About Hell Takes a Holiday
by Kiernan Kelly
32 pages
/ 13500 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-569-1, 1-60370-569-4
Available file types - html. lit, Adobe and Sony optimized pdf, prc, and
epub
Who hasn't been in love? Even Lucifer, former archangel and current ruler of Hell, has experienced love. When he finds Uriel, silver-haired archangel and former lover, sitting in Hell's Waiting Room, Lucifer wonders what new punishment Heaven has planned for him. The last thing Lucifer needs is a Christmas Day visit from the only angel ever to hold his heart.
Ruling Hell is taxing enough. Overcrowding has pushed Lucifer to the limit of his patience, forcing him to embrace twenty-first century technology, to give up his dreams of releasing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and to implement a few bold, creative changes to the very infrastructure of the Pits. When Lucifer and Uriel get together for the first time in millennia, Heaven and Hell meet head on, and the sparks are sure to fly.
Sample
The wails and pleas for mercy by the damned were no more than background noise to Lucifer. Hell's Muzak, he called the din on the rare instances an exceptionally good mood seized him. After spending an eternity listening to the voices, he'd learned to tune them out. The siren, however, caught his attention immediately.
His spine snapped to steel as he perched on the edge of his throne, eyeing the revolving red light flashing on the wall near the golden double doors at the back of the room. The siren was earsplitting; it rose and ebbed like a piercing scream. It hadn't gone off since…well, ever, not once since he'd first installed it. Before then, demons were Lucifer's only early warning system. A lesser demon named Cael had once escaped, and the trouble he'd caused Lucifer afterwards was not something Lucifer cared to have repeated.
Now, he needn't worry anymore. He had infrared, radar, and motion detectors to warn him of a breach in Hell's security -- nobody in, nobody out, at least, not without his knowledge. The world above had progressed a long way since the day his angelic ass was booted into the Pit, and he'd recently brought Hell kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century of Man.
He and his demons now enjoyed a multitude of human contraptions, including televisions, DVD players, iPods, video games, and a world class, state-of-the-art security system.
Lucifer waited a few more seconds, hoping the alarm was a fluke, a simple case of a malfunctioning unit, but when the siren continued to sound and the lights didn't stop flashing, he bolted from his throne and trotted toward the banks of closed-circuit monitors that covered the far wall. His eyes flicked from screen to screen, looking for the being responsible for triggering the alarm.
It took him a while to locate the culprit. After all, each of the Nine Circles was outfitted with cameras, as well as the Waiting Room where the newly damned souls were sorted upon arrival. Each camera had a dedicated screen, which amounted to hundreds of monitors speckling the wall in front of him. Several demons frantically pressed buttons on the row of large consoles beneath the screens, trying to zero in on the intruder.
Lucifer spotted him first and cursed an expletive so foul that it burst the head of one of the security demons, splattering some of the screens with black goo.
Lucifer ignored the mess, scowling fiercely. The face he saw on the monitor was very familiar. He remembered it all too well. During Lucifer's last days in Heaven, Uriel had been one of his closest friends. More than that -- they'd been lovers since almost the very Beginning, and when Uriel refused to take Lucifer's side during the War, he'd broken Lucifer's heart.
Lucifer never forgave him. Then again, Lucifer could hold a grudge like nobody's business.