Author's Note: So, let me just say...you guys are my faaaaavorite. Never has anything I've written gotten such a response (go figure, it's about the Devil), and it really means a lot. One sentence, a short story, I love, love, LOVE your feedback. It's how I tell whether or not I pursue one storyline over another. This was supposed to be a one shot (and I obviously failed...miserably). Anyway, no, I will not be working in the storyline from the show about who and how Lucifer's wings were stolen. This is now to be A/U.
Also, a specific shout out - FEATHERED FILLY! YAY! YOU'RE BACK! I HAVE MISSED YOU! And because of you, Lucifer is getting whumped hardcore by the end of this story.
"Do you know what this is?" Chloe asked, indicating the bizarre, painted image on the ground.
"Blood," Lucifer answered automatically. "You can't taste that in the air?"
"No, not what it's made out of," Chloe amended. She took a step back, indicating the massive design. "Do you recognize the symbol?"
Lucifer's interest piqued, and he tilted his head sideways so he could look at the image properly. "It's an alpha and omega symbol. Do they no longer teach Greek in school these days?"
"Not outside of AP chemistry and physics classes," Chloe asked. "Do you know what they mean together like that?"
The body had been called in several hours ago, but there were some issues over jurisdiction. Homicide won, but only for now. If it turned out to be a cult killing, they had to call in the FBI. LAPD had only a short window to prove or disprove that it was an isolated incident, unrelated to any religious belief. If Chloe was being honest, the odds that this wasn't cult related were dropping exponentially, but she wanted Lucifer's opinion before they handed it over.
Lucifer glanced indifferently to the body being carted away by the medical examiners, and she wondered how he could regard the destroyed young man with such callousness. He'd been brutally murdered, ritualistically if the crime scene was anything to go off. Patrol had found him when an anonymous tip reported it. The man was dead, crucified on a makeshift upside down cross, his throat and wrists slit almost to the point of severing limbs. He would've bled out in seconds, and it was likely his blood used to create the design on the ground surrounding the grim spectacle.
"Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. It's in the Book of Revelations, though to be perfectly honest I never memorized it well enough to tell you which version or verse. They're always rewriting the damn thing anyway," Lucifer answered, sounding bored. He kept his hands in his pocket as he stepped delicately over the painted blood. "Overlapped, I'm assuming someone is trying to make a statement."
"Does the overlap mean something in specific?"
Lucifer stepped close to the inverted cross, almost touching but not quite, and seemed…annoyed, actually. He shook his head. "Generally speaking, it's used as an expression of a seal, which is why they used to put it on graves and in catacombs. These...misguided souls, were trying to use it to create a seal to trap something." He frowned, and tilted his head and leaned so far over that she was surprised he didn't topple. "Trap…or bind something."
"You mean like the victim?" Chloe asked.
"There's nothing special about him, dead or alive," Lucifer dismissed. "There is something familiar about this nonsense though. I just can't quite…" He stepped back, again avoiding stepping directly on the blood.
"Wouldn't happen to have anything to do with your persona, would it?" Dan asked.
Lucifer chuckled, apparently genuinely amused. "You think devil worshippers did this?"
Dan gestured to the drawing, and the cross. "Upside down cross, blood sacrifice, Book of Revelations…sounds like Satanists to me."
"That's because you're an idiot," Lucifer said, without malice. "When was the last time Satanists started a Holy War? Or bombed an abortion clinic? Protested funerals?"
"So…then what's your suggestion?" Dan asked, folding his arms irritably. "Publicity stunt gone wrong? Turf war?"
Lucifer didn't answer immediately. He tilted his head, first one way and then the next, like he was trying to judge distance. He shouldered Dan out of the way when he didn't move on his own, until he was backed out of the circle entirely, all while still looking at the ground.
When he started walking the perimeter of the circle, Chloe finally realized what he was doing – he wasn't looking at it from a different angle, he was reading something.
"Wait, what are you looking at?" she asked, glancing down at the symbol. The symbols resembled absolutely nothing like a written language, but from Lucifer's undivided attention, it clearly meant something. "Are these letters? Can you read them?"
Lucifer paused his careful circling, sparing a brief glance at her and she could see he was clearly bothered by whatever it was.
"No, and yes…" he admitted, scratching the back of his head absently.
"That's helpful," Dan muttered, and Chloe elbowed him sharply in the ribs.
Lucifer frowned, and finally stepped back. "They're not letters, exactly, they're Enochian sigils. Some of them, anyway. And I can read them, but they don't say anything." He gestured irritably at the symbols. "Imagine if someone just took random words out of a thesaurus and painted them on the floor. You'd have words like 'truculent', 'cat', 'absquatulate' and 'tree' – words that separately mean something, but together are total gibberish. And then there's these other symbols I think are alchemical binding sigils."
"Enochian? Is that a language, or a religion…?" Chloe asked.
Lucifer nodded. "Enochian is the language of angels."
"And you can read them?" Dan asked in disbelief.
Lucifer smiled brilliantly. "Well, of course I can. It's my language. My first one, anyway."
Before Dan and Lucifer could really start to argue, Chloe jumped in. "Okay, so if it's an angel language…what's with the human sacrifice? Last I checked, angels didn't require blood rituals. And if that's not what the victim was, then what's with the upside down cross that he was nailed to? Why is there a language associated with angels and so many contradictions at the same scene?"
For a moment, it looked like Lucifer was going to ignore the interruption and try and bait Dan again, but one quick glance at Chloe's Startsomethingandyou'redead face, and he relented. "Honestly, I don't think they know what they were doing. In all likelihood, someone got a hold of an occult book at the library and decided to test some of it out."
"People do that with house pets on Halloween," Dan countered. "It's the middle of the winter. What could they possibly be trying to do now?"
Lucifer shrugged indifferently. "I'm not the investigator, Detective," he sneered, turning the term of affection he used for Chloe to a slur for Dan. "You tell me."
"I think it's a cover up for a murder," Dan said. "And all the crazy is just to throw us off, look places that we wouldn't normally to try and make it more difficult to investigate. Maybe someone knows enough to Google jurisdiction on religious crimes and would realize that the LAPD and the FBI would be potentially arguing over it."
Lucifer actually looked mildly impressed, and the sneer slowly morphed to a smirk. "Not bad… you might not be as thick as you look."
Aaand the moment was over.
For a moment, it looked like Dan was going to argue back, but just as quickly as he opened his mouth, he closed it again, and the manic grin on Lucifer's face faded a little. "I'm going back to the precinct, see what the ME's turn up. Maybe the guy's prints will be in AFIS for once. Maybe something in his history will have a lead. I'll see you later."
As Dan walked away, Lucifer's bewildered frown suddenly deepened into an accusatory scowl. "Detective, did you happen to mention to your ex your theory about my history?" His voice remained saccharin sweet, lips still pulled into a smile so false it looked painful.
Suddenly the sky was the most interesting thing in the world. Oh, look at the birds…that cloud looked like a beagle. The smog wasn't so bad today…
"You did," Lucifer said, irritably. "Of course you did. Why am I even a little bit surprised? What is it going to take to believe me? I'm not some sappy childhood trauma victim, I am Lucifer Morningstar – the Devil, the Dark One, Apollyon, The Fallen-"
Before Lucifer could continue, she grabbed him by his arm and dragged him away from the rest of the investigators who were beginning to take notice. She barely got out of ear shot before Lucifer wrenched his arm free of her grasp. "Don't do that," he snarled.
"Lucifer, shut up for a minute, and let me try and explain this to you. You can tell me whatever you want. You're the Devil, you're an angel, you're Santa Claus – I don't care. But if you keep working with the police, you cannot keep telling people that and react when they don't believe you. There's a very big difference between delusional and hiding. If you keep telling people that you're Satan, as if you really, honestly believe that, they're not going to let you keep working for the department," she hissed, trying to keep her voice down and trying desperately to get Lucifer to understand why she cared about this.
Lucifer scoffed. "I convinced your captain easily enough to let me in."
"And if she gets transferred? And it's not a woman that replaces her?" Chloe challenged. "Then what? You don't seem to charm most guys, you seem to just piss them off."
Lucifer's face fell slightly, before his arrogant smile returned full force. "Only because I don't make the same effort. It'll still work."
"Like your immortality?" Chloe said, crossing her arms. It was a low blow, and a dangerous topic she knew, especially with so many other officers around. Especially since she was the one who tested his claim.
Low blow or not, she could tell from the look on his face that she'd made her point.
"Let's say, just for the sake of this argument so I can make it real clear for you. Say you were invulnerable. Fine. I could've sworn I saw you get shot multiple times by Jimmy Barnes and nothing happened, and now suddenly you're no longer bullet proof. What happens if the same thing happens to your 'charming' personality?" She made air quotes with her fingers. "What happens when you can't charm your way out of things? Then what?"
Lucifer's face fell, looking horrified.
Point made.
She sighed. "Look, Lucifer. Belief aside, you can't keep going around telling people you're the Devil. At best, they won't believe you. At worst, they will. True believers are scary, and we already know you're not indestructible. Stop inviting trouble in, okay? We find enough of it already."
Lucifer looked thoroughly chastised, and Chloe couldn't help but think of Trixie when she was caught doing something she'd been warned against and realized her parents might've had a point.
"Come on. We'll go interrogate some people to make you feel better. Maybe we'll get snow cones," she said, and headed back towards the police line.
"What am I, seven?" Lucifer grumbled, but followed her all the same.
He could protest all he wanted. She knew how he felt about desserts – that man had a sweet tooth that would drop a diabetic in his shoes.
She politely held the police line tape up so he could duck underneath – which took considerable limbo technique considering their difference in height.
A fair crowd had gathered at the edge of the tape, people snapping pictures and video with their cell phones, all pushing for a better angle at the crime scene. Or at least what little was visible. The gory scenes always seemed to draw the larger crowds.
As she pushed her way through the group of people, all jockeying for position, she suddenly heard Lucifer yelp in surprise and turned quickly.
An older man had grabbed onto Lucifer's shoulder, pulling him backwards and down so the man's lips were almost pressed against Lucifer's ear. The man hissed excitedly, talking so quickly she couldn't make out what he was saying.
"Hey!" she yelled, pushing back through the crowd that had converged behind her. "Let go of him, now!"
The crowd pressed in close, and then just as suddenly parted, and Lucifer was standing alone. The man she'd just seen pulling Lucifer down – she'd seen what he could do, and without effort – was gone. Lucifer looked confused, but mostly…worried? Scared? What the hell was that look? It was so completely foreign on his face that it took her a minute to realize it was the same look she'd seen when he'd found out his container was missing.
"Hey, you okay?" she asked, glancing over him. He didn't look hurt, but something was definitely wrong. "Who was that guy?"
Lucifer didn't even look at her as he shook his head. He stared, unblinking into the distance, away from her, presumably the direction the man disappeared to. He had one hand up, rubbing at the part of his sleeve the other man touched, as if he was trying to wipe something off, or massage the feeling back into it. That must have been one hell of a grip for Lucifer to feel it.
"Lucifer," she said quietly, gently touching his arm. His head snapped back around so fast she was surprised she didn't hear bones snap. "Talk to me."
"He said it was for me," Lucifer said, sounding awed. Not the awe that someone felt when seeing something beautiful, or the sense of the divine – like the awe that spawned the word awful. He turned dark, worried eyes to hers. "He said 'it's all for you,' and welcomed me home."
"What the hell does that mean?" Chloe demanded. "Welcome home?"
Lucifer barely shook his head, hand still rubbing where the man gripped his arm. "I have no idea…"
I really, really, REALLY fought hard to not make that last line sound like the one from the Omen/Damien (btw, if you like Lucifer, you would probably really like A&E's Damien). So, drop me a line, tell me what you think! I live for reviews!
Actually, I live for cookies and feather pillows, but you get the idea.