A gust of wind billowed into the hall, sending clinks through the chains and buckles strung across Jack’s leather coat and jeans. They were the only part of him that moved, planted in the doorway with one boot hooked around the other ankle and violence in his grin.

Beside him, angled away from Cain just inside the doorway, Ella’s lips pursed while her hair danced in the breeze.

A sigh dragged from Cain’s lips, a wistful glance to the plastic sheet tumbling down the alley outside. “Move.”

Not that Jack did of course. “You wanna fucking stop telling me what to do, huh?”

Cain pressed his tongue tighter against the roof of his mouth. “And here I thought you wanted me to leave. Move, worm, before I make you.”

Something ugly dragged through Jack’s grin, and it haunted all the hollows in his face no amount of grooming could fill. “I mean, if anyone ‘round here’s getting babysat, it’s you, wanker. What’d she tell you, huh? Bar with Bunny, was it, babe?”

Shit. Cain sunk his teeth into his tongue, drawing in a sharp, hard breath. The cringing guilt on Ella’s face must be sickening, just the same as what he could hear in her small mumbling voice.

“Jack, can’t you just—”

A raucous cheer burst from Jack, and he slapped his hand against his thigh, tipping his head back with the howl. “There it is! You like that, huh, dickwad? Do the chores then fuck off so Jacky can get laid? Gonna make sure I look at that tinsel and think of you while I—”

“I wonder…” A brittle smile curved Cain’s lips as he cut Jack off, smooth, loud. Ice spanned a puddle at Jack’s back, and as Cain drew in a deeper breath, it seemed to thicken. Crack. “Was Casper thinking of you when he—”

Jack lunged forward, but Cain twisted aside, his coat flaring out as he dodged the blow. Jack lurched past, so close Cain could reach out – grip his skull and fill it with rot. End it.

Jack caught himself. His fist jabbed for Cain’s face, and Cain dipped back, quick steps to draw out of Jack’s range. The wall threatened his back, but the closer it crowded, the more of this thrumming seeped into Cain’s veins. Cold, whining in his ears. The sorcery lingering at his fingertips begged.

It wasn’t even hard. The drink made Jack clumsy, and his body announced the track of each blow.

Thunder darkened Jack’s face as he stalked Cain down the hall, shoulders brawling and his fists rocks. “You cunt. Talk plenty of shit for a posh cunt who can’t even man a—”

“Oh please. Look at you – the only thing you’re good at is violence—" Jack threw a fist. Cain jerked away from it again, his heel scuffing against the skirting board, and laughed. “And you’re still failing at that. No wonder you have that gargantuan inferiority complex ruining—"

Ella’s shriek burst through the hall, arresting Cain’s words on his tongue.  “Stop it!”

In a flurry of gossamer, Ella darted between them. She pushed at Jack’s chest. Perhaps less a shove than comfort with the way her hands stayed pressed against the tight white of his t-shirt. Cain caught a glimpse of the wild whites of her eyes past her hair.

Snarling, Jack lunged for Cain again, but Ella had always been stronger than she looked. Another shove kept him back but didn’t do a thing to stem Jack’s spat words. “I didn’t fucking start it. If this cunt’s going to talk about Cas, I’ll—”

A flare seethed through Cain’s chest, a threat of heat that his aura beat back. The dangling lamps caught frost, a crystalline shimmer obscuring the filaments. “You’ll do what, worm? Cry about it? Because you have no choice but to confront that your own mire of self-flagellating guilt and envy has finally driven away the one thing you care about.” Cain flicked his fingers, an idle motion, and grinned. “I suppose it is rather upsetting seeing as this all seems to stem from—”

“Ella.” Barely restrained violence seethed in the word, her name between gritted teeth. Jack seemed to poise on the teetering edge of losing grip. “If he doesn’t shut the fuck up, I’m going to smash his smug fucking face in.”

Finally. Cain crooked his finger to Jack. Crystals stung his lips, the moisture in his breath misting in the air and cracking on the bitter cold clinging to his skin. “Go ahead, maggot. But do remember if your skin so much as brushes mine, Ella will be mopping the rotting cesspool of your corpse off—”

“Stop it!” Ella spun around. Wetness gathered like dew beneath her lashes, and a splash of pink stained her cheekbones. The strangling in her chest was audible in her breaths. “Just stop it, Cain! No wonder I tried to get you to leave without seeing him, because whenever you do, you end up doing this!”

Cain took a step forward, stabbing his finger at Ella. “I do not—”

“Yes you do!” Ella’s lip wobbled as she drew herself up, the same tremble as what gripped her balled fists. Gently, she stamped one foot against the ground, like she couldn’t quite muster the temper. “You do. Just like you always have, and I’m sick of it! You know exactly what’s happened, and you still bring it up just to make him feel like nothing, and I hate it!”

The ice seethed inside Cain’s skull, painting Ella’s skin in a reverberating burst of crystal fractals. Hissing, he squeezed the bridge of his nose like the pressure might force out the anger and drag this thick, foul sorcery back inside his skin. How had he ended up the villain? Again? Like bloody always. None of this crap would be happening if she’d just asked him to bloody leave early like any sane person.

Venom coated the words that spilled off Cain’s tongue. “You seemed perfectly content to let me talk however I bloody well wanted to for months during the Collapse. Whatever invoked the change of heart?”

Ella flinched at that, drawing back a step and then another until her back knocked against Jack’s chest. The haze of darkness edging Cain’s vision did plenty to swallow whatever vacuous expression Jack had on, but it couldn’t obscure the hands he settled on her waist.

Worse yet was the way her chin lifted after, as if the touch strengthened her. “I told you I’m sick of it, Cain. Maybe I wouldn’t have kept it from you if you were capable of talking to him without being cruel. But you’re not so I’m making sure Jack doesn’t have to deal with it.”

God, she was actually doing that. Cain squeezed his fingers tighter, tipping his head back. All the cold seared his insides, but it struggled in an aimless writhing with no place to go but oozing onto the floor. “Ella, I am perfectly—“

“Just go, Cain. And think about how you talk to people, alright? You aren’t better than anyone just because you’re powerful.”

The first flash instinct was wrong. It was shouted protests and hissed insults. It was black sorcery washing across the hall and swallowing Jack in a viscous dark haze while he decayed.

But Cain had always been very good at ignoring first instinct. Precision and consideration had gotten him exactly as far as he’d gotten today.

And where’s that now, Cain? God to a thousand square foot flat and not a soul more.

Another wave of cold flooded up, cramping around his skull. Suffocating. Cain hissed between his teeth and stalked out of the door without looking back.

The alley stunk, but nothing stunk worse than the rotten sorcery that clawed through his skin and into his bones.