Let there be Truth – Tell no soul 5

The old oak door swung to reveal Reverend Ecbert's familiar smile. He stepped aside and invited Chloe into one of his comfortable armchairs, then offered some tea. She took coffee this time, and did her best to withhold her questions before he was done filling her cup. The last time she'd been here, she had never strayed too far from the subject of Lucifer's past and nature. But the truth was, he wasn't the only otherworldly being she'd met. While Amenadiel didn't seem too concerning a presence yet, there was someone else she needed to know more about, right now.

"Reverend, does the word Mazikeen mean anything to you?"

The old man massaged his thin white beard pensively, eyes up as if to look through his memories. "Oh, yes. Not a name you would find in the Bible, Detective. I assume you've been doing some reading of your own."

He sat up in his chair in order to reach one of the higher shelves behind his desk, plucked a dusty volume, and set it before him. He combed through the page delicately. Chloe started gnawing on her nails, wishing the kind man would hurry up a bit. Finally, he placed a finger on the paper, which had turned sepia with age. The language he was reading was in an alphabet Chloe didn't recognize.

"Mazikeen, the Night Daughter, the Girl with Two Faces. Armed with a lust for pain like a demon, and human bravery, she's both a torturer and a warrior." The head of the Reverend bobbed as he ostensibly scanned the page for more details. "And that's about it," he concluded.

Chloe repeated the words under a breath, trying to commit them to memory, then she paused. "Like a demon, you said. Could that be a mistranslation?"

Ecbert read the passage again, whispering words she couldn't make sense of, then shook his head. "This part is pretty straight forward, I must say."

She frowned. Maybe it was just a weird phrasing, but…

"So… She isn't a demon?"

Ecbert smiled at the question. "Well, it's a rather complicated notion. I told you that some scholars have tried to organize a hierarchy of angels. Others have tried to do the same with demons, however, most religions tend to frown on those who spend too much time dwelling on what is seen as evil."

Chloe nodded. After all, she'd thought about the Salem witch trials the last time she'd been in this room, and the Reverend didn't seem threatening in the least. "That's why she's only mentioned here?" she asked, her eyes turning to the rather obscure book.

"Oh, no. This is simply the most extensive description I can think of. You should find an entry for Mazikeen in any Dictionary of Demonology, but it would say nothing more than 'kind of minor demon.' I assume that's why you expect her to be one."

Chloe bit her lip as discreetly as she could when she lied with a nod. It didn't feel right to deceive someone so nice, but that was the cost of sounding like a sane person.

Chloe felt guilty. It was one thing to allow Lucifer to get involved in her investigations after he was personally part in one, and because he seduced her boss into letting him. Inviting Maze was another. There was no way the chief would have seen her as anything else than a criminal, even though she'd never been convicted.

"Hmm…" The possibly demon woman spread the photos of the crime scene on the table, then picked one: a close-up of the victim's mouth.

"Did you find something?" Chloe asked a little too eagerly. She didn't want Lucifer to know that she needed him because he was smug, but Maze looked like the kind of person who would actually take advantage of it. Her good nature – if she had one – was hidden much better than his.

"Figure eight stitches." Maze put the picture back on the table, so Chloe could see it. "I've seen that before." She met the detective's eyes, a smirk on her lips.

"Where?" Chloe eventually asked.

"In hell."

Chloe let out an annoyed sigh, out of habit, before she remembered what had happened when Lucifer got shot. Still, she couldn't really wrap her head around it. It was much easier to think about it as a joke, or a bad prank, than reality. Heaven above, hell down below, and at the center of all that, God and Lucifer, his rebellious son.

"Uh huh," was about the only intelligible thing that could come out of her mouth.

"You see, humans live all their lives in those meat bags. So once they're in hell, it's much easier to punish them once they're in a body."

"So, what? You tortured people by sewing their mouth shut?"

"Me? No. I'm for a hands-on approach, but it's my thing. Lucifer, on the other hand…"

A shiver ran down Chloe's spine. Lucifer, doing this? It didn't really sit well with the image she had of him, but if he really was the devil, then it was probably true. "He did that to people?"

"You see, pain, physical pain – even emotional pain – it passes after a while. It's just something you can get away from after a few centuries. Some humans even learn to do that before they die. They can even enjoy it, sometimes." She had a naughty grin, as if to say that Chloe might be one of them.

"I can see how that could be painful, yeah." Chloe looked at the picture to try and avoid the demon's playful gaze.

"Oh, no. That's not the point. You see, there is a reason why Lucifer is called the prince of terror."

Despite her best efforts, Chloe had to meet Maze's gaze when she said those words. What did she mean by that, exactly? Of course, the demon seemed delighted to catch her attention so easily.

"See, it's a weird thing about the afterlife, but even if you're given a body, you don't really get hungry. I think it's because there's no death there, so you don't feel the need. But people don't notice that at first. They just want to eat out of habit I guess. So when the devil tie their lips together, and tell them that they'll get so hungry that once he removes the stitches, they'll gobble whatever he puts in front of them… They believe him. And the best part is that it works on everyone. The kind will think you'll make them devour a baby or a kitten, I don't know. The selfish think you'll make them eat their own flesh. The cannibals imagine that they'll only eat bland rice for the rest of eternity."

"And how does he know what to give them, in the end?"

Maze let out a short laugh at that question. Her eyes were shining with amusement as she observed Chloe's reaction. "You don't get it, do you? He never takes the stitches out. Pain, sorrow, you become numb to it at after a while. Doubt? Fear? Time only makes it worse. In isolation, with no concept of time, no prospect of death, it does nothing but grow. The human soul might be immortal, but sanity is a very finite resource." She ended her testimony with a particularly nasty grin.

No, Chloe thought, Lucifer would never do that. But the pit in her stomach was proof enough that she believed what she'd just heard.