Lord of Hell (Alex Holden) (9 page)

“I don’t know.” He sat on the edge of the couch. “I thought you were supposed to take over the world before the worst of the disasters happened.”

“What if Jehovah changed the plan?” I said. “Satan tried to change the plan last summer.”

“But my Father sent us to stop him. Why would He do that if He wanted the world to end?”

“I don’t know.” I hoped he could find a good, solid reason why it wasn’t possible. “Maybe it was too early to start. I need to be much older before I can be president, much less take over all the other countries. That’s gotta be, like, twenty years from now.” I looked at him. “I mean, even if I was following the script.”

“So there you go. It can’t be the end of the world. Not yet, anyway.”

“How long does the tribulation last?”

“I don’t know. A while? The Bible isn’t specific.”

“So… it might last, say, twenty years?”

A flicker of worry went through his eyes. “That still doesn’t mean that’s what these disasters are. Sure, it’s unusual to have big disasters so close together, but it doesn’t mean the world is ending.”

“Joshua.” I stopped pacing and gave him a hard look. “The fact that we
exist
means the world is ending.” All this time, I’d been so focused on Satan wanting to end the world and the part I was supposed to play in it that I’d almost overlooked who else was behind it.
The Book of Truth
makes the Apocalypse look like Satan’s idea. But Revelation puts Jehovah squarely in the driver’s seat.

“The world is destined to end. My Father wills it. But we have time yet.”

And we were back to the same argument we’d had the first time we met. “Do you
want
the world to end? Your mom and everyone else to die so Jehovah can wipe the slate clean?”

His gaze dropped. “It’s not a question of what I want. I serve God, my Father.”

“And you’ll let everyone die?”

“I’ll save as many souls as I can.”

“And what about the ones you can’t? The ones that end up in Hell? The suicides and the people who gave up Christianity, the gays and the atheists? I gave them a place they could be happy. I saved them from pain and a punishment they didn’t deserve. But if Jehovah’s version of the end is right, Hell disappears. All those souls gone, blasted out of existence. And me, too. Thrown into the lake of fire. Is that what you want?” Now I was yelling.

Joshua set his jaw and looked up at me. “I don’t get to decide, and neither do you. You’re not God.”

But I am a god. I became one when I took over Hell.
I wanted to throttle him and force him to see reason, and that was definitely a sign I should walk away. Joshua frustrates the fuck out of me, but he’s still my friend. “Ask him,” I said. “Ask your dad if this is the tribulation. Maybe he’ll talk to you.”

I walked out before I started calling him names. A year of high school had taught me a lot of restraint.

***

Spoiling for a fight, I went down to Hell. I’d avoided it for a whole day and I hoped some other duke was pissed off enough to take me on. Since I’d killed Vetis, there’d been a lot of grumbling but no open challenges. And no one had been stupid enough to go to the mortal world. Right now I wished someone would so I could drag them back and beat the shit out of them.

But no one was willing to take me on. The demons that appeared when I sat in the throne stayed hovering near the shadows. Maybe they could see it on my face. Maybe they could feel my mood.

Maybe they were smarter than I gave them credit for.

My anger simmered for a few minutes while I waited for someone to make a wrong move. I jumped down from the throne and paced back and forth through the long room. “Anybody want a fight? Think you can take the throne from me? Come on, give it a try. I know you all hate me, think I’m just a weak half-breed who got lucky. Oh, you’re so much older than me. You’ve wanted to rule Hell since it was created. Maybe you tried to take on Satan and he kicked your ass. Well, I kicked
his
and I’d be happy to kick yours too. Come on!”

Astaroth came out of the shadows behind the pillars and approached slowly, his hands held up and his posture placating. “My lord, perhaps you would like to torture a few souls? Lord Satan found great pleasure and relief in causing the souls pain when he was in such a mood.”

I growled as I lunged at him. He was only able to make a squeak of surprise before I had him pinned against one of the columns. “I am not my father!”

“I…I didn’t mean to… say you were.” It was hard for him to talk with my hand around his throat. “Please… please don’t kill me.”

With another growl, I let him drop and stepped back to let him have some room to get up.

He stood, rubbing his neck. “I was only trying to help. Many of us take our anger out on the souls of sinners.”

And what was I trying to do? Take my anger out on the demons. “Son of a bitch, I really am one of you.”

I swallowed and took a few more steps back. “I have the same anger you do, but I don’t hate humans, I hate—”
Jehovah.
I caught myself just before it could come out of my mouth. A little chill went through me, but it was true, wasn’t it? “I hate suffering, and cruelty. I hate bullies. I hate spoiled, rich jackasses. I hate animal abusers, any abusers.” I glanced between both sides of the room. “And you know what else? I hate being in charge of Hell and I hate all of you. But you know what? I’m willing to let you change my mind. Are you more than human-hating creatures of evil? Can you change?”

Naamah might be changing, and Semiazas. A few others had approached me over the last few weeks, cautiously, awkwardly. Possibly just trying to kiss my ass and do what they thought would make me happy, but they might actually be taking the opportunity to make a change.

“I was an angel once,” Astaroth said quietly. “I hate humans because I’m jealous of them. If they sin, they can accept Jesus and be forgiven. Where is my forgiveness?”

“But that happened way after the Fall, right? The forgiveness part?”

“Yes. I didn’t hate humans before then. I followed Lucifer in the rebellion because he warned us that humans would be raised to our level. That they would be favored above us in the eyes of God,” he said. “I… feared them. But after God gave his Son to the world, I knew Lucifer had been right. Then I hated them. I hated all of them.” His eyes blazed.

“Did you ask for forgiveness?”

“I begged for it!” he shouted, his words echoing off the columns.

My hand twitched toward Animus and he saw the movement. Astaroth dropped his gaze. “I apologize, my lord.”

“You’re blaming humans for something they didn’t do. Something they have no control over.” I searched for the right words, but how could you change the mind of a demon who had hated humans for thousands of years? What could you say to a hatred that vast?

“I was created first. Why are their sins washed away and not mine?”

Sins. Like the souls sent here because they’d disobeyed Jehovah’s rules and not because they’d actually done anything wrong. “So you did something you regret, that Jehovah disapproves of? And now it’s too late for you to be forgiven and taken back to Heaven?”

“Yes,” he said. So much hurt and bitter anger in that word.

“Just like the souls I freed from the Swamp of Suicides, and all those other souls who died without accepting Jesus as their savior. You think they didn’t regret that when they ended up here? That maybe some of them begged for forgiveness?” I stared into his eyes. “I went up to Heaven and asked for them, because I know they deserve better, and Jehovah refused.”

“You think I should sympathize with them?” He sneered.

“Yeah, I do. You sound like a kid throwing a tantrum because Mommy and Daddy brought home a new baby. Aren’t you a little old to still need Daddy’s approval?”

The crowd of demons tittered.

I glared at them. “Don’t pretend like some of you aren’t acting the same way. It’s time to get over it.
Seriously
.”

Chapter 11

I got home and a few missed calls showed up on my phone, all of them from Joshua. No messages. I called him back.

“Father said it
is
the tribulation. That it starts slow but keeps getting worse.” His voice shook. “Even if you don’t take over the world, it’s still going to happen.”

“Fuck!” I said before I remembered how much he didn’t like me swearing.

He was upset enough that he didn’t even say anything about it. “I’m not ready for this.”

“How long do we have?” My tight throat made it hard to speak.

“A while. Years. I don’t know how many, but He said it would be years yet until I reveal myself to the world. Then I gain a following, and that takes more years. And that’s supposed to happen while you have your rise to power. Which I guess doesn’t need to happen anymore.”

“We have to stop him somehow.”

“Alex, you can’t stop
God
. This is all His plan.”

“Fuck his plan!” Well, didn’t
this
feel familiar.

“No.” Joshua’s voice was low and hummed with power, even through the phone. “Don’t even think about it. It’s suicide.”

“I can’t just sit here and watch the world fall into chaos. I can’t just let all those people die.”

“I don’t like it either, but there are things you just have to accept.”

“No, I don’t have to fucking accept it.”

“Alex, this isn’t a fight you can win. All you’ll do is get yourself killed.”

“Yeah? Well at least I won’t be a fucking coward.” I hung up.

Mew-Mew stood up from his spot on the couch and stretched.
If we’re going to fight Jehovah, we should have a plan. A very good plan.

“I am totally fucking insane for even considering this.” I set my phone on the table, glaring at it as if it could transmit my anger to Joshua.

That never stopped you before.

A little snort of laughter escaped me. “True. And this time I have an army of demons.” An idea hit me. “An army of
veterans
from the War in Heaven. Holy shit. If they remember what went down and how they lost, maybe we can figure out how to win this time.” Part of me knew this was hopeless, but maybe I could trick myself into believing I might be able to win. And really, I’d rather go down fighting than sit around watching it happen. At least by fighting I’d know I’d done everything I could to save the world. And doing everything I could meant that this time I needed a plan. A real plan, not something slapped together by me and my friends.

The next day I went down to Hell and summoned Semiazas to my new office. I’d just created it on the level below the throne room, with a window that looked out onto the Eternal Gardens.

He knocked and waited for permission to enter. “You asked for me, my lord?”

I couldn’t decide if I should tell them all to stop calling me that because it bothered me, or let them keep doing it because I needed them to remember I was in charge. “Yes. I wanted to ask you…” I had to approach this carefully. I didn’t know how he would react to the idea. “How well do you remember the War in Heaven?”

“Vividly.” His eyes went dark and distant for a moment.

“What about the battles? How were the troops deployed… or whatever?” Much of my battle knowledge was from World War II and Vietnam War movies. I didn’t know what the correct terminology was when talking about battles between angels.

Semiazas folded his hands behind his back. “Why are you asking, my lord?”

“Because despite taking myself out of the game as the Antichrist
and
taking Satan out as the instigator of the whole thing, the Apocalypse is still on track.”

He arched an eyebrow. “And you intend to stop it?”

“I stopped it once. I stopped Ragnarok twice.”

“And now you want to take over Heaven to stop the Apocalypse again?”

Taking over had never occurred to me. I shook my head. “No, I don’t want to take over. I just want to make Jehovah stop.”

“How do you think you can make him stop, then? Battle him to a draw? Beat his forces the way he once beat Lucifer’s?”

I drummed my fingers on the desk. “I’ll have to beat him. Trap him somehow or take away his power.”

“To make sure he cannot threaten the mortal world again?”

“Yes, exactly.” Again, I knew this was insane and talking about it with him made it seem even crazier.

Semiazas nodded. “I remember my part in the battles, what my legion was commanded to do, and how we gained and lost ground.”

“Great. I need to know everything.” I picked up a pen.

“However…,” he said, “shortly after the war, a fallen angel wrote an account of it, including the accounts of several other leaders, and maps and diagrams of each battle and what led to the gains and losses. Also an analysis of what ultimately went wrong and how we lost.”

I stared. “That’s… that’s fucking awesome. Where is it?” As soon as I asked, I had this little shiver of fear that it had been lost or destroyed.

The hesitant look on his face did nothing to erase that fear. “Well, that is the problem, my lord. Satan soon began to forbid us to talk about our loss as any kind of mistake on our part. Certainly the loss was not his fault. Anyone who blamed his leadership for our loss was at risk of losing their life.”

“And?” I wanted him to get to the point, to get the disappointment over with.

“And the fallen angel was killed.”

I sagged. “So the book was destroyed, right?”

“No. I was able to save the book and hide it.”

“It still exists?”

“Yes. I hid it on Earth.”

I couldn’t let myself hope too much. “So what’s the problem?”

“I’m the only one who knows exactly where it is and how to retrieve it, but you have forbidden demons from going to Earth.”

Oh, this had to be a trick. Did the book even exist? Or had he made it up so I’d let him go to the mortal world? “That’s not a problem. I’ll give you special permission to go to Earth, and I’ll come with you.” There. I’d make sure he couldn’t go romping around messing with humans.

He didn’t balk at the suggestion, which made me wonder if getting me alone in the mortal world was the whole plan. So he could get me away from the center of my power and take advantage of my slightly weaker state? Fuck, I hated being so paranoid.