She stood in front of the man and looked up at him. She let out a gasp as tears formed in her eyes from what she saw. It was Lucifer. Gone was Lucifer's perfectly coiffed hair – in its place was a red, ravaged bald head, the skin leathery and bumpy from scar tissue. Chloe looked into his eyes – instead of the soft chocolate brown she was used to, she saw crimson – and if she looked hard enough, she almost swore she saw flickers of flame in his irises.
"L-Lucifer," Chloe whispered. Underneath all the scars, she could see all the familiar planes and contours of his face.
"I'm sorry, Detective," Lucifer breathed.
"H-How?" Chloe slowly lifted her hands to gently lay them on Lucifer's chest, "Did Kinley do this to you?"
"This is me, Detec-… Chloe," Lucifer's cracked lips curved into a sad smile, "I tried to tell you… I'm the Devil."
Chloe opened her mouth to respond but was cut off when Trixie stepped out of Dan's arms and closer to her and Lucifer in order to jump to the Devil's defense.
"It's still Lucifer, Mom."
Chloe turned to look at Trixie and to Ella and Dan only to see mirrored expressions on their faces as the expression her daughter wore. They all knew. Chloe blinked back another tear as she turned back to Lucifer – he didn't look like he had moved a muscle in fear she'd run.
Memories of their past rose up in Chloe's mind…
"Detective, I trust you."
"Look, if you think that I wouldn't forgive you for your mistakes or your flaws. If you think that I don't know who you really are by now, you're wrong."
~*~
"I am the Devil."
"No, you're not… Not to me."
~*~
"No more Devil talk… I've told you before, you may think that that's what you are, but I don't see you that way."
"Lately, I'm not sure I do either."
~*~
"It's all true," Chloe breathed.
Lucifer's gaze dropped to Chloe's feet, afraid of what he might see if he looked into her eyes. He couldn't bear to see her rejection reflected in them.
Or even worse…
Fear…
Of him.
To his surprise, the next thing he knew, he felt her hand curl up into his before giving it a light squeeze. The contrast of the creamy skin of her hand to his red one was stark. He looked up from their entwined hands to look her in the eyes. She offered him a small but encouraging smile. Chloe gently tugged on his hand and slowly led him closer to the rest of their group.
"Reunited and it feels so good," Chloe said with a timid smile as she gave Lucifer's rough hand another reassuring squeeze.
She didn't drop her hand from Lucifer as she turned to look at Trixie.
"How did you two manage to get your door open? I didn't see a lock on it like ours had. In fact, the padlock looked like it was missing."
"Two guys came to see us," Trixie said.
"Was Kinley one of them?" Dan asked.
"No," Trixie shook her head, "But I think they're working for him. They were demons."
"Demons?" Chloe's head whipped to Lucifer.
"Perhaps we should find another place to continue this conversation," Lucifer suggested as he gestured to the hallway, "Preferably in safety and a long way away from here."
"Yeah, I definitely vote we get the hell out of here," Ella raised her hand, "On our way over to you two, I thought I saw an exit back in the other direction. The security in this place luckily looks pretty lax, but I don't know what else you'd expect out of an abandoned storage facility. I guess Kinley was going for the creepy factor."
Ella began to walk backwards toward the area she was talking about and everyone followed. Unfortunately, the exit Ella thought she saw was just another entrance to another section of storage units. Thinking it was best they all stick together, they all walked in circles around the facility for quite awhile, avoiding what little cameras were there, but ultimately none of them could find any obvious exits. Each door they did find led to another section of storage units or offices.
"With this labyrinth of doors, you could add a few screaming souls and about a ton of ash and this place could pass for the corridors of Hell," Lucifer commented as they all made their way into one of the bigger abandoned offices that clearly housed all the paperwork. Papers overflowed in stacks of boxes along one wall. On the lone table in the middle of the room, there was a thick layer of dust. Only a portion of the dust was disturbed on one side of the table on the opposite side of where everyone stood.
"Yeah, that comment's not helping the situation," Dan mumbled.
"I feel like we're rats in a maze," Ella commented as she walked further into the room.
"Where is everybody?" Trixie asked, "Do you think that evil priest guy was even here?"
"This place does seem pretty empty," Ella agreed.
"Well, we know that there was someone here," Lucifer said.
"Right, Trix said that um, two demons came to see you?" Chloe faltered a little in her question as she tried to adapt to what apparently was the norm for her world now.
"Yes," Lucifer said, "Dromos and Squee… not the brightest bulbs in the Hellfire chandelier, but they still managed to find their way topside."
"They want to take Lucifer back to Hell," Trixie said, "But we're not gonna let 'em, are we?"
Lucifer looked to Chloe to see her reaction. She gaped like a fish for a moment, but didn't answer.
"Not a chance in Hell… pun intended," Ella replied and good-naturedly elbowed Lucifer in his ribs. Chloe dropped her gaze from Lucifer's expectant one. Sensing that Lucifer might misinterpret her hesitant reply, Chloe quickly agreed.
"Of course we're not gonna let them, Monkey."
"I thought you said that demons could only come to Earth by possessing…" Dan started and then looked to Trixie and abruptly stopped talking.
"No need to filter yourself, Daniel," Lucifer said, "Your offspring apparently has known the truth for awhile. I didn't even know she knew."
"Yeah," Trixie confirmed, "I've told Lucifer before, you guys don't have to speak in code. I can handle adult stuff."
Chloe let out a resigned sigh. Her daughter had even figured things out before her. She made some Detective.
"Still, I'd prefer it if you didn't hear everything," Chloe addressed her daughter and made a pointed look at a spot across the room.
Taking the hint, Trixie huffed but obeyed her mother's request and slowly made her way over to the other end of the room on the other side of the big table so that she would (mostly) be out of earshot.
Once Chloe was satisfied with Trixie's distance from the conversation, she looked to Lucifer, "Anyway, what did these two demons want aside from wanting to take you back to Hell?"
She took another steadying breath. His other face was still something that took some time to get used to, but she didn't want Lucifer to misconstrue anything if she didn't give him eye contact.
"Well, they confirmed what Kinley had already confessed to – that he killed Ivan Wilson," Lucifer replied, "In fact, Dromos had possessed Wilson first before hopping into whatever poor sap he's possessing now."
"And h-how exactly does a demon possess someone?" Chloe was almost afraid to hear the answer.
"Don't worry, Detective, the body has to be empty… they would have to have died and gone to Hell," Lucifer explained, "You have nothing to worry about."
"Wait, so this Dromos demon dude possessed our victim first before hopping bodies?" Ella asked, "What made him abandon ship?"
"Perhaps Kinley called for him," Lucifer shrugged, "Dromos mentioned our victim got a hold of a book. Maybe he summoned him by killing another member of that Satanist Club: The Old Scratch-ing Post. Or maybe Kinley simply called for him and he obeyed… He seemed much more obedient to this Father Kinley than he was to me… I am only his King."
Ignoring Lucifer's petulant tone, Chloe began to connect the dots, "That must've been the book we found in Wilson's secret room in his apartment."
"Oh my Gosh!" Ella exclaimed causing Lucifer to flinch by her side.
"That coin thing…" Ella looked to Dan, "The one that I said that was missing. Do you think Kinley somehow stole it from the lab?"
"What coin thing?" Lucifer asked.
"Amongst all of our victim's stuff, I found this weird dark grey coin," Ella mimed with her fingers, "One side had a pentagram emblazoned on it with a horn-headed figure in the middle. And on the other side, there was what I think was a sword in the center of what might be an eclipsed sun. I only saw it once."
"That does ring a very faint bell," Lucifer brought his hand up to his chin, thinking.
"Lucifer! Your hand," Chloe exclaimed.
Lucifer quickly looked down to see what got the Detective so excited. His hand was smooth and alabaster. He brought up his other hand to see its twin.
Lucifer chuckled in relief. He brought his restored hands to his face and stopped. He still felt scar tissue. His hands may have returned to their normal appearance, but his Devil Face was still in place.
"Well, at least it's a step in the right direction," Lucifer remarked.
"Maybe Kinley really did somehow steal the coin from evidence and he's using it to somehow control your appearance," Dan suggested.
"For once, you might be right," Lucifer agreed, "It certainly would explain my lack of control of my face. I have some books back at my penthouse that might help enlighten us on the subject. I've procured quite a lot of informative books over the millennia."
"Um… Mom!" Trixie called out causing all the adults in the room to turn their attention to the girl. She had her gaze locked on something on the floor in front of her that was out of view from the rest of the adults due to the table.
"What is it? Are you okay?" Chloe came over to her daughter.
"Isn't that blood?" Trixie pointed to a spot on the floor. Lucifer, Dan, and Ella walked over to also see what the young girl was talking about.
"That it is," Lucifer said and nodded his head toward another spot on the floor, "And from the looks of that toppled over stack of boxes, there was a struggle. I think the Urchin might've found our crime scene, Detective."
Ella gently nudged Trixie to stand closer to her mom so she could examine the area, "He's right, Decker… Those boxes there, it looks like a guy of Wilson's size struggled against them. That's probably where Kinley strangled him."
"Whoa," Trixie breathed.
"Once we get out of here, we'll get a team down here to process the scene as soon as possible," Dan knew that Chloe would want to follow proper protocol, "But we have to get out of here first."
"Any thoughts on how we can accomplish that, Daniel?" Lucifer asked, "So far we've only managed to go in circles."
"There has to be an exit, Lucifer," Dan countered.
"Uh, I don't know how close we are to an exit, but I think I found something else," Ella said from her knelt position on the ground. She pointed across the room to a different area of the office.
"What is it, Ella?" Chloe asked. Whatever she was seeing, clearly it was only visible from her vantage point.
"Looks to me like a super creepy observation room," Ella replied, "I can see part of a TV monitor through the crack in that door over there in the adjacent room. I think that's where Big Father was watching us."
Lucifer wasted no time and determinedly stalked over to the room Ella indicated with his friends quickly following. Ella was right. There were rows of monitors in the room. Some of them were on and some off. They could clearly see their abandoned units and other locations throughout the warehouse. There was even a microphone sitting on a table in front of all the screens with a little switch attached to the stand it sat on – clearly he was broadcasting to them from this room.
"Creeper," Trixie commented as she stood in between Chloe and Lucifer. They all continued to look around at all the screens.
"You can say that again, Child," Lucifer agreed.
"Clearly Kinley was watching us from here," Chloe said, "But he's long gone by now."
"Look! There's the exit!" Ella pointed to one screen on the far right.
"Right, let's get the hell out of here," Dan said as he started to shuffle himself and Trixie toward the door.
"Just a second, Dan, I gotta figure out exactly where the exit is," Ella fiddled with the screens to try to ascertain where they needed to go.
"Right," Dan sighed. He looked over to a small box that sat in the corner by one of the monitors. Dan walked over to it and peered inside.
"Hey! It's our phones," Dan quickly started to take them all out of the box. He clicked his phone to the lock screen only to see the percentage was at 1%. If he had to hazard a guess, all of their phones were almost dead too. He handed everyone their respective phones. They nodded silent thanks as they took their phones from him.
"Are we going home?" Trixie looked up at her dad and over to her mom.
Chloe exchanged a look with Dan. They were both thinking the same thing. They had been kidnapped from Chloe's apartment. Kinley knew where she lived. Home might not be the safest place at the moment.
"Why don't we go to my penthouse?" Lucifer suggested, "It might be the safest place for everyone right now. I doubt this Kinley would want to enter the Lion's den…"
He looked to Chloe. She looked uneasy.
"That is… if you want to, Detective," Lucifer still wasn't sure how Chloe felt about him at the moment given that his Devil Face was still on full display. Right now, she was still running on adrenaline. Who knew what she'd think once that adrenaline wore off?
"Actually, I was about to suggest that," Chloe surprised him.
"You said you have some books at your place. Maybe one of them might help shed some light on what's happening with you."
"Cool! Sleepover at Lucifer's!" Trixie exclaimed as she seemed to vibrate with barely contained excitement.