17. Chapter 17

Lucifer examined his…guest with an analytical eye.

He was quite right of course. Lucifer had no intention of torturing him.

It was unfortunate, really, but since when was life fair? Especially to him. They didn’t even have enough time to lay in the proper groundwork. The Offspring was down to thirty-nine hours, if their true prey was a man of his word - and the sort of games Mazikeen preferred required much, much, longer to show the right sort of results.

Every soul would lie like a rug if they thought it would stop the pain; it took a careful, patient, touch to teach them better; the pain was never going to stop.

In the meantime, Lucifer couldn’t tolerate that sort of inefficiency when the Detective was watching. The thought of what failure would do to his reputation… it wasn’t worth contemplating.

Psychological torture was more effective, Lucifer had seen some amazing things down Below - back when he’d cared. Humans were their own worst enemy; the sheer cruelty of their imagination was beyond even Lucifer’s ken. And yet his Father’s favourite, they remained. Typical. Perhaps He saw something of Himself in them. Regardless, that method took even longer that the first.

Fortunately, Lucifer wasn’t limited to human methods.

He lit up a cigarette and puffed on it indolently, savouring the taste of the smoke as he weighed and measured the mortal’s soul. It was soaked in pain and tragedy, grey only because it’s light still shone weakly through the skein of shame, regret, and sin. A fair beginning as all souls received, but soon darkened with suffering, and weighed down by bad choices that only grew worse the longer this one endured.

“Let me guess, if I don’t talk, you’re going to put it out in my eye,” Amir Martin said.

Lucifer made his choice, and exhaled the smoke in one deep breath, before lazily meeting the human’s gaze.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Mr Martin? It’s what your mother used to tell you after all, and you knew how to handle her.”

Eyes. The windows to the soul.

The light flickered gently above them, and in the deepening shadows Lucifer’s eyes grew brighter, his smile infinitely sharper and colder, something dreadful inside throwing off the shackles of sleep and spreading it’s malevolent wings.

The mortal had stilled, heart thumping a rhythm only the two of them could hear. No matter how veiled a mortal’s sight was, the primal instincts were not so easily fooled. The hairs on the back of the neck, the pricking of the thumbs, that creeping horrible dread that something was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Infinitely patient, Lucifer watched as the mortal was swamped with the ghastly scrambling sensation, before that wilful blindness rushed back to soothe the uneasy mind with the familiar and comforting blinders of Science and Logic.

Mr Martin licked his lips, opened his mouth to sass – but his voice came out as a trembling croak.

Lucifer was not surprised. Some mortals took The Knowledge that way. If it was real – if it really, really, was real – then so too was Hell, and they’d been very naughty little boys and girls.

Ignorance was bliss, in comparison.

“I can see it you know,” Lucifer murmured, “How she twisted you from innocence to sin,” he paused to take another drag of smoke. “How you let her.”

“I was a child!”

The defence was incredibly swift for a man who wanted to laugh at him, but Lucifer knew the man had no idea why he cared so much so suddenly only that he did.

Instinct was a compelling power – and somewhere behind the defensive consciousness, the soul remembered that there was a Judge.

“Do you really think that matters?”

If it weren’t so pathetic, it would be funny. Why were children exempt from the will of their Father, when all were children before Him? Why did the weight of the years matter, when Dearest Dad’s rules were absolute? Those laws made no exceptions for the child, the mad or the desperate.

Not even his favourite son.

Mercy was a modern concept and not one Dad cared for. Honestly, had no one read the Bible?

“You’re not my fucking therapist.”

It wasn’t anger talking, Lucifer sensed, but an attempt to normalise the situation. Mr Martin thought he knew the game; the roles the two of them were supposed to play. Banter and bravado followed by a little rough and tumble – not this slow sinking dread. He thought he was better than that.

Lucifer knew otherwise.

The longer he kept he gave the man his undivided attention, which, honestly, was quite the honour in and of itself, the more the shield of Mr Martin’s nerves cracked before the onslaught of gibbering cosmic potential.

Lucifer kept watching.

The human snapped.

Mr Martin started heaving on the cuffs that bound him – absolutely, gloriously, mindless with wild panic.

Lucifer surveyed the show with a connoisseur’s eye. Mr Martin’s body writhed pleasantly under the chains and under the dim light and faintly sweating – well, Lucifer had paid good money to see similar performances. Smooth skin, faint scars, strongly defined musculature that flexed and heaved…

He took another slow drag, and luxuriated in the smouldering flavour.

“Why would I want to be?” he parried as if there’d been no interim, once Mr Martin had exhausted himself and began fidgeting, “after what you did to the last one?”

Oh yes, he was shocked now. Surprise rather than fear, but they were getting there.

“So you’ve read my file,” he said eventually, “big deal.”

“You want to believe that,” Lucifer tapped the ashes off, “but you don’t.”

“Am I supposed to say, oh but how could you possibly know that, Mister Holmes? Fuck you, you fucking fag. Hand me over to the cops already will you? I’m getting bored, and get me some fucking pants too.”

“Tell me what I want to know, and we can make a deal.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’m not Robert or Claire, Mr Martin,” Lucifer chided sympathetically, “I don’t touch the unwilling.” There was a regretful pause. “No matter how good you look tied up like that – and Claire agreed with me, didn’t she? She just preferred leather, and you liked it quite a bit until you didn’t.”

#

She’d never seen Lucifer like this.

Chloe was pressed up as close to the glass as she could get without sticking to it, arms wrapped about herself for warmth. It was cold down here, and got colder with every revelation.

Lucifer persuaded people all the time for her cases, but those had been brief, the secrets on the tip of the tongue, ready to come spilling out for a handsome man and a cute accent.

This was different.

Chloe shivered. Lucifer wasn’t questioning the mercenary; he was… peeling him open, secret by secret.

Every thought, every choice, every passing fancy no matter how bizarrely random or excruciatingly private - It seemed like there was nothing that Lucifer didn’t know, and he was a master of theatre.

The information had to have come from Brent upstairs – and Chloe made a mental note to never piss off a man that thorough – but the way Lucifer spoke. All quiet sympathy one moment, pitying a childhood trauma, and then deriding as he passed judgement on a particular decision. Lucifer just kept going.

First kiss.

First kill.

Abused.

Abuser.

Victim.

Criminal.

His voice was hypnotic, tone, intonation, rhythm, coupled with the ever-moving shadows, the cold room, the nakedness, the vulnerability as every secret was laid bare, exposed like a raw nerve and flayed alive.

For god’s sake, Lucifer hadn’t even hit him. The worst thing he’d done was blow smoke in Martin’s face and Chloe was scared.

The mercenary broke, and Chloe actually felt sorry for him.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Amir – and it was Amir now after seeing, no, bearing witness to such cruel intimacy – was looking at Lucifer like he was the face of the devil. It was testament to how unnerved Chloe felt that she couldn’t muster any of her usual exasperation for the accidental pun.

If it had been her in there, naked and alone in the dark before a man who knew everything, how would she have reacted? God, it would be so easy to call it supernatural.

“What are you?” Amir’s voice was so wretched it was painful to listen to.

Even in victory, Lucifer’s expression didn’t so much as flicker. He sipped his whisky and smoked his second cigarette, but nothing could hide the nightmare looking out of his eyes. The things he must have seen, Chloe realised sadly, to earn such a tortured gaze.

“You already know.”

Amir looked away, swallowed, nodded his head once as if to say, fair’s fair and started to speak.

“I work on a team of six. We do security for the Castello family.” He gave Lucifer a meaningful look. “You know?”

Lucifer nodded, and Chloe was certain there was something in there she’d missed. Some nugget of background knowledge or understanding that only those in the know would recognise.

“Last week we get a call that there’s a specialist coming to town. A right nutter, but he turns a profit like you wouldn’t believe. We just have to play his game for a bit, keep him happy, whatever it takes.”

Chloe let out a long slow breath and rested her forehead against the cool glass. Finally, finally.

“Give me a name.”

“I don’t know it,” Amir said softly. “Seriously man, I’d tell you if I did.”

“I believe you,” Lucifer said, and Amir shuddered. Chloe tried not to read into that, but couldn’t help herself. Relief?

“We’re doing routine business, a few meetings, moving the product like, and then he asks us to do surveillance on this woman.”

“You’ve seen his face?”

“No. I told you he’s paranoid. Our orders came by phone or email. He has an American accent, no markers but I’m not an expert.”

“Tell me about this surveillance.”

“Nothing exotic, bit of records research, bit of following her about,” Amir shrugged. Chloe tried not to feel like ants were crawling down her back and failed. They’d followed her? She hadn’t seen anything. There was a crushing sense of blame and guilt lurking in the far corners of her mind, but she didn’t let herself feel it.

“Name of Decker, he said, a detective. The one I was supposed to chat up tonight. Your partner,” Amir rolled his eyes. “Once we reported that, couple of the lads weren’t so happy – but this guy, he doesn’t care about you.”

Chloe sucked in a breath. Confirmation. Amir knew Lucifer – or knew of him, so did this team of his, and it meant something to them all. She didn’t need to be part of their world to connect the dots. If he was telling the truth though, that this had nothing to do with Lucifer… then it really was all about her?

“He’s talking about raising a bit of publicity,” Amir continued and Chloe had to shake the devastation-resignation-hope- out to focus once more.

“-advertising for the usual market and so on. The bosses, they’re all for it, heck, you’ve seen the news, the guy’s untouchable. He’s got feds running like chickens, so what the hell, right?”

“Oh, Hell’s certainly on the menu,” Lucifer purred, “Continue.”

“Right,” cue awkward shifting, and Chloe couldn’t even blame him by that point. She’d passed highly disturbed over an hour ago when Lucifer told Amir details about his life that couldn’t possibly (but must have) made it onto a record somewhere. They did the say the Internet was forever – but there had to be limits.

“Well, it wasn’t exactly difficult. The target is obviously going to be the kid with this guy, best place for that is always after school lets out, so we work out her schedule. Divorced parents mean there’s like five different cars that pick her up so that’s the weak point we recommend, and bam, the next day it’s all over the news.”

“I see.”

Lucifer pulled a photograph out from his pocket.

“Do you recognise this man?”

Amir looked at it carefully then nodded once.

“Yeah, I remember him. Thought he was a customer. You don’t get many black guys working with the Castellos.”

Black guy? Amenadiel, Chloe guessed. So Lucifer’s family was involved somehow? God she knew that family was screwed up but this was beyond the pale. Who would go after children for an unrelated man’s offence? Who went after children at all? Well. She knew the answer, didn’t she?

“Did you hear or see anything about him?” Lucifer continued, tucking the photo back away.

“No. I literally walked past him once in the corridor. If he hadn’t been black, I wouldn’t have even remembered him.”

“What corridor, and when.”

“Main house, yesterday morning.”

“Do you know anything that could get me access to the girl, to The Collector, or anyone else who could?”

There was a long weighty silence. Chloe could see the calculation running in Amir’s eyes and she was running it right along with him.

What happened when his store of information run out? When he was no longer useful? Did he live, or die? Was he a loose end or an asset?

Not that she thought Lucifer would kill him, but, well, he couldn’t know Lucifer as she did, and apparently, her partner had a ‘reputation’ amongst their kind.

Amir made his decision.

“No.” Amir said evenly. “He finished business with the family over a week ago. This is all a side operation, unconnected apart from the advertising. Our team was loaned as a courtesy really.”

“What were you supposed to do with the video footage you took tonight?”

“Dead drop, but the deadline’s passed. He won’t risk going for it, not when it could be a trap now.”

“I see,” Lucifer said politely.

He stood up, and smoothed out his jacket, adjusting the lay of the sleeves.

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

He turned to leave.

“What happens to me?” Amir called to his back. “Let me go! I told you everything I know didn’t I? We had a deal!”

Lucifer didn’t turn around.

“We made no Bargain, Amir Martin,” Lucifer said, oddly formal, “so I must do nothing.”

He left without another word.