A/N: Woohoo! Another chapter at the ready for you and I'm super excited to share! I had an absolute blast writing this! Grab yourself some popcorn and I hope you enjoy the read!
Recommended Songs:
Dead Melodies & Zenjungle - The Lowering
Metatron Omega - Arhontes
Genitorturers - Lecher Bitch
Mindwarden - Ethereal Land
Chapter 21 – Hunt
[Dead Melodies & Zenjungle - The Lowering]
"This is mind-boggling! Why am I not wreaking havoc on this bastard's personal belongings, but am looking through the drawers of a child's desk while being watched by a bloody army of toys?" Lucifer cringed as he looked over his shoulder towards the shelves, scrutinising the rows of puppets and plush animals.
He had hoped to be going through some sort of valuable collection he could destroy, perhaps draw ugly moustaches all throughout the man's photos on the walls, make a mess out of his closet by pairing up wrong socks or scratching his car. Unfortunately Lucifer could do none of the above, because, as it turned out, there was no valuable collection, no egocentric photos on the walls, the socks all had the same dull, muddy-brown colour, and there was no car in the garage either that he could properly vandalise. The Devil felt powerless.
"Ella and Dan are handling the search in the living room. They're focusing on the items there. I want us to find out more about the girl and why it's looking like this room isn't used. This just doesn't feel right," she added the last bit with a thoughtful murmur as she looked through the cupboard with books, toys and handicraft materials.
"It's the room of a little girl. What on earth do you expect to find out here, Detective? That she is secretly hiding sweets under her bed? Or that she got an F in arts class? I mean, I'm not pretending to be as talented as Michelangelo, but this young lady is really stretching the limits of the phrase 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder', don't you think?" Lucifer complained, picking up a drawing of wildly scribbled figures from one of the drawers of the desk.
"Lucifer," Chloe almost whined, stepping over to him and taking the drawing out of his hands. "She's a child. Cut her some slack. Besides, it can't be any worse than your hilarious stick figures—" But that was when she looked at it and paused in bafflement. "Oh, wow. Yeah, alright, that… that is quite weird. Are those… blue people?" Squinting her eyes she tilted her head as if a changed perspective would make the drawing's motif any clearer. It didn't. Snapping out of it, she shook her head. "Okay, whatever. The point is, we could learn more about this girl's family and their lives, maybe there's even a clue as to where everyone is right now. So let's take a good look around…"
"Fine then," he grumbled with slight annoyance and carelessly skimmed through another one of the drawers from the little girl's desk. After a few moments of pushing aside more drawings that offended his eyesight, he found a little book, conveniently labelled All My Beautiful Secrets. "Ah-ha!" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Why, wouldn't you look at that! A book of secrets that's even got a lock on it! I'm curious as to what nasty little secrets we will uncover from this little imp!" he purred gleefully and pinched the tiny lock between his fingers, easily cracking it. Spotting the disapproving look and the annoyed eye-roll of Chloe he pursed his lips. "What? You said you want to learn more about her, so what's a better way then to read what she's written in her diary? Can't get much more personal than that."
Eyes squinting, Chloe sighed. The intrusion of the girl's diary was, while truly going against her own liking, quite possibly the best way to learn more about her - Lucifer was right. But what she was not going to allow was to give Lucifer the chance to make fun of the writing of the girl, now that he had already made fun of her drawing skills. "Give me that," she muttered, quickly snatching the book from his hands and starting to read.
"Dear diary, today's visit was really tough. Doctor Jacob was nice, but the procedure was super exhausting and gave me a headache. Mom made me my favourite dish: Spaghetti with uncle Pete's secret family sauce. She said I need to eat more so that I have enough strength for the next surgery. It was delicious! But then later on I heard mom and dad arguing. Dad doesn't trust Doctor Jacob… He says he could probably treat me better himself, but the hospital doesn't let him. That makes him angry. And when he's angry he argues even more with mom. I wish they would stop and just be happy again."
Jumping a few pages forward, Chloe continued with another entry.
"Dear diary, I don't know what to do! Mom and dad were arguing again, but this time it was so much worse! They were yelling and screaming at each other and I was so scared. I heard mom cry and then the door slammed with a bang. I saw her run to the car and then she drove away! She left! I heard them shout my name and something about my treatment. I know she left because of me! Because I'm not healthy like the other kids… I hate this! Why can't I be like the other kids?! If I were healthy, dad would stop being so angry and mom would probably be happy too."
Flipping through another handful of pages, she went on once again.
"Dear diary, I'll have to go back to the hospital for another surgery tomorrow… I asked dad if mom could come and stay at the hospital with me, but he avoided answering me. I wish mom would be here. I miss her so much. She comes to spend time with me, but it's only every week or two. When I ask mom if she will come back home, she says that it's complicated. And when I ask dad, he says that mom doesn't support him in his work to help me get better. I think they both don't tell me the truth. Dad keeps telling me that he'll make sure that the surgery will go well, that it will fix everything. That HE will fix everything… I hope that's true because I hate hospitals."
Turning over to the next page, Chloe swallowed and looked back up at Lucifer. "That's the last entry. It's from six months ago…"
Lucifer mimicked her thick swallow, his eyes turning glassy. "How horribly sad. First she's suffering from an illness and needs to go from one surgery to the next and then the bloody incompetent parents leave her feeling like their problems are the girl's fault. And now it appears she might have not made it."
"It doesn't have to be like that," Chloe slowly tried to reason, but she was hardly able to convince herself of that.
"You said it yourself though, Detective. Look around. This room doesn't look like it's being actively lived in and it could very well be, because the girl is actually dead."
"You're right. It would explain it, of course, although, still, it's not bulletproof evidence." Releasing a sigh, she bit her lower lip in thought and walked a few steps through the room. "But let's say you're right. What if this is even the reason for everything? I mean, yes, perhaps that demon is also involved, but what if the girl's death is what initiated the demon possession in the first place?"
Lucifer observed her, intrigued by her line of thought and following it along as well. "You mean that because his daughter died, our guy might have wanted to kill himself, which enabled the possession? Perhaps he truly thought he was going to heaven before everything went down south, so to speak. Azrael said that he was really calm and looked almost eager to leave the earthly plane after he died. Maybe that was because he thought he'd be reunited with his daughter."
"And then he got possessed exactly while he was being revived," she finished, the puzzle pieces of the chains of events becoming clearer. "But what about the whole creating new angels thing? Is that coming from Glover's crazy mind or is it something the demon makes him do?"
"I'm not sure. Both options would seem plausible… As far as you can say that this madness is plausible at all…" Lucifer muttered. He thought of Flora and Tamiel, of their gruesome murder and the horror that came with the Butcher's torments. No matter if the work of a demon was involved and no matter how they could elaborate the reasons behind the madman's actions, he still felt the overwhelming urge to give this lowlife a proper payback from the Devil.
"Chloe! Lucifer!" the voice of Ella rang excitedly from the living room.
After bagging the girl's diary and handing it over to one of the other forensics, they joined Ella and Dan. Ella had a big photo album splayed out on the table while next to it Dan was skimming through a folder. "Hey, Ella, what did you find?" Chloe asked, curiously looking over Ella's shoulder.
"Sick. Psycho. Scratching," she empathised each word, pointing at the images as she flipped through the album.
The photographs showed a younger Glover in his twenties with a blonde woman at his side around the same age. She seemed like a good looking person, but it was difficult to tell that about her face, because that was the section of her that was viciously scratched out in photographs where she appeared. As Ella flipped on further, there was a big segment in the album showing wedding pictures with the woman's face being scratched out as well.
"We just found the girl's diary in which she wrote about her parents' heavy arguing and the mother leaving," Chloe said, feeling a knot of concern in her stomach.
"I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm gonna say that there is a disturbing possibility that this butchering bastard might have gone the extra mile and got rid of his wife," Lucifer pointed out. "He's been particularly pedantic with the scratching. That's never a good sign. Trust me, I know."
He was right. This was quite an extreme sign of pent up aggression. "I hope we quickly get a life-sign from the wife, because if something has triggered him in his anger, then maybe he really went a step further than to just scratch out her face from his photo albums…"
"Guys," Dan spoke up next to them, opening the U-bolt of the folder he was looking through and taking out a particular page. "That's a bill from the USC's own medical store over a wheelchair."
"Dios mío!" Ella mouthed, taking the bill from him and looking at the details of the receipt. "It's the same brand and size we found at the Griffith Observatory!"
Chloe's mind was running a hundred miles an hour. "Glover's daughter was sick. Maybe due to her illness she required a wheelchair. It could've been for her. If that's the case, then Glover didn't have to steal the wheelchair from the hospital or buy it online. He'd gotten it officially for his daughter." Her phone pulled her attention away as it buzzed with an incoming call. Checking the display, she saw it's the station. "Decker," she answered tensely. "Lieutenant. - You did? - Oh… Okay… - When did it happen? - Okay… And are there any news on the mother yet? - I see… Okay, thank you, sir. Bye."
Having observed her answering Chloe's Lieutenant, Lucifer pinned her with curious eyes. "What did he say?"
Taking a deep breath, Chloe looked back at him, saddened. "The girl's name was Samantha. She died about six months ago. One day after her last diary entry actually," she explained, her chest aching with the thought of the poor little girl's fate. "She didn't make it through that surgery she wrote about. There had been complications… She died on the operating table. She was just ten years old…"
The tension of curiosity and the excitement of news dropped with a twist of dismay in Lucifer's expression. The little girl had died. She hadn't died to the hands of her crazy father it seemed, but she did die nonetheless. A little girl that was even younger than the Detective's spawn. Despite having wished unfathomable pain and suffering to Glover, he now found himself devastated over the death of the daughter. Another innocent, far too young, who was forcefully pulled from this world.
"I think we were right. I think this incident did something to Glover… Samantha died six months ago… The hospital's file said Glover was fired two and a half months ago after several accusations of malpractice," Chloe said her detective brain clicked in once more.
"So he's had accusations happen after his daughter died," Lucifer murmured, his jaw tensing with frustration and anger. "But that's not an excuse for what he did, only an explanation to perhaps the beginnings of him spiralling out of control. We need to find him. We need to stop him, because we know what his next point is on his to-do-list, Detective."
"I know, Lucifer. And we will," she said reassuringly, reaching out and giving his arm a light squeeze. Turning towards Ella, she went on in full focus. "Okay, Ella, was there any useful evidence or test results from the swipe of the Griffith Observatory?"
"Well, let's see. We did find partials on the wheelchair. So, if we match those, I guess they could give an applicable connection towards Glover and the crime scene, in addition to the recipe. The blanket we found had bloodstains from the victim and the ME report confirmed what we already predicted: Firstly the CoD was exsanguination and secondly, there were traces of high amounts of decamethonium as well as zolpidem found in her system. So, just like Lucifer, she was physiologically rendered immobile, while staying fully aware during her suffering, and the zolpidem was used to knock her out when the Butcher needed her to be imperceptive. But there were no traces of GHB found, meaning she was probably not pushed to tell him something."
"And the stab wound on her neck?" Chloe asked, taking in the information that unfortunately didn't tell them a whole lot that could be used to find Glover so far.
"Turns out the stab was pretty accurate, cutting through her carotid. Analysis has shown that the weapon must've been a thicker type of knife, six and a half inches long."
"But do we have anything on where he could be right now? Anything on where I had been taken?!" Lucifer grunted, frustrated and began pacing through the room.
"No, not really. I'm so sorry, Lucifer," Ella frowned.
"Let's go through what we've got on the place then," Dan suggested, pushing for a positive attitude. "Lucifer, give us a rundown."
Taking a deep breath, he felt his throat tighten in discomfort of recalling the place of his torture, but he knew it was a necessary evil and, if he had listened correctly to his doctor, going through this process again and again would help him deal with it better each time. Seeing Chloe immediately step up closer to his side, supporting her in his personal space with her presence, he gave her a short but warm and thankful smile. She truly was the best partner he could think of and he knew he would never be able to understand how he could be so lucky that she loved him.
"Fine…" he began, picturing himself in the room. "The room I was in had white tiling on the walls and the floor, and there were painfully bright lights on the ceiling. The walls had some metallic tables and a sink lined up along them, similar to the metallic trolley that was next to me with that imbecile's torture instruments on it."
"Hm…. Okay. And do you remember there being any windows at all?" Dan went on, focused.
In front of his inner eyes, Lucifer managed to easily walk through the room, just like he had done before with Chloe's help. It was still half-blurry, but it was much less frightening now than before. "No. I think there actually were none."
"What about sounds and smells? Anything standing out that you recall?"
"Well I guess there was the taste and smell of my own blood in the air and in my mouth…" he began with a bitter grimace, "but I could also smell something biting. Like chemicals or one of those cleansing agents you sometimes smell in Miss Lopez' lab."
The Latina immediately jumped up on the mention of her and her lab. "Chemicals? Cleansing agents? That's a huge clue, Lucifer!"
Surprised and somewhat doubtful, he exchanged a wondrous look with Chloe before raising his brows at Ella curiously. "It is?"
Excited, Ella smiled widely at him, grasped the side of his arms and pulled Lucifer into a bear-hug. "Yes! Oh my gosh, that is SO helpful! Can't you see? This reduces the spectrum of places you could've been taken to massively!" Pulling back, she began to elaborate, "A room that's tiled not only on the floor but also the walls, usually is used for rooms that need special, easy and regular cleaning. Combining this with the fact that you smelled something as distinguishable as chemicals or cleansing agents, it supports that theory even further."
"That's true," Dan agreed, supportingly. "And bright lights, metallic tables and a sink? That jolts some pretty distinct ideas for a room. A laboratory maybe, perhaps a place in a factory, something very clean and sterile like in the food production."
An odd feeling began to stir inside Lucifer's gut. A nervousness of sorts. A hint. There was something just outside of his reach. He could feel the answer at the tip of his tongue, but the dots in his head just didn't seem to fully connect to form a realisation just yet. "Yes… yes… something like that. I think you're onto something there, Daniel," he muttered, trying hard to dig into that dark spot of his memory, but nothing came to the surface. Sighing, he shook his head, frustrated once again with him being unable to contribute more to the case. "Bloody hell, I just don't know what this Dad-damn place was!"
Chloe's chest tightened from the sympathy she felt for him. It was hard to see how frustrated he was. That he was so close to retrieve another piece of memory that could be the key to solving the case, but the penny just didn't want to drop for him. And with lives at stake, his patience was, understandably, running thin. "It's okay, Lucifer. The memories you re-acquired are already able to help us quite a bit," she assured him with a soft smile before turning to the others. "Let's specify the search a little more on Glover. We have to find out if Glover has any ties to or direct ownership in laboratories, food production companies, anything that's working in rather sterile-looking rooms. We have to go deep, talking with neighbours, friends, relatives, anyone who's got a connection to him who could know something about this room where Lucifer had been taken to. And on the top list, we need to find Glover's wife."
"Then let's see if we can help find her as she seems to be the most probable way to find out about that bloody git!" Lucifer exclaimed matter-of-factly and as if this had not already been exactly what Chloe had just said, and stormed towards the door. Just as he was about to head out though, he stopped and turned towards his friends, his voice dropping with insecurity. "How exactly are we supposed to find her?"
Keeping her features in check and not letting an eye-roll slip, Chloe smiled at him softly instead. "Well, we keep searching for any clues in the house, ask the neighbours. You name it. And we also have that search being put out from the station which could help speed things up. I mean, for all we know, maybe she knew Glover was going mad and she wanted to get away from him without being able to be found by him again."
"You mean that she might've actually wanted to disappear?" he chimed, his gears turning. Not a split second later his face glowed with a radiant smile. "Well that's excellent, Detective!"
Eyes widening, Chloe's head tilted in wonder. Now it was her moment of being utterly confused. "It is?"
"Well, of course it is! It will be so much easier to find her now, because if she really wanted to disappear and had some money on her hands, which, by the looks of this house she clearly did, then she probably went to the one person in town who's currently the go to when it comes to fake IDs." Lucifer's smile stayed as he retrieved his phone from his jacket's pocket, pausing at the open-mouthed stare of Chloe. "What? Are you seriously surprised, Detective?" With his right eyebrow cocked at her, his question hung in the air, challengingly.
Tongue pressing against the side of her mouth, Chloe's eyes narrowed. He had a point of course. As always. Why was she surprised? He had told her about the five people he had granted a favour for, if they'd provide him with information about his wings. "Is that person part of your Dubious Five you hired to find your wings?"
"No, but come to think of it, it would probably be smart to involve dear Neil in people's searches from now on!" Dialling a number from his address book, he waited until the call was picked up. "Hello, Neil. It's me, Lucifer. How's the business?" he purred with his Cheshire Cat smirk, continuing to hum while the man at the other end started to curse exasperatedly. "Yeah, it's been a while hasn't it?" Another wave of yells and curses blared through the speaker. "Oh come on! Me and my brother barging in wasn't really destroying your ridiculous charade as a pious and diligent mortician, was it? I know you're still the number one when it comes to freshening up some personal papers. And as a matter of fact, I am on the lookout for someone who might've gotten a new batch from you, so I need every information you have and remember about her." Neil whistled with a snarky response, but Lucifer kept his cool, his voice like velvet, but with a spicy edge of astuteness to it. "Why should you help me? I mean, I could pass you over to my dear friends from the LAPD…" Intentionally trailing off and exchanging a look with Chloe, he heard Neil quickly doubling down. "Yeah… I thought as much. Perfect. It's settled then. Alright. Hold on a second…"
Heedlessly pushing Ella aside to step at the big photo album on the table, he energetically browsed to the back of the album and stopped at a picture of the scratchy-faced wife during some sort of party. The last and presumably most recent photo of her in the album. Taking a picture of it, he sent it to Neil's phone. "I just sent you a picture of her. Mind you though, her face is a bit scratchy. Take a look." Flashing a curious-looking Chloe a confident smile, he waited for a reply from Neil. When he eventually heard a mumbling from him, Lucifer followed up and put him on speaker, "Spill it, Neil. Everything."
"Umm… yeah, so… It's not like I have big chit chats with my clients, so I don't know her story, obviously. On her old ID it said her name is Michelle Glover. Forty-two years old. Blonde hair, blue eyes. Looked pretty upper class. Made her a whole new set. Birth certificate, Social Security, ID, you name it."
"And with what name did you polish up her papers?" Chloe chimed in, clearly disturbing Neil in his previously rather carefree, criminal effusions.
"Answer her, Neil…" Lucifer reinforced with a warning grumble in his tone.
"Alright, alright! I gave her the name Trisha Brooks. I asked her if she wants to be fully relocated somewhere in the US, but she said that it's fine to leave the residence somewhere in LA, just not her old address. I think she didn't want to fully disappear. Ya know… Some folks just want to disappear for a particular person… She didn't seem like she wanted to take the next plane to Miami, if you know what I mean…"
Chloe took a deep breath. Neil was quite right. If she really wanted to get away, she could've changed her papers to settle in Florida, but she chose not to and she had a pretty good idea why that was. "Did you change her looks?"
"Um… yeah. She came pretty unprepared to me. Clearly she had not much of an idea what it needed to forge papers, so I gave her a wig from my stash and took a photo of her. Wavy, shoulder-long, dark brown hair. Really accentuated her eyes—"
Leaning to the speaker, Lucifer cut him off with a purr. "Send us the picture. Actually, send us everything you gave her, too."
"What?! No! If I do that and you find her because of that, she will know it's because I blabbed and what am I supposed to do if word goes around that I work with the police?!"
While Chloe felt her body tense up, worried that they could have this person's information slipping out of their fingers for good if Neil would just hang up and disappear, Lucifer was more than confident to hammer home to Neil that there was no way he could weasel his way out of this situation.
"Neil… Neil… my dear, virginal nerd of a forger with an ever-lasting incapability of tying your ties like a real man," Lucifer purred, his insults dripping from his lips like a honey-flavoured poison. "Are you aware that my range of contacts by far outmatches yours and that the word from the actual Devil has unfathomable more weight than yours?" He let his words hang in the air like a Damocles Sword from Hell, his head hovering above his cell phone like a wild predator, waiting and watching its prey.
He wasn't nervous that Neil would remain defensive. He knew he would cave in, because reputation was Neil's livelihood and it could be ruined by him not only much faster than from Michelle Glover, but also irreversibly so. And just as Lucifer predicted, after a few silent seconds in which he was sure Neil was grinding his teeth and fuming with anger, he caved in.
"Okay okay okay! Shit! Hrmph! You're gonna be the death of me, Goddammit!"
Another moment of quiet followed, although it was no real silence. Neil continued to curse, but he sounded like he muttered from a bit further away. Something rustled and Neil's breath was loud and heavy again while Lucifer's phone binged with incoming pictures.
"There you go. That's all I've got. Will you now please leave me be?!"
Holding the phone towards Chloe, he let her take a look at the pictures and when she nodded back at him, he quipped at Neil in a cooing tone, "Thank you very much for your cooperation, Neil. I'll leave you be, for now. Doesn't mean we won't see each other again, though. If not up top, then maybe down below someday. Until then, you four-eyed cucumber." Tapping the red button, he smiled at Chloe triumphantly. "See? So much easier, isn't it?"
"Much easier," Chloe agreed, smiling back at him warmly. Another smart move by him, albeit slightly dubious once again, but she didn't mind too much and was actually rather impressed by the power Lucifer held over the criminal with only the weight of his reputation. "Now we can search for her not only with an old image of her but also with her new looks. It seems though, she really just wanted to get away from her husband… but still be close to where her little girl is buried."
The group fell in a moment of unanimous grief and sympathy. A case where kids were involved, no matter how much and in what way, was always so much more affecting and heartbreaking. It was much more difficult to keep your head clear and your thoughts logical, and at times emotions would get the better of you.
"So let's get on with the search then," Dan suggested quietly, the gloomy mood still hanging in the air amongst them. "Let's check with the neighbours first."
Agreeing with him, they all spread out from the house, left and right on both sides of the street to ask every neighbour up towards the next street crossing about Glover and his family. It took them another two hours until they had spoken with every neighbour in the near vicinity. Most of them had no knowledge of the Glover family whatsoever. A few of the neighbours told them that they had only fleeting contact through some casual chit chats, but none said they had a stronger neighbourly friendship. Two neighbours mentioned they had heard the adults repeatedly shout at each other, when Michelle had still lived in the house. When asked if they knew where the wife might have gone or if they had heard Glover talking about other real estate, they all denied.
At the end of the day they unfortunately had not found out about the whereabouts of Michelle or about another place Glover might be owning or having access to. To help widen the search with his own resources, Lucifer called out for his Dubious Five as Chloe had called them (although he commented it was probably more fitting to call them his Dubious Four now, given that Gregor Ivanov was out of the picture). Involving them in the search for Michelle Glover aka Trisha Brooks meant another opportunity for a favour from the Devil and so they all happily obliged to Lucifer's request.
Exhausted from the long day, having endured the find of a murdered angel, the search at the crime scene for evidence, the examination of personnel files at the hospital and now a thorough house search at the killer's place, the team eventually parted ways with high hopes for the next day to bring them the information and person they were looking for to find Glover.
[Metatron Omega - Arhontes]
The air around Maze got colder with every step she made and the further on she went into the vast area of the Silent Rifts, the more the air reeked from the stench of her cousins.
Her cousins were not really comparable to her own demonic origin, that of the Lilim. Not only were they looking rotten in their natural demonic forms, but they appeared actually monstrous. They were deformed, had completely different types of physiques and were oftentimes equipped with several sets of claws, wings, tails and fangs. There was hardly any feature of them that could be seen as even remotely humanoid.
With her siblings it was difficult enough to have a normal conversation and gather useful information, but with her cousins it would be a Herculean task. They were mentally less evolved, unable to stick to a thought or topic for longer than a few seconds, too much driven and overwhelmed by their brutish impulses and instincts to feast and destroy. Talking was not at all on their list of talents and for some of her cousins it was not even a physical capability they had.
Alastor however was different. His special cursing aura was only one of the things that set him apart from his degenerative, monstrous brothers and sisters. He was also much smarter which made him a little less predictable, and thus more dangerous.
Maze knew that if she were to encounter him in hell, she would need to be extra careful.
A rumble of growls and howls, pulled her attention to the spiked, sharp ridges and ledges to her right. She spotted small movements, veiled by the stark blacks and dark blues of the landscape, and for a split second, she saw several red-orange spots glowing up before vanishing again in the shadows.
Her presence had not stayed unnoticed.
Soft sounding steps rushed onwards and stopped when she had caught up with the entities again. The howling and growling began anew and when the glints of red-orange appeared once more as well, thick, beastly heads emerged from the shadows, revealing them to be sets of wild, glowing eyes from houndish creatures.
Varcolacs. A particularly nasty type of hellhound that functioned as a welcome committee of the Silent Rifts, meaning that perhaps her cousins already knew she was here.
"Great," Maze ground her teeth, her muscles tensing as she stopped and faced the hounds.
The Varcolacs worked as a pack, knowing by nature their hierarchy and purpose within their group. There were grunts, chasing their prey until it was either making a mistake or simply too tired to escape. There were scrappers, true brutes on the field, bigger and heavier than their fellow specimen, skilled at pulling and tearing apart whatever their vigorous jaws could clench down on. And lastly there was the alpha. Leaner built than the scrappers but much wittier than the others together, it led the pack from the back, directing its orders in core-trembling barks and howls.
Their physiques, while having certain dog-looking traits like pawed, four legs, tail, pointy ears and snout, really almost made them look more like hyenas. Hyenas on steroids and coming from Hell. Their fur was black and short, and only existed along the top of their heads and along the rim of their neck up to their withers. The rest of their body was black skin, shimmering in the gloomy light of hell and displaying their accentuated packs of muscles. Their heads were very different from dogs though. With twisted nostrils like that of a gator, they pumped hot clouds of breath into the ash-rain, and the drawn-back cheeks with thin membranes at the sides, revealed not only rows of razor-sharp teeth, but also an orange glow that seemed to stem from the back of their maws.
This was what truly made them hellhounds. They could spit fire.
There were five hounds that began to surround her and Maze calmly weighed her options. She was strong and fast, but depending on the size of the pack, Varcolacs were nothing to joke about. Five of them however she considered feasible to handle. But just when she widened her stance and lowered her body in a predator-like preparation to pounce, several more glowing eyes appeared in the shadows, revealing that there was an additional group of three Varcolacs.
"You want some, huh? Come get it!" Maze growled, reaching behind herself to draw her daggers. Unlike some smaller creatures in Hell, she was not one to run from a good fight.
[Genitorturers - Lecher Bitch]
With a loud howl, the alpha announced the opening of the fight. Its conspecifics leaped down the ledges with wild barks, their long pointy tails slapping from side to side, their teeth and claws glistening sharp. Maze quickly took note of how there were five grunts and two scrappers surrounding her, and the alpha not yet making a sign of joining the direct confrontation. He was letting his mates do the work. The hounds used their advantage of having surrounded her and lunged at her from all sides.
Her own teeth bared, Maze swirled around, arms outstretched, slashing the blades like a whirlwind of death. Her timing perfect, her daggers landed a slicing hit on four of her attackers. The hounds yelped and whined, making several steps back and licking their bleeding snouts. But the other Varcolacs were unscathed and thus unimpressed by her attack. Snapping at her arms, and ankles, they tried fiercely on getting her to fall to the ground.
Making a quick step into an open space, Maze sneered, the pained whines of the hounds she had hit like music in her ears. Turning, she launched a powerful sidekick at a jumping Varcolac and smashed it with a crunching sound against the nearest wall. Watching the hound from the corner of her eye, she spotted it getting back on its feet, but the creature's left front leg was limping as it tried to return into the field of action. Upset at stumbling on its way though, the Varcolac growled lowly in the back of its throat and tilted his head back.
Maze noticed the glowing orange from the hounds maw becoming brighter. Suddenly its head lowered again, its jaw stretched wide open. A wave of hot whites, oranges and reds emerged and with a roar, the hound spit a roaring ball of fire towards her.
Just in time, she managed to jump to the side, feeling the smouldering heat as it barely passed her waist. Hissing she saw that the flames had burned a hole in her leather top. "That was my fucking favourite! Raaaaaargh!" Slashing out at the Varcolacs around her, she closed the distance to the limping hound. Telling by the slender physique of it, it seemed to be a grunt.
Skilfully dashing from side to side and avoiding the other creatures' attacks, she lunged out at the wounded grunt. It tried jumping backwards, its big teeth bared, the hairs on its neck rising, knowing about its compromised position, but Maze redirected her aim. Her daggers slashed from left to right all over the hounds chest.
Releasing a high-pitched yelp, the Varcolac stumbled backwards. Hot, red blood gushed from the cuts, glistening as it covered the creature's chest and ran down along its thick legs. But a second later, its slender body collapsed with a grunt, the wounds too severe for it to stay upright.
One down, six more to go…
The other Varcolacs went even more furious as they spotted their fellow specimen on the ground and positioned themselves once more in a circle around her, all of their maws beginning to glow from the building heat inside their throats.
"Shit…"
Balls of fire shot towards her like a meteor shower raining sideways. Heels digging into the ground, she pushed herself up into the air in a graceful back flip, the heat simmering the soles of her boots as she turned. Using her momentum and her new positioning to her advantage, she struck out from behind at two hounds, another grunt and a scrapper. Hissing through the air, her daggers cut along the backs of them and both Varcolacs turned and lashed out their claws at her with a wounded yelp. One set of claws managed to dig into her right calf, but the pain didn't cloud her perception or hinder her movements. In fact, her body was so used to pain, both in handing it out and experiencing it firsthand, it was embracing it as a part of itself.
Smirking, Maze sent her daggers down in vicious swipes, left and right, crossing them midair and thrusting them forward. The two close hounds stood no chance to Maze's onslaught of attacks and took various hits all over their bodies, across their snouts, their shoulders, backs, legs and tails. The grunt retreated with the last of its remaining strength, stumbling several metres away from the fight, but its cowardice was not being tolerated by the alpha in the background. It jumped off its overseeing ledge and launched at the grunt's throat, growling and huffing as its teeth sunk into its flesh.
The grunt's legs kicked, its body twisting in its pointless fight to come free from its leader's judgement. With a strangled last whine, the hound stilled. The alpha's head turned towards its other pack members, a silent, warning glare that this fight was to the death and a cowardly retreat was out of the question. And the other pack members understood, snapping their eyes immediately back on Maze and lunging towards her with wide open, spit-dripping maws and shimmering, drawn claws.
The one closest to her, a bulky scrapper, jumped at her, but instead of burying its teeth into her, it used its broad frame to tackle her. Feeling like a truck had just hit her full-front, Maze was thrust backwards. She grunted as the air was knocked out of her lungs by the hard impact and came to a sliding halt on the ashen ground.
"That enough, you stupid fucking mutts!" Arching her back, she swung her legs and jumped back onto her feet, only to throw herself right back on top of the scrapper that had tackled her. Straddling the Varcolac and keeping its legs pressed to the ground, she slung an arm around its throat and pulled and bent its head towards her. Making sure the hound could not snap back at her, she used the access to its exposed throat and slashed over it in one smooth swipe.
The Varcolac burbled and grunted, twitching and kicking, twisting and turning under Maze's bodyweight, but to no avail, and with a forceful stab from the left side into the hounds chest, the muscles beneath her slacked and stilled. The creature's tongue slipped from its maw, its head resting sideways in the rubble. The glowing in the back of its throat died just like the one in its eyes.
That makes two… Three, counting the coward taken out from their boss… This is taking a bit longer than I thought… I hope Amenadiel doesn't saunter into this region despite my warning, just because he has ants in his pants… Gotta hurry this up a bit…
Arms and hands covered in Varcolac-blood, the thick, warm liquid dripping from her fingers, she got back up on her feet and squared her shoulders.
"Come on, puppies! Let's get this over with! How about I snuff you next, hm?" she taunted the alpha and raced over towards it, skilfully dodging the attacks of the other hounds in her path.
A pack without a leader would be less of a hassle to deal with and easier to scare away. So it was time to get this over with.
[Mindwarden - Ethereal Land]
After Ella had called during their drive back home, telling Lucifer that the ME had given his clearance on Tamiel's body, he stayed quiet for the rest of the ride and the pain of Lucifer's loss of a family member hung oppressively in the air. When they arrived at her apartment, Chloe asked him if he wanted to stay at her place to which he merely replied a quiet 'Sure.' and followed her inside with a gloomy expression. With the rush of events of the day, there had been hardly enough time to truly reflect on what had happened, let alone cope with emotions that had been thrust at them both without a warning.
Guiding him to sit on the couch, Chloe poured them both a glass of whisky from the bottle he had insisted on storing at her place for 'moments when wine is simply not the appropriate beverage to help cope with a situation'. Smiling to herself at the memory of his words and the heartwarmingly serious expression he had worn, she settled down next to him and handed him his glass. She did recognise the little twitch of his lips, a smile he wanted to show because she knew he was thankful over her gesture, but that he was unable to fully reveal with the emotional weight that pulled him down.
"I'll bury her," he mouthed after another long moment of silence, staring into the mesmerising flames of her fake fireplace without even having taken a sip from his drink.
Her chest clenched in sympathy. Not knowing what to say, she gently leaned against him and took his free hand into hers, lightly squeezing. He felt cold. He hadn't eaten anything since this morning and, although she knew he didn't necessarily need to eat in order to survive, she still figured that it was affecting his body at least a little bit.
While he didn't lean much back into her, he did spread his fingers to entwine with hers, covering her small hand easily. "I'll inform Kasbeel and the others," he added quietly, his right hand slightly tilting the glass and letting the liquid slosh around.
The others… She figured that he meant his other fallen siblings, which inevitably made her wonder about his other siblings, the ones still in Heaven's graces, in God's graces. The ones that hadn't fallen. She wondered if the ones up above cared about the ones that had been exiled. It was plain obvious that nobody had cared for Lucifer. Did the staggering indifference they'd shown towards him also apply to the other outcasts? Were they affected by the violent death of one of their siblings at all?
When her cautious glance took in his expression again, she stilled for a brief moment, surprised to see that his eyes were alight with hellfire and a muscle in his jaw twitched from the tension he put on it with his clenched teeth.
"You've asked me if I could handle it," he spoke slowly, the flames in his eyes flickering agitatedly.
Her brows furrowed in thought.
'Do you think you can do this?' she remembered asking him when they had left the hospital to head to Glover's house. The confrontation with Glover had been a real possibility and she had not only asked out of necessity if Lucifer was ready for that, but she had been genuinely worried for his own sanity. With him —understandably—suffering so intensely from his kidnapping and butchering, including panic attacks and brutal flashbacks that knocked him to the ground, she was afraid about what an effect it would have for him to see the man who did this to him in the flesh and be in one room with him.
She nodded at him in silence.
"Well… I'm not sure I can anymore," he went on, slipping his hand away from hers and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, fumbling with his glass. His eyes stayed on the flames and for a moment it seemed like the hellfire in his eyes was trying to break free and join the dancing flames of the fireplace. "I'm angry… So bloody angry, Chloe…"
His throat moved from a thick swallow, before his jaw shifted forward and his index finger ran along the rim of his glass in contemplation. "Up to this point I've been angry at an unknown person, but now… now that I know who is responsible… now that he's done so much more damage… things are different."
Again, she nodded and waited, having learned that it was best to let him talk on his terms, whenever he was ready, and sure enough, after taking the first sip from his drink, he continued.
"The term of being angry hardly fits now. I'm furious," he pressed in a trembling, hard tone. "Now I'm not afraid of having killed a person— I'm looking forward to do so." He paused again, his breathing hard and fast from emotions overwhelming him. "I don't know if I'll be able to control myself, Chloe… For you or for myself… I want to do unspeakable things with Glover… I know that he's probably being manipulated by a demon inside him, but I cannot help and see that… that it has been him having made those things. No matter if he is possessed or not, he did what he did. The demon isn't in control over his body or mind. Glover is. He told me how without my wings I couldn't lead innocents to Hell anymore. He used a bloody bone saw on me while he made me watch being butchered. He killed Flora and Tamiel and—"
He stopped in a choking sob, the glow in his eyes dying, making them return to their natural dark-brown colour. Tears trailing down his cheeks, his head lowering between his shoulders, he sighed in a whisper, "He caused so much pain… He's responsible."
Her own voice got stuck in her throat as tears welled up in her eyes as well. She could understand him being worried over the darkness of his own thoughts, of the knowledge over what he wanted to do to that bastard. Of handing out justice. Before having been confronted with the celestial world, it rarely happened to her that she was even considering not going by protocol, not following the law. But temptation waited just around the corner whenever she had been personally affected. Her father's shooting or Trixie's kidnapping where just the first that came to her mind.
It was easy to loose yourself in an act of personal revenge. But she also knew Lucifer. She knew how he would do everything for the people he cared about. He would kill— had killed— in order to protect her. He was so full of love, burning so very bright. "Lucifer," she began softly, "I know you won't lose control… You won't lose yourself."
His head turned towards her with his face torn between despair and hope, and his words came out trembling from the rush of emotions flooding through him. "How can you be so sure of that? You'd be utterly petrified if you'd know what I want to do with him…"
It was heartbreaking to see how much he doubted himself, how little he believed in his own goodness. "Because I know you, Lucifer. You will do the right thing. And even if you might be at the brink of despair and right at the verge of losing control, I will be there for you and help you hold on. Always," she added, her voice vibrating from the faith and devotion she placed into them.
The impact of her words left him breath- and speechless. His desperate look dissolved into gratitude and affection, and his glistening eyes closed softly as he leaned down towards her, seeking the warmth of her lips against his own.
She met him halfway, tilting up towards him and cupping his stubbly cheek in her palm. Sighing softly, she kissed him with all the love he deserved so much, knowing that, even if he would keep doubting himself, she would always be there to reassure him how good and how worthy he was.
When they parted, they kept their foreheads resting against each other. A small, blissful smile was plastered on their faces as they continued to taste a mix of each other and whisky on their tongues.
"You know, as much as I hate my Father for what He did to me, there is something that I could never hate Him for," he mouthed, gently nuzzling her nose. "He put you in this world and into my life, and I'll forever be grateful for that. Your faith in me makes all those eons of guilt dissolve and I'll never be able to fathom how you do that."
Her stomach fuzzy and her heart fluttering with love, she kissed him again. "See?" she managed to say, just barely avoiding her answer to be choked up in her throat as tears of joy welled in her eyes. "That's how I know. Your goodness can easily evaporate any darkness that might overwhelm you."
"It makes no sense to argue with you on that, does it?" he asked with a crooked smile and let out a playful long sigh as she shook her head. "Alright then. I'll accept your reasoning."
Happy seeing him more accepting and perhaps through her compliment a little more confident in himself, she glanced towards the clock on the wall, feeling a twitch of nervousness tug in her stomach. "Have you gotten a message from Maze by now? It's been almost four hours… That's really long in Hell-terms, isn't it?"
"It is long, yes. And, no. Nothing from her yet, although that doesn't need to mean anything. You see, everything in Hell, even the smallest of tasks, takes exceptionally long compared to what it would take on Earth. Combine that Hell's time moving much faster than on Earth, that's basically twice a punishment and only adds to why Hell is, well… Hell," he explained matter-of-factly, but his nonchalant tone was invalidated by the pensive frown scrunching his brows. It wasn't so much that he was worried over Maze having been gone since a while. He knew she could handle herself perfectly well.
It was because of the thoughts about punishment and Hell, that his mind wandered to a dark and equally sad topic.
Seeing him frown and tense, Chloe's worry intensified. "What? What is it?"
"Glover's daughter," he muttered, releasing a tensed breath. "She's felt guilty." His words hung in the air, brutally giving room for the words that didn't need to be spoken to be heard.
Chloe's heart clenched in distress and sorrow. This couldn't be true. It couldn't be… "No…" she mouthed, looking at him with watering eyes. "No, you can't tell me that… that she—"
But he was not a man to lie. No lie would ever pass his lips. So he brought her the truth that cut like a blade. "She's in Hell." Stifling a sob, containing the horror over his ow words, he swallowed thickly.
She didn't have the control he was able to maintain, her motherly instincts only adding to how much his information shook her core. "No… No you can't— She… Lucifer, she's just a child. How… how is this even possible? She hasn't hurt anybody. She—"
"You saw what she wrote down, Chloe. She—," he paused, his voice cracking. Oh, he knew the little girl's pain and guilt all too well. "She was utterly devastated, believing that her parents were fighting over her and because of her illness. She believed that she was the problem. That she was the reason they were shouting at each other and responsible for her mother leaving." Releasing another shuddering breath, his shoulders sank and his voice lowered in sadness. "She felt guilty. And guilt is what brings you to Hell."
"That's not fair… She's… she's just a child. She did nothing wrong." Her hands trembled in a mixture of anger and utter despair and with a slightly harder thud than she had wanted, put the glass on the coffee table.
"I know… Tell me about things that aren't fair…" he murmured, shaking his head in a loss of words.
Another heart-wrenching, oppressive silence spread between them, neither one of them able to find words.
Eventually it was Chloe who spoke, her mind having wandered to actions and things they could do. "Lucifer… This demon, Alastor," she began slowly. "When we find Glover and he's really possessed by him. What does that mean for us?"
"Well if— when we find Glover and Alastor really has nestled inside of him, then we need to get him out of his human host. As much as I want for Glover to suffer miserably and perhaps —if I can control myself— rot in prison, he cannot keep carrying a demon inside of him."
"Can you command him back to Hell once you're face-to-face with him? Like you did before at the Mayan?" she asked, vividly remembering his full Devil transformation.
"I will try. But the thing is that demons only follow my orders reluctantly unless they see the benefits to their own well being," he explained, his thoughts going back to the Mayan. He had been able to free himself of the guilt he carried, of all the hatred he had harboured inside him, directed against himself. While he was still able to bring out his Devil face, his Devil body including Devil wings, were a thing of the past. Intimidating Alastor would thus not be the easiest task, if he were to question his authority.
Observing him carefully, watching the flames dance in his dark brown eyes, she probed, "So… what happens if he's not willing to go back to Hell?"
Turning the glass in his hand, he brought it to his lips and downed the remaining whisky from it. His tone low and calm, he looked back at her. "Then I will have to incinerate Alastor… which will most likely kill Glover in the process."
A/N: Another chapter that was filled with new information, a bunch of action and a wee bit of hurt. I hope you enjoyed this chapter! The last act has basically begun now! Let me know what you think! I'm eager to hear your reactions! Stay tuned, maybe hop over and find me on twitter for more news, snippets and "BTS"-sketches! Username: x_Luniana_x
See you in the next one!
-Luni
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