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The beach house feels too quiet tonight, even with the fire going and the faint sounds of ocean waves crashing into surf. The only light comes from yellow-orange flames dancing across the walls. Everything beyond that pool of brightness is cast into almost eerie shadows. Behind her, the door to Trixie’s room is cracked open, and a instinctive part of Chloe’s mind is attuned to any sound inside signaling the beginning of a nightmare. Like the last few nights.
Ever since Malcolm.
Scrubbing her eyes, Chloe sits hunched on the couch, elbows braced on her knees and fingers steepled below her lips. She hasn’t moved in nearly twenty minutes. On the coffee table in front of her, a single glass slide reflects the firelight. Standard-issue forensic kit slide, labeled in her own hasty, trembling handwriting.
L.M.
She barely remembers collecting it. And she hadn’t meant to keep it. It had been a spur of the moment decision that night with hardly any thought behind it except the mystery she can’t seem to solve. Since then, she’s been torn between having it analyzed and throwing it away.
Beneath the glass is a drop of blood taken from a pool of it on a hangar floor. At the time, it had still been cooling, still bright red. Now it’s dried to a flaky rust-red smear. She stares at it a lot more than she probably should. Questions forming that don’t seem to have answers. Memories, images, sounds...and this slide—that’s all that remains.
Three days have passed since that night. Every time she closes her eyes, Chloe sees it all again as if it’s happening now. The sound of the gunshot. Lucifer’s surprise and the way he dropped to the ground. Blood soaking through his shirt, pooling beneath his back. Malcolm standing over him, gun still raised, with a look of vicious satisfaction on his face—“That’s what it feels like to die, my man”. It wasn’t long before Lucifer went still, eyes open and staring up at the ceiling.
She was so sure he died. Felt it in her bones. In her soul. It was the sort of knowing that left no room for argument. She’s seen enough death, enough dead bodies, to know when someone is gone. And Lucifer was gone.
And then, not three minutes later (though it felt so much longer), he got back up. Chloe hadn’t seen it happen—she was too focused on getting to her weapons—but she remembers seeing the blood pool without a body laying in it. She heard Malcolm’s gun cock, turned around, and there was Lucifer. Like nothing happened. Like death hadn’t stuck at all.
There was a blur of movement—Lucifer punched Malcolm, Chloe shot him, and then it was over. She only gave herself a few seconds, trying to calm the roar of her pulse in her ears enough to hear the exchange between the men—something about a coin?—then Malcolm was dead.
Actually dead.
She remembers how she stared at Lucifer for another second, then called for Trixie to come out. After making sure her kid was as okay as she could be in the circumstances, she turned to Lucifer.
“Excuse me if I don’t join the group hug.”
“I thought he killed you.”
“Oh he did,” Lucifer said easily, eyes darting to Trixie briefly. “I got better.”
Opening her eyes, Chloe lets out a breath. The slide is still there in front of her, hasn’t moved in the last minute. She reaches for it carefully, as if it might burn, and places it in a fresh evidence sleeve. Her fingers move on autopilot, like she could do it in her sleep—seal, label, bag. Then a second bag, another layer, making sure it’s airtight.
She’s been telling herself this is due diligence. Her partner had been shot in the gut at close range. He lost what any sane person would call a fatal amount of blood. And then he stood up like it was nothing, took care of the threat, and cracked jokes. The fact of the matter is, it wasn’t normal—hardly anything about Lucifer Morningstar could be considered that—and she’s witnessed one too many strange occurrences to ignore it any longer.
He’s a mystery she’s been trying to work out from day damn one, and asking him directly only gets her the same response: “I’m the Devil.” But that can’t...it can’t be true.
Can it?
Because if it is, it means Chloe has put her trust, her life in the hands of some ancient being every story says is evil. She might not be religious in the slightest, but she isn’t blind or deaf, and she went to church often enough with Dan’s family to hear the ramblings. The Devil is some mythical being that corrupts the living and tortures the damned dead. Nothing about him is considered good. Some theology says he’s misunderstood, a son who rebelled after being denied what he desired: free will.
Well, that part of it would fit Lucifer to a T. But he isn’t evil. The only things he corrupts are liquor and consensual adults seeking meaningless sex. He has darkness like anyone else—a temper that should be frightening, a tendency towards violence. But there’s also goodness in him. Chloe has seen it with her own eyes. Although he tries to hide it, Lucifer cares more than he would ever admit. About the cases they work. About justice. About her.
That isn’t evil.
With a sigh, she reaches for a marker and scribbles the necessary info on the bag: date, time, initials. No names. No traceable identifiers. If she’s going to do this, it won’t be through official channels. She has a contact she can trust. Someone she met at a forensics seminar two years ago—an independent contractor who does off the record work. No questions, only results.
Tomorrow, she’ll drop it off before heading into work. Maybe then she can put this whole thing to rest.
A few days later, she gets the call.
Fortunately, she doesn’t have any current cases and her paperwork is (mostly) caught up. She barely waited for the end of the day to grab her things and leave. Ever since dropping off the slide, Chloe has watched Lucifer closer than before, like she might catch him doing or saying something that will flip a switch in her mind. But it’s been the usual innuendo-laced jokes and flirting, the same Devil spiel, the same Lucifer she’s known for six months.
With no signs that he even got so much as a scratch from Malcolm’s bullet.
Just like when Jimmy shot at him... she thinks, looking at the entrance for the private lab.
Shaking herself, Chloe walks up to the door.
This place is tucked in the unremarkable backside of a converted industrial building on the outskirts of the city. One that doesn’t advertise, welcome walk-ins, and doesn’t appear on any city registry as anything but a ‘consulting firm’. It’s the sort of place that only exists in whispers—known by those who need it, invisible to those who don’t. A single security camera watches the side door, and the sign on the buzzer simply reads, C. Rawlins, BioData Analytics. No logo. No contact information.
Inside, the space is deceptively clean and quiet, narrow and sparse. There are two adjoining rooms—one for prep and intake, the other for diagnostics—both illuminated by LED lighting and cluttered with equipment that looks too expensive to be in private hands. Chloe only knows the names of any of it after years on the force. Benchtop centrifuges, high-end spectrometers, an ancient cryo freezer that hums in the corner. The air smells sterilized, and like ethanol and melted plastic.
The tech herself, Cassie Rawlins, is a former biomedical researcher turned freelance analyst after leaving a DAPRA-adjacent contract she still isn’t allowed to talk about. Chloe met her at a forensic toxicology seminar—both of them bored, both of them suspicious of the narrative that comes out of labs attached to too many acronyms. They bonded over cheap beer, mutual distrust of bureaucracy, and a shared appreciation for good french fries.
Chloe ducks her head around a doorframe to see Cassie hunched over a microscope, a deep frown on her face. Cassie is around her age, long auburn hair pulled back in a messy bun, and eyes sharper than a scalpel. Today, she’s dressed in a faded hoodie, combat boots, and there’s chipped black nail polish on her fingernails. One of the best things about Cassie is her little to no questions policy.
“I don’t care if it’s blood from a crime scene, a dog, or your imaginary friend,” she said the first time Chloe brought her something strange. “I run what I run. You get what I find. That’s the deal.”
She specializes in outliers—the anomalous samples, unclear toxicology, DNA that doesn’t belong anywhere. She doesn’t bat an eye at missing chromosomes or corrupted base pair sequences. She saw too much in her years in defense-adjacent labs to be surprised by much. Like Chloe, she prefers mystery, even when it makes her nervous. The thrill is in the puzzle-solving.
But when she called Chloe today, her voice had been taut. “This isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen,” she said in a low voice. “You didn’t get this from any human, Decker.” She paused for a long moment, then added in a hushed whisper, “Did you?”
“Hey, Cassie,” Chloe calls.
The other woman’s head snaps up. No welcoming smile on her face today. “Decker,” she says evenly. “You couldn’t have warned me before dropping this radioactive nightmare on my lab?”
“Um...” Chloe says, blinking. “What?”
Reaching over to a pile of files arranged in organized chaos, Cassie picks up a manila envelope and drops it onto a table behind her, then turns her chair to face it. Chloe steps inside the office, staring at the envelope like it’s the holy grail of paper, still fresh from the printer.
“You ran the sample, then?” Chloe asks cautiously.
“Ran it, reran it, nearly fried my damn sequencer in the process. You’re lucky I like you too much to invoice you for equipment damage,” Cassie snaps, grabbing a pen and jabbing it into the table for emphasis. “What the hell did you bring me, Decker?”
Chloe doesn’t answer—mostly because she isn’t sure how to answer. She can’t exactly say, My partner might be the Devil and I don’t know what to do about that.
Cassie blows out a breath. “Okay, fine. You want the facts? Here.”
She opens the envelope and slides out the top sheet, which is a full-color DNA readout. “I started with a basic electrophoresis panel,” she says. “At first glance, looked human. But when I ran it through the genome sequencer...” She flips to the next sheet. It looks more like static than actual data—rows of mismatched codes, gaps, highlighted warning flags litter the page. “It glitched halfway through. Error messages I have never seen. The entire interface locked up. Twice. I thought the machine was just overheating. I cracked the casing open—then the lights inside started pulsing.”
Chloe’s eyebrows furrow. “What do you mean, pulsing?” she asks, stepping closer.
Reaching behind her for a tablet, Cassie taps a few buttons. “Blue-white flashes from the sample itself. Not electrical arcing, either. Or heat. This was....” She trails off, shakes her head, then taps a video file. Grainy black and white lab cam footage plays: the interior sequencer glows for a split second, flickers like a dying bulb, and then settles again.
“The plasma sample sparked,” Cassie goes on. “I don’t mean glowed a little. I mean sparked. Like it refracts light from the inside out. That’s not how natural bioluminescence works, Decker. That’s something else.”
Shaking her head, ignoring the way her pulse quickens, Chloe says, “Something else...like what?”
“Hell if I know,” Cassie grunts, flipping to a microscopy image that’s magnified in a high-resolution scan.
Chloe leans in. At first, it looks like a normal smear of blood plasma, pale gold and viscous. But speckled throughout are tiny pinpricks of faint light. And it doesn’t look fake. Steady glows are embedded inside every cell.
“They shift,” Cassie adds. “Almost like they’re responding to the scan frequencies. They don’t degrade. They don’t denature. They’re completely stable. How long ago was this sample taken?”
“Almost a week,” Chloe replies faintly, staring at the scan. “Six days.” She blinks, glancing back at the results. “What about the DNA?”
Cassie taps the sequencing report. “That’s where it gets weirder. There are full sequences that aren’t mapped to any known organism. Not human, not animal. Hell, it isn’t even microbial. Just...patterns we’ve never catalogued. It’s like someone took a human genome, spliced in something—and this is the only word I have for it—ancient, then encrypted the whole damn thing.”
“That—how is that possible?”
“It’s not,” Cassie says, crossing her arms. “But, somehow, you brought it to me anyway.”
Chloe stares at the printed sheets. To her untrained eye, they look like...well, science. Like logic on a page. But nothing Cassie is saying, nothing Chloe is seeing makes sense.
“This isn’t human blood,” Cassie says quietly. “To be honest, I have no idea what it is.”
The words hang between them like a verdict. Chloe reaches for the table, closing her fingers around the edge, just to ground herself in something real. Something normal. “Is there any way the sample could’ve been contaminated?” she asks, grasping at straws now. “Lab error, a freak reaction—”
Cassie shakes her head. “Everything was clean and sterile. Triple-checked. I isolated the proteins twice. Your guy—whoever he is—doesn’t just have weird DNA. He has impossible DNA.”
“I didn’t give you a name.”
The other woman raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t need one. Whatever this is? It’s definitely not from around here.” She pauses for a moment. “And look, you know me—I don’t do conspiracy theorist bullshit or alien abduction crap. I haven’t been to church since I was three. But when I ran these samples, Decker? There was this...feeling.” She pauses again, swallowing hard, her eyes glistening. “I can’t even explain it. It was just...warmth.”
“You’re serious?” Chloe asks quietly.
Cassie nods. “As a damn heart attack.” She slides the pages back in the envelope, then pushes them towards Chloe. For a moment, she doesn’t remove her hand, like she doesn’t want to give any of it up, but she forces herself to pull away. Chloe stares at it for a moment, then picks it up carefully, tucking it under one arm.
Leaning back against the bench, Cassie crosses her arms again. “I usually don’t ask questions,” she says. “You know that. That’s why you came to me. But if I were you? I’d stay far away from this one.”
Chloe looks at her friend. “You just said—”
“I know what I said. But I’m telling you, Chloe—this will only lead to trouble. Leave it alone. Walk away.”
Shaking her head, Chloe tightens the grip on the envelope like it’s a lifeline. “I can’t do that,” she says.
Cassie sighs. “Then on your own head be it.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
With that, Chloe turns to leave.
“Decker, wait.”
She looks back.
The usual formidable, take no bullshit expression on Cassie’s face cracks slightly. “Whose sample was that?” she whispers, like she doesn’t want anyone to overhear her breaking her own protocol.
But despite trusting Cassie, Chloe’s gut is screaming to protect this information—protect Lucifer—even if it has the potential to shatter every illusion she’s ever had.
“See you later, Cassie,” she says instead of answering.
Behind her, she hears the other woman sigh as if she just lost out on the greatest find of her life.
Maybe she has.
Outside in her car, Chloe sits behind the wheel with the envelope still in her lap like it’s a ticking time bomb she can’t put down. Fingers shaking, she opens it again and looks down at the report. Glowing particles. Mutated DNA. Light flares inside the sequencer. No biological match.
“This isn’t human blood,” Cassie’s voice says, echoing in her mind. “I can’t even explain it. It was just...warmth.”
Not human, and yet it came from a man. One Chloe might not know everything about, but one she does know. One she trusts everyday. One who saved both her and her daughter’s lives under a week ago.
Lucifer Morningstar.
She stares straight ahead at the empty alley. “There has to be an explanation,” she whispers.
But the one she wanted to believe is slipping further and further out of reach. And the one she fears is beginning to feel inevitable.
The lights in the records room switch on automatically with a hum. Chloe steps inside, letting the door close behind her, and for a moment, she just stands still, letting the silence settle around her.
She shouldn’t be here. This is no longer an active case. There’s no paperwork justifying her request, no pressing need from the department—they want it all swept under the rug. All it is, is a personal obsession masquerading as due diligence. But she already crossed the line the second she tested his blood.
Her hand tightens around the folder in her hand—Lucifer’s bloodwork, which turned out to be a mess of contradictions and impossibilities. Much like the man himself. She forces her legs to move, to carry her deeper into the rows of locked filing cabinets. These are the hard copies, backup reports never fully digitized. Mostly precaution; paper doesn’t glitch. Paper doesn’t disappear when servers go down.
Paper doesn’t lie.
But people do, she reminds herself.
She’s seen that all too often lately—and yet, never from Lucifer. Or at least, she’s never caught him in a lie. Even if the bloodwork is telling the truth, if Lucifer isn’t human, if he’s something...other, she can’t say it would be a lie. He tells her all the time.
She unlocks the cabinet marked ‘Medical + Incident Reports: Civilian Consultants / Informants’ and begins thumbing through the folders. Her fingers are quick and methodical, eyes scanning names as they go by in a blur.
Lucifer Morningstar has worked at her side for six months now—since mid February. He managed to gain consultant status by weaseling in on her cases, and charming the Lieutenant. A dozen or so cases worked, a few injuries sustained, but not once has he submitted any medical documentation. How he got through the mandated physical, Chloe has no idea.
Probably the same way he ended up joining the LAPD...
She opens the system on her phone and logs into the department database just to be sure, searching every variant of his name: Morningstar, L. Morningstar, Lucifer, Lucifer M. Nothing comes back—no ER reports, no admissions, no private physician correspondence, no ambulance records, no surgery. Not even a damn Band-Aid.
She’s seen him injured—shot, bleeding. And yet, officially? Nothing.
Pulse picking up, Chloe drops her eyes back to the paper files. She pulls a folder from the hangar and lays it open on the nearest desk. The forensics photos still turn her stomach. Blood soaks into the concrete. The spatter pattern says someone bled out—fast. Officially, it’s Malcolm’s. Because Chloe hadn’t told anyone Lucifer got shot—what the hell was she even supposed to say? “Oh yeah, my partner got shot in the gut, but don’t worry, he’s totally fine. Doesn’t even have a scratch.” She’d get laughed out of the department and into a psych hold.
The casing from the scene matched Malcolm’s service weapon, but no bullet was ever recovered. The blood on Lucifer's shirt is said to be transfer from ‘struggle with suspect’—even though neither Chloe nor Lucifer even hinted there'd been a struggle.
She drops her head into her hands. “This is insane,” she mutters to herself.
Closing her eyes, she replays the scene again. She’d been hiding behind a metal shelving unit—Trixie was somewhere deeper in the hangar. Her weapon, and her backup, were between Malcolm and Lucifer. She watched her partner approach Malcolm like he wasn’t a complete psychopath, asking what he desired. Chloe hadn’t heard the answer, but the gunshot was clear as a bomb in her ears.
Lucifer stumbled slightly, blood spreading, and he dropped. Hard. She remembers the sound of his labored breaths, gurgling in his chest, and a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. He said something then, too quiet for her to make out. But she could swear—no, she knows he said her name, right at the tailend. And then silence.
And there was nothing she could do. She had to remain hidden, to find a way back to her weapons to defend her daughter. Then Malcolm started hunting her, and she was searching for an opening. Her back was only turned to the blood pool a few seconds—and when she looked back, Lucifer was gone.
Across the room, punching Malcolm.
She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes, the memory a dizzy loop behind her eyelids. No bullet. No sign of injury. No morgue trip. She shuts the folder a little harder than necessary and leaves the room.
At her desk upstairs, she pulls out the older files—the earliest cases she worked with Lucifer. The first four were on an...unofficial basis. Only once had she sought him out, but only because he could get her into that stupid Players seminar. And there’s only one ‘official’ injury notated: The one Chloe caused.
She still feels like an idiot for that night—and a little guilty. The Lindsay Jolson kidnapping that turned out not to be a kidnapping at all. Earlier in the night, Chloe walked into the penthouse to meet Lucifer before the party down in Lux—only for him to step out of his bedroom...completely naked. Offering himself up to her on a silver platter, as if he really believed that’s all it would take.
That was when she saw his scars. The ones on his back—two huge, symmetrical scars, pebbled and raw looking. She’d never seen anything like it. When she reached out without thinking to touch one, he spun around quicker than she could blink, his hand like a vise around her wrist.
“Don’t, please,” he said in a slightly choked whisper. And the look in his eyes... Haunted and full of pain and anger and memories.
A little later, they sat in her dark car, watching the warehouse where the kidnapper was supposed to be. He talked about being invulnerable. She thought he meant he didn’t feel pain—she knows there’s a genetic condition that can make it possible. She asked what a bullet feels like to him, mostly out of curiosity for what he’d say. And he flicked her, called getting shot a nuisance.
“Does it scare you?”
“No. How can I be afraid of something I don’t believe in?”
He turned towards her, looking more serious than she’d seen him to that point. “Do I scare you?” The look on his face said the answer actually mattered to him, however he tried to hide it.
She shook her head. “No.”
He looked relieved.
After that, Lucifer went inside the warehouse with the cash for the hostage exchange after Carver Cruz nearly blew the whole op. When Chloe followed, the dick locked her out, saying he promised no cops. She had to find another way in, and when she did...it was chaos.
Lindsay was curled on the floor, crying and begging, with Lucifer looming over her. His voice was dark as Chloe approached, and she wasn’t sure what he might do next. Told him to step away. Then she glanced into steel machinery and saw—
Chloe shakes her head. She doesn’t know what she saw. Red eyes? A red, monstrous face? That’s not...it can’t be.
Then he goaded her into shooting him, saying he’s immortal. And she doesn’t know what came over her...but she fired. For a moment, nothing happened. For a moment, he had her believing everything he said about being the Devil.
But then the pain registered, and his hand came away from the graze bloody.
“I’m bleeding. I don’t—I don’t bleed. What’s happening to me?”
She can’t forget the stunned look on his face at the sight of his own blood—like it wasn’t something he saw often. Or expected. As though he’d spent his life walking into direct gunfire and coming out unscathed.
Chloe flips through the injury log—she also remembers him with the EMTs, how he had them laughing and completely charmed. But there’s no record of that. No follow-up care. No stitches. No complaint against her filed. He protected her job that night. Protected her.
Before, she hadn’t even considered it, especially with the way he milked the injury afterwards. Teasing her, mostly. Getting under her skin, the way he always does. Now, though, it feels like puzzle pieces snapping into place.
For a moment, she pauses, unsure where to go next. Then she reaches into her bottom desk drawer, at the very back, where a notepad is hidden. All the notes she took on Lucifer after their first case.
Delilah. Jimmy Barnes.
Chloe said it herself when she first met Lucifer: “Delilah gets riddled with bullets, and you walk away without a scratch. I think that’s interesting, don’t you?”
Lucifer just laughed. “Benefits of being immortal, Detective.”
“Immortal. Do you spell that with one or two M’s? I always forget.”
And then the recording studio.
She can still feel the pain in her shoulder, the dizziness, the darkness floating around the edges. Lucifer was at her side in an instant.
“Chloe...”
“I don’t want to die.”
“I won’t let you. Your father will just have to wait for you.”
He promised he wouldn’t let her die—and she didn’t. But she remembers Jimmy’s gun going off again. Six times. She saw Lucifer jolt from the impacts. He just stood up and went to deal with Jimmy. And again, she saw—
That face. Reflected in the glass behind Jimmy where Lucifer had him pinned. She blamed it on hallucinations from blood loss.
When she woke up in the hospital, Lucifer was sitting at her bedside, a smirk on his lips. Cracking jokes when she asked how long she’d been out. “Three years.” Then he laughed. She called him an ass. He thanked her.
“How are you not...more dead?”
“You’re having a very hard time with the immortal thing, aren’t you?”
Damn right she is.
She sits back in her chair and stares at the wall, heart pounding. Everything she’s seen—every demonstration of strength, the disappearing acts, every Tell me, what is it you desire, every injury that should be present—tells a story.
Until now, she hasn’t been willing to hear it.
Her fingers curl around the bloodwork printout again, the edges softer from being handled too many times in a few hours. She whispers the words before she can stop herself.
“The simplest answer is usually the best one.”
The thing is, it isn’t a simple answer. It will complicate everything. But everything she’s doing now—coming up with alternate ‘logical’ explanations is getting her nowhere. Especially when the evidence suggests something else entirely.
And good detectives follow the evidence.
Lux is quiet when she arrives. There’s no pounding bass shaking the walls, no crowd of writhing bodies on the dance floor. Only the sound of soft piano music played in a minor key. Not the usual, either; this is slow...and achingly sad.
Chloe walks down the stairs, heels clicking on marble, her hand gripping the polished banister like it might have answers. This hadn’t been in her plans, not really. She told herself she needed air, just a drive to clear her head. For a while, she did just that, then autopilot took over and here she is.
Across the room, Lucifer sits at the piano, fingers moving of their own accord. He’s wearing one of his usual suits, though the jacket is gone and the sleeves of his shirt are rolled up. With his eyes closed and head tipped back slightly, he looks like he belongs in another time. Or like a painting come to life. For a moment, she studies his profile—not for the first time. Even she can admit he’s handsome. Beautiful, even, when he isn’t being an ass.
He doesn’t look up at first. But the moment she crosses the threshold of the dance floor, the music falters. “Detective,” he drawls softly without looking up. “Back so soon? Bit late for a case, so I assume this is a social call.”
She doesn’t answer right away.
Lucifer’s fingers linger on the keys for a few more seconds, then he lets them drop. The last chord rings out through the club and fades. Finally, he turns slowly on the bench, dark eyes already scanning her face. “Detective?” he says, tilting his head slightly. “Everything all right?”
Taking a deep breath, she reaches into her bag, pulls out the folded report, and drops it onto the piano.
Lucifer glances at it, then at her, raising an eyebrow. “What’s this?”
“I had your blood tested,” she says quietly.
He blinks once, a slow, unreadable expression settling over his face. “Oh? Did you now?” His tone is light, but the corners of his mouth don’t lift. “And what, pray tell, did you find, I wonder?”
Chloe unfolds the report and taps a finger against the printed diagrams. “The machines couldn’t even read half of it,” she says. “They sparked, then shorted out. Whatever this is,” she taps harder, “it’s not human. So...what are you, Lucifer?”
Lucifer studies her face intently for a moment, then folds his hands in his lap, eyes locked on hers. She waits for him to make a joke of it. To tell her it’s about time. “Maybe now we can have a real conversation, Detective!” But he doesn’t. He’s just...still in a way that makes it feel like the whole room is holding its breath.
“I told you,” he says quietly. “I’m the Devil.”
The laugh that escapes her is short and brittle as glass. “No. You’re a man with a dark past and trauma and way too many metaphors. That’s all,” she says. Even to her own ears, it sounds like she’s trying to convince herself.
“Is it?” he says, his voice quiet and even. If anything, it drops lower. “Tell me, Detective, how many times have you seen something you were then forced to explain away? Inhuman strength. The ability to open any locked door. Injuries that heal a bit too quickly. You’ve seen the way I pull desires from humans.”
His jaw tenses. “You watched me die, Detective. And yet, here we are, having this scintillating conversation.”
She looks down, her jaw tightening, then back up at him. “But that isn’t proof. Not really. Not conclusive. There could be...scientific explanations. Experimental treatments. Genetic mutations.”
He raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t butt in.
“I’ve been digging through our case files. Your consultant files. You don’t have any medical records. You never go to a hospital. Even EMT treatments are missing. But maybe you heal crazy fast. Maybe—maybe you have some rare condition. Something no one’s studied yet.”
His eyes dart to the printout on the piano. “Something that causes my blood to glow under blacklight?” he says mildly. “To short out state-of-the-art equipment?”
Chloe looks away. Her mind is whirring, desperate to come up with something—anything—that isn’t what her gut is trying to tell her. She swallows and looks back at him. “I want the truth,” she says finally, stepping closer. Her voice is quieter but the intensity sharpens. “Not your performance. Not the metaphor. Not whatever story you use to scare people into behaving. The real, actual truth.”
Several seconds pass where Lucifer simply watches her. His eyes are so...quiet when he’s serious, still and endless, like a well without a bottom. “Detective. I have never lied to you,” he says, his voice low and rougher now. “Not once.”
“I know,” she whispers. “That’s what scares me.”
Lucifer hesitates. Then he reaches out—not to touch her, but to gently fold the report closed. “Very well,” he says, sounding a like man condemned as he slowly gets to his feet. “Come upstairs.”
He walks past her without another word, not looking back.
Chloe follows.
The penthouse is dim with only the light from the backlit bar and odd tree root chandelier above his second piano. The room smells like aged whiskey, old books, and whatever cologne he favors—something warm and spicy with hints of vanilla.
Lucifer stands near the darkened fireplace, hands at his sides. For once, he isn’t fidgeting. There’s no drink in his hand. And Chloe has never seen him so—grim doesn’t quite cover it.
“This isn’t something I show lightly, Detective,” he says softly.
Chloe remains silent about ten feet away where he asked her to stand. Her pulse has picked up, and her heart is lodged somewhere in her throat.
“I don’t want to scare you,” he adds, even softer. “But if it’s what you truly desire, then I will show you.”
She only hesitates for a beat. “I need to know, Lucifer,” she says tightly.
He nods once, swallowing. “As you wish,” he whispers, closing his eyes.
Chloe doesn’t know what she was expecting. Horns, maybe? A tail? But he said that’s the stuff of movies and TV—apparently, they always get it wrong. Or a shift in the air. A ripple of heat. That face she swears she saw twice and wrote off as her imagination.
What she gets...is silence. Just for a few seconds. Then he opens his eyes.
They aren’t warm mahogany brown anymore. They’re bottomless red. And she’s 99.99% sure they aren’t contact lenses or something else artificial. They’re real—and alive.
The color glows like they're burning. Bright, shifting crimson, the way flames dance in a dying fire. No human eye could move like that, glow like that. They’re completely otherworldly, and yet...they are still his eyes. Lucifer’s. Just...more.
Chloe’s breath catches in a soft gasp. Her lips part and her whole body freezes. Her brain tells her to run, but she doesn’t. She stays rooted to the spot, knees locked. All she can do is stare.
Terror trickles cold down her spine like fingers, but that isn’t the only thing she feels. Awe wars with it. Wonder. Disbelief. And somewhere beneath it all...recognition.
Her mouth opens breathlessly. “You’re really...?”
Sadness flickers across Lucifer’s face. Followed closely by resignation. “Yes,” he murmurs softly, lips barely moving.
Lucifer blinks once, slowly, and when he opens his eyes again...they’re brown. The same warm, familiar, kind eyes she’s known for the last six months. The ones that dance when he’s amused. Harden when he’s angry. He’s also completely still, though for different reasons. He’s just...waiting.
“I...” she starts. Her voice sounds far away to her own ears. “How?”
He doesn’t answer, jaw tightening.
“I thought you were just...” She shakes her head, unable to finish the sentence. “I wanted you to be just—”
“A man?” he offers gently. “A very odd, devastatingly handsome, possibly delusional man with an expensive wardrobe and a flair for the dramatic?”
This time when she laughs, it’s soft and disbelieving. “I don’t want this to be real,” she admits. “Because if this is real, then everything I believe—everything I thought was true—doesn’t mean anything anymore.”
Lucifer takes a careful step closer, watching her every move intently. “But you do believe it? You did see?”
Chloe meets his gaze and nods slightly. “I saw it,” she breathes.
For a long time, they stand in silence, each sizing the other up, waiting for something to happen.
“I’m still me, Detective,” he says finally. “The same insufferable, infuriating partner you threaten to strangle once a week. Nothing’s changed.”
“Everything has changed,” she says.
Another long stretch of silence falls between them, this one charged with a heavy, electric...something.
“But...you’re still here,” he says quietly, a faint edge of amazement in his tone. “You didn’t run.”
She shakes her head slowly. “I think...I already knew. Deep down.” She looks away, towards the window and the city sprawled beneath them, just a spread of lights. “When I took your blood in for testing, I thought I was chasing a mystery, a riddle,” she says. “Something medical and rational.”
“And now?”
She turns back to him, meeting his gaze without flinching. “Now I think I’m standing in front of something impossible,” she whispers. “And I’m trying really hard not to fall apart.”
Chloe hesitates for a moment. Her mind is still going a mile a minute, trying to fit the new puzzle pieces he’s given her into place. And a picture begins to form.. “You’re not...” she whispers.
“What?” he murmurs.
She shakes her head. “You’re not evil,” she says.
He searches her eyes, his expression impassive. “Know that, do you?”
“Yes. You saved my daughter’s life. You’ve saved my life—several times. You care, even if you try not to show it.”
Lucifer doesn’t say anything. He just studies her, like she’s the otherworldly being in the room. As if he’s never seen anything quite like her.
“I’ve seen you get violent, but only with killers—guilty people,” she adds. “You don’t hurt innocent ones.”
“That’s the tragedy, isn’t it?” he says softly. “That no one ever believed that part?”
The words feel like a punch to the chest. He isn’t smug or gloating. He looks...tired. Worn through. As though millennia of disbelief and judgment have etched themselves into his soul, and he’s grown used to carrying it. Expecting to be feared and misunderstood. Rejected, even.
“I’m not evil,” he murmurs. “I punish evil. The truly wicked. And yes...I enjoyed it. I was quite good at it too.”
Her breath catches again.
“But,” he continues, “I don't lie. I don’t deceive. I try not to manipulate. And I wouldn’t—not with you, Detective.” He meets her eyes fully now. “I told you once that I have never and will never lie to you. I’ve kept that promise, even when it might have been easier not to.”
He steps forward, still watching her like he expects her to turn tail and run. One of his hands lifts between them, palm up, offering it to her. “I know this is difficult,” he says. “I know this isn’t what you asked for. But it’s always been the truth, Chloe.”
Chloe searches his face for a moment, then glances down at his hand. Slowly, she lifts her own and places it in his, warm fingers closing gently around hers. It’s the same hand she’s always known. Warmer than a human’s, as though he’s constantly running a fever, but it doesn’t burn.
She lifts her gaze to look at him again. He’s still the same Lucifer, she tells herself again, and the truth is starting to settle the fear. The same partner. The same friend. The only person who has had her back in the last six months. The man who followed her into that hangar and got himself shot—all to give Chloe and Trixie a chance.
“I think I need a drink,” she whispers.
Perfectly manicured eyebrows shoot up, and for the first time since she arrived, Lucifer smiles. “Well, I can certainly manage that,” he says warmly.
They sit on the balcony, each with a tumbler of whiskey in hand, overlooking the L.A. skyline. A thousand questions are warring for dominance in Chloe’s mind, and she doesn’t know where to start. Beside her, Lucifer’s gaze is turned upwards towards the sky, eyebrows furrowed slightly. He looks as though she isn’t the only one having a difficult time processing.
“Will you tell me what really happened?” she asks without meaning to. “With Malcolm.”
Lucifer lets out a long breath and takes a sip of his drink. “I died,” he says simply. “On Earth, it couldn’t have been for than a few minutes at most. But...where I was...well. Let’s just say it was much longer.”
“Where were you?”
He turns his head to look at her, no smile on his lips. “Hell.”
She’s pretty sure her brain short-circuits for a second. “But you’re...here...?”
“Indeed,” he sighs. For a long moment, he’s quiet, and she thinks he won’t go on. Then he turns to her. “Before I died, I did something I told myself I would never do again. I prayed.”
Chloe blinks. “To...who?” she asks slowly.
“My father. I offered Him a deal—a blank check—and He brought me back.”
She blinks a second time. Her mouth opens and closes. Nothing comes out. Finally, she manages, “And, um, He does that a lot?”
Lucifer shakes his head. “Not to my knowledge. But then, celestials are immortal. We don’t die—not like a human would. I thought that was lights out for me. I would go back to Hell, and that would be the end of it. In case you missed the memo, my father and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms.”
That gets a small laugh from her. “So you asked Him to bring you back and—”
“No,” Lucifer interrupts. “That isn’t what I asked for.”
Her eyebrows furrow.
He hesitates for a long moment. “Detective, I went to that hangar not only because Malcolm deserved punishment—which he did,” he says. “But because...well, I didn’t want to see anything happen to you. Or your sticky-fingered spawn. When I realized what was happening, I needed some way to...protect you. So, that is what I asked for.”
Chloe’s lips part. “You asked G—your father...to protect me?” she whispers.
Lucifer nods. “I did.” He takes a long drink of his whiskey before going on, averting his eyes to the sky again. “I’ve never...desired a human’s protection that way. I’ve never gotten involved like this. But from our first case to now...” He trails off, swallowing. “I can’t let anything happen to you.”
“Why?” The word is out of her mouth before she can stop it. “Why do you care? Why do you even work with the LAPD? With me?”
He shrugs one shoulder. “I don’t know,” he murmurs. “It isn’t something I can explain. I meant it when I said we have a connection. What that means, I’m unsure. But...” He looks at her again. “I want to find out.”
Chloe can only stare at him, not knowing how to respond. Then she realizes, not for the first time—if Lucifer hadn’t followed her that night, she and Trixie wouldn’t be here now. Her daughter even asked her if he saved them and Chloe said yes—because it’s true.
The Devil saved their lives.
“Thank you,” she breathes, reaching over with her free hand for his wrist.
Lucifer looks down at her hand, blinks, then looks at her. His head tilts like a puppy who’s just heard a new sound.
“Thank you, Lucifer,” she says again. “For protecting us.”
He swallows, nodding once. “You’re welcome, Detective,” he murmurs.
Chloe doesn’t know what comes next. She isn’t sure how to come to terms with the whole world being different, but she does know one thing: as long as Lucifer is at her side, she’ll be able to figure it out.