Saturday February 7th 2015
The sun was just coming out from behind the clouds, burning off the gauzy mist that softened the edges of building, stripping the dreaming illusions from the land. It had been a long week in a life of long weeks.
Viktor had switched their workout programs after the fight, consolidating the three into one. The fight had proven any attempt to come between the three would face lethal force. Ever the practical bastard, Viktor built the new program around variations for each individual. Cesare had found himself at the center of the trio, switching out on spotting the girls, the gear around which the machine moved.
The Cherries had taken to his teaching with enthusiasm birthed from desperation. The harder he pushed, the more they loved him, they'd do anything to be stronger, even sell their soul to a devil of degradation and scars. He paved the way with bruises, lacerated flesh, black eyes, and bloody faces. He didn’t care about their skill with weapons. Aggression, violence, brutality, the darkest of things decided who came off the killing fields and who was butchered meat. It helped that they were Umbrae Lunae, born monsters, he only had to tear off the lies of humanity.
He'd planned for that, what couldn’t be planned was the notes that kept appearing on his door. They’d doubled on Tuesday and kept going all the way to Friday. Boys and girls begging for help to the only ones that gave a damn. They were all the same, times and places where kids were eaten alive a strip of flesh at a time. He wasn’t sure how the girls where getting them to his door, but he didn’t care.
Some of them were easy jobs, before or after school with lunch being a target rich environment for bullies. Those they’d been able to deal with by adjusting their schedules. Elizabeth became the go to teacher for them, letting them go early to lunch or come in late to class.
The kids hunted during study periods or in class were harder. If they’d been the Thagirion, they could've barged in and taken care of it, but they weren’t. Luckily, they’d gotten names on those notes, leading to long talks liberally spiced with blood and terror, attitudes adjusted at the point of a knife.
It had been exhausting, and the most rewarding thing he’d ever done. It wasn’t saving people that made it worthwhile, no, that would never be enough for him. He thrilled at the terror in the bully’s eyes, black pleasure surging cold and sharp through his veins at every mewling cry and muffled sob. Every bully he broke on his blade, smashed into the ground, or flayed with words, gave him back a little piece of himself, bought with pain from the horrors of his memories.
Anastasia was incandescently happy. She didn't care about the people they helped, slavish devotion poured from the outcast and rejects they saved, and she lapped it up with gluttonous hunger. With each batch of notes he brought down the stairs, she flew into his arms, eyes shining with infectious joy.
He’d thought Alexandra would go along for the ride; he couldn’t have been more wrong. She was only a step behind Anastasia in her eagerness to see how many notes he’d received in the night. On Tuesday, he'd finally understood what she was getting out of it. Walking to the scene of their next beat down, she’d checked that her sword cross was prominently displayed on her impressive chest.
She was using Anastasia’s ambition for her own ends. Alexandra had taken a lot of time to think about their long-ago conversation about how to convert people to Christ. Back then she’d talked about Christ but she hadn’t been shown Christ’s grace. She had to walk the path if she wanted them to follow, she couldn’t point and hope it looked good.
That left him with two thrilled girls. It was early stages, but it looked like this might work. But it was his flesh stitching it together, he dealt with each of the bullies, branding their souls with the deftness of a High Inquisitor in service to Spain. It was Cesare that had to work out how to balance training time and hunts, him that had to get permission from Elizabeth.
It was exhausting, simply, painfully, exhausting, a crushing responsibility to hold their dreams in his hands. He liked them, maybe even loved them. But the more he gave, the more they wanted, leaving him with too little to feed himself.
Walking into the shed, Cesare let out a long sigh, shoulders relaxing, the door closing behind him with a soft click. Putting pellets into the potbellied stove, he warmed up the cottage for Elizabeth. It was a small thing, but love was made of grains of sands.
Going around the cottage, Cesare looked over the tools they’d use today. It wasn’t long before the door opened, and Elizabeth came in. No matter how many times he saw her, he was always caught by the ripeness of her full figure. Faded jeans hugged her wide hips and clung to her ample ass. A sweater of blue and green softened the curves of her breasts and hid her small belly. Black shining hair pulled back into a ponytail revealed a neck of delectable milky skin. Her eyes danced with a slow, enduring joy.
Tightened muscles strung like piano wire unraveled under those eyes. This was what it meant to be with her. This moment of complete relaxation, of being with someone as true and steady as the earth. A calm passion that moved with deliberate, unstoppable force, a landslide that swept him clean of stress, worry, and anxiety. This was why he loved her.
“I love these days, it’s the only time when no one wants something from me. When I can be with someone that make me feel good without worrying about the cost. I'll never be able to thank you for being part of my life or tell you how much you mean to me.” Black as sable silk, soft as velvet, the words pulled at the shadows of the room, leaving only the two of them existing in a sanctuary of plants and dirt. A small, insignificant sanctuary compared to the grand cathedrals of the world, but it was the world to them.
She blinked at the raw truth, walking across the room, her eyes never left his. He didn’t hide his love for her or the raging desire that clawed at his insides, howling its need into his scarred soul. Elizabeth faced that raging truth; she’d tried to change him and only hurt him.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
She didn’t share his feelings, but she was done trying to get him to shift them to another. Besides, he was spending more and more time with the most gorgeous women she’d ever seen, it was only a matter of time before his feelings for her withered and died. Elizabeth ignored the pang that tore through her soul at the thought, it was like falling and knowing no one would catch her.
Thoughts roiled through her eyes like storm clouds. Reaching forward, a light tremble possessed her fingers as she traced his face. “You're precious to me.” The words held in the air between them. “More precious than I can tell you. I've never been prouder of you than I have this week. When I went to school, I would've given anything to have someone like you to make my world right.” She smiled with the shine of tears in her eyes. “I just had to wait a few years for you to show up, but you still make the world right. Every day you start my day and end it with your leaving."
Her calloused fingers caressed over his face with a gentleness that spoke of emotions she'd never acknowledge. They stood there for a long moment before backing away. The truth a tortured thing between them, bound in the rusty barbed wire of their pasts. The horrors they'd lived through crippled and chained them into the misery of the present.
He’d torn himself away from the barbed hooks of his past, leaving gobbets of flesh and bleeding muscle behind. Taking the wounds as the price of living beyond the past. He’d be damned if he let the monsters that slaughtered his childhood infest his adult life. He'd lost who he should have been, but he could try to live beyond what they’d made him.
Elizabeth had lived with those chains for decades, flesh growing over rusty links, steel welded into body and soul. That was the true legacy of bullying, it wasn’t the crying, bruises, or broken hearts, it was the crippling of the soul.
“How’s your teaching classes going?” Cesare asked, turning away from her because it always hurt when she turned from him.
He missed her small smile of thanks, but it threaded her voice as she talked. No matter what he was doing, his mind stayed with Elizabeth's words, being with her the whole point. Even paying attention, the concepts that slipped casually from her lips were beyond him. There was an insurmountable gulf of knowledge between them, made of decades of teaching and an intellect that towered over his own.
A hard knock stopped her mid-sentence, Elizabeth giving Cesare a questioning, heated look. Laughing, he raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t look at me, I’m not expecting anyone.” She stomped her way to the door, Cesare smiling at the roll of her ass. He didn’t like to see her mad, but he loved to see that ass on the move.
Elizabeth hated sharing her weekends with him. She was forced to deal with him spending the week with Alexandra and Anastasia. If she could deal with them throwing themselves at him, they could deal with not having him at their beck and call for two days.
Yanking the door open, Elizabeth glared at the man standing there. Viktor gave her a winning smile, stepping forward with the expectation she’d move back. Only Elizabeth wasn't that kind of woman. She held her place, ravens joining in glaring at the trespasser. Clustered along the eaves of the shed, and dipping branches of the trees, death own watched with glittering, malignant eyes.
Viktor’s smile withered under the weight of disapproval that settled along his shoulders. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“No,” Elizabeth said, neither moving nor giving him an opening to continue the conversation. She didn’t want him here; he was a reminder of a time when she'd been lost and alone. This was her place, hers and Cesare’s.
“I wondered why you offered the boy tea the other day. You never offered me any of your teas?” Viktor said, backing a careful step away, eyes taking in the sleek, blade dark shapes of the ravens.
“You came all the way here to ask me about something that happened over a week ago?” Elizabeth asked dryly. “I gave him my tea because he’s my friend.”
Matching her frown, the man tried to look past her. “I’m your friend.”
“Really? When was the last time you dropped by to talk?” Elizabeth let the question hang in the air. “You wanted to fuck me, hardly the basis for a friendship. Besides, if I remember correctly, you said tea tasted like horse piss.”
Sighing, Viktor nodded in resignation. “Okay. Well, that’s not why I’m here. I came to pick up the boy.”
At Victor’s words, Cesare stepped out from behind the door. Under the man’s intense stare, Cesare placed his hand on the small of Elizabeth’s back. Elizabeth met Viktor’s narrowed eyes with easy equanimity.
“I have a pick-up in Tacoma, Washington.” Focusing on Elizabeth, he deliberately cut Cesare out of the conversation.
“I haven’t heard anything. Is the rest of the team going?” Hearing concern in her voice, Cesare caressed her back in slow, soothing circles. He shouldn't take advantage of the moment but he couldn’t help it, the need to touch was too tantalizing to resist.
“Nope, just me. It's a street kid, I figure the boy should know where I need to look.” Viktor paused, tone hardening. “I have a note from the Mistress if you need it.”
Shaking her head, Elizabeth drew back from the threshold of the door. “No, that won’t be necessary. He’ll be out in a minute.” She shut the door as Viktor was opening his mouth.
Turning, she faced Cesare, his arm falling away without mention. She motioned for him to follow her across the room, waiting until they were far away from the door before starting. “You have to go with him, it’s part of the mandate of the school.”
“I don’t understand,” Cesare said.
She eyed the door, juggling things that needed saying vs the time they had. “I can’t explain it all and I’m sure Viktor will cover it. Some teachers have extra duties that extend outside the school, and when they get missions, they can request a student's help. Usually we need their parent’s permission, but you don’t have a guardian.”
Walking to his duffel, he slung it over his shoulder when her words stopped him. “Do you have your things with you?”
He paused at the way she said it and the darting look she gave to the stone table. They didn’t talk about the weapons he brewed in the shed. She liked having him around, but cooking up high explosives and distilled poisons wasn’t anyone’s idea of a good guest. That she was asking said a lot, none of it good.
Cesare let his bag settle to the ground. “I think we have a little time for that explanation after all.”
Elizabeth looked at the door before facing him. “Once away from the school anything can happen, and you won’t have me and the others watching your back. The first rule for missions is to make it back. I don’t know what you'll face but I don’t like the feel of this. Viktor would have had to swing it by Jerold to get permission, and the Mistress is the only one that could have signed off on them taking you.”
Shaking his head, Cesare’s muscles tensed, body thrumming with violence tightly leashed. There were days when Cesare thought life was trying to kill him, other days he knew it was. Smiling at the grim humor, he started filling his pockets and bags with tricks he’d cooked up.
Slipping the strap across his back, he headed for the door. “Let the others know where I’ve gone if I don’t show up on Monday.” He couldn’t spare her a look. He needed all his love for himself.