Turning slowly, Cesare eyed the icy man, he didn't like turning his back on the murmillo. But you don't watch the gun, you watch the guy holding the gun. The murmillo weren't going to wipe their asses without the iceholes okay. Jerold was a lot of things, but he wasn't stupid. If Cesare was attacked and killed while Jerold watched, the blow back would make an apocalypse look like a spring morning.
Jerold looked beyond Cesare, taking in the murmillo with an air of satisfaction. "I thought we might discuss the events of this afternoon." The man's face twitched, tendrils of corruption running under the skin, rage fraying the edges of the thing's illusion. "I didn't get my scholarship by cheating."
Cesare relaxed; this was nothing but a pork chop check. Put some pressure on a man and see if he's a man or a piece of meat pretending to have balls. If Jerold thought this would shake Cesare, then the man hadn't been paying attention.
"It was a weapon," Cesare said, deliberately mild. "I don't care if you stole the scholarship or if you earned it by selling your soul. The truth's a bland meal, but lies laced with poison are gobbled up with greedy grins."
Jerold's face clouded with something too deep to be called hate and too cold to be rage. "You'll do anything to win, won't you?"
Cesare smiled into Jerold's look of disgust. "You don't like me, do you?"
Jerold's lip twisted. "No, I don't. You have less honor than a dog. You go through life destroying beauty without thinking about repercussions. You're a child, with a child's understanding, little more than grasping dirty hands, willing to desecrate traditions that trace back thousands of years for fleshy hungers. You profane these stones with your petty ambitions, uncaring of the apocalypse you bring to this sanctuary."
Shrugging, Cesare neither agreed nor disagreed with the man. "When your starving, the price of the food doesn't matter," Cesare said, tracking the murmillo out of the corner of his eye.
"I notice you're not arguing with anything else I've said." A low mist rose from his skin, temper freezing the air that touched him.
"You're a slave to your eyes, just like a human." Cesare's amusement was dry in the cold heat of his malice. "When I fight, you see a warrior. When I wear a school uniform, you see a Primrose student. When you read my file, you see a piece of garbage. Each time you think you know me."
Cesare turned away from Jerold, making for the female murmillo. The girl eyed him blackly as he cut the distance between them, tension tightening her body. She was a master of the sword, but a steel needed room to breath. Each step he took was a threat, percentages tumbling in his favor. She fingered the hilt of her gladius, hand lightly gripping the dark stained leather as she met Jerold's eyes over Cesare's shoulder. Silently begging for the permission to cut him down. Her blade whipped out, a tongue of lethal silver shining in the hot sun.
Eyeing the woman, Cesare noticed the boys had unsheathed their blades. Facing the three blades of the gladiators, Jerold's words came from behind Cesare. "I don't see where I've gone wrong." A cold wave of air washed over Cesare as the man crept up on him. "No matter where you bed, you're homeless, even your family doesn't want you, no one wants you. That makes you damnati. A bastard born dog that savages the hand that feeds it." There was an undercurrent of relish in the man's voice, the gladiator's lips twisting in cruel smiles.
Shaking his head, a malignant smile creased Cesare's lip. "I like that, you're almost there." The words were dark with satisfaction, the sun dimming as ebony shadows lengthened. The air chilled, violence twisting around the group. "I'm a wolf. I kill anything that threatens my family. Honor has no meaning, what's honor to a thrown away child or a hungry wolf. Turn your back on me, and I'll feast on your meat." Wariness tugged at the edges of Jerold's eyes. Naked hate bloomed in the air, saturating it with cancerous perfume.
For a long minute, Jerold studied Cesare, eyes widening at the primal thing glaring out of the child's eyes. It was a savage mutt, fur slicked back with the dried blood of its kills, muscles bulging with power, built from gorging itself on the agony of enemies. Beyond taming, it harkened to an era before thought, a time when animals ruled the world and monsters were nothing but abominations in the minds of alien gods.
It was older than anything that walked on two legs, truer than Umbrae Lunae, more enduring than tradition or custom. Existing today in the same way it had existed since the first animal snarled over its kill. Before the Gods had torn the heavens apart in their wars, before the North Wind had scoured the earth of all but the strongest, it had existed. Wild and untamed, it was birthed in every feral thing that squirmed out of wet wombs.
Facing the truth for the first-time, Jerold realized Cesare was right. He'd judged the kid on what he knew of him, instead of what the boy was. Jerold thought he could deal with him how he'd handled a hundred kids before him. But Cesare wasn't like them, he was an animal wearing the skin of a person. There was no civilization in him, no honor, no code that Jerold would understand. Cesare was wild in a way that even the Umbrae Lunae with their savage natures struggled to understand, pure in a way that spoke of a time before monsters or man.
"What do you want?" Jerold asked, a low mist escaping his mouth.
Cesare seized the initiative, uncaring what had brought the change of heart, only that there was weakness to exploit. "I want the Furies to have the same rights, responsibilities, and privileges, as the Thagirion. For Anastasia to be given the same status the leader of the Thagirion."
Jerold stared at Cesare, eyes flashing with fury. "Never." The word was jagged with restrained violence. "I've told you; I'll see you dead before I let the Furies tear down the traditions of this school. They're the only thing that keeps this place from turning into a blood bath. Without the singular supremacy of the Thagirion, the students would kill each other in the hallways. You'd see this school reborn in your grotesque image, I won't see that happen." His words were as implacable as glacier ice.
"That's the real reason for the deal with the Brain Trust. The Thagirion need to be the strongest and smartest, the Brain Trust insured the illusion was perfect." Jerold sneered. "Not that you care. I might see my way to granting your club some kind of official status as helpers to the Thagirion. You could oversee policing the students for bullying and being emissaries to the gangs."
Laughing softly, Cesare looked around the courtyard. Everyone was watching; practice was still going on, but it was slow and clumsy. They wanted to know what was happening between Cesare the Pariah and Jerold. They were too far away to hear, but they could feel the tension.
"You don't understand the position you're in," Cesare said mildly. "You wouldn't be legitimizing us; the Furies would be legitimizing you. Already we're seen as the more honorable. You should think long and hard on what you lost today and the offer I've made. Wait too long, and we'll take what we want." The rage that had been slowly building in Jerold ripened with an edge of sorrow.
The murmillo opened for him as he walked past Jerold. The problem was, Jerold options were shit. Hamstrung by being a teacher, his authority crippled his ability, retaliation against the Furies would only prove their point. Physical attacks would bring the sure wrath of Elizabeth, she'd wipe him off the map along with the Thagirion and maybe the school.
That left only the Thagirion, which hadn't been a fly away success. Cesare had crippled, threatened, and terrorized the school's police force. Pantagruel refused point blank to go against the demonic child and no amount of threats or pleading had shaken him. Blaez had simply said he'd made a deal with Cesare and meant to keep it. While the wolf did what he was told, his scars were all the proof Blaez needed of what came from tangling with the sewer rat. Abraxas was … wary, almost respectful, something had shifted Cesare from a nothing, into something needed special handling.
Jerold had thought the Furies were just another dog needing kicking until it knew its place. When he'd thrown the kid out, Sarah had warned him that Cesare wasn't like the others. She'd said he was older, harder, more ruthless than anything he'd faced, dangerous in ways he couldn't see. He'd dismissed her words and Sarah's advice to find common ground with the child. Watching Cesare walk across the courtyard under the worshipping eyes of his gladiators, Jerold was beginning to understand how fucked he was.
Cesare left Jerold behind. The man wasn't a threat, chained to a way of thinking that made him more slave than man. When you were so used to using a hammer, everything looked like a nail. There were dozens of ways Jerold could castrate the Furies but he couldn't see them. He could send the Thagirion to take on the bullies, done right, the Furies would be forgotten in a week. The latest scandal swept under the table by saying it was part of a sting to unearth the real cheaters. That the deal with the Brain Trust was used to clean up the school.
Jerold's morality crippled him. He refused to sacrifice his soul to win. No man can survive with two masters, you can only ever feed one dog. The ruthless win while idealists dream of better worlds. The man played by the rules, and he'd be castrated by them. Jerold was a deadly opponent, but only if you played his game, keep it in the shadows where he refused to walk and he was easy prey.
Cesare didn't see the respectful bows the guards gave him as he stalked past. The other students in the hallway parting for Cesare as he moved with casual, predatory grace through a silence enforced by his will. People had been cautious around Cesare since the fight. They didn't like him, but he'd earned a wary respect for butchering an Onibi in its own death field.
The campus was thick with lounging students taking in the day. Spring had finally come to Oregon, gifting Primrose with a fairy tale day. Clear blue skies and gentle breezes kept the worst of the heat off. The sun kissed lush, green grass, splintering through the branches of trees, sending its harsh touch across vibrant flower beds.
Cesare moved within a shadow that was deeper, darker, and meaner than the shade under the trees. The students watched him with wary anger, he was the hard truth ruining their perfect day. Controversial, cruel, known for having a vicious temper, he was a living avatar of the brutal violence that plagued this place. No one called out a greeting or raised their hands in welcome. He wasn't wanted, that was the defining point of his life.
Taking the trail at an easy pace, a need burned through him. It shouldn't matter after a lifetime of being rejected. But even lone wolves hunger for the warmth of the pack. To be turned away no matter what he did, no matter how many he saved, it wasn't a new pain but that didn't make it hurt less. At least with the girls he could pretend they cared about more than what he could do for them.
Cesare slowed as the voices came to him, the instinctive ability of a born rabbit pulling silence around him. Crouching down, fingers brushing the earth, his head turned slowly, mapping the voices positions in his mind. They were coming from the entrance to Raven's Rest. Moving slowly, he left the trail, slipping through the underbrush.
Peeking through a friendly fern, Cesare took in the strange sight. Atalanta and about fifteen of her friends dressed in gladiator training leathers faced off against Alexandra and Anastasia. The girl's with Atalanta shared her scars, canyons of gouged flesh black in the sunlight forest. Flowing down shoulders, writhing across hardened arms, peeking out from leather shirts, the patterns seemed to move under Cesare's eyes. Separated by no more than a bare five feet, it was worth a life to step foot into that wasteland between the groups.
"You wanted somewhere private; this is private," Anastasia said, angry and defensive. Alexandra glared at the akatharton, a simmering fury staining the air around the vampire.