Positons Vacant

Positions Vacant

By Kara Larson

It hadn’t been bad for a Halloween night, and a rainy Halloween night at that. No teenagers had egged his door this year. No one had smashed the Charlie Brown of a lopsided pumpkin he’d carved a half-assed face into just minutes before he’d shoved it outside with a candle crammed down its throat. Er, mouth. And hey, he still had candy left, which meant he’d done something right this year. All Hallows wasn’t too bad, once you divorced it from the neo-pagan rituals of your roots and let it exist in its purely commercial birthright. Especially when it meant a night off from classes, since no college student in their right mind would pass up one last chance at trick or treating.

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So Adrian sat by himself, folding laundry and enjoying the benefits of what had been a deserted laundry room for a change. Until his doorbell rang. And someone deposited what looked like, for all intents and purposes, a demon prince on his doorstep. Adrian stared at the demon--er, man--that stood just outside his door, taking in the dark hair, the dark clothing, even the dark leathery wings seemed to spring from the guy’s shoulders. Someone had obviously done his research, or at least checked out every Monster Manual that Wizards of the Coast ever put out. Damn his parents, and the fact that they considered gaming manuals proper reading material for bedtime stories. And of course the guy had to be kinda hot. Or very hot. Especially for someone who looked like a demon prince. “Look, just because it’s been awhile since… well, y’know…” The demon prince stared at him blankly. Adrian, noticing that the demon’s eyes seemed bright yellow in the porch light, shook his head and tried again. “They shouldn’t have put you up to this. I mean, the costume’s fantastic, but…” The blank look was now uncertain. He had to admit that costume was one of the best he’d ever seen, and this was coming from someone whose parents were die-hard Rennies and whose sister had done enough prosthetic work both in and out of Hollywood to outfit an entire army of hobbits and elves. Even though it was a dark and stormy night, none of the demon’s makeup had run and his prosthetics, even the black horns affixed to his forehead, were still immaculately in place. “Look, d’you wanna at least come in out of the rain? I still have some candy, and I can fix you a cup of cider or something.” Adrian gently took the demon by the arm, all but dragging him into his apartment. There was no resistance, which surprised him. Either the rain had shocked the poor guy more than he thought, or the guy was a damned good actor. If Holly sent him, since she knew half of gay Hollywood anyway, it was probably the acting bit. If not… Well, Adrian tried not to think of the implications of a demon prince in his apartment. Least of all one that would’ve made his metaphorical tail curl--if he had one. As the demon moved past Adrian into the narrow hallway, Adrian saw that the demon, at least, definitely had one. A long black one, complete with veined point on the end. It made him wonder if the demon had actually taped his toes together to get the cloven-hoofed look. There’d been some Rennies crazy enough to do that when he was a kid. At least he got the skin tone right. The guy had to have a hell of a makeup artist. He probably had plenty of melatonin to begin with to get the right shade of ruddy-bronze out of the makeup. Every time Holly or their parents had tried the stuff on Adrian, he’d just ended up looking like the red M&M at worst or a sunburnt tourist at best. But this guy--there were no smears or anything. It was possible that it was airbrushed on. Holly had mentioned something about that in her latest email, not that he’d paid too much attention. He didn’t want to be that gay guy. It was

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bad enough that he was a perpetual student and the son of parents who suffered from delusions of SCA. His Closet of Shame was full of enough shit, thank you very much. Trying not to ogle the demon, Adrian dragged him the rest of the way down the hallway and into the kitchen. The demon didn’t even seem to so much as glance around the room before automatically sitting down at the round table in the middle of the room. The rain dripping off him made him seem even more bedraggled than before. His clothes, now that Adrian could see them, were utterly soaked and quite possibly ruined. Apparently not everyone knew that getting velvet wet was an incredibly bad idea, especially since the crimson color seemed to be leaking onto what looked like it had once been cream brocade of some kind. The fact that he could identify those meant he’d been spending way too much time with his family again… But, before Adrian could get too caught up in his own mental melodrama, he forced himself to grab a towel from his pile of clean laundry on the table. “Here, that might help.” The demon stared at it, turning it over and over in his hands helplessly before looking back up at Adrian. If he didn’t know better, he would’ve thought that the demon was going to cry. Someone was obviously having a shitty night. Or a shitty life, from the looks of it. “Here,” he said, with a gentleness usually reserved for the babies in his Frosh literature course. He plucked the towel out of the demon’s hands (long-fingered, tipped in what looked like blacklacquered claws) and began toweling off the dripping black hair. No dye rubbed off on his slightly grey towel, nor did any red streaks stain it once Adrian worked his way toward the demon’s neck. Did airbrushing come off with water? Hadn’t Holly said something about Mystique’s paintjob in the three X-men movies? The demon leaned into Adrian’s rubbing, eyes closed and a look of something like pleasure on his face. Adrian noticed the long dark eyelashes, something his sister would’ve killed for. Wasn’t it a rule somewhere that demons had to be pretty? All the better to eat you with? Or tempt you with? Someone had to have made that rule up at some point. And maybe there was a reason for it… He wasn’t sure what to do once he got to the neck and shoulders of what had once been an ornate red velvet waistcoat over what looked like a cream tunic or blouse of some kind. The embroidery was better than any he’d ever seen as a kid, and some of the costumers he’d known would have wet dreams over this. Gold and crimson embroidery in loops and whorls and patterns that almost made him dizzy edged the shoulders and neckline of the tunic. And the cream-on-cream pattern in the brocade shirt… Yeah, definitely time to stop hanging around with Holly and her ilk. “Look, the costume might be ruined,” Adrian started, trying to wring out what he could of the demon’s sleeve while the demon’s arm was still in it. It just seemed easier--more comfortable--to

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think of him like that. Demon. Not man. Not really hot man in his kitchen whose family was obviously more talented than Adrian’s, not that Adrian was jealous. In answer, the demon’s hands scrabbled at the buttons on his waistcoat, trying to unbutton it so fast that two of the buttons flew off, falling to the floor with a thunk. Cheap metal usually didn’t thunk. Adrian knelt down, out of curiosity’s sake, to stare at one of the gleaming gold buttons. Maybe they were really expensive gilded buttons. But what kind of metal overlay could achieve that kind of rosy-gold undertone? By the time he looked back up, the demon had stood again, struggling to unwrap himself from what had become a wet clothes monster. The soaked fabric decided it was too fond of the poor guy to let him go, and his wings--the wingsGargoyle was Adrian’s first thought. Possibly dragon, if you were talking the Pern kind. Maybe even bat. The wings were black, black as the guy’s claws and horns, with an inner membrane of dark red. It was kind of hard to see the wings, as caught as they were in the guy’s shirt and waistcoat. Someone had scarred the membrane of the left one, tattering the lower edge. They’d even gone through the trouble of dry-brushing the boning that ran through the membrane, adding details like veins and ridges. Adrian couldn’t help fingering the tapered claw that capped one of the wing’s ‘fingers’. And then the demon shuddered. “You okay?” Adrian asked, standing up in alarm. “Here, lemme help.” It took two of them to untangle the demon--man--from his costume. Finally, a heap of wet clothes lay on the floor at their feet and the man was wrapped in yet another towel. The wings had been better attached than Adrian thought, because they were currently wrapped around the man under the towel. The tail peeped out from the bottom of the towel, probably either sewn into the man’s damp black pants, or tied around his waist as a belt. The pants didn’t seem too bad--they looked and smelled like wet leather, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Treated leather would dry at least. It’d be hell getting off, but it would dry. Which was more than could be said for the waistcoat and shirt… “You should’ve brought an umbrella or something,” Adrian said finally, filling up his electric kettle and plugging it in next to the sink. “I know it doesn’t usually rain here in October, but the newscasters have been predicting this all week.” “They didn’t say anything about rain,” the man said finally, looking up at Adrian from under his still straggly hair. “But there’s always something they forget to tell me.” His voice, a light tenor, sounded miserable. Adrian knelt in front of the man, putting his hands on the man’s damp knees. “Y’know hazing’s against college rules, right? I mean, I know the frats still do it every fall, and the Powers that Be turn a blind eye, but you can tell someone.”

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The man’s yellow eyes widened. “Tell the Powers? They’re the ones behind this. It’s not like they’d do anything.” Adrian sat back on his heels. “Wait, the college administration dressed you up and sent you off to trick-or-treat at all the TAs in the English department?” The man blinked back. “What’s a TA? And who said anything about--“ Adrian could almost hear the light bulbs clicking on in the man’s head. “Your college administration would do something like that?” “You’re the one who appeared on my doorstep, dressed as a demon,” Adrian pointed out. “And God knows they’ve done stranger.” The annual Christmas party was generally regarded as a taboo topic, followed closely by that one year they’d attempted a Midsummer’s Eve bash. “What’s your name anyhow?” Probably wasn’t a good idea to admit that he was still calling the guy ‘demon’ in his head anyway. The guy actually coughed. “Um. Bael.” Adrian snickered. “Your parents must’ve hated you. Aren’t you supposed to be the first king over hell? I mean, I’m kinda surprised my sisters and me got off so easy, since our parents were as crazy as they were.” “Duke, actually. But not by choice,” Bael muttered. “If the other side would’ve asked--“ “The old ‘picked last for the team’ thing, huh?” Adrian grinned. “That’s my usual answer when people ask why I study dead languages. Because that’s the department that had last pick when I was the only kid on the bench.” Bael stared at him, though Adrian wasn’t sure why. “Um, I’m Adrian, by the way.” He shook the well-shaped hand that Bael held out, surprised at how warm Bael’s skin was. And how well the makeup still stayed on. “Y’know, you must have the best makeup artist on earth. I didn’t think anyone could do this good a job.” Adrian brought Bael’s hand closer, examining it closer. “Didn’t even smudge. I would’ve thought that in the rain…” He trailed off, looking up and noticing Bael’s yellow eyes focused on him. Maybe not so much yellow as gold. Kinda like his hair wasn’t so much black as having really dark red highlights. “Crimson,” he muttered. “God, how much more gay can I be?” Again, Bael gave him that perplexed blink. “Unless that bothers you,” Adrian continued in a hurried voice, dropping Bael’s hand. “I mean, I know it does, but they really should’ve told you that, whoever sent you…” “Heosphoros,” Bael cut in. He looked nervous as he spoke. “Heosphoros sent me.” “Dawn-bearer,” Adrian translated automatically. “Helel, in the Hebrew, for ‘bright one’. Though Lucifer is more traditional, meaning ‘light-bearer’.”

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“He prefers ‘star of morning’.” Bael cleared his throat. “But that’s just a personal choice, he’ll really answer to anything.” The towel slipped off his bare shoulder, revealing a long red limb (redskin, something whispered in the back of Adrian’s mind) and what was clearly a wing joint, attached seamlessly to Bael’s narrow shoulder blade. At the base, the wing joint was the same ruddy color of Bael’s skin, darkening to the black lacquered look of the wing as it progressed further and further up the main bony ridge (forearm?). “Star of morning really is more poetic,” Adrian replied absently. “And you’ve gotta call the guy what he wants to be called--and you’re a demon, aren’t you?” Adrian had always thought his… eccentric upbringing would be good for something. At least he’d finally found it. Not everyone was raised to be a knight, after all. If he hadn’t been so pragmatic about the damn thing, he probably could’ve gone the Ren Faire route like his oldest sister, since it’s what his parents had brought him up on. Or maybe he might’ve hung with the SCA crowd, if he could get them to forgive him for being a Rennie. And Holly emailed him a constant stream of jobs from the studios she worked with. Post Peter Jackson, there were plenty of fantasy stunt jobs to be had. But there still were no dragons to slay, and certainly no princesses to save, which was the real dream his parents had set him up for. It’s also what he kept telling his parents from the time he could talk: there was no need for fencing lessons, or jousting lessons, or knowing the exact pieces that make up each part of his set of plate armor. The sword they gave him for his twelfth birthday was heavy and made his wrists ache, and horses inevitably didn't like him. Not to mention the fact that he couldn't see around the cheek-pieces of his helm and his peripheral vision was shot unless he was wearing his contacts. In the real world that his parents and sisters had no part of, Adrian was a perpetual student. He was, specifically, a graduate student of dead languages by day, and a teaching assistant by night. Surprisingly, Mum and Da (as they insisted on being called) were supportive of this. It was his monastic lifestyle, Da said on numerous occasions, constantly showering Adrian with new calligraphy inks and scraps of parchment from God knew where that always wound up on that shelf in Adrian's closet. That shelf--the one that held several bags of rings for chain mail (his depth perception was off), his leatherworking tools (the punch and riveting tools caused some form of carpel tunnel), and the spurs that he supposedly wore when he jousted on weekends. Because leaving them out in plain sight would just give any potential friend, boy or otherwise, the wrong ideas. Or maybe the right ones. At least this time, Bael gave him a hint of a shy smile. He really was too pretty to be a normal human guy, at least one that Adrian hadn’t seen outside of an anime convention. Face that was almost heart-shaped, pointed chin and ears, high cheekbones--Bael had the works. It was the eyes that did it, though. There was something in those yellow eyes that was inherently not demonlike. Adrian blinked. “So… you chose the wrong side?” It was almost more of a statement than a question. Bael coughed. “Define ‘wrong’.”

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“Uh, stealing candy from old ladies and knocking over babies and starting wars?” As odd as his upbringing had been, Mum and Da had no ambivalence over one thing. Right was right and wrong was wrong. And a demon was sitting at his kitchen table, dripping water all over his linoleum and giving Adrian a look that made him want to bend over the table and spread ‘em. “There are… shades of right and wrong,” Bael started, turning what seemed to be an even darker shade of red. “And some of us just chose really badly, and if you met Heosphoros, you’d know how convincing he could be…” When Adrian didn’t answer, Bael dropped his eyes and gave Adrian a better look at those thick black eyelashes. “I don’t suppose you’d be my minion then?” “Uh…” Adrian jumped when the electric kettle whistled. “Water’s done. Want some tea? Cider?” Fire and brimstone? “Tea, please. And it really was just a lover’s spat,” Bael continued in a quiet voice. “Heosphoros was tired of being second and wanted to share in all of the Creator’s glory for himself, so…” “So Lucifer got tired of bottoming, and that’s why you guys all hightailed it out of there?” Adrian surprised himself at how calm he felt. “Kind of…” Bael trailed off. “And if I told you that all this negative energy was just Heosphoros acting out, trying to get the Creator’s attention?” “I’d say that Lucifer needed a good kick in the ass,” Adrian answered, setting a mug of tea in front of Bael. “About this minion-thing…” Bael sighed. “It’s tradition. Every All Hallows, when the walls between the worlds thin, demons sneak onto this plain and grab as many minions as they can. If you don’t…” “They, erm, punish you?” Adrian tried to sip his tea, driving all thoughts of Bael, handcuffs, and whips from his mind. Bael looked miserable. “So you had a crush on the Fallen One himself eons ago, and because you’re rotten at being a demon, he keeps sending you out to bring minions that you never seem to collect,” Adrian said slowly. “And these minions are supposed to help you spread Hell on Earth.” “It isn’t all stealing and starting wars,” Bael muttered to his cup of tea. “There’s mischief too. And Heosphoros did realize a long time ago what a lousy demon I was…” His wings, now completely free of the towel, actually drooped. “Hey, hey…” Adrian said, coming around the table to squeeze Bael by the shoulders. “It’s not so bad. And if the big guy doesn’t necessarily expect anything out of you…”

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Bael’s skin was warm against his, his head coming to rest against Adrian’s as if it was the only comfort he had. A part of Adrian’s brain thought that this could be some kind of demon trick, that Bael was really a hell of a lot better at this business than he said he was, but a bigger (more erect) part of his brain kept reminding him of how nice Bael looked, and how well-meaning he seemed, and how sexy those black horns were, crowning Bael’s high forehead like that… “He did look a little proud when I put that curse on the Lovelock Road sign,” Bael said, sounding a little more cheerful. “The one that keeps turning into Lovecock, no matter how many times they replace it?” It was hard, even after seven years, to drive past the street sign without snickering. “Is Condom Avenue your fault too?” A small snicker was the only answer. “See, that’s my kinda mischief,” Adrian said, grinning at Bael. “Nothing necessarily bad, per se. Just…” “Making life a little more difficult?” Bael suggested. “Causing a little… chaos?” Adrian nodded. “Chaos is the opposite of order, and since God seems to stand for order…” Bael looked thoughtful. “I wonder if anyone’s ever pointed that out to Heosphoros.” He wiggled out of the loose embrace Adrian still had him in, standing up. “Maybe if I tell him that...” Adrian coughed. “Um, about that minion thing--“ He shifted awkwardly, trying not to make his now raging erection obvious. “Does it come with… fringe benefits?” The lusty grin that Bael gave him was all he needed. “It might,” Bael answered, his soft voice dropping almost an octave. “What type of benefits were you looking for?” Adrian’s hand, of its own volition, reached for what looked like the tie fly on the front of Bael’s loose pants. Something was creating a tent in there, and he was anxious to see it. “Knowledge,” he answered. “Power. Incredible sex.” His fingers wiggled inside, wrapping around something even warmer than Bael’s skin and hard as iron. “And to find out if you’re red all over.” Bael purred, his eyes half-lidded with pleasure. He leaned into Adrian’s careful strokes. “That could possibly be arranged… *** “So you really are all red,” Adrian said some time later, one hand lightly stroking Bael’s halferect cock. Not a bad cock, for a demon. Quite a talented cock, actually. Adrian was starting to see what this whole ‘side of the angels’ thing was all about. “Mmmph,” Bael murmured into Adrian’s bare shoulder.

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“Been a while for you too, huh?” Adrian asked, grinning. “You could say that,” Bael said with a self-satisfied smile. “We might have time for another round--just for practice’s sake.” “If it’s for practice’s sake…” Adrian pounced on his demon in all his naked splendor. All those Bible stories had been right about one thing--the fallen certainly were something to look at. “I do wanna be a good minion after all.” “I don’t think you have any worries,” Bael answered, tickling Adrian’s neck with his tongue, followed by light nips with his teeth. Maybe this was what Adrian’s parents had in mind after all. Heaven might not need a failed knight, but apparently Hell had some vacancies… The End

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Positions Vacant Copyright © 2007 by Kara Larson All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Torquere Press, Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680 Printed in the United States of America. Torquere Press, Inc.: Sips electronic edition / October 2007 Torquere Press eBooks are published by Torquere Press, Inc., PO Box 2545, Round Rock, TX 78680

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