Satan's Historian: The Lucifer Chronicles, #1

By Carmen Kern

What if you call for Death, but the Devil shows up instead?

Life sucks, and then you die, at least you try to. Or, if you're James Rucker, Lucifer, aka the Devil, shows up at your door instead of Death, job offer in hand. An offer Rucker can't refuse. Not if he wants his family safe and fully souled.

Rucker is sentenced to hell, writing Lucifer's memoir.

The hours are brutal. His demonic colleagues are lousy conversationalists, and the health benefits are still up in the air.

But after his first live showing of the fall of Lucifer Morningstar and the sins of the Garden, he discovers there is more to history than what he'd learned in university, and his own past isn't what he thought it was.

The bets are on the table as heaven and hell roll the dice for Rucker's future.

SATAN'S HISTORIAN is the first novella in the new series, THE LUCIFER CHRONICLES.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carmen Kern
• Release date: Jan 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386256939

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Devil is still a liar, but he tells one hell of a story.

—anonymous

They call me the Watcher.

I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been here. Centuries. Millennia.

I’ve seen everything. Literally. But while I watch, I wait for one specific moment.

The world is strewn with brokenness, dirty clothes and mildewed pages of stories best forgotten. It stinks of the sweat of youth, old pizza, and Axe deodorant that, if I’m honest, isn’t strong enough to mask the stench of the above mentioned. This world belongs to James Rucker.

Who is James? He is a well-intentioned young man with abandonment issues, a half decent apartment, and an almost supernatural love for world history.

But what he wants most is quiet. He is so very tired of the noise of life, of people and the voices in his head. Mostly the voices.

There are three of them.

One who reminds him he is alone in the world, and if he would have been someone different, someone better, his father would still be alive, his family intact.

The second whispers dreams, stories that are more like fairytales and are hard to believe because there is a thread of happiness that connects them all.

And then there’s my voice. The one least spoken. I whisper a word here or there, giving them out like breadcrumbs when Rucker strays too far from the path.

You would think today would be a good day for me to speak, to intervene.

It isn’t.

He is right where he should be.

Today, our James wants Death. He thinks he is ready for it. But what James doesn’t understand is when he hears Death’s whisper, fierce and intimate, when he looks into its tar-black eyes—one can never be ready. You could prepay your bills for six months, purchase a water globe for your one and only plant, give the university notice that you are on an extended vacation and still not be ready.

When dealing with Death, the smart thing is to have a back-up plan. Rucker didn’t think he needed one. It didn’t occur to him that someone other than Death would come knocking on his newly painted door.

I suppose if you want a beginning, this would be it. Here. Thirty-two minutes and twenty-seven seconds ago.

James Rucker had crushed and snorted twenty-four pills, one for every year of his life. Now he is curled up on his hand-me-down couch, hand dangling, moving in a slow circle, round and round. The empty pill bottle had tipped and rolled under the couch, disturbing the dust balls and Tootsie Pop wrappers accumulated over the last two semesters.

Come on! The words hammer his ears with clarity. But the rest of his empty world hears, Cmmm un. He wipes his nose with his sleeve after the stomach cramps finish punching their way through his gut.

Rucker passes out, then comes to, clutching his stomach. The cramps come in waves as his mind blurs with the Molotov cocktail of pills running through his system.

Lookie, lookie! Another epic fail. You can’t even do death right, Rucker. But your daddy did. Sure as I’m talking, the old man is sucking dirt and sprouting weeds out of his chest. The familiar voice tickles Rucker’s eardrums. He swats at the voices in his head as if they are relentless flies.

The boy is not his father. Leave him be.

He’s his daddy all right. Has the same meds, stews in his own mental juice too long, and likes to bail out whether or not it’s his time. Hey boy, how long you gonna roll around and moan about your crap-filled life before you do death right?

Rucker’s body numbs skin to muscle, neuron to atom. His father’s dog tags click together, a sound too loud for this world. The racket of trucks, cars, and buses honk and hammer the walls of the small apartment. The noise, there’s too much of it.

From the corner of his mind comes a crunching sound. A nut cracks, is peeled and only partially chewed before a dreamy voice whispers, how do you think Death smells? Sour like vomit? Teeth clack and crush another nut. Or like the lingering smoky smell of a cold day? Maybe like those cinnamon candies—the ones your granddad fed you when you were a wee lad. You’d sit on his lap and smell his old person smell and suck those candies so hard your eyes watered.

Rucker rolls to his side, curling up, wombed into the couch until he remembers to breathe.

Stop smacking your gums and chewing like you ain’t got manners. No one cares how Death smells.

I care.

Then you’re the only one.

Rucker clamps his hands over his ears, but it does nothing to silence the voices.

Tell me, Rucker, did all that history mumbo jumbo you studied come in handy? Maybe you should’ve taken biology or chemistry. If you had, you might have got the cut just right on your drug cocktail and you could stumble through the Valley of the Shadow instead of listening to me. There is laughter, the kind that grates like an out of tune violin.

Rucker, it’s time. The voice was so quiet it might have said nothing at all.

Knock, knock.

Rucker wrestles free of the sweat-soaked blanket, unwinds his legs and rolls off the couch. On his knees, Rucker tries to right himself, sort out thoughts that crawl together then ease apart, their edges overlapping in a haze of mist.

His life plays out in slow motion: nine-year-old hands pushing live worms onto the hook attached to his sisters pink fishing pole, a double-dog-dare and he’s jumping from the shed roof with a Batman sheet whipping in the wind, a fit of teenage anger as his Dad drives away dressed in fatigues, leaving Rucker and the rest of them alone. Again.

My favorite memory is his prom night—kissing Michelle Scott in the alley behind her father’s bakery, the smell of yeast and urine making him gag in her mouth.

He couldn’t look at the girl for a month after. What a time! But the past is done and gone. Our Rucker needs to be in the here and now. He needs to be ready.

Rucker hangs onto the couch and stumbles to his feet, his mind sludged in memory. He slams into the wall, sliding his hands along the plaster, making his way towards the door, willing his body along. It’s hot. Sticky. The air hangs like wet sacks. Rucker stops, studies his hands. Small gills form between his thumb and finger, the flap of skin expanding and contracting. Breathing.

He flips his palms over and then back. The gills disappear, replaced by needle sharp talons. He sweats, stares at his hands and sweats some more.

Minutes pass before he finds the front door.

Leather bracelets on his wrist slither. Tightening. Constricting. He slaps at them, leaps backwards, stomps the nonexistent serpents. Crushing heads and tails until they are pulp. Stepping over the imagined gore, he finds the lock, fingers fumbling with the doorknob. Turning and turning until there’s a click.

The door swings open. 

James! Sorry to keep you waiting! Helluva traffic jam at Central and 3rd. A stranger settles a large hand on Rucker’s shoulder and gifts him with a smile dazzling as a dying star. He pushes past, into the apartment, turning back only when he reaches the end of the hallway. Well, come on. It’s time we had a little chitchat.

Rucker’s head is thick and soupy, but the man’s voice is surround-sound clear.

The stranger clears the dirty clothes and sweat-soaked blanket from the couch before settling in. Take a load off, James. Have a seat. He pats the cushion beside him. Rucker slumps down, obedient like a young pup, oddly aware that this man had somehow found the time to piss in every corner.

This man is like no other. It is clear he owns every room he occupies. He sits, arms stretched across the top of the couch, creamy leather coat extending into wings that drape over crossed legs. He is gold in the way the sun would be if it pulled up to your home and invited itself in for a look-see. Burnished skin. White-blond hair long enough to pull back. But it is his eyes that are most arresting, the purest of silver, such as the blade my brothers once carried into battle. The man is dazzling. The room fills with his splendor, an effect not lost on our young Rucker as he clamps his eyes shut against the blinding throb chipping away at his skull.

White-hot light. Pound. Pound. Pounding. Rucker closes his