Devil in the Details
'Madhouse' was not enough to describe the crime scene Lucifer rolled up to. The front steps of the courthouse were flooded with people, so many that the LAPD had called in back up for crowd control. Whatever sat on the steps must have been juicy enough to warrant not only a yellow-tape perimeter, but black out curtains as well. At least one blogger had decided to risk arrest and started a live-stream. Many cried performative tears.
Lucifer parked the corvette in the loading zone in front of the building, sideways and taking up more room than necessary, but he felt inclined to inconvenience others since the Detective was keen on inconveniencing him. He pushed through the crowd, flashed a smile at Detective Douche, who was relegated to calming the crowd, and pulled back the curtain.
Lilith was right there! In the palm of his hands! Lucifer lamented bitterly as he donned a pair of black shades and locked the car behind him. To think he was mere moments away from plucking the truth from her cold, dead heartstrings...
Hearts.
Chests cracked open, guts spilling out, hearts rent from their ribcages and mashed between blood-stained teeth.
Lucifer paled at the gruesome sight. This wasn't like the murders from before. Sure, there were the lacerations and the tattoos on the corpses that indicated that the victims were indeed Nephilim. But this was new. This was horrifying.
This was Lilith.
The Detective stood next to Miss Lopez, the pair bent over the furthest corpse. There were four in total with black body bags ready to go as soon as dynamic duo had collected enough evidence.
"There you are!" The Detective walked over his way as quick as someone had set a fire under her. Anger, barely contained, flickered in her eyes. She was tired and frustrated and definitely not in the mood for the joke that immediately died on Lucifer's lips. "What took you so long?"
"My apologies, Detective. I was in the middle of a meeting."
"A meeting?"
"Yes. I do still run a very lucrative night club, in case you've forgotten..." It was hard for him to remember, himself, in the face of so much senseless carnage. "What the bloody hell happened here?"
Perhaps making puns at a quite literally bloody crime scene was not in the best taste, but Lucifer had done much worse to deserve the venom shot his way. While Miss Lopez cringed - it wasn't his best work, he will admit - the daggers in the Detective's eyes could have killed a lesser being.
"I was hoping you could fill me in on that part."
"I beg your pardon?" Lucifer asked, genuinely surprised. Why would she possibly think - ? No. Not this again.
"I get it. Raziel is your brother and you want to protect him. But he's a murderer, Lucifer," the Detective spat fiercely, as if her contempt alone would change Lucifer mind. "How many times are you going to let him get away with this?"
"And how many times must I tell you, Detective, that I don't know what Raziel is doing? My brother doesn't speak to me. He doesn't even like me. And I'm pretty sure, if given the chance, he'd add me to his hit list," Lucifer replied charges lose, tired of being interrogated as if he were the one to butcher these poor Nephilim.
What was Raziel doing, anyway? He certainly didn't seem concerned about what Lilith was doing to his precious followers. Maybe he didn't know. Lucifer wasn't sure of anything, not after his chat with Lilith. Only that her wraiths were responsible for the carnage, but he very well couldn't tell the Detective that, now could he?
"If that's how you want to play it, fine." She reached around her belt for a pair of very familiar handcuffs. "Turn around and place your hands behind your back."
Lucifer let out a little laugh, shocked still with disbelief. "Are you...are you arresting me, Detective?"
"You're giving me no choice." The iron around his wrist stung as it clapped into place. The impulse to break out like last time - the first time - entered his brain as quickly as it left. "Lucifer Morningstar, you are under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."
"On what charges?" Lucifer demanded, outraged.
"Obstruction of justice."
"This is absurd - !"
"No, what's absurd is that I can't trust my partner," Chloe fired back, which did a pretty good job of shutting Lucifer up and leaving him speechless. "You may not lie but you don't always tell the truth. You know something Lucifer. I know you do. And I need you to tell me before more people wind up dead."
"Detective, I - " Lucifer didn't know what to say. In one hour, so much of his life turned upside down. How could everything have gone so wrong? He looked her in the eye, and even though his mojo didn't work on her, he willed her to understand. "I'm sorry. I can't give you what you want."
The remaining hope and goodwill the Detective had left vanished. Her expression shuttered closed, all her walls thrown up as she took him by the arm and yanked him towards the car. Lucifer went willingly; she wouldn't be able to manhandle him if he didn't want her to, and my oh my this was not how he imagining finally getting rough with her.
She wouldn't look at him as she slammed the door, leaving him in the backseat, metal fence separating him from the driver.
Isn't it against the law to leave your child in a locked car?
That was the last time they'd been on opposite sides. They had come so far. But as the police car took off, sirens flashing, Miss Lopez staring like someone had broken her favorite piece of lab equipment, Lucifer wondered if they had ever moved forward at all.
Aldertree remained behind to gloat or ruin the Lightwood family some more - who knew? and who cared? - while half his entourage escorted Izzy to the lobby. They were waiting on someone or something, otherwise Izzy would have been moved somewhere more secure, but she didn't speak up. She sat on a sofa and kept her head down and her breathing even, trying to make sense of how everything got so wrong.
Jace's screams, his anguish, his pain still echoed in her head. The grief of waking up and seeing him gone still lingered. She would have nightmares about his face, tear-streaked and tortured, alongside dreams of never seeing her family again.
Poor Alec...what he must be going through...
Her heart broke for what was left of her family. They were never meant to be alone. They were always meant to have each other.
Heels on the tile drew her attention. No one was allowed to get close to her; the wards surrounding hte place with the added glamors made it impossible for any mundane to see what was really going on in the lobby. But Maryse Lightwood wasn't just any mundane. Not yet, at least.
"Would you mind?" she asked the guards standing on either side of Izzy, giving her best Former-Head-of-the-Institute commandeering glare. When Izzy was little, she used to think it was so cool, so impressive that her mother could command men twice her age and size with a single look. Now, she saw it for what it really was: a sad, desperate grasp for power by a sad, desperate woman.
The guards didn't see Maryse that way. They still saw her as the fearsome hardass who used to make them run drills until they dropped. So, the gave the two women some space, standing across the lobby with their eyes averted, pretending like they didn't have their hearing and seeing runes activated.
"Why, Mom?" Izzy asked, hating how desperate she sounded.
She wanted to rage. She wanted to take her mother by the throat and hit her, make her beg forgiveness for betraying her and their family in the worse way possible. But instead, Izzy sat there with her hands in her lap, looking up at the mother who, despite what she said at dinner, never really supported her. Not in the way Izzy wanted, and not in the way she needed either.
What made things worse was that Maryse had the audacity to look torn, to look upset that she had ruined everything, again. And after they had supported her divorce, her exile -
"The Clave offered me a chance at redemption. I had to take it."
"I don't understand."
"I reached out to them about the Shanghai mission. It doesn't exist. They've been watching you and Alec ever since. And then, after what happened with that vampire, what I saw you do..." Maryse didn't have the words. She waved her hand in the air trying to find the right thing to say. And were those...were those tears in her eyes? "You have to understand. I had to report it, Isabelle. I had a responsibility to tell the Clave what I saw."
Well, so much for a foolproof cover. She should have know...she should have known it wouldn't work! Izzy was just so desperate for help, to make everything work that she got sloppy. That was on her. What wasn't on her was her mother's blatant deception. That shouldn't have stung as much as it did. Izzy should have seen this betrayal coming a mile away.
"Was anything you said at dinner even real?"
Maryse remained quiet, her head hung.
Izzy let out a tiny, hysterical laugh. "Unbelievable."
"I didn't think they'd go as far as arrest you. I had no idea - " Maryse cut herself off, wide eyed and scared. Her hand hovered above Izzy's shoulder, afraid to touch. Afraid to get close to the daughter she watched burn a vampire to dust. "What I saw you do, Isabelle...it's not normal. I'm afraid something's wrong. Other people around the Institute noticed you were acting strangely before you left. I reached out to Aldertree when I felt like there were no options left. He said he could help fix you."
"I don't need fixing," Izzy snapped through her tears. "I need my mother."
First Jace, now Maryse...
How much more did Izzy have to lose?
Was this the future Lucifer tried to save her from? Was she a fool for not taking the easy way out? Was she wrong to try to bring the Devil's child into the world? All signs seemed to say yes. Ever since she came back from L.A., nothing had gone right. If only she could close her eyes and take it all back...
...would she?
Would she still have her brother? Her mother? Or would circumstances take them away regardless? Impossible to know. All she knew was that her heart was far more broken than any heart had a right being, and it was only going to get worse.
The elevator dinged and Aldertree and his remaining entourage stepped out. Victory was written over every inch of his smug face. Izzy wanted to smack it off and beat some humility into him.
"Thank you, Maryse," Aldertree addressed the older woman first. Maryse stood at the sound of her name like a dog heeling at its master's feet for scraps. "I'll be sure to pass off what you did here, put in a good word to Imogen and the others."
"And Isabelle?" she asked, darting her eyes back and forth between Izzy and the men surrounding her.
"In light of your recent claims, Miss Lightwood will be taken to Alicante and kept in the Gard." Maryse gasped at the news, and Aldertree raised one hand to assuage her. "Not to fear, it's not all doom and gloom. She will be kept not as a prisoner, but as a patient in an isolation unit in my private facility until we are able to discern the cause of her...affliction."
That did very little to soothe mother and daughter.
Izzy's anxiety started going haywire, the blessing roiling under her skin. She knew the stories of the Gard: those who went in and never came out, the terrors within, the culling of the death row inmates that happened on the courtyard every month. It was not a place of safety and comfort. It was no place to take a child. And yet, Izzy got the distinct feeling that she wouldn't be there long enough to meet her baby; whether that be from escape or death remained to be seen.
"And when you find that affliction, she'll be free to go?"
"That depends entirely on whether or not this affliction will affect other Shadowhunters. And whether or not the Clave rules the murder the vampire formerly known as Heidi as self-defense. I'm sure the New York Clan will have some say in the matter." Aldertree smiled his most political, smarmy smile and rest his hands on Maryse's shoulders. "It's too early to predict anything for certain, but I'll keep you and Robert up to date on any progress."
"Thank you, Victor. Truly."
"No need to mention it." Victor gave another smile, then looked up at the presence of another person. "Ah! There's my portal now. We should be on our way."
Maryse took her cue to leave. She gathered her jacket and her purse, and with one last look back at Izzy, she exited the lobby into the cold night. No parting words, no lingering I love you. Again, Izzy should have expected it. This was her mother, after all. But it still stung to be left behind, fed to the wolves.
I hope it's worth it, Mom, she thought.
Izzy didn't recognize the warlock Aldertree brought with him. Purple spikes lined their arms like a porcupine, bristling as they raised both to summon the portal to Alicante. Strange, that Aldertree wouldn't use a contracted warlock for any Clave-sanctioned dealings, but she believed this mission was Clave-sanctioned about as much as she believed in her chances of returning from the Gard. Which was none, to be clear.
She was completely and utterly fucked.
Her only chance at getting out of this was to pray to Lucifer and have him whisk her away, but that would only put Lucifer in jeopardy. What good was having the Devil on her side if he was imprisoned as well? But she could pray to him, and maybe...maybe he would reach out to Raziel, or her friends, and they could get her out.
Lucifer, she closed her eyes and started praying, hoping this worked. I really hope you hear this, because I need you. I'm -
On fire. She was on fire.
Izzy screamed through the pain as it tore through her hand, up her arm, down her spine. Everywhere her body touched the portal, a skin-splitting, mind-numbing kind of pain that drove her to her knees.
"What the Hell is going on?" Aldertree demanded as Izzy hit the ground, writhing.
"I don't know!" someone shouted.
The hands that reached for her amplified the burning, fiery handprints blazing across her body as they grabbed her.
"Hold her still!"
There was so much pain. Everywhere. Never-ending, scorching, tearing through her nerves, peeling her apart. Suddenly - a pressure in her neck and then a cool pinprick of sensation, a reprieve from the torrent of flames. As the pressure left, it took the flames with it.
When Izzy opened her eyes, she saw a haze of red shimmering in her vision. It rose from her skin and evaporated like mist in the air. No one else seemed to see it; the guards pulled her hands back to her sides as she reached for it.
Guards pulled her up off the ground and onto unsteady feet. Free from pain, the reality set in.
She could touch the portal now. It no longer hurt to be near it, no longer felt a sense of foreboding about Alicante on the other side. There was only one reason for that. Only one reason for the shimmering red only she could see.
Lucifer's blessing was gone.
"What did you do to me?" Izzy asked, proud she kept the tremble out of her voice.
Aldertree fiddled with a syringe, barrel empty, and needle flecked with fresh blood. It was much more gruesome looking than expected. "Gave you a little something I've been working on. I call it Project Heavenly Fire. But never mind that. What I'm far more interested in is what makes you so averse to angelic spaces."
Izzy grit her teeth. She wouldn't give this man anything. "Whatever it was is gone now."
"Are you certain?"
Aldertree looked her up and down in a way that made her skin crawl. If her arms weren't pinned to her sides, she would have reached for her stomach. Thank the Angel for restrains, or else her greatest secret would have been exposed.
Wait...Heavenly Fire...
Was the baby alright? Lucifer was a fallen angel, so would anything heavenly harm the baby? Panic rose along with bile in her throat. She already lost Jace and her mother, she couldn't lose the baby too. No one else...no more...
Izzy tried not to scream or cry or panic as she was shoved through the portal and into Aldertree's prison.