Author's note: Here is a new chapter my friends. I was hoping to post this one earlier, but I find myself with some health problems lately, so writing has become difficult to achieve. Hopefully, it will get better soon. Thank you Babec for your ideas on this one, I think it makes a great improvement. And now, place to the story. Enjoy!


Chapter 17

Who's the Best?

Lucifer was lying in bed, looking at his pink flawless hand in wonder. He was whole again somehow. He'd come back from that spiralling descendent into darkness. A descent which had felt disturbingly like a second Fall. He'd been on the verge of completely losing his mind when realizing what he had become, what Hell had made of him. In that moment, he'd lost his grasp on reality, even forgetting why he should fight this pull towards the shadows. Never had he felt so utterly lost. Yet, now he was back. Thought he knew for a certainty that he could never have done it by himself.

He could feel Djalliah still loosely wrapped around him from behind, breathing softly against his skin in her sleep. She was giving him the physical comfort he needed at the moment. Without her touch anchoring him into reality, he feared he could lose himself once more. He was back, but still felt disturbingly vulnerable.

As much as Djall's presence had been and still was essential in keeping his mind away from the shadows, it wasn't her who had brought him back from the brink of losing himself completely.

It had been Chloe...

He still couldn't believe what a perfect timing she'd chosen to pray to him and remind him of her love and how much she needed him. The fog that had been completely enveloping his mind and soul at that moment had lifted almost instantly at hearing her heartbreaking plea to come back to her. With her prayer, she'd also reminded him of who he was...

He was Lucifer Morningstar, Chloe's lover, the man she loved and cherished.

Chloe was the reason why he needed to resist the pull towards the darkness, the reason he couldn't lose himself. He was not a beast, nor was he evil, and above all, he needed to remain the man she loved. Chloe needed him as much as he needed her and he would keep fighting until she was back in his arms.

Chloe's prayer had done what Djalliah's few ministrations on his body had failed to do. She'd snap him out of it, at least enough to prevent Djall from doing something he could never have forgiven himself to have let happen. Djall had been confused by his refusal, hurt even, but what he needed from his demon had nothing to do with carnal pleasures, even if he definitely needed her.

Afterwards, it could have taken hours, he couldn't really say, but with the help of Chloe's subsequent prayers and Djalliah's tender touch, he'd slowly regained his angelic form.

Now, after a few more hours of lying still and exhausted, his cheeks were still bathed in tears from hearing Chloe call to him again and again with so much pain and desperation. He was ashamed of wanting to hear her again in her suffering, of needing to hear her again. Her pain felt like the echo of his own heart, but somehow it helped remind him that her love for him was real and beautiful. Her love was like a beacon of light in the darkness that was surrounding him and prying upon him. He would take every ounce of it to help straighten his resolves to do whatever he could to remain the man she loved.

While Chloe was his reason to live and fight, his everything, Djalliah was his everyday anchor to reality and to his humanity, if it could be called so. Without his faithful demon's tenderness and care, he knew that he would have been lost long ago. He just hoped that Chloe could find in herself to understand and forgive what he still needed from Djall while he was away from her.

Lucifer lifted God's gift to eye level from where he had been pressing it against his heart. This little box that held so much promises for a better future. For the best future he could have ever envisioned. But for that to even be possible, he needed to keep fighting, and hope, pray, that Chloe's love for him would never weaver.

In an impulse, he sent her a prayer that he knew she could never get.

My Love,

You are strong, the strongest person I have ever known

You can do this

I'm still with you, I will always be

Please, don't give up on me

You are the light of my existence

And I'll be coming back to you

That is all that I want

And when I do, I'll never leave you again

I will love and worship you for eternity...


Chloe was allowed to walk the obstacle course once with Doom by her side, to memorise the path they would have to go through. It was getting a bit confusing in the middle, where they had to turn left and make a loop that would bring them all around from the right side as to finish exactly where they started. Doom listened intently to her explanations of each and every obstacles so he would know what was expected of him. The obstacles looked actually quite difficult, to the point that Chloe wondered if a dog really could make it. She knew that they were at a disadvantage here, since every other competitors had certainly been training on that very course for months while it was actually the first time Chloe did anything of the sort with Doomy. Yet, her hound looked so confident that it alleviated some of her doubts.

When they were finally done with their scouting tour, they joined the rest of the group who looked quite ready to start the trial. She had the bad impression that everybody was looking at her funny. She narrowed her eyes and stared at the man in charge questioningly. He was too happy to oblige and tell her what was apparently on every minds.

"Do you really thing that your dog understood anything that you tried to tell it? The efficiency of a dog on such a course depends in great part on the quality of its handler. I'm looking forward to see how you'll do," he finished with a chuckle.

Apparently more polite, the rest of the men tried to contain their smiles. It was still evident that they all shared Spencer's point of view.

It was decided that Doom and Chloe would go third out of six. She was glad to have the chance to observe a few pairs before having to do it herself, and her experience with Doom told her that he would learn a lot by observing the dogs cross the different obstacles.

Similarly to what she observed in the videos on YouTube, the handlers were constantly using treats and toys to motivate their dogs to obey and make it appear as a game instead of work. Chloe had never felt the need to use any of it with Doom since he was always so eager to please and do his duty. Still, maybe he would appreciate that too. She felt cheapish for not thinking of it seriously before.

"Would you have liked some treats too? Or a toy maybe?" she asked him discreetly as to not be overheard by the others.

Doom rolled his eyes to the sky and snorted, looking most insulted.

Chloe smiled proudly. "That's what I thought." As an afterthought she added, "it doesn't mean we couldn't go to the butcher to buy you a reward of your choice at the end of the day once we've shown those jerks who are the bests."

Doom answered her with a wicked smile that would have scared the common human being.

It was finally their turn. The three first duos had made good times close to four minutes. She'd heard that the current record was of 3min 37sec and dated from two years ago. They only needed to do it under 4min 25sec to pass, but Chloe intended to do a lot better than that.

When the start signal was given, Doom ran to the first obstacle and almost flew over it. He landed directly on the top while he was supposed to be using the angled ladder to get on the landing that stood six feet above ground. A heartbeat later, he'd already jumped down on the other side and was running towards the second obstacle.

Chloe heard gasps of amazement behind her, but didn't waste time looking at the stunned reaction of their audience. It was already hard enough for her to keep up with Doom's incredible speed even though she only had to run in a straight line.

From there, each obstacle looked tougher than the precedent. Somehow, Doom made it look like it was just a walk in the park. Among other things, the hound jumped easily over high chain-link fences without barely touching it, ran across narrow beams at great heights on which the other dogs had been carefully walking, and jumped through a ring of fire without hesitation.

Doom manoeuvered swiftly and efficiently through every obstacles without seeming to need Chloe's indications as to where and when to turn. He finished with a good thirty feet in front of her, and not because she was not running fast.

When she reached the finish line, panting and exhausted from her run, Chloe lifted her eyes on the timer above them. At first, she thought there had to be a problem with it, but then she saw the gaping faces around her. Even Spencer didn't seem to find anything smart to say.

The timer had stopped at 2min 52sec. Forty-five seconds faster than the last record.

In your teeth!

While Spencer couldn't bring himself to congratulate her, the other guys visibly warmth to her and her amazing dog and patted her on the back in acknowledgement of their feat.

After that, it was the defense and attack trial. A man all padded from head to toe would run away from them, or walk to the agent-dog duo and make a threatening move to attack or pull out a gun at the last second. The dog had to stop the run away or block the attack by grabbing an arm and immobilise him long enough for his human partner to cuff him.

Doom did impeccably, not only was he able to grab the culprit in a record time but he was also able to drag him on the ground and immobilise him either with his fangs around an arm or around the neck, and a heavy paw on the back. It didn't take long for the acting criminal to become warry of the Hellhound and of his supernatural efficiency.

Then they were put into real life situations, such as finding drugs among a series of lockers, search a vehicle for explosives, or look for crime scene evidences only from the sniff of a few drops of blood presented to the dog beforehand.

While it took in average five to fifteen minutes for each duos to search a place and complete a task, Doom only had to enter a crime scene and take a sniff before heading straight to the piece of evidence needed to be found.

Chloe and Doom were even put through a special test prepared only for them in which Chloe had to determinate if Doom found narcotics or some explosive devices. With a few pointed questions to Doom, she had absolutely no difficulty to discover that it was a bomb.

Before they finished every trials, Chloe noticed that a group of recruits and agents had come out from the K9 Headquarters and gathered nearby to watch the show. She even heard a few of them take wagers in favor of Doom and herself.

Then came the last and hardest test; finding a missing person. In the scenario, a woman had gone missing, leaving only behind her an empty car on the side of a forest. They were led one by one to a different starting point alongside a forest road and had an hour to find the missing woman. Strangely, Spencer decided to send Doom and Chloe last, and it took a suspicious amount of time for them to be called at their turn after the last duo had been sent.

It didn't take long for Doom to sniff the interior of the car and get the right smell to track. In a matter of seconds, they were already jogging through the woods. With his supernatural sense of smell, the Hellhound didn't even need to slow down to keep on track.

Less than ten minutes later, Chloe spotted a small shack ahead through the trees. She made Doom slow down and unleashed him. They advanced more cautiously from there to make sure not to be seen. She'd been told that this simulation was supposed to be about a lost person, but maybe Spencer had concocted something special for her. It would be just like him to want to test them differently.

They were maybe fifty feet from the cabin when Doom stopped in his tracks and emitted a low growl. Chloe froze instantly and put a hand on her gun. Looking warily around her, she couldn't see or hear anything threatening. Puzzled by the hound's reaction, she looked down to find him sniffing at a wire that was crossing their path at knee level. If it hadn't been for Doom, she sure would have triggered it. She had the feeling that this wire had been put there especially for them at Spencer's demand. What a bastard!

Doom sniffed it back to its origin where Chloe discovered some explosive materials. It certainly would not have exploded for real had it been triggered but they would have failed the test nonetheless if it had. They went around it without touching anything and took a wide berth to get to the shack from the side. Doing her best to be as much silent as she could, Chloe got to a side window and took a peek inside the single room.

The first thing she saw was a woman lying in a bed with her hands tied up behind her back. Close to the door was standing a man wearing padded protection all over his body and holding a shotgun. Obviously waiting for them to arrive, he was walking up and down in front of the entrance nervously.

Chloe signaled to Doom that she'd spotted one single threat and that they would enter from the front. She lowered herself to pass under the side window then under the one on the front before straightening herself up beside the door with her gun at the ready.

Taking advantage of Doom's strength, she gave him a hand signal asking him to barge in. She narrowed her eyes in warning when she saw him lift a paw to simply slap the door. He snorted in exasperation when she shook her head to incite him to take a few steps back for a swing they both knew he didn't need. There might be a few cameras around recording their every move and even if she wanted everyone to be impressed, she certainly didn't want them to understand that Doom was more than what he appeared to be.

The hound complied then ran the few steps separating him from the door before slamming into it with controlled strength. The door was almost pulled out of its hinges and hit the kidnapper, sending him sprawling on his back on the wooden floor. In an instant, Doom was on him with his fangs around his neck and both front paws pinning his arms down. Doom's wild growling finished convincing the culprit to stay still.

Chloe cleared the room first in case there could be a second kidnapper or any hidden wire laying around. Unsurprisingly, she found two cameras in the corners of the room which were certainly recording everything that was happening. Once she was certain that there was no other threat, she hand-cuffed the man while Doom made sure that he couldn't make any aggressive move. Only afterwards did she allow herself to take care of the hostage and untie her. All in all, it couldn't have taken more than twenty minutes for them to close the case.

They made it back to the Headquarters and arrived before every other teams who yet had left way before them. They were warmly congratulated outside the building by the new recruits and other members of the K9 Unit who apparently had been watching their progresses on Spencer's laptop computer. As she'd suspected, Doom and herself were the only ones who had been so closely monitored and who had faced a faked kidnapping. All the other teams only had to find a lost person into the woods, which took them at least twice the amount of time in the end. Only one of the duos failed to find the victim in the allowed time and would have to go through the entire test all over again in a month.

Doom had made much of a sensation among the agents present and to Chloe's amazement, she even received a few offers to buy her hound. Spencer reluctantly had to concede their successful passage of the test and handed her a diploma attesting of their rights to officially work as a canine team.

Eventually, tables were brought outside with food and Champagne to celebrate the victorious teams. The dogs even received bones as rewards for their feat.

At some point, Chloe noticed a man standing close to the building's entrance, apparently talking on his phone. A chill ran up her spine when she recognised him as the man who had been following her this morning.

But how could he have followed her all the way here?

She was certain to have lost him this morning. Unless... Either he had connexions with the police that enabled him to learn where she would be today, or he had put a tracker on her car. But she'd switched cars at the last second, so it couldn't be that.

Chloe discreetly watched him speak on his phone while he was keeping an eye in their general direction, and suddenly another possibility appeared to her. He could have been tracking her cell phone, which would require a connexion to the highest level. Unless he was himself FBI...

Damn! That was it! She was being followed by the Feds.

She felt panic take a hold of her, because if humans would only find Doom particularly amazing, a FBI agent who might be aware of the supernatural, if working with the special team assisted by the priest, would undoubtedly get an interest in her Hellhound. But why follow her at all to start with?

Then it all made sense.

Somehow, Father Amantini must have found out that Lucifer was living in LA and that she was close to him. More than close now. She was living in his penthouse and shared all his belongings. The FBI might very well believe that Lucifer had something to do with the horde of demons raging around the city. She suspected that she would already be locked up into a federal cell and being questioned if it wasn't for Lucifer being missing at the moment. They were probably monitoring her to get to him. And if she was being tracked, her friends might be too...

Chloe distanced herself from the rest of the group to make a call, followed by a nervous Doom conscious that something was going on.

It took a long moment for Maze to answer. She sounded a bit out of breath when she did, probably from training in the gym. "Hey Decker! How's it going with the test?"

Chloe ignored her question and went straight to the point. "I think I'm being followed by the FBI, Maze."

"Oh! You too?" the demon simply replied.

"What do you mean, you too? You got tracked and didn't warn me? You got to be kidding me!"

"Calm down Decker! I had no reason to think that you'd be followed too. It happened last night for the first time and we thought it was only because we were in the vicinity of the abbey. It was actually kind of strange the way those cars always turned around to follow us even though we flew all night long."

"Did you or Amenadiel have your cell phones with you?" Chloe inquired.

"Actually we did. Why? I didn't forget to take pictures for you if that's what concerns you."

"That's not. I think they are tracking us through our cell phones, which means that it could very well be the special team that is dealing with the demons in town. You might be in danger from more than just Lilith and her followers, Maze. Be careful. Who knows what that priest would do if he got his hands on you?"

"Father Amantini doesn't frighten me. If he dares come after me, he'll soon learn that he bit off more than he can chew. After all, I'm a lot more than a simple demon now a days. Let him come!"

A frightening thought crossed Chloe's mind and she cursed her own stupidity. "Shit! Stop talking, Maze. They could be listening to this conversation. I'm coming back home as soon as I can." And she hang up without adding more.

Another horrible thought came to her. If the FBI was watching her, they might eventually discover that she was pregnant with Lucifer's child. And what would they think of the Devil's offspring? What would they think was needed to be done about it...?


Author's note: I hope you enjoyed this one. Please let me know if you did. I do need feedbacks to keep up my motivation to write :) Next chapter will be about Tribe night, then only a couple chapters left until I can bring Lucifer back. Thank you so much for reading and commenting. I love you all!