The cafeteria went silent as the trio entered. The recent attack on the gladiators was just one more rumor making the rounds about the three. Taking their table under the watchful eyes of the early birds, the three started working.

As the place filled, Greg and Dan walked in surrounded by the massed force of the Thagirion. Whispers broke out at the duo’s injuries, speculation and calculation a susurration of cruel curiosity. Greg's arm was slung protectively across his body, hand swathed in bandages, his face a jigsaw puzzle of bruises, cuts, and lumps. Dan had his arm wrapped up and slung in a sling, face maimed into the red headed stepchild of Quasimodo.

The school scrutinized the gladiators before darting uneasy looks at the trio sitting at the losers' table. No one knew the truth of what happened, only that the trio had walked into the killer’s den and come out with heads. That was enough to shake them. While not as singularly powerful as the Thagirion, the gladiators were still a faction no one fucked with.

Taking the center of the cafeteria, Jerold gathered the room's attention to him. “These two have a confession to make, and an apology to their victim.”

Anastasia ground her teeth in anger, Cesare laid his hand on her arm. “He’s trying to lessen you,” he said, taking his hand back before she shied away from his touch. After being so close for so long, it hurt to protect himself from her rejection. But he’d always known it would end. He’d told himself over and over, turning the truth into a mantra of loneliness. It didn't make it hurt any less.

Stepping back, Jerold left the stage to Greg and Dan. The Thagirion surrounded the two boys, keeping them contained and away from the other students. It was a piece of theater, claiming responsibility for bringing them to justice, or at least what passed for justice in this place.

Cesare swept his eyes over the crowd, judging how the dog and pony show was playing to the students. The rumor had already made the rounds and settled into the student’s minds. Even as Greg took center stage, Cesare could see the sidelong looks directed at the losers' table. No, this was a solid win for his team, despite Jerold’s posturing.

Greg looked around, the white in his eyes showing from across the room. The drug dealer gave Cesare a barely perceptible nod as they locked eyes. “It wasn’t supposed to be this big of a thing. We thought it would get a few laughs, maybe make a couple of dollars. We found a porn star that had a body like Anastasia and put Anastasia's face on her.” His shoulders wilted under the concentrated glares of the girls in the room. The boys had bought the books in droves, but the girls had been disgusted.

“Sure looked like her.” The words came from the crowd as the boys grumbled their skepticism. She was the golden girl of the school, the kind they could only dream of getting, gorgeous, powerful, and talented. The pictures had butchered that, stripping her of womanhood, tainting her of individuality, making her meat to defile. More than degradation, it had lessened her, driving her down into something they could degrade with gleeful smiles, transforming the princess into a cock sock, a caricature of the real. They didn’t want to give that up.

“It should, we spent enough time on it,” Greg said wryly, quickly stepping in to squash the doubt the anonymous student had fostered. Greg needed to be convincing, anything less would bring a nighttime visit from Cesare. “If you look at the back of the woman’s leg, you’ll see a crescent shaped birth mark. Compare that to pictures of Anastasia fighting, she doesn’t have any birthmarks.”

The collective mass of boys deflated, knowing the pictures well enough they didn’t have to look. The pictures had swept through the boys like wildfire, more than one showing up to breakfast with a limp after a night spent with the books. For a day, Anastasia was reduced to meat, tits and ass, something to jerk off to. Sadistically joyful that she’d been proven to be the slut they wanted her to be, the boys had gloried in her whoredome. That was so much more satisfying than facing she was special, and they were as common as sand.

Stepping up behind Greg, Jerold's hand came down on the boy’s shoulder, tightening into an iron grip. Wincing, the boy looked across the room to Anastasia. Bowing from the waist, he kept his head to the floor with Dan a bare second behind him. “I apologize for the offense we have given you and your family. I can never make up for the insult, but I will strive to for the rest of my life.”

It was nicely done with the boy’s heads down and the Thagirion framing them. Power and punishment threaded into a picture that spoke of dominate strength. That it was false, didn’t change the impact it had on the students. The reassuring illusion that everything would return to its simple state with the Thagirion on top appealed to the weak. They longed for that simplicity, even if most were little more than meat for the grinder. It was better than the chaos Cesare bred with his every breath.

Standing, Anastasia faced off with the Thagirion. Cesare held his breath, this moment would dominate the course for his small group. He’d planned and schemed the long night away, but they were less than a newborns spite without Anastasia's backing.

His plans would turn to ashes in his mouth if she came out for the Thagirion. He'd recover, the streets had taught him to be adaptable if nothing else.

Anastasia’s hand settled on Cesare’s shoulder. “I accept your apology. After our talk on Friday, I know your remorse.” The words brought a deathly silence to the room as the Thagirion glared at Anastasia. That the trio had brought vengeance hidden in the skin of justice to the school was no longer a rumor. “I’m sure that,” Her eyes lingered on Greg and Dan’s injuries, “you're committed to keeping your noses clean.”

Jerold’s eyes burned with cold fury, going quietly mad at not being able to find out what happened in his kingdom. The man was riding the ragged edge of losing his shit at his own gladiators shutting him out.

Alexandra and Cesare stood with Anastasia, facing the glares of the Thagirion and the students' scared eyes. This was it, the time when it all changed, right here, right now. In this moment, they declared themselves as the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, bringers of chaos, ruin, and destruction. Amoral, lethal, ravenously hungry for power, unchained by tradition, they were an end to the world, and the school knew it.

In pregnant silence with the school watching, the three walked out. It wasn’t the first time the Thagirion were challenged. Others had come before and faced the unleashed nightmares of the Umbrae Lunae. Singly or in groups, they'd been massacred, lessons on what it meant to face the savage sons of darkness. Each story of carnage feeding the myth of the Thagirion.

But this time was different, and everyone knew it. Alexandra Dracul was a trained soldier, a prodigy in the arts of slaughter, all but unstoppable. Vampires were the children of war, steeped in its violent caress, joyously partaking of its unholy sacraments. Even for the vampires, Alexandra was one step too far, a weapon that couldn't be contained, earning the name Gods Butcher.

Anastasia was dangerous in other ways. The daughter of an immortal, birthed to privilege and all its subtleties, she wielded the tools of power with unmatched deftness. Money, politics, alliances, Anastasia couldn't be dismissed as a tainted vampire. That she’d become monstrously powerful with titanic destructive force far beyond anything anyone had expected added a lethal dimension to her already terrifying power base.

Twisting like a serpent around them was Cesare. No one knew what he truly was, where he came from, or what horror the mendacium hid. He was a wild card in every sense of the word, a modern avatar of chaos bringing ruinous growth with every step.

When Miss Raven’s door had clicked shut, Anastasia whipped around, glaring at him. “It doesn’t matter if I win, I’ll never wear the black again.” She held a hand up, killing the words stillborn in his throat. The glittering shards of broken dreams littered her eyes. “That’s the price of standing by you. My mom always told me, nothing good comes without taking its toll in pain.” A sorrowful smile creased her lips. “I’m not happy with where we are, I don’t … like … the things I see in you. But that doesn’t change how I feel.”

Stepping forward, she laid her hand on his chest, meeting his eyes with the molten core that was her truest self. “I’m on your side. I haven’t always been there, and maybe I liked who I thought you were more than who you are, but I'm not turning my back on you.”

It hurt like hell to think the girl he’d held night after night, liked the guy she’d made up more than the man he was. The poison of her words coursed through his heart, hardening meat, callousing delicate tissue. That was the gift of pain, the sacred fruit gluttonously devoured by its devotees. Words cut and sliced, wounds as real as the scars that flowed across his body, but they healed into ropy leather, until even a broken heart was dead flesh, unfeeling of any touch.

Taking a step back, his blood cooled with each step away from Anastasia. Elizabeth had stood at the girl’s words, anger tightening her face into a mask twisted through with understanding. For Anastasia. If anyone would understand his selfish demands, it was Elizabeth. She couldn’t love him because he didn’t fit into how things should be. Until this moment, he’d always thought the two women were opposites. Sympathy and understanding flowed over the anger in the teacher’s eyes, making it clear whose side Elizabeth stood on.

Meeting his eyes, Alexandra stepped beyond Anastasia, walking to his side without a sidelong look at the others. She pivoted when she was next to him, turning to face the others with him.

Her voice cut through the air with hate as pure as mother’s love. “You could never understand him. You’ve never been an outsider because of who you are. Never been hated for being yourself. He doesn’t need your approval. Great men don’t beg for approval; they burn in the firmament, eclipsing flickering nothings around them. You’re not worth him, you never were.”

The women flinched back from the vampire’s words. Neither of them could muster the words to fight against Alexandra’s condemnation. In another time or place, Elizabeth might have fought Alexandra's words, but not after siding with Anastasia.

Taking a sliding step closer, Cesare touched shoulders with the vampire. “It doesn’t matter if you like me.” The words carved into the two, leaving bloody canyons behind. “You asked me if you'll ever rejoin the Thagirion, and I’ll answer that. It’s up to you. You’ll win your fight, what you do with that is your call. You can go back and be their pretty bit of fluff or you can take a chance on me.”

“You don’t care about the Thagirion, what you care about is their mission. To make the school safer. You can still do that. You don’t need the Thagirion to change the school or stand between the weak and the butchers. All you need is power and the will to use it,” Cesare paused, pulling the others into his reality with the dramatic silence.

“We have the power. We have the will. This group, right here, can make a difference. All I’m asking for is trust.” His words sharpened into a blade, a scalpel dipping coldly into their hearts. “All I need is your loyalty.”

“Till my blood runs dry, commander,” Alexandra pledged, her solemn tone more than enough.

“I’m with you,” Anastasia said, words echoing with reservations. She might like him, she might trust him, but she was repulsed by the wiggling creatures infesting his inner truth. She had his back, but she didn’t believe in him the way Alexandra did.

“You know I’m on your side, Cesare,” Elizabeth said, her soft words carried a terrible authority in the sanctuary of her majesty. Elizabeth was as loyal as he could wish, as long as her comforts, goals, and career, weren’t threatened. For all her regrets that she couldn’t be there for him in the wasteland of choices he walked, she wouldn't budge on her beliefs.

He refused to understand that. Beliefs didn’t keep you warm at night, didn’t hold you when your heart was shredded by betrayal or guard you when hard and greedy hands came sneaking through shadows. They were cold things, rotting lies twisting the mind away from the truth of flesh and broken souls. When his beliefs got in the way of his friends, it was time to find new beliefs. Either you were willing to bleed for your friends or you didn’t have the testicular fortitude to be called a friend.

“What’s the plan?” Anastasia asked, eyes moving between Alexandra and Cesare.

Shaking his head, Cesare turned his back on the akatharton. “I’ll let you know as it comes together, but don’t expect me to lay it out for you. This isn’t a democracy, I put it in play, I call the shots, I bear responsibility for it. Right now, if it gets out, the whole thing goes to hell. Better to keep it to myself until the time’s right. There will come a time when you’ll have to either trust me and have my back … or watch it burn,” Cesare said as he took out his books.

“You don’t trust us?” The words came from Elizabeth.

He looked at them with a twist to his smile. “Should I? Your agenda’s are more important than me. If you didn’t like what I said, you’d do everything you could to stop me. I’d be a fool to trust you.” The statement rang through the room, his words ringing off the boundary of their friendship.

“But you trust her?” Anastasia said, easily transferring her anger to the vampire.

“I know where she stands. The only things she cares about is God, Christians, and The Order of the Dragon. My needs don’t touch her tender spots.” Cesare paused before adding, “She’d never ask me what my plan was.”

Alexandra already had her books out, watching the two women with cold eyes over the ordered stack. “A soldier knows when to ask questions and when to shut up and take orders. He has my trust, my support, and when the time comes, he can count on my sword.” Her faith stood starkly against the others half promises and self-obsessed needs.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to expect them to bet on him. It was easy for him. He had nothing to lose, it’s easy to go all in when you have nothing. But they had everything to lose by putting money on him.

Elizabeth had a successful career and a life she’d bled to get. Decades of work, dreams, money, career, successes, everything he was threatened that. She wouldn't bet her life on a boy she’d known for a bare handful of months. Anastasia didn’t have concrete things to lose, but she had something just as hard to give up, ambition. She had a plan for herself, power, prestige, and the fruits of their poisoned trees. That was a lot to give up for a homeless boy she’d seen taken apart by the failures that had made up her harem.

There were no maybes about it. He was asking too much, wanted things they’d never give. Who was more the fool, him for wanting what they’d never give or them for keeping a friend who demanded what they couldn't give? All he knew was he couldn’t sacrifice his wants without losing the last bit's he called his own. He’d given up his hopes and dreams when they’d started torturing him with what he’d never have. All he had left were broken wants birthed from his hateful heart.

Lost in thought, Anastasia watched him from a few feet that might as well have been miles. Shaking herself out of the maze of her mind, the girl took her seat. It wasn’t long before the others came and the rush of getting work done pushed the conversation into the forgotten past.