Chapter 61: The Reject Chapter 7 - 2
Rocky held the cage open for him as he left. Cesare's hand settled onto the wolfs head as the bond filled with its pleasure. Slipping his bag onto his back, Cesare followed Ramona as she cut a path through the crowd. His caress moved down the wolfs spine, burying itself in the lush sable hair of its back.
Ramona left the door open to the Governor's office for him. The light from dozens of monitors played across the walls, blood and screams mangled into a tapestry of man's lust to maim. The cold creature that called this place home smiled; bone white teeth tinted neon from digital slaughter.
"You did well out there," the Governor said, tossing two envelopes on the tinted glass desk. Ramona gathered them up without comment. Taking a careful step back, she stood on the border between the two men. "I'd like to talk about your next fight. We're moving the fights .…"
Cesare cut him off quietly. "Sorry, but I'm going back to school. I won't be following the circuit."
Silence descended on the room as the Governor looked across the table at Cesare. Almost holding her breath, Ramona stood to the side as the two men's wills snapped and snarled in chilled air. Nodding to himself, the Governor broke the standoff. "I see; educations an important thing. I certainly won't get in the way of you bettering yourself." His eyes flickered down to the wolf, lips twisting in a self-deprecating smile. "I would shake your hand, but I don't think I'd get close enough. Just know, you'll always have a place here. Ramona can give you my cell if you decide to come back, either permanently or part time. It's been a true pleasure, Caine."
Ramona visibly relaxed at the man's words, tension draining from her body in a wave of relief. Taking no chances on the two men striking sparks, Ramona led Cesare out of the room. Making their way around the crowd, the two passed through the triage area without a word.
With a metal thump, the door to the warehouse closed behind them. There was a finality to the sound that hadn't existed before tonight. This was his last fight here. The last time he'd enter and cripple boys for fun. It was the end of this chapter in his life. Staring out into the darkness as Ramona went down the stairs, Cesare knew he'd miss it.
The fights were disgusting, like wading through a sewer of human corruption with pieces of rotting souls floating by. To maim and cripple for fun and money was a degradation, a perversion that sickened as it thrilled. Yet it called to Cesare, tapped a need to torture that only grew as it fed off the pain and humiliation of his victims.
"You can sit up front with me if you want?" Ramona said as she looked up at him from the bottom of the stairs.
A deep pulse of anger washed through the bond at the women's words. The wolf didn't like him being closer to the woman than it was to him. It had stayed at his side, closer than breath or thought, claiming Cesare as its territory, a possession it guarded jealously. Ramona's offer was a challenge to that fundamental truth, and nothing lived that challenged the beast.
A tightening of its body was all the warning Cesare needed. His hand came down, nestling in the downy fur of the midnight creature. He couldn't hold it back, any more than he could hold back death, but he could offer reassurance. "No. My place is next to my friend."
Ramona flinched from the look in the wolfs eyes, instinctively stumbling back as her lizard brain screamed a warning across wrinkled lobes. Nodding, the women quick stepped around the SUV and into the driver's seat.
Running his hand through lush fur, he met its beastly eyes. Cesare's love and happiness flooded the bond, rushing down to the wolf. It had followed him into the darkness of this life without hesitation. He wouldn't turn his back on its blessing. Not for the promise of a piece of ass or the mercenary needs of a woman who meant nothing to him.
It wasn't relief that came through the bond, you only feel relief when fears are false. This was rightness, as of a truth made manifest by knowing. The feeling of absurdity that someone would lie about the obvious.
In the back of the SUV, the animal curled around him in a half moon. Ramona had turned on the car but didn't make a move to put it in gear. Hands tightening on the wheel, her knuckles went white with the force of her grip. "You don't have to leave."
Laying back against the beasts' warm bulk, Cesare rested his hand on the wolfs head as he looked at Ramona. "No, I don't. But I want to go back to school."
"I've seen you fight, no one who fights like you do will be satisfied with a go nowhere desk job." Turning, she faced him. "You could own this circuit, Caine. I don't mean making a grand here and there, I mean real money. Enough to set yourself up for the rest of your life, don't throw that away for a piece of teenage ass."
Anger, hot and acidic, rushed through his blood at her casual degradation of the girls. Ramona met his eyes in the rearview mirror. "You didn't think I knew why you're going back, did you? I've seen that look on a thousand just like you. Some girl has her hooks in you and that's dragging you back. You're better than some shit school full of snot nosed teenagers and entitled bitches."
Swallowing under his furious eyes, her words came low and intense, each one sharpened on honed, designed to hurt. "You love to fight, it's not something you do, it's who you are. When you're out there, you belong. For the first time in your life, you're not the outsider. That cage is the only home you've known. No matter how far you go, you'll never be able to run from that."
She wasn't wrong, but she wasn't right either. The cage felt like home, and he enjoyed fighting more than he'd enjoyed anything in a long time. The breaking of bones, the primal joy of birthing twisted beings of agony, it called to the core of who he was. It was home, a warped, barbed, and barbarous home, but a home all the same. But it wasn't his only home. Anywhere his friends where would always be home to him. He loved fighting, but he wouldn't live to fight when he could live for his friends. What was an empty fight compared to the warmth of friends? This might be part of him, but it wasn't his whole being.
Seeing the answer in his eyes, she put the car in gear with a sigh. "Fine. Just don't get the bitch preggars."
His cold voice cut through the air, jagged edges tipped with hate. "That's the last time you insult them and don't pay for it." He wouldn't stand aside and let his friends be insulted. You can't call yourself a friend and let that happen.
Ramona kept her silence as they hit the freeway heading out of Portland. She wouldn't be taking him the whole way, just close enough that he could walk to Primrose. Mark hadn't known where the school was, the guy had just picked up a random hitchhiker. But Ramona knew he was going back to school, and Cesare wouldn't trust anyone with the location of a school for monsters. Not when some of them were his friends.
Less than an hour later and the SUV pulled onto the side of the street. It was the small hours of deepest darkness, when the day was a dream that may never be and night rolled on endlessly in every direction.
Devoid of light, the stygian ocean drowned the street with only the SUV's lights breaking its purity. Alien and small in the great expanse of velvet black, they were two beams of diseased truth in a sea of blessed lies. Cesare closed the back door with a thump that radiated out into the woods, a crass sound twisting through silent grace. He'd chosen this spot because it was hours away from anything, including the school.
The driver's window rolled down as Cesare walked up. Meeting his eyes, Ramona handed over a card. "My cell and the Governors. Call me anytime, from anywhere. Take care of yourself, tiger."
As the red lights disappeared into the darkness, he felt nothing, no regret, no worry, nothing. He was only a paycheck to Ramona. She promised nothing more than fool's gold. Empty sex, hollow good times, easy money, and all the blood he could spill.
Life meant nothing without friends to live it with. Ramona was a lot of things, smart, cunning, mercenary, beautiful, sexy, but she'd never be a friend. Everything she offered was to feed her hungers, and if he was stupid enough to take it, he'd find the poison too late.
Cesare turned away from Portland and the human world, walking along the road to the only place anyone cared about him. A low growl from his side brought a smile to his face. Okay, the only place anyone with two legs gave a shit about him.
He'd chosen the bottom of a mountain to be dropped off on. It made for a nice landmark, even if it was a bitch to climb in the middle of the night. No cars, no streetlights, just the two of them walking along the highway in the night.
Reaching the top of the mountain, his sweat soaked shirt chilled skin as December winds whipped around them. Taking a stump for a seat, Cesare pulled out the sandwiches and bacon he'd brought along. Laying down next to the stump, the wolf took the strips of bacon from his hand as they watched the sun rise over the valley below.
Light flooded across the earth, chasing the shadows back to their dens, revealing a world of straight angles and right answers. The night, with its dreams and illusions burned away beneath the sun's devouring truth. Watching the blazing rays consume the land, a twinge of sadness sliced through Cesare at the destruction of the sheltering shadows.
Cesare was a creature of the night, he belonged in its illusions. Only when it clothed him in its sweet lies could he believe he was more than a crippled soul. He walked through the sunlight, but only to get to the darkness. Mother Night was fickle, her love never more than a night's caress, her words nothing more than honeyed lies, but she was the only mother he'd ever known. It was to her he'd cried his tears, under her pale light he'd been bled and violated, turned into a piece of meat to feed the diseased desires of the strong. She was the keeper of secrets, the whispers he'd given only to midnight shadows, the prayers never answered, all his lost dreams and forgotten hopes.
Coming off the mountain was easier than going up had been, and with the sun came cars buzzing down the highway. A few slowed to see if he was looking for a ride, but quickly sped back up when he didn't turn to them. He was both driven to get to Primrose and desperately clinging to solitude.
Unwilling to share the time they had together, he didn't stop at any of the small towns they passed through. Instead, they moved across the landscape with the ease of long practice, each lost in their own thoughts and yet intertwined in their minds. A subtle feeling of contentment radiated from them. The bond tightening until the leaping joy they felt was birthed in roots woven through both souls, neither knowing where it started or ended.
Night was falling as he came onto the road that lead to the trail into Primrose. The wolf stopped next to him; the move so unexpected Cesare walked a few feet alone before realizing it. Turning back, Cesare faced the wolf, its wild eyes carrying a tinge of regret.
He'd wondered what would happen when they got back. Whether the wolf would walk beside him or return to Tamlin. Shaking its majestic head, the wolf sent a complex mix of emotions through the bond, the flood of feelings too feral for him to understand.
Only the fact of its leaving rode the storm of feelings, one thread dominating the subtle traceries of primordial feelings. It wasn't being forced, and it wasn't leaving because it wanted to. It was leaving for him. An image of a young wolf on its first hunt flashed into his mind, the need to let the young make its own mistakes because strength was fashioned from pain.
Slinking into the forest, the wolf was lost from sight. Watching the undergrowth the wolf had faded into, Cesare felt the bond dwindle until only direction remained. It had been by his side for weeks, always next to him.
If it had stayed, he would've depended on it. And in that dependence, he would have been less. Pressure made the strong, gentle life bred only weak things of mewling need, petty creatures of civilized perversion. If he'd faltered under the savage trials he'd passed through, he'd be dead. You couldn't argue with success. If he wanted to stand on his own, he had to face the storm of pain without its shelter. His shaping was in torment, strength born in orgies of agony.
Everything he owned was taken from him, the only permanence in his life was darkness and chaos. Sighing, he adjusted his duffel and started down the road.
The fading light framed the two figures at the entrance. Seeming to glow with an inner light, Alexandra's long, golden hair hoarded the last rays of the sun, holding a bit of its fury as its due. Not far from her, a low glow of red threaded the night, tainted with gorgeous, tantalizing darkness, it owned a power all its own.
Leaning against the posts of the gate, the two girls were as far from each other as they could get. Distorted echoes of each other with their heads down, a silent stillness wrapped around them. The dead space of deep thought, a trance that excluded in its search for answers only found in the deepest parts of the soul.
Cesare got to within a few feet before the scuffing of his boots betrayed him. Their heads whipped up, locking on him with frightening intensity. Pushing off the pillar, Anastasia bolted for him. He had just enough time to catch her as she barreled into him.
Her fever hot body molded to his. Memories of the times he'd spent holding her over the past months flooded his mind. The delicious feel of her breasts pressing and compressing against him, the feel of her laying flush against his body. A sudden charge of lust ran lightning like down his spine.
With her head buried in his shoulder, Cesare breathed in the clean scent of jasmine that was all her. Bristles of fiery hair rasped against his skin. It had grown into a stubble of scarlet across her scarred scalp. Strands no longer than a fingernail quivered in an unseen wind.
"You know, I don't believe in forgiveness. An empty thing worth less than the air shoved into the word. I won't demean you by paying lip service to it now. But I wish I could have kept my promise and stayed true to who I am." The words were soft with regret, littered with shattered promises.
Tension that had drawn her whipcord tight unwound. Relaxing into him, her hands caressed along his spine. "I was mad, furious at you for leaving. Even with your gift, it wasn't the same as having you beside me. I needed you, and you weren't there." Cesare swallowed at the raw truth. "My mom tried to explain why you couldn't be there. She told me you were a wild thing and you can't cage a wild thing. Caging you would maim your soul, betray who you are for what I want you to be. A wild thing has to be free, or you kill the thing you love."
Turning her face up, she let him see her in all her exquisite grotesqueness. She'd taken off the plastic mask that had blurred the tortured wasteland of her face. The soft tissue had melted into valleys and ridges of pink, veiny tissue. Translucent traceries wove a gruesome patchwork of unrelated pieces, leaving her face a mangled, discordant mass.
"I wanted you to be my first sight," Anastasia said, the words cutting deep into Cesare as he met beautifully dark, sorrowful eyes. He hadn't been there for her, he'd chosen the streets over helping his friend. He had his reasons, but where they were worth the pain he'd inflicted?
Tracing her face, his touch was gentle as the night air. "Don't … I'm hideous," she said, blinking wetly.
Smiling, he laid a kiss on her forehead, the scar tissue rough under his lips. "You'll never be hideous. You'll always be beautiful."
Sighing, she laid her head on his shoulder and pulled his scent into her lungs with a deep breath. "Only to you," she said with rock solid surety.
He wouldn't insult her with empty platitudes and cheap sayings. Wouldn't degrade her pain or loss with a greeting cards sugar sweet lies. The attack hadn't killed her, but it had changed her on a fundamental level, her old self died in that hallway.
She'd transcended the shallow beauty she'd possessed. Great beauty is always fey, it's not in the eyes or the breasts, can't be found in perfect proportions or cover girl looks. It's the strange, those born in wombs of horror and otherness, exposed in flayed eyes, discordant souls, broken hearts, and maimed lives. It's character that only gets stronger the more you hurt it, the heart that harnesses the fire of hate, a body molded to a skinned soul. Only the strange are worth knowing and loving.
His arms loosened as she relaxed her strangle hold. He'd expected her to move away, instead she slipped to his side, arm looping around his waist. Settling his arm around her shoulders, a tight feeling came to his heart when she cuddled into his side.
Distracting himself from the warm softness of her body, he looked over at Alexandra. The vampire had worn tight, form fitting jeans that showed off muscled legs. A black, short sleeved shirt framed firm breasts and broad shoulders that would do a lumber jack proud. Her sun kissed hair shone in its tightly bound braid.
Only two pieces of jewelry broke up her stark form. The claymore cross snuggled between her breasts, its silver form shining in the last rays of the sun. And the lovingly polished ring on her hand, made of two nails twisted into a cross, its sharpened points sliced the sunlight that dared to dance along its length. In a habit as ingrained as it was new, the vampire ran calloused fingers over the ring.
Sweeping her eyes over him from head to foot, Alexandra studied him. He'd changed, and she could see it. She noted Cesare's easy grace and the kinetic stillness born of leashed violence. Casual power rested in his shoulders, a dangerous, half wild look stained his eyes. Meeting the feral windows of his soul, she grinned in approval.
It was a moment belonging to a different world. Alexandra was a predator, an unashamed killer. A lion in a world of sheep, a stalking evil of darkness that sent fear skittering before her. An abomination that scared even the things born to cruel gods. Violent, deadly, and merciless, she was fiercely proud of it. She would never think to stop Cesare from walking the road of slaughter, no, she'd slip up beside him and join him in skipping down the flesh strewn path.
"Good to see you, commander," Alexandra said, words ghosting across the distance between them, eyes catching and narrowing on Anastasia's arm wrapped possessively around him.
Smiling, his eyes ran down her body, quietly reassuring himself that she'd made it back from the Imago Mortis in one piece. "Good to be back, killer."
Walking past the gate, Anastasia stayed pressed into his side, matching him step for step with effortless grace, while Alexandra moved to his other side. "Why did you buy new clothes that look like your old ones?" Alexandra asked.
Shrugging his shoulders, Cesare looked away from her. "I didn't buy them, the girl I stayed with got them for me." Their attention sharpened into a razor's edge that stroked across his awareness. Carefully keeping his eyes off the two and focused on the trail, Cesare delicately picked his words. "She gave me a place to stay, food, and some clothes."
"And what did you give her?" Anastasia asked, voice flat and devoid of emotion, dark eyes flashing with temper.
"A hard time mostly, and some grunt labor she couldn't do herself." He didn't want to get into what he'd done over Winter Break. It was private, birthed in a different world. One that didn't involve the girls.
A strange tension gripped them as their eyes roamed his face, searching for something. Whatever they were looking for, they must have found as they settled with only a scowl to show for that flash of temper. Neither pried into what he'd had to do, content to let those weeks stay in the graveyard that birthed them.
Night folded over them as they walked the trail. There was no talk of what the two had done over Winter Break or the upcoming match with the Thagirion. Instead, they stayed to the small things, schoolwork, cafeteria food, and the collective hate of sharing a bathroom.
Even with that, or maybe because of it, Cesare felt himself smiling along with them. This was why he'd come back. This feeling of having friends around him, people who he could count on and who liked him for who he was. It wasn't perfect. They were using him, bleeding him out slowly, cutting bits of flesh off to feed their ambition. But everything had a price, and their friendship was laid out in the scars across his body, and the expectations he could only fail. He'd live the lie of friendship, because the lie was the best thing to happen to him.
The girls left him at the foot of the Serpens Lacum. Walking beneath the weighty arch, Cesare had the strange feeling of returning to a battlefield. Passing down the heavy halls, the students gave him distrustful looks. There was a sadness in their eyes as a cherished hope died in front of them. No one had wanted him to back.
Turning the corner down his hallway, his eyes fell on Greg and Dan standing by the door to Cesare's room. The smile that had stretched across his face from the moment he'd seen the girls withered and died. He wasn't even back, and it was already starting.
Greg faced him with Dan only a few steps behind. Cesare indulged in a surge of vicious pleasure at the fear that flashed in Dan's eyes. The boy had been in and out of the infirmary for months because of their little fight. Turning away from the watchful eyes of Greg's enforcer, Cesare faced the dealer.
"Due to expulsions, we have some free rooms. Given that some are on this floor and I have seniority, I've been given my own room." Cesare let his boredom run across his face. He hadn't asked for Greg to be his roommate, and he sure as hell wouldn't cry about losing him.
"We asked around to see if anyone wanted to bunk with you. No one did," Greg said.
"Not even the ones three to a room." Dan added with a smirk.
Cesare glanced at the black man, his stance shifting subtly, violence baring bloody, cancerous teeth. Flinching under Cesare's eyes, the man's smirk died.
Glaring at the black man, Greg stepped in front of his muscle, drawing Cesare's full attention. "None of that matters. What this comes down to, is that the room is yours for the rest of the year." There was an unspoken apology in the man's voice. He hadn't meant for it to turn into a pissing contest. But like everything around Cesare, it went to shit with a regularity you could set your watch by.
Opening the door, Cesare left the two in the hallway without a backward look. They weren't his friends, and he didn't owe them anything, not even common courtesy. The room had only one bed and a dresser. It gave the room a charming off kilter look with the one bed against the left wall along with its companion dresser. The window divided occupied from the empty. It looked like what it was, another way for people to throw him away.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
UncleanSoul
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