Free I, Lucifer: Finally, the Other Side of the Story by Glen Duncan Page B

that.
Then these_farking whining, self-obsessed freaks turn up as
the issue of your lust and it just makes you ... ugh. Never
mind. Point is I wiped them out. One Mr Sheen-style sweep
across the surface of the earth, and the excrescent offences
were gone . .
    Or so I thought. I've no conclusive proof, but I've long
suspected that some of my brethren - no more than a handful - somehow managed to snaffle their wretched offspring
away, concealed in some cranny from the scythe of my
wrath. Every now and then I'll spot someone (a Fleetwod
Mac documentary, an Elton John special - the music industry does seem suspiciously fertile in this respect) and wonder
whether Nephilim blood doesn't still course through human veins. I keep thinking I should do something about it, but,
you know, I'm so busy all the time ...

    `Now, Nelchael. What of your other charge?'
    `Charge, my Lord?'
    I rolled Gunn's eyes. (I'm getting the hang of these gestures. That Gallic shrug-with-downturned mouth's one of
my favourites just now. That and the tut-with-eye-roll I'd
just delivered to my servant.) `Give me strength,' I said,
under my breath. `Your other task, idiot. Your other errand.!
    `Of course, my Lord. Forgive nee. I see, I see what you -'
    `Have you found it yet?'
    'Alas, my Lord, Limbo is deceptively large. The ... the
unbaptised infants alone number -'
    `Yes yes, I know all that. Time, Nelkers, is most definitely not on our side. Keep looking. And bring me word
immediately you find it. Understood?'
    `Understood, Sire.'
    `One more thing.'
    `My Lord?'
    `Keep an eye on Astaroth. I want names and rank of all
those closest to him. Now go.'
    I checked the balance the following morning. 079,666.00.
Nice touch, that. Made me smile. I celebrated with a fry-up
at a Leather Lane greasy before hitting Oxford Street for a
sartorial shopping spree and a bit of how's your father.

    Now this might come as a shock, so pour yourself a double
and drop your buttocks into a beanbag.
    Ready?
    Okay. Sexual intercourse was not Original Sin.

    Truth is Adam and Eve had had sex a few times (how else
were they supposed to multiply, my dear Butthead?); it just
hadn't been much fun. It hadn't been unpleasant, but it hadn't
been sex as you know it. It had been the expression of a
design feature, that's all, like folding one's arms or hiccupping. Adam's tool worked - that is, achieved tumescence
now and again - but of its own accord. He had no feelings
about it one way or the other. Eve, for her part, felt much
the same. She didn't mind. It was just another thing they did
because that was the way they were made. Edenic sex didn't
feel good and didn't feel bad. How times have changed,
n'est-ce pas? Now it feels so gerd. Now it feels so bayered. Yes?
No, really, you're too kind.
    `You know you want it you dirty little bitch.'
    What astonished both of us was that it came out not as a
sequence of hisses (snakeskin looked good on me, I'd
decided; slithering was my corporeal metier) but as a perfectly
intelligible articulation. For several moments we remained in
surprised silence, Eve lying on the grass looking up at the
glowing fruit, me corkscrewed around the upper trunk with
my neck and head resting close to one of the golden globes.
    `A bitch is a female dog,' Eve said, quite sensibly. `And
dirty is before bathing in the river.'
    Appalled that I'd wasted the chance for a subtle opening
gambit (don't try that one in the health club bar), I said: `Do
you remember the time before Adam?'
    Eve wasn't one of those people who say `What?' when
they've heard you perfectly clearly. She lay blotched with
leaf-shadows, blinking slowly and thinking about it. One
hand ran its fingers through the grass, the other idled on her
midriff.
    `Sometimes I think I remember,' she said, not quite looking at me. `But then it evaporates.'

    I can't take any credit for foresight or planning, but I can
and will for consummate opportunism. (Did I say I was