King of Thieves

by Jane Kindred

  “Meaning?”

  “Dmitri and I heard them…showering.”

  Belphagor steadied his breathing. “Maybe Silk needed help.”

  “Well, he got plenty,” said Lev flatly.

  “I see.” Vasily had vehemently refuted Belphagor’s assumption that he desired Silk. It should have been a glaring sign of what was coming.

  “Maybe you should just come back and make up with him before things get any weirder.”

  “This is what he wants,” he replied brusquely. “No amount of talk is going to change his mind.”

  “Bel—”

  “Thanks, Lev. I’ll be in touch.”

  He’d been a fool to imagine this was only temporary. Vasily had outgrown him. Had outgrown, plain and simple, being a boy. What the hell was wrong with Belphagor? He was the one who was acting like a child, remaining stuck in an infinite adolescence. It was embarrassing. His rule had always been to keep his heart out of the game, and he’d allowed himself to become sentimental, imagining there could ever be more to it than just a game. But the truth of the matter was he was the only one playing. And he’d lost.

  Desyataya

  There was soon more, however, to occupy Belphagor’s mind than self-pity. The vory v zakone had taken an interest in him. Catching the interest of the Russian underworld was something he’d spent much of his life within the terrestrial sphere avoiding. During his stints in prison, of course, it had been impossible. The power of influence in such places was a crucial skill, and far more difficult to pull off among those for whom influence was a tool of the trade. But it was his time in the zona that had made him determined not to draw their attention elsewhere. He’d earned their respect eventually, but it was hard won, and constantly challenged, and in the language written on the body in ink, he was a walking contradiction.

  Outside the zona, only the tattoos on his hands were generally visible unless he chose to reveal more, but those, on this summer morning in the hotel restaurant, were enough.

  “Vy zdes ne mesto.”

  Belphagor looked up from his porridge into the face of a very surly, very tattooed vor whose hands were in his pockets, which didn’t bode well. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You don’t speak Russian?” He spoke the words in English with disdain, apparently taking Belphagor for a Brit with his celestial accent—despite Belphagor having spoken to him in Russian—and repeated himself in the same language. “You don’t belong here, anglichanin. You’ll beg for something else if you show your face here again.”

  With a mild lift of his eyebrow, Belphagor went back to his porridge. “You seem confused. I’m a Russian national.” This wasn’t strictly true, but he had forged papers that said it was, which was all that mattered.

  The vor’s right hand whipped out of his pocket before Belphagor could react and slammed a pocketknife into the wood of the table next to the hand that held Belphagor’s spoon.

  “Ya pererezhu tebe gorlo yesli yeshche raz narisuesh’sya na nashey tochke.” He stared straight at Belphagor. “Let me spell it out for you in angliski, in case you don’t understand: I’ll cut your throat if you show up on our turf again.”

  Belphagor set down his spoon and moved his hand to his lap as the vor yanked the knife out of the tabletop. He had no weapons in his pockets, but it wouldn’t hurt to let his challenger think he did. Misdirection was the foundation of all influence. With the other hand, he picked up his teacup, making sure the crown on his left middle finger over the snake-entwined sword was visible as he lifted the cup to his lips. Misdirection number two. He wasn’t left-handed, but the suggestion that he might be tended to make Russians suspicious that he might also be capable of anything. Leave it to the world of Man to be more superstitious about simple genetics than the Heavens.

  As he lowered the cup, he brought his other hand back up to the table. The vor’s eyes snapped to the motion just in time to miss the fact that Belphagor was tossing his hot tea in his face. With the distraction of shock and pain, the man let down his guard for an instant with a yelp—just long enough for Belphagor to snatch the pocketknife and jam it up under the vor’s jaw as he leapt to his feet. The few other diners slipped out of their chairs and quietly left the restaurant.

  “Let me spell something out for you,” he said calmly. “I’ve killed men for less disrespect. You come to my table while I’m eating my breakfast and insult me without provocation. Ordinarily, I’d ignore you, since you’ve made no attempt to even identify yourself in relation to your claim of ‘turf’, but it so happens that I’m in a foul mood this morning, so I’m inclined to carve out your tongue from below so that you won’t make the mistake of insulting someone so out of your league again.”

  The man held both hands up, palm out. “I must have mistaken you for someone else.”

  “The hell you did. No one else looks like me.” He pushed the tip of the knife a little harder under the man’s jaw. He hadn’t broken the skin yet, but the slightest pressure would do it. “Who sent you here?”

  “We were told by an agent of ours that you were attempting to move in on our business. That you showed up asking questions about our inventory.”

  “Did this agent happen to mention that I’m not interested in selling, I’m interested in buying?” He lowered the knife and pocketed it, sitting down once more and adjusting his sleeves.

  The vor tried to recover some dignity now that he wasn’t in imminent danger. “We don’t sell. We rent.”

  “Anyone will sell for the right price.” Belphagor righted his teacup in the saucer and poured himself another. “And I’m prepared to offer the right price.”

  The man laughed. “Like the price you offered for the piece you coerced from our agent? That piece wasn’t for sale, and we want it back.”

  Belphagor sat back in his chair with the teacup in hand. “Would a restaurateur request a fine meal be returned after a patron consumed it?”

  The vor folded his arms. “We don’t deal in fine dining. We deal in more durable entertainment. Like video rental. You pay to enjoy it temporarily. The tape can be used again.”

  Belphagor shrugged. “Not this tape. It broke.” He sipped his tea. “I have very specific and eclectic tastes. And a rather insatiable appetite. If you feel your supply can’t meet my demand for my price, I have other connections.”

  “Your price is meaningless. Half a million rubles are worth a new car one day and a cab ride the next. A single-transaction trade is of no use to our enterprise for a product that will bring in multiple clients at current currency value if we do no business with you.”

  “And what if I traded other commodities instead?”

  The vor looked dubious. “What other ‘commodities’?”

  “How would diamonds suit you and your organization?”

  As expected, this caused the vor’s mouth to drop open comically before he recovered his poise and looked Belphagor up and down with a sneer. “You don’t have diamonds.”

  “I have many investments.” Belphagor went back to drinking his tea and eating his kasha as if the conversation were over, while the vor continued to stand in front of his table and stare at him. “Perhaps you’d like to have a more senior member of your organization negotiate with me. You don’t seem up to the task of serious business matters.” He took a notecard and a pen from inside his breast pocket. “Have your boss meet me here at two p.m.,” he said as he wrote on the card. He left it lying on the table for the man to take and paid him no more attention. Wisely, the vor picked up the card and left.

  The location he’d written down was as public as he could think of that would allow for privacy while still ensuring the “boss” didn’t show up with an entourage of thugs to beat the hell out of him. He’d chosen the Field of Mars.

  Tourists wandered about the manicured lawns of the park, its geometric lines and artfully arranged vegetation leaving the vistas of the park wide open to the bordering streets and palace, and the Moyka River beyond. Belphagor waited beside the
eternal memorial flame at the center of the park, which afforded him an unobstructed view in all directions. Flanked by a modest entourage of just two bodyguards—one whose acquaintance Belphagor had already made—the man he’d arranged to meet was impossible to miss in his impeccable Armani suit and silk tie in the middle of summer.

  Belphagor, likewise, was conspicuous in his leather duster and spiked hair. Tourists seemed to magically clear the area. Perhaps Belphagor had overestimated the safety of the public space. He might be able to match wits with these thugs, and, if it came down to it, match them in a physical fight with the advantage of his elemental radiance despite being outnumbered, but radiance wouldn’t help against firearms at close range.

  The boss wasted no time as he approached Belphagor. “You’re the hooligan who insults my intelligence with claims of your vast wealth.”

  “You can call me Knyaz,” said Belphagor. “And you would be?”

  The gangster laughed. “The Prince, is it?” He folded his arms, clearly not interested in pleasantries. “Yuri Yegorevich Andropov. You should have heard of me, judging by your ink.”

  “I’ve been abroad. Which is why you haven’t heard of me.” He mirrored Andropov’s stance. “Otherwise, you’d know that my resources are more than adequate to finance my needs.”

  “And what are your needs, exactly?”

  Belphagor began to stroll about the brazier. “I’m interested in acquiring any unique inventory you may have. Anything you want to move quickly.”

  Andropov watched him as he circled the monument. “And what do you mean by unique?”

  “I think you know. Like the piece I acquired. Wasn’t exactly local, was it?”

  “You want imports.”

  “Precisely.” Belphagor stopped and met his eyes across the flame. “Perhaps you’ve recently received a shipment of similar items you need to unload. Perhaps higher quality. Undamaged. Pristine.”

  The vor’s eyes darkened, and his men moved around the monument at a silent command from him. “If you’re militsia, I have no qualms about burying you at the bottom of the Neva. I have connections. You won’t even be missed.”

  “Do I look like militsia?” Belphagor scoffed.

  “How do you know about my inventory?”

  Belphagor smiled. “You know how information travels on the underground. Even deeply underground, it can be had for a price. And I always have the price.”

  Andropov frowned. “Suppose I do have such a shipment. And let us just suppose for the sake of argument that you could actually afford to make a trade I would find acceptable. What guarantee do I have that you won’t set up business on my turf with my inventory?”

  “As I’ve already stated, I have no interest in a private enterprise. I merely wish to purchase and consume.”

  The vor looked him over, scowling in thought. “But you’re not the one who will be consuming.”

  “Am I not?”

  “No one with such tastes would have survived in the zona.” He spat on the ground for good measure, making a loud, raucous production of it, letting him know what he thought of pedophiles. And yet he didn’t mind the money to be made selling children to them. How enterprising.

  “What I do with them is none of your business. What is your business is your price. Name it.”

  Andropov observed him with an unreadable expression for a long moment and then shook his head. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Damn. Belphagor had hoped this would remain a simple business transaction. He was going to need backup.

  When he returned to the hotel, he was surprised to find a note waiting at the desk for him when he retrieved his papers from the safe. Lev had called.

  He collected his keys from the matrona on his floor, one of the many quaint customs that the collapse of the Soviet Union hadn’t changed, and took his time before picking up the phone to dial Lev. He wasn’t looking forward to the lecture, or to hearing more about what Vasily was up to with his beautiful boy.

  “Lev,” he said, and hurried on without waiting for Lev to say what he’d intended. “Can you put Dmitri on? I need to talk to him about hiring some muscle. It’s kind of urgent, so if you don’t mind, we can talk later.”

  “Belphagor.”

  His heart dropped into his stomach at the sound of Vasily’s voice. Lev had ignored his brush-off and had handed Vasily the phone. “I thought you were Lev.”

  “He phoned you for me. He figured you might not want to talk to me.” There was a pause, and then he went on in a tight, gravelly rumble that said he was pissed about something. “After what he told you yesterday.” So he was pissed that Belphagor knew he’d been fucking Silk. Charming.

  “Why wouldn’t I want to talk to you? You’ve made your plans plain to me. I didn’t realize just how dedicated you were to them, of course, but I would never stand in your way.”

  There was a slight pause, and then the gravelly voice became even rougher, if that were possible. “Heaven forbid you’d stand in my way, Bel. Goddammit. Hang on.” His voice became slightly muffled, but only slightly. He clearly hadn’t gotten the hang of using the phone. “You talk to him. I can’t talk to him.” Lev’s reply was too low to hear. “I hate this thing,” the muffled voice muttered, and then he was back. “I don’t want to argue with you, Belphagor.”

  “Good. Then don’t.” Belphagor slammed down the receiver, his heart pounding in his chest and his face unnaturally warm. Khrystos, Bel, get a fucking grip. This wasn’t like him. He was giving Vasily the upper hand in their breakup. His heart almost stopped. Because that was what this was, wasn’t it? A goddamn breakup. He grabbed up the phone, ready to hurl it at the wall, but paused just before he let it fly. He still had to talk to Dmitri. Fucking hell.

  When he’d gotten himself together, he sat on the bed and picked up the receiver once more. No dial tone.

  “Hello?” Vasily’s gruff voice growled at his ear.

  “The phone didn’t ring,” said Belphagor defensively.

  “It didn’t ring here either. I was about to dial.”

  Weird. The line must not have disconnected when they’d hung up. Belphagor wound the cord in his hand, rubbing his thumb against the stiff rubber as if it were Vasily’s flesh. He could hear the warm breath on the other end of the line. “Why did you call?”

  “I just told you, I didn’t.”

  He could imagine the heat in Vasily’s eyes accompanying the irritated rumble of his voice. “Before. When you had Lev leave me the message.”

  “Oh.” An awkward pause followed before he spoke again. “I need to get tickets to Slyudyanka. The trains are booked for the next three weeks. I thought maybe you could…get them.”

  A small trickle of hope ran through his veins. Vasily wasn’t staying here with Silk after all. And then the plural of Vasily’s request registered. They were going back to Raqia together.

  “Sure,” he said tightly. “I’ll get them to Dmitri. Can you put him on, please?” After a pause, a loud thud sounded in his ear as though Vasily had dropped the receiver onto a wooden table. Several seconds passed, and he was considering whether he ought to hang up when Dmitri came on the line.

  “Bel? It’s Dima. What’s up?”

  Belphagor smiled at his casual tone, the words delivered as if nothing at all out of the ordinary were going on. “Well, my friend, I need a small army.”

  “To do what?” Again, delivered in that matter-of-fact tone.

  “I’ve raised the ire of a local gangster by messing in his business.”

  Dmitri sighed. “Only you, Belphagor. And I’m guessing Silk was some of his business.”

  “You guess correctly. There’s another group of kids from Raqia I’m fairly certain he’s acquired. I dropped some pretty big hints about their origins, and he didn’t seem at all confused or surprised. I also offered him a blank check in facets of the realm, but he wasn’t biting. My gut says I’ll be getting a visit tonight to invite me to do a disappearing act. I was hoping you might know a few Ne
philim I could borrow. Enough to storm wherever he’s holding these kids and take out his men.”

  “Just a few Nephilim. By tonight.”

  Belphagor grinned. “That would cover it, yeah.”

  There was a thoughtful pause. “I believe there may be a Nephil or two in town. I’ll put out some feelers. Where should they meet you?”

  “You’re a lifesaver, my friend. I’m at Gostinitsa Oktiabrskaya. I’m expecting my company to show up around dusk, so I guess that’s about midnight? My preference would be to take them alive so we can use them to get to the kids. And I’m guessing they’ll be armed. Do Nephilim pack heat?”

  “Not like your Vasily,” said Dmitri with a smirk in his voice. “But yes, some do carry firearms.”

  The possessive pronoun jabbed at his heart, and he barely heard the rest of the sentence. “He’s not my Vasily.”

  “I thought we talked about this, Bel.”

  “That was before he started fucking Silk the moment I walked out the door.”

  “So let me get this straight. You, the Prince of Tricks, are giving up on true love because your boy has a passing infatuation for a pretty young demon.”

  “He hasn’t given me reason to believe it’s a passing infatuation. He wanted me to go so he could be with him. And now they’re going home together.”

  “And your reaction doesn’t strike you as a bit ironic. After you tossed off my boyfriend just hours after promising Vasily you’d make him trust you again while you had him pinned to the kitchen table.”

  Belphagor fumed silently, knowing there was little he could say in his own defense. “How do you know what I said to him, anyway?”

  This prompted a snort from Dmitri. “You’re joking, I presume. Lev and I were standing in the hallway for a good while waiting for you two to finish. If things hadn’t been so strained between you both before, we might have joined you—well, if you hadn’t broken Lev’s teacups. He’s still stewing over that.”

  “I’ll buy him new ones.”

  “But it might interest you to know that nothing else seems to have happened between Vasily and Silk since the shower. Vasily’s sleeping on the couch.” That did ease his mind a bit. “Anyway, I need to run if I’m going to get you that backup tonight. Just…stop being a baby.”