“Ugh.”
The Lux penthouse bathroom mirror, framed in filigreed gold, lazed over more than half the black marble wall, as if it were the Supreme Ruler of Mirrors lounging in a Roman bath, and every last inch of it smirked at him, delighting in displaying his injuries’ teeniest, tiniest, most gruesome details.
“Go on, have your laugh, get it all out.”
A slash bisected his nose. A Hell’s rainbow of bruises uglified his right eye. A forked gash gouged his left cheek. His body? Lumps and bumps, and lumps upon his bumps.
(“I will not stoop to your level,” Amenadiel snarled. Jab, cross, hook, uppercut, body-rip, repeat, repeat, repeat—and a blistering straight punch finish, right between the eyes, which, if Lucifer had been human, would’ve would’ve either killed him outright or left him, for the rest of his life, a gibbering idiot.)
Lucifer unzipped the toiletry bag that a human at Rodeo Drive’s House of Bijan had helped him outfit, in exchange for a messy, sexy game of “Gentlemen, Start your Engines”—humanity and Divinity all over the shelves and racks of Prada, Gucci, Versace! He pawed through the bag, scanning the items and tossing them onto the white marble counter. Condoms, Mr. Salesman not believing that he was genetically incompatible; Fall Boy’s Liquid Guyliner, Mr. Salesman not believing that, when he’d burst into life after Mum and Dad’s Big Bang, his eyelids had been naturally lined black—
Ah! There it was. Product, to untangle and tame. (“Samael, your hair is as wild and curly as a fat-cheeked cherub’s,” Uriel teased, and little Sammy cried.)
He did battle with a jar of Mythical’s Heavy-Duty Pomade. Then, another mirror check.
“Ugh.” But as good as it would get. Besides, no matter how disheveled or banged-up he looked, he always outshone his brothers. Right, bros?
He hummed a bit of the Misfits’ “Speak of the Devil”:
Traded in my bible for a little black cat
The time of Armageddon’s here
Some call me the son of the morning
God knows I’m the angel of light
He tugged at the cuffs of his devilishly black Burberry—also courtesy of a little Vroom! Vroom!—and slipped his whisky flask from the suit’s inner pocket. He gulped a slug of smoky sweet. Then he moseyed toward the penthouse balcony.
His footsteps slapped against Italian marble floors and echoed in the dark-paneled rooms and passageways. Unlike the downstairs soon-to-be-Lux-nightclub, no fixer-upper, this penthouse. Rather, he’d taken ownership—thanks to a little morally ambiguous deal-making—of a sumptuous abode, worthy of his Divine presence, with an unholy energy both playful and dangerous tumbling through its spaces.
Once he adorned this apartment with his treasures, voila, his Deviltuary would be complete!
Here, in the bedroom, he’d clothe the walls in ancient Hindu temple stones and bas reliefs—Ganesha and Shiva and Rama and Sita. Here, on the way into the living area, he’d create a room divider with a Renaissance stained glass window of chubby putti. Over there, the living area’s floor-to-ceiling bookcases he’d cram with thousands of original-scribbled manuscripts and first-print books.
And then here, at the heart of the living area, at the heart of Lux, his piano—Oh, Dad, he could almost feel his fingers stealing over the Divine ivories, almost feel Immortal Music stealing out of his soul; I want that; I want that again!—would reign supreme. Above it, his chandelier, its branches those of the eternal Yggdrasil “World Tree,” would cast its warm, cosmic light.
Yes, his celestial piano and all his Earthly treasures would find a home here, treasures gifted to him by kings, queens, playwrights, artists, poets, and thinkers, treasures he hadn’t known why he was squirreling away, given how little chance he’d ever had to enjoy them while on one of his brief Earth visits, but squirreled away nevertheless.
Why had he squirreled them away?
He glugged more whisky.
Maybe…because the givers would drop to dust long before their gifts would, and he’d wanted to preserve little pieces of their genius?
Or maybe…
He glugged another slug.
Maybe because those wondrous people, the cream of humanity, had appreciated him, had stirred up good feelings within him, and he’d sought to hoard those good feelings to try to offset all the bad that many humans—and all Celestials—thrust upon him?
Huh.
He slid open the balcony door. A fall-grumpy evening breeze ruffled his hair and wafted over whiffs of pansy, lavender, and lemon-tree scents from the garden pots. He took a deep sniff.
“Marvelous.”
He ambled toward the railing, reaching into his pants pockets for a Vroom! Vroom! silver cigarette case and lighter. He selected a cig and gave it a deep sniff too. A rich, dry, woody aroma. Nothing like this sinful pleasure existed on the Infernal Plane. All Hell-loop cigarettes tasted like charred sticks, smelled like sweaty armpits, and imparted no adrenaline rush—just another torture for those human souls who’d been addicted to nicotine during their Earthly years, as they desperately fumbled in their pockets for just one more hit. Again. And again. And again.
The cig between his lips, he cupped his hands at his mouth, warding off the breeze, and flicked his new lighter. Once, twice, thrice—
“Gah!” How hard could this be!
He reared back his arm to hurl the bloody lighter across the universe—
Would you look at that?
His arm checked, mid-swing, the act hijacked by the balcony view of the city. He pinched the unlit cigarette from his mouth and rested his hands on the glass railing.
“Oh. My.”
His gaze rose to the sky, and then slowly drifted over the metropolis spread out before him. And it was almost as if he were sitting on his Hell throne, miles-high above his realm, for a massive swirl of purple-black clouds hulked low over L.A., much like the maelstrom of ash-raining clouds that roiled over Hell.
Behind him, the whispered swish of soft-soled boots. His demon—five feet and seven inches of coiled muscle, Hellcat reflexes, and temper of the same—joined him at the railing. She too took in the sky.
“Just like home,” Mazikeen said.
“No,” he said.
Here, no towering basalt spires crowded the land and plucked at his eyes. Here, no imploring screams of the damned—packed in those towers, cell above cell above cell, floor after floor after floor—scraped his eardrums. Here, no stench of brimstone stung his nostrils. Rather, here, warm city lights jeweled the view. Here, traffic honked in the distance like migrating geese. And here, a multi-flowered bouquet of pleasing smells, from foods to perfumes to, simply, living bodies, would scent the rest of his days. Yes, this was where he belonged. Nothing would ever induce him to return to Hell.
“Dearie me, Mazikeen, you’ll need a whole new wardrobe.”
She bared her teeth, as if he’d insulted her warrior bloodline. “What’s wrong with this?” She picked at her clothing.
“Hmm, let’s have a think.”
He’d meant to sweep his gaze down her body, but, for a moment, it got snagged on her face. Angled cheekbones, cut so high they caught the light like diamond facets. Plump, biteable bottom lip. Flawless, café-au-lait complexion. How could a demon radiate more beauty than any of his angelic sisters?
“Bulky leather-and-linen doublet; breastplate; steel-plated spaulders at your shoulders; couters at your elbows; poleyns at your knees— Nope! Nothing wrong with those, if you’re planning on launching yourself at all the humans and slitting their throats.”
From her leather weapons belt, Mazikeen’s curved-bladed demon dagger hissed free. It, and her grin, shone sharp and wicked. “Can I?”
“No. You’re not a demon warrior here. You’ll be a, a…” He fiddled with a cufflink, flicked the flaps of his suit coat, stuck the till-now forgotten cigarette in his mouth, lit up, puffed once, stubbed the cig out on the railing, and tossed it over. “A bartender.”
“A what!”
Her blade twirled around its forefinger loop like a whirling grim-reaper scythe. If he’d been anyone but her Lord and Master—well, theoretically her Lord and Master—all eight inches of that blade would’ve surely slit his throat.
“Not a lowly Hell bartender, Maze.” Ugh, the swill they served. “Something much, much, much much much classier. And you’ll keep Lux’s books, and be my serv—, erm, my assistant.”
“Oh, gee, Lucifer, that sounds like so much fun.” The blade twisted and glinted in her grasp, as if Hell-bent on breaking the ban against spilling Devil’s blood.
He slapped his hands together. “I know, right? Plus, remember your thrilling sex-torture of Tío?”
A smile prowled her lips. She ran her talented tongue along the demon blade as if it were a…
Well.
“All the sex you want here, Mazie—all shapes, all sizes, all combinations! A veritable cornucopia of carnal delights awaits!” Say, maybe they could even track down that hot babe from Hot Tub High School and rub-a-dub-dub with her! Yes, a hot tub! Over there, in the corner of the patio. Something intimate, seating eight lovely women and men. “But first—”
He stepped back from her, pulled out his flask, and took a fortifying nip.
Ah, Hell. He chugged the flask nearly dry.
“First, I have to pop up to Heaven. How do I look?” He smoothed a hand through his hair and again tugged at his cuffs.
“Lucifer—”
“Back soon!”
“Lucifer, we talked about this. Don’t chance it! Your stupid music-thingy probably got tossed into a black hole. Treated like celestial trash, like you.”
The muscles under his ribs bunched, as if a Hell-boa were coiling there, squeezing his guts. Surely his piano still existed. It had to. Mum had…
Lucifer’s soul drooped. Oh, Mum. The worst moment of my life, You abandoning me too.
When he was a child, Mum had created the piano, just for him. He’d squealed, actually squealed, at the sight of it. He’d pushed over a puffy cumulus cloud for a bench and seated himself, and his feet could barely reach the piano’s pedals, but he could stretch wide his small hands to comfortably reach a tenth, and even an eleventh if he really, really stretched. I knew you had piano hands, Mum said, her golden aura beaming, her Presence wrapping around him like loving arms, her celestial kisses pressed to his neck as he played.
How the Divine rosewood piano case gleamed. How the ivories and ebonies warmed at his touch. And the sounds and the colors leaping out from the piano! You make my heart catch, Samael, Mum said, and a feeling rushed through his own heart like a wild, tumultuous river—how he adored her! His siblings gathered round, Raphael, Amenadiel, Michael, all of them, and they nodded their heads or swayed their bodies to the Immortal Music, with soft, silvery laughs tumbling from their lips—
“Lucifer, are you listening to me?”
“What? Oh.” He chattered his fingers against his thumb, making a blabbering hand-ducky. “Hearing you, not listening to you,” he singsonged. “Don’t be such a Debbie Downer—”
Her blade stabbed the air between them, millimeters from his chest.
He jerked back. “Easy, Mazie!”
Her blade waved under his nose, carving up oxygen. “And you know you’ve been banned. What if those sanctimonious dunderheads declare war?”
“Gah! You’d think I blunder off into disasters left and right!”
He rolled his shoulders. In a brilliant flash of white, his wings, stretching twenty glorious feet from tip to tip, whomped out. And three planters of purple pansies plonked to the deck. The miniature lemon tree sliced in two. Petals and tiny fruit flew.
“Oops.”