Prince of Tricks Read online

  They were also known for their painful, electrified touch. Vasily had thus far managed to steer clear of angelic law—it tended not to bother with what happened on the other side of the river—and he had no desire to run afoul of them and experience the effects of the pure element for himself. Luckily, they gave off a kind of cold, blue-white bioluminescence, and it was easy enough to dart around the side of a building and take a side alley at the first sign of the distinctive glow.

  He reached Duke Elyon’s villa suffering nothing more than a bit of verbal abuse, and that from a distance, but when Elyon received him, it was not with pleasure. He hadn’t exactly expected a warm welcome after the altercation outside The Brimstone, but he hadn’t raised his hand to the duke himself, so he’d imagined an awkward encounter at best and a cold politeness at worst as he requested his meager possessions. Instead he was greeted with open hostility.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” The handsome duke—golden haired and blue eyed like all Fourth Choir angels, but with the fine, chiseled features and pointed chin that marked him as an aristocrat—leveled a look of scorn at Vasily through two black-rimmed eyes above a swollen, broken nose. Belphagor had certainly decked him good.

  “I came to get my things.” Vasily took the purse from his pocket. “I can’t return the coat, but if you want your facets back—”

  Elyon snatched the purse from his hand and tossed it to a waiting demon servant. “You’re a very stupid demon, boy.” Elyon was no older than he was, and the way he said this word was nothing like the term of endearment Belphagor used. Vasily’s face burned. “If you had any brains at all, you’d have counted yourself lucky not to have been taught a lesson for your insolence and would have gone back to sucking back-alley demon wad for a lump of coal.” The duke gave him an unfriendly smile. “But since you’re here, I have a job for you.”

  Vasily bristled. He didn’t relish servicing the duke now that he’d shown him such naked contempt. “I didn’t come to do business. I just want my clothes.”

  “It’s not a job for you to perform; it’s a job for you to be.”

  He wasn’t sure what this meant, but he didn’t like the duke’s tone. “I’m afraid I have to decline,” he said, repeating the phrase Belphagor had taught him to use in undesirable situations. Before he’d met Belphagor, he’d never once refused a potential patron, thinking he didn’t have the right. Belphagor had taught him that his skills were a valuable commodity and his body didn’t belong to those who paid him. What he provided was in high demand, and he could choose to take someone as a “client”, as Belphagor called it, or not, as he pleased.

  Elyon sneered. “It’s not an invitation.” He jerked his head at a pair of large demons—bodyguards, it seemed—who’d entered at the rear door of the room. “See that he doesn’t leave.”

  Vasily tensed for a fight as the demons moved around him to block the way he’d entered, but he noted with a prick of alarm as he glanced through the open rear door to the room beyond that most of the angels from the night before were assembled for breakfast. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to fight off this many of them, and there was nowhere to run. He thought of all the advice he’d gotten on the streets growing up. “If you’re caught by a gang, just do what they ask and count yourself lucky if they don’t mess you up permanently” had been the prevailing wisdom. Perhaps sound advice for a youth with no way to defend himself, but he couldn’t see himself passively submitting to an assault. Things were going to get ugly.

  Vasily cursed himself. Duke Elyon was right. He was incredibly stupid to have come here.

  But the duke’s next words weren’t what he’d expected. “I’m going to give you an honor you don’t deserve, boy.” Elyon smiled. “You’re going to start a revolution.”

  Belphagor wasn’t worried when he woke to find Vasily no longer in his bed. After the intimacy they’d shared last night, there was no way his malchik would have left him again. He’d probably gone to use the public outhouse; Vasily hated using the chamber pot. Belphagor had no such qualms about it, and he stood pissing into it, smiling to himself at the memory of Vasily in nothing but boots and the velvet coat, with his wrists lashed to the bedframe. Perhaps not the wisest thing to think about while trying to have his morning piss, he thought belatedly, as a partial erection made the job difficult.

  When someone knocked on the door, he thought it must be Vasily. “You don’t have to knock, malchik,” he called with a laugh. “You live here. Come in.”

  “Delivery for you,” came the reply. Not Vasily after all.

  Belphagor pulled on a dressing gown and opened the door as he tied it off. A boy from the market stood in the hallway bearing a basket of sweet buns and cooked sausage, with a tin of fine black-market Russian tea. In his other hand was a jug of rather expensive earthly vodka.

  “What’s this? I didn’t send out for it.”

  “Tall firespirit with a voice like gravel bought it,” said the boy. “Told me to bring it here.”

  The unexpected treat made him feel generous and he gave the delivery boy a good-sized facet for his trouble. Setting the kettle on the iron brazier he used to heat the room and the occasional pot of water or broth, Belphagor wondered what else Vasily must be up to. He waited after the tea had brewed but gave up in annoyance as it began to get cold and drank a cup. He’d just begun to nibble on a bite of sausage when another knock came at the door.

  He opened it this time without calling to Vasily and found a messenger bearing a letter—which was odd, because he hardly knew anyone who could write. When he’d sent the messenger away with a considerably smaller facet, he opened the letter and scowled.

  I don’t think things are going to work out, it read. I’ve had a better offer. No hard feelings.

  Not only did it sound nothing like his malchik, there was no way this could have come from him. He’d been teaching Vasily to write, but not in angelic script. Any note from him would have been written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

  It did, however, tell him something. Whoever had written it had coerced Vasily’s cooperation. There was no other reason to try to throw Belphagor off the trail and attempt to keep him from coming after him than that Vasily had told whoever was holding him that Belphagor would. Which meant Vasily was alive and well—at least well enough to be talking—and his captor had reason to want to keep him that way without interference from Belphagor.

  The possibilities for why someone might take Vasily and go to the trouble of protecting their prize were few. Belphagor sat on the cot for a moment to calm his breathing and the sick feeling in his gut. He had to control his emotions to deal with this. He couldn’t afford to act out of panic or blind rage. Someone had taken his boy, and he would find him and take him back—and then punish them—by using the same skills that made him a master at the game of wingcasting.

  The obvious and most likely culprit was the pretty angelic duke Belphagor had punched in the snout. He took some grim satisfaction in the certainty that the angel wouldn’t be so pretty today. Of course, Belphagor’s impulsive act of jealousy had most likely put Vasily in harm’s way, so it was nothing to be proud of, even if it gave him a certain amount of pleasure to recall.

  So what did he know about his enemy? He was a duke, was fresh out of university if his youth and arrogance were any indication, and he kept a play pad on the Left Bank. Belphagor’s fury nearly choked him again at the thought of Vasily being entertainment for the privileged angel bastards. He forced the images out of his head. He had to concentrate on the game—he had to think of it as a game, as abhorrent as it was to him, and he had to win it.

  What else did he know? The angel was not an Arkhangel’sk. There were any number of supernal dukes and grand dukes—cousins and uncles of the young principality—but there were no other direct descendants in the House of Arkhangel’sk except Principality Helison Alimielovich himself and his brother Lebes. And if the angel was not an Arkhangel’sk, and was a duke, but not a grand duke—a
ssuming Vasily had known the distinction and hadn’t just used the term generically—yet had a villa in Elysium, Left Bank or otherwise, he was someone of considerable wealth and importance.

  The most likely familial connection to the supernal family that would afford the angel such privilege and freedom was a relative of the queen. Sefira Huzievna had been a grand duchess of the House of Arcadia, the ruling house of the Princedom of Vilon, Sixth Heaven in the celestial empire—Seventh, if you were a demon and knew the truth about Raqia’s former glory. In any case, the number of newly independent dukes with villas on the Left Bank was certainly not infinite, and Belphagor might be able to skip the conjecture and find out if anyone knew the name of the duke who’d been at The Brimstone the night before.

  The fresh pastries and sausage had lost their appeal, but Belphagor knew he’d need the sustenance, so he made himself eat and then dressed to go out and start his search. He hung up the frock coat, smoothing the velvet he’d crushed beneath Vasily in pressing him into the bed, and suppressed the extra beat of his heart this memory engendered.

  Vasily had gone out into the cold without it, draping it over Belphagor while he slept. His boy had been thinking of him with every action he’d taken this morning, and he clearly hadn’t intended to be gone long. Belphagor had to hold on to that knowledge and not allow himself to sink into self-hating despair, imagining that maybe the note hadn’t been written by Vasily, but dictated by him. Such thinking would drive him mad, and his heart knew it wasn’t so even if his head wanted to mock him with it.

  He pulled on his leather duster and the billed leather cap to keep warm and project an air of appropriate gravity. He might be less imposing than the average demon, but he’d built a reputation for being someone few demons would dare to mess with, and the right costume helped to maintain the persona. The tattoos that remained visible on his hands beneath the cuffs didn’t hurt either. And the fact that they were currently marred by scraped knuckles from bloodying his fist on an angel’s face wouldn’t go unnoticed. If anyone in the den had known the name of the duke, they also knew Belphagor had been the one to bloody him.

  Ordering a shot of hot coffee liqueur to warm him up at the bar as he headed out, he wasn’t disappointed in his expectations.

  The bartender noted his scraped hand, nodding at the bruises on Belphagor’s face as he downed the drink. “I imagine the pretty prince you taught a lesson to last night is looking a bit less pretty this morning,” he said with a grin.

  “I should hope so, Oza.” Belphagor set the glass down on the bar decisively. “I don’t suppose the prince dropped his name.” He winked. “I’d like to send him flowers.”

  Oza laughed. “Not a clue. I don’t ask for names. Besides, you never let that one get close enough to sample my fine brew.”

  Belphagor slid a pair of facets across the bar. “Alas, I did cost you more than one customer, I’m afraid.”

  Oza pocketed the facets. “You might ask over at The Cat.”

  Belphagor smirked. “Not really my kind of place.” The Cat was a local brothel trading in the more traditional variety of ass than the kind Belphagor was partial to.

  “But from what I hear, it’s that prince’s kind of place. Seems he and his comrades like to sample all the local wares. To hear some of the girls tell it who come in here for a drink, a group of angelic nobles has been spending facets over there the past few nights like they piss diamonds.” Oza shrugged. “Hell, maybe they do, what do I know?”

  Belphagor shook his head with a wry smile. “Allow me to ruin the mystique for you. They don’t.”

  “I’m not going to ask how you know that, my friend.” Oza snapped the bar towel at him and Belphagor tipped his hat with a grin.

  “Many thanks, Oza.” He made his way through the game room, busy as always, regardless of the time of year or the time of day, and headed out into the cold to check out The Cat.

  He’d never seen so many breasts in his life. The parlor of The Cat, kept from the curious eyes of passersby by a second set of doors inside the entryway and a layer of heavy curtains through which he had to pass, was also kept unseasonably warm. Covering not only the entrance, but draping every inch of the walls, the curtains kept the heat in, but a massive fireplace on either end of the room generated it. Fancy ladies, providing pre-entertainment to prospective clients, lounged about the cushioned seats in little more than petticoats and corsets, and not one of the corsets was of the sort that covered the bust. Those few wearing a chemise beneath the lacings had the fabric off their shoulders to expose at least one breast, but most were simply displayed in all their dubious glory.

  Two unoccupied ladies approached him at the same time, each obviously vying for his business while trying to maintain a balance between selling herself and putting him off the other’s charms without going too far in case his preference happened to be for both of them. While they cooed over him and tried to grope him, a younger demoness wearing slightly more clothing offered him a tray of complimentary spirits. He took a drink to give his hands something to do, feeling bad for the girl who seemed far too young to have to make her way apprenticing at a brothel. He hadn’t been much older when he’d made his first facet, but he’d have done it for free at the time, while she looked merely resigned to it.

  The women steered him toward a seat on a narrow couch, and he fell into it, slightly alarmed at their aggressiveness. One of them slid her hand into his coat, heading for his crotch. He grabbed her with his free hand in time to dissuade her, but the other demoness had taken advantage of the opportunity, and Belphagor let out a slight yelp of surprise as the small hand slipped through the buttons at his fly and grabbed his cock.

  “Don’t be shy,” she said. “I’ll warm you up, on the house.”

  Belphagor squirmed away from her and set the drink down on the floor, realizing he’d need both hands free. “That’s okay.” He held her off. “I prefer to watch.”

  “Ooh,” said the other, her dark hair striped with strands of candy-apple red from a glamour of ruby oil. “Why didn’t you say so? Sefi and I are very good friends.” She stretched across him to tangle her hands in the other’s tresses of magically enhanced blue, pushing her breasts almost in his face as the two women put on a show of kissing and groping one another that was obviously solely for his benefit.

  He wasn’t going to learn anything this way. Belphagor amended the thought. He was learning quite a bit, but nothing he wanted to. “Could we go somewhere more private?” he asked the breast pressed up against him.

  Sefi winked as they separated. “That’s more like it, sweetmeat.” She slid off the couch and took his hand to pull him up. “Come on. Tabris and I are going to take good care of you.”

  Belphagor allowed them to pull him down the corridor into a room that was little more than a closet with a mat thrown on the floor. He sat on the mat, thinking he’d have a moment to explain what he was really looking for, but was mortified when Sefi turned around, lifted her petticoat as she dropped onto all fours and spread herself open with her fingers so he could see straight up inside her. At the same moment, with incomprehensible flexibility, Tabris had leaned over her from the front and stuck her tongue where Sefi’s fingers directed, while Sefi performed the same actions on Tabris from beneath.

  Belphagor covered his eyes. “Wait. Wait a minute. I was hoping we could talk.” When he peered between his fingers, Tabris wrinkled her nose at him in confusion, perched above Sefi’s—bozhe moi. “Please. Just…put yourselves back together.”

  Sefi dropped her skirt and turned around, giving him a black look. “I have better things to do with my time. You want to pay me to talk; on the other hand, I’ll talk to you all day long.”

  “Of course I’ll pay you.” Relieved to be able to get down to business, Belphagor opened the purse at his hip, and before he could offer any facets, both women had dipped their fingers into the purse and taken almost a night’s earnings at the wingcasting table. He supposed they worked harder f
or their money than he did, so he didn’t argue the point, but he tied the purse shut immediately, and when he glanced up, the crystal was nowhere to be seen. Blushing, he didn’t dare ask where it had gone.

  Sefi curled onto her hip on the mat with an arm around Tabris, fingers playing idly at the other woman’s breasts. Perhaps they really were “good friends”. “So what is it you want to know, sweetmeat? If it’s how to pleasure a woman, it’s far easier to show than tell.”

  “Actually, I was hoping you could tell me about some of your patrons.”

  “Ha!” Tabris elbowed Sefi. “Pay up. Told you he didn’t like girls.”

  Belphagor suppressed a smile. “As a matter of fact, my inclinations don’t run in your direction, but that wasn’t what I meant. I understand a group of angels has been hanging about recently. A duke and his retinue, perhaps.”

  “Duke Elyon?” Sefi shrugged. “That’s no secret. His ‘inclinations’ run both ways. Brought his own rent boy with him the last time. Poor sweet thing didn’t even know inclinations could run both ways until we showed him.”

  Belphagor’s mouth dropped open, but he quickly closed it. He couldn’t imagine Vasily with a girl. The idea didn’t punch him in the gut like the thought of the angel manhandling him, but it made him feel odd. What if Vasily discovered he preferred a more conventional pairing? What if he’d only been with Belphagor because he didn’t know any better? Belphagor gnawed at his thumb. He was being ridiculous. Last night had not been about not knowing any better, and if Vasily had just come from his first sexual encounter with a girl, he’d certainly shown no sign of wishing he were with one instead of Belphagor. And if he did, that wasn’t important right now. What mattered was finding him and keeping him from being some bastard angel’s slave.

  “This Duke Elyon, he has a villa on the Left Bank, does he not?”