Read To Reign in Hell: A Novel for Free Online Page B

expressing.”
    “What? But when he spoke to me—”
    “Maybe you convinced him.”
    “I hope not. But it doesn’t matter. Rather than figure out what to do if the hosts resist the Plan, I’d like to decide how we are going to make sure they don’t. I gave the task to Satan because I don’t feel that I can do it; I told him so.”
    Raphael started to argue, then thought about it. “Yes, it would be better if you didn’t have to coerce them. Have you a way?”
    Yaweh shook his head. “Not yet. But I think that is what we ought to be worried about. And,” he added in a worried tone, “if Satan’s feelings have been going the other way, I wish he would speak to me about them.”
    Raphael fingered the star at her side. “I think he hesitates to do so because of your doubts. He thinks the Plan is right, and doesn’t want to make things worse for you. I think he’ll speak to you when he has something definite to say.”
    Yaweh nodded. “That would be like him. But there is such a thing as being
too
kind.”
     
    “One returns from irksome task, sent by you in days gone by. He doubtless has a tale to tell. Come forth now; he draweth nigh.”
    Leviathan’s head broke the water. “That was better, Ariel, but you’re starting to sound like Beelzebub.”
    The owl fluffed his feathers and settled on a rock near the water’s edge. “You mock my form, and rhymes, and tone, but this much I beseech: Leave my choice of words alone, and my style of speech.”
    Leviathan chuckled as Mephistopheles walked up. “Greetings, lady,” he said. He nodded to Ariel. “And how is our flying iambic tetrameter?”
    “I see and hear and speak the truth, not thinking loss or gain. The answer to your question is: You are a raging pain.”
    Mephistopheles was silent for a moment, then he said, “Go back to rhyming couplets.”
    Before Ariel had a chance to rebut, Leviathan broke in. “What did you learn?”
    “There is, indeed, a plan afoot. It’s pretty much a secret, but it involves Yaweh, Satan, Michael, Abdiel, Lucifer, Asmodai, and a few others. I don’t know why they haven’t discussed it with you, but I think they simply don’t want anyone knowing about it who doesn’t have to.”
    “I see,” she said, her voice flat.
    “It involves the creation of some kind of massive structure, to exist outside of Heaven, where, I guess, we’d all move. The idea is to make it a permanent thing, so we wouldn’t have to be watching it all the time. The form of the thing, as far as I can tell, is to be a globe.”
    “But why such need for secrecy?”
    “Well, there’s danger in the construction. It means setting off a Wave ourselves, in effect, and there’s some doubt that the new angels will cooperate willingly.”
    “Willingly? Do you think they’d
force
them to?”
    “There’s talk of it. Satan is responsible for that, and I hear that he isn’t happy about it.”
    “No, I suppose he wouldn’t be.”
    Ariel said, “It must be a worthy plan indeed, full of weighty gains, before I’ll needless let them risk, what little of me remains.”
    “You see,” said Mephistopheles. “And he isn’t even one of the younger ones.”
     
    Abdiel walked alone through the streets near Yawch’s Palace. Small dwelling places surrounded him. The streets were wide, winding affairs, large enough for two or three hand-carts to pass. Abdiel hadspent a great deal of time walking and thinking in the last ten days, since delivering his plans to Yaweh and staying to eavesdrop on Yaweh’s conversation with Raphael.
    After this time, he was near to a conclusion.
    “There is nothing wrong,” he told himself, “with not wanting to be there when the Plan goes into operation. No one, in all the hosts, would actually
want
to be holding off the flux. I’m no different.”
    “True enough,” he answered himself. “But can you do anything about it?”
    “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Yaweh’s talk with Raphael does bring up some