Part 3 in a series of short stories. Can be read separately.
On the run from a prince of hell, Kai the incubus is broke. His protégé Jamie is hunted by an angel and a psychopath named Noah has taken up residence in their lair.
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The desert was a technicolor nightmare that noon. Kai squinted at the featureless azure sky and bright sand, his eyes burning with the strain. He had always hated daytime, but in the desert the contrast was cranked up high enough to make his eyes water. He looked through the rifle scope. From the roof of the gas station he could see from horizon to horizon and still remain hidden behind the busted neon sign. Someone could, at least.
He lowered the rifle and dropped it into Noah's hands. The boy almost buckled under the weight of it, but he seemed very pleased. Kai couldn't relate. That hideous gun had wiped out what was left of his bank account and he was very sore about it.
"You promise you know how to use it?" he asked, and Noah nodded, eager to play with his new toy. "Don't go crazy. If you see an angel, shoot it."
"What does an angel look like anyway?" Noah asked, shouldering the heavy rifle with remarkable ease and scanning the desert.
"They'd probably just look like a human."
"So just shoot anything that moves then?"
Kai thought about it for a second. Noah looked at him expectantly, and a shot of pure delight went through him when Kai shrugged.
"Sure. Just keep them away from here. I'm sick to death of cleaning up Jamie with a mop. Have you ever killed anyone before?"
"No," he said with a frown, as if he was reluctant to admit it. "But I'd like to."
"Of course you would. Just keep an eye out while I'm away. And don't play with Jamie."
"Yeah, I know, he's in a time-out. I don't know why you bother. The stupid cunt probably likes it anyway."
"You let me handle my business and I'll leave you to yours. Just be good."
Kai had hoped to sound at least a bit authoritative, but as usual Noah didn't care. He'd gone back to playing with the gun. Kai left him with plenty of bottled water and a chair, so he would probably be okay until evening. And he had places to be.
The metal of the ladder at the back of the roof had been baking in the sun all day and almost burned his hands when he climbed down. It wasn't until he was back on the cracked asphalt that he realized he could have just jumped. He'd been around humans for too long. Those boys were starting to rub off on him.
Back inside he went upstairs to the bedroom. Jamie was still hanging by his wrists from the ceiling, his toes barely touching the floor. The fresh tattoos looked angry and red, but the welts had stopped bleeding. He lifted his head when the door opened.
"Can I come down now?" he asked in a tiny voice, and his head drooped again when Kai walked right past him to the nightstand.
"No. This whole angel business is your fault," he said, riffling through the drawer and getting more agitated by the minute. He hated being awake during the day, he hated being broke and he especially hated what he had to do next. He found what he was looking for soon enough. Jamie had managed to snatch a diamond necklace before hell's army kicked down their door. He could probably sell it for a nice chunk of change, but that would just be a band aid on the gaping wound. He needed to get things sorted once and for all. And he knew just the person to do it.
"Where are you going?" Jamie asked, and he yelped when Kai slapped him on the ass in passing.
"I'm going to see Glory," he said, lingering in the doorway, as if talking to Jamie was a better use of his time than just getting it over with already. It annoyed him to no end when the boy sucked the air through his teeth.
"Oh no, she's so mean. I'm sorry master."
"Don't be. I mean it. And be quiet or I'll gag you again. I'll be back before nightfall."
"Okay. But what if the angel comes back?"
"I've got Noah on the roof with a sniper rifle."
"Oh, good for him, he'll like that," Jamie smiled, and he flinched when Kai glared at him. He finally got it through his thick skull that he was supposed to be quiet. And now that he was, Kai had no more excuse to keep dawdling. There was nothing for it. He stepped into the summoning circle and took a deep breath, clutched the diamonds in his fist, and whispered an incantation he had hoped never to use again. While the world shimmered he resolved not to let his pride get the better of him no matter what. It would all be over soon enough. Maybe she had mellowed with time. And maybe while he'd been out, hell had frozen over.
It was evening in Prague. He could see the bright pink sunset when the tall windows of a luxurious hotel penthouse shimmered into view, the curtains billowing in the cool evening breeze. The scent of the old world filled his heart with nostalgia. Visions of nights on the shores of the Vltava played in his mind. The scent reminded him of opera houses and champagne in stately halls, of masked gatherings in ancient basements, and of Glory, beautiful as the dawn. She stood by the window, and she still took his breath away. It looked like she had been ready to head out, her makeup perfect and her red hair spilling out of a messy pile and over her shoulders. The evening light made her silver gown sparkle. He felt like a clumsy boy on prom night when he smiled at her. She smiled back, with blood red lips. Maybe it would all be okay. When she walked over to him he could imagine for a moment that she'd fall into his arms again. The smile never left her face when she punched him on the nose.
"Ow, fuck!" he shouted, blood gushing on the carpet in thick ropes when he doubled over. He could just see her shake her bruised fist loose. But when he opened his mouth, she held up a stern finger.
"Not a word. You deserved that," she said, and he sighed and touched the bridge of his nose. His eyes were watering. She was slight little thing, but she hit like a freight train.
"Okay, that's fair," he nodded, wiping the blood away with the back of his hand. "If you'd let me-"
He screamed when she planted a knife between his shoulders. Howling in pain he whirled around trying to grab it. She laughed like a hyena when he couldn't reach it and twirled through the room like a dog with an itchy ass. He dropped to his knees, giving up on trying to reach it and seeing stars.
"Have some goddamn mercy," he pleaded. Still laughing she planted her high heel on his shoulder, grabbed the knife and yanked it out. It took quite a bit more howling and heavy breathing before he found himself leaning against the wall, trying to get his bearings again. He flinched when she came at him again, but this time she didn't do anything to him. She just crossed her arms.
"Did you get it out of your system?" he snapped, blowing a wad of blood out of his nose, and she shuddered at his barbarism. "Fucking hell woman, I brought you a present and everything."
He held out the necklace, as if he was trying to distract a magpie from pecking his eyes out. It worked too. She snatched it out of his hand and held it up between her fingers.
"You just yanked this out of a drawer somewhere, didn't you?" she said with real disgust in her voice, and he frowned. "Thought so. Word in the very, very deep underground is that Kai the runaway is broke."
"Flat broke," he nodded, because there was no point trying to play games with her. He watched her twirl the necklace around her gloved finger.
"You know what else I heard?" she said with a voice like a knife. "Go on. Ask me what I've heard."
"What have you heard?" he asked, his eyes following the diamonds sparkling in the evening light. With a flick of her wrist, she flung it over her shoulder and out the open window. She laughed again when he groaned.
"I've heard you're holed up in a gas station. And here I was thinking hell was the lowest you could possibly fall."
That laugh was like a switchblade in the ear, but he tried not to react. She wasn't above turning him in and he knew it very well. But the fact that she knew where he was hiding didn't rattle him. For all her faults, Glory was no snitch. She was perfectly at peace with cozying up to the dukes of hell and consorting with it's outcasts on the side. He had to respect anyone who could play such a dangerous game for so many centuries and thrive. Glory had been around in one form or another since hell was just a hateful flicker in the free mind of the Morning Star. And she had enjoyed every second of it.
"Please tell me you've come to beg for money," she grinned, cleaning his blood off the knife with a silk scarf. "Not that this visit hasn't been delightful up until now, but I am rather looking forward to the groveling. You do it so well."
"Thank you."
"Don't get sarcastic with me," she hissed, pointing the knife at his eye. "Why do incubi always have mouths on them? Actually, I have a theory about that. Would you like to hear it?"
"Yes," he said, because he knew for a fact that he couldn't keep the venom out of his voice if he said one more word. She sat on the edge of the desk by the window, playing with the knife.
"It's the humans. You can't help but bond with them. I keep telling you people. Humans are food, not friends, but do you listen? You roll around in their fluids like pigs in shit, soaking up their dirt and disease, and then you have the gall to act indignant when hell treats you like the cocks on legs you are. Too much time away from the hierarchies of hell, no class, no pride, hell's whores, too deep in pussy and ass to properly fear the light of the Morning Star."
"Are you done?"
"No. All the barbarism of hell poured into brutish beasts that would fuck pigs if they knew how to draw a circle. The audacity of you filthy things even having a place in the inferno boggles the mind. And so you quip and sneer to your betters, wave your cock at the princes and go right back to rolling in filth."
"You love that about me," Kai said with a cheeky grin, and he ducked just in time to avoid the knife. It stuck into the wall just behind him. "Come on, are you that bitter about the nun?"
"She was mine," Glory hissed, her sharp nails digging into the oak desk in leaving scratches behind. "Four decades I groomed that girl and you stole her just when she was ripe."
"Maybe she just liked me better."
"Maybe she just tripped over that beastly cock and fell tits first into hell."
"Come on, it wasn't all bad," he tried, but the more he smiled, the more she narrowed her eyes. "Bohemia was fun, wasn't it? You didn't mind consorting with humans so much when you could be their dark queen. Earth is fun. Humans are fun. Admit it."
"And all the rhetorical wherewithal of a goat," she sneered, brimming with disgust. "Has that little monkey you like to fuck been rubbing off on you?"
"Jamie's fun too. You can borrow him if you want, you'll see."
"I'm surprised you don't snap that brittle little thing like a twig."
"I do sometimes. It's a dirty, dirty mess in that nasty gas station. Just filthy with mutated sluts. You'd hate it."
He'd been carefully coming closer, close enough to put his hands around her tiny waste. Now that she was disarmed, it seemed worth the risk. But even he was surprised when she let him. She always made him feel like a filthy beast, and he couldn't altogether dislike it. He leaned over, his lips brushing against her ear.
"I can smell you," he whispered, and he laughed when she kicked his chest with her stiletto heel, hard enough to make him stumble back. She crossed her legs like a jack knife and lit and angry cigarette. "Oh come on, you haven't talked about my filthy cock this much since Babylon."
"Mm, Babylon was fun," she admitted, wistfully blowing smoke out the open window.
"You liked playing a high priestess," he smiled, coming closer again to carefully uncross her legs. "I remember it like it was yesterday, tits out and covered in gold. All class. Always have been."
He slipped a hand over her thigh. Her hand shot out like an adder and grabbed his wrist. He'd pushed it too far. He could see her bristle at the realization that he'd managed to charm her, and she loathed him for it. She shoved him back and blew a cloud of smoke in his face.
"What do you want? I'm late for a party."
"Still cozying up to Flauros, are you?"
"That's Grand Duke Flauros to you, peasant," she said, stubbing out the cigarette on the desk. "And darling to me."
"So you've tamed the Great Leopard, have you?" he said, genuinely impressed. "What did it take? Chains and whips?"
"This is exactly what I mean," she sighed, walking past him to yank the knife out of the wall, and her being armed again set his nerves on edge. "I have the ear of a grand duke of hell, a creature who has worshipers in every hall of power, and you can't even drag your cum-soaked mind out of the gutter long enough to realize what that means for you."
"I hate politics," he said truthfully. "I'm just a cock on legs. Spell it out for me."
"Flauros and Sitri have been waging a cold war for the last decade. I have it on good authority that the dukes have grown very tired of Sitri's disruptive little coups and excesses. And a handful of the knights and earls agree. It would be very advantageous for you if Sitri were to get caught up in an open power struggle. He certainly wouldn't have time and resources to hunt down petty little traitors."
Just the way she talked made his eyes glaze over. Hell's politics gave him hives. Half the reason he'd fled was to be away from the whole infernal mess, the hierarchies and the vicious games in the shadows of the thrones. Glory may have reveled in the high-stakes grandeur of it all, but he was a simple man. All he wanted was pretty boys and silk sheets and to not be hunted down by the legions of inferno. But even he could understand what she was saying, and he appreciated her dumbing it down for him.
"So could you talk to your darling?" he said, and she held up a finger and narrowed her eyes. "The grand duke."
"I don't know," she sighed, hopping back on the desk and cleaning her nails with the knife with infuriating feigned boredom. "I don't have a horse in that particular race."
"Me though. I'm the horse."
"You certainly are," she smiled, looking him up and down in a way that made him want to cry a little bit. His resolve to not let his pride take over was sorely tested when she hiked up her dress and put an elegant foot on the edge of the desk. Her grin was as sharp as the knife she was twirling.
"Get to work, fuckboy."
He sighed from the pit of his soul and took a step towards her, but stopped when he got close.
"You're going to stab me again, aren't you?" he asked, and she grinned and made stabbing motions with the knife. But there was no reason being churlish now. If she really could get Sitri off his back, it was worth the unpleasantness she no doubt had in store for him. It still didn't feel great kneeling between her legs, but the scent of her did take him back to better days, wild romps in hanging gardens and bohemian blood rituals in misty forests. For a brief moment he was content just putting his cheek on her inner thigh and remembering, but a sharp poke of the knife to his cheek snapped him out of it. Glory had never been the romantic type. Better to get it over with. So he peeled off her panties and dropped them on the carpet. He felt her nails scratching his horns and flakes of dried blood fell on his shoulders.
"So filthy," she said with a purr in her throat. He couldn't feel anything from her, but he didn't need incubus senses to hear the titillated disgust. "Do you wash that meat slab body of yours or are you always crusted in human fluids?"
"What about you then?" he asked, running a finger between her labia and making her purr again. "Why do you always pick these bony disguises? I like the way you look in hell."
"I don't give a shit what you like."
That was fair. She made it very clear his opinion wasn't wanted when she put her legs over his shoulders and drew him closer, leaning back on the desk. The cool breeze from the open window raised goosebumps on her white skin. Or maybe it was his tongue following his finger that made her shiver. It was unsettling to feel absolutely nothing from her. There was no way to tell if he was pleasing her other than the movements of her own body, the slight twitches in her muscles and the noises she made. He put his hands on her thighs to feel her better, get some hint as to whether she was enjoying herself. On a whim he flicked his tongue over he clit and felt her tense. For a moment he felt her hand in his hair before she snapped her hand back.
"Ugh, you don't have flees, do you?" she asked, but when he tried to answer she shoved his head back between her legs. Probably for the best. He'd just say something sarcastic and get his head crushed between her thighs like a grape. She'd done it before.
Kai had lost his touch with women sometime around the Roman empire, and demons were a bit of a mystery even to him, but luckily for him Glory wasn't difficult to get going. He could tell from her noises and twitches that he was doing something right. One time he had coaxed her into reluctantly admitting that she liked his tongue, that it was raspy, and apparently she still thought so. The less delicately he licked her, the more she responded, and the more he got into it. Despite her contempt for hell's whores, or maybe because of it, she was wet and hot and squirming, her thigh muscles tensing under his grip. He felt her sharp little fingernails on his scalp, she grabbed his horns to make him move like she wanted, just like she always did, and he still didn't know whether he loved or hated it. She made him feel lost and confused and irredeemably brutish. It wasn't nice, but it was different. And when life was eternal, different was a very precious good.
For a moment he felt her sharp heel on his shoulder, then a hard shove threw him back on the thick carpet. She leapt at him like a cat, straddled him with her pretty dress hiked up around her waist and her fingernails digging into his chest. When he winced, she chuckled.
"Scared?" she hissed, leaning over him as if she was about to kiss him, even if he knew damn well she'd rather lick a pig's ass.
"A little," he admitted. "You're being way too nice."
"How dare you," she grinned, pulling her nails along his chest. "I'm a delight."
Before he could do something stupid, like laugh, she stood up. Thankfully she'd left the knife of the desk, but he didn't like her rooting around in the drawer. He flinched when she threw something at him, but all he heard was a heavy thud. When he looked, he saw a dildo the size of a man's arm on the carpet.
"Really? My cock isn't that filthy," he said, but all she did was lean against the desk and light another cigarette.
"It's not for me."
"Ah," he sighed, but something about the wicked gleam in her eyes was starting to get to him. That same flicker had danced in her soulless eyes when sacrificial pyres burned for her, when blood gushed over ritual stones and sacred virgins threw themselves at her feet. Nothing pleased Glory more than adulation. And Kai was a creature who was created to please. Despite what she said, he knew when she was enjoying herself. If that was all she wanted from him, he was getting off easy.
Without another moment's hesitation he opened his legs for her. He may not have felt much of his own arousal, but his body responded to familiar stimuli all the same. His cock was hard, his muscles tense, and he felt the beginnings of lust trickling into his loins. She loved the display. He could tell by the way she sucked on her cigarette. She loved it even more when he grabbed the dildo and pushed it against his ass. It was big. She had meant for him to struggle like a mewling virgin. But even Glory underestimated just how slutty an incubus could be. He didn't feel a lick of shame giving her what she wanted, fucking himself while looking her in the gleaming eyes. When she blew out her smoke and bit her lip, he knew he had her.r"
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