Chapter 5

The party at the Lux had just started when the clock had hit midnight. The music was loud, the drinks flowing like streams in the desert, the drugs just starting to make an appearance, and Lucifer was surrounding himself with the finest that the Los Angeles nightlife had to offer.

Of both types.

He was living the high life…...when he felt it. A jolt of Holiness rippled through this city; a tidal wave so powerful that it nearly sent him hurling his thirty-year whiskey onto the floor. His arm candy looked at him as he stood, wild-eyed and frightened like a deer in the crosshairs of a hunter.

"Honey? What is it?" the brunette asked.

She tried to reach out to him, to bring back down, but he waved her off. He could feel his power flare up in response to the power of Holiness. A dark, suffocating power, unbeholden to his control, pure Unholiness, fell over the club. It seemed as though the dancers and music had slowed down, until they were almost still.

Among the crowd of unholy party seekers, there was a holier-than-thou being, one that he used to be. He held a delicate little glass of champagne, his smirk very infuriating, almost to the point where Lucifer wanted to let that dark power loose just to see that smirk wiped off.

Even if that meant seeing his beloved club crumble around him.

But Lucifer took a deep breath, carefully tightening that leash, quickly reigning in his power. Any tighter and the leash would snap but it would yield to the slightly tightening. He regained his breathing, and despite the yearning of the ladies on the couch, Lucifer swung away from the party and made his way up to his private penthouse. He gestured silently for Mazdikeen to follow him, the headstrong demon immediately dropping the drinks she was making (and the man that was in her basement) and making her way to his side.

The ride up the elevator was a tense one, a trip that he used to stipend the flow of power outward. It was difficult; so much of it building up to an undesirable climax that would ultimately raze the entirety of Los Angeles and the greater western region of the United States. By the time he managed to get everything under control, there was a delicate little ding that came right before the elevator stopped and the doors slid open. He entered his penthouse and went directly to the little bar that he had and chose the strongest liquid he could find. There wasn't much that could make the Devil of all beings drunk but he was sure going to try.

Mazdikeen was there a heartbeat later.

"You felt that, I assume." He said without preamble. Something that was very unlike him. He turned to see his Head Torturer nodding, her face grave.

"The Holy Energy." She said. "Of course. I'm sure that every demon within a thousand miles felt it."

"We'll either have a swarm of demons or a swarm of angels at our doors." Lucifer swallowed the last of the burning liquid that he fondly thought tasted like a weaker form of Hellfire, slamming the glass down angrily. "Both need to be avoided if we're to remain in hiding here."

Maz seductively laid herself out on the bar top but didn't do anything beyond that. Despite the unworldly beauty she possessed, it wasn't a shock that most men came forward only to be thrown off balance by her deadly and predatorial skills. "You said you encountered a heavenly host the other day?"

"Nothing more than a carrier pigeon."

"But she wielded a sword that once belonged to a principality?"

"With the skills and speed to match."

It took him so long that Lucifer could've hit himself in his stupidity. But any thought that came to his mind about it, another doubt popped up. It didn't make any sense that the Archangels would promote a being that they saw as below them, even if it was one of their own. His own memory on how his fellow brothers and sisters treated those even only half a rank below them were still shockingly clear.

There was no way angelic being, a messenger no doubt, would be entrusted a mission such as this to someone with such inexperience….

"Bless it!" he hissed.

Mazdikeen turned her head curiously.

"Don't you see?" Lucifer insisted with vehemence. He worried for a brief moment that he looked like a raving lunatic but he was lucky to be among a friend that understood her. When it appeared that his unspoken insistence wasn't clicking with his torturer, he sighed heavily and continued, "The Demon and that little Principality that helped stop the Apocalypse have taken in a little pigeon."

Maz look even more disbelieving. "Do you really think that the spineless snake was able to convince a messenger to take out the Devil himself?"

"No. Crawly is…. persuasive but he believes himself too good to put such innocent lives in danger." Lucifer spat. He sighed. "Whatever the cause or whoever is behind this will just have to wait. We'll just have to cage the little pigeon before she gets blown too far-off course."

"And how do you propose we do that? I'm all for dangerous situations, but a Messenger that probably has some hidden abilities? No thank you."

"Then we'll just have set a trap. Though how we'll do it is the question."

"We could lead Chloe Decker that way. Get the pigeon to panic and make a mistake."

Lucifer immediately waved the suggestion away. "I don't want her hurt."

"Well, it's either her or someone else, and if it's someone else, then I'll have no problem letting that person getting fed to the wolves, so to speak. Which will incur more wrath from heaven." Maz made her way towards the elevator.

"Wait." He called back, damning himself back to his kingdom as the torturer halted in her track. "I'll manipulate the scenes as soon as I can."

Maz smirked. "Then I'll prepare my tools."

"Try not hurt her too much, Maz. We want to get as much information out of her as possible but not kill her."

"Where's the fun in that?" The demoness called as the elevator doors slid shut.

Lucifer poured himself another glass of whiskey. He was awarded some peace and quiet for a few moments before the elevator door opened up again and this time, Amenadiel, sauntered out. His face mirrored Lucifer's own turbulent feelings but more importantly, looked as though he was fuming.

"What happened?" The Throne boomed. When Lucifer looked away, sipping his drink, Amenadiel found his way to set himself in the front of the Devil's gaze. "I felt something, Lucifer. Holy Energy. It rippled through the city and then I felt yours in response. Though it wasn't as great."

"Is there a point to this, brother dear?"

"My point, is that there is something other than a Messenger lurking about here in this city."

"I told you what I saw, Amenadiel. There's no mistaking that the being I saw, the being that attacked me, was a messenger."

Amenadiel gave a heavy laugh. "You're hilarious, Luci. A Messenger wouldn't have the ability to do something like that without burning herself up from the inside. No, this has to be either a Principality or an Archangel."

Lucifer swallowed a large gulp of whisky, large enough that any human would've been flat on their back in a matter of seconds, to stifle his fury. "If it was either of those things, I would've felt them as soon as they entered the city. And wouldn't they have come to you first? Our Holier-than-thou siblings wouldn't miss a chance to show off and gloat to the Oldest and Most Beloved of the Angels."

"You have a point." The Oldest gestured to the former Morningstar, his eyes transfixed on the whiskey bottle. Lucifer gave his brother a mocked surprised look as he grabbed hold of another glass and Amenadiel some. Once his oldest had some of that liquid fire in his gullet, Amenadiel looked a little more relaxed. The two beings sat there in silence, listening to the sounds of the party that still raged down a floor below them.

"What if Gabriel's behind all of this?" Amenadiel chanced.

"Well, if it's not Crawly, then it's most certainly Gabriel, but we won't know for sure until we snare the little thing that wants to play 'warrior'."

"You're not going to hurt her, are you?"

Lucifer diverted his eyes, eyeing the amber liquid at the bottom of his glass.

"Luci…."

"I'm not going to hurt her too much. Just…. I'm just going to persuade her to tell us why she's here and who tasked her."

Amenadiel still didn't look too convinced at his words, but held out his glass for another shot. Lucifer was more than happy to obliged. But while the alcohol was enough to loosen the tension in his shoulders, the thoughts and fears of what loomed over his head was enough from keeping him nodding off in a drunken stupor. He wondered, with a small amount of fear he hadn't felt since his banishment from the Silver City, if this little pigeon was a hawk in disguise.