Prince of Tricks

by Jane Kindred

  Belphagor reached his hand up with a smile, but Elyon shook his head.

  “I think I’ve earned a turn in that creamy throat of yours. I am, after all, the guest of honor.”

  Belphagor struggled to keep the smile on his face and not resort to violence with the angel who’d taken his boy and still threatened his life. “Of course, Your Grace. As soon as Phaleg finishes. Or perhaps the two of you would like to go head-to-head in competition to see who breaks first. The winner gets to finish in my creamy throat.”

  The duke frowned, but Belphagor had appealed to his ego, and he clearly believed poor Phaleg, red and stiff, couldn’t last much longer.

  The other angels gathered around with their after-dinner drinks and cigars—habits normally reserved for the peasant class but all the rage currently among the Left Bank ton—to watch the jerk-off.

  Standing on either side of him, Elyon and Phaleg groaned with pleasure as Belphagor worked them, grinning at one another periodically as each came close to coming and then regained control. Belphagor steeled himself to add a bit of tongue to the mix in order to avoid a jealous tantrum when the duke lost. He’d get his fair share of pleasure before he was done, though it was pleasure he didn’t deserve.

  Sliding to the edge of his seat, Belphagor dipped his head and sucked Phaleg’s smooth balls into his mouth in turn. Phaleg moaned and shook, nearly at his limit. He tormented the angel a bit longer and then turned to the duke. As his tongue drew in one downy globe and he closed his lips around it, Duke Elyon cried out and grabbed Belphagor by the shoulder in surprise as he spent himself against Belphagor’s cheek.

  When the duke had finished, he shook Phaleg’s hand and stepped aside gallantly. “You’ve earned it,” he said with rueful admiration.

  Phaleg straddled the chair and slid himself gratefully into Belphagor’s mouth and began to thrust vigorously, though, to his credit, he glanced at Belphagor and waited for the discreet nod of permission before he let loose with a shout of relief and gave it all to him.

  Belphagor wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grinned after Phaleg stumbled a bit weakly and pulled out. “Well, boys,” he said gazing up at Phaleg, “I have to say the pleasure has been all mine.” Sucking off Phaleg after his quiet obedience in plain view of all his comrades had been more than worth the unpleasant bit of contact with the duke.

  The duke was oblivious, already tucking himself away and pulling on his pants. “Surely you’re not leaving so early, Beatrix? Come lie by the fire with us and get warmed up before you have to face that dreadful cold.” He reclined on a luxurious pile of cushions near the hearth as he spoke, patting one next to him.

  Belphagor bit his lip coquettishly. “It’s awfully late, but that does look tempting.” He rose and went to the hearth, curling up beside him, and held a hand out to Phaleg and the angels who’d lasted longest. “Come on, cuddle up. And I don’t mind if any of you boys want to play with each other a bit. I know how young men’s tastes run, and I can see some of you are prepared to go again already, even though you’ve quite worn me out.”

  Several of the angels took the offer, drawing up more cushions and gathering around in pairs and threesomes. Those who were bored with the direction the party had taken thanked the duke for his hospitality, congratulated him on his success and let themselves out.

  Belphagor watched with pleasure as angels stroked and sucked each other, happy to see Phaleg bury his head in a young angel’s lap and enjoy what a few weeks ago would have mortified him. Among Duke Elyon’s obvious preference for the company of men, the atmosphere was far more open and relaxed than it had been on that first evening with Phaleg’s friends—who had been the first to leave tonight.

  “You’re everything they say you are,” Elyon murmured, sleepy with contentment. “And more.”

  “You flatter me, Your Grace. I’m only making due with the assets I have available to me while I’m on the mend.”

  “I’d be hard-pressed to find another whore as enthusiastic about cock as you obviously are, my dear.” Elyon yawned and closed his eyes with one arm draped around him. “Consider my supernal account to be at your disposal as compensation for your excellent entertainment. Whatever you want, it’s yours.”

  “There is one thing, but I’m afraid you’ll be angry if I ask.”

  “Nonsense. What could you possibly ask for that would anger me?”

  Belphagor hesitated. “It’s my friend, Tabi. She’s no anarchist, I swear to you. Even if Sefira got mixed up in something, Tabris doesn’t have a devious bone in her body.”

  Elyon opened his eyes and narrowed them at him. “And just what is it you’re asking?”

  “Couldn’t you see fit to spare her?”

  Elyon’s arm tightened around him. “She was there in the assassin’s room with the body. She was no innocent bystander.”

  “But she was! You saw that firespirit with her and Sefira yourself. Did it seem they’d ever met him before?”

  Elyon considered. “I suppose not. But how would you know about that? You weren’t at The Cat.”

  “It’s all the talk there. No one can believe that sweet brute is a killer. But the madam told me how Tabi ran off in tears when a message came that Sefira’s body was at The Brimstone. She just wanted to see her sister one more time.”

  “Sister? I thought that was just an act.”

  “Not a bit of it. Tabi is Sefi’s baby sister, and she only came to work at The Cat because she had nowhere to go when their mother passed. Please, Your Grace. Have a heart and advise the principality to set her free. She doesn’t know anything.” Belphagor crossed his bosom-covered heart. “I swear on my life.”

  The duke propped himself up on one elbow and gave Belphagor a piercing stare. “It will be on your life if I find you’re lying.” He tucked his hand into Belphagor’s bodice and stroked one ample breast with a sigh, kneading the nipple. “But I confess I’ve had my suspicions that your friend was simply a victim of circumstance. She’s done nothing but cry since they brought her in.”

  “I’d be so grateful, Your Grace.” Belphagor leaned into his touch. “I can promise you the best fuck of your life as soon as I’m feeling myself.”

  Elyon leered. “And I will take you up on that, dear Beatrix. You suck cock better than most of the rent boys I’ve known. I’m eager to find out if you take it up the ass half as well.”

  Belphagor smiled, burying the urge to strangle Elyon where he lay, and wiggled his feminine posterior provocatively. “It’s my specialty, Your Grace. You’ll think you’re fucking a boy.”

  Phaleg walked Belphagor back to The Cat in the early hours before dawn, when the duke had gotten up to prepare for his morning meeting with the principality.

  “I hate this.” Belphagor glared at his escort as they crossed the bridge. “I hate that women need this. We’re all bastards, the lot of us.”

  Phaleg feigned offense. “I hardly think I’m a bastard, dear Beatrix, as I am gallantly escorting you to your house of ill repute to protect your dubious virtue.”

  “And it’s much appreciated, I’m sure, good sir.” Belphagor gave him a mock curtsy. He tightened his grip on Phaleg’s arm. “But I think it’s only fair to warn you that your ass is going to pay for that ‘dear Beatrix’ and for your aspersions against her virtue, with a fisting you won’t soon forget.”

  Phaleg smiled. “I haven’t forgotten the first, ser.”

  “You were an exceptionally good boy this evening, however.” He could sense Phaleg blushing beside him in the dark. “Does that bother you? To be called a boy?”

  “Not…entirely.” Phaleg was quiet for a moment. “You call your demon your boy.”

  Belphagor glanced up at the angel warily. “Are you jealous of him?”

  “I’m just trying to understand what…” Phaleg’s voice trailed off as if he was struggling to vocalize his thoughts.

  “What you are to me?” They’d arrived at The Cat, and Belphagor stopped and turned to face him. “Yo
u are a source of great pleasure and pride.”

  “And nothing more?”

  Belphagor sighed. “I won’t deny that I feel affection for you. More than affection,” he amended as the angel’s face fell. “You are very dear to me. We’ve shared something extremely intimate that I would venture to say you will never share with anyone else. Not quite as you have with me. I will always own your fall from angelic grace and be the author of your surrender to your true desires. But you’re an angel, and I’m a demon. There can never be anything more than a play of power between us. It’s the nature of the eternal music of the spheres.”

  Phaleg nodded, silent.

  “And as you said,” Belphagor added gently, “Vasily is my boy. He’s… I’m…” It was his turn to grasp for words. But it wasn’t words that were failing him. He was failing the words. “I love him,” he admitted at last, slightly horrified and immensely relieved at the same time to have finally said it.

  Unexpectedly, Phaleg looked relieved as well. “I’m glad you said so. I think it makes it easier to understand what’s between us, knowing that. And to answer your question, no, I’m not jealous. But I am envious. Your demon is a very lucky…boy.”

  Belphagor shook his head. “I’m lucky. And I’ll be lucky if he’ll even have me after how I left things with him.” He sighed and shrugged deeper into his fur-lined coat in a disturbingly feminine gesture as if his body were becoming used to being in this illusory form. “I’m a complete bastard.”

  Phaleg smiled. “I have a suspicion that may be what makes you so irresistible.”

  An inelegant snort escaped him as he reached for the door. “Well, that just goes without saying.”

  When Phaleg had taken his leave with a gentlemanly bow and a kiss of Belphagor’s hand, Belphagor went up to bed, exhausted from the evening’s escapades. He’d forgotten the promise he’d extracted from Duke Elyon and woke disoriented at the loud knock on his door some hours later, unable to recall for a few moments how he’d gotten in this bed, and that he was Beatrix. The piss that splattered around the chamber pot as he stood over it sans penis brought it all back to him.

  Someone pounded on the door once more. “Beatrix, are you awake?” It was Anzhela, sounding rather anxious.

  Belphagor pulled on his dressing gown and hurried to turn the key in the lock and let her in. “What is it? Has something happened?”

  “It’s Tabris,” she said, holding the door wide for him as if ushering him out. “She showed up outside in the snow without a coat and in her bare feet. I think she’d walked all the way from Elysium. She won’t speak.”

  Belphagor hurried with her to Masha’s rooms, where Tabris sat motionless beside the madam except for a slight tremble that seemed to possess her uncontrollably. Her eyes were unfocused, and she paid no attention to their entrance.

  “Tabris.” Belphagor approached her. “Are you all right?” It was an idiotic question given her nearly catatonic state.

  “She hasn’t said a word,” said Masha, setting a hand lightly on Tabris’s shoulder and then pulling it quickly back when Tabris arched and screamed as if she’d burned her. Despite the odd reaction, Tabris continued to stare blankly.

  Belphagor crouched in front of her. “Tabris, it’s Belphagor. I know I don’t look myself. I’ve taken a glamour. I’m the one who found Ouestucati. Vasily and I found her. You remember?”

  “Ouestucati,” Tabris moaned, and her staring eyes began to leak. Belphagor put a hand out toward her knee, and she recoiled.

  “Are you in pain?” he asked. “Did someone hurt you?”

  “Opha—” Her breath drew in sharply, and her voice rose in pitch with the second syllable before she paused and gasped out almost inaudibly, “—nim.”

  “The Ophanim.” He cast a troubled glance at Masha. “I’ve been told their touch is very unpleasant, like fire ants crawling over the skin.”

  “We saw them take her away when she was arrested at The Brimstone,” said Masha. “She screamed without cease as they led her to the bridge.”

  Tabris’s tremor began to intensify as tears poured silently down her cheeks.

  “Perhaps we should put her to bed and let her get some rest,” Belphagor suggested.

  Masha nodded and coaxed Tabris to lie down in the high, canopied featherbed that was far more luxurious than any the girls had. They couldn’t get her to move to turn down the covers, so Belphagor picked up a knitted blanket from the foot of the bed and laid it over her without touching before the three of them stepped out into the hallway and Masha closed the door.

  “She wouldn’t let me examine her,” said Masha. “We warmed up her feet as best as we could while she shrieked at any contact. I don’t see any signs of physical damage—as well as I can check without touching her—but she’s obviously been traumatized.”

  “I suspect they tortured her,” said Belphagor quietly. “If their touch is as unpleasant as I’ve heard reported, they wouldn’t have had to do much but maintain continual contact while they interrogated her. I’ve heard of demons who’ve gone mad from the same.”

  Masha shook her head angrily. “They had no right. She’s done nothing. But what I can’t understand is why they suddenly decided to let her go. No one even knows how she got here.”

  “I got her released,” said Belphagor. Both Masha and Anzhela gaped at him. “I didn’t think he’d do it so quickly—I wasn’t even sure he’d do it at all, honestly—but I managed to extract a favor from Duke Elyon.”

  Unexpectedly, Masha threw her ample arms around him and gave him a startlingly strong hug. “I don’t know how to thank you.” She wiped at her damp eyes when she released him, and Anzhela produced a handkerchief for her, which she took gratefully. “You didn’t have to do that for her.”

  “On the contrary, I owed it to her,” he objected. “She and Ouestucati would never have been at that party if it weren’t for me.”

  “My girls make their own decisions,” said Masha. “They chose to go with you. You couldn’t have known how it would turn out.”

  “I underestimated the duke.” He didn’t like to admit it. He’d taken the angel for a bit of a dandy, letting Elyon’s persona fool him into thinking he was relatively harmless. It was a mistake that would have wiped him out at the wingcasting table. Instead, it had cost a woman her life, and he wasn’t about to let himself off the hook for it. “But I’m very glad to have been able to do what little I could for Tabris. I wish I could have done it sooner.”

  “We’ll take care of her,” said Anzhela. “She’s one of ours.”

  Masha nodded. “She’ll have a home here as long as The Cat stands.” Her forehead wrinkled with worry. “Whether she can work again or not.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. And I’d also like to contribute to her care. When I have access to my funds at The Brimstone, I’ll have ample facets to get her anything she needs.”

  Masha studied him. “Do you really think you can bring this Elyon down and exonerate the Fallen in the attack on the principality?” She obviously hadn’t expected much of him before and was now reevaluating his potential value to her in light of Tabris’s release.

  “I not only think it, I’ll do it.” Securing the ties on his dressing gown as he spoke, he pulled them tight with a decisive yank on the latter half of the sentence. “There isn’t a demon or angel in the Heavens who can best me when I’ve marked him, and Elyon tried to take my boy from me. He is marked.”

  He didn’t add that he had no idea how he was going to do it. He never did at the start of a game, but inspiration would strike. Or perhaps it had struck…in the person of Phaleg. He’d promised the angel he wouldn’t ask him to commit treason. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t ask him to pretend to commit treason.

  Dvenadtsataya

  Vasily was going mad cooped up in the apartment with Lev and Dmitri. Things had managed not to be too awkward between them after the intimacy they’d shared; there was a certain point at which intimacy with a stranger dissolved th
e barrier of “stranger” itself through the sheer knowledge of one another’s most private parts—in every sense of the term. But they had nothing in common. Belphagor had been a literal lubricant between them, easing the bits that didn’t fit precisely, but without him, Lev and Dmitri, to put it plainly, bored Vasily.

  Lev surprised him, however, by inviting him one evening to the kinoteatr. This was a term Vasily had never heard before. The “theatre” part of the term, he grasped, but “kino” meant nothing to him. Lev wanted to be mysterious about it.

  “It’s like television,” he said. “But only in the way that a political pamphlet is like a book.”

  Vasily had no idea what he meant by this. He’d never read a book. Perhaps there was something in the collective sum of pages bound together he didn’t know about. And he’d found television to be the most amazing invention he’d seen yet in the world of Man. Given his boredom, however, he was happy enough to get out of the house, so he agreed.

  The damp, chilly air was a welcome change from the apartment. He’d never done well with being indoors for too long at a time. He’d slept in alleyways under the stars and the elements for most of his life until Belphagor had given him a home.

  Vasily ignored the little jab of the knife.

  Despite the abysmal temperature, he was more than adequately dressed in the garments Belphagor had gotten for him. He’d worn the black “turtleneck” with his new coat, an ivory scarf wrapped around his neck just because it was there, and a pair of dark gray pants that had extra pockets down the sides as if for holding tools. He’d forgone the knitted gloves.

  “Do you think he’s coming back?” The question escaped his mouth as he trudged through the snow beside Lev. He hadn’t intended to say it aloud.