King of Thieves

by Jane Kindred

  Armen’s second stepped forward with the open box for Belphagor and Armen to select their weapons. Belphagor had the privilege of choosing first. This was as fair as it was going to get.

  As he took his pistol from the box, something made Belphagor glance up. In the pale dawn light, Vasily was charging toward him down the bank.

  “Vasya—” he managed before the firespirit reached him and grabbed him by the lapels of his morning coat, driving him backward into the bridge support so roughly he almost winded him.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Vasily growled. Smudges of kohl paint still ringed his eyes.

  “Vasya—” he tried again, to no avail.

  “A duel? A fucking duel? Who are you, Nikolai Stavrogin? You think you can just march off to your possible death after everything you said to me last night and not even tell me?”

  Belphagor gazed up at him, stunned by his ferocity and his passion in the wake of how things had turned for them of late. And finding it incredibly hot that Vasily was making Dostoevsky references. “Damn, you’re beautiful,” he murmured.

  That shut him up for a second. But only a second.

  “I want to know what the hell you think you’re doing.”

  “I’m handling Armen. I won’t have any peace from his accusations and slander unless I prove him a liar.”

  “And you’re going to prove that by…” Pausing to look down at the gun Belphagor held pointed at the ground, Vasily did a double-take. “That won’t work here.”

  “Apparently it will. Via elemental manipulation. And if you’d let me get this over with,” he said, speaking low, “I plan to use mine to ensure that I am not in the path of his.”

  Vasily searched his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I’m an airspirit, my dear boy. Now stop sullying my coat and step back with the spectators.”

  Vasily’s hands slipped from the fabric. “But what if you miscalculate the moment he fires?”

  “If I’m distracted, that’s far more likely to happen. So stop worrying and go away.”

  Vasily stood a moment longer while Belphagor brushed at his lapels, making a show of being more concerned with his clothing than the duel at hand. “I haven’t stopped loving you either,” the firespirit muttered in a lovely, guttural growl.

  Belphagor nodded. “I know that. Now go.”

  Vasily backed toward the crowd just as Khai arrived on the opposite side of the bridge. Stepping forward to the starting point where Armen waited impatiently to begin counting off his paces, Belphagor made a grand bow and blew Khai a kiss, in keeping with the foppish role he’d been cultivating for the past week. He’d pay for it later with Vasily. Hopefully the payment would be in his preferred currency.

  Armen didn’t bother with a bow, turning on his heel, while Phaleg began the count. Belphagor turned and matched his paces in the opposite direction. They weren’t to raise their weapons until Phaleg gave the word, but Belphagor had to be prepared for Armen to cheat. He sucked in his breath as he turned, knowing it would prevent him from firing. His hand still gripped the pistol, but it was insubstantial, only the aether in Heaven’s air keeping the object he held from falling.

  He heard the crack and felt the bullet rush into him, pulling his matter apart. Armen’s aim was exceptional, as he’d feared. If he breathed out now, it would be lodged in his heart. The earthspirit propulsion of the projectile seemed to make it a solid blow, like a tiny fist slamming through him. He felt it tear through the boundary of the space his physical body ought to occupy, so compelling a sensation he nearly gasped and made it real, but he managed to hold on an instant longer until it had passed. Breathing out with relief, he fired his weapon. He’d aimed high, hoping to graze Armen’s ear, but the bullet ricocheted off as though the other demon were a wall of stone and struck some poor bystander. Armen too had used the advantage of his element beyond just the mechanism of the gun.

  Unnoticed in the chaos as demons rushed to the aid of the one who’d been hit, Armen advanced on him, his weapon still raised. But the pistol held only one bullet. He’d watched it being loaded. Belphagor surmised that Armen had found some other magical method of reloading and sucked in his breath once more just as Armen fired again. His timing in this instance was a millisecond slow.

  But he had also moved in the same breath, and the bullet caught him in the shoulder, ripping through it rather than lodging within. As he breathed out, he stumbled and fell to one knee, the unexpected pain nearly whiting out thought. Armen’s second had darted forward and grabbed the earthspirit’s wrist, and Belphagor gritted his teeth and seized the moment while Armen, he hoped, would be too distracted to do whatever had made him impervious to the first bullet Belphagor had fired. He also had to hope Armen had applied whatever magic allowed him to fire a second bullet to both weapons, not knowing which Belphagor would pick.

  His reflexes and his hunch proved solid, and when he pulled the trigger again, another bullet flew home and caught Armen in the cheek. Belphagor’s aim had been a little off. Armen howled and stumbled backward with his hand to his face. His second disarmed him before he could disgrace himself further.

  As Phaleg hurried to Belphagor’s side, he handed over his pistol. “I’m fine. Keep Vasily away from me,” he gritted out. “He’ll queer the deal.” He got to his feet as Phaleg stepped in the way of Vasily, who’d come running just as Belphagor had expected, while Khai dashed in to support him.

  “Just grazed,” Belphagor lied with an amiable smile, and added more loudly, “I believe Armen Nekirevich has shown himself to be an unreliable witness, has he not? Can’t even fight fair in a duel he knows he’d lose.” Belphagor glanced at the other demon, whose left cheek had a hole blown clean through it, though he didn’t seem to have struck anything vital. Deflected at the last minute, probably, but not quickly enough. “Well bloodied, despite your craven behavior. I’d say you’ve disgraced yourself thoroughly.”

  Out of the corner of his eye as he wrapped his arm around Khai’s waist and leaned on him to let him lead him up the bank, he saw Vasily fuming. Poor Phaleg was having a time of it.

  “The demon who was shot,” Belphagor managed. “How bad?”

  “Hit him in the wrist,” said Khai. “He’ll be fine.”

  Phaleg threatened to have him arrested if he persisted in trying to see Belphagor. It was only the whispered assurance that the angel would come by the Stone Horse that evening to apprise him of Belphagor’s condition that kept Vasily from calling his bluff.

  “He’s very close,” Phaleg added. “Don’t let all his effort go to waste because you have to have everything your way.”

  “My way?” Vasily would have laughed if he hadn’t been so worried. “Since when has anything with Belphagor gone my way?”

  The angel blinked up at him for several seconds in disbelief. “You must be daft,” he said finally. “Just stay away from the Brimstone. It was a superficial wound, and I’ll let you know how he is later.”

  When Phaleg showed up that evening, Silk’s eyes lit with a familiar gleam. Dressed smartly in the dark suit from the collection Belphagor had purchased for him, Silk waved Phaleg over with a cigarillo at the end of a long, bone holder perched between his fingers.

  “Do you know what I think would be marvelous?” Silk said loudly to the group he was entertaining as Phaleg approached. “If we took this angelic soldier fellow and my Ruby brute downstairs and put them to a cocksucking contest after baring their bottoms and slapping them pink.”

  Vasily coughed violently as if he’d forgotten how to breathe.

  Silk smiled up at him. “Something go down the wrong way?”

  Phaleg managed to act as if he hadn’t heard Silk’s suggestion when he arrived. “I’m afraid I need to borrow Vasily for a bit.”

  Silk’s eyes widened with exaggerated shock. “You’re not arresting him?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. I just have a message to deliver to him in private.”

 
Silk puffed on the end of his holder. “Well, hurry back. I’d like to deliver something into your ‘private’ as well.”

  Laughter from the demons Silk was entertaining followed them out the door, though it wasn’t the mocking laughter Vasily would have expected had they been a group of angels.

  “So you actually pay Silk to humiliate you?” Vasily asked after the door closed.

  Phaleg gave him a cool stare. “Are you judging me?” There was a slight emphasis on the pronouns that said Phaleg considered himself above Vasily.

  “Oh, right. I’m just a filthy demon. Not an upstanding angel debasing himself for filthy demons.”

  Phaleg reddened. “That wasn’t what I was implying. It’s just that I was under the impression you had the same sort of relationship with Belphagor I did.”

  The past tense and the implication that what they’d had with Belphagor was the same needled like a burr caught in his clothes against his skin. “I was under the impression you were in love with him because you enjoyed being made to suffer. Whereas I enjoyed being made to suffer because I was in love with him. Am in—was—dammit.” Grammar seemed to be getting the best of him this evening.

  “You mean you…?” Phaleg faltered. “I thought you were a submissive.”

  “Oh, I’ll submit. Eventually. I’m just not sure I’d call myself submissive. It’s more like…surrender.” This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to be having with Phaleg. “Weren’t you supposed to be giving me news from Belphagor?”

  “Right. Sorry. He wants you to stop by the Brimstone. Enter the back way. Knock and wait for Khai, and—these are his words—don’t go barreling in like an angry lummox. This is covert.”

  Vasily narrowed his eyes, not sure if he should be insulted. “What’s a lummox?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  If Belphagor wanted him there, perhaps he’d been hurt worse than he’d seemed. The thought nagged at Vasily as he waited around the corner of a building at the end of the block while the back way into the Brimstone was blocked by a demoness barmaid in a tryst with her lover. Anxiety thrummed in his chest while the drunken demon struggled to unlace the barmaid and free her from her restricting garments so he could get to business—followed by an even longer wait once they’d finished while he laced and cinched her back up. One of the advantages of sex with men was not requiring a chambermaid pit crew just to get on with it.

  When they’d finally cleared out, Vasily went to the door and knocked, only to have Khai yank the door open and glare at him.

  “Where the hell have you been? Decide to finish someone off at the Stone Horse first?”

  “No, I was waiting for an amorous couple to finish each other off in the alley,” Vasily grumbled, following Khai down the hall.

  “Oh, them.” Khai chuckled. “Did you watch?”

  “Of course I didn’t watch. Any more than was necessary.”

  Khai held the door open to what had once been Vasily’s room. Belphagor had said there was nothing going on between them, but it was hard to believe, given Belphagor’s poor impulse control. And hotness.

  But tonight, Belphagor looked a little pale, propped up on the cot by a multitude of pillows. On the cloth bandage wrapped around his bare left shoulder, a small circle of blood stained the center.

  “Belphagor.” Vasily was at his side in an instant, kneeling beside the cot to get a closer look at the wound. “How bad is it? Did you get the bullet out? Did you use antiseptic?”

  “It’s nice to see I can still get you on your knees.” Belphagor winked, but Vasily didn’t smile. “Don’t worry. It’s nothing. I was half substantial when I was hit, so the bullet merely tore a sort of displaced matter hole where it passed through. I’m fine.”

  “It’s not nothing. You’re still bleeding. It’s just inches from your heart. And I happen to know how much one of these damned things hurts, if you recall.”

  That sobered Belphagor considerably. “Khai, could you give us a minute?” When Khai had stepped out and closed the door, Belphagor sat up, trying to hide a wince. “I recall very well.” Of course he did. That was when he’d said it: You’re not my boy. “I’ve been thinking about what to do about us.”

  “Do about us?” That didn’t sound ominous at all.

  “If you mean for there to be an us. Which I understood from this morning’s comment that you did.”

  “Of course I do.” Emotion made his voice a low growl. Belphagor’s hand moved toward his across the blanket, but Vasily wasn’t quite ready to take it yet.

  Belphagor casually withdrew it. “I’ve given serious consideration to where things went astray.”

  “They went astray when you sold me to the fucking Fletchery.”

  “Did I, Vasya? Did I sell you, or did I ask you to play a foolish game and pretend that I had?”

  “You took the facets.”

  Belphagor’s eyes darkened. “You think facets had anything to do with my sending you there? I have plenty of facets. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  Vasily looked down at his hand on the blanket. “How was I to notice? You keep it hidden from me. Like everything.”

  “What I keep from you is merely that which is of no consequence. How many facets I have, how many rubles in the world of Man, is immaterial. If I cared about them, I wouldn’t live at the Brimstone.”

  Vasily raised his head. “Why the hell do you live at the Brimstone?”

  “Because demons who throw facets around find themselves with their throats slit in dark alleys. And because no one would play against me at the tables if they knew how much I was really winning. The game gives me too much pleasure to give it up just to live a little more comfortably. I have all I need.”

  “You could use a bigger damned bed.”

  Belphagor laughed. “So I could. If only the room were larger, I’d buy one. But as you know, the real reason I keep this room is the portal. No amount of facets would be worth trading it for.”

  “There are other portals.”

  “Not many. And there’s about to be one fewer.”

  Vasily studied Belphagor’s up-to-something gaze. “How are you going to manage that?”

  “I’m going to glamour it so it’s never seen, and so that anyone who’s ever seen or used it before can no longer remember where it is. My little enterprise over the past couple of weeks has yielded a great deal of information. The northeast portal is the only route the drovers on the Celestial Silk Road have for their terrestrial commerce. The angelic faction tortured Anzhela to learn its location.”

  Anger and dismay roiled through him. “Tortured her?”

  Belphagor nodded grimly. “She’s a very strong girl, as well as a practical one. When they threatened to start cutting things off of her, she relented and told them what they wanted to know. She’s afraid the girls at The Cat must hate her for it, but I’ve assured her that they’re very worried about her and only want her to be safe. They understand she did what she had to.”

  Vasily curled his fist into the blanket at the thought of the angels hurting Anzhela. “We need to kill those fucking bastards.”

  Belphagor gave him a dark smile. “Which brings me to the second part of my plan. The principality isn’t likely to intervene in the case of demons enslaving demons, but the fact that angels are involved—and that on occasion, angels have been sold—is deeply troubling to him.”

  “How do you know what’s troubling to the principality?”

  Belphagor’s eyebrow lifted characteristically. “I have an in with our dear patriarch. Phaleg is his Chief of Security.”

  “Oh.”

  Belphagor moved his hand back across the blanket and this time curled it around Vasily’s fist without hesitating. “Please don’t worry about him. I ended it with him that day in our room, and there has been nothing for you to worry about since.” He stroked his thumb over the tightly clenched bones of Vasily’s hand. “You remember that day. How he got on his hands and knees and you fucked him for me with that magnifice
nt, delectable cock until the poor boy nearly fainted of his own pleasure while I fucked his mouth.”

  Sweat ran down Vasily’s temple, and his pulse fluttered. “I remember.”

  “Which is what I’ve been thinking about. A great deal. And to my great frustration, Khai is always about, preventing me from thinking it through to its conclusion.” Belphagor winked and played his fingers along the bones of Vasily’s hand.

  “You’re really not fucking Khai?”

  “I understand that I’ve given you cause not to trust me, but no. I am not fucking Khai. Nor is he giving me mouth jobs or toss-offs. I’m as chaste as an angel.” Vasily couldn’t help the loud laugh, which made Belphagor’s eyebrows draw together in annoyance. “As I was saying, I’ve given these matters thought, and my conclusion is that you would be more comfortable joining me in meting out punishment to others than taking punishment from me.”

  Vasily’s jaw dropped. “You what?”

  “I think we both know you’re not really a submissive.”

  Vasily yanked his hand away and jumped to his feet. He’d said exactly the same thing to Phaleg not an hour ago, but from Belphagor’s lips it struck him like a slap in the face. “Poshel na khui!”

  Belphagor looked baffled. “What have I said?”

  “I’m not submissive enough for your taste, is what you mean!”

  “No—”

  “I don’t grovel and fawn and look up at you with beautiful angel eyes full of unquestioning obedience.”

  “Now, just a damned minute, Vasya. I love your eyes.” Belphagor threw off his blanket and swung his legs over the side of the cot. “I’ve told you before I don’t want blind obedience and servility from you. I want to break you like a wild, magnificent horse. Every. Single. Damned. Time. I want to wrestle you to the ground and hold you down and make you insane with fury at your helplessness before I fuck you.”

  Vasily’s heart was pounding with that fury at this very moment, confounded with desire. “Then why the hell would you take that away from me? Just to punish me? Just so you can fuck other demons and angels with impunity?”