The aisle ahead was perfectly clear. Audrey looked down at Samson, who growled back at her through his sharp, bared teeth, but between one second and the next, his great paws stumbled, his legs giving way beneath him, and he collapsed into a furry pile on the floor. A hand clamped around her mouth, impeding her scream, while a vice-like arm came around her middle, pinning her arms to her sides.
"Salvē, Amor," a man's voice breathed raggedly in her ear, his grin audible among the strange words. She fought to break free of his grip, her mind a hysterical whirlwind of terror after the things she'd seen in the past three days. "Shhhh," the voice hushed, chuckling quietly; "He's still alive."
Darkness crept upon her like a heavy blanket, and her weight transferred from her feet to the support of a large pair of arms. Her sleeping head lolled against a cool, bare chest, and her dangling legs swung to one side as if she were strapped to the nose of a bullet train.
Her kidnapper stepped, barefoot, onto hot, amber coals. They hissed and crackled under their weight as he crossed to an island of smooth, black rock with a raised divan carved into it. He laid her reverently down and waited.
Audrey's eyelids fluttered as she regained consciousness. Where the hell am I? She asked the cavernous ceiling of stalactites above. The air was humid and thick with the smell of smoke, but goosebumps covered her skin despite the heat.
"Welcome," a low, hoarse voice greeted her, sending her pulse buzzing with fear as she rolled into a crouch behind the platform, "to the ninth circle of Hell."
Her mind was reeling as she gasped deep lungfuls of the acrid atmosphere, absorbing the man before her. He was dressed only in a loose pair of salwar trousers that pulled into cuffs just below his knees. His skin was scarred and filthy, and his eyes were a piercing emerald green beneath his mess of ashen-blonde hair.
"Lucifer," she whispered, muted by the vivacious sounds of the coals.
She glanced around; this was a cathedral of a very different kind. In the shadowy distance on either side she could just make out a few holes resembling windows, though no light shone through them.
Lucifer smiled at her recognition as molten lava rose and solidified upon itself behind him, fashioning a throne-like chair crowned with a series of large thorns across the back. He sat, resting one ankle across his knee.
"We meet at last," he murmured. He read Audrey's face like a book. "You may be a stranger to my brothers, Audrey, but I have been a prominent possibility in your fate for a long time." A sudden huff of amusement escaped him. "Well, a long time to you, anyway."
"But... the holy water—" she argued weakly.
"So I broke the rules," he shrugged, grinning. "Isn't that what I do best?"
"I don't understand... I didn't die." Audrey was verging on tears now, crushed beneath the gravity of the situation. "Why have you brought me here?"
Lucifer leaned forward in his seat, his eyes blazing dangerously.
"I took you because I wanted to," he justified simply; "Desperate times call for desperate measures."
"What do you mean?" Audrey asked quietly, cowering from his volatile nature.
The former angel paused, staring at the terrified, bewildered expression she wore.
"You're trying to tell me Gabriel doesn't know?"
"Know what?"
His victorious grin grew wider as he reclined against the back of his throne once more.
"The prophets have been whispering, Amor," he crooned, inspecting his blackened fingernails in boastful arrogance. "The key approaches in the form of love," he recited, "and its nurturers shall be rewarded."
Audrey's memory snagged on the word 'key', but there was no time to dwell on it as Lucifer got up and circled around the back of the chair. Over the recesses of his shoulder blades, two large, oval scars shone in the dim glow of the coals. He wrapped his fingers around two of the throne's horns from behind and for a split second, Audrey thought she saw the slip of a mask.
"Before all this," he continued, watching little parts of the volcanic rock crumble away beneath his thumbs; "Before the oh-so-righteous Lord broke his oath and brought on the Second Reckoning... did you believe He existed?"
She gripped the sculpted Belladonna-flowered edge of the divan, wondering why he could possibly care, and shook her head.
"And what do you believe now?"
The conflict going on within Audrey's mind was a familiar one, except this time, rather than feeling a sense of habitual goodness, her better judgement told her she should be afraid, and yet she found herself slowly rising to her feet, observing the fair-haired Fallen One vigilantly.
"I believe I made the right choice in not believing," she answered assertively.
Lucifer looked up at her, genuinely surprised. He snapped the two largest horns off and tossed them behind him.
"Is that so?"
Audrey stood motionless as he stalked around the chair and stepped towards her, until only the divan stood between them. Every cell in her body screamed danger, but she was held in place by one tiny, barely discernable crease between his brows.
"Hypocrites don't make very good parents," she pointed out, and the crease grew noticeably deeper. "What happened to you?"
Just like that, it was gone. His face relaxed back into an indifferent disguise and he slumped into his throne, arranging his sooty feet one atop the other on the edge of the divan.
"That, Amor," he sneered, "is none of your concern."
She looked at him with something akin to pity, and it flung him into a terrifying onset of rage. He was standing on the platform, lifting her by the throat before she'd even had a chance to register he'd moved.
His thumb dug into her oesophagus, cutting off her albeit polluted air supply. Her fingers grappled at his hand as her face began to redden.
"I see right through you, little girl," he spat. "You won't succeed."
He glared at her only another moment, before his features slid into a look of thorough boredom and he released her. In the fall, her head cracked against a sharp, stone Nightshade blossom, and her arm fell across the edge of the island onto the scorching coals. With a coughing shriek she pulled her arm in to her chest and rolled onto her side, wheezing her dizziness away.
When she was able to breathe slowly enough that it didn't strain her muscles to inhale, she rolled onto her back to find Lucifer sitting on the divan, looming over her with his elbows on his knees. He was playing with a silver lighter, flicking the lid back and forth through each tiny burst of flame. On the side, it was engraved with a word. She squinted through the gloom to read it: 'Hope'. There was something familiar about it, but Audrey couldn't quite name it.
His emerald eyes swept over her burnt arm, then rolled in exasperation as he reached down and ran his fingertips along it. She gasped, expecting the raw skin to sear with pain at his touch, but it merely tickled as it would anywhere else.
Not daring to sit up, she angled her elbow up a little to look along where the injury had been – it had disappeared. She blinked, absolutely clueless on how to even begin to comprehend this strange, fickle man who now extended a hand to help her up.
Fury bubbled in her chest like acid. She reached behind her and pushed herself back from him, glowering as fiercely as Lucifer had himself.
"You," she snapped, "are the most bi-polar bastard I've ever met."
She pulled herself up at the opposite end of the divan to where he sat, surveying her, and he laughed.
"Well, you got the fatherless part right."
He stood and walked away across the coals without another word, leaving Audrey trapped and alone in the deepest depths of Hell.
She scowled into the darkness after him, tears pricking at her eyes as she realised this might not be a temporary arrangement. Please, Gabriel, she willed, come and find me. She curled up on the hard, carved bed, imagining his strong arms around her, and the cool metal of his collar against her temple. She wondered how long it would take him to notice she'd gone, and if he'd have any idea where she'd disappeared to. Hopefully he'll find Samson and know, she thought. Hopefully.
Hope... the lighter.
Audrey sat upright.
"He's been to paradise falls," she muttered to herself.
"So what if I have?" His voice came out of the darkness; she couldn't be sure from which direction.
She said nothing. The loss of her parents hit her again like a powerful after tremor. Their bodies would still be there now: her dad hung upside-down outside, her mother in the doorway with a bullet in her brain. She crossed her legs and leaned on them, balled fists joined in an apex against her mouth. How could He?
Something suddenly occurred to her; the beat in her chest doubled in pace.
"The people who died in all this," she called into the void; "If humanity's in God's bad books... are they here, in Hell?"
A silhouette emerged from the hidden extent of the room, the coals sizzling beneath his every step. Even as he came into view, Audrey couldn't decipher his expression. He looked almost hurt.
"Asking after someone in particular?"
She rubbed her forehead with her overwrought fingertips and fought against the lump in her throat.
"My parents," she whispered, not trusting the pitch of her voice to remain constant long enough for even just two words.
"Howard and Sandra Anderson," he elaborated. It wasn't a question. "No, they're not here anymore."
"Any more?"
The thought of them suffering even a moment of this place gouged at her heart. How long were they here? She wondered, distraught. Her tears were irrepressible now; her sobs caught in her throat as she tried to draw breath between them.
Lucifer stepped closer and perched on the arm of his volcanic throne.
"Those who were thrown in here during the Apocalypse were not harmed in any way," he told her. She looked up at his apple-green eyes and saw naked sincerity. "I give you my word."
Audrey took a deep breath as her anxiety subsided. She brushed away the couple of tears still rolling down her cheeks and he looked completely taken off guard.
"You're comforted by this," he noted aloud.
"Of course I am."
"You trust the word of Satan?" He asked, incredulous.
She thought back to what Gabriel had said at the motel: That depends, on whether you consider Satan and the 'Devil' to be one and the same.
"No, but I trust the word of the Devil," she replied; "There's a little of him in all of us."
He cocked his head to one side and folded his arms, apparently intrigued.
"I was pushed," Lucifer announced; Audrey just stared at him, completely lost.
"Sorry?"
"You asked what happened to me," he backtracked; "I didn't fall from grace, I was pushed."
His words hung in her mind like bubbles of oil suspended in water, slowly rising to the surface, but the question they formed was cut off by the growing hissing of the coals to her right.
Glossary
Salvē, Amor : Hello, love