My hatred of ffdotnets formatting knows no bounds...

CONTENT NOTE: Implied bloody violence

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Chapter 7

Joy to the righteous

When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous but terror to evildoers.

(Proverbs 21:15, NIV)

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Chloe knows. Meet me at Lux when you come back

It was all the message said, but it was enough to make her furious.

Maze was, at heart, a predator and a predator never abandoned its prey. This was what made her such a good bounty hunter. She turned her car around anyway. Four hours until Los Angeles.

There was a first time for everything.

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Lucifer was pacing in his apartment, a half-filled tumbler in hand, when his phone pinged, startling him. He had not expected to hear back from Maze so soon. Hastily, he put the glass down and grabbed his smartphone instead.

What did u do?

omw

I swear if u just lost me my roommate I'm gonna disembowel u

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Lucifer typed quickly.

Later. Right now we have someone to punish

Do ur own damn punishing Lucifer I don't work for u anymore!

You will want to get your hands on this particular scumbag

What, someone try to kill Decker and u came to the rescue? Is that how she knows?

Look at the news

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He watched the three little dots move, then stop, then move again.

Is Trix ok?!

Yes

He's in police custody

B there in 4

Don't start without me

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"Now what?", asked Maze when Lucifer returned from the bathroom, drying the hands he had been meticulously scrubbing for the last fifteen minutes with a fluffy white towel. Blood was so hard to get out from under your nails.

His erstwhile bodyguard was sitting spread out on the leather sofa, a glass in her hand that was filled to the brim with something Lucifer suspected came from one of the more expensive bottles on his shelf. "Trix is safe and we punished the bad guy. What happens next?"

"Nothing", answered Lucifer, tossed the towel on the counter and poured himself a Scotch. "The jig is up. The detective knows, as does her daughter. We'll deal with the fallout."

Maze rolled her eyes.

"You really didn't think this through, did you?", she groaned.

"No, Maze, I did not 'think this through', because I was too busy saving the detective's offspring's life!", Lucifer snapped at her. The glass in his hand cracked.

"Jeez. Calm down", she said. "I get that part, okay? But you didn't have to use your wings, Lucifer! You could have knocked that little shit down with your pinkie!"

"Well, Maze, maybe I used them because the little shit was bloody shooting!", he answered acidly.

"Ugh, fine. So why didn't you ask the kids not to tell? You asked Trixie", Maze pointed out and tossed her hair back.

"Because I didn't think of it", Lucifer admitted grudgingly and a little embarrassed. "I was so… focused on the offspring not telling her mother anything, that I didn't pay any attention to the others." He took a sip from his tumbler, pacing up and down in his apartment.

"You didn't think of it", echoed Maze and mouthed 'unbelievable' to herself, when he wasn't looking.

"Besides, I didn't ask Beatrice not to mention the wings, I only asked her to keep quiet about the healing", Lucifer corrected her absentmindedly.

Mazes' eyes narrowed and she leaned forward.

"What healing?", she asked him in a dangerously low voice.

Lucifer, realizing mid-drink he had made another hugeblunder, waved her question away.

"Oh, it was nothing", he said casually and quickly turned his back to her, ostensibly to pour himself more Whiskey. "Considering everything else, it hardly makes a difference." He laughed nervously. "I covered a forty-minute car ride in under three minutes and then survived getting shot at with a rifle multiple times. Even the wings hardly matter at this point", he went on and downed the whole glass in one go.

"What. Healing. Lucifer?", asked Maze sharply and he could practically feel her eyes bore holes into his shirt.

When he ignored her and did not answer, she pressed on: "Lucifer, did you use one of your feathers to heal a human? Did they seeyou do it?!"

"Yes, Maze, I may have treated a girl's gunshot wound", he conceded, still busying himself behind the counter and purposely avoiding her gaze and the second part of the question. "But it was nothing, really."

"What the hell were you thinking?!", Maze yelled at him and jumped up. "Lucifer, you can't just go around and use your damn wings to heal people! Humans aren't supposed to see proof of the divine-"

Lucifer scoffed at this.

"Oh, quit it, Maze, you're starting to sound like Amenadiel", he interrupted her, his voice dripping with condescension.

"Well, maybe because he's right for a change! Why the hell did you do it, Lucifer", she asked, lowering her voice.

"Because she was bloody dying, that's why!", he thundered, his eyes flaring red.

"So what?!", she shouted. "She's just a human! They all die!"

"Would you have said the same if it had been the detective's child?", asked Lucifer quietly.

Maze remained silent. She crossed her arms and lowered her head, not looking at him. Neither of them said anything.

"Why do you even care so much, Lucifer?", Maze asked at last.

"Because, Maze, sometimes even the Devil may care", he said softly.

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The police never found out how Kevin Norton had vanished from his cell only to turn up as a mutilated, bloody mess hours later; speaking gibberish and curling himself into a ball as soon as anyone came within a meter of him.

When they finally got Kevin to talk, he told them how and where he had gotten his weapon and how long he had planned the assault, he explained in detail about how he had hacked into the school security system to trigger the autmatic lockdown himself, so the police couldn't get in and how many he had shot. In short, he confessed to everything.

Detective Chloe Decker might have known why, but as Crawford was under the jurisdiction of a different bureau and she was personally involved in the case, neither she nor her ex-husband ever interrogated him and by the time he had to testify, his injuries were barely visible anymore. Everyone else had agreed that since Norton was back where he belonged, there was no need to bother the detectives with such trivial details. For reasons that were anyone's guess, news about his brief disappearance never reached outside ears either.

Truth to be told, it was a mystery no one particularly cared to solve.