“You staying the night?” Viktor asked in an open offer. It was the simple confidence of a man who knew he was what women dreamed about.
Lady Kali squeezed Cesare’s hand. “No, I’ll be leaving in a few hours. I can’t be away for long, too much going on.”
Shrugging, the man let his eyes drift across her body. “Maybe next time.” He spun around and walked away.
“I’d like to see the training you’re going through. I’ve heard you talk about it, and my daughter keeps me up to date, but I’d like to see it in action,” Lady Kali said. There was more going on in her eyes than he liked, but it was her daughter he was training. With that in mind, he agreed with only the briefest of looks at an eager Anastasia.
Lady Kali filled the silence with questions for her daughter. Avoiding training and dysfunctional relationships, Lady Kali drilled into how Anastasia was treated by the students and faculty. It wasn't long before the incident with the pictures came up. The Dark Mother wanted to know everything from what the pictures looked like to the confrontations with the gladiators and Abraxas.
She went silent after Cesare gave her the final part of his talk with Abraxas. Each of them slowed when they hit the trail into the woods. Elizabeth slipped into the lead, the forest moving aside for its beloved daughter.
“He won’t stop,” Lady Kali said, the words drawing looks from the other women. “He can’t, not with everything on the line. Abraxas and Jerold have too much to lose. They’ve been pushed into either winning and being the men who butchered the pretenders, or the Thagirion that let a thousand years of tradition burn”
Cesare had known what he was getting into when he’d pushed them into this. He’d picked a fight and now he had to put up or get buried. It was an all-or-nothing kind of bet, glory or death. A person who hadn’t lived the way he had might have hesitated. But on the streets, you were lucky to get a fifty-fifty toss of the bones.
Lady Kali studied him for a long minute while the others shot them sidelong looks. “If you didn’t hold my daughter’s life in your hands, I’d take you from this. Honor, money, woman, and glory would be yours for the taking. You’d make a devastating general; the world would be ours to fuck and kill across.”
Anastasia stumbled, shocked at the offer. But it was nothing compared to the raw hate that rushed through Alexandra’s face at the suggestion Kali might take him away. “Be at ease Daughter of the Dragon, he wouldn’t accept. I know where his heart lies, and while I may have a piece, I don’t own the whole … yet.” She smiled into the vampire’s deadly hiss.
Turning away from the furious vampire, Kali met Cesare’s eyes. “If the clans knew what your teachings can do, they’d send the Venator to liquidate you. Your name is already whispered as an asset to be acquired at the first opportunity.” She held up her hand, killing the words before they could be born. “Insightful, intelligent, with a remarkable gift for combining Umbrae Lunae gifts and the weapons of man. Viktor's value isn't his ability to kill with a spoon, but his skill in teaching others to do it. One powerful warrior is still just one warrior, but a man that can gift that power to others is legion. And Viktor possesses a fraction of your raw talent.”
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder, face tight with concern. Alexandra held herself back by the thinnest of margins, knowing this wasn’t a casual conversation, it was a job offer. Stumbling over the uneven ground, Anastasia refused to take her eyes off her mom. They'd been aware on some level of how extraordinary Cesare was, but none of them had looked at how those skills could be used in the wider world.
“The clans can’t be hurting that bad.” He’d never looked at how he could fit into Umbrae Lunae society. His future had only ever been two roads, shit manual labor jobs and tenderizing kids with more brawn than brains. Either way, the shadows of the Umbrae Lunae had always been destined for others.
“Generals are like fish, they go bad after an astonishingly short time. Products of their time, most are locked into a way of thinking, it’s the curse of our long life's. Brought up in a culture that revere's the old ways of tooth and talon, bombs, guns, chemical warfare, and modern tactics, are seen as lesser, failed technologies of man. Those that are pushed into embracing the new weapons of this century, do so reluctantly and incompetently. Alexander the Great made use of cavalry in a way new for his age, Ragnar Lothbrok used ships centuries more advanced than anyone on the seas to raid entire countries, Shogun Nobunaga realized the potential of rifles and conquered Japan. They possessed men’s hearts and minds, owning their flesh. More than that, they forged them into incomparable weapons of their time. You may not see it, but you have the potential to reshape the world. People will want to make sure you reshape it in their favor,” Lady Kali said with a significant look.
She wasn’t only talking about others; she was talking about herself. People at the top had a vested interest in things staying status quo. To reach the height of gods, they’d built pyramids out of the bodies of the ones they’d killed, raped, and tortured, millions dying slow and cruel to feed one abomination’s need for power. They wouldn't let that butchery go to waste. Evil endured, its gluttonous brutality eternal in a way good could never be.
Cesare let go of Lady Kali’s words as they walked into Raven's Rest. Nothing would be decided today or tomorrow. He had more than enough time to think it over and decide what he wanted, both about her offer and the threat under it.
Lady Kali took in the broken, charred, and melted, remains of the bamboo men. Anastasia had taken to shattering the men with an almost religious zeal. Each one she blew apart drew a savage smile across her face.
“I usually meditate for an hour or two before we start the exercises,” Anastasia said, gesturing to the spot she'd chosen for her meditation area.
“What do you do while she’s meditating?” Lady Kali asked, eyes tracing over the area, settling on the scuffed area of torn grass where Alexandra and Cesare used.
Cesare spared Alexandra a look before answering. “We usually spar.”
Lady Kali’s eyebrows rose at the answer. “That, I'd like to see.”
Alexandra cut quietly into the conversation, staring a challenge at Lady Kali. “I’d be glad to show you.”
The vampire was already making for the area by the time Cesare got his mouth open in protest. Closing his mouth, he took in the interested looks from the women. Not just Lady Kali but Elizabeth and Anastasia. None of them had seen the two spar, and all of them were interested in seeing the fight. His odds of getting out of a public display of what had always been private were fuck all.
Pivoting, he joined the vampire in the area they’d mapped out for their use. The midnight sin black of her new jacket reduced her school uniform to a narrow slice of dark blue skirt and pristine white shirt. The silver of her necklace hung still and threatening between her breasts. Her feet settled, muscles shifting, balanced and ready, eyes sharpening with lethal intent.
Neither of them made to take off the jackets. They meant too much for them to remove, and a killer learned to fight in what they had on. Death didn’t wait for you to stretch and change clothes.
Cesare’s body loosened, changing like mercury between one step and the next, his center of gravity taking on a floating solidness. Hands, shoulders, and hips unlocked as muscles heated in preparation. The moment engulfed him, pulling him into the still depths of his mind.
Wild instincts fired, lighting his mind in a technicolor landscape of carnage. Information rushed at him in a torrent he rode with the easy grace of long practice. The black wolf had worked him over during every session with Tamlin, changing him by inches into a carnivore. Overwriting the weakness of the omnivore, replacing his instincts with a predator’s hunger.
A smile stretched his lips, fierce, needy, and barbarous, naked in its want. Alexandra's was a savage echo of his untamed anticipation, the dance of dominance, the quenching of their bloody needs.
Surging forward, she entered his space, every line of her body a challenge. Darting punches snapped in blurs of force, seeking to ground in his face. Weaving between them, Cesare’s hands slapped the punches aside. Bending back with sinuous grace, he slipped under her onslaught, leg unfurling in a teep kick that snapped into her middle. Lifting the vampire, the kick threw her back and out of range. It was an impossible move for anyone who hadn’t spent months contorting their spine and exhaustively working on their balance.
Alexandra blurred back, snapping a low kick at his leg, intending to break his stance and open his defense. Planting both feet, he twisted, taking the kick on his meaty thigh, body rippling with the force but his foundation staying sure. Stepping close, his knee came up, body jackknifing backward, adding explosive power, folding her over the spear of bone.
Arching down, his elbow exploded into the back of her head, a blow that would kill a normal if it had power behind it. Collapsing to the side of his knee, she twirled up with a razor’s cold smile of pride shining in her eyes at his win.
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Her punches blew through his blocks as she used her superior strength to shatter his armor. Moving from side to side, he dodged as best he could, drawing her into angles that left her on the wrong foot. With a blur of bone breaking force, her kick hit his ribs, meat bruising as slats quivered. Slumping over the kick, he grasped her leg and rolled away, trying to pull her out of her stance.
The exchanges sped up as they lost themselves in each other, force climbing with their need to dominate, wild souls racing to the edge of murderous desires. A snarl stretched across her face, a low hiss of gnawing appetite cutting through her fangs as she tore holes in his guard. He met her punches with lightning jabs of his own, peppering her face and body with small irritants, shocking her out of rhythm.
She was unstoppable power, barreling forward, confidant that her strength and speed would overcome anything in her way. Wisps of shadow and darting movement, Cesare snapped at any vulnerable place. Twisting with serpentine movements, he slid into impossible angles and hitting with the one-pointed force of his body. The only way to win was to wear her down, hunt the weakness in a carved second when her flesh was open.
Faces locked in terrible lines of savagery, lips pulled back, teeth clenched in snarls of hate, skintight as stranglers wire, there was no give in them. Longing soaked every brutal attack, sadistic pleasure taken with every grunt of pain, triumph at every back step. Violence poured into the air, tainting it with savage delights. Every mask shredded under animal need, only truth remained, two animals hunting pain, glory in dominance.
They stepped away, lost in each other's eyes. Her need reached out to him with clawed hands, his own lust burning through his blood. Each step was a struggle to keep from rushing back into the fight, to carve his dominance on her flesh, drown her in blood, to take that beautiful body and sate his need in her flesh.
The moment tore through him as he turned, catching the five-foot missile that swarmed into his arms, lips searing his mouth with passion. So close on the heels of the fight, with wild desire still cutting his heart, he was a sawmill with a torch thrown in.
Cesare’s lips opened, his tongue pushing into Lady Kali’s mouth, raw with desire, her own tongue fought to keep up and failed. He devoured her, taking her essence into his body and soul. She moaned into his mouth, painfully fisting her hands in his hair.
Lady Kali’s body burned with a sexual flame, a wave of heat washing over Cesare. His hands ran down her back, pushing into her jeans, glorying in bare flesh as he cupped her ass and pulled her into his hardness. A low, hungry growl rumbled from him as she wrapped her legs around him in wanton desire, grinding her core into him.
Cesare's lips trailed down her jaw, licking the length of her jugular. Baring porcelain white skin, she moaned with worshipful lips. “Mark me, fuck me, do something!” Smiling, he teased the flesh over her jugular, wanting to savage the skin and mark her as his. With a flash he realized it would just be one mark among many, meaning as little to her as all the others men had given her.
He let her down slowly, desire flaring into a tsunami of heated flesh and frustrated want. Kali groaned in disappointment as he took his hands out of her pants and stepped back. Flushed with raw, bleeding want, her hands fisted in his hair. “You can’t be mine and everyone else’s. I won’t mark what I can't own.”
With a sigh of frustrated want, she released her grip. “I swear if that wasn’t one of the best kisses I’d ever gotten, I’d beat you bloody for leaving me wet and hungry. Why does it always have to be so fucking complicated with you?” Cesare quirked a smile at her plaintive tone.
“Seems your daughter could agree with that,” Cesare said with a look at Anastasia. Flushed, the girl was caught between fury at her mother and agreement with Lady Kali’s words.
Lady Kali’s hand slid into his jacket, running down his angular, starved chest possessively. “You were gorgeous, Cesare. A living weapon, grace and maleness mated to brutal violence. I wasn’t sure what I'd see, but I never thought I'd see that.” She looked at the vampire. “You were made for each other; I’ve never seen the like of it. The raw violence and sexual need, the primal hunger and desire, savage and cruel, it was the distillation of what it means to be Umbrae Lunae. The purest parts of our souls. Fantastic. Beautiful. Arousing.”
Elizabeth flushed at the woman’s words, but no protest passed her lips, her own eyes holding an echo of need. Anastasia faced him fearlessly, desire darkening her eyes. Alexandra met his eyes squarely as she flushed from Lady Kali’s words, they’d always side stepped the sexual part of their spars. Now he understood why she’d insisted on the fight. She wanted them to know she shared something with him they'd never have.
It meant nothing. None of them liked him enough to be with him for more than a quick fuck. They didn’t want him, they wanted something he'd never be. The shadows of malformed dreams crowded between them.
Stepping around the small immortal, Cesare faced her daughter. “Looks like you're up, Anastasia.”
They weren’t stupid, everyone knew the road his thoughts had taken. No reassurances were given, because none would be accepted. It was the way it was, and no one was willing to change enough to make it work. Not even him.
Stopping in front of the shooting range, Anastasia stepped in front of him. Cesare held his arms steady, waiting for her to make the move. It was petty, and he knew it for what it was, a game to show his control. She'd have to come to him. He wanted that, needed it after being flayed by the thoughts that thrashed, hooked and barbed through his soul.
She stepped back without a moment's hesitation, shoulders, back, and ass molding to his body. She placed his hands on her hips, pushing them down over the school skirt, drawing the fabric tight across her core as she settled his hands on her inner thighs.
Covering his hands with her own, her words were quiet but not so soft that the others wouldn’t hear. “I do love you, Cesare.” Wistfully tracing his fingers, she continued, “I’d burn this fucking school to the ground for you. But you can’t give me what I want, I need a man that comes with alliances, power, family, and clan. I won’t betray my dreams for you.”
Cesare breathed in her scent, an intoxicating mixture of sweat and jasmine. Pulling her tight, he kissed the ravaged, coarse flesh of her neck. “I know. You have to be who you are, and I have to be who I am. I wish I could give you the easy you’re looking for, but I can’t.”
It was a fight they couldn't win. Butchering each other day by day, cutting off the pieces they hated, slicing into the things that disgusted them, madly trying to make the other into what they needed them to be. Yet they didn't want to be anywhere else. Sometimes hell was better than being alone.
His voice changed, smooth as velvet shadows across a lover’s body, as hypnotic as the sway of a woman’s hips. “Feel the abyss that burns. The wash of heat spreading tendrils up from its glittering shadows. Answer the pull of the black tide, let its currents wrap around and guide you into the greater night.”
Anastasia relaxed into the mindscape he wove, leaving reality for his honeyed illusion. They’d seen the power of Anastasia’s soul, but power was a fickle thing, meaningless without precision. The strongest man in the world was nothing more than meat if he couldn’t hit the target.
She had the power, now she needed the skill. The ability to hit with pinpoint accuracy. They'd trained her ability like a gun, binding it to the laws of man. Cesare knew it was more than that.
“Call the flame to you, reach into the abyss, pull a tendril of spite from the ocean of hate.” Smooth and effortless, her mind and body fused into a pure expression beyond the fragmentary warring parts as she raised her hand palm up.
Black flame surged into being, lancing through the air with claws of fire, greedily grasping for life in any form. “Infuse the fire with your hunger. Picture your dreams, your wants, the desire that twists your guts and sears your soul. Feed the flame and make it yours.” Glittering with dense malice, the flame thrummed with hate, cruelty given form.
“Feel the connection.” The soft words whispered through the air, pushing Anastasia deeper into the abyss of her mind, breaking down barriers, shattering restraints, strangling the protests of her conscious mind. Fusing Anastasia and the Ebon Flame into one.
“The flame's birthed from your soul. An extension of who you are, no different than your hand. You are the Ebon Flame.” Cesare's breath flowed over tortured skin as he held her relaxed and supple body against him. “I want you to curve the flame around the dummy and hit the bamboo man behind it.”
“I … can’t …” Her words were slow and wavering, conviction unsteady in the face of his command.
“Trust me. The flame bends to your will, obeys your rule. You're not the servant; you're the master.” Smooth and steady, he weaponized the things she treasured, strangling her protests. She would never admit to not trusting him, not after the agony she went through when he was hurt. And she could never see herself as anything but dominate, the idea she'd be a slave was anathema to who she thought she was.
“Let the tendril go,” Cesare said.
Casting her hand forward, the tendril of hateful flame wavered across the ground, lacking the speed of her other attacks. It was slow and methodical, the sable torrent seeming a failure. But this one was special; she controlled its life. Flickering with uncertain light, it hovered hesitantly above the first bamboo man, before surging down and hammering into the one behind it.
Sagging against him, her words were breathless with awe. “I did it …. I did it … By the Darkness, I did it!”
Coming up beside them, Lady Kali's eyes were trained on the targets. “We call it the Tongue of the Abyss,” she said as she took in the two of them, eyes resting on the intimate way his hands held Anastasia. “The Ebon Flame is more than a gun to be pointed and shot. It's the core of who we are, the force that birthed me in the lost mists beyond time. Love gone wrong, lust turned to violence, black jealousy, envy when it grows old and vicious, the more we understand the soiled parts of ourselves, the more power we can draw from it. Be careful you don’t get lost.”
Anastasia straightened, caressing the hands that rested on her inner thighs. “I won’t get lost,” she said with a challenging look.
Smiling at her, Lady Kali switched her gaze to Cesare. “You have a better anchor than most.”
Cesare and Anastasia separated with the ease of lovers that knew each other's body’s as well as their own. She wasn’t shy and anything she had he’d seen, touched, and cleaned before. They were comfortable in a way it took decades of married to get.
Kali wrapped an arm around his waist as they left the clearing, snugging herself into his side. It was the most natural thing in the world for Cesare’s arm to fall around her shoulders. She was as unpredictable as a rattlesnake and as deadly as a crocodile, but that was part of her charm.
“You’ll write?” The quiet words drifted in the air with the shy life of tender things.
“Of course.” He tried to keep in contact, but it was spottier on his end than hers. He always seemed to be racing toward an event or away from a tragedy, either way left little time to write.
With torn suits and dirt smeared faces, the harem waited where the forest gave way to grass. Despite their best efforts, they looked like they’d lost a fight with a mud puddle. They weren't any less deadly for being bitch slapped, a Glock covered in mud kills you just as dead. Elizabeth had taught them whose land they walked on, but Cesare was the one they'd blame for it.
Lady Kali stopped as they caught sight of her harem, a sigh gusting from her. Turning into him, she got on her tip toes for a gentle kiss, her words the shade of a whisper. “Don’t forget me.”
Squaring her shoulders, she walked into the midst of her servants and jailors. Step-by-step, power gathered around her, transforming the carefree immortal into a deadly creature of elemental destruction that ruled the lives of thousands with casual skill.