Putting her iPad away, Alexandra started for the school, Anastasia falling into step beside her with an equally grim face. Miss Raven had come by the Vulpes and told them Viktor had chosen Cesare for a mission. The war with the Illuminati didn’t stop for school, she knew the power housed at the school wouldn’t be allowed to lie idle for long.
Alexandra had surged with pride at Cesare being chosen. She didn’t like the dirty animal with his grasping hands and leering eyes, but she respected his reputation and ability. That Viktor was one of the best was born out when she went toe to toe with him. While it had been humiliating to fail in front of Cesare, it had shown her how far she had to grow. It had given her the courage to ask Cesare for training, something she’d been too embarrassed to ask for before that point.
The two of them hit the stairs two at a time, students scattering from their path as they moved through the halls. A thrill of near arousal spiked through her at the fear on the kids’ faces. This fear differed from the diseased revulsion people felt at her presence, this fear was birthed in the squirming womb of guilt. They were the guiding hand of god come to smite the sinners, and Alexandra felt an ecstatic joy at the pureness of it.
She felt the same rush when they crushed a bully, seeing their petty egos shatter under Cesare’s ruthless cruelty never got old. They were slime, self-important dictators devoid of honor, growing fat off the strips of quivering flesh they cut from the innocent. This is what it meant to be Christian, fighting the good fight for those that couldn't. She was a tiger, but she was done asking forgiveness for being born. She was a killer, a reaper of monsters, but she could be a protector of the innocent, a beacon for those looking for the light of Christ. Alexandra had never questioned what her power was for, to live for God, to kill for the Order. She knew how to follow orders, but she'd never had anyone care enough to teach her how to live in Gods Grace. Cesare was the one to show her that loving Christ meant more than following orders.
They bypassed the cafeteria and headed straight for Miss Raven’s class. Alexandra hesitated on the threshold, less than a flicker, a mere twitch of liquid instinct. She didn’t like this room, the skim of foulness that oozed over her skin, turning her stomach with oily questing fingers. It defiled the air with its presence, mocking God by twisting reality from ordained truth.
She entered the room with gritted teeth, the blanket of heathen spawned waste enfolding her in its perverse caress, taking gleeful delight in fouling her consecrated body. She knew Cesare felt at home in this bubble of corruption, but she never did. This was a place dedicated to alien forces that drowned the world in hideous beliefs. This was one of their strongholds, and she walked into it like she would any enemies fortress, head held high, ready to kill.
Miss Raven looked up as they entered, eyes lighting as they darted over the two before flattening with indifference when she realized Cesare wasn’t with them. “The mission must be taking longer than Viktor thought.” Alexandra wondered who she was trying to convince.
Taking her seat, Alexandra slowly laid her books out as she looked at the empty seat next to her. It wasn’t right, he should be next to her. This was when she helped him, the only place he wore that shy smile of thanks. She knew how much he treasured this time, when he could bask in someone spending time on him.
She caught Anastasia’s eyes on the seat, an echo of Alexandra's anger lighting the girls eyes. Briefly their eyes met before the akatharton turned away and pulled on her headphones, retreating into the otherworld Cesare had crafted for her.
Sighing, Alexandra took up her iPad, starting the next verse of her Bible. Without Cesare, they didn't have anything to do. They were so far ahead of the class, that being here was more a joke than anything. They'd stayed because of Cesare.
The class slowly filled with students; smiles and smirks blooming like mushrooms in shit across faces as they marked the empty seat. They hated him for everything he was, and a lot he'd never be. She remembered with crystalline malice the times they'd singled him out, cutting words, bruising looks, anything they could weaponize to make him feel small. Grinning, the kids lapped up his pain with vicious smile's dripping poison.
They hated Cesare, despite, or because of that, he was a figure of endless fascination. Everyone knew his name, the stories of what he might have done told and retold over and over. They didn't realize they talked about him more than the girls combined. As much as they despised him for being damnati, they admired his standing against everyone and everything. His capturing the friendship of the two lethally gorgeous girls didn't hurt.
The door closed silently by itself behind the last student. Standing, Miss Raven looked out at the class as whispers rustled between students, everyone speculating on Cesare. Under her menacing stare the whispers died with the speed of terror. “We're going to .…”
A tentative knock at the door cut Miss Raven off. The door swung open silently, an unimpressive boy in a student’s uniform looking in. Average height, slim in the way of male models, he owned an almost emaciated look that passed for strength to the ignorant. Black hair hung in gleaming waves to his shoulders, paired with a finely boned face struggling to qualify as masculine.
“Yes?” Miss. Raven asked with a distinct lack of patience.
Bowing slightly, the boy held out a carefully folded paper. “I’m your new student, Miss Raven.”
Reading the note, Miss Raven's eyes narrowed, the room growing cold with anger. Ravens perked up under the fey threads that spilled into the air, rustling and stretching, feathers slicking down, blades of malignity glaring down at the kids. The students froze in that eldritch current, room swelling with terrible power, unseen forces towered above them, a tidal wave that threatened to drown them at any moment.
Shuddering, the boy sidestepped the simmering teacher. Seeing the safety of an empty desk, he made for it with single minded desperation. It just happened to be Cesare’s desk. Standing in a flash of black, Alexandra glared at the boy, baring his way, her low his cutting through fangs dimpling her lower lip.
Already pale, he went milk white under her eyes. “That desk's taken.” She hadn’t attacked him, but she'd kill him before she let him sit in her Lords seat.
Swallowing, the boy looked around at the full class, fear shading his whisper. “It’s the only one open.”
From the opposite side of the desk, Anastasia stood, black tides of unholy Ebon Flames churning in void empty eyes, glittering serpents writhing in darkness. “The floor is empty, if you try to sit in the desk, I’ll kill you before your ass hits the seat.”
Ducking his head, the boy backed away. “Yoshisune Doku No Hane,” Miss Raven said, the boy pivoted away from the girls to face the seething teacher. “It says you’re a new placement, how new?”
“Mr. Blood picked me up this weekend,” Yoshisune said, looking around in terror spiced confusion.
Alexandra’s body thrummed with a vicious stew of violence, blood thrumming with cruelty, begging to rip the answer from the pretty bit of fluff. Anastasia’s desk burned with a crackling sound, hands wreathed in malignant flame, tongues of perversion charring the wood on contact.
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“Cesare.” Alexandra stalked into the boy’s space, closing the three-pointed noose with the other women. “Where. Is. Cesare?”
Caught in her brutal eyes, shame flooded his face, whispered words falling from stiff lips. “We left him for the Hounds.”
Rage consumed the world, turning it into a red coated thing of flayed flesh. Steel was her body, a blade for a soul, a beating engine for a heart. She was a thing of death, a lethal object that killed and butchered the meat of the world. Sound swirled around her, but the words were nothing more than white noise, only the fleshy thing she held in her hands mattered.
She held the boy above the ground, strangling the thing that had left her Cesare. Slowly, she closed her hand with a relish that flared in green eyes. Flailing, he kicked at her, the thuds of his feet nothing compared to the steel of her body, his struggles pitiful things, the desperation of a puppy caught in the jaws of a tiger.
A hand gripped her arm breaking the euphoria of the moment. Tracing the violating thing back, Alexandra faced Elizabeth. “Let him down. Do you really think he could have saved Cesare from the Hounds? We need to know what happened.” They didn’t understand, none of them did. She wanted him dead because he was here, Yoshisune should have died before leaving Cesare. It didn’t matter that the boy couldn’t do anything, that he’d her Lord was sin enough. Cesare would have understood; he would have accepted her need.
Alexandra released the gasping boy. Falling into a heap, Yoshisune desperately pulled air into starved lungs, skittering back on all fours until he hit the wall. “Your friends of his?” Yoshisune asked, looking at the women that stood around him with pitiless expressions. “I’m sorry, I tried to get Viktor to go back, but he said there was no point, that Cesare was already dead.”
Hissing came from the floor as thick, as thick viscous drops of Ebon Flame melted stone. Anastasia looked down on the boy with death in her eyes, not for the boy at their feet, she was seeing Viktor boiling in her flames.
“Viktor.” The word was a hiss of savagery that sent the class shivering at the raw, exposed hatred.
The three of them turned as one, the door slammed open, ravens boiling from their shelves and branches, streaming out with cruel eyes. “Find him. Find the man who abandoned what's ours.” Elizabeth’s words chased the last bird from the room.
Miss Raven lead them into the hallways a bare step behind the cloud of deaths favored. The teachers head tilted as her family scoured the school for the faithless beast. She was more than a fighter; she was a prodigy the vampiric arts of the Sanguinem Scientiam. Cesare’s blood ran in her veins, potent, strong, and fey, black as her heart, smooth as a razors kiss, as cruel as his eyes, pitiless in its unsurpassed power. Ambrosia of a crimson God, it came gleefully to her call. Scarlet power screamed through her body, malicious prana binding to cells, branding bones, firing along neurons, the world becoming a breakable thing under new eyes.
Strength beyond human filled her muscles, transforming them into steel cables, speed that defied sight coated her body in a sheath of physics defying power, blood flooded soft tissue armoring her against the world. His blood pushed her finely honed skills beyond the reach of any vampire her age, gifting her with power reserved for those centuries her elder. A secret intimacy she'd never get to share with him now.
If they'd left Cesare to the Hounds, he was dead. No one escaped the Hounds jaws; her only prayer was a clean death, one the sadists of the Illuminati granted few. The Hounds were known for vivisecting their prisoners in their never-ending quest to refine the extermination of the Umbrae Lunae. She’d strip Viktor’s skin from his body by inches, salt the weeping flesh, lap up his mewling cries of agony.
“He’s with the Mistress,” Miss Raven said, sterilized things the words were exacting scalpels. Exploding into a conspiracy of ravens, her flesh was gone, replaced by black shadows, tainted claws, beaks of glossy death. The reverberation of her power shuddered down the hallway, stone groaning under blooming of eldritch corruption. Pouring down the corridor in a river of deadly black feathers and hellish caws, a cold, frozen fury rushed ahead of her, promising only slow death.
Flashing forward with vampiric speed, Alexandra stepped between seconds, the world a thing of slow particles and still movement. Quicksilver sheathed in God’s crimson hand, the beat of Cesare’s murderous blood her heartbeat. With his tortured gift riding her hard the world was less, weakness glaring out at her in its viscous slowness, her own body saturated with untamed savagery.
Breathing controlled and steady, Anastasia sprinted alongside, far slower than the others, but kept within the pack by need. They climbed the stairs without slowing, ravens spiraling up story after story, wings beating a steady drum beat of vengeance.
They hit the top landing without missing a step, ravens flashing into Miss Raven’s human form. “Anastasia.” The order was hardly out before black flames roared at the door, obliterating it in a flash of cinders and shattered wood. All but one of the group inside the room covered up as they were peppered with flaming wreckage.
“Cesare.” Cloying, corrupting power drowned the world in its rotting touch, the very stones of the castle shuddered under the Imperatrix Terra’s bared power. Quivering, the tower rippled as the earth moved to its beloved daughters rage. Anastasia slipped around the side of Miss Raven, taking an angle that allowed her to cover the room. Alexandra stepped to the teacher’s other side, locking onto the animal that had left her Lord behind.
“Hold Imperatrix Terra, until we know the story.” The void like cold of the Mistress swept through the room, devouring Miss Raven’s power. With its endless bounty, the Earth faced off against the voids gnawing hunger. The forces locked, that which could never be satiated facing the everlasting.
Miss Raven's eyes never left Viktor’s bloodless face. “The earth will not be denied. I demand what was promised me.”
The sucking power of the void pulled back, no longer struggling to consume that which was the foundations of life. “The pact will be honored. What is yours will be respected. Cesare Nietzsche was a student here; he is not one of your kin as defined by the agreement.”
Eyes blazing with the power of the ever living earth, Miss Raven faced the soulless orbs of the Mistress. “The Roots of Yggdrasil have been nourished by his blood. He's been welcomed by the Lady of the Crossroads and the Lord of the Wild.” The words shook the castle as the earth rumbled with unbound power. Woken by its beloved daughters unleashed temper, the campus outside groaned at her unstoppable power, the stone of the castle resounding in sympathy at its mother wrath.
Calm and untroubled, the Mistress matched eyes with Miss. Raven. “I accept your claiming of Cesare Nietzsche as kin to Elizabeth Raven. What the Earth claims, the Void respects, let him be contained in her womb, cradled in the Earths Embrace. Should the man child be dead, you may exact your vengeance. The Void has spoken, so mote it be.” The words tore through the air, leaving a raw, weeping laceration in its wake.
“So mote it be,” Miss Raven answered, the words healing the breach in a pact that harkened back to a time when profane Gods walked the earth.
Turning soulless eyes on Viktor Blood, the Mistress words were dismissive. “You can recite the end of your mission and reasons for the abandonment of Cesare Nietzsche, Kin of the Earth.”
Standing tall, Viktor's eyes flicked over the forces arrayed against him. Alexandra had to give it to him, he wasn’t a coward, he faced them with a confidence born of thousands of life and death fights. He'd make worthy prey; she would make a nice pair of boots from his hide. She’d like that, walking through shit in boots made from his face.
“We found the boy .…” Viktor stopped in consideration. “No, Cesare found the boy, I just walked up on them. From beginning to end, Cesare made this mission a success. He was the one that knew who to talk to and how to get them to give up the kid. He convinced the kid to come back.”
Sighing, Viktor ran a hand through his hair, smoothing back his tangled mane. “Something was off the moment we got the kid. It went to shit when we hit the hotel. The Hounds attacked from three directions, they tied me up with a tank, hammering us from established lines of fire. I was filling the bruiser with lead when he stepped out of the room.”
Shaking his head, Viktor’s mouth thinned. “I didn’t want to leave Cesare, but once Andras Twin Souled showed up, I knew I had to get out if I wanted to secure the Doku No Hane.” Pained surprise added an edge to the rage that pulsed in the room. Andras Twin Souled was the left hand of Lucifer, his mortal instrument in the world, only sent out on the Seraphim’s personal missions. If he was involved, it had gone from bad to apocalyptic.
“So you choose between Cesare and Yoshisune?” Alexandra said while the others grappled with Viktor’s words.
Avoiding the vampires eyes, the man’s words filled the room. “I had to make a choice. I like the kid, even if he is a pain in the ass, but you know the facts of our world.” Raising his head, he faced their scorn. “Cesare has no clan, no people, no Imperium or Sceptrum. He’s nothing but a damnati. Yoshisune has a claim to a clan with holdings, allies, political, and personal power. I had to choose between assets, and I chose the one that was worth the most.”