Lucifer should've been more suspicious when a group of exorcists showed up at his mansion, requesting a meeting. They claimed to be there to renegotiate terms for the extermination day, and it seemed like they were open to restoring the previous yearly schedule. In reality they were just there to distract him. By the time he realized that they were stalling and arrived at the hotel, the only one he could find was the cat demon, lying on his back in a pool of his own blood.
"You're too late," the feline demon said. His voice wasn't angry, or even cold really. It had an almost nonchalant tone that Lucifer wasn't accustomed to hearing. Nobody addressed him so casually, regardless of the situation.
"What the hell do you mean I'm too late?" Lucifer asked, dread building up inside of him. His eyes danced around the battlefield, searching for any other signs of life. The wreckage of the museum was littered with both angelic and demonic corpses. His daughter was nowhere to be seen.
"I mean she's gone. They're all gone. We did fine against the regular exorcists. Not sure if I'd say we were winning but we definitely put up a good fight. Once Adam got involved though... He killed Alastor in under a minute and then took his time tearing the rest of us apart and rubbing it in Charlie's face. Then he killed her too."
"How are you still alive then?" Lucifer demanded angrily, still trying to deny the situation. "If you survived then she must've too. I don't see her corpse. Adam wouldn't dare to..."
"There isn't a corpse. He didn't leave one behind," the cat demon interrupted him. His tone was still flat and casual. As if he was remarking on the weather to a random acquaintance rather than informing the king of hell that his daughter had been murdered. Lucifer felt a desire to smite growing inside him as the impertinent demon continued. "As for how I'm alive, Adam ripped off my wings and dropped me from the sky. I think he made some dumbass quip about cats landing on their feet to Charlie. I wasn't really listening though. Don't know if he assumed I was dead or just didn't care enough to double tap. Either way I was still conscious when Charlie died. I saw what he did to her."
Towards the end of his speech, Husk's composure finally broke. Agony and sorrow leaked into his previously calm voice and Lucifer felt his misplaced anger shift into profound shame. He had seriously considered taking out his rage on Charlie's only surviving friend. A demon who, This sinner didn't seem particularly strong, but he had still chosen to fight alongside Lucifer's daughter against the legions of hell. Meanwhile Lucifer himself had let himself be delayed by cheap tricks. He was the inventor of cheap tricks.
"Do you regret it?" Lucifer asked somberly.
"Gonna have to be more specific, your majesty. I regret most things."
"Do you regret fighting for the hotel instead of running away?" Lucifer clarified.
"I didn't exactly have a choice. Alastor owned my soul and he wasn't going to back down. If he wanted to fight then obviously I had to as well."
"That's not an answer" Lucifer pressed.
Husker went silent for a while before responding. "No," he said firmly. "If I could do it again I'd still fight. I'd probably do it a bit differently though. Go out in a blaze of glory like Pentious, instead of being used to torment Charlie for Adam's amusement."
"And you're sure everyone else is dead? No chance of other survivors?"
"Some of the Cannibals might've gotten out alright I suppose. But no one from the hotel survived. I'd have my doubts about Alastor's demise if it weren't for the fact that I felt my contract with him break. You could almost call it a silver lining. I've got my soul again, and nothing else."
"Well I certainly won't miss that bastard at least," Lucifer said, as an idea began to form in his head. "Sorry, what was your name again? I recall Charlie introducing you, but I was a little distracted by the small one climbing up my suit."
"It's Husk," the demon replied simply.
"I've been demanding a lot of answers from you. Can't help but notice you haven't asked me anything. Aren't you curious why I wasn't here? Don't you resent me for not showing up earlier?"
"You know I always assumed the King of Hell would be someone like Alastor. A sadistic puppet master who revelled in our suffering. But you're nothing like that are you? You're just another loser."
"Excuse me?"
"It shouldn't be such a surprise really. Most people in hell are losers. The winners don't typically end up here. But I just didn't expect it from you."
"I don't think anyone's ever insulted me that casually before..." Lucifer remarked. "I mean plenty of people have screamed at me about how much of a bastard or a monster I am, that comes with the territory of being the origin of human sin. But no one's ever just called me a loser to my face." Lucifer didn't sound particularly offended by what Husk had said. He was more bewildered about why he said it.
"It's true though isn't it? Charlie told us you were a busy guy who never had time for her, but that was wrong. You were never busy. You were just insecure and assumed she didn't want you around. So instead of risking rejection you spent all your time drinking your depression away in your empty mansion until she finally reached out to you."
"I don't drink. I have... other coping mechanisms," Lucifer replied vaguely. He wasn't about to bring up his rubber duck collection. "The rest of that was disturbingly accurate though." He admitted.
"I'm a gambler and a bartender. Both tend to be good at reading people."
"I'm not sure why you'd say that to me though. I asked if you resented me and you called me a loser. Should I take that as a yes?"
"You should take it as a fuck off! I don't know why you weren't here and I don't care. What I do know is that Charlie didn't die so you could spiral further into depression. My friends didn't die to be some cautionary footnote in your tragic backstory. I won't accept that. But I can't do anything to change it. I'm just some dead overlord's stupid pet. I can't do anything about this. But you're different. You act like a loser but you're a big deal. So you have to do something, anything to make this whole mess mean something. I don't care if it's revenge, or picking up where Charlie left off. Just stop wallowing in self pity and do something."
"You say I need to stop wallowing, but it sounds like you're trying to goad me into ending you. Isn't that a bit hypocritical."
"I just got through telling you about your daughter's brutal death. I doubt any insult I could come up with would overshadow that." Husk responded angrily. "It doesn't really matter to me anyway. At this point either you decide to shoot the messenger, or I have to pull myself together and figure out what to do next. Neither of those options seem appealing."
"Then how about a third option," Lucifer said as he began to transform. His eyes glowed red and wings manifested on his back, but the biggest change was his presence. Something inside the man seemed to shift and power like nothing Husk had ever felt radiated from every part of him. If Husk wasn't already on the ground he would've surely fallen over.
"What is this?" Husk asked, his anger forgotten due to the shock.
"You were right. For milenia I've been so overwhelmed with self-pity and despair that I forgot who I was. I forgot why heaven feared me so much in the first place. Heaven must've forgotten it too. The thing that makes me so much more powerful than even the other Seraphim."
"And what's that?" Husk asked.
"The fact that I'm willing to break their taboos. No matter how sacred. They thought I'd just accept this. That I'd take my daughter's death lying down. They thought they'd stamped my defiance out. But they were wrong. So now I have one last question for you, Husk."
"And what's that?"
Lucifer stood over Husk and extended a hand down to him. The angel had a terrifying grin on his face. "Would you like to make a deal?"
Lucifer gave no further explanation, but somehow Husk knew what was being offered here. He wasn't sure if it was intuition or magic but he knew on some instinctive level what he stood to gain from shaking that hand. And he could sense the unfathomable risks attached to this deal. If this went wrong there was no counting the number of fates worse than death that could befall them. Heaven would show no mercy. But Heaven wasn't exactly full of mercy in the first place...
"I swore that if I ever got my soul back I'd never make another deal again," Husk said softly. "But if I was really the type of person to learn from my mistakes, then I would've never ended up here in the first place."
With no further hesitation, Husk reached out and grasped Lucifer's hand. The deal was struck.