“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.
“Oh, thou art too lovely for this.”
Kit thought he should step back, but the Devil’s fingers were cool against his scar. “I should think, to you, the damaged vessel might hold more appeal.”
“Perfection in all things.” Lucifer said. He caressed Kit’s sightless eye with rose-pale lips, the writhing shadows of his crown brushing Kit’s face with a palpable touch. “There. Scars do not suit thee.”
Kit blinked. And then gasped, because he could blink, and beyond blinking he could see. Not as he would have seen before. Not as he would see with his left eye, even now. But, he looked for a word, but otherwise.
The Devil still stood before him, close enough to kiss again, but on the right side Kit saw him as a vining of light and darkness, a twist of contradictions. Kit would have stepped back, but somehow those wings had crossed behind his back; he stood encircled by them and enfolded by the rich, heady pungency of sweat and good tobacco.
“I’ve dreamed of you,” Kit said, wondering.”
“And hast thy dream come true?”
“Not yet.” But he wasn’t sure it was truth as he said it.
“Now.” Lucifer whispered, and his breath at least was as hot as Kit thought it should be. “Bargain with me.”
Kit swallowed, shivered. The Devil’s hands stayed slack and open by hissides; only the wings restrained Kit. Who raised his chin to meet eyes that twitched at the corner with an almost smile. “Will Shakespeare,” he said. “I’m here to buy his life.
“The cost of that is dear.”
“How dear? I could take his place if I had to. But mayhap there’s somethin gelse…. I could pay you with a song.”
“Thine art might be enough to buy his freedom. Thy soul.”
“Mine art. All of it?”
Just that smile. The wings parted, shifted, opened. Lucifer stepped away half lovely swan-winged man, half vortex of light and shadow, and looked down, bowing his long aristocratic neck.
“What about my body?”
A gesture, as if the Devil reached out and pulled something from a table, although there was no table near him. He wheeled about, wings furled tight, their peaks reaching three foot or more over his head, their primaries brushing the floor. Still silent, he tossed the black thing that swung from his fingers at Kit. It sailed heavily though the air; Kit got his hands up in time and caught it, barking his fingertips. And almost dropped it, when he saw what he held.
Rough iron bands abraded his skin; if it were locked in place they would go across the top of his skull, under the chin, around the sides. Hinges made the thing to be opened. A padlock hung from the cheek-piece. The bit or mouthpiece was flat and broad, the size of a small woman’s palm, scattered with blades that would score his tongue and palate, worse if he was so foolish as to try to talk. It weighed a great deal.
“A scold’s bridle.”
Lucifer smiled, and as if the smile cast a shadow over him, seemed to change and darken. Kit found himself looking further up, into eyes he saw in his nightmares. Richard Baines. God help me.