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Celeste has been with Armand the longest out of all of his coven, and a century or two of infrequent fumblings have given her familiarity with his moods. She eyes him from across the restaurant table, from her vantage point in Santiago’s lap, and watches him smoke, make idle conversation, play the master.
Maître’s hot for it tonight, she tells Santiago.
She’s right. It’s like a demon settles under his skin sometimes, and until he can fuck it out of himself, he’ll itch and itch and itch—
Go on, she adds. Santiago laughs it off. Go on, it doesn’t mean anything. And then, Let him suck you off at least, he’ll be in a terrible mood tomorrow otherwise.
Armand’s chair scrapes back as he stands. He takes a slug of his drink, not tasting it, rolls his shoulders back, and heads leisurely for the restaurant door. Santiago can come. Any of them can come. Or he’ll go to the pissoir down the street and find his luck that way.
The others jeer as Santiago dislodges Celeste, gets up, and moves after him.
We who are about to die salute you! he proclaims.
The pretense of a smoke. The hot, squirmy arousal in Armand’s core as Santiago pushes his head down until his knees buckle.
And then what else is there to say.
In their sixth week in Cairo, Louis looks over at Armand from the other side of the bed and frowns in the way that is becoming familiar, as if resurfacing from a dream and struggling to figure out where he’s woken up.
“What were you doing? While I was dying?”
One evening, after the night’s guest performer has been disposed of, Armand sticks his arm in the ratbox as far as it can go. The rats shriek and scuttle over each other with delight at the rare treat of a second meal so soon. They hesitate at his cold flesh, but eventually hunger and instinct take over, and they start biting. Little blunt knives in his hand and his arm. It’s almost restful, leaning here against the metal, these hordes of squalling creatures nursing at him like piglets at a sow’s teats. They like his blood. He wonders if vampire blood makes a rat feel the way it makes a human feel.
Louis’s name watches him from the wall. Deep inside it, pebbles click and shift against each other.
For the two-hundred and sixty-second time that day, Armand hears Claudia’s name.
A rat sinks its teeth into the web of skin between his thumb and index finger.
He’s been starved too, in his time. He too has mourned. Listening to Louis’s screams brings to mind the grief he always carries. The burden felt so much lighter recently. Now with its return and its added weight, it might crush him altogether.
Little rat teeth chewing him. Their tails slither around his wrists, which are sloppy-wet with blood and saliva and filmy tags of skin. He learned to love them when he was underground with Santino and Allessandra and their coven. The rats had kept him company, and their teeth had been the only thing that reminded him he had a body at all.
Your heretic master kept you in such comfort and adoration, Santino told him once. Yours is not a body for comfort.
He spends his first few weeks in Marius’s palazzo bedridden. Pelvis aching, legs aching, back aching, neck aching, head aching. It would be years before he stopped pissing himself in his sleep. When he climaxed—which was always, with Marius—the pleasure came right alongside the wrenching agony of every muscle in his battered pelvic floor clenching vise-tight. In the evenings, Marius would rub his sore back and feet until all the knots of muscle were worked loose, and Amadeo was sobbing with his teeth sunk into the pillow. Ow, ow, ow. And then, once he was a puddle of boy and slick with oil from his neck to his toes, Marius’s hands would slip between his legs. A fingertip gently circled his hole before he bent down to kiss it. And then it was Amadeo’s job to just enjoy, enjoy and keep relaxed. He had to learn how to like things.
They scrap his coffin one night and then watch him halt when it’s time to turn in.
“Were you looking for something, Arun?” Santiago asks to general amusement.
Armand doesn’t give him the satisfaction of a response. Ever the improviser, Santiago makes do.
“Oh, how careless of us. But that’s all right. Plenty of room over here.” He spreads his arms wide with a smile. “Come to Papa.”
He doesn’t touch him in the coffin beyond one hand wrapped around Armand’s wrist and the way he crowds him in from behind. The pageantry is enough.
Louis ties his wrists to the bedposts one night and fucks him facedown so hard he can’t walk afterward. Legs shaky, aching all the way up and down his spine. He laughs at Armand as he feeds him some blood from his wrist—poor baby, don’t tell me you’re getting it too good now—and then tucks a hot water bottle between the pillow and his back. Armand sighs and tugs Louis down to snuggle next to him. The care, the hot water. It reminds him of Marius, in a pleasant way. It reminds him, too, of the brothel. What a luxury Arun would have considered this.
In the back of his head, where Louis can’t reach, he calculates that he has five days left.
“It was Louis.”
She tells him this one night as he mops the stage after closing. She’s sitting in the front row in her yellow dress, one little heel kicking. Blood trickles from the cut in her tendon.
I don’t want you here, he thinks. Go away.
“Well, you’re not Maître anymore,” Claudia says, “so too bad. I go where I please. It was Louis.”
Water trickles from his mop into a shiny puddle.
“Where they got Arun from. They heard you talking on the bench that night. And Louis was always thinking it, way under. He’s never been any good at blocking his thoughts. But then you knew that.”
He wills himself to keep mopping. Not to pause, not to give the specter any sign that she’s hurt him.
“He loved you, you hateful fool,” she says.
The mop clatters to the ground and he faces her squarely.
You’re dead, he tells her.
She blinks her rose-colored eyes at him.
“So are you.”
“They’ll eat you down to the bone if you let them.”
Armand goes still at the sound of Santiago’s voice. The rats nearly have reached the bone. He’s drunksick with the pain.
Footsteps behind him. His spine prickles. Santiago takes his upper arm and yanks it free of the box. The rats squeal in protest. Santiago slams the lid shut. The air is agonizing on Armand’s exposed muscle and nerves. But he’s already starting to heal. In a few hours, he’ll be whole, and it’ll be like it never happened.
His face feels numb.
Santiago tut-tut-tuts at the sight of his mangled arm.
“They’ll eat you down to the bone,” he repeats.
He lays a hand on the top of Armand’s head. The sinking resignation that he’s had ever since the trial, maybe ever since he walked into his own theatre and found his coven waiting and ready for him, reaches its apex.
Can’t bend too easily. Can’t give him the satisfaction, for one thing, and it wouldn’t satisfy a man like Santiago anyway. He wants the thrill of knocking over something that doesn’t want to fall.
He should tell him that he’s barking up the wrong tree. Armand has never been good at much of anything except toppling when expected to.
Santiago increases the pressure of his hand until Armand’s knees fail him and down he goes.
Armand wants Louis to have the simple version. A boy led astray by wicked men, who never laughed in the beds his master sent him to, who considered such donation a violating betrayal and nothing more, who treated his master with the slavish adoration of a lapdog, but somehow also despised him for every wrong, but was never so angry as to fight back, who never caught a thrill when he exchanged hands, never shivered in delight when his master read in his mind all the things their guests did to him and made him do, who never took an axe to his master’s door so he could climb back into his bed and beg for more. When for every banker who sodomized him over a banquet table, there was a passing artist scattering golden crowns at Marius’s feet just for Amadeo’s palm.
Not every night was spent weeping.
Louis can have the fact of his tears. He can have the fact of his violation, minus the calculations that made it a bargain. Armand’s dignity has been hard-won, but it’s an easy thing to give up if the price is right. Always has been. His pragmaticism is inconvenient. Neither he nor Louis want it.
Santiago pushes his head between his legs. Hard hand at his crown, holding him in place so all he can do is breathe the smell of his woolen trousers and the faint iron tang of blood that clings to the fibers. He’s hard. Armand smells his arousal rather than feeling it for himself. His own cock throbs in response. Part of him almost misses the squealing, leg-kicking terror of his first few times around the block—not the forcing itself, but the straightforwardness of being forced.
“Set him on fire,” Claudia says from the corner. No, Armand thinks, pleads, not now, not now, go away. “Come on, you were gonna do it to Louis. You good-as did it to me and Maddi. Why not him?”
Santiago grinds his face against his crotch. Armand opens his mouth, sucks him through the cloth. The wool dries out his tongue.
Go away. I don’t want you here. Go away.
Santiago shoves him away just enough to get his belt open. Pants down, cock out. Armand has just enough time to work up some spit before Santiago’s hand is back in his hair and his cock is pushing past his lips. Armand recoils, what Santiago wants from him. He splutters a little, makes it look like it’s more difficult than it is to get his mouth around him and get to work. Reality fractures for a moment, and he’s naked on his knees in his master’s salon, bobbing his head while his patron and his master talk art. Another fracture—spluttering, vomiting, hand thunderclapping against his ear—
Santiago pinches his nose shut.
Meaningless gesture. He doesn’t need to breathe, and after so many centuries the cutting-off of a former airway no longer alarms him, but it’s the pantomime Santiago’s chasing, the illusion that he could make Armand asphyxiate on his joke of a cock.
Somewhere inside of him, a child wails for Louis.
His hands—the whole one and the ruined one—twitch on his knees. His nose stings. It’s all right if he cries. This is what Santiago is looking for. The tears won’t come.
“Oh, I get it,” Claudia says. “If you put your hands behind your back and let him fuck your face, maybe you can be a victim too.
“Maybe it’d work if you were worse at it,” she adds.
Santiago drags Armand’s head back and forth on his cock. Armand lets his body go as limp as possible.
“Don’t worry, Louis,” Santiago calls. He’s projecting his voice the way he does onstage. Armand’s gut clenches. “We’re giving Arun everything he needs, aren’t we?” He lowers his voice to a purr, all conspiratorial, and taps his fingers on Armand’s cheek. He releases his nose and pulls him off his cock. Armand gives him an exaggerated gasp for air. “Aren’t we?”
Heavy, hollow resignation.
“Yes, Maître.”
He mutters it to Santiago’s shoes. Santiago doesn’t disappoint—he grabs Armand’s jaw and forces eye contact.
“This is an English-only performance,” he says.
Armand groans a little. He’s not sure if it’s real or pretend.
“Yes, Master,” he mumbles.
Santiago’s smirk gets wider.
“Louder for the gallery.”
Armand wets his lips and complies.
Santiago’s not big enough to choke him on his own, so he puts his hand around Armand’s throat and does it that way. Nostrils pinched, windpipe closed. Louis did this for him once, and Armand had slipped into a velvet world where the only thing that was, was him.
Santiago comes in his mouth. Armand swallows without needing to be told, is called an eager little whore for his trouble, and then is knocked back on his elbows. Lightning bolt of fresh pain in his bad arm. He watches Santiago do his pants back up and rebuckle his belt. He tastes Santiago’s come at the back of his throat. Santiago steps forward, thrusts his hips once, twice, into his face, then ruffles his hair and strides away. Footsteps back up the stairs.
Armand lets out an unnecessary breath in a careful, steady stream. He wipes his face. Spits on the floor a few times, until his mouth feels dry. Wipes his face again. Sits back against the ratbox. Sniffs. Blinks until his eyes focus. Hot pressure inside his skull. Throat stings. He coughs.
He hasn’t been raped in two centuries.
LOUIS DU LAC screams down at him from the wall.
In her dark corner, Claudia begins, slowly, to clap.
In Cairo, he waits until Louis is asleep again before he shifts closer on the bed, closing the gap between their bodies. He breathes in the smell of Louis’s hair. He is dreaming of a night in New Orleans.
Get off that bench, Claudia tells him. Get up.
“Get up,” Claudia says.