Walking away from the vampire, he made his way to Anastasia. A wash of heat rushed to meet him, the Ebon Flame responding to her temper. “Took you long enough,” she said as he came up behind her.

His hands moved down her sides and onto her hips, spandex hot from inhuman body heat, muscles hard and ready under his fingers. Pulling her close, he felt the tension that tightened her into a taut cord of power. She was beautifully soft and as lethal as an Egyptian Asp.

He wouldn't jump into that fight. A man didn’t get old by picking fights with jealous women. “Close your eyes.” The words were the tones of training, smooth, edges ground down to a buttery soft tone with hints of darkness and moonlight. “Feel the tide of hunger that runs through your soul. The fire that burns and churns below the surface. The birthright of your race. Taste its needs on your tongue, raw and weeping, begging for release.” She relaxed under his words as he wove a world outside the one they lived, a world of the mind.

Heat radiated off her in waves, caressing across him, sweat prickling in its wake. Ebon Flame churned under the surface of her skin as his whispered words washed over tortured flesh. “Hold the hunger, the gluttonous need to devour. Now, call to your needs and desires.” Heat surged from her as Anastasia joined the twin hungers. “Wallow in their vicious darkness, the conviction that nothing can stand in your way. No man or woman will deny you what you want. No amount of blood will stop you from taking what’s yours. The world will burn until it bows to your need. Twist your needs with the Ebon Flame, make it one hunger.”

The flame surged, fighting the will that held it, wearing away at the threads binding it to flesh. Cesare felt the tipping point, the hair's breath from it flying out of control. “Now.” The whisper snapped Anastasia’s eyes open, hands flying forward, black flames roared in twisting streams of hateful desire. Exploding down range, it hammered into a dummy, blowing it apart in splinters of burning wreckage. Before the first had hit, the second stream was already on its way, the two seeming to merge into one, blowing apart the dummy behind it.

Slumping back, Anastasia sagged in sudden exhaustion. “Good. But we need faster, harder, stronger, and deadlier. Let’s start again.”

They went over it again and again, until she was wrung out and he was the only thing holding her up. Even when she couldn’t stand, when her legs wobbled and her arms shook with weariness, she kept working. Calling flame, sending it tearing down to burn through the bamboo men.

Hours later they were working under moonlight, swathed in the velvet darkness that had swept the clearing of the sun's taint. “That’s enough for tonight.” The soft words brought a groan of exhausted relief from the girl.

Holding onto Anastasia, he turned to Alexandra. “Can you give us the night? We need to take care of something … personal.”

The vampire’s eyes darkened, emotions deep and caustic stirring their depths. Studying them, Alexandra nodded, shouldering her bag as she left the training field without a word. She was pissed, and he’d pay for that later, but something’s you just had to do. He needed to feed Anastasia, and the thought of Alexandra watching was enough to make even Cesare's nerves twang in protest.

As the vampire disappeared into the corridor of thorns, Cesare picked Anastasia up bridal style and carried her over to the wall of trees. The Season of Hunger gripped the earth with deathless fingers, winters claws still bleeding the wood of life. For all that, Anastasia gave off enough tainted heat to keep him warm and far from cold.

In the deeper shadows of the trees, the shades of midnight sheathed them. Cesare sat down with his back to the pine tree, Anastasia slipping from his arms and straddling his lap as she nuzzled his neck. Flush against each other, they were caught in an embrace as telling as it was intimate.

Anastasia's feverish heat rolled over him in a wave of comfort, memories of other nights filling his mind with quiet familiarity. The smell of sweat and jasmine surrounded him with easy intimacy. Soft breasts pressed against into his chest, held back by thin spandex. Toned and sculpted thighs tightened around him, molding her delicious curves to the hard planes of his starved body.

Cesare caressed a hand down her back, sliding over sweat slick skin, the fabric of the sports bra wet from hours of work. He didn’t mind the sweat, it was clean and pure, born from her unbreakable ambition. A testament to her strength, to that steel core that ran through her. It was easy to overlook that hardened core when it hid in soft velvet. But Anastasia wasn’t her looks, that inner strength was the real woman, not the soft skin or the beautiful face.

Cesare waited for Anastasia to get her wind back, happy in a way he rarely was to simply hold her in the dark. The moon shone down on the field, lighting it with illusion and magic, gifting the world with its special sight.

Stirring against him, she laid a whispers kiss on his neck. “Is it too late to feed? I’d understand after the day you had; you can’t have much to give.”

Cesare traced his fingers along the milky smooth skin across the back of her neck, his words as soft as silken shadows. “I have enough for you.”

Nuzzling his neck, her tongue licked along salty skin. Caressing with purpose, her hand traced his shoulders, warm fingers finding the back of his neck. A cold touch, the lamprey like worm squirmed along vulnerable skin, a pinprick of pain as its fanged teeth bit into flesh, tendrils of subtle energy lancing into his nadi.

Cesare felt the channel open into his soul. A searing slash radiating an alien hunger, a channel linking him to something other, barbed tendrils swarming from the hole, waving through the air with unthinking hunger. His soul shuddered away from the foreign energy, the violation tainting the sanctity of his existence. A forced bonding, her restless need pushed against his soul, unable to enter beyond the needy tentacles. Feelings that were sounds came from the slice in his soul, rustling and snorting, whining and snarling, the ravening of the madness that dominated her life.

It was a need that would consume everything in its path, striking to the bone, the devouring want of a heroin junky looking for its next fix. Mammoth in its power, it had cast aside all subtlety and demanded its due. Capable of destroying its host in its desire, the hunger slaved the mind in its unending quest.

His desire surged to meet the wanton hunger. He'd dreamed of this moment, need saturating every thought until only the moment towered in the psyche, a spike of howling desire. All he needed to do was stop holding it back.

His hand pushed between their sweat soaked bodies. Reaching into his pants, his fingers wrapped around his rampant hardness as he gave rise to a rumbling groan of pleasure. Her moan of satisfaction sharpened his own desire. Unsure what she wanted, he slowly stroked along his length, painfully aware that each move pushed against her core. This wasn’t suggestive, it was blatant, stroking his cock while rubbing her pussy. Anastasia pushed them along, picking up his rhythm, undulating with his stroking. Breathy moans marked when his fist stroked to the end of his length, bumping into the heart of her core as she came down.

Needy as him, her lust heated the air. Desires snapped and clawed at midnight's chill, each breath thick with her untamed appetite. She kissed along his neck, small pecks lengthening into long things, tongue squirming along his skin, ridden by a sweet whine of desire. He couldn’t keep to the slow stroking, his hand speeding up as needs birthed in flesh demanded their due.

His growing desire fed her own, hips coming down harder and harder on his up-thrusting hand. Moving with the grace and power of a dancer, the force of her grinding became inescapably urgent with each growl torn from Cesare’s lips. His hand moved of its own accord, down her milky shoulder, across silky skin as warm as velvet, over her sweat soaked bra, reaching the small of her back. A needy groan tore from her as she arched her back, begging with her body for the sweet release he promised. His hand cupped the fullness of her ass, firm flesh igniting a jagged bolt of desire down his own spine. Squeezing her ass, their moans of need joined and tangled as they reveled in raw arousal.

Wind whistled between his teeth as a growl prowled snarling through the air. Dark with hate and rage, it bled into the air, Cesare’s desire turning wantonly diseased. Looking at the woman in his arms, he craved not just her flesh, but her mind and soul. He wanted to own, to dominate and control. To suckle from her flesh and devour her for his own. Needed to take her body, to bury himself in her wet flesh and make her his. To join with her until there was nothing between them.

Tilting her head up, she met his eyes. Her lips pulled back in a grimace of painful need, flickers of black flame dancing in dark eyes to a chorus of sadistic cravings. His unholy hungers reflected back on him as she drank his infernal desire. His own need to hurt and possess exposed naked and throbbing in her eyes. Her need stitched flesh to flesh with his own.

Pulled by nature's lust, his eyes looked down the sports bra and into the creamy canyon of her cleavage. Mounds of beautiful softness, the fruits of womanhood lushly displayed for his hungry eyes. A tempting valley calling out with its own sweetness. Cesare held himself still as the abyss reached for him.

Arching her back, throaty moans thrummed with painful arousal. “Do it.” The words were permission, acceptance, want and pleading blending into a mixture that broke all resistance.

Cesare buried his face between her breasts as she shuddered and gasped, his rough lips kissing along the white valleys of her breasts. Tightening his grip on her ass, he guided her frantic movements as they came together, desperate to reach the endless fall. Cesare’s tongue moved over the soft swells of womanly flesh that his face was buried in, his own arousal hard in his hand.

It rushed up with all the power of a god, swamping them in black waters. They stiffened and clutched each other, screams of orgasmic need joined into a single prayer to a lust soaked Pan. An offering of flesh, love, sweat, and animal need. Shaking and moaning, they rode the ocean of pleasure as it tossed them about, drowning in its unplumbed depths.

With small jerks and moans, they slowly came back to their bodies. Her hands tight around his shoulders, chin resting on his head. His face buried in her breasts, lips still worshipping milky flesh. Cesare’s other hand caressed along her ass, reluctant to pull away from its treasure.

Power thrummed through Anastasia, the heat she’d radiated nothing next to the blast furnace shredding the night now. Holding his head in her breasts, her words were soft as the shadows that blanketed them. “You pushed it out of me. His prana's gone. Your desiderium was so dense and heavy, it filled me and expelled his.” Stopping, she raised Cesare’s head from her heaving breasts, looking him in the eye as her own snapped with arousal. “I’m yours again, my Cesare.”

His hand traced her ravaged face. “Mine.” The simple word darkened the night, moonlight turning wan and pale as shadows stretched across the ground. Ruthless power, chilling rage, complete and absolute control, tinged with the cries of broken souls and wasted bodies. The night welcomed his tainted offerings, his soul bleeding into the world.

Ducking his head, he looked away in shame and regret. Gently, she pulled his eyes back to face her. “You don’t need to hide your head from me, Cesare. You don’t need to hide your desire.” Her lips curved in a wicked grin. “You think I don’t know you want to fuck me? That you dream of me at night? I'm Harab Serapel. Desire is weaved through my soul. I'm your wanton hunger given flesh, I welcome your depraved hunger.”

Her hand cradled his face, tongue wetting melted lips. “You think I won’t give you what you want, but I’ve been willing for a long time.”

Smiling, his heart broke as he got up and helped her to her feet. “I don’t want to fuck you.” Corded with truth, the words couldn’t be denied. “I want to own you, and no one can take that from another.” She stepped back at the raw honesty of his words.

“You like me well enough to fuck, maybe even have me as a boyfriend, but that’s nothing. I don’t want what you had with Blaez, to be nothing but a mockery of give a fuck. I want to own, to possess, to quench an obsessive need that wounds the heart by existing. To crawl into your flesh and suckle malice from your soul, to punish your body until it craves my touch. To carve my name into your bones and write my needs in blood across porcelain skin.”

They walked back in silence and parted without words. Cesare watched as she climbed the steps into the Vulpes, his thoughts swirling with the night’s encounter. He wasn’t sorry about what he’d said, but he hadn’t meant to hurt her either.

The few kids up and wandering around the Serpens Lacum, watched him out of the corners of their eyes as they moved out of his way. They weren’t all enemies, but none of them were friends. He might have gotten used to it, but that wasn't the same as it not bothering him.

They wanted different things. Anastasia wanted a boyfriend and a fuck buddy, something for right now. He wanted the fullness of midnight glory, a perverse thing outside the diseased imaginings of man. To own her, from bones to tits, possessing her pleasure until he was all she craved. It was the only way he knew to stop her from leaving. She was new and beautiful while he was old and broken. His light had died years ago, only the sadism of darkness stirred in the shards of smoking obsidian he called a heart. Love's caress was beyond him, vicious and barbed, his care was a maimed thing of possession and greed.

Bare and quiet, his room enfolded him in its cold arms. He didn’t have anything to put on the dresser, no pictures of family or friends to break up its stark functionality. There were no posters for the wall, video games, movies, and pop culture, were things for others. The room owned an air of supreme indifference, a blank canvas for someone to put its stamp on.

He didn’t belong here, and everyone knew it. What could he talk to the others about, how to get day old milk? The best way to hide from a gang looking for a good time? Or the fine art of laying cardboard so you didn’t freeze at night. He didn’t have anything in common with them, besides having the same plumbing. Different pasts and futures, the only thing they would ever have in common was the present.

Sighing, he reached to take his shirt off, freezing in mid pull as he noticed the vampire outside his window. Cesare blinked at the window, unsure if he’d finally cracked under the pressure or if Alexandra really was hanging outside his window. Shaking his head, he looked again, but she didn’t disappear or fade away, instead smiling shyly and motioning for him to open the window.

Sliding the glass aside, he met her unsure green eyes with a smile. “Do I need to invite you in?” Darkly gleaming fabric caressed a body hardened by work and battle. The fabric molded to high, firm breasts, stiff nipples tenting thin silk. Alexandra’s white, luminescent skin was corpse pale next to the sable cloth. Long golden hair ran down her shoulder in a braid of light, defying the night with its brilliance. An angel clothed in the ebony shades of night.

Stark relief flooded her eyes as she stepped into the room. She took the stark nothing of the room in with a trained sweep of razor attention. “That’s a fairy tale." Shame flashed through Cesare as he saw the room through her eyes. A place for a nobody with nothing to his name.

The reflexive fear drained out of him as quick as it had come. If there was one person who wouldn’t judge him for being different, it was Alexandra. Cast out by her people as something born wrong. She was a weapon to them, an asset, not a person. She knew what it was like to only see normal from the outside.

“What do I owe this honor to?” Cesare asked, smile back in place.

Returning his smile, she walked into the room, leaving the window behind. “You fed her. I wanted to see if you'd feed me.”

He’d spent the day training as if there was no tomorrow, his muscles weren’t sore, they were blood engorged things of agonized torment. It hurt to stand, and he didn’t think sitting was going to make it better. Where his body wasn’t yellow from old bruises, it was black and blue from today's punishment. On top of that, he’d just had Anastasia suck the life out of him. While he wouldn’t give that up for anything, it didn’t make him feel chipper.

Every bit of it fell to the wayside at Alexandra’s wounded expression. She knew what had gone down between him and Anastasia, maybe not the specifics, but that they'd been intimate. She’d had to walk away knowing he wanted to be with Anastasia. That her only friend didn’t want her around. When you'd known rejection like a lover, ghosted your hands over its bladed body, you'd do anything to spare your friends its razored attention.

“How do you want to do this?” He simply wouldn’t turn away from her, no matter the cost.

Suddenly, Alexandra was a teenage girl braced for rejection, sure that he’d push her aside as everyone else had when she needed them. A smile burst out of her, innocent, joyous, and so pure that it lit her face. Only god had ever been gifted with such a radiant smile. For Cesare, it meant that he’d made the right choice. She looked for something that might work, anything but the bed. The room forced her hand, blushing, she gestured at the bed helplessly.

As the place was chosen, her eyes shifted from shy girl to predatory killer in a twinkling. Her tongue traced across lips thinning with anticipation, fangs lengthening and sharpening into needles of menace. Flesh receded like the tide from her face, revealing a cadaverous thing of bones and brutal angles. An eerie glitter flickered in her eyes as she stared at him from cavernous sockets.

Cesare held her eyes as she transformed. It was their ritual, a special moment when the masks the world forced her to wear dropped and she faced him naked in heart and soul. It was more intimate than if she’d stripped. We all look the same naked, meat slapped on bones. Our souls are where we're unique, stained-glass windows as singular as the laughter of a woman and as precious as the last kiss of a lover.

He’d never tire of seeing the truth behind the masks she wore. The beautiful girl dying under the fangs of the ravening beast. No one would call her death's face beautiful, but it owned an honesty beyond the shallow prettiness of meat. It spoke of horrific truths people shuddered away from. Hiding in their precious light, they prayed the truths of the night wouldn’t sweep over their lives. In her wasted eyes, Cesare saw the sweet face of death as the last breath rattled through lungs. The razor-sharp bones of eternal sleep and an end to everything loved. The glitter of deep sunken eyes told the tale of starvation that stripped men of good until only human meat could satiate hunger. It was horrifically honest, slicing through the bullshit of life and slipping into bone.

They’d done this a few times since that first torturous experience, but it never got easy. Holding himself still, he watched as she moved around and behind him, her breath coming high and tight as expectation sharpened the air. Cesare knew pain was coming, that she’d take the best of his life and leave him with rotting dregs. It was more than food; it was an atavistic need, a hunger that twisted her soul. At her core she was a parasite, taking his blood for her own, gifting him with agony in return.

Gentle as an assassin’s wire, her arm slipped around his neck, anchoring both his shoulders. The other cinched around his chest with the inevitability of death. Wrapped around him like strangler vines, she stripped him of choice, enforcing her dominion over his flesh. There was no turning back, if that time had ever existed. His pain was meaningless to her, screams nothing more than rain falling across the jungle. She would take what she wanted uncaring of the cost to him.

Nuzzling his neck, her tongue licked across his skin. Remembered agony sat on the tip of his tongue, the wash of crimson tainted agony washing through his mind on memories of tears and screams. A stew of adrenaline and endorphins dumped into his body, mixing and churning with terror.

“I never get tired of …” A humming sound of pleasure vibrated through the vampire. “I’ve been dreaming of this….” Groaning, her fangs pricked against his skin. “I want ... need ...”

Cold as ice, the fangs tore into his throat. His whimper of agony buried under her groan of greedy pleasure. His heart slowed, beats staggering as death’s frozen touch wrapped around the muscle. Frozen acid crept through his veins, an icy burning that flowed down the web work of lifelines, corruption squirming tendrils into the sacredness of his body. Whimpering and crying, his hands struggled against the iron rods caging him in place, it was nothing more than the mewling death cries of a baby in the teeth of a lion. His strength couldn’t match the power of the child of famine gluttonously guzzling with malicious relish at his neck.

His energy, his life, his very soul, grew threadbare as she parasitically devoured him. Things of meat and arctic cold, his legs were numb victims of the frozen wasteland of veins and the icy water they poured into flesh. His vision shrunk as the world grew dim, the macabre lullaby of slurping swollen lips following him into darkness.

The world drifted back in bits and pieces. The taste of day-old milk, a pillow under his head, and the familiar feeling of his bed. As blessings went, falling unconscious was the best thing to happen today. If he had his way, she’d knock him out every time.

“I’m sorry.” The words came from his chest. Alexandra hadn’t only laid him in bed, she’d joined him. Cuddled against his side, she had her head laying on his chest, where the thump of his heart beat out its song. His arm tightened around her in response to the pain echoing in her voice. “I should have waited. I know how hard you push yourself; I know how much it takes to feed the akatharton. I … just wanted you so bad. Wanted to know I meant as much to you as she did.” Vulnerable and hurt, the words were as soft as a lover’s goodbye. “I’m sorry. If you don’t want to do this again, I’ll ….”

Cesare cut into her broken words. “I wouldn’t give this up for the world.” By all that was unholy, he wanted to stop these feedings. Feeding Anastasia was the stuff of dreams. Feeding Alexandra was a torture that would make a masochist sweat.

None of that mattered. He wanted to be there for her, wanted to feed her. To know she was filled with his blood and life. It was an intensely intimate act, from the way she changed, to the taking of his blood. It was a closeness that eclipsed flesh, and she shared it only with him. He wanted that, craved it with every fiber of his broken being. The pain was horrendous, beautiful in its pure power to strip him down to nothing, as precious and prized as sheathing himself in a woman. He loved her because she hurt him; the mind flaying torment was her way of making love to him. He needed her to want him; it made him worth something.

Sighing, she relaxed on his chest. “You’re sure?” she asked, the words a fading whisper.

“I’m sure. I want this, I want you.” Cesare paused, hesitating on the edge of something he couldn't take back. “I want to be the one that fills you. The one you come to when you hunger.”

Alexandra tensed against him as the words were absorbed. He wasn’t sure if she understood what he’d said, but then, he’d done it as much for himself as he had for her. “Did you sleep with her?”

“No.”

Keeping her head on his chest, Alexandra was careful not to look at him. “Why not? I know she offered. It was painted in every touch and smile since you got back from Winter Break, she’s been throwing herself at you.”

“She might like me …”

Alexandra cut in, words sharp and honed with spite. “She likes you. There’s no doubt, not for me.”

Alexandra took advantage of his shrug to slide across his chest, laying more on top of him than to the side. Hard steel clothed in velvet softness, she possessed the weight of dense muscle. A smile tugged at his lips as a surge of pleasure spiked through him. “Maybe she likes me. But that’s all it is. She wants a boyfriend, a nice boy she can go on dates with and give her virginity too. The normal of everyone, no one expects those relationships to last, look at her and Blaez.” Soft and vicious, the words stained the stones with malice.

“I don’t have much love left; the world tore that from me. I don’t want to waste what’s left on temporary. I’d rather be alone then sell what love I have for a good time.” The words hurt, but truth always did.

Uncaring of the rage that vibrated through the room, Alexandra took it as simply a fact of being with him. She didn’t fear the dark, it feared her. Smiling at the thought, Cesare pulled her tighter into his body. Like snuggling with a tiger, it was an experience in contradictions. She was hard muscle coiled around bones of glittering diamond, interspersed with delectably soft, womanly curves. Uniquely wonderful, she was a treasure passed over by others for gilt plated vipers.

“How did the Imago Mortis go?” Cesare asked. She didn’t seem to want to go anywhere soon, and he had nothing he’d rather do then hold her. The question had rattled around his head for days, but there never seemed to be a time to ask.

“Like all the other times I’ve gone.” Her voice dropped, weary with old bitterness, a comfortable kind of poison. “Like the rest of my life. I was alone, Cesare … I’m always alone. They stare at me and talk behind my back. Conspire to kill and hurt me, yet I’m the monster. They hand me the trophy for winning the Imago Mortis and hold me up as the pinnacle of my race, while fashioning crippling rules to see me fall. I’m tired of having no one.”

“You got me, killer,” Cesare said, running his hand down her back, the thick braid of gold as soft as silk against his fingers.

Barking a caustic laugh against his chest, she breathed his scent in deep. “You know what I wonder in the darkness of the night?” Cesare kept his peace, knowing she needed to let this out, to lance the festering wound poisoning her soul. “How long before you shy away from touching me? How long before I see fear in your eyes when I reach for you?”

“I can’t make people like or trust you. All I can do is tell you, I like and trust you.” Leaning down, he laid a light kiss on her head.

“Why Cesare? What do you see that no one else does?”

“It’s not that I see something they don’t.” Pausing, he searched for words as his hand caressed her braided hair. “The things that scare them, are the things that draw me too you. Your blood-soaked soul and willingness to fight for the things you care for. You have the elegant nature of a tiger. Simple and beautiful, a beauty that transcends flesh. You're extraordinary, special in a way cookie cutter souls will never be. A tiger clothed in the flesh of a vampire.”

“You’re the only one that sees that. You’re the only friend I have.” The admission came hard, dense with memories of nights spent crying into a pillow, praying for friends, of loneliness sharp enough to cut angels.

“How many do you need?” Cesare asked, letting the words hang in the air for a moment. “I’ve always thought it wasn’t how many you but how many showed up when blood stained your hands. When you need money, a place to stay, or someone killed, how many can you count on? How many would be there if you were nothing, but a broken thing on the streets strung out on heroin? Better to have one friend who’d be there, then a hundred working angles on your ass.”

“Is that what you are, someone I can count on?” Alexandra teased, settling comfortably into his side.

There was a lightness to her tone that wasn’t there before. Smiling in the darkness, his hand was both unable and unwilling to stop its caressing path along the silky golden hair. “Nope, I was saying you should look for a guy like that.” There was a stillness as she tensed before laughing against his chest.

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