“We’ve set the date for the 28th. Any objections to the fight being open to the student body? It would be educational for them to see two of the Thagirion fight.” Jerold's words ghosted through the air in a mist of frozen air.

They wanted to break her in front of the school. To make an example of the bitch that dared to challenge the Thagirion. It would cement their power if they shattered the daughter of Lady Kali in front of everyone, and it would kill any hope she had of being a true power in the moon shadows.

“I don’t have issue with the school watching. You’ve chosen your champion?” Anastasia asked, eyes sweeping the Thagirion with a challenging look.

“We’re trying to finalize that now,” Jerold said, briefly settling his eyes on Cesare before looking at Anastasia. “We'll have it to you in the next few days.” Turning away in dismissal, Jerold pulled the black clad Thagirion behind him as he exited the cafeteria.

Having lost their appetites, Cesare and the others turned in their trays and left the cafeteria. Anastasia slowed on the way to class. “What do you think?” The question was for Cesare. It would be a cold day in hell before Anastasia asked Alexandra for advice.

“Nothing we didn’t know. He’ll hold on to the name of the person you’re fighting until the day of the fight. You have a history of exploiting a creature’s weakness,” Cesare said.

“Thanks to you.”

Cesare shrugged the compliment away. “It won’t affect our plans. It doesn’t matter who Jerold sends, we’ll put them in the infirmary or the morgue.” Doubt was a viper he wouldn’t let burrow into Anastasia.

Anastasia's shoulders straightened, lightness returning to her walk. She had a lot on the line. Her position in the Thagirion, the popularity she’d bled to get, and a future bound to glory. She was butchered roadkill if she lost the fight, all her political power and chances of making a name for herself lost on the anvil of reality.

The day’s lessons passed in a blur of work. The three were left on their own as the class worked on the project. They couldn’t make up the grade they’d miss but they could mitigate the damage. It was strange how that seemed the mantra of his life.

The cafeteria was a changed thing after the confrontation. Students going silent as the trio approached, only to start up after the three passed. Everyone was talking about the upcoming fight. The room buzzed like diseased flies, air vibrating with needy hungers and perverse desires.

Viktor waited on the bench press, idly swirling a mason jar of brown sludge in the vain hope it would magically taste better. He perked up as the three entered, eyes skipping Cesare and locking on the girls. “Go ahead and get dressed. I’ve got a busy day planned.”

Walking to the changing room, Cesare shook his head as Viktor followed the girls with his eyes. He didn’t own them; he was temporary, the right tool at the right time, nothing more.

A quick change later and he came back to Viktor’s eyes resting meditatively on the door to the girl’s locker room. Enthralled with his thoughts, he didn’t notice Cesare had come out or simply didn’t care.

As the girls came out, Viktor stood up in an impressive muscle rippling stretch. He looked the girls over with an easy grin. “Today should be a lot like yesterday. I’m sure when Cesare gets out he'll …” Viktor looked over, eyes narrowing on seeing Cesare already stretching. “Oh good, glad you’ve started.”

Viktor was quick to suggest new stretches for the girls, only a few were adopted with most getting eye rolls. He didn't try to help them, but he didn’t pull his eyes off the contorting girls.

Viktor stayed with the girls as they moved onto the weight. His words carried over the grunts of effort and whines of pain as he pushed them to the edge. Apart and distant, Cesare was more observer as he worked his own program.

If he wanted to make the most of this, he’d have to push himself. He couldn’t count on Viktor. Maybe it was for the best, he’d depended on Viktor long enough. It hadn’t been a mistake back then, but if he kept doing it, it would be.

Standing behind Anastasia, Viktor watched the girl as she strained under the weight. “Don’t arch your back, concentrate on your movement, focus on the muscle,” Viktor said. “Come on, give me one more, that’s it, you can do it. Dig deep … and done.”

Dropping the weight in a cloud of dust and the rattle of weights, Anastasia stumbled to the side. Viktor started rolling the weights off the bar, already racking up the monster weights for Alexandra. Over Viktor’s head, Anastasia shot Cesare a worried look. She knew what was going on, but she didn’t know how to stop it.

Walking out of the class with Anastasia on one side and Alexandra holding down the other, Cesare considered their eyes. They’d changed electives for a lot of reasons, but one of them had been to spend time with him. It couldn’t be easy to see Viktor throw Cesare away like a used towel when all they’d wanted was to share the time with him.

“Don’t worry it,” Cesare said, eyes drifting to the door to Viktor’s class. “I’d rather have you with me than him teaching me.” He shouldn’t have to choose between a teacher that cared and learning with his friends, but so much in life wasn’t fair that one more meant nothing.

Embarrassment, worry, and anger, swirled into a witch’s brew in their eyes. But they didn’t have a way to make it right. It was an easy choice for him, his friends or the world. One was the reason he got up and the other a brutal thing of giggling violation.

Pushing the door to Tamlin's room open, Cesare made for the sable wolf raising its head in anticipation. The sun shone weak and pale through the windows, bathing the night black creature in shadows. Pushing its head into his chest, the wolf's eyes closed in bliss as Cesare’s hands scratched the back of its ears. After only a few minutes, Cesare heard the steps behind him.

He met the man’s quiet eyes, looking for the question that was never there. Tamlin never asked about the wolf or Cesare’s bond with it. It wasn’t even a topic the man skirted, more along the lines of something the man understood so completely he had no reason to question.

Without a word, Tamlin flowed into his stance, an order for all that no words were spoken. Burying his groan, Cesare moved into his own ready stance, weight low and light. With each step, his balance shifted like mercury as he approached Tamlin’s strike zone.

Tamlin came at him with a vengeance. Each bruise a testament to when Cesare should have paid less attention. It was the feyness of fighting with Tamlin. Thinking meant losing, punches blurring as he drowned in his discordant mind. The only way to stay above the ocean was by letting go, surrendering to the moment, letting the song of Sen lead him.

In the timeless place of now, where nothing existed, instincts and reactions became a thing of beauty. Stripped of thought, his body weaved and dodged with a grace impossible for a mind mired in ego. Tamlin carved the lesson into his flesh with every spike of agony, branding it into bone, one sweat soaked second at a time.

Minutes faded into a twilight place of meaninglessness. Cesare found the moment, floating in the void of nothingness, the Kundalini’s susurration flowing over him. Outside time, he existed in burning muscles and rasping breaths. It was the one place he excelled, a world that welcomed him with blood-soaked arms and a barbed snarl.

Tamlin retreated, ending the spar. He didn’t care if Cesare was broken or bleeding. If mercy lived in the hard man’s soul, Cesare had never seen it. Cesare quit when Tamlin allowed him to quit.

Falling into a puddle of sweat and sore muscles, Cesare hit the ground with a wet thump. He knew the reason Tamlin pushed hard. You trained like you fought. A fight stopped when the other man was dead or crippled. Tamlin was better, stronger, harder, his supremacy gave him the right to end the fight.

Crumpled on the ground with sweat pooling around him, Cesare kept track of the man through the quiet scuff of the man’s feet across the mat. Tamlin liked to attack when he wasn't ready. Training started when you came in the door and ended when you left, everything in between was Tamlin’s whim. “How are you doing with the Sephirothic?”

Cesare squinted at the man through a sweat soaked haze. “I got the Root Chakra to open.”

Grimacing, the man’s mouth tightened. “I didn’t ask how you were doing with Chakra’s. I asked how you were doing with the Sephirothic?”

“Not good, as in nothing,” Cesare said, closing his eyes under the raw disappointment in Tamlin’s eyes.

Squatting, the man settled on the balls of his feet. “The Chakra’s power will make you stronger, faster, smarter, and deadlier. But you know what the wolf calls the strongest rabbit in the forest?” Tamlin asked, arching an eyebrow at Cesare. “Food.” The word filled the room with the inevitability of broken dreams and shattered hopes. “Opening the Chakra’s will make you a stronger human. But that’s all they'll do. That won’t be enough for you to take your place in this world. You need to be more than human if you want to be anything but meat.”

Cesare nodded as he got painfully to his feet, taking it easy wasn’t an option. He hadn’t really been taking it easy, but that didn't mean he was riding the razor. Either he got stronger, or he died. The school was a battlefield with people stepping over the rotting carcasses of the weak. He wouldn’t survive as he was. His only option was to become something more.

Instead of continuing the spar, Tamlin worked with Cesare on his throws. It only underlined Cesare’s weakness, Judo was an art designed for the weak. Its holds and throws used a man’s strength against him. It was a bitter lesson, all the more pointed for having been designed to hurt.

He was limping and gritting his teeth as he left the room. Coming down the stairs, he met the girls as they were coming up. Their eyes traced over him as he hobbled down the stairs.

Crossing the campus, Alexandra gave Cesare a sidelong look. “Why do you push so hard?” Her gesture took in his pained steps and the bruises blooming along his face. “You can’t keep this up; you're going to hurt yourself if you don’t burn out first.”

Anastasia lips pressed into a thin line with the effort to keep from agreeing with the vampire. “Either I get stronger or I leave.” Concern tightened their faces as the harsh fact stained the air. “If the training breaks me, I was never meant to be here. I either survive the holocaust of my old self dying or go down with it.”

The girls watched with sterilized, blank faces, emotion's hidden behind fixed expressions. When they reached the clearing, Anastasia accepted the tape recorder without comment, eyes flaring with conviction. Turning, he found Alexandra ready and waiting for him, eyes flatly cold with determination.

Her words reached over the ground between them. “If you must be stronger, then I will be the anvil that shapes you. You will either withstand my power or shatter like cheap steel.” The raw threat stilled Cesare for a moment.

She came hot and fast, her power bleeding into the air. The moment gripped Cesare with breath taking force, razor sharp awareness flooding into him. His body was moving between one torn, bloody second and the next. Slapping away her punches, his elbows cut the air with breaking force. They were one, each tearing their bodies apart in an insane need to consume the other.

Tamlin outmatched Cesare with consummate skill. Alexandra wasn’t trying to teach him. She was forcing him to reach beyond himself or be broken.

They danced across the bare patch of earth, long since stripped of grass from constant trampling. She was stronger and faster, with a knowledge base he could never match, but he was better. Gifted as she was with every advantage you could buy or birth, he was a sliver more in tune with the dance, owning an intuitive grasp she didn’t have. It was a grueling, vicious, kind of training, done because he wanted, needed, her to do it.

They tangled and unwound, punches and kicks ridden by snarls and hisses of victory. An occasional grunt of pain detonating in the air with the force of a cannon. This was what they lived for, to push themselves as hard as they could, to fight the one person who could hold them on the bleeding edge of ability. The person who made them fight that much harder, reach that much further. It brought them together, their feelings mirroring each other in bared teeth and rage filled eyes. There was a cruel, mad joy in it.

The beeping of the alarm had Cesare backing away as they shared toothy smiles. This was part of him, maybe it always had been, chained in the darkness, gnawing on its own flesh until he found the courage to let it out. He wasn’t sure if he trusted it, but then, when he was fighting Alexandra, he didn’t have to. She could take anything he could dish out and meet it with her own terrible nature. It was release, humanity, falsehood, and pretense, all the chains of civilization dropped from their shoulders. They craved it with an almost sexual hunger, sought it out as strongly as the pleasures of the night.

Cesare fished out a sheaf of papers from his duffel before tossing them to the vampire. She caught them with the animal grace that underlined her every move. “One of the first missions of the S.A.S. was to bomb German planes in the desert. March across the desert, set bombs on the planes and get free for extraction.”

She looked at him, arching an eyebrow in question. “You want me to detail what I would do?”

“You got it. Personnel, equipment, weapons, set down point and extraction, everything you can think of. The next page is what happens next based on your choices. A ‘Chose Your Own Adventure’ for killers.” Cesare looked to where Anastasia was waiting, arms folded and scowling “This should give you something to do while I’m training Anastasia.”

She set the packet down with an oddly reluctant air, before studying him for long seconds. “Why?”

“You’re good, damn good. I doubt there’s anything I can teach you when it comes to fighting, and if all you want to be is a killer, you can throw that away. But if what you want to be a force for change in the world, this is what you need. We’ve done this dance long enough, now’s the time to put your body were your mouth is,” Cesare said, holding the girl’s eyes with his own.

She didn’t flinch from his words, meeting his eyes squarely, shoulders firming in a rippling motion of muscle. “I’ll work on it.”

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