Author's Note: I am terribly neglecting my other stories in favor of this one. I would've had it up sooner, but I had an impromptu 1200 mile road trip over the weekend. Some thing I did find out though: the writers on the show aren't being purposely ignorant of the origins and meanings of the names Samael and Lucifer. That's an actual conversation in the Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman, which is what this show is based off of. I also took several of the quotes from said series for Lucifer, because they were too good not to use. So total disclaimer on those - all Neil Gaiman's wonderful word art.
Also - Feathered Filly, OF COURSE I REMEMBER YOU. One, because few people read or reviewed my Common Law stories, but I mostly remember you from the fact that you and I share the same indifference towards relationship stories. This is not going to be anything outside of Chloe/Lucifer friendship.
"Nothing on the vic's prints. No priors, no arrests, not even a parking ticket. Nothing that would indicate gang activity, or any reason why someone would do…that to him," Dan said, dropping tiredly into the chair opposite Chloe.
She hardly glanced up from her notes, except to confer with the screen in front of her.
"Earth to Chloe…" Dan tried, and she held up a finger, signaling 'wait one'. He sighed, and glanced around the bullpen. It was mostly empty, in between shifts, and Dan was rather grateful. Occasionally, he and Chloe worked well together, but it was normally when they were alone. Somehow an audience always made them irritable.
Speaking of irritable…it was weirdly quiet.
"Did Morningstar go home?" he asked. The taller man was hard to miss, and almost always drew others into his orbit.
"I sent him home," Chloe said. She finally looked up from her notes, and he could see something was bothering her.
"And he listened?" Dan asked incredulously.
"I know, weird, right?"
Dan paused, studying his wife suspiciously. "Did you drug him?"
There was that patented Chloe Decker 'how are you still alive' glare. "No, smartass. I didn't do anything. There was an incident when we were leaving the crime scene, and it freaked him out enough that I sent him back to Lux. He wasn't paying enough attention to be of any use, and his area of expertise lies in interrogation."
"And we currently don't have any suspects to interrogate. Did you find anything about the whacky drawings? Was Lucifer telling the truth?" he asked.
Chloe gestured for him to come over, and he wheeled around in the office chair until he could see her screen.
"Good thing we're cops and can claim investigative purposes, or we would look like serial killers," Dan muttered. Her ability to think outside the box was what made Chloe an excellent investigator, but her ability to understand the criminal mind enough to make leaps where others wouldn't had always mildly concerned him. At least enough to make him wash the dishes every night and never leave wet towels on the floor when they were still living together.
She'd clearly been researching the occult since she returned from the crime scene. She had half a dozen windows open, all with images of varying symbols, sigils, and blood rituals. Half carved open animals, people in masks dressed in robes, torches raised high…
Who the hell even stopped to take these pictures? That's a hell of a snapchat picture.
Not all of them were photos, admittedly. Some of them were drawings and illustrations from various texts.
"Lucifer was right, these are Enochian symbols. It's a language created in the 16th century by some guy named Dee and his buddy, which they claim was given to them by angels so they could directly communicate with the hereafter." Chloe pointed to the cited text, and Dan recognized at least a few of them from the scene.
"So not real angels?" he asked.
"No such thing," Chloe said adamantly. "At least not for the purposes of the case. And then this other ones, he was also right – sort of. They're runes, and some of them are from an archaic alchemical design, and then there's some from Nordic mythology. He's right about the total gibberish. No combination of any of them amount to anything."
"So now we're back to every day murder with some psycho trying to throw us off?" Dan asked. He reached over and scanned through a couple of the tabs opened in the background, and paused on one for religious cults operating in the US. "You dig up anything with these guys?"
Chloe shrugged, clearly frustrated. "Not really. They're weird, which I suppose is a given since they're cults, but it's FBI territory to cover any criminal activity by them, and there's all these rules and regulations that I swear were meant to make kidnapping legal."
"Why were you looking up missing persons in relation to religious sects here in California?" Dan asked, frowning at the window opened in the background. "You think our vic is from one?"
"Honestly, I have no idea. I thought it was worth a look, at least. Maybe that's why there's no record of our guy, you know? These places attract runaways, the homeless…anybody who is just sort of adrift."
Dan was quiet for a moment, thinking. "What happened at the crime scene? Morningstar doesn't seem to be bothered by much. Were there kids?"
Lucifer's effect on kids was by far the most unexplainable part of his personality. While the man himself seemed completely baffled by children (he couldn't seem to quite grasp that they were not the same thing as puppies), but they loved him. For the most part, Dan chalked it up to the fact that kids were like cats – they seemed most attracted to the people that were least attracted to them. Lucifer wasn't cruel – at least not purposely – but he was mind boggling clueless, and every time Trixie hugged him, Lucifer always seemed just on the verge of screaming 'GETITOFF, GETITOFF'.
Chloe chuckled. "No, no kids. But there was someone…when we were leaving, this old guy grabbed him by the arm and whispered in his ear, that this was all for him, and welcome home."
"Well that's not creepy at all. He say anything?" Dan asked.
"The guy disappeared by the time I got to him, but Lucifer looked…worried. Like maybe he might know what the guy was talking about, but context made no sense?"
Dan shrugged. "You think the vanishing guy might've had something to do with the body?"
"Maybe? I mean, most psychos like to see the fallout of what they've done, but the guy wasn't that big, and he had to have been pushing seventy. There's no way he could've wrestled our vic onto that cross, unconscious or otherwise. He would need help to lift the cross if it was on the ground when they tied him to it, or machinery, and there was no evidence of anything else being there."
"You figure out at least what religion might be behind this, assuming it is a religious cult?"
Chloe smiled faintly. "Lucifer was right again…did you know actual Satanists are like one of the most peaceful religions out there?"
Dan scowled. "No way. Remember those killings in Florida last year? One guy got shot, the other two beaten to death with a hammer around the time of the blue moon?"
Chloe shook her head. "They weren't Satanists, they actually tied it to Wicca, which, apparently is also supposed to be a peaceful religion. But extremist sects aside, because then we'd have way too many statistics to go through, actual Satanists are non-violent – until you insult them. Think of it like a more violent version of the Golden Rule. Instead of 'do unto others as you would have done unto you', it's 'do to others what they have done to you.' So if someone spits in your face, you get to punch them in theirs."
Dan nodded appreciatively. "Not bad. I kinda like that better than turning the other cheek."
Chloe frowned. "I'm not advocating it. I'm just saying that the entire principle of the religion itself is to leave people be and only be concerned with yourself. But technically, I think it could still be one of the extremist groups…except that none of the symbols used show up at all in the religion."
Dan groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face. "So we're again back to square one? Crazy people with a disturbing Google search word trend?"
"I have no clue," Chloe said, shrugging in defeat. "I feel like we're missing something." She clicked back over to the crime scene photos, scrolling through them. As she flashed past one of an aerial view of the symbol, sans upside down cross in the middle, she suddenly grabbed Dan's arm. "What if the reason why there's so many different symbols is because it's a test pattern?"
"Test pattern?"
"Hear me out – you know how serial killers slowly refine their patterns?" Chloe asked excitedly. "What if that's exactly what this is? What if this is a serial killer's first victim, and that's why there's all these conflicting religious symbols?"
"Like a crisis of faith?" Dan asked.
"Exactly!" Chloe said. "He's testing out the different patterns, trying to get a feel for what he wants!"
"One problem with that," Dan pointed out. "There's only one body. And serial killers are usually slow to start, especially smart ones. You, at best, have to wait for another body to show before you can call it a serial killer."
Chloe's face fell marginally, glancing back to the crime scene photos.
"Hey," Dan said, clapping her on the shoulder. "I don't think you're wrong, I just think we need something else to go on now. Do you think he has any sort of predisposition based on what he left behind?"
"The Judeo Christian aspect," Chloe said without hesitation. "More of the symbols have to do with Enochian language than anything else."
"So maybe we start looking into the local churches. Maybe the vic was one of the parishioners. See if we can't get an ID that way."
Chloe nodded thoughtfully, then pulled up one of the aerial shots of the sigils. "We need to see if there's anyone who can tell us what this could possibly mean. Lucifer said something about binding…"
"The guy was tied up. What, they just wanted the added security to make sure he wasn't going to get away?"
"I don't think he meant tied up, or a physical binding. I think he meant like some sort of spiritual binding…"
Dan raised an eyebrow. "And how many episodes of Supernatural did you watch before you came up with that?"
Chloe turned a faint shade of pink. "I actually found it through an exorcist named Constantine…"
"Uh huh. Fine, we'll check the local churches tomorrow, starting with the Roman Catholic ones in the area of the killing. See if someone can shed some light on it, or can at least recognize the vic."
"I'll pick up Lucifer in the morning," Chloe offered as she shuffled her papers back into her files. "He might be of some help trying to explain to the priests exactly what it is they're looking at or for."
"That guy is awake before noon?" Dan said incredulously. "Will wonders never cease?"
Lucifer stared up at the massive oak doors. The gothic styled roof steepled upwards at least three stories, and the bells in the tower were larger than most cars. The stonework was intricate, and very old for the section of town they were in, and absolutely immaculate compared to the buildings around them. Statues of the Virgin Mary and her son graced the front entry way, and the gargoyles on the buttresses leered down from on high.
"Not a fan of church?" Dan asked as he jogged up the stairs past him. "Shocker."
Lucifer didn't even spare the other man a glance. He just stood stock still, neck craned upwards and what Chloe would've thought was an incredibly painful angle.
To say he hadn't been thrilled at the aspect of going to a church, never mind the dozen or so they had listed for being in the area, was an understatement.
Trixie protesting bed time was less dramatic.
Chloe expected it to a certain degree. He claimed to be the Devil – it stood to reason he wasn't a huge fan of attending or even entering a church. But there was something in the way he protested that reinforced Chloe's growing suspicion that a large part of his youth was tied into religion, and not in a good way. When Dan had caught her looking up missing persons from cults in the area, she hadn't corrected him when he suspected she was looking for her victim.
She'd been looking for Lucifer. Or rather, someone who matched his description, starting five years ago to the mid-nineties, which is roughly when he would be turning eighteen. She hadn't found anything, but Dan had interrupted her before she could really start to dig.
She waited patiently for Lucifer at the threshold, holding open the enormous door with her foot.
"I haven't been in my Father's house for two thousand years," Lucifer said quietly. He glanced down at the threshold, and she could literally watch the war of emotions playing across his face. "I don't even know if I'm welcome."
"Only one way to find out," Chloe said.
Lucifer didn't move.
"What, you need an invitation or something?" Dan called from halfway down the aisle. "We haven't got all day!"
Lucifer scowled at the jibe. "I'm not a vampire, you ignorant swine," he growled. A then, so much quieter that Chloe barely caught it, "Just the Devil about to enter the house of God." He closed his eyes, and hunched his shoulders like he was preparing to be struck by lightning, he practically jumped across the threshold. He landed both feet inside the door, just outside the reach of the early morning sun, and paused.
Nothing happened. No apocalypse, no wrathful lightning or shrieking heretics. The church remained quiet.
Lucifer visibly relaxed. "That went better than expected," he said lightly. He eyed the font of Holy Water at the door way and took a wide step around it, keeping his hands firmly in his pockets.
Chloe bumped his shoulder with hers as they walked towards the front of the church where Dan was already talking to an elderly man in a priest's robe and collar. "Thank you for coming, Lucifer."
"The mountain of debt you are accumulating on this case alone, Detective, is going to take an act of God to wipe out," Lucifer said. "Or a reenactment of a scene out of 50 Shades."
She snorted, trying to unsuccessfully mask the burst of laughter. Lucifer had essentially given up on the idea that she would ever sleep with him, and it had now become a back burner jab whenever he felt like mentioning what she owed him for his help.
"Have you seen this man?" Dan was asking the priest, showing the picture of the victim from the morgue. The photograph hid the damage done to the young man's neck. Even though he was quite obviously dead, it didn't show how he'd been sliced through to his vertebrae.
The priest adjusted his glasses, pushing them up further on his nose as he studied the picture. "I'm not sure…my eyes aren't what they used to be," he apologized. "He looks a little familiar, but not like someone who attended regularly. He might have frequented the food pantry or the shelter in the back."
"How about these?" Dan held up the aerial picture of the crime scene. "Do you recognize these?"
The priest frowned, and made the sign of the cross.
Lucifer rolled his eyes, and Chloe elbowed him in the ribs before he could say anything.
"They're Enochian," he said, confirming Lucifer's assessment.
Lucifer smirked arrogantly at the vindication.
"But the over laying symbol isn't one from Catholicism," the priest said. "I've never even seen it before."
Chloe glanced over at Lucifer, who remained oddly quiet. "We were told that the symbols could be a form of a binding ritual," she said. She pointed out the alpha and the omega symbol. "Something about it being put on graves?"
The priest nodded. "The alpha and omega, yes. I thought you were asking about the other symbol."
Dan and Chloe looked at each other. "Other symbol?"
"Yes, underneath both of them," the priest said. He carefully traced another pattern out, extending beyond the blood drawn Greek letters. "I've never seen this one before."
There was a second…or third, depending on how you counted, symbol on the ground. Neither Chloe nor Dan had seen it, and apparently neither had Lucifer, because he actually looked curious.
"See, where it's drawn with the Enochian letters?" the priest said.
Now that he'd pointed it out, Chloe couldn't believe she'd missed it. The letters were in a shape of their own, creating a long, swooping design on the ground, sort of like a circle, but with two sickle shaped outcroppings on either end. The upside down cross the man had been hanging from would've been at the pinnacle of the design then, not the middle. Part of the reason she hadn't noticed was because the natural way that she read was linear – and the symbol was created with both the Enochian lettering and the unrelated alchemy symbols to form separate shapes.
"I see it," Dan confirmed. "Does it mean anything?"
The priest shook his head, handing the picture back. "Nothing at all, as far as I am aware. But I'm certainly not an authority on the archaic or the occult."
"Thanks for the help, padre," Dan said, shaking the priest's hand. "If you hear anything about a missing person from your shelter, or anything out of the ordinary, let us know, okay?"
"Certainly, detectives," the priest said, smiling as they parted ways.
"So we're back to square one," Dan said quietly to Chloe. "I seriously think the symbols are just to throw us off."
"If they are, someone went through an awful lot of effort to do it," Chloe said. She wasn't entirely sure why they were whispering, except that they were in church and felt like they should probably keep their voices down while discussing potentially satanic cult killing.
"Grab Morningstar, we can check out the next church. If the priest was right and the vic was one of the guys who used the food pantry, he might have gone to other churches in the area. Someone might recognize him."
Chloe hadn't even noticed that Lucifer had disappeared – he did it so often, she realized she was no longer surprised when she would turn around and he would be gone.
"Yeah, sure. We'll meet you at the car."
As it turned out, Lucifer hadn't wandered far, for once.
He'd simply wandered to the transept, apparently bored with the conversation with the priest after he'd revealed he knew nothing of interest. He was staring up at the crucifixion statue, but his expression was anything but contemplative. Chloe knew she didn't go to church as often as she should, but she was pretty positive that most people didn't look at Jesus like he was the bane of their existence.
"And for God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son…" Lucifer muttered under his breath. "No never mind the rest of us, hmm…?"
"Lucifer?" she said quietly.
He didn't even turn to look at her. "You know, Detective, despite what people seem to believe, I don't hate people. I don't wish them harm, and I don't try and trick them. And I really don't like hurting them. My Father made me into a torturer. Can you imagine what it was like? Ten billion years providing a place for dead mortals to torture themselves? And like all masochists, they called the shots. 'Burn me.' 'Freeze me.' 'Eat me.' 'Hurt me.' And we did..."
He broke his stare with the statue, gazing down at the candles on the altar in front of it. "Why do they blame me for all their little failings? They use my name as if I spent my entire days sitting on their shoulders, forcing them to commits acts they would otherwise find repulsive. 'The devil made me do it.' I have never made one of them do anything. Never. They live their own tiny lives. I do not live their lives for them."
The terrible sadness in his voice was breathtaking. That was not an act.
"My brother would have you believe it is a great honor to rule in Hell. If it so wonderful, why did my Father change my name?"
She stepped closer. "What do you mean?" As far as she knew, Lucifer meant 'light bringer', or some variation of that thought. According Lucifer, his previous name of Samael meant 'God's poison'…Lucifer sounded like a step up.
"Ever notice how all angels' names end in –el?" Lucifer asked. "Michael, Uriel, Amenadiel, Gabriel…? El means 'of God'. As Samael, I did everything my Father asked…no matter how horrible it was. And as soon as I questioned my purpose, He stripped me of identity as His son."
"Lucifer, I'm-"
"Don't you dare say you're sorry," Lucifer said savagely, and Chloe fell silent.
He may not want to hear the words, but Chloe couldn't just stand there and not offer something to tell him that he wasn't alone. Annoying as he could be, she really did enjoy working with him, and she was even beginning to consider him a friend.
Before he could protest, she pulled him into a quick, tight hug. She had to stand on her tiptoes, and she didn't hold him any longer than a moment. She pretended not to notice when he flinched – like he'd never been hugged before.
"Come on then," she said, stepping back and gesturing for him to follow. She ignored the look of awe the same way she ignored the flinch – with professional ease. "Dan's probably wondering what the hell is taking us so long. Wouldn't want him to get the wrong idea."
Though it took a moment longer than it normally would have, Lucifer's beguiling smirk returned. It was as carefully crafted as his mask – she knew he was grateful for the open opportunity to break the melancholy.
"Wouldn't we?"
"We have seven more churches to visit, Lucifer. I don't want to listen to Dan complain for the rest of the afternoon."
"So…what you're saying is wait until the last church before giving him ideas?"
As he turned to follow her, in a rare display of completely human lack of grace, he stumbled, apparently over nothing and barely caught himself against one of the pillars.
"You okay?" she asked, starting back towards him before he waved her off.
"Do people not trip?" he said. "I'm fine." But he still glanced over his shoulder as if he expected to see someone. Or something. "Did you hear something just then?"
"You mean besides you tripping over thin air?" she asked. She shook her head. She hadn't heard a thing. "Did you?"
Lucifer smiled briefly, looking slightly nervous. "The Devil hears voices in a church…let's hope not." He cast a quick, uneasy glance upwards. "I shudder to think what that would mean…"
But he had heard something.
Ho en o ra, zamran…
True son, show yourself.
A for a moment, Lucifer would've sworn he had his wings again.
Holy flipping crap, Lucifer can be reeeeally hard to channel some times. Also, in light of the most recent episode, I'm not making Dan into a villain. One, I like him working with Chloe, and two, because based on his reaction, I'm assuming he [SPOILER] shot the other cop at the deal because the other cop had blackmailed/roped him into something, and he was between a rock and a hard place of trying to get rid of something hanging over him. Just a theory. Sort of like my general theory on Chloe is not that she's supernatural, but that she is a true NON-believer. Not agnostic, but a flat out atheist, and most 'canon' for religious stories/myths, is that belief gives power. Therefore, in my world, lack of belief takes it away.
So what do you think? Still interested? Did I do well? Like it, love it, loathe it? I LOVE hearing from people (especially repeats - Feathered Filly, BigKahuna, Chades, SummerMistedDragon, DragonWraith12 and everyone else that I would list except then will take this down)
