Page 4 of Hell and Its Pleasures

Two

We were a band of holy men and servants crammed into a gig and on horseback, galloping to a destination I did not know the name of. Bishop Fazio rode out with such haste that I barely had to bother with farewells; I told Oliviero not to worry, that I would make things right, and I silently hoped I would never see him again.

The only thing I took besides the clothes on my back was the letter opener I had used to cut the palm of my hand when I’d summoned Asmodeus. Partly out of sentiment, and partly out of necessity; if I was this far gone, then thinking that Iwouldn’tgo so far to defend myself should I be discovered was idiotic.

I would go to any lengths to take Asmodeus’ cock again.

“It will take two days to get there,” Bishop Fazio told me. His body bumped and shuddered as the gig clattered over the uneven road out of my small town.

The sun set in a red bleed across the horizon, and the colour reminded me of what I did to summon Asmodeus tome. The sticky slickness of blood against my cock. The way it dried fast and uneven. My fingers glided over the healed cut on my palm with a tremor. A thunderous desire clapped through me.

“Pray,” Bishop Fazio whispered, mistaking the look on my face. The gig had crates full of the abbey’s more dangerous tomes, and they rattled and slid towards me with every bump of the ride. But I wasn’t worried—I had no fear of them. It felt like being amongst brethren, in a strange way. As if I was amongst like-minded folk.

I had more camaraderie with these illicit papers than with my flesh and blood brethren.

To pass the time, I did close my eyes, and I did pray, in a way. To It, though, and not to Him. I thought of its body. I thought of its hot breath along my neck. I thought of the way it might bend me over and split me open when I finally walked into Hell.

When we arrived out our destination, I was surprised. Intrinsically I had expected we would be in the city; that Rome would be waiting with its ancient soul, that I would be before the Vatican and limited by its many measures. Instead, we were in another town.

Outside the gig window, the villagers stopped to watch us gallop past. They lowered their scythes and buckets, and then the village itself enveloped us with its warm, bright stone and patchwork tiles. But we sped through this town, too, spilling out the other side, and suddenly a lake greeted us. The gig stopped abruptly. The water was quiet and unmoving. The lake was tucked away behind another lake, set in a volcanic crater. Vineyards spilled out around the blue bastion and up the slope to where the gig had paused, these green fields sprawling over terraces down the natural incline. Reeds swayed gently in the breeze, and the sun felt warm and inviting.A peaceful place. Not the source of hellish information. Not what I needed at all.

I looked at Bishop Fazio. “Here?”

His brow collapsed at my incredulous tone, and he grunted, that familiar, unimpressed expression clouding his face. “Here,” he repeated, knocking on the roof of the gig. He looked at me and said nothing more. I could feel the crates pressing in on either side, and under his gaze, the fear I had been long ago trained to feel blared to life like a warning bell, and each toll of it sent shivers into my gut. Immediate claustrophobia clawed at my throat, but I waited in tense silence for the child servant to open the door. A blustery cool breeze swirled into the gig and sent my hair flying every which way, but I breathed it in, let it settle in my lungs.

You are close. Do not grow scared now.

Pleasure. Pleasure so whole and intense I might feel as if I was beyond my body. I might reach a state beyond mortality; beyond humanity; beyondme.

It would be worth it. I wanted—I wanted it.

Despite the shame, despite the little voice in me that screamed and thrashed about, tempting me away from sin, tempting me back to goodness and primness, the cage of the church, the manacles of my rigid faith, I wanted to be used.

I wanted to be fucked.

“Let us go, then,” I said, and left the gig.

By some holy miracle, we spoke to no one, and no one spoke to us. The townsfolk went to great strides to avoid us altogether, fleeing from our line of sight as if we were an incoming plague, and I wondered what it would mean to them to see men in the draperies and trappings of holy servants. Iimagined anywhere else, how the people would have celebrated. How we might have been welcomed. But here, they seemed to see us and shrink away.

We became a procession weaving our way down that slope towards the still lake at the bottom. Marching single file, I trailed behind Bishop Fazio, who, despite walking slowly and clumsily, seemed to be enjoying the walk.

“What do you know of the myths, Don Alessandro?” he called back to me. The servants around us led us on, clearing a path, showing us where to walk to avoid becoming trapped in the tangling vineyard paths.

I ducked my head. “I do not engage with such pagan fantasies,” I said—which was true. I didn’t know much of anything, except where it related to Christianity; how God found the Romans, and the tensions that ensued.

“Do you know where we are?”

“No,” I said truthfully.

“Naples. The bay of Naples.”

A name even I knew, for the volcano Vesuvius, and for the towns it destroyed. “Why here?” I asked. Pleaded, really—I wanted no more of these games, no more of these questions. I wanted—Asmodeus.

But the bishop gave me no answer. We trudged down the rest of the slope in silence. At the bottom, the lake rippled out, peaceful and unmoving. Nothing appeared wrong with it. Ducks floated on the surface. A warm breeze moved through the air, and the whole scene seemed cast in a warm-green haze; it felt, in every way, like summer.

Bishop Fazio glanced at me. “Do not be fooled by its peace,” he said. “I have brought you to Lake Avernus.”

The name meant nothing to me, and I shook my head. The bishop nodded and craned his neck back at the sky. “The myths say it is an entrance to the underworld. That here, in acave—they call it the ‘Cave of the Sibyl’—lies a gate to Hell itself.”

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