the haunted kingdom by Charles E.J. Moulton (best detective novels of all time .TXT) 📖

saw the magic right climb to heaven that had been officially created by Lucifer to connect the deep with the top.
But there was a road to the left leading downwards that had not been there before. The three angels looked at each other and shook their heads. There were wails and screams and a red beam that seemed to be there that was new.
Metatron spoke again. “Angelic warfare …”
“On that universal level? Does the Lord allow that to happen?”
"War." Michael softly said shaking himself more than anyone else. “Yes. If it is necessary.”
Metatron shook his head. "My mind is full of riddle. Maybe you can inform us as his blood brother." But Michael could only shake his head. “There is more to it than that to figuring him out. I saw his eyes at the beach.” As Michael gazed to his right he noticed that the red light had grown stronger and the wails louder. “What is down there?”
Raphael shrugged. “The remains of the souls that were tempted after Eve ate the apple.”
Metatron sighed, his soul searching for an answer inside his own spirit, looking at the moss on the walls and the icicles hanging from the cave ceiling. “We must not forget, brethren, that our former brother hath developed sorcery through the centuries in captivity.”
Michael looked at the kind angel, wincing. The awake stare was one of surprise and anguish, a look that spoke of a realization surfacing like a stone to the shore. “He was the snake.” They all nodded, agreeing. And as the three angels walked back across the water to fly home and converse with God about this, screams echoed in the pits and one angel remained.
The pure one lay left alone there on his stone, waiting for an eternity to pass.

REBECCA, TEMPTATION
The Land of Yambalah had risen in only one hundred years to become a city inhabited by two hundred souls. Marketplaces and city halls had been erected, schools and shops and even inns and innkeepers and woodcutters and barbershops. It was a peaceful city with no crime and no prostitution, thus a place of peace and love. The nature in the area was glorious and the inhabitants, Adam & Eve's children and grandchildren and other men and women God had put upon the Earth to faithfully breed were proud of the glorious surrounding they saw every day upon awakening.
There was a pasture where the cows grazed contentedly. The meadow was on the hillside and especially rich. So Rebecca, a lovely ripe girl of seventeen with red flaming hair, would go and milk them there. She did that almost every day, so it was nothing new that was happening the day that she was seduced for the first time. In her future lay the decay and destruction of a thousand nightmares.
The spot really had the finest grass in Yambalah. Rebecca, contrary to the others, didn't believe there were demons down there at all, but she was the only one that dared to go near the place because she was not afraid of rats and snakes. She and her husband Joseph closed the cows in there and took them out again. Only Rebecca dared to stay to milk them on the hillside pasture.
That day the thing that she didn't believe in returned from the depths of the cave she thought only had rats and snakes. But the rats and snakes had a friend. She had been sitting milking in solitude and singing a song when she saw a pair of hooves with red legs. They looked like they would've belonged to a red-legged bull standing on its two feet. But the creature had a forked tail. It was large, at least seven feet. It had horns and sharp, black teeth. It had red skin and black fur. It was not human, yet not completely animal. She must've been too scared too scream, because for a moment she thought her heart skipped a beat and started thumping too irregularly to return back, after a while faster than normal. She tried to run, but all she did was kick down the milk pitcher under the cow. The milk trickled down the grass and down the hill and looked like drool. Normally when that happened she would laugh and sigh, now she screamed and carried on and cursed herself for her stupidity and tried to save some of her sanity. Then, on the ground, she turned around and just kept watching those red eyes. She had never seen anything like that before. She should’ve been running for her life, after all she was a mile or so from her own house. But she just kept looking into those eyes and that evil mouth and could ... never ... move, unless the creature told her to. The man, the beast, was smiling. It was a ghastly smile, an evil smile full of spite and hate, yet, so attractive. Yes, attractive. Alluring and ... horny. Something in her, her crotch, was saying with a soft voice: I like this man. I LIKE HIS ...
"Hello, Rebecca!" the creature said and smiled. She jumped a step back and the beast smiled, lovingly. Rebecca shivered, not daring to say a thing. The chest of the beast was muscular and was rising and falling with a husky deep-throated sneering loud breath, as if some little one-eyed dwarf with a blue helmet, a gigantic cold to his name, was blowing flames on ice in there and would cough any minute, but
couldn't. There was a laugh in that breath that made her smile and cry simultaneously. That terrified her. Every breath told her a story. She was fascinated by that story. But the storyteller made her want to scream. She felt herself being attracted to the sheer physicality of that chest, though, like she never had before to any chest of any man. This was not a man and yet ... it was. So who ... was this? Rebecca tried to
speak, but couldn't.
"He --" She tried again. "Hel-…" Her lip trembled. "Hell- ... Oh ..." Her dress fluttered and showed a bit of her leg. She looked into the beast’s eyes and it saw through her.
It was as if the beast saw through her.
"Hello!" The beast grinned at her. "Sorry about the milk!"
"That's all right!" She found herself calming down. She swallowed. "Who ..." The creature raised its one eyebrow. "Who … uhh ... are you?“
"My name is Lucifer, Rebecca.“
She shook her head. "I'm s-sorry. But ... we ... haven't been properly introduced ..." She swallowed hard. So hard, in fact that he could hear the gulp. "Yet! “
The devil shook his head and shot his gigantic head up and laughed into the morning air displaying the only two white teeth he had left, his side fangs, the teeth he had chewed with for a thousand years. "You are a sweet one, aren't you, now?" His laugh was so dark and rich that Rebecca felt a tingling sensation down ... there. It was a strange and new, dangerous and exciting thing that was happening to her. The more she felt it the more she wanted it. But the laugh scared her and it made her jump out of her chair and fidget with her fingers and arms as if three bees were flying around her and she tried to wave them off. The cow somehow transfixed and numb up until now just like the others ran away and left her standing there. The chair fell over and Rebecca jumped four feet up in the air and ran ten steps away with it and then turned around to face the beast again. It chuckled, uttering a deep throated sneer. It was the basso-giggle of a very randy man who couldn't help laughing at the silly frilliness of his latest conquest, his head shaking involuntarily and then settling down, his eyes looking at her from below, his whites shining brightly like the angel of death. “Could we talk?” His mouth twitched and his upper lip curled. The first syllable of his next word waited to emerge from his tongue, the inner muscle glued to his gum with hard intensity, making the final Kh- of the word could ... sound a pop like a pebble waiting to be shot at the bulls eye of Becky's large and very becoming cleavage. He sucked on the consonant for a while like a kid would on a lollipop. He spat it out, drooling. "Could we talk somewhere … just you and I?"
"If ... if you like to ... then right here … is fine ..." She smiled and tried to compose herself and looked down. She nodded and said with a cold voice. "How may I help you, sir?" She straightened out her dress and the man walked up and breathed on her, silently. She shook her head and all that official coldness disappeared at once. His eyes were hot as ice.
"I am new in town. I am here to make new friends!" He smiled. "You see , sweet one ..." He said, talking matter-of-fact now, walking up the hill slowly with her, laying his right hand across her right shoulder, embracing her, leading her to a sure pitfall, up to the village. She was looking down, fighting to let go but her body going with him like a girl would do looking at her shoes when her priest came by to inspect her forbidden games. This priest was leading her to the grave. "... I have been so lonely these past years!" She was wearing a white dress with a red vest that lifted her bosom as the bottom of her frock swayed in the wind. "I do need some company and would like to know something about ..." He stopped. She stopped as well. She was petrified of him. There was no turning back. For the wise part in her was unaccoustomed to challenge. It was as if all her worst fears had come to visit her in incarnated form and knew it. But yet she loved him ... Loved Him? Why? She felt a feeling she had never felt. Something she had only felt in bed, once, with Joseph, yet. Was that why? Yes ...She thought about it for a bit. He was
gesturing at the landscape of the rising of the hill above like a ruler looking at his land with his daughter. His eyes looked to the side, upwards, his right hand still embracing her right shoulder and freezing his left. "... your village!" He snapped his head to her left and smiled. "Mmh- ... what do you call it?" They stopped and came face to face. He was holding her by both shoulders now and Rebecca looked like a scared but gorgeous angora-cat up at this beast. His left eyebrow raised as he gave a beaming half-smile after looking up from her cleavage. Rebecca was shivering and her bosom shivering with it. He loved that part of it.
"Uhmmm ..." Rebecca thought. She could not say anything at all. Her mind was occupied with other thoughts. "Eh-hrrm ..." Lucifer smiled again, waiting patiently as if waiting for a sick child's first words after returning to school. "Yambalah!" Her words were confident now. He had gotten her by the ... crotch. He smiled. Her eyes beamed and she smiled. She was in his grip. "Our village's name is Yambalah! We would like to welcome you most heartily, sir, and invite you for tea." He laughed. Now the girl was confident and he spoke through her. "Maybe you could even get a position helping our leaders. Maybe you could even become our leader. If you like the idea of becoming a leader, that is. We would need one, you see ... It