44 The Rejects Prologue

Prologue

Elizabeth watched Cesare walk away as silent tears traced the lines of her face. She hated him, second only to her savage loathing of herself. He had to send that parting shot, to dig the knife in that little bit deeper. A nightmare of jagged terror capered through her soul at the thought he'd leave her. That he'd walk away and never come back.

It was payback, a cut for the beating she'd given him. A bleeding slice to match the patchwork of weeping wounds she'd carved into him over the past few days. Pain made sadists of angels, and he was far from angelic. He wanted her to bleed like he bled. Oh, she understood him, not always, but when he was like this, she saw the hurt child that lashed out at the world.

She wouldn't entertain the possibility that he wouldn't come back to her. Wouldn't think about falling into the abyss of loneliness. Of eating alone night after night, drinking her tea in solitude because no one wanted her. She wouldn't let the fear of going back to a life of endless days with only lonelinesses growing roots to mark the days torture her. Not until she faced it.

He was the only one who'd ever understood her. The only real friend she'd ever had. Everyone wanted something from her, power, position, prestige, they wanted what she could do for them. None had ever wanted her for what she was. For all his promises, she'd never made any to him. Knowing well that promises were dangerous things, weapons others used against you.

She'd wanted tonight to be special, planning out the Rite weeks ago, making sure it was perfect. More than anything, she'd wanted to give him something special, to show her love for him. While she couldn't be his lover, she could still be his friend.

Every year she came out into the woods and performed the Yule Rite to the Old Ones. The Rite had once been a time of great magic's, a fey moment when powers aligned for beginnings and eldritch tides pulsed wetly ready for new births. Gateways, weather, and mammoth workings were set into motion as the celestial door of the sun opened. But for centuries, the Old Ones hadn't come to their call. These days the ritual was more symbolic, the great magic's lost to her race. Her people had become widowed wives staring out black windows into the cold, midnight sea, abandoned by the Old Ones that had birthed them.

She wanted to share with Cesare what she'd only ever shared with Chthonic's. To give him what she'd never given anyone. And after all her planning, she'd poisoned the night with grotesque truth.

Elizabeth knew why she'd betrayed him to Sarah. A stupid act of saving face, nothing more than fears forked tongue. You could never tell with the Pythian's. How could you ever trust a mind reader? Power corrupted. Sweet words can't change temptations lush curves and sin blessed eyes. To look into the depths of a mind not your own was tender meat even the strongest couldn't help feasting on. Elizabeth had panicked and said what needed saying, cutting with poisonous contempt. She'd done it instinctively, without thinking to the consequences of betrayal.

Cesare would never know, so what did it matter what she said? This was to protect them both, to make sure Sarah didn't pry into things that weren't her business. How better to throw her off the scent than to degrade and humiliate Cesare? It wasn't betrayal if he never knew.

Only it was. She'd turned that corner and come face to face with his despairing eyes. She'd seen the wound her casual words cut into his soul, had known that what she wanted to protect, she'd killed. A mother loves her baby, but sometimes a mother holds the baby too tight, snapping its neck. In trying to protect, she'd strangled the thing she treasured.

There was no way to undo it. It was a truth as pure as Cesare's black soul. Because for all his strength, Cesare had never learned to forgive. Without forgiveness, they'd never build back what she'd burned to the ground.

The only way forward was to build on the wasteland of poisoned earth. If she'd been Alexandra or Anastasia, it would be simpler. He never expected them to be there for him. Never thought they would understand or care. He accepted that he was a convenient stepping stone in their lives. He'd expected more from Elizabeth.

It had meant everything to her. He'd trusted her in a way he trusted no one else. Shared with her what he hadn't given to anyone. They were memories she touched and caressed as often as the Origami animals he'd made her. Each memory a token of how special he thought she was. That he saw something extraordinary where she only saw a fat woman past her prime.

With an almost physical effort, she turned her mind away from the desecrated land of those thoughts. The ritual … Now, that was something. The Old Ones didn't come into the world beyond the forest Sanctuary, its darkling corridors hoary with their madness. But even in that place of brutal blessings, they didn't show themselves, their influence a thing of murderous caresses and shifting shadows. All her people had were stories faded into myth of times when they joined the Rites of her people, nothing more than legends. Yet tonight, they'd come to her call.

Around the world, her people gathered to invoke the Yule Rite. From the youngest Chthonic to the Elementa Dominantium, they would join in covens and circles, howling their devotion to the darkness and mother moon. And out of all the worthy and wicked, the Old One's had come to her circle.

They hadn't come for her. She'd done this Rite dozens of times and never received so much as an eldritch breeze for her efforts. No, they'd come for Cesare. The problem was, she didn't know why.

She left the altar standing behind her as she made for the corridor of thorns. The passage engulfed her as she walked through its darkened, deadly trail. With the barest touch of power, she caressed the plants that were never far from her. They came eagerly to her call, weaving themselves into a tapestry of spears behind her, sealing the way to man or monster. She'd made this place for Cesare and him alone.

Deep in her thoughts, she didn't notice she was standing outside the infirmary. No matter the reason, the others deserved to know what had happened. To know the boy they waited on wasn't coming.

Lady Kali's harem eyed her as she came down the hallway. Harems were incestuously close, impenetrable from the outside. Husbands, lovers, friends, and even children, all came second to their Mistress. The unswerving loyalty was a poison well for the Harab Serapel. An addiction eating at the soul, greater than dragon chasers hunting heroin, it was an all devouring cancer.

A community of parasites. Feasting on their own flesh like the Ouroboros serpent. Locked in a cycle without escape. The abyss of insanity and perverse desires maw opening wide to accept its diseased fruit.

Lady Kali wasn't an exception, she was the rule. In the centuries of her life, going back to beyond the mists of history and myth, she'd never chosen an outsider over her harem. Never made them back down from a fight they wanted, never demanded they apologize for a slight. To be part of her harem was to be untouchable and inviolate.

The only thing that had ever come before the harem was Lady Kali's children. Lovers, husbands, sexual playthings, and friends were disposable meat next to her pets. Until Cesare. Now they faced a boy that had captivated their beloved Mistress from the moment she'd set eyes on him. When he'd been only a face in the stands.

After that first fight, Elizabeth had received a letter from Lady Kali. Never one to mince words, she'd wanted to know about the boy that had sat next to her. Elizabeth had given enough that Lady Kali wasn't surprised when they met for the first time, but she'd hoarded all but the bare bones for herself.

Birthed from one look, the fey thing took on a life of its own. A grotesque thing the harem hungered to put down. That was why the harems eyes twisted with threads of fury. She was friends with the object of their hate.

Elizabeth met their glares with her own cold look. She'd kill them if they touched her Cesare. Bury them deep in the earth and leave them without a thought. Not one of them was worth a minute of his pain to her. While they'd never go against their Mistress … accidents happened.

Nzinga opened the door with a brief nod of understanding. All eyes fell on her as she walked into the room, the door clicking shut behind her.

"Cesare?" Anastasia asked from the bed, head weaving from side to side. Thank the Goddess someone had thought to hide her eyes behind black silk. Those hollowed, raw eye sockets had never lost their horror for Elizabeth.

She never understood how Cesare did it. The melted, ruined flesh was a tapestry of translucent, cheery red, and maggot pale. Ridges of half liquefied flesh crisscrossed her face without pattern or sense. Drops of flesh hung in skin tags from her chin, soft fleshy hills and valleys warping her face into the grotesque. It was a cold blessing Anastasia couldn't see herself in a mirror.

Elizabeth had been careful never to get close to Anastasia, distance had been her best friend. She'd been certain to keep any trace of horror and disgust from her eyes. She knew the savageness of Cesare if he thought someone dared look down on his friend.

Lady Kali wrapped an arm around her daughter. "No honey, it's Miss Raven. Cesare isn't with her."

Alexandra faced Elizabeth with an eerie neutrality. "And why is that?" The question brought instant silence to the room.

Elizabeth wasn't afraid of the vampire. But she wasn't crazy either. In this place, there would be little Elizabeth could do to stop the vampire if it came to a fight. The cold, malevolent fury in the vampire's eyes was the glazed look of a murderer. Alexandra would never forgive Elizabeth for hurting Cesare. It didn't bother Elizabeth. They'd never be friends, and Elizabeth had her own issues with the blonde killing machine.

Turning her eyes from the vampire, Elizabeth looked at the damaged girl and her mother. "Jerold got the Mistress to exile him from school for Winter Break. He's gone back to the streets."

Alexandra's face twisted with crazed hate, an insane thing unfettered by rules, a malevolent beast of bestial, cancerous needs. She turned to the window, hiding her truth from view. Her knuckles popped like gun shots in the quiet room as her hands fisted shut.

She couldn't take him with her to the Imago Mortis, but Alexandra had expected him to at least be safe. Either in the school with the other students or taking holiday with his broken princess. Instead, they'd sent him back to the streets he'd bled to get off. The streets that had broken him, savaged, and mangled him into a shape untouched by sanity.

Lady Kali's eyes shadowed with fury at the words. The plans she'd made shattering around her into so many useless pieces. She'd wanted him to come with her and Anastasia, back to her home or anywhere he wanted to go.

What he'd done for her daughter couldn't be repaid, not in a lifetime of favors or a mountain of gold. She knew how hard it was to come back from a violation of flesh and self. The horror of losing your sight and the disgust at the feel of your own flesh. Black depression was a shark, cruising the darkness of the soul, uncaring if you were Umbrae Lunae or human. It was the reason she'd wanted to take her daughter home. The bone deep fear that darkness would swallow her little one.

Cesare had dragged Anastasia out of the searing light of facts and crippling truth through sheer strength of will. Enveloped her in his shadow, he'd sheltered Anastasia from the cruelty of the sun. His support was the reason her daughter hadn't shattered. Instead, she'd gotten stronger by leaps and bounds, not only with the Ebon Flame but where it counted, in her soul.

Kali wanted to show her gratitude and take Cesare away from the cold stone and endless games of the school. Not only for him, but because her daughter still needed him.

Under all that, Lady Kali knew the slinking obsession that threaded her reasoning. To spend time with the bewitching man. She knew a lot about him, but it was through other people. Stolen moments taken from covetous woman, glimpses of the scarred truth of his life.

The reality was that the man that had saved her daughter's life, time and time again. Who had held Kali as she cried on his shoulder, offering comfort without expectation. Was out on the streets in December.

"It's because of me, isn't it?" Small and broken, the words slipped from Anastasia's lips.

Tightening her arm around her daughter, Lady Kali kissed the top of her head. "No child, it's not your fault. Cesare was the center of every cataclysm by choice. He wouldn't want you taking the blame for that. He made his choices, knowing the trouble he courted. Don't diminish his choices by taking credit for them."

Anastasia slumped back. It sounded so like Cesare she could almost hear him saying it to her. "I know, but … he's out there alone."

A knock at the door broke the morbid thoughts of the woman. Robert poked his head in the room under the eyes of the women. "Well, this works out." Smiling, the doctor met the women's eyes as he pushed the door open and walked in with boxes piled in his hands. "Cesare wanted to make sure you got his presents, he left it to me to deliver them." He waited expectantly after handing out the boxes, eyes drifting from the wrapped presents to the woman.

They stared at the man with flat eyes. It was one thing to share the moment with others chained to the same hell. And another to share it with an outsider. Robert's smile withered. Turning away from them, he trudged to the door.

Looking at their Origami boxes, it was the vampire that gave vent to their frustration. "He said no presents," Alexandra muttered, glaring at the box in her hands.

"You know him; the rules only apply when he agrees with them," Lady Kali said, humor glinting in her eyes. "We come from money, there's no way he can match that. Better to get nothing, than be shamed because you can't buy a present."

Elizabeth's fingers trembled over the simple box. Cesare had chosen a glossy, shimmering black paper for her box. With a deep breath, she slipped the box open. A ring of purple, Amaranth wood shone with life against a bed of black silk. Her breath left her in a heartbroken sigh.

Lifting the ring out of its silky bed, she felt the satin finish of the untreated wood, the work of hours of hand sanding. Light danced over the delicate Celtic scroll work incised into the wood. Small ravens played peek-a-boo between the knot work.

She didn't know where he got the wood for the ring. She didn't have an Amaranth tree on the property or any pieces lying around. Caressing the buttery soft ring, her fingers ran over the lines of the pattern. The easy curves of the knot work must have taken days of painstaking work. Long hours of sanding a square block down until it transformed into the graceful curves of a ring.

Looking at the others, her hand clenched into a fist around the ring as a silent tear wound down her face. She'd betrayed this. This … token of his love for her, even if misplaced in childish fantasies of being with an older woman. It was still love, and she'd betrayed it with callous words and cutting laughter. Feelings choked her as she tried to swallow the lump of diseased self-loathing.

Alexandra watched Elizabeth's pain with grim satisfaction. Unlike the older woman, she wasn't dreading any gift Cesare gave her. A warm feeling spread through her, lighting the cold places only Cesare touched. Slipping the lid off her scarlet box, she plucked out the heavy ring. Edges cut the light with razors kiss. "Steel." Soft, the word was a discordant note against the backdrop of her savage smile of happiness.

Gleaming between her fingers was a ring of twisted steel, polished to a frightening gloss. Twisted together, two double-ended spikes formed a cross with needled points. It was hard and sharp, tough and deadly. But over all that, Cesare had infused it with a simple, lethal beauty.

Alexandra met the eyes of the other women as she slipped the ring onto her finger with a sense of finality. She'd kill the person who tried to take it from her. "I'm not made for weak silver or gaudy gold. I'm steel, hard, unyielding, and deadly. Designed for butcher. This ring is all those things, but it's also beautiful and full of God's grace. Only Cesare believes I'm beautiful and worthy of God's grace."

Kali swallowed as she looked down at the cheetah patterned box. Smiling at the bit of whimsy, she slipped the top off. Unsure what it was, she pulled out the bracelet. Silver and gold bands were woven together, cradling a third material cradled between. Controlling the slight shaking of her finger, she traced the third strand. Brown with hints of auburn, it was soft as the belly of a bunny. Smile widening, her fingers caressed along the strand.

She'd wanted to take him with her since she'd seen him that first day. To offer him a place in her harem and honor the specialness she saw shining in him. Only her daughter had stopped her, and that there was no owning Cesare. No more than a jaguar would accept a leash. But now she could do exactly that. Granted, it was only a piece of him. But did anyone in this room have anything more?

Anastasia didn't care what the other women were going through. A gauntlet of terror and voices born from pity stretched ahead of her without Cesare's shadow to hide in. It was like losing her eyes again, vulnerable and alone, hidden razors touching their blades to tortured skin.

Her mom would be there, and Anastasia knew she wouldn't lack for anything. But there would be no one to hold her at night, nothing to chase away the skittering nightmares that waited in the deeper darkness of her weakness. No one to help her in the morning with gentle touches and kind words. No one to hold on to when the world threatened to drown her, and she only wanted to hide.

A present was a poor second to that. Taking the box, she opened the top as depression surged up in a burning tsunami of raw facts. Her fingers ran over the familiar recorder Cesare used for her meditations. A light brightened her dark landscape, holding the viscous depression at bay in a detente of hate.

Holding her breath, she pushed the play button on the recorder. Cesare's voice came calm and clear in the tomb silent room. "Not sure how many are going to hear this. I left this for Anastasia, so if others are in the room … well, I hope you enjoy your gifts, and I'm sorry I couldn't give them to you myself." Pausing, Cesare's voice came back threaded with regret. "I'm sorry princess, I can't be there for you over Winter Break. I thought about it, and more than once I was close to telling you. But I have to be true to myself, and taking your charity would make me small. Not in your eyes, but in my own. I wish … there is nothing I'd have liked than being with you, but my life has nothing to do with wishes," Cesare stopped, a hesitation in his voice.

"I've mapped out fourteen meditations for you. One for each day, with special ones for when you go to bed and wake up in the morning. It's not much, and it's far less than you deserve, but it's the best I could do." His voice died as the recording stopped.

It was a poor second to having him with her, not when he'd been there every step of the way. No matter what he was doing or what he was going through, he'd made time for her. Was it too much to ask him to put aside his pride so she could take care of him?

Touching the recorder, she knew it had been. Not because he didn't want to be there, but because she meant that much to him. If she was some nameless person on the street, he would have accepted anything she'd give. But she wasn't, none of them were. He wanted them to see him as an equal, not a charity case. He couldn't reconcile that want, with them helping him out with a few dollars or a place to stay.