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Back Happy Hour In Hell
Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

A sudden idea occurred to me. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe this had nothing to do with some larger plan, nothing to do with the war between Us and Them, between the Highest and the Adversary. Maybe this was just something that Temuel really believed in. Maybe he actually thought that nobody, not the damned, not even their cursed jailers, was beyond redemption.

That sort of took my breath away. I was suddenly filled with a sense of how big and tragic Hell really was. God, if He was as responsible as my superiors claimed, had built a huge machine to concentrate suffering and institutionalize His punishment. The quid pro quo, as far as I’d ever been able to tell, was, “If you do wrong, even if it is only once for a brief moment, you will be tortured for it forever and ever, amen.” Period. No appeal, no parole. But old Origen of Alexandria hadn’t believed that, and maybe Temuel didn’t either. Could that make any difference in the larger scheme of things?

It could if these damned souls believed it. It would give them something they had never otherwise had—hope. So was my archangel really trying to bring comfort to the most afflicted of all? Or was it, as I had first assumed, just a cynical way to make trouble for the Adversary?

After all the time I’d spent here in the Pit, and despite everyone who had been trying to destroy me, I was having more trouble than ever with the whole idea of Hell. It’s hard to think of the enemy the same way when you’ve seen them at home, met the wife and kids, etc. And I was definitely far into the “etc.” phase, considering that I thought of a female demon as my girlfriend, even if she said she didn’t want to be. Was there still a chance Caz was going to show up tomorrow night? And even if she did, how was I going to get her safely onto Riprash’s ship?

All of those unanswered questions made me restless, so I got up to walk around. That didn’t last long, since the room was full of hideous hell-creatures annoyed with me for creaking the floor while they were trying to listen to Riprash, so I wandered out into the open corridor that crossed the upper level. Most of the storage rooms were empty and their doors were open. For a moment I thought I saw a disturbingly familiar shape, gray and hunched, in one of the doorways. After a moment’s stunned surprise, I pulled my knife out of my belt and cautiously approached the door. When I stepped through, the room was empty of even the piles of black straw that I expected, and the window at the far end was open, the shutter still propped up.