Endless Knight (Darkling Mage 9)

“So,” Belphegor grumbled, still scrolling through his phone. “What do you want?”

I wasn’t sure who he was addressing until Scrimshaw tugged on my pant leg. I cleared my throat, slipping my body into the array of facial and physical expressions that generally worked best when sucking up to entities. Of course, body language only ever works when the other person is looking at you. Belphegor was being rude as hell, and wouldn’t even give me so much as a glance.

“We had a bargain,” I said. “Remember, when we visited you on Calaguas Island the other day?”

Still staring into his phone, Belphegor scoffed. “I mean, I remember when you interrupted my me time, my little vacay. But sure, why not. A bargain.”

I twiddled my thumbs, waiting for him to say something, and growing steadily more impatient and frustrated by the second. It didn’t help that this body Belphegor was wearing had perfected the carefree slouch of an impetuous teenager. It also had an eminently punchable face.

To my surprise, Mason stepped in, his face and demeanor similarly poised in a facsimile of my own “let’s be nice to entities” body language. “We asked to borrow a sword, Belphegor,” he said, firmly, but politely. “And the deal was that I would owe you a favor. Me. The nephilim.”

Belphegor’s thumb froze mid-swipe as his eyes slowly swiveled up to meet Mason’s. His lips broke into a lazy smile. “Oh, yeah. Now I remember. Duskfang, wasn’t it? Sure. Why didn’t you say so?”

Mason looked over his shoulder at me, and despite being mad, he threw me the kind of befuddled, annoyed look you might see flying between two people in a sitcom. Like, “What the hell is this guy smoking?”

Weed, it turned out, because the wind shifted just then, and I caught a whiff of the scent clinging to Belphegor’s body. I was totally right.

“That should be on my to-do list,” Belphegor said, scrolling through his phone. “I could have sworn I checked that thing off days ago.”

I bit hard on the inside of my cheek. “Are you serious? Days ago? And we had to chase you down for this?”

Belphegor said nothing, but he didn’t have to. The way his eyes flitted towards me with thick displeasure said plenty. I backpedaled without meaning to under the force of his glower, stumbling in the uneven earth of the hilltop.

“I don’t exactly have access to two-day delivery, Dustin Graves,” Belphegor said, his voice dripping with derision. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, being so far removed from your original role in the arcane underground, but the acquisition of magical artifacts takes time, and effort.”

“Acquisition?” I said. I turned to Asher and Gil, just to clarify. “Refresh my memory,” I said, softly so Belphegor couldn’t hear. “When we went to meet the prince of sloth in the Philippines, wasn’t there talk about just retrieving the sword?”

Gil’s eyes darkened as he chewed over the meaning of what Belphegor had said. “That’s what I thought, at least. It sounded like she – like he was going to just pop into his apartment and take it out of some dusty closet.”

Belphegor patted at his body, like he was confused at how he could have misplaced an entire goddamn sword on his person. “Oh, that’s right,” he muttered, mainly to himsel

f. Belphegor opened his mouth, unhinging his jaw like a python. I cringed as he reached into his own throat, grasping the pommel of something glistening and wet. Within moments he had pulled out a jet black sword: Duskfang.

I approached to take it, but I didn’t have to. Belphegor spread his fingers, and Duskfang hovered towards me, obedient and docile, the way that Laevateinn had after Loki handed it over. I accepted, managing to hide most of my grimace as my fingers closed around the sword’s spit-slick hilt.

“Sorry about that,” Belphegor said, not sounding very sorry at all. “Can’t help it. You keep something in your throat, of course there’s going to be some saliva. You can just wipe that stuff off.”

I placed Duskfang into my backpack, resting it alongside the others. We only needed a celestial sword to complete the ritual now. I wiped my hand off on the back of my jacket, raising an eyebrow at Belphegor.

“Thanks a lot,” I grumbled. “I mean, you could have stored it somewhere else, right?”

“Meh,” he said. “It’s rough when you’re in a hurry and don’t want to be discovered, you know? Gotta stash it somewhere quick, and safe. It’s like how prisoners smuggle stuff up their butts.”

My eyes flitted wildly, like they were searching the hilltop for answers. “Wait, wait. Why did you have to stuff the sword up your butt – shit, I meant down your throat? Who was chasing you?”

Belphegor’s eyes looked straight into my face, focusing as if seeing me for the first time that night. It chilled me to the bone, how his gaze lingered there. “Oh, did I not mention? I don’t exactly have a bunch of magical demon-forged swords lying around, you know. Like I said, I had to acquire it.”

Asher’s gasp almost made me jump out of my skin. I’d almost forgotten he was even there. “Wait. You mean you stole Duskfang?”

Belphegor rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t say ‘steal,’ but yeah, sure, the principle is the same. Going by the definition that I took it from someone else, and that the sword doesn’t technically belong to me, then I suppose you could say that I ‘stole’ it.”

He wiggled his fingers in the air, making air quotes around the word each time. And each time, cold blood ran just under my skin. “And who exactly did you steal Duskfang from?”

Belphegor blinked at me with all the innocence of someone who was building up to a dramatic mic drop. “Why, another demon prince, of course.”

Gil, Asher, Mason, Sterling, all five of us groaned practically at the same time. Hell, I was pretty sure I heard Vanitas groaning from inside my backpack, too. Scrimshaw, to my surprise, didn’t make a sound, but he was clearly eating his s’mores a lot faster, like a dog that’d been caught sneaking in the larder.

“Oops,” Belphegor said, a boyish grin spreading across his lips, his eyes twinkling with cunning, with fiendish delight.