Bleeding Empire

Longlisted in the Exeter Novel Prize."Are you ready to end the world?"It's supposed to be the greatest Apocalypse the world has ever known. But the death of mankind isn't as headline-grabbing as who laundered their last load on Celebrity Dirty Washing. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse's offspring want to tear up the biblical rulebook with style, sexiness and smiley face achievement stickers.There's one problem with rebooting legends: nobody recognises them.Health and Safety forbade horses (and there's nowhere to park them), so they ride motorbikes. And budget cuts only allow one Travelodge room between them. Their arrival breaks four seals. And a streetlight. It's hardly the epic, end-of-the-world entrance they'd imagined. Less 'world-wide media coverage', more 'notice in the personal ads'.Death excelled at reaping, not reproduction, so there are five Horsemen: twins Morgan and Aeron are in charge but couldn't lead a conga line; Marsden would be the hero if slaughter wasn't his favourite hobby; Demi prefers destroying people's confidence to destroying crops; Mac's low self-esteem and pacifism hinders his pestilent plans.Fallen angel Drew fights to stop them. But as usual, love arrives to cock things up for everybody. And what better time to host an Apocalypse than Christmas, while mortals are distracted by the contents of Santa's sack. Instead of Jingle Bells, there'll be abject screams. Providing they stop getting drunk on sexually-named cocktails...