Monday February 2nd 2015

Stepping out, his eye caught on the note taped to his door. Pulling it off, he looked up and down the dark corridor. Whoever had put it up hadn't stuck around to talk.

Outside Miss. Falcov’s class before lunch.

Help

Simple and to the point, without a signature to follow up on. He slid the note into his back pocket. It had been a little less than a week since they’d come out as an alternative to the Thagirion. Like a working girl measuring a John in the small hours when darkness is hard, a pocket dead from a pimps need for meth, and a babe starving at home, Cesare couldn’t pass it up.

The Serpens Lacum was dark, only a few lights let bathroom breakers see their way down the halls. Cesare slipped through the shadows with the confidence of a born dweller. Those the night had birthed found safety in silence and blessings in darkness. People hurt you, they lied, cheated, and beat you, but darkness stretched its cold grace to all its children. It hid the scars across your body and the broken pieces of your soul within its velvet embrace, you could imagine you weren’t the maimed monster of the story when you hid in blessed night.

Passing the girls on the stairs, he admired their new jackets. Skin cut from midnights glossy flesh flowed over their bodies, molding to breasts and running over the smooth curve of hips. The ebony coats had cost more than Cesare would see in a lifetime of hustle. Taking in how the glittering black liquid material cradled Anastasia's breasts he knew it was worth every penny.

Facing the Akatharton’s knowing smirk he handed the note over with a wry grin. “I found that on my door.”

She passed it back after a quick read, it would be a violation of the natural order of the universe for her to give it to Alexandra. Smiling, he handed it to the vampire.

“Someone desperate enough to ask for help from an unknown,” Anastasia said.

“Or a trap,” Alexandra corrected, handing the note back.

“Either way, we need to follow it up. This is what we’ve been waiting for. Trap or chance, it doesn’t matter, this is where we start making a name for ourselves,” Cesare said.

Taking the stairs outside the school two at a time, they leapt up them in a wave of black. The school had turned into an armed encampment, the only people who had their backs were the ones walking beside them. They all had a stake in making this work, but the eerie silence from the Thagirion sawed along the nerves, tightening the stitches that bound them together.

The kid’s heads jerked up as they pushed the cafeteria doors open, giving them quick looks before turning back to their books. In a way, this was the group Anastasia was trying to help. These kids were the next professors, professionals, and business owners, the bedrock of the Umbrae Lunae. Book worms, nerds, losers, and cast offs, they had the brains and drive to make something of themselves. Anyone willing to get up this early and spend their mornings studying had a fire that would take them far.

Someday they'd have the kind of bank accounts Cesare could only dream of. Nice houses, good kids, and fabulous vacations, but right now, they were meat for the grinder. No one cared about their potential or what they would be. Maybe ten percent would make it out of school without needing therapy. Ninety percent would be birthed anew in these hallowed halls into the dead eyed souls of the violated, only able to know clean by looking into a past before Primrose. Their lives tainted by a shit skim of defilement, images of violation, shame, and humiliation riding their flesh.

Taking his seat, he swept his eyes over the crowd, looking for the signs of breakage. The slumped shoulders, quiver of hands, nervous looks at the door, the signs of cracking souls. A few showed the cancerous growths, others were buried too deep to pull out, cutting themselves off from others, hunched around the last good parts they had. Armored in castles of books, weapons of words, sustaining themselves on dreams of the future.

Studying with the girls, he listened to the low murmurs of working students and the quiet sounds of the cafeteria staff getting breakfast ready. Sounds were truthful, words lied, cut with jagged edges, and poisoned with honeyed innocence, but sound was honest. It was sound that told you when a predator came to the watering hole. The sudden quiet when a lion entered the area, the swift silence of a pack of wolves. Anastasia and Alexandra had never been prey; they didn’t know the signs or feel the tension that entered a room. He was the basset hound of the group, sniffing out the killers so the hunters could put them down.

As more students came in, the soft sounds of the morning were replaced by the teenage jungle. Most of the students at the school weren’t victimized by bullies, but it didn’t take repeated assaults to turn the whole into the malformed unable to look another man in the eye. It would be their job to prevent that from happening. It would be great if he knew how to do that.

Miss Raven's class was more a study period for the trio interspersed with a little work while they watched the class put together presentations. If something didn’t happen soon, he’d fail out and this would be his one and only year at Primrose. He was too far behind, with his low grades there was no way he'd pass.

With a nod at the clock to the others, he started getting his books into his ratty duffel. Taking his cue, the girls packed their own stuff into leather backpacks. Miss Raven raised an eyebrow at the sudden packing. “Miss Raven, can we be excused? We have another obligation.”

Raising an eyebrow, Miss Raven looked them over. “What kind of obligation?”

Cesare hesitated, he’d thought about this moment. The idea birthed months ago in an orgy of blood. But it was this moment, here, now, with the slime of the afterbirth smeared on its body that it would dare the world to strike it down. “The Furies hunt.”

The name resonated in the still room, possessing a gravity greater than the child's plaything it should have been. Elizabeth’s lips quirked into a smile equal parts relief and pride. “Good luck, and good hunting.”

They swept out of the still classroom under the student’s eyes. Stalking through the hallways, they were halfway there when the bell rang, and students flooded the hall. Bursting out of doors in a hungry tide of hormones, they froze in thresholds on sighting the grim-faced Furies.

A wide path opened for the Furies, protests rising from behind the stilled and frightened students that blocked the way. Specters of agony, the school didn’t know if they brought ruin or salvation, the only fact that permeated their names was pain. Nothing that crossed them had come out whole, each maimed for the touching.

They rounded the corner, students skittering out of their way in the nearly deserted hallway. Miss Falcov’s classroom was open, looking in on desks and a few lingering students, his eyes settled on the group blocking the hall. There were five of them, prowling around a boy. It was a classic, bullies circling, always someone behind the kid, pushing, shoving, low words that cut and sliced across the heart tangling in the air. The last stragglers of class shied away from the scene. Student’s eyes passed over the torture with the determination of the willfully blind, each kid crawlingly grateful not to be the punching bag today.

Locking onto the oncoming trio, the stragglers eyes widened. Stuck in place, they shifted back and forth between the hammer and the anvil. Taking the path of least resistance, they moved against the walls and out of the way, the hope of not getting caught in the crossfire fading from their eyes.

The silence of the hall tipped the scavengers off. Turning as one, the jackals faced the Furies. They weren’t big, if Cesare had met them in the halls, he wouldn’t have thought twice. They were just a group of kids that got off by beating the weak.

“Don’t bother,” Anastasia said, stopping the pale faced boys as they opened their mouth. “This stops now. Cesare …”

She didn't need to ask twice, not with the memories of the times he’d been trapped in that circle twisting around his soul like spite tipped barbed wire. His kick snapped out, collapsing the lead boys’ knee. Hitting the floor with his knees, Cesare was on him before his pain was old. A brutal head twist tossed the boy flat on the ground. Mounting his victim, Cesare snapped his blade out, the sound loud in the fear laden silence.

Arrowed down, the blade settled on the boys tightly closed eyelid, a single bead of crimson bubbling up from the razors point. “You might think of running to the Thagirion or the teachers, well, you can do that. I’ll get a slap on the wrist, and when the heat dies, I’ll peel you like a grape, and make you the one-eyed wonder.” Blackness unfurled from his voice, the claret from the innocent bled out under laughing eyes, pleasure lapped from the screams of babes, carnage washing over a wedding.

The boy whimpered, pissing himself in a spreading stain of wetness across his pants. Savage joy rushed through Cesare as the boy’s friends stumbled back from his cruel eyes. “Remember, I know where you sleep.” The boys swallowed, terror chasing sense from their eyes.

Getting to his feet with predatory grace, Cesare's masterful center of gravity kept him balanced and ready. He knew Alexandra was ready to tear through the boys at the first sign he’d lost control of them. Anastasia was poised at the perfect angle to consume the group in flames.

Rejoining the others, he was just in time to see Mrs. Falcov come out of her class. Convenient. How long had she known her student was being tortured? Was she ever going to stand for the rabbit, or was it simply easier to pretend it wasn’t happening? After all, it was hard to save a child's soul, you had to care.

“What’s going on here?” The boys stumbled back from Mrs. Falcov, the one on the ground scrambling to get up, scrubbing at his eyes.

“Nothing.” Stepping forward, Anastasia's word slipped easily into the silence. With Alexandra on one side and Cesare on the other, they formed an arrow pointed at the teacher, a fact Sarah was painfully aware of. It was one thing to deal with a student and another to face a team wedded to murder. An uneasy cloud drifted through the teacher’s eyes as realization's hit her one after another.

“I think he had an accident. Can he get permisson to go back to the Serpens Lacum to clean up?” Cesare said with a gesture at the front of the leader’s pants.

Sarah looked at the Furies for a long minute, quickly deciding this was a fight she didn't want, a fight no one wanted. “Of course, there’s no reason to humiliate him in front of the school. I’ll be right back.”

As soon as she left the doorway, the boy turned, eyes cast down submissively. “Why?”

Anastasia gave Cesare a questioning look before facing the boy. “We won't tolerate bullying. But we're not here to humiliate, we’re here to stop the humiliation.” Her voice carried down the halls with quiet authority. She wasn’t talking to the boy, she was talking to the school.

They didn’t wait for the boy to get his permission slip, instead sweeping out of the hallway under the silent, wondering eyes of the students. Anastasia looked over at him, studying his face with a fascination usually given to exotic poisons. “I've wanted to make a difference my whole life, to be revered and worshipped like my mother. In all those dreams, I never thought on how to do it. Who to protect and why, how far to push and when to pull back. Thank you.”

Cesare kept his silence as they walked, picking his words as the minute passed. “I know you want to make a difference; it doesn't matter why it happens. A man under the knife doesn’t care why you step in, only that you did. But you're right, you don’t know how to save them because you’ve never needed saving.”

Stopping, her hand clamped down on his arm, turning him to face her. Cesare’s eyes traced the tortured face he was so familiar with, valleys of translucent and maggot white flesh, red veins spider webbing in raggedly disjointed patterns. Her jaw was a mangled thing without straight lines, flesh bunching up in ridges and valleys.

A feverish light blazed in her dark eyes. “You’re wrong.” Her hand ran across his face with a wonderingly delicate touch. “You saved me, not just from the attack but every day after. You held me when no one would, showed me I was alive and beautiful, loved me when I didn’t love myself. You cared for me when I didn’t care for myself. No Cesare, I know exactly what it's like to be saved. I’m just selfish, I couldn’t see that he'd be broken by walking around with piss running down his pants and I wouldn’t have cared if I had. But you did.” She gently brushed sandpaper rough lips across his, branding him with her joy and pain.