Cold Steel and Hot Lead [How the West Was Done 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (14 page)

Alameda encouraged Derrick. With her hand full of Derrick’s penis, she purred steamily, “That’s it. That’s good. Pleasure your friend. Make him want more. He’ll want to come back for more because you’re that good.”

Rudy twitched and jerked in his bonds. He had performed acts such as this many times before with other men, but never had such an exquisite orgasm come so fast. It was the hand of the man he craved the most that had stroked him to such bliss, and Rudy felt bawdy and profane, his prick still stiff as Derrick squeezed the last drop from it.

“Ah,” Alameda breathed into Derrick’s ear. “You do that well.”

Perhaps to deny that he was interested at all in frigging Rudy and to show her he was only doing it to please her, Derrick let go of his prick and grabbed Alameda for a lusty, openmouthed kiss. She slung a leg over Derrick’s lap while Rudy easily squirmed out of his ropes.

Rudy enjoyed watching the couple kiss for a few moments. Alameda humped Derrick’s hip with only the thin fabric of her sheer outfit covering her pussy mound. For a few leisurely moments, Rudy marveled that he had met this couple who seemed willing to admit him to their sex play. Magic had assisted in this. Percy—a
ghost
, after all!—and his clues and hints had brought them together, and now they were set to unmask the kidnapper and bring happiness to Laramie because they alone would bring back the stolen Kittie.

“You in there?” Someone shook the cabinet, and Derrick and Alameda detached with gasps.

“Oh dear,” said Alameda, hand to her chest. “I thought that was a real spirit. Maybe we shouldn’t be in this cabinet.”

“Miss Deluxe Dora?” asked a stage worker. “Cannonball says we’re ready to rehearse your scene.”

At this, Alameda sprang from the cabinet, dramatically gesturing. “Arise, my loving subjects!”

Rudy chuckled as he crammed his prick back into his trousers, bits of rope hanging from his wrists. “I sure hope that’s one of her lines.”

Derrick grinned. “It could just be her.”

The stage worker told Rudy, “And some giant milk canister arrived for you.”

Alameda slid away theatrically, crying, “From beneath the rank leaves of a plant glided a huge serpent. Its eyes were burning coals, its tongue a living flame. I was paralyzed with fear and powerless to move. Nearer and nearer it came…”

“Revenge, revenge!” called out one of her sprites. “Revenge on the Arch Fiend, Zamiel!”

They clambered out of the cabinet and looked at a giant steel can someone had placed nearby. “Ah,” said Rudy. “It came. Good. I’m going to use this as the opening act, before I even get inside the cabinet. You’re going to lock chains around my wrists—I’ll teach you how to palm me the key—and put me inside this can. Only it’ll be full of water.”

“Can you get out easily enough?”

Rudy shrugged. “I hope so. A magician is but an actor playing the role of magician.” He held up his palms to Derrick then grasped a thumb and bent it back so it touched his wrist. “I’m double-jointed. One of those contortionist fellows, such as Percy saw with Kittie.”

“Are you a suspect?” Derrick chuckled. “We’ll have to test your acrobatic skills later. All right, let’s practice this milk can act.”

“Where are my scenes of infernal life and wreaths of flame?” bellowed Cannonball from the stage.

A throne lit by candles, decorated with skulls that looked shockingly real, was flanked by two dwarf demons. Rudy was certain one of them was Major Littlefinger, possible cohort in the abduction of Memphis Kittie. A dozen other fiends danced about the throne, laughing diabolically in front of a flashing chasm that was nothing more than someone rattling a big piece of cardboard glued with glitter.

“That’s Zamiel, the Arch Fiend,” Rudy told Derrick of the devil who now took the throne.

This Zamiel wobbled as though oiled as he tried to take his seat, his ass instead hitting a throne arm and knocking it askew. He waved his scepter, and the dancing devils parted, bowing down to him.

Zamiel shouted, “If, when the brazen tongue of time, now trembling on the cusp of midnight, proclaims the appointed hour, the wail of the fresh soul who betrayed me breaks on the air of hell! Let her be summoned!”

“Let
him
be summoned,” suggested Cannonball.

Zamiel waved his wand at the ringmaster. “I summon Stalacta, Fairy Queen of the Golden Realm!”

“That’s not in the script!” howled Cannonball, but already someone was shoving Alameda onstage. She skittered out, bewildered.

“He’s right,” said Rudy. “Zamiel never meets Stalacta. The part they’re doing now is just the grand crescendo with a lot of lights and flames. Vistas of pandemonium.”

Derrick said, “Let’s see what he does. Maybe he’s improvising.”

The roostered devil stood, pointing his scepter at Alameda. “Stalacta! Your soul is mine, I tell you! All mine! I shall smite you with this scepter and cast you into the abyss!”

Alameda held her hands out. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked Cannonball. “Does he cast me into the abyss?”

“That devil looks familiar,” said Derrick.

“Yes,” Rudy agreed.

Cannonball yelled, “What are you doing, Castillo? Zamiel doesn’t cast Stalacta into any abyss. You’re supposed to throw the innocent Amina in there. Amina! Where are you?”

Zamiel shouted, “Zamiel wants to cast Stalacta into his abyss! She has caused him great anguish!”

The trapeze girl Temperance scurried out, allowing Alameda to be shuttled offstage, thankfully. But not before the two men shared a look of realization.

“Eliazar Castillo,” Rudy breathed.

Their suspected culprit, Castillo the knife thrower, was playing the part of the very devil.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen. I shall proceed to crouch down in this can, which you’ve seen is filled with melted snow. Senator Spiro here will replace the lid while I free myself from these chains.”

Alameda watched from the wing of the stage. They had somehow lured the maximum five hundred people into the theater, probably bored with nothing else to do. No one could get out of town with the train and only road snowed in. The Elks Club was planning a big fandango in an hour, so spectators were just getting warmed up with flasks of whiskey and a keg of beer her sister Ivy had donated in the name of her husband Neil, the town’s deputy. Neil Tempest, snowed in at his Serendipity Ranch, was evidently looking to create more work for himself by donating the beer. Several revelers sitting in the audience near the pregnant Ivy were tossing a ball back and forth and creating a public nuisance, and it probably wouldn’t get any better from there on in.

It was her job to keep an eye on Eliazar Castillo, their suspect. If Percy was right—and he mostly had been, so far—Castillo would use their cabinet act as a way to bring Kittie back and make it look as though the kidnappers had been Rudy and Derrick. They hadn’t entrusted her with a pistol—they didn’t know she had secreted her ladylike pocket pistol in the white rabbit’s fur muff she held in her lap now—but her eyewitness recounting of anything she saw would stand them in good stead. Neil Tempest would believe his sister-in-law. And here on the vast frontier, the law of Judge Lynch usually took care of matters.

She relaxed now, having seen that Castillo was standing one row behind her, about five people down, easily detected by the devil’s horns he had glued to his cap.

“The senator is your beau?” Temperance asked.

Alameda started to say “yes” but paused. She really didn’t know what to say. Derrick had stated he was “seeking her out,” singling her out of the crowd for a courtship. But Derrick was to move to Cheyenne, and she didn’t even know if she wanted a beau. Could she trust a man again, after tolerating the cheating adultery of her fiancé Ralph Ellis? Why on earth would a man ask someone to marry him when he fully intended on bedding an additional one hundred women before the wedding even happened?

“Yes, I suppose he’s my beau,” Alameda admitted.

Temperance said, “I’ve heard he’s vowed to find whoever kidnapped that town girl.”

“Kittie, yes. She is my friend. We did many things together.”

“Your beau is very dashing.” Temperance sighed as they watched Derrick cover Rudy with the canister’s lid.

“He is dashing.” Now Alameda could not take her eyes from the canister, being genuinely fearful that Rudy would not escape in time. “I was betrothed to another man back in New York. A Ralph Ellis of importing fame. My father arranged it, and I just agreed to it, thinking that anything your father does must be right.”

Temperance turned her placid angel’s face to Alameda. “And what happened? You’re obviously not betrothed anymore.”

Alameda took an enormous, deep sigh. Onstage, Derrick was pattering about the women’s vote. The women in the audience became distracted by this and applauded. Men shoved at them to shut up, as they wanted to concentrate on the tin canister. Derrick stalked back and forth, absolutely luscious in his wide, striped tie and double-breasted waistcoat.

“Under this new law, women teachers will be paid the same salary as men!” declared Derrick. Alameda knew her sister Liberty would already be in love with Derrick, as she had founded Laramie’s first school. “It is the duty of all magicians to give entertainment, and it is the duty of all politicians to give them freedom and forward-thinking laws!”

“Well,” Alameda told Temperance. “This Ralph Ellis fellow, I suppose he imagined that being betrothed didn’t involve being faithful. Even before we were engaged, he was giving pokes to almost every woman within a hundred-mile radius.”

Temperance’s jaw hung low. She shut it almost as quickly. “Well. I suppose that’s just the way of men. I don’t expect to find a husband who is faithful.”

“I do!” Alameda surprised herself with her vehemence. “I will not tolerate a man who thinks it’s acceptable to ride any old woman like she’s a mare. I didn’t find out about Ralph’s dalliances, of course, until right before the wedding. Of course that’s why I called it off. It was another girl friend of mine who informed me.”

Temperance sighed. It looked as though she was intently watching Derrick’s butt as he paraded across the stage. “I’m surprised you didn’t become one of those lesbians. Oh, my! Who is that?”

A clown of some sort meandered across the stage behind Derrick. The audience’s attention was drawn to this fellow who had painted his face white. He wasn’t so extraordinary, but the audience laughed because he was mimicking Derrick silently, exaggerating his every move. When the mime displayed the split in his pants, the audience roared.

Alameda stood slowly. “Oh, dear. How long has Rudy been in that canister?”

Ever the circus performer, Temperance said, “Two minutes. Of course, he left an air pocket at the top. Right?”

The mime was pretending to choke. Derrick, perhaps finally becoming aware that his speech on women’s rights wasn’t that terribly hilarious, turned around and grinned.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he called out, gesturing to the clown. “Our next Wyoming Territorial Legislator, at your service.”

The canister rattled and teetered, and Derrick cast anxious looks at it. Alameda flew down the stage, shoving the choking mime out of her way. He toppled like one of those bushes that rolled down the streets of Laramie, and an audience member shouted, “Yeah! Bully! Naked fairies!”

The cry was taken up, a roaring between the women who wanted to know if Rudy had survived inside the canister and the men who wanted to see more naked fairies. Derrick and Alameda reached the can at the same time that the lid popped off, rolling off the edge of the stage, and Rudy emerged, triumphant. He lifted his unbound hands like a prizefighter, melted snow streaming off his well-muscled torso.

Alameda and Derrick fell back to allow Rudy his time in the limelight. The dying mime was forgotten, and by the time Alameda thought to look, someone must have dragged him offstage. By that time she wanted to kick the buffoon, but Rudy was strutting across the stage.

He shouted, “And now, for the most exalted and victorious illusion of all! I, Remington Rudy, King of all Handcuff Kings, will escape from the knots of your best ropers! Who is the best calf roper in all of Laramie City? Bind me with reatas, lassos, and lariats! Come to the stage and do your best work on me!”

“I’d like to do my best work on him,” Alameda whispered to Derrick, slipping in Rudy’s wet footprints.

“Not now, duck. Where is Eliazar Castillo? You need to keep an eye on the front door, too, in case he sends Kittie in that way.”

Alameda flew back to the wings, scooping up her furry muff with the hidden revolver. Castillo was no longer standing in the group behind Temperance, and she asked her new friend, “Have you seen Castillo, the knife thrower, in the past three minutes?”

“He was here,” said Temperance, “but he disappeared approximately three minutes ago. Right before that mime started choking. By the way,” she added, “he really
was
choking. I suppose that’s the sign of a good actor, that everyone thought he was just miming.”

“Which way did Castillo go?”

“Backstage. Behind the curtain. I assumed he was checking on that abyss scenery he was building. You know, the one his Arch Fiend is going to throw me into.”