her tea, Elizabeth blushed, something in the answer catching her by surprise. "When you were with the Hounds, we thought you were dead. We went looking for Viktor to .... When we found him, he was with the Mistress, debriefing from the mission." Stopping, her eyes ran over his face. "I don't know if I can explain how we felt. You've never had anyone mean to you, what you mean to us. We were ready to … do anything to make the pain go away."
Cesare kept quiet wanting to hear it without putting himself into the narrative. He knew how they felt, but when your life was a gauntlet of users and pimps, everyone looking to get ahead off your flesh, it was hard to think anyone could care for you. Elizabeth had been alone for a long time; she didn't value herself the way he valued her.
"Long ago, the first Imperatrix Terra forged a treaty with the Mistress. A non-aggression pact with the caveat that the Imperatrix Terra could name what would be called the Children of the Earth. These chosen few would be protected from the depredations of the Mistress." Toying with the last bite of steak on her plate, Elizabeth avoided his eyes. "I should have asked you before claiming you as … mine. At the time I thought you were as good as dead, and all I could think of was getting to the man that had left you to die."
Reaching across the desk, he slipped his fingers in hers. "I like being claimed by you." The quiet words saturated the air with feeling. "I want to be yours. I want you to look at me and know I'm with you, that I'm your friend. I've always wanted the world to know I'm with you." He knew how his words sounded, knew the truth that bled into the air in tortured longing.
Swallowing slowly, she nodded. "I do care for you, and I am your friend." The subtext was plain, unspoken words tearing through the air 'and nothing more than your friend'.
Pulling his hand back, he smiled through the pain. He'd all but begged her to do that, had bared his heart and given her the knife. Could he really blame her for cutting into him?
"Is it because I'm male?" Cesare asked quietly.
Sighing, Elizabeth sipped her tea. "Partly," she confessed, words soft and poisoned. "I like women, Cesare. They're beautiful in a way a man will never be. Soft and gentle, we truly are the fairer sex. I like their bodies and the touch of their skin, intimacy with a woman's different than being with a man. When a woman touches you, it's a caress of giving, a man takes, it's in their nature." Her words trailed off, hands playing with the cup she struggled to find the words.
"I've had boyfriends, Cesare. Good men that cared for me, but it never worked out. Sometimes that was me, and sometimes them. But one thing that never changed was that they could never be a woman, any more than a woman could be a man. You know what being bisexual really is?" she asked. "It's not orgies or sharing, not loving sex so much you'll do it with anyone. It's not about selfishness in not choosing a sex or the need to keep your options open. It's about seeing people, not genitals. It's about loving a soul, instead of a body."
Swallowing, he refused to lower his eyes from hers, taking the pain she poured into his heart. "And you don't love my soul?"
Stricken, she blinked the tears away. "Not like that. You're too young, coming into my life when there are decades between us. You're small for your age, and the masculine beauty I find attractive, you don't have. Maybe if you were a woman … but you're not."
Taking the plates, he left with what he'd wanted and what he'd deserved. She hadn't wanted to hurt him, she'd just made sure he knew he was a wolf chasing a raven. He couldn't blame her for never letting him forget it, she was forever careful to keep that wall between them. He wasn't sure if he hated or loved her for it.
Why did he have to settle on one or the other? Didn't some secret part of him keep coming back to feel the cold touch of her knife on his heart? Didn't he admire her for the bleeding scars she'd left across his soul? Love and hate were colored sides of the same coin, a jester that could flash into a serial killer. Every great love had its seeds of hate, and that volatile combination was as addictive as it was explosive.
Walking across campus, he thought over what she'd told him about being a Child of the Earth. There had been a time when he'd prayed his mother would come for him. Mothers were supposed to be the one thing that never turned away, the one person that never betrays. As cast off as he was, he knew what a mother should be. And had longed for it.
Every piece of garbage on the streets, dreamed their mother would come for them, even if that woman was the reason they were there. It was burned into a person's DNA to want to be loved by the woman that brought them into the world. What piece of shit couldn't earn the love of their mother?
They never came. No one ever came. That was the lesson you learned on the streets. Gutter trash didn't have mothers, all they had were woman that had pushed them out, as unwanted in their bodies as they were in their lives. Nameless, faceless woman, failing in the one thing you should never fail at. Diseased and poisoned, the hope of being saved rotted in place, a malignant cancer of corruption that beat with malign life, never healing, always hurting.
Child of the Earth. Cesare rolled the title over, trying to tease out the meaning. There was no doubt he was a child, when you compare yourself to a planet you're not coming out ahead in years. But did that mean he owed the world anything? If she was his mother, she'd been an indifferent one.
He walked over to the Coastal Red Wood that towered over the campus. The rough bark under his hands woke something deep in him. Maybe she'd just been a fair one. Everything alive came from her in some way, born out of her nurturing love, birthed through the wombs of her daughters. Could she really choose between her children?
No, he'd love them all. Give them the same bounty and hardships, the same opportunities and love. Cradle them in winter and delight their senses with summer. Boil them with heat and freeze them with cold. It didn't matter if the world was sentient or not, it only mattered if he wanted it to be. He'd told bigger lies for less reason, and found more truths to be lies than he ever wanted to remember.
Gazing up at the towering tree draped in dignity and shadow, he realized he wanted it to be true so bad it hurt. He wanted a mother, that rotted out part of his heart hadn't died, it had only twisted in on itself, a cancer that fed on its own corruption. Inside, he was still that boy longing for a mothers love, for a gentle hand to make it safe. Someone to run to when he was hurt, a lap to curl up on when life got hard. A sacred place where the demons that plagued and harried him couldn't tread. He wanted it so badly he'd do almost anything to have it.
In that frozen, tortured moment, it washed over him, the power of Beth blazing into consciousness as the last link was forged. Aleph was alien, Beth was like the warmth of a familiar fire. Mother, shelter, hope, and home, she flowed through his body in a wash of love and care so deep tears ran down his face from its gentleness.
The carved symbol was a pinprick of pain across his chest, forgotten in the cocooning power of the matronly Beth. Kneeling in silent benediction, Cesare welcomed her power as it caressed across skin, pimples, moles, and discolored flesh, smoothing out under her power. The last bit of baby fat flowing away under shaping hands.
Remaking his body, she fixed the squint in his eyes, and stripped him of allergies. With the gentleness of a goddess, she dissected his body, remaking it to her perfecting standards. Birthing him into the world, making him not into something new, but into better than he'd been. She couldn't, wouldn't, add to him, she could only refine what was there.
With a loving caress, she retreated with a sense of satisfaction. Standing, Cesare felt the difference. The crick in his neck was gone, the back pain that had plagued him for most of his life had disappeared. She'd purged his body of imperfection, making him into what he should've been before the streets butchered him to feed the diseased hungers of man.
That disconnect between his forged soul and body that had plagued him since he'd accepted Aleph was gone. Now the frame fit the picture, the works of art complimenting each other. Aleph had stripped his soul to the bone, hammering, and welding him into a vessel for its power. Those diamond bones had chafed at the coarse meat it had been forced to live in. That wrongness was gone, replaced by the rightness of a man sheathing himself in a woman.
Calling her to him, Beth enveloped him in warmth born of breathtaking love. Rearing up, he powered down, fist hitting the stone bench, body bearing down on fragile knuckles. Shudders ran up his arm, shaking his body, but no pain threaded the impact. Flexing his fingers, Cesare marveled at the veins of void that flowed along blood channels. Unharmed by bruises or scrapped flesh, his hand was marked only by the stygian darkness that mirrored his veins.
Beth sheathed his body with her own. She stood between him and pain, isn't that what every mother should do? Finally, he understood what she'd been trying to tell him in his meditations. She was the shelter he'd sought, the warm place that protected and supported. Beth's love was a shield against the demons of the night.