“Someone will pay for this,” Shakespeare said softly.
Lucifer patted him on the shoulder and offered him a hand. “Someone generally does. Come, Master Shakespeare, let me show you to your cottage, where you may begin your revenge.”
Will wobbled when he stood, his hands trembling more than they had in Faerie, his arse and his inner thighs still aflame. He was thankful when Lucifer dropped his hand. The angel’s touch was not what Will would have expected. “A cottage and not a dungeon, Your Highness?”
“A poet with naught to poesy on but dungeons is of but little use.” Lucifer walked ahead, arms swinging freely with his stride, wings luffing like sails.
“Thou mayest go where thou list, and pass without fear. Here in Hell”
Will almost walked into a tree, unable to take his eyes from Lucifer. Lucifer did not return the regard.
“I’m free?”
“Where couldst hide that Hell’s master could not find thee, an I wish’t?”
“Ah.”
“Here is thy home”
Home. The word had the sound of a hammer driving coffin nails. Will turned to regard a little cottage under the trees, a vegetable garden in a sunny glade beside it, a stone well with a yellow bucket resting on the lip. The smell of cool water and vegetable blossoms filled the air. “This?”
“Aye,” Lucifer said. “I think thou wilt find what thou dost need within. Goodmorrow, Master Shakespeare.”
“Your Highness, Will said softly. Don’t leave me alone. What am I to do here?”
“Lucifer, turning, looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Write poetry”
Will stood, mouth gaping. “A quiet cottage in the woods is Hell, lord Lucifer?”
The angel smiled. “It shan’t be quiet. Thou’lt have thy son and all thy many loves and failures to keep thee company, or I misjudge thee sorely”
Will shuddered. And Lucifer smiled, but it looked like sorrow. He dropped his eyes to the forest floor and drew a breath. Will saw it swell his wings. “I trust thou wilt find those adequate companions”
Will said not another word, but watched Lucifer vanish through the trees. He didn’t turn to look at the homely cottage, its verdant garden, the warm coil of smoke rising from the chimney. He sat down on the arched sweep of a root and laid his chin in his hands.
“Oh, Annie,” he said, miserably, what might have been hours later. “Oh, Hamnet. What have I done?”
I’ll frame me wings of wax like Icarus,
And o’er his ships will soar unto the Sun,
That they may melt and I fall in his arms.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE, Dido, Queen of Carthage
A pleasant enough chamber, if a room walled with shadows and floored in cold stone floating like a ship on a nothing sea were one’s ideal of pleasantry. Kit turned at its center as the ferry poled into oblivion, noticing spare furnishings, a master mason’s hand in the angles where the stones turned down into the abyss. “Christ wept,” he murmured.
“So he did.” A voice like a fistful of velvet dragged across Kit’s skin.
Kit swallowed and turned toward his blind side. He might have raised his right hand to check if his jaw was hanging open, but didn’t quite. Father of lies,Kit reminded himself, but nothing could have prepared him for the confounding beauty of the figure in black who faced him, a raptor’s fanned wings glowing soft and pale as moonlight.
Lucifer Morningstar tugged elegant fingers through tousled golden locks and smiled. “Sir Christofer,” he said, furling his wings. “What an unexpected pleasure. May I offer you some refreshment?”
Kit licked dry lips with a tongue that failed to moisten them. He shook his head. The Devil sauntered catlike toward him and shrugged as if to say suit yourself. A casual gesture and a wine glass appeared in his hand, his fingers cupped around the bowl as if to a lover’s cheek.
“God help me.”
“He looks in now and again.” Lucifer commented, brow bent like a bow to dart that glance. “Thou dost interest me. Such eloquence in thee. And such pain.” As if pain were a thing to be savored. The wings flipped and settled, and Kit’s stomach flipped with them, in fear and something else. One white wing extended, a drift of snow glittering against the dark. Primaries trailed on dark stone as Lucifer paced in slow orbit. Deosil, sunwise, moving always to Kit’s blind side and so forcing Kit to turn. Idly swirling that red wine in its glass, until a few drops scattered over the rim and splashed.
“Thou hast a gift for the ages, Sir Christofer. Would that thou wouldst consider an allegiance with Hell.”
Kit drew a breath. Feathers flicked the back of his calves. They carried a rich, earthy musk he knew. He wasn’t sure where he found the humor he put into his voice, but he managed it.
“I’ve come to bargain, not offer allegiance.”
“I could make it very pleasant for thee. Thou hast a fascination with power”
“Get thee behind me, Satan.”
A wink broke the horse-trader’s appraisal in the Devil’s gaudy eyes. “The thought had occurred”
“Are angels equipped for such roguery?”
“like man, made in God’s image”
“So God has an arsehole?”
“Yes. He calls him Michael.” Lucifer laughed in such merriment that Kit smiled, despite the trembling knot in his belly. “Surely, thou hast heard of osculum infame.”
“The infamous kiss. Your kiss. The one that bestows power of witchcraft. Tis not a kiss on the mouth, I hear.” Lucifer only smiled. “Rutting with devils is sorcery.”
“So is rutting with boys. Of a kind with bestiality in thy human law books. It’s all sodomy, dear poet.”
“Only sodomy.” Kit laughed. Enough to burn on; but hanged for a lamb, hanged for a ewe is that what you insinuate? What virtue lies in your kiss, then, Prince of Darkness?”
“No virtue at all. But power. Come, kiss me and discover.”
“Am I Faustus? Shall a man be confused with his creations?”
“Nay. Thou art Marley, who should know better, and come to bargain nonetheless.” The Prince of Darkness spread his wings as if stretching. Kit had never seen anything so white, swans nor snow, limestone nor linen. They gleamed as if sunlit from behind. Kit’s fingers itched to stroke their arm-long primaries. Face burning, he forced his gaze to the well masoned stones under his boots.
“Thou’rt fascinated.”
“… Yes.” Kit folded his hands like a repentant schoolboy.
“Wouldst care to touch?.”
“Touch?”
Lucifer smiled over the rim of his wineglass and flexed the trailing wing forward. Kit clenched fist in fist as the pinions breathed coolly across his cheek, trailed down his throat, bending where they brushed his doublet, a pressure like fingertips braced against his breast.
“Touch.”
Kit disentangled his fingers from each other, lord, how can he be so beautiful, and hesitantly raised his right hand as if in oath and laid it gently, gently on the leading edge of that vast white wing. Rapture swelled his breast; he half expected to yank his hand back, fingertips scorched, but the feathers were cool and firm and slick over buried warmth. Bone and muscle moved beneath strong flexing plumage, tiny barbs catching the ridges of his fingertips with a rasp more felt than heard. He let those fingers burrow through feathers, into down soft as blown thistle seeds, to the blood-hot membrane beneath. And what has become of the burns on my hands?Lucifer shivered, a reflexive twitch of skin like a fly-bitten horse. Ravishing.
“Can you fly?” The wing flicked from his fingers like snatched paper, snapped shut with a slapped drumhead sound.
“If I care to.” Lucifer set his glass aside; it vanished when it left his fingertips, and moved toward Kit, golden curls in disorder against the black velvet of his doublet. He raised sinewy fingers and pressed them curiously against Kit’s forehead, hooking the strap of his eyepatch and dropping it to the floor.