Chapter Text
B
Blitzø had dreamt of the circus again last night. Now his waking day was an endless slog of those old, useless memories circling his brain like the rotating shadow lamp he’d had as a kid. The big top. The trapeze. The horses. Barbie. His mama. Fizz. The fire. Again and again and again on an endless loop as he tried to focus on what he really needed to be focusing on which, right now, was the sheet of depressing as fuck numbers in front of him.
He’d founded I.M.P. not too long ago and it was already on the brink of failure. It had started in the red and had never managed to claw its way into the black, only sliding further and further into debt as Blitzø ran it into the ground—just like he did with any good thing he'd ever had.
Muffled voices came from outside his office—Moxxie’s dramatics; Loona’s ambivalence; Millie’s mediation. Another argument among his employees that was, safe bet, going to end with Loona stomping out to take her “lunch break” at 9AM and slamming the door so hard behind her Blitzø was going to have to add repairing that to the list of expenses they just didn’t have the funds for. He really didn’t see a way of closing out today without walking out there and having to give them all the speech he’d been dreading all week.
“Happy Friday, gang! FYI, don’t bother coming in Monday because I.M.P. is going into liquidation!”
Fuck, their faces. Millie would be so heartbroken, probably thinking of that awkward call home to her parents—“You were right, Ma and Pa. It was a pipe dream after all.” Moxxie would be like a little lost puppy—but a kind of judgy puppy that always secretly deep down knew you weren’t shit. And Loona—his Loonie—fuck, how was he even going to be able to look her in the eye again? She needed this job. She needed the stability; the confidence. Blitzø was her dad, for fuck’s sake, and he couldn’t even provide—
“Fuck me in all my holes,” he muttered into his hands, curling in on himself at his desk.
Suddenly the noise outside cut out like a TV switched to mute. There was a strange shuffling and then a panicked knock at his door.
“What is it?” Blitzø looked up wearily as Moxxie came tumbling into the room, hastily closing the door behind him.
“Sir, we have— Uh, well, it’s— There’s someone here to—” Moxxie stammered, glancing wide-eyed from Blitzø back to the door. “We have a visitor.”
“Well, if they’re lost, give them directions and tell them to fuck off. If it’s one of the neighbors complaining about the smell again, tell them it’s a septic issue and we’re waiting on someone to come and check it out, and then tell them to fuck off. If it’s some shady-looking shark guy, tell him he can try and pry the money out of my cold, dead asshole, and to fuck off.
“No, sir.” Moxxie shook his head, trembling for some reason. “It’s a client.”
“It’s a what?”
Suddenly the door to his office slammed open, bouncing on its hinges. Moxxie shrank even further into himself and scuttled out of the room.
“What the—” Blitzø realized exactly what he was looking at a moment too late. “—Ohhhh, shit.”
Demon royalty had an air to them that made them unmistakable as anything else. If the fancy fucking clothes didn’t give them away, or the entourage of lackeys and bootlickers, it was the general vibe of absolute fucking disdain for everyone and everything around them. This woman was dressed incognito in a simple black coat and sunglasses, and she came alone, but she had the third thing in spades. Plus, another dead giveaway—she was a bird. Why were so many of them birds?
“I refuse to entertain the riffraff out there. Are you the one in charge?”
She spoke like a royal, too—posh accent and cutting words and all the confidence of a woman who’d never once been made to believe what she had to say wasn’t of the highest importance.
Stumbling to his feet on instinct, Blitzø gave a sharp little bow of his head and gestured to the chair on the other side of his desk.
“That’s me,” he said, eyeing her as she took the proffered seat, patting the dust from it first with a disgusted face. “What— uh, what can I do for you, ma’am?”
She gave him a look. Shit. Not ‘ma’am’, huh? Give him a break—he didn’t know this etiquette shit.
“I need someone dead,” she said, straight to the point. “I saw your little advertisement on the television—with the ghastly little jingle. It said you operate across all seven rings of Hell? No demon too big or too small?”
In theory, Blitzø didn’t say. Not so much in practice.
“You’ve got that right!” He instead switched to salesman mode. “So, who’d you need taken out?”
“My husband,” she said, inspecting her nails. “As quick as you can, if you please.”
“Wow. Trouble in paradise, huh? What’d he do? Gamble away the family fortune? Boink the pool boy?” Blitzø wished he could turn himself off, but he couldn’t—not even when faced with an increasingly irate blue blood who was starting to look two steps away from having him killed instead.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” she huffed, tossing her glorious mane of white feathers, “but if you must know—he brought home yet another stupid potted plant after I specifically forbade it and put it in the spot I was planning for my new vase.”
“Uh huh…” Blitzø nodded, then squinted. “Oh, you were finished. That’s it?”
“No!” She huffed petulantly. “That was just the final straw! He’s always humming stupid little tunes and reading at the dinner table and locking himself in his study and moping around the palace in nothing but his robe and squeaky fucking slippers—and he just breathes so loudly.”
“He… breathes?” Blitzø just wanted to make sure he got this heinous list of transgressions straight.
“It’s a series of microaggressions,” she insisted. “I can’t take it anymore.”
“Okay,” Blitzø said, leaning back in his chair. “Well, obviously, this is a pretty high-stakes job—totally normal for us, of course, no big deal—but it does push the fee up a little—”
The client held up a hand to silence him, took a piece of paper and a pen from his desk and wrote down a number, sliding it over to him for his verdict.
Oh. Oh, that was a lot of zeroes.
“Well, you won’t have to worry now that I.M.P. is on the job,” Blitzø assured her, a gleam in his eyes. “We’ll have your dickbag of a husband dead by dinner time. Just point us in the right direction and we’ll—”
“How?”
“Huh?”
“The method you’ll use to dispatch him—what is it?” The client looked at him through narrowed eyes. “Surely you wouldn’t be stupid enough to think that one of your silly little toy guns will work on a demon of our station?”
“Of course not,” Blitzø said with a little chuckle, sweat starting to bead on his brow. “I’m not an idiot.”
I am an idiot, he admitted internally.
“Hm,” she replied, unconvinced, reaching into the bag she brought with her and producing a coil of silver rope. “You can use this if you’d like. It’s blessed rope. As long as he is bound by this his powers will be suppressed and he should be vulnerable to even your primitive weapons.”
Blitzø took it from her, sure this was the single most valuable item he’d ever held in his hands.
“Cool beanaroonies,” he said, tucking it down his pants. “So, what’s the poor fucker’s name?”
The client rose to her feet, looking down at him with a mad glint in her eye. “Prince Stolas of the Ars Goetia.”
“Oh,” Blitzø said. “Cool.”
Oh, Blitzø thought. Fuck.
After they hammered out the details and the client left, sweeping out the door in as grand an exit as anyone had ever made in this rinky-dink office, Blitzø stepped out to face the bombardment of questions from the others.
“Who was she, sir?”
“What did she want?”
“Did that seriously just happen?”
Blitzø explained the situation to them, projecting the same air of confidence he’d used with the client. Unlike the client, none of them bought his bullshit for a second.
“We can’t kill demon royalty!” Moxxie clutched at his hair. “That’s not just murder—that’s treason.”
“You know I’m up for killin’ anything, Blitz, but I don’t know if I could take one of those big birds.” Millie shook her head. “They’re too powerful.”
“Not to mention the security.” Loona stared at him like he was crazy. “We’ll be arrested in a second.”
“We’ll be fine, Loonie,” Blitzø said, “because I’m gonna be the one to take care of it.”
“Just you, sir?” Moxxie stared at him. “You alone? Why?”
Because I’m the reason we’re in this fucking mess and I’m gonna be the one to pull us out of it, Blitzø didn’t say.
“Because I fucked your mom last night and she said so, how about that?” Blitzø pushed past everyone to get back into his office.
They piled in after him, still throwing opinions left, right, and center.
“Look!” Blitzø finally snapped. “In case you hadn’t noticed, clients aren’t exactly lining up around the block. No one trusts an imp-run business to do a good job of anything—let alone an assassination. This is our big chance to prove them all wrong.”
“But this is crazy dangerous,” Loona argued. “The jobs we’ve done so far have been nothing compared to this. I mean, shit. This is big fucking leagues.”
“And so is the compensation,” Blitzø pointed out. “The fee for this one job alone is gonna put us right in the black—and think of the rep we’ll gain. I’m telling you—this one is gonna put us on the fucking map.”
“Do we want to be on the map for this?” Moxxie asked.
Blitzø shrugged. “At this point we’re either on the map or we’re drowning in the fucking ocean just off the edge of it. Take your pick, Mox.”
The three of them looked around at each other then back to him.
“Okay, Blitz. We trust you,” Millie finally said. “How’s this gonna work?”
“There’s gonna be a big, fancy party at the palace in a few days’ time. The client’s gonna leave a window open for me to slip on in and make my move.”
More concerned glances. Blitzø was having to try really hard not to take the lack of faith in his abilities personally.
“A whole party full of high society’s most important demons?” Moxxie chewed on his lip. “Don’t go accidentally killing the wrong one.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,” Blitzø said. “I know exactly who I’m looking for.”
S
Closing the door behind him, Stolas leaned back against it and sighed in the dark reprieve of his chambers. Stella had been in extraordinary form all night, hurling barbs and taunts and pointed insinuations in his direction with barely a pause to take a breath. What choice did he have but to retreat to a quiet room where he could drink his absinthe in peace and try to numb the pain of this excruciating party?
He was just taking another long drink when a low-pitched, “Hey there,” from across the room had him choking and hacking and looking around in a panic.
“Who’s there?” he demanded with a raspy voice. “You shouldn’t be in here. These are my private chambers.”
“Oh, I know.” A figure stepped out of the shadows—small of stature, red, familiar.
“Oh!” Stolas blinked, first the bottom and then his top set of eyes. “It’s you.”
The imp looked very different to the little clown Stolas had once known 25 years ago—so much taller, his circus garb switched for black leather, his fiery red skin now mottled with splashes of white, something hard and tired in his eyes. Still, Stolas recognized him in an instant.
“Not enjoying your party?” the imp asked, swaggering closer.
“Oh, it’s hardly my party,” Stolas said, casting one last hateful glance toward the door. “I am entirely ornamental, I assure you.”
“Nobody gonna miss you down there?” Another step closer.
“Absolutely no one.” Stolas shook his head and then smiled at his guest. “It’s been a long time. How’ve you been?”
Stumbling for the first time, the imp gave him a narrow-eyed look.
“That’s what you wanna ask? You don’t wanna ask, like, what the fuck I’m doing here?”
Stolas had assumed he was here to steal something (again), or perhaps to ask a favor. Regardless, getting down to business too early would cut their time together short and since this was the first person he’d spoken to all day that he was actually happy to see, Stolas didn’t particularly want to rush things along.
“Are you still in the circus business?” He changed the subject instead.
“Oh, no, no.” The imp chuckled, pulling something out from behind his back. “No, I kill people now.”
There was a flash of metal and Stolas had just time enough to swirl into a facet of his primal form, evading the thrown dagger and rematerializing a foot to his left.
“What was that abou—?” he demanded with a pout, right before a rope lashed around his wrist and he was being yanked onto the bed and tied to a bed post.
“Really now,” he chastised, even as his other wrist was captured and tied to another post. “Is this absolutely necessary?”
I’ve let you rob me once before, he thought exasperatedly. No need for the song and dance.
Unless—
“Wait, you’re actually here to kill me?” He stared up at the imp now straddling him as he finished tying all of Stolas’ limbs to the four bed posts. “But why?”
The imp sat back on his haunches, still straddling Stolas’ waist. “Listen, no judgement from me—I’ve fucked over a lot of exes—but I’ve never met anyone who hates anyone as much as your wife hates you.”
Stella was behind this? Feeling the first stirring of actual danger, Stolas considered his options. He was hardly going to turn his first and only friend to stone—even if that friend was currently trying to murder him. Retreat might be the best tactic in this case. Pulling at the ropes that held him, Stolas expected to snap himself free in an instant. Instead, the bindings held. Looking at them closer, he realized what they were. The rope was blessed?
Panic finally starting to build, he cried, “Wait, Blitzo!”
“The O is silent now,” Blitzø replied irritably before doing a double-take. “You remembered my name?”
Stolas opened his beak to reply only for Blitzø to tear a piece of his bedsheet and use it to gag him. Well, there went any hope of calling for help. He really was letting this entire incident get away from him.
Retrieving his dagger, Blitzø held it up above Stolas’ head. Goodness, he really did look incredible from his angle—all hard planes and sharp edges and that dangerous glint in his eyes. Such a handsome man.
“Okay, you’ve gotta stop looking at me like that,” Blitzø said, lowering the blade and tearing off more cloth to tie around Stolas’ head as a blindfold. “It’s so distracting.”
Now in darkness, Stolas tuned in more keenly to the sounds Blitzø made—the rustling of his clothes, the ragged edge to his breathing. He smelled faintly of something alcoholic—a little liquid courage, perhaps? And the meeting of their two bodies, Blitzø’s inner thighs pressing against his waist, practically seated on Stolas’—
Get a hold of yourself! He threw his head back against the pillows, appalled. What do you think is happening right now?
“Sorry about this,” came Blitzø’s voice, a hint of strain to the casual bravado. “It’s nothing personal.”
Blitzø’s thighs tensed as he made a downward swing. Stolas steeled himself for the blow—he’d never been stabbed before. Presumably it would be very painful. At least for a short while, before everything was over. When he was—
Why wasn’t he dead? Seconds ticked by and the pain never came. The blade never slid in. Blitzø continued to breathe harshly above him.
“Shit!” Blitzø finally barked, falling back to rest more snugly in the slope of Stolas’ lap. “Why did it have to be someone I knew? This fucking sucks.”
Not knowing what else one would say in such a situation, Stolas spat out the gag and asked, “Is everything alright?”
“Are you fucking seri— No, Stolas. No, everything is not fucking alright. Are you fucking kidding me?” Blitzø sounded like a man at the end of his tether. “Do you have any idea how shitty everything is right now? How hard it is to run this business? How impossible it is to get taken seriously as a professional when everyone thinks imps are just silly little guys with nothing meaningful to contribute to the world?”
“I admit, I haven’t heard of very many imp-led businesses.” In fact, the only other Stolas could recall right now was the circus where he had first set eyes on Blitzø. “It must be a difficult trail to blaze.”
“You have no idea,” Blitzø sighed. “It’s Hell out there. I mean, yeah, literally. But also it’s just, like, really, really fucking hard. You know?”
“I don’t, I’m afraid,” Stolas admitted. “I see very little of Hell outside of the palace walls. I suppose it gives one a very… limited view of the world.”
“Christ on a stick, that’s fucking depressing. Don’t say shit like that thinking it’s gonna make me feel so sorry for you I let you go.” Blitzø huffed. “I’ve got a job to do, and if I don’t do it then I’m just proving all those cocksuckers who think imps ain’t shit right.”
“I should warn you,” Stolas pointed out, “that Stella is highly likely to renege on whatever she’s offered you for this contract. I trust you at least got something in writing?”
“Yes,” Blitzø said defensively, and it sounded like no.
Stolas didn’t blame him for the sloppy details—Stella was rather like a bulldozer in that way.
“Whatever,” Blitzø continued, again with the forced bravado. “The reputation boost we get from this job’ll be payment in itself—besides, there’s plenty of nice things in this room. I guess I’ll just have to take some of them with me. Uh, out of curiosity, what kinda price would I be looking at for some of these old books?”
Pulse jumping in his neck, Stolas implored him, “Take whatever you’d like—most of it should fetch a handsome price. Just—please—leave the grimoire.”
“Why? You aren’t gonna need it.”
Swallowing, Stolas said, “It’s my daughter’s birthright. It will pass to her once I’m—well, after this—and it is vitally important that she get it. Please, Blitz. If there is any part of you that feels a scrap of obligation to me as an old friend, please leave the grimoire.”
Blitzø scoffed at the word “friend” and then went deathly quiet for a long time. Then his weight lifted from the bed and Stolas heard him walk over to the bookcase and climb to reach an upper shelf.
When he spoke again, it was to ask, carefully, as he crawled back over Stolas, “This one? The book you showed me when we were kids?”
“Yes,” Stolas confirmed in a whisper.
He felt the pressure shift again as Blitzø leaned close over him and braced once more for the killing blow. Instead, light flooded past his eyelids, causing him to open his eyes and look up as Blitzø finished removing the blindfold. The grimoire was held aloft in his free hand.
“Let’s make a deal,” he said. “A new contract, between you and me.”
“The terms?” Stolas asked.
Blitzø snorted. “A guy throws you a lifeline and you wanna weigh your options? Fine. Lemme lay it out for you: I let you live. I even keep your psycho bitch of a wife on the hook for a while; stall her while you work out how you wanna clean house. And in return, I get the book.”
“Out of the question,” Stolas answered immediately.
“Whoa, whoa. Hold your horses, birdy.” Blitzø held up a pacifying hand. “I get to borrow the book, as and when I need it, and it comes back to you on weekends like an unwanted child of divorce. And if anyone comes around asking any awkward questions, you cover for me. How’s that sound?”
“What are you going to use it for?”
Blitzø stared down at him for a while, deciding how much to tell him, before shrugging and saying, “Doing contracts for locals is a sucker’s game. Shitting on your own doorstep gets messy. But the living world? Now there’s an untapped market. So many humans wandering around up there, so far away, with no one in Hell to ask any questions if they start going missing.”
“Who would be your client in this scenario?” Stolas squinted up at him.
“Sinners!” Blitzø beamed. “You ever met a sinner?”
Stolas shook his head.
“Trust me, they suck. So full of hate and self-pity. Every single one of ‘em has at least one or two people they left behind up there that they’d love to see come to a bloody end. Fuck me, it’s an endless supply of rubes that’ll pay top price for this kinda service.” Some kind of euphoria was gripping Blitzø now, and he looked down at Stolas with a rapturous smile. “Holy shit, Stolas—this is gonna save my business!”
“Assuming that, once you untie me, I don’t immediately vaporize you on the spot,” Stolas said sourly, feeling a little offended at his lack of agency in this entire situation.
“Okay, well, first of all, if that’s your plan—big, dumb move to tell me it before I’ve untied you.” Blitzø rolled his eyes. “But it doesn’t matter, because I know you’re not gonna do that.”
“Oh?” Stolas raised an eyebrow, trying to muster the vibe of a man that might do that—you don’t know!
“Yeah, because I’m not your enemy,” Blitzø said—bold words from his would-be assassin. “I’m just an asshole that can be bought—and no one out there has a better offer than your book.”
He had a point. …Did he have a point, or was Stolas just too tired to deal with the situation anymore? He supposed it was moot.
“Your wife’s the one you need to worry about right now, and I can help you with that—up to a point. Like, don’t go asking me to talk to the authorities or testify at some trial or anything.” Blitzø gave him a hard look. “I speak up against a blue blood and I’ll be dead in a ditch by morning. We both know how these things work for guys like me. We’re the fucking disposables of the demon world.”
Stolas didn’t know. Surely that couldn’t be true—could it?
“Well, in the absence of a better offer than yours or, you know, certain death—I suppose I don’t have much of a choice.” He wriggled a little. “Can you please untie me now?”
Giving him a slow, assessing look, Blitzø finally lifted away and cut Stolas free. In a show of good faith, he continued to cut the rope into smaller and smaller pieces, until it was a frayed pile of silver strings.
“Thank you.” Stolas appreciated it.
Shaking his head, Blitzø said, “Yeah, no problem. Satan’s taint, you’re the politest guy I ever killed.”
They worked out the finer details of their custody agreement over the grimoire and Stolas taught Blitzø how to use it to open a portal to anywhere in the living world with only a simple incantation of one of the spells within. It was all settled very efficiently and soon, after exchanging phone numbers, Blitzø was gone, leaping from the window and escaping into the night with the grimoire under his arm.
In the aftermath of his brush with death, Stolas sat back down on the bed. His mind swooped and fell in wild loops. The skin under his feathers felt electrified. He lowered himself onto his back, resuming the spread-eagled position that Blitzø had trapped him in earlier. Heat began to pulse between his thighs. He placed one hand over his mouth in pale imitation of the gag that been there before, while his other hand slid down to rub himself over his finely tailored pants. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend he was still wearing the blindfold. And, in his mind, he saw that pair of glinting eyes, that smirking mouth of sharp teeth all the clearer.
When his hand slipped inside and got to work, Stolas asked himself more than once as a senseless fever overtook him: What the fuck is wrong with me?