Monday March 23rd 2015
Cesare studied his face in the mirror. Both his eyes were black with highlights of blue and yellow. Swollen and split, his lips were still sloppy when he talked if he wasn't careful. The burned lines had faded to strips of scabs. He'd never be good looking, but now he was a piece of meat beaten with a dirty stick. Cesare had always felt like a leper, now he looked like one.
Elizabeth hadn't exactly freaked when she'd seen the results of his latest brush with the Thagirion, but it had taken hours to calm her down. She hadn't only walked him back to the Serpens Lacum but had two of her ravens follow him inside.
She might be the most powerful woman at the school, but she didn't possess one of the tempers he was worried about. He'd done the best he could with what he had. Short of calling in sick for the week, he'd have to show Alexandra and Anastasia what had happened over the weekend.
He tried to think of the words that would prevent an apocalypse. They'd blown a gasket when he'd tangled with the Scythians but after a lot of talking, they'd come around to his point of view.
Opening the doors, he knew instantly he was fucked. Alexandra locked onto him, eyes running over his face and the way he held himself with a scrutiny that would have made him uncomfortable if it wasn't for the murderous fury twisting her face.
Anastasia's lips thinned into a sharp line, blackness crawling across her eyes as the Ebon Flames devouring rage surged into them. Delicate and deadly, tongues of corruption ran over her fingers as she stretched them out, loosening them in preparation for calling the unholy into the world.
"Who?" Alexandra demanded as he walked down the stairs, the girls moving to block his way. It was almost as if they'd storm the dorm and hunt the offender down.
"I'll tell you on the way," Cesare said, bargaining they wanted to know more than they wanted revenge. The girls exchanged long looks before reluctantly parting and letting him through.
Stepping beyond their barrier, Cesare explained, "Abraxas was going to kill Blaez. He had the wolf down on his knees and was strangling him. I stepped in and stopped him."
"That belly crawling snake laid his hands on you?" Alexandra hissed through elongated, ivory needles.
On top of Alexandra came Anastasia's angry words. "Why didn't you let him die?"
Looking between them, unsure how to reply, Cesare broke down laughing. Scowling, the girls waited out his laughter, anger climbing as he struggled to get it under control. Smiling into their glares, he watched their eyes dart across his face, cataloguing the damage for a list of grievances never to be forgiven. Pain and fury tightened their eyes, hardening into something lethal and hungry.
Turning away, he avoided looking at them. "It was a tactical decision, there was no downside to the fight. No matter what, it furthered our goals."
Anastasia frowned. "You picked a fight with a creature that can kill you out of hand. I don't see how that outcome would help us."
Cesare held his silence, anything he said beyond this point wouldn't help. If he told them he'd made his peace with being a sacrifice, they'd explode.
"Why didn't you let the wolf die?" Anastasia asked, a thread of disbelief in her voice. Meeting his eyes, she slipped her hand into his. "I'd rather see him dead than you hurt. He means nothing, Cesare."
Considering her amoral eyes, his happiness was balanced against caution. He couldn't help wondering if she'd said the same thing to Blaez when she was dating him. Maybe she'd promised Blaez the same thing. He wasn't dealing with humans; the girls were ruthlessly ambitious abominations.
Alexandra's lips thinned at their joined hands, but her voice was no less sure. "Let the dog die, its one less boot licker. After what he did to you, and all the hell he put you through, I can't understand why you'd stick up for him."
They walked in silence as Cesare tried to find the words. "We stand for those that can't stand on their own. It shouldn't matter if we like them. If I'd turned away, I wouldn't be any different than the Thagirion were when I needed someone."
Both girls looked away, shame twisting its hooked barbs across their soft bits. When he'd needed them, they'd walked away. It didn't matter that they hadn't been friends, they'd known him, had seen what he was going through, and decided it wasn't their problem. They'd taken the easy way out; betting Cesare wouldn't mean anything to them.
A part of Cesare wanted to hold it against them. It was the anger of the discarded, a person who'd never been enough for anyone to help. But the greater part of him understood, everyone had problems. No one was demon free, we all had them gripping us in the soft spots, barbed little claws twisting deep into lacerated flesh. When it was a struggle just to get through the day, when you couldn't fall because there was no one to catch you, it was fucking hard to take on someone else's dark spirits.
Cesare had walked away from more than his share of broken souls. Stepping over the bodies of starving kids, watching the last gasping breaths of addicts, walked away from the hollow eyes of the abused and ravaged. He'd done it because if he'd helped them, they would have dragged him down.
It made him wonder if the girls saw him as a weight around their necks. Was he a liability or just another parasite sucking them of their wonder, trying to fill the aching void inside himself. Out on the streets, you didn't just step away from victims because you couldn't help them, you walked away because they wanted to feed on you. To take what little light you had for themselves, to steal what little good you hadn't sold.
He didn't bother being mad or hurt that they'd never come for him. You didn't save a leech, you tolerated it until you had the time to burn it off. No matter what others thought, that's what he was, a leech sucking them of the light he'd sold long before Primrose.
Cesare knew he was sinking into the madness of melancholy, memories of his past capering around him, pulling him into the viscous sewer of his past. The girls let him fall into the barbed tangled mass, knowing when the darkness called, he was lost to them.
When they'd first seen it, they'd tried to pull him out, but you couldn't pull Cesare into the light. He was darkness, madness, and cruelty, it threaded his soul, tainting everything around him, leaving the brightest of objects smeared with viciousness. The light wasn't where he belonged, it wasn't what he was. He could force himself under the harsh, uncompromising glare, but it wasn't where he lived.
Sitting at their table, they worked on Cesare's remedial school work. The girls would never be friends, hell, they'd never even like each other, but that didn't stop them from working together. This was more important than their hate for each other.
The room was filled when Abraxas walked into the cafeteria. The dragon always timed his entrance for when the room was full. Abraxas knew fear was strongest when it was shared, watered by other hands respect flourished. Walking down the avenue that opened for him, he split the groups apart with his presence, taking their fear and admiration as his due.
The dragon didn't pander, they owed him their respect because of what he was. It was the duty of the weak to worship the strong. A lion wasn't the same as a water buffalo. A lion was strong, beautiful, a work of art that inspired everyone that looked on it. A water buffalo was nothing more than a stinking meat, good only for what it fed. No one would ever think the two were equal.
The girls followed the dragon with their eyes. Alexandra was kinetic stillness, a pure, insane rage radiating from her. Anastasia eyes went black, the Ebon Flame swallowing them with unquenchable hunger. Without a look at Cesare, they stood as one, moving before he thought to stop them.
Alexandra cut through the skittering students, her blood drenched aura stroking across their souls. Each child knowing instinctively, she'd shred their bodies without thought. A rat didn't step into a cat's way when it was on the hunt, it scurried away, praying it wasn't on the menu.
Heat waves wreathed Anastasia's body, flowing from her in a warning of raw, scorching power. Light and airy, she ghosted across the floor, black eyes promising burning death. Backing away the students refused to meet her tortured face.
Cesare couldn't stop them; he wasn't strong enough to be anything but a speed bump. Besides, he'd gotten his ass handed to him by the dragon, and Cesare liked seeing his hawks fly to the hunt. Getting up, he walked quietly behind them, wanting to get a decent view of the action.
Abraxas had taken his seat at the table he'd claimed. No matter how crowded the place was, no one sat at the dragons table. The table stayed open even after the dragon left, his use of it marking it off limits.
Paging through his book, the dragon looked up to see the girls closing in on him. Their eyes locked for a second as the three predators faced each other, in those seconds, everything was laid bare.
Anastasia's hands rose with the smoothness of a marksman, black stygian flames snapped into violating existence with loathsome, sickly heat. It burst across the cafeteria in a stream of vileness, a smear of cruelty across the worlds beauty. Shattering the table into blazing splinters and charred wood, blasting into the dragon, it tossed him back like the hand of a wrathful god. Tumbling through the air, the dragon's uniform ashed under the ravening fire. He hit the ground with a bone breaking wet thud that rose above the screaming kids rushing for the far walls.
Blurring through the air, Alexandra was there as the burned dragon surged to his feet. Leaping high, she came down like a vengeful angel, smashing her doubled up fists into the dragon's forehead with all her vampiric power. Bone breaking, steel bending force hit the dragon, hammering him to the ground in a blur of incredible force.
Disappearing, Alexandra appeared mounted on the dragon, fists coming down in a jack hammer staccato. Exploding with power, her clenched hands cracked into the dragons armored face with booms of wet meat hitting stone. Wasted and starving, Alexandra's face stretched in a freakish rictus of malevolent joy as she laid into the dragon.
Anastasia watched from the edge of the fight, dense drops of Ebon Flame dripping from her hands, sizzling as they hit the ground, melting scars into stone. Always moving, never resting, she sought the best angle for attack, knowing the dragon wasn't down for the count.
Roaring, Abraxas burst from the ground, throwing Alexandra off him with a black scaled arm as long as a man's body. Bulging and twisting, the dragons body warped into a grotesque mockery of both humanity and dragon. Flesh ran like taffy from his face to his shoulder, three talons tipped the arms that dragged on the ground, hunched over to the right, an enormous hump rippled like a sack of snakes along his back. Cancerous red burns flowed across the dragon's body, weeping sizzling claret. Shattered scales littered his face, bones tearing through flesh, his face mangled into roadkill hit face first.
Glaring down at him from the ceiling, Alexandra hissed, low and lethal. Crouched over the dragon, the vampire was perfectly at ease with only her fingers and feet touching the stone. Snarling, Abraxas roared up at the untouched vampire, a wall of sound slammed into Cesare as the shock wave hit him. Tables skittered back, the air trembling as plates and glasses exploded under weaponized sound. The dragon's mouth was a pit of seething, golden fire, tongues of brilliant flame licking its face.
Black flames turned around Anastasia's hands, building force and weight, distilled hate lashing the air around her, the world trembling as she fell deeper into the abyss of the Ebon Flame. Heat waves flared into a tornado of unleashed power, tendrils of smoke rising into the air, benches blackening under the unrelenting heat.
"I think that's enough." The quiet words roared with a power that claimed the room. Instantly, stone liquefied under Abraxas, flowing up like a living thing, it engulfed the dragon in a whirlpool, dragging him down into the floor. In a blink of time, the liquid solidified into the stones of the castle, trapping the roaring dragon with only his head above it.
Ravens poured through the open doors of the cafeteria; a river of the grim reapers beloved. Silent shadows of malice, their eyes glittered with vicious humor, dead black beaks flashing in the light. The birds dove and swooped through the room, filling it with the sound of stygian feathers. Landing on tables and chairs, they stared with silent condemnation at the dragon.
Struggling in his coffin of stone, the infuriated dragon sent a cone of golden flame blasting across the room, charring the floor, reducing a tables to ash, it slammed into the far wall with a reverberating impact that rocked the room. Roaring, the dragons hate beat from wall to wall, a sound chamber of spite. Flesh boiled and ran as Abraxas sought to change into a dragon while encased in stone.
Without warning, the floor pulled the dragon down, solidifying over the place where he'd been. Silence blanketed the room, marked only by the sound of Elizabeth's steps.
She'd chosen black without highlights today, an ebony dream in shades of sable. A black skirt of velvet swirled around her legs, running up to ample, curved hips. A corset of silk and lace bound her into a wasp waist, adding an impressive bounce to her breasts. Shoulders of bare milk white skin gleamed in the faded light, lacey gloves climbed her arms to just beyond the elbows.
Beautiful black hair shone with the allure of fresh sin. Her face was the image of a woman long dead with lips of life's blood. Bruised, blue eye shadow, sent her eyes into darkness, leaving only raw power to glare out at the world in warning.
"What have you done?" Horror ran over Jerold's face as he looked from the clean stones of the floor were the dragon had been to Elizabeth's satisfied smile.
"I silenced a problem," Elizabeth said simply, facing the other teacher without concern. "He was a danger to the students and campus. I wasn't going to let him incinerate an innocent student out of petulant anger."
"We don't kill students, you dirt grubbing bitch!" Jerold screamed, face tearing apart and reforming as the rages truth tore at the illusion of lies clothing his flesh. "I'll see you crucified for this."
That small smile never wavered, but Cesare saw the hurt that spiked deep into her eyes. The flinch of pain that ran to her soul as she looked underneath the lying mask to the squirming maggots. Jerold was never a friend, but he'd been a coworker, someone to share lunch with. It was one thing to think people disliked you, and another to see the sadistic glee of their hate.
Cesare was walking before thought formed. If it was time to pick sides, he knew where he stood. The crowd flowed out of his way until he was walking on the butcher's floor. Locking on him, Jerold's eyes narrowed with black hate. Alexandra dropped from the ceiling; lethal grace wedded to madness. Sable flames turned with slow, purposeful malice around her hands as Anastasia slipped into place at his side. Her scorching heat enfolded him in a blanket of pain as it burned his skin.
Jerold's lips twisted with disgust when they joined Elizabeth. Arraying themselves behind her, they faced the icy primordial creature. "I'll see you dead for this. No one kills a student on these grounds. No matter who they are."
"Really?" Elizabeth's quiet word sent the stone quivering under its power. "You seem to be very selective in who you stand for. I don't remember you ever standing for Cesare. You were more than happy to excuse the attempts on his life as youthful indiscretions, is that because the murderers were from distinguished families?"
She met Jerold's eyes, daring the thing to make a move. The icy monster swept the group with an intent glare, calculating his odds of taking them. Alexandra was at Cesare's side, flesh pulled tight as a drum outlining sharp cheekbones and shadowed eyes, the face of starving, agonizing death. There was never a question if she'd join the fight. If Cesare was in, then she had his back. Anastasia was on his other side, flames of spinning, distilled cruelty turning widdershins in hungry spirals around her hands.
Tension rose between the teachers as Jerold's cold eyes swept the group, slowly, the man settled back on his heels. "The Mistress will devour you for this dirt grubber."
Elizabeth's shoulders relaxed, not because Jerold was backing down, the cold thing was hardly a danger to her. No, Cesare knew it was because of the Furies backing. Primrose had always been a sea of blackness with only the fins of the circling sharks marking the lonely years. That was her reality, and in all the years as a student and a teacher, it hadn't changed. Reality fractured and tore as a new paradigm was set.
Elizabeth gave a casual gesture at the ground, eager as a new puppy, the stone liquefied and swirled to her command. The dragons head rose above its gray waves. Gasping with desperation, the human looking dragon struggled in the soupy gray rock before it solidified around him. Gray and perfect, the stone reformed with every scar and worn spot in place.
"Would you like to have that conversation with the Mistress now?" The threat hung in the air. Every time Jerold had gone against the Furies with the Mistress between them, he'd gotten his head handed to him. He was at the point that the Mistress might just hit the reset button and start new.
"Let him out," Jerold said, it was a surrender in all but name. Watching the hard, unshakable man, publicly savaged by the outcast teacher sent a low murmur through the students.
"No." Complete control radiated from the woman. "He's mine. He attacked one of my Furies and there's a price that's paid for that." She looked down on the dragon with a speculative expression.
Abraxas stopped struggling as the reality of his situation filled him. A dragon was powerful, but anything living was only powerful in motion. It takes momentum, body mechanics, and above all space, to generate strength. Locked in stone, the dragon was as helpless as a bug in amber.
Forced to wait like a child for the adults to decide his fate, he whipped his head back and forth as he tried to see Elizabeth. It was more than a humiliation, more than a disgrace. A dragon was pride, more than honor, more than gold.
Pride in themselves, pride in their race, pride in their families. When they had nothing, they still had that. Elizabeth had shattered his keystone, torn everything from him, transforming him into a punch line. She'd shown him as nothing, a piddling puppy to spank and put outside, unworthy even of her words. The story wouldn't stay here, by the end of the day, the Umbrae Lunae world would know Abraxas was castrated by the Imperatrix Terra, reduced to a whining child before her mastery.
The dragon might still come for him, but his time at the school was over. Elizabeth and the girls had stripped him of any respect he'd earned. The students might fear his power, but they'd never admire him. She'd taken that from him with as much effort as a man snaps the neck of a dove.
"That's not for you to decide." Frost radiated from Jerold, cracks of ice stretching across his face. "I'm in charge of the Thagirion, we have the remit to dispense discipline. You over step yourself Miss Raven."
Elizabeth's lips twisted into a savage smile. "No longer a dirt grubber?" Jerold flinched under her words as the magnitude of the enemy he'd made was starkly apparent. "You have the authority … but I have the power. The Furies police the bullies of the school with the approval of the Mistress. We can see which group she trusts to deal with the issue if you want?"
Jerold frowned; anger snuffed under ruthless will. The illusion of humanity reasserted itself as the cold thing chained its essential otherness in the darkness of its soul. Running his hand over his suit jacket, he straightened the folds, the other hand brushing through his hair, insuring it was still perfectly parted.
Hesitating, Jerold pivoted, walking out of the cafeteria under a blanket of silence. Shock froze the room, everyone looking between the swinging doors and the Furies. It wasn't only that Elizabeth had made the other teacher back down. Or that she'd taken out a dragon with a level of power that was divine. No, what shocked everyone was Jerold cutting his student loose with only a token fight to get him free.
Outnumbered and out gunned, Jerold hadn't had a choice. A rabbit going up against a lion, doomed from the start to be a meal. But the students didn't see that, all they saw was the abandonment, Jerold casting aside someone he owed his loyalty to. The complete betrayal of loyalty and honor, it shook them to the core, rattling their beliefs and world. No one thought he'd throw away a student without a fight.