Mr. Snake was standing on the porch as they came back, Andras answered the question in his eyes with a slight shake of his head. Walking up onto the porch, Andras nodded at Cesare. "I noticed you seem to prefer hand to hand, how would you like to give it a go? I might be able to give you some pointers."
Cesare didn't even have to think about it, nodding his acceptance before his good sense stopped him. Andras grinned, a lightness entering his steps as he led the way around the house.
Mr. Snake fell into step with Cesare. "You feel up to helping me with Beast and Dart later?" the man asked, walking with him to what looked like a corral.
"Sure," Cesare said, mind focused on the upcoming spar.
In another time it had been used to break horses with leather, rope, and sweat, stripping an animal of its wildness with cruelty, instilling bastard born submissiveness with sadistic ease. The old wood of the corral was the faded gray of old love smoothed from decades of hardship. Inside the wood cage, the hard-packed dirt smelled of old violence, blood soaked glory, and shattered dreams.
Andras laid his canvas trench coat on the fence, stripping off the plaid shirt underneath, baring the man to the cold wind. Golden sigils stood out in the sun, collecting and reflecting pitiless rays. The man slipped between the slates in the fence, rolling his shoulders as he warmed up.
Cesare slipped his duffel bag off his back and followed the man into the corral. Snake's words caught him as he was walking away from the fence. "Don't hold back kid, because he won't."
The moment flowed over him, instincts firing across his mind. He didn't plan or anticipate; he was the moment, and the moment was everything. Nothing was between him and his instincts, no thought or doubt troubled the tranquility of his mind.
Andras grinned. "You need to warm up?" He asked, feet spread out, balancing his center of gravity.
Shaking his head, Cesare watched approval light the man's eyes. Walking forward, the man brought his hands up, gravitas gathering around him. Cesare felt Andras break the bubble of his sphere of control.
Lashing out, Cesare's leg snapped forward, cracking into the man's face. Andras shrugged it off as a tendril of blood dripped from his lips. His fist hammered forward, sinking into Cesare's stomach, folding him over in an explosion of air. Smashing into his face, Andras fist sent Cesare's vision spinning, the follow up rocking his skull back, legs wobbling as he tried to get his bearings. The kick appeared out of nowhere, cutting his feet out from under him, sending Cesare down with a grunt of pain.
It had taken maybe seconds for Andras to put him down as easily as drowning a kitten in a sack. Stripped of fancy, they were the workmanlike strikes of a man who'd fought for more years than Cesare had lived. Andras was a brawler, this wasn't his favored way to kill, he'd learned because he'd had to. The quickest punch is straight forward, brutal, and telegraphed with bright neon. But simple didn't mean easy.
Looking up, Cesare locked eyes with the man. Understanding passed between them in those long seconds. Cesare hadn't gotten lucky yesterday, he'd been good. He'd had his weapons ready and acted decisively to put his attackers down hard and permanent. But that didn't change that he'd had a decent hand of cards. They hadn't known he'd have explosives or chemical weapons; Beast had already been shot and was on her last legs when they tangled. Now he knew going one on one with these guys was a failing proposition ... if he played by their rules.
Nodding up at the Pack Master, Cesare got the point the man was laying down. The pack, each cold-blooded son of a bitch of them, had years of experience at killing. That depth of crimson tainted knowledge obliterated any advantages Cesare might have, unless he changed the game.
With a tight smile, Andras eased back, willing to put Cesare through his paces now that dominance had been established. He wasn't like Tamlin, but no one was. Tamlin had a thousand ways to teach, moving from style to style, always with an eye on the lethality of the skill set he was teaching. Beating him down with the same strike, tearing Cesare apart until he was a mass of whimpering flesh, or helping Cesare polish a move to shining, simple, perfection. Tamlin was the consummate teacher, adapting to his student, keeping him on the edge of his ability.
Andras wasn't even a chip on Tamlin, but he was a man with a lifetime of experience in teaching practical fighting. Andras had learned to strip a technique down to its simplest form. Every angle broken down, aligning it with the body's internal strength, almost Neanderthal in its basicness. Andras had no time for fancy footwork or ornamentation, for him, fighting came down to hitting hardest and connecting the most.
Pushing him hard, Andras grinned every time Cesare got back up. Delighting in being given another chance to see what Cesare was made of. Blows hammered against Cesare's guard, turning arms into numb meat. Sweat ran down Cesare's face, slicking his hair back, shirt molding to his starved frame under the hoodie. But Cesare ran this gauntlet every day, Andras couldn't say the same.
Huffing and blowing, the man moved slower and slower, hours of constant sparring wearing him thin. Andras backed up, motioning wearily for Snake to come into the coral. "Your turn, Snake."
Coated in sweat, sigils gleaming from inside the borders of wet skin, Andras took a bottle of water from Beast while scrubbing himself down with a stained towel. The two women looked like hammered shit with bandages covering their bodies, but they were standing.
Smirking, Mr. Snake walked by the big man. "I've told you a hundred times, you're getting fat."
Andras glared wearily over at the slim man. "And I've told you a hundred times, when you can kick my teeth in, you can give me orders."
Shaking his head, Mr. Snake came into the corral. "Movement and flexibility are the keys to any fight. Style is a box. A straitjacket dictating angles you can attack from. Blinder's to the true fight. We learn a style to know how to fight, only to learn that we always knew how to fight. Fluid, changeable, loyal to the movement of the body, stripped of the perverse constraints of style. These are the hallmarks of masters, those that have learned what they've always known."
Mr. Snake was the polar opposite of the Andras, a martial artist through and through, techniques complex and multifaceted. With foot work that looked like he was turning his legs into origami, the man came in from directions Cesare would swear were impossible. Not only could he land those strikes, he could do it with power.
Relentlessly finding fault with Cesare, the man's words wove a cruel, barbed web around the corral. Dodging through the verbal onslaught, Cesare pushed to the edge, letting go of ego, determined to drink deeply of this poisoned well of violence. Strain settled into muscles, the low burning of meat tearing. Mr. Snake was fast, experienced, and in shape, but as minutes dripped by, they stole the lightness from his feet. Sweat drenched the blade of a man, shirt molding to his whipcord body, highlighting hardened muscles, golden sigils shining through the soaked shirt.
Stepping back, Mr. Snake called a stop to the training. "You're a machine," Mr. Snake said, motioning for Cesare to follow him over to the fence. Tossing a water bottle to Cesare, Mr. Snake snagged one for himself. "How long have you been training?"
Shrugging, Cesare picked up a towel and dried his face and hair. "A few months."
The four Hounds went still at his words, exchanging long looks. Andras met Snakes eyes with his own, giving the man a slow nod as something passed between them. "He's a fucking monster," Dart said, eyes hard on Cesare.
"We've been over this," Andras said, tone steel sharp.
"Yeah, well, I want to go over it again. After putting Beast on the ground, crippling Banana, and tearing me a spare one, he just fucking ran both of you into the ground. That's not fucking human and you know it." Dart's lips twisted into a sneer.
Mr. Snake's words were cool with disinterest. "We knew what we were coming to do, Dart."
Dart looked between Andras, Mr. Snake, and Beast, unwilling to let it go. "I can't be the only one that has a problem with this. He's not of God, he's a defiled." Andras opened his mouth, Dart quickly cutting in ruthlessly. "It doesn't matter that he's not Umbrae Lunae, we know he's not born of God's grace. We don't need to know more. It's either of God or needs killing. Do I need to remind you of the Teachings?"
"Thank you, no. I remember all too well the Teachings they hammered into us at the Kennel," Mr. Snake said.
Despite the man's words, Dart quoted anyway. "That which is not of God is of the Leviathan. Its heads are many, but its root is corruption. Be it woman, man, or babe, that which is not born of God is a seed of violation planted in the Garden of Eden. Tear them from the earth, cast them to the wind, burn and salt the ground to prevent the spread of its seed." Darts hand dropped to the twisted needle of a knife that rode her hip, fingers caressing along the handle.
Glaring at her pack, Dart thrilled at the power of staring down Mr. Snake and Beast. Andras met her eyes squarely, thumbs tucked into his belt where his two Bowie knives rested. "That's what the Hounds are. We're the fire and salt of God. We purify the earth. We don't allow weeds to choke the garden."
Beast and Mr. Snake shuffled uneasily at her words, exchanging uncertain looks. But it wasn't about them. They might be great warriors, but they weren't the ones with the passion to capture hearts and minds. They didn't have that special something that made a leader. This fight was between Dart and Andras. The small woman had the fire and drive, an arrogance that brought others into her wake. While Andras was steady, unmovable and obstinate, he'd given his loyalty and nothing, not even death, would change that.
Leaning on the fence, Andras ran his tongue across the split Cesare had put in his lip. "I serve The Light Bringer, not the Master of Dogs." The quiet word's brought Snake and Beasts head up, while Darts face twisted. "I'm a Hound, not an Archangel, and not the First Light of Heaven. It'll take more than the words of man to make me doubt the truth of an Archangel, a being that has stood in God's presence and basked in his Glory."
Andras rested his eyes on Dart as the woman glared up at him. "You make good points, but would you face the Lord of the Morning and make those same points?" Heat rose on the woman's face as shame flooded her. "Would you stand in front of God's Herald, and tell him he's not following his father's command?" The questions hammered the woman, each word a blow driving her face down to the ground in humble apology.
Andras laid his hand on Dart's shoulder. "I know this is hard for you. But we're here at the command of our Lord. As long as we hold true to him, we're holy and pure, to stray from that light on the words of another is the path of wickedness and evil. You must temper this ... independence of thought. It does you no credit and much harm." The fatherly tone was accompanied by a slow squeeze of the woman's shoulder. "Follow the words of your Lord. Believe in the Light Bringer. Trust his God given judgment, doubt is the worm in the apple, the canker in the rose. Make your faith pure, without doubt or blemish."
Dart nodded slowly, never taking her eyes off her Pack Master. "I'm sorry, I just ... can't help myself sometimes."
"Go to the chapel, pray for guidance. I'll come for you when I feel you're ready to rejoin us." Quietly stern, Andras dominated the woman with practiced authority. With a short nod of thanks, Dart left the small group.
Snake and Beast watched the woman worriedly, but it was the concern in Andras face that set Cesare on edge. There were few things as dangerous as a man who owned people so completely, they thanked him for the chains. It would be stupid to call this man a killer, Andras was simply dangerous.
Cesare followed the man away from the corral, the others drifting away from them. Squinting over the field, crow's feet crinkled the man's eyes. Sighing, the man turned Cesare. "I'll take you back to school once we finish dinner."
Cesare kept his silence, unsure what kind of response the man wanted. "You're wondering why I don't press you to stay?" Andras said, taking a seat on one of the wooden chairs that peppered the porch. "We're warriors, its more than what we do, it's who we are. I don't get to know a guy by shaking his hand and talking over tea. I want to see how he takes a punch, how he fights, and what he looks like when he's in the dirt looking up at me. That's how I measure a man."
Steepling his fingers in front of his face, Andras met Cesare's eyes. "Your raw kid, a volatile mass of untamed chaos. You don't know who you are, and until you know that, you can't know where you want to go. If we were in the Kennels, I'd give you a few years and they'd make a Hound out of you, but I think your school will do just as well."
"You're not afraid I'll chose them?" Cesare said, taking a seat across from the man.
Andras gave a tight smile. "You're not human but you're not a walking disease. When things come out of the darkness, giggling and skittering, looking to make a meal out of little girls, we're the ones that smack the bitch back. Those kids you go to school with are mass murders waiting to grow up. Are you willing to back a school of child killers, creatures that butcher newborn babes to feast on succulent flesh? Or would you pick up a gun and fight? Because that's the choice, Cesare."
Cesare leaned back against the uncompromising slates in the chair. He couldn't help agreeing with the bastard. Werewolves were predators, they hunted for food and fun, it was as natural as breathing for them. You couldn't expect them to turn their backs on that, it was woven into their soul. Vampires needed blood, despite what he'd learned from Alexandra, he thought more than a few indulged in taking it hot from a vein spiced with terror. The Harab Serapelneeded prana to live, he'd be stupid to think they didn't drain people dry and leave their corpses as mute witness to their hunger.
Every Umbrae Lunae he'd met had some kind of parasitic need for humans. Food, pleasure, or slaves, their appetites were intertwined with humanity. They used humanity for their own needs, and gave nothing in return for their predations. It was the definition of a parasite.
The Hounds were far from perfect, fanatical zealots bound on a holy crusade, uncaring at the casual brutality they wielded with relish. Cesare didn't agree with their religion or methods. But you had to give them credit for fighting things that destroyed lives with malign abandon.
Did it make a difference? It should, Cesare knew that. It should make a difference that the people he cared about killed and destroyed with a kind of ease that likened them to Genghis Khan and his mountains of skulls. The Hounds were the good guys, his friends the villains. It should make the earth move under his feat as reality refocused around him. But it didn't, the world was the same as it had been five days ago and he still loved them. He wasn't sure what that made him, it was easier to say what it didn't make him, a good man.
"Andras," Mr. Snake called from inside the house. "You need to see this." There was a tension in the man's voice that had Andras getting to his feet with a fighter's grace, hands slipping over the hilts of his knives. It was a killer's need to reassure himself that death was close to hand.
They wound through the sprawling house, tracking Mr. Snake to a back bedroom away from the others. The decaying caress of death stroked the air, twin smells of shit and entrails rotting in the open. The scent was a violation, a reminder that the end is the one sure thing. Every death is born in a stew of empty bowels and rotting flesh, there's no elegance to a corpse. Man comes into life screaming in pain, coated in bloody membranes of shredded flesh, we die as grotesquely as we're born.
Banana had kneeled beside his bed in the pose of a man beseeching God for understanding. Then he'd cut open his stomach and spilled his guts onto the ground with his own kukri. It must have taken him a bastard long time to die, but he'd never wavered. He'd stayed with his head bent in supplication; hands clasped in prayer until death took him slow and mean.
The room stank of corrupted flesh and voided bowels. Andras stepped into the room with the solemnity of entering a cathedral. Walking up behind Banana, the man laid his hands on the man's shoulders, tone quiet and fiercely proud. "Honor to the end, my friend."
"I don't understand," Cesare said, noticing for the first time that Banana had laid his kukri down in front of him. The glittering sigils along its blade as dead and lifeless as the man.
Andras looked back at Cesare, hand gently resting on Banana's shoulder. "A famous samurai on dying complained only that he did not have seven lives to give his Lord." Andras looked down on the rotting corpse of his Hound. "A hunting dog without his eyes is useless. The Light Bringer would have taken care of his dog, but the dog knew his time had passed. Rather than take advantage of his Lord, Banana chose the honorable way. Now a stronger dog can take his place."
It was a strange honor, and it moved Cesare. That kind of commitment demanded respect; it went deeper than if you agreed with what they were committed to. Banana had lived his life according to a hard code of honor, and taken his life to keep true to it. How many people had that kind of strength? It wasn't hard to live a life by a code, most people did. But when those beliefs required you to cut open your belly and spill the secrets of your body onto the ground, few stayed true. Most turned away from the sacrifice, unwilling to die for words, or the ideals they'd killed for.
Stepping out of the room, Cesare made way for Beast to enter. She lifted Banana, blood blooming across her chest, face screwed up in pain she wouldn't give voice to. While Beast waited, Mr. Snake gathered up the man's entrails. Hands full of slippery guts, the sleek man followed behind the towering woman like some macabre bridal train.
Andras picked up the strangely lonesome kukri. "A shard of his soul." Andras watched Cesare, weighing the kukri in his hand. "You got a blade?" Cesare nodded, feet spreading, shifting his center of gravity from standing to ready.
Andras held his hand out in silent demand. The switchblade slipped into Cesare's hand. Years and a lifetime ago, he'd found the blade stained in old blood, half buried in the dirt. He'd wondered how it got there but not so much that he was going to leave it. The blade had stood between him and death more times than he wanted to think about. A steel friend he depended on as familiar as the back of his hand.
Cesare didn't want to hand it over, but he didn't have a choice. Gripping it tightly, Cesare slapped it into Andras palm. With a push of the stud the blade sprang out with a clean click, a tongue of sliver dancing in the fading sunlight.
"We live and die by the steel we carry. For a Hound, our blade is our soul, birthed with a shard of our spirit woven into its metallic flesh. We sleep with it, shit with it, kill, and fuck with it. Night after night, we polish and sharpen our blades until we know them better than our cocks. Banana spent hours with this blade, day after day, night after night." Andras stopped, giving Cesare a long look. "You know what that's like don't you?" Cesare nodded, eyes on the blade.
"The blades are bonded to us through the sigils," Andras said, fingers running over the cold, dead sigils of the kukri. "No two blades are the same, just as no two souls are the same. This blade will be buried with Banana, a reminder of his service."
Andras laid the switchblade on the bed in the splattered blood of the dead Hound. Barbarous invocations spilled from his lips, crude, guttural, and coarse, the world sizzled, jumping like grease in a hot pain, sticky heat flashing hot through the room. Glyphs incised themselves in the blade, steel bubbling under Andras index finger. Reality screamed at the words, the strings that underpinned existence singing like a tortured violin.
As the last word left the man's mouth, the silver blade shone with sigils. Motes of gold swam in the cut lines across blade and handle. "Don't get excited, it won't change the blade a werewolf's dick hair. But it'll remind you of the man you killed and what kind of people sit on the other side of this war."
Grimacing, Cesare accepted the blade back. "What does it say?"
Andras grinned, eyes glinting wickedly. "Lucifer's Pup. It might buy you two seconds if you ever have to use it to get out from under another pack."
Cesare traced the glittering sigils, flesh pulled by the razor cut groves in the metal. This would be one bitch of a thing to explain if he had to pull the blade at school. Which given his luck, would be minutes after he arrived. He should toss the tainted blade. It had passed from asset into a liability, but after so many years of saving his life he couldn't throw it away.
"Loyalty," Andras said, summing up not just Cesare's feelings toward the knife but also Banana's actions. It was the same emotion, if not in quality, then in kind. That was the real lesson Andras was getting at, that his people held to honor and faith. It was a powerful, if poisoned lesson, and one Cesare wouldn't be forgetting soon.
Andras watched him for long few minutes. "I don't know what you are or where you came from. I don't understand how a thing isn't of God but isn't born in Darkness, and I don't give a fuck. My Lord tells me who to kill, that's my world, Cesare."
Walking up, Andras drew even with Cesare. "But I know men. I know what their insides look like, I know what they cry when their balls have been cut off, and I know a good man when I see one." Andras paused, voice lowering, "You'll never be a good man Cesare, you and I both know that, but you can still do good."
Cesare watched the man leave him in the room. Banana had lived and died with honor. He was the kind of man boys dream of growing up to be. Strong enough to stand on his own, no matter the odds, uncompromising on right. Banana had been strong, Christian, honorable, and whole. He was everything Cesare had wanted to be, but he wasn't what Cesare was.
Cesare was deceitful, weak, dishonorable, sneaky, a lying bastard. For Cesare, the world was done in shades of gray with no moral to the story except survival. When life had pressed down on him, he'd broken. He hadn't stood up to the world, Cesare had scurried around and snapped up the rotting flesh of the innocent and guilty as it savaged the weak.