Chapter Seven
"Are you drunk?" Azrael asked him, and she had no right to take such a judgmental tone with him. Draining more handles than he'd strictly kept count of tonight to deal with eventual amputation pain made sense. It wasn't a sign of bigger problems. It wasn't. "I think you're totally swaying."
Lucifer stood and made the effort to keep himself upright and from swaying. He was still too sober for what was coming next, but he'd manage. He'd had close to a dozen pairs of wings sawed off, done it himself, hadn't he? If his words slurred just a little as he spoke, surely that was his imagination.
Gesturing to his offending appendage, he glared down regally (at least he thought he was managing that) at Azrael. "I'm going to start on getting rid of my problem. Chop-chop, and all that. You talked Ella out of it, so you're elected to help me." He reached around and his tail, as if it knew what was coming, flicked away from his inebriated grasp. Lucifer grumbled and caught it a second time. "Ha! Got you. I don't think I can keep it still and get it sawed through all in one go."
Azrael's eyes seemed shiny even from behind the thick glasses she wore. And she chided him about not being British. What kind of angel had less that twenty-twenty vision? What kind of whatever you are has a tail? Point. Maybe self-actualization had hit Sis while on earth too, at least if she needed glasses. Surely, even if he hadn't been to the Silver City in eons…well, surely she was the only one who required them.
Seriously, Dad, maybe designing isn't your strong suit…
His sister stood and followed him toward the bathroom. He caught her worrying her lower lip before he turned his attention from her and focused on carefully taking Maze's blade from the top of the piano. Demon steel sliced easily through any Celestial or demon; it could land a fatal blow to anything except a Marked Cain. The more delicate he was with it, the better. He wanted the bloody tail gone, not to lose anything else unexpectedly. Ditto for Sis.
Once they marched into his bathroom, his little sister gave an appreciative whistle. "Holy crap! This is like the size of the entire apartments of some humans I collect."
Despite the solemnity of the occasion, Lucifer couldn't help but set the blade down on the sink and then turn back to grin at her. "I don't do anything small scale, Azrael."
She nodded and raked her eyes over his bathroom, clearly taking into account the Italian marble, the double shower with more jets than he'd ever bothered to counter up, the triple vanity (it made getting his guests out in the morning easier and it wasn't as if he tended to do less than a threesome when he was swinging and single), and the giant, jetted tub at the far end, which could accommodate four easily. Five if the four besides him were gymnasts. Long story, but a good one, that.
"Wow."
He shrugged. "I'm on holiday. Creature comforts are a given, especially with a penthouse."
Azrael shook her head. "I bet your closet is as big as an apartment too."
"Depends on the flat. If it's one of those tiny lofts in New York or even here, then assuredly so."
His sister rolled her eyes. "You're still not British."
He shrugged and slipped off his suit jacket and then undid his cufflinks to make slipping off his shirt easier. Handing both of them off to her, he nodded toward his bedroom. "Be a luv and lay those on the bed. Delicately, please, they wrinkle and it's a right pain to get out."
Brat didn't quite do as she was told and dumped them unceremoniously on his bed. Well, off to the dry cleaners it would be with both as soon as he could leave the penthouse again. He got a bit of justice out of the whole situation by one-upping her. Lucifer had turned back to face his sinks and slipped out of his trousers. Considering she'd just chuck them on the mattress like yesterday's rubbish, he opted instead to lay them on the lip of his tub.
Azrael groaned even as she took the blade's hilt. "You have to be naked for this?"
"Complaints, complaints. I'm not thrilled with this arrangement either."
"Then even better Ella's not here."
He grinned and hoped she caught the look reflected in his vanity mirror. "Oh Ella's seen me naked."
His sister slapped him hard on the shoulder with her free hand. Oh, there was that less than peachy warrior he remembered. Azrael could still hit quite hard. "Dude! I sent her to you for sisterly bonding. Is there like anyone in L.A. you haven't fucked?"
He stilled and took in a shuddering breath. There were still some he hadn't. Straight men and lesbians of course hadn't been on his list. Then there were those who just fell below his standards, which for the men were exceptionally high. He'd always liked a gorgeous man, one that stood out in the club like a beacon shined down on him. Women…for some reason he was more flexible on, could do with less than a nine. But, yes, he hadn't slept with some. Ella, of course, because she was so like his sister, but also the detective.
The unfortunate incident from the masquerade flashed through his mind. He had not idea what she'd seen. It had been bad enough to have the claws and the red, broken skin all over. The bat wings that Lucifer loathed and couldn't get to go back in. The rest…dear Dad, what had the rest even looked like?
No, he hadn't slept with everyone in L.A., and whatever could have been once with Chloe was surely gone.
"Lu? This is, uh, awkward enough. You can't just space out on me."
"I just…of course I've not slept with Ella. We're friends."
"Then?"
"We did go undercover at a nudist colony. She was game to go in too, so I've seen her bum and then some."
Azrael laughed despite everything. "That sounds like you."
"Well, the killer was caught." And paralyzed. That was where all of it had started to plummet, hadn't it? With the younger Tiernan in a body brace. If he hadn't…would things be all buggered up now? Probably, but, then again, if it was all his own subconscious then maybe it was just a matter of time before his mind had turned completely on his body. "But I'm not thrilled either with this arrangement, but I want to get as much of this sodding thing off as possible. You can get closer with-"
"Skin to blade?"
"Exactly." He eyed the blade as she gripped it. "Are you ready?"
"I am not, not at all. This is a bad idea."
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'll just go around L.A. with a Devil tail for the conceivable future. That sounds like a brilliant idea."
"Wow, I forgot how much disdain you could put into just one sentence."
He pinched the bridge of his nose. If Amenadiel and Linda wouldn't be guaranteed no's, he'd have asked them by now. Maze would have made fun of him for the rest of eternity. She was not to be called. Still, getting anyone to help him with this cock up was frustrating as, well, Hell. Azrael was not making this easy on him.
"I forgot how little you actually listened to me."
"That's what you love about me, Lu."
He smirked at that. Lucifer couldn't deny her that point. Once upon a time, angels of a feather had flocked together. "I can't live like this. I refuse to be unable to leave the penthouse."
"Well, it is a pretty sweet set up."
"Don't Tom Sawyer me."
"Huh?"
"So Bond you get? But Twain eludes you?"
"Most of us haven't slept with the bulk of the world's authors and musicians."
"I wouldn't say 'the bulk.'"
"Groupie," she chirped, far too content with herself. "Are you sure you can't just channel your inner Jedi, and make it schloop back in?"
"Yes, why ever didn't I think about that in the last six hours?"
"Okay, I think you can probably actually kill people with sarcasm too."
"Not immortals, now, please, Sis, get to the slicing."
Azrael sighed heavily and her fingers wrapped around his tail and, bollocks, even as drunk as he was (or could get without the detective in the building), Lucifer could still feel far too much. Fuck, he hoped that his tail wasn't more sensitive than his wings. Cutting things off was a necessity. He wasn't so far gone that he found it pleasant. Despite some light BDSM in his life, he was far from a masochist.
"Alright Lu-one, two…"
She cut before reaching three and he bit his teeth hard. It wasn't the blinding pain of Maze's blade scraping through flesh and bone that was the worst. Oh, it was bad, and he'd somehow managed to forget how painful the wing excisions had been. But it was the sound. The grinding of steel on bone that made him bite his inner cheek till blood welled up. If he screamed, even shuddered, he knew that his sister would stop and the only thing worse than having a tail would be having half of one hanging by ichor and gore from his backside.
Finally, after interminable moments, and this would be in his Hell loop if he ever got caught in one again, there was a thunk on the floor and the terrible, haunting scrapes had stopped. He reached for a towel immediately and wrapped it around his waist. Being naked in front of his sister wasn't exactly his favorite thing either. Family was ironically a sacred thing, but necessary medical evils and all that.
She hurried to the main living area by the bar and rushed back with the trashcan in hand. He didn't turn around until she'd shoved the blasted tail into the trashcan, covered it with several towels-best use of Egyptian cotton in history in his opinion-and deposited it far away on the edge of his balcony.
Lucifer grabbed the first aid kit he kept under his sink. He hadn't kept one before, but then he'd found himself at first shot and with a mortality situation that he didn't understand. Then, he'd had Eve around and kept a full assortment of things in case of another siege or Dad knew what happening to them. It never hurt to have it around, lest the detective stop in and he get buggered up.
Well…maybe not now. It wasn't like the detective would just randomly end up in his lair any time soon, if ever.
Striding with a confidence he didn't feel to the bed, he sat down at set the first aid kit to his side. His sister, and now her eyes weren't just shiny but wet tracks had worked her way down her cheeks. Lucifer stood and hugged Azrael tightly. She was stiff at first, and considering the circumstances both with what he'd asked her to do and how many thousands of years it had been since he'd been this close to her, Lucifer couldn't blame her. Eventually, she relaxed in his grip and he held her as she shook.
He remembered this, remembered comforting her after their older siblings (usually Michael and Gabriel, though never Amenadiel with her) had mocked her. They never quite fit, and maybe it was why they both had their own types of exile to work through.
Finally, she pulled away and gestured toward his closet. "I get the, uh, not the time for pants yet part and yay for fluffy bath sheets, totally…"
He arched an eyebrow at her. "But?"
"Do you have a t-shirt. Wait, you do buy them?"
"I most assuredly do not, but I have this green monstrosity I received on a case. My shirt had been ruined."
"The tragedy."
"It was Prada. Definitely a tragedy," he affirmed.
She trotted to the closet and after a few minutes spent bitching about how large it was and that a "serial killer could be hiding in here and you'd never know" style rants, Azrael returned with the old t-shirt from Pop's restaurant. Chuckling, she tossed it to him. "Do I want to know?"
He caught it effortlessly and slipped the t-shirt over his head. "The life of a police consultant is varied. Or, well, it was."
She sat on the bed first and he followed suit, comforted when their shoulders touched. He'd missed her so much. In Hell, Maze had been his real only comfort and consort, but theirs had been a business relationship. Now, he hoped they were doing better, working to being real friends and family, now that she was even more protective over his nephew than he was. But it had been so long away from family. Amenadiel had grown to be his closest ally. Hell, the idiot had asked him to be Charlie's godfather, which was stark raving mad on the face of it, but Lucifer had agreed eventually after Linda had also begged him. She'd been fried by Mum for him. His psychiatrist might not quite know it yet, but she could ask him for anything, and he'd hardly deny her.
But this was his sister, and for a few, fleeting moment, he could pretend they were back in the Silver City-not that it had ever been decorated with as much taste, take that Dad-and things were possible again.
That he wasn't so bloody trapped in a cage of his own making.
"Do you need me to, oh man. Do I have to clean that too? You like heal still right?"
"Demon blade is the only reason it cut at all, Sis."
"Okay, but I don't…this is a lot more sibling togetherness than I anticipated, Lu."
"I'll give you a few and just some peroxide. Honestly the rest should heal up on its own by sunrise."
She swung her feet against the mattress, her heels hitting it in a regular rhythm. "What if it grows back?"
He sighed and focused on the carpet beneath him. "The wings did. Still have them in point of fact."
He did not specify what type of wings; he couldn't bear for his sister to know. In fact, no one knew about them but Chloe and Linda. He hoped to keep it that way until he could get a handle on his own trauma.
Her hand was on his cheek, soft and comforting, something he probably didn't deserve after what he'd just put her through. "Why would you cut off your wings?"
"I did when I decided to make my holiday in Los Angeles permanent. I was trying to forge my own path away from Dad."
"When aren't you?"
"But no wings, harder to be forced back to Hell. It didn't take, not eventually, and I gave up and except the damn plumage." At least it had been until Tiernan, Jr. "For a while, I just needed them gone."
"You were mutilating yourself. We just did that together."
"A tail is not part of me, that's a trick of my mind and my subconscious."
"You keep saying that, but I've never seen anyone in the Silver City…"
He turned and glared at her, having a damn hard time controlling his temper. And his shame. Shouting he could do; anger he could channel. Deflecting, right? That was what Linda called it. "And how many have glasses? How many feel such guilt their wings rot off and they lose their power to stop time?"
Azrael let out a sharp puff of air as if he'd slugged her, and he instantly felt like the ass he was for rounding on her. "I'd heard rumors about Amenadiel falling, but he was fine when he showed back up at the Silver City months ago. I saw him when I was bringing up a load of humans from a bus crash."
"Well, rumors of his fitness were somewhat exaggerated. He got over his guilt enough for the wings to grow back, much to poor Charlotte's benefit, but he can no longer stop time." He sighed but kept the icy tone in his voice. "Why do you need glasses, Rae Rae?"
"I dunno. I just figured some angels have all the luck. I got them…well, honestly, I realized I needed them a little after Ella's accident."
"Because it became real for you for the first time since you'd started. For the first time in six thousand years, you had a human face to put with the accidents and carnage Dad makes you sift through, and you simply didn't wish to see it as clearly as you had before. So you can't."
She stood and started to pace. "That's not…it's not possible."
"You just cut off my tail. I think we've established that, with angels, anything we can dream up-deep down-we can do to ourselves."
She stilled and her eyes, so large and owl like behind her glasses, regarded him and gave him no place to hide. "I wasn't there."
"Where?"
"The day…" It was her turn to look down at the floor, at her scuffed sneakers. He really needed to teach her anything about fashion. She was even worse at it than Amenadiel, and that was saying something. "…when Dad had you dragged out in front of everyone in chains. When you'd really lost."
He rubbed his side, an old phantom pain that only visited him in nightmares and long, lonely nights. "When Michael gave me a bonus stab for my trouble and they booted me out of the Silver City, yeah?"
"I couldn't watch." She wrung her hands in front of him, and he hated her just a bit in that moment.
She'd loved him, and he had no doubt he was her favorite brother because most of their siblings were utter pillocks, but she hadn't loved him enough. Not to side with him just once over Dad. Then again, the two dozen who had, well, they'd been eradicated with a snap of Dad's fingers to ash. He'd have loathed himself even more if that fate had befallen Azrael.
"Oh. I was a bit busy at the time. Didn't realize you were catching a breather."
"Lu, I'm serious!"
"I know, but I try not to travel down memory lane too much if I can avoid it. Too many bad avenues there."
"I know, but I just meant that I didn't…I never saw your face change."
"I'm sure it was quite the show that day. I'm bloody sure the Silver City gossip still revolves around it. Nothing ever changes in that sodding place but me."
Azrael didn't deny it, and it proved his point. Even if all was somehow magically forgiven tomorrow, he'd never go back to Heaven. The lot of hypocrites and sycophants deserved each other. "I'm sorry. I just…are you saying you did it to yourself?"
Lucifer shrugged. "I'm not sure what to believe sometimes. I'd always assumed Dad had-"
"Me too!"
"But I'm doing something to myself now, and I can't seem to stop it. It spread very badly five weeks ago. I was everything any raving prophet or so-called Biblical scholar would have painted me as. Had a friend walk me back, but I was hoping it was going to stop. It's creeping back and I have fuck all idea what to do about it."
"Not Ella," his sister said, her tone bright and sure. "Who helped you before?"
"The detective I work with."
"Chloe! She's really nice. She totally is chill with Ella seeing ghosts, well, just me but still."
It was his turn to be surprised. "Chloe knows about you?"
"No, Ella told her last time I was in town that she saw a ghost. Chloe's very understanding. It's a good thing she knows about you."
"It bloody well isn't!" He snapped and it took every ounce of his control to keep his eyes from flashing. He was terrified if he let even that much shift, then he wouldn't be able to change it back. Besides, his sister had never seen all of it, nothing even close. He didn't want to lose the faith and adoration still in her eyes. Not that. He'd lost too much already. Lucifer stood and stormed out to the bar. He was sobering up too quickly for his liking. "I can't put her through that again. It frightens her. I frighten her."
A soft hand was on his shoulder as he poured some bourbon. Wasn't his go-to drink, but he'd worked through half his stash tonight. "Lu, we'll figure it out, okay. Ella's really smart, and maybe there's…I can get to the Silver City and the library there. Maybe there's something."
He snorted but his tone was muted, the fight leeched from him. "Dear old Dad never saw fit to tell any of us about self-actualization, doubt he left a manual on it back home."
She coughed loudly until he faced her. "I'm going to help you. I have thousands of years to make up for."
"I could have bumped into you too on my walkabouts. 'S not all you."
"Then, I'll fix this, but I need to know what even set this off. Why did you start going all Jekyll and Hyde?"
"Oh, that book you have heard of. Perfect."
She rolled her eyes, and, alright, if Azrael accused him of being theatrical, then she wasn't always wrong. "Why, Lu?"
"Because I had a bloody epiphany. And I wish my psychiatrist-I know so L.A.-had told me these things had prices. Never would have had one if I'd known."
She stood on tiptoes so that both of her hands were on his shoulders. "What did you realize?"
He closed his eyes and let the words tumble out, just as every ounce of strength and resilience felt leeched from him. "I hate myself."
Her sister hugged him again, and he was grateful for her being back, even with the history between them. "But you shouldn't."
Lucifer let himself have a few more precious seconds in her embrace before he pulled away from a hug he didn't deserve. "You don't know a fraction of what I've done, and you were there for The Fall. Sis, I'm a monster."
She shook her head but then cursed under her breath. "There's an overturned ocean liner in the Mediterranean. Needs my full attention, can't just split focus. It's pretty bad, Lu."
"Oh."
"I will be back, and we will so be talking about all of this." She stilled and then squeezed his hand. "You're not a monster, and Dad can be a total jerk. I'll be back, okay? Uh, don't do anything Amenadiel wouldn't do while I'm gone."
"So, I'm free to knock up a human?"
"What?!"
"I see the gossip mill has only gone so far up there," he said, forcing himself to laugh. He needed to get back some levity. Anything resembling equilibrium. "Go, I'd never wish this job on you, but you do it well."
"Feeling's mutual," she said, and her wings sprouted behind her, mottled like an Osprey's. "Smell you later."
And with a strong breeze, she was gone.
