Part One
Corporate Retreats, Romance, and Revenge
A DEMONIC DISASTERS AND AFTERLIFE ADVENTURES BONUS STORY
Chapter 1
Adam
Adam winced as the ball smashed into a leadership team demon’s face, knocking him backwards in the air.
“That’s a lot of blood,” Adam muttered, staring at the demon’s face; his nose seemed to be spouting blood, and Adam hadn’t even known they bled.
Minos only chuckled, and Adam wasn’t imagining the gleeful sound to it either.
Maybe interdepartmental dodgeball wasn’t the greatest idea after all.
The leadership team demon popped back up, grabbed a ball, and aimed it at the lesser demon who had hit him.
“Oomph,” Adam muttered in sympathy as the ball hit the demon below the waist. The demon rolled around on the floor for a bit before he popped up, searching for a ball.
“Um, Minos? Once they’re hit, they’re out. That’s how dodgeball is played,” Adam clarified.
“Both sides agreed on different terms,” Minos replied. “Their terms seemed reasonable.”
Adam didn’t want to imagine what terms would be reasonable to a team of leadership demons and lesser demons who didn’t like each other. He tried not to look back out atthe field again, because things were getting a bit gory for his taste. His soulmate sensed his discomfort, however, and Minos took his hand and led him away. The retreat was being held in a specially created section of Limbo, and they made their way out of the retreat area and back towards Minos’s Judgment Chamber.
Adam sighed once they were out of sight, but Minos pulled him close, kissing his lips. “Your retreat has been inspired, my soul,” Minos reassured him. “It has been suitably torturous for the leadership team.”
Adam supposed it had been torturous, but he just wasn’t sure how effective it all was.
They’d made the entire leadership team attend, and he’d paired up roommates of one demon and one angel in each room, and then he’d had loads of workshops with motivational speakers (no shortage of those in hell, that was for sure, and a few half decent ones were in Limbo, as well).
He’d even managed a few trust exercises, which had been spectacularly hilarious. Luckily angels and demons had wings, because the whole trustfall thing… yeah, the less said about that, the better. Although really, he didn’t know why they complained—it’s not like they could die or anything.
He’d also set each team member up with a stylist, although they werereallynot receptive to the whole not looking and dressing alike thing. In the leadership team, angels wore white robes tied with a sash at the waist and white sandals, and demons wore loose black pants and a top also tied with a sash at the waist with black sandals. It was all rather boring.
Adam had started by offering totally different types of clothing—jeans, sweaters, hoodies—but those had been firmly ignored. He’d then tried giving them their outfits of choice and simply adding designs or color to them.
Those had also been firmly ignored. Minos had told Adam to simply force them to wear the outfits, but that really defeated the point. He wanted them to choose to be different. He wanted them to find their own personalities and things they liked. If he forced them, it would still not be them expressing individuality.
It was all quite exasperating. The name issue only added to Adam’s frustration. They all went by the name “leadership team angel” or “leadership team demon,” like they were in some dystopian novel or something. Adam had tried repeatedly to get their original names out of them, but either they didn’t know them or else they couldn’t remember them. It was totally weird, and Adam didn’t get very far on the topic. One demon had looked at him and actually asked what the point of a name was, since their title was all that was needed to inspire fear and compliance in the afterlife. He’d then gone on to explain that they all spoke in unison, so separate names prevented disagreement amongst the team.
Yeah, definitely not the right attitude. Sometimes a little disagreement was essential to growth and happiness.
Even the fact that they were a group of angels and demons didn’t seem to separate them. Sure, the two groups dressed differently, but he thought if they had their way they wouldn’t. One angel admitted it was to deal with their underlings, and so far he hadn’t seen any disagreement or difference between the angels and demons.
It was kind of creepy.
It seemed like the leadership team was a magnet for corporate drones. He guessed Earth really did mirror the afterlife in some ways—those people who followed the rules and did nothing more or less than they were told ended up making it ahead. Somehow middle management was often filled with assholes. It seemed rare to get someone good in that position.
He and Minos could always strip the entire team and put new people in their place, and he had contemplated doing just that, but Minos assured him that they’d done that in the past and it ended up exactly the same. Maybe it was something about middle management that just sucked the life out of people. Or the individuality out of angels and demons. Maybe it actually sucked their souls away? Something to ponder…
As they passed through the bar and club scene in Limbo (afterlife physics werestillconfusing, and Limbo was a mystery), Adam thought about his spark of hope on the team. The angel cutie who had shown up with the unique planner was apparently the newest addition to the team, and of course there was a scowly demon who was also a newer addition, and Adam had a sense that their individuality hadn’t totally been stripped away.
He was hoping to get to them before the leadership team did whatever creepy drone-making mojo they did. Of course, neither of them had names either. Yah had put the cutie angel in charge, and Adam hoped he and scowly demon would sort out the rest of the crew, but he didn’t think the rest of the team wasn’t actually following that edict very well.
It was all really frustrating.
