There was an uncomfortable silence for a while after Ella and Alexander left the penthouse. Lucifer poured Chloe a cup of coffee, just the way she preferred. The detective could not look the Devil in the eye for the moment. After taking a sip, she said quietly:
"Lucifer, we need to talk. I need to tell you something about the time I was away and what happened while I was on, hmmm, holiday."
Lucifer looked at her worriedly and asked:
"Are you all right Detective, has anyone done anything to hurt you or the Urchin?"
Lucifer's worried words confirmed how wrong she had been in believing Kinley. She had to confess, face to face, and it weighed on her as the realization began to sink in that she had been on the verge of making a gigantic stupid mistake. Silently she said:
"No Lucifer, everything is fine, no one has done anything to us. But we really need to talk. Please let us sit down, because this is extremely difficult for me."
Without waiting for an answer, she walked over to the seating area and sat down in an extremely tense manner. Lucifer followed her, watching her closely. He had never seen the detective so nervous, so unsure of herself. Once he was seated, she began to speak:
"After I saw your other face, after you killed Pierce, Cain, I was terrified. Before all this, I didn't even believe in God, and now I was faced with evidence that everything is true. That God, Heaven, Angels, Demons and the Devil really exist. My whole worldview was turned upside down. And if all that exists what was my place in all this? I am just a tiny puny human being."
Lucifer wanted to interrupt and contradict her, but she raised her hand:
"Please let me speak, Lucifer, before I lose my courage."
He nodded silently, and she continued with a deep sigh. Lucifer squeezed his eyes shut. He had a very strong suspicion of where this was going, especially since Alexander had more or less taken a Catholic priest hostage and put him up with one of his underworld contacts through Maze. That did not bode well, not well at all. Chloe continued:
"My first reaction was to take Trixie away from everything to protect her from the supernatural. We travelled to Europe, to Italy. We travelled around a bit while I tried to relax and think. Eventually we ended up in Rome. I was scared, Lucifer; I couldn't think straight. My mind was playing tricks on me and I was having nightmares. All I could think about was what the Church and Hollywood tell us about the Devil. That the Devil is the ultimate evil, that the Devil is the father of lies and has a plan to bring an end to mankind. I couldn't talk to anyone about my fears. There was no one to listen and tell me how stupid I was. In Rome I was subconsciously drawn to the Vatican. There I met a priest called Kinley. He listened to me, seemed to understand. He didn't call me a fool for saying that I knew the Devil and that I worked with the Devil in law enforcement. We talked for hours. He wasn't a fanatic, or at least he didn't sound like one. Kinley showed me things at Vatican Lucifer. Things I don't understand at all, but which only reinforced the view that the Devil is the ultimate evil. He also showed me a prophecy that you would destroy the world. In the end, all I could think about was Trixie and how I had to save her."
Lucifer shook his head and said quietly:
"Oh Detective, what have you done..."
Lucifer drank his whisky in one gulp and asked quietly but sternly:
"Then what was it that this priest told and showed you detective?"
Chloe nodded, expecting his patience and the gentleness in his voice to wear thin as the conversation progressed. She replied meekly:
"According to him, there is a small group in Rome who try to keep an eye on you while you are on Earth. That they have known of your little vacations since the time of St. Peter and that you enjoy a short holiday on Earth from time to time. He showed me old sketches, portraits and some photographs. He used them to prove that you are always there when terrible things happen on Earth. One of them, although I don't believe you are literally evil, I really can't place Lucifer. The Vatican has pictures of you at a party with top Nazis. In one of those pictures, you were smiling while talking to Hitler and Himmler."
The devil shook his head slowly and said:
"Around that time we had a huge influx of souls into Hell. That happens from time to time. Especially when humanity decides it needs to go to war again. I came up to see what was going on. It didn't take long to find out. I just wanted to meet the vermin responsible for all the misery before they ended up in hell. It is inconceivable that an intellectually limited individual could bring down an entire nation, the entire world for that matter. Not that he did not have help; his little friends Franco, Mussolini, and Hirohito were not much better. It seems that there is truth in the saying, and I quote, If you are a single one and you want to become more, make sure that you have a lot of zeros behind you."
Chloe nodded quietly at this explanation; she understood what he meant. She said quietly:
"In one of these pictures, you can be seen completely relaxed and smiling together with an equally relaxed and smiling Hitler. What must a person think when they put such a picture in front of you, Lucifer?"
On the one hand, Lucifer wanted to agree with her completely, but on the other, it hurt what she must have thought about him. Especially after working with him for some years. He said:
"He's a Catholic priest, detective. This group has been brainwashing for two thousand years and they have become very adept at it over the centuries. My youngest brother Yeshua died because a caste of priests saw him as a threat to their power. The first thing Peter and Paul did after his death was to hijack his teachings and install a new caste of priests. Damned idiots!"
Chloe asked in surprise:
"Yeshua?"
"The original name of Jesus Detective, Yeshua Ben Josef, Jesus Son of Joseph."
Her eyes went wide and she almost stammered.
"You... Jesus is your brother?"
He looked at her strangely and said dryly:
"If I am my father's son and Jesus is my father's son, then that means we are brothers Detective, well, half-brothers in this case because my mother had nothing to do with it."
She swallowed for a moment and again her brain had some difficulty making the divine family connection between Jesus, Lucifer and God. Lucifer the divine Archangel, the fallen one, the son of God an apparently the half-brother of Jezus freaking Christ. She asked:
"What do you mean by a new priestly caste?"
He took a deep breath and said:
"The high priests of the temple in Jerusalem were afraid of Jesus. He had been sent to Earth to teach man another way, to really connect with Father again, to be more peaceful and positive. One of his lessons was that man does not need temples and priests to get closer to Father. This was something that the priestly class did not like at all. They owed their political power to being the intermediary between man and God. The group man could not do without to make a connection to God because they were the so-called chosen ones. Their economic wealth and power came from the temples. If you wanted that someone whispered a good word in the ear of God on your behave, well you paid the priest for that services, birth, marriage, dead? All stages of life passed through the priest and the people gladly paid them for so-called services rendered. You wanted to beg God for his special attention then you could only do that in a temple and make a sacrifice. Only items approved by the priests could be sacrificed in the temples, and miraculously these could only be obtained from merchants associated with the temple, and a large part of the income from these went directly into the coffers of the temple and thus the priests. When people no longer needed priests, their political power disappeared, and when people no longer needed temples, their economic power disappeared like snow in the sun. Jesus knew that the priests were after him and that they would use the Romans to achieve their goal. When he disappeared from the Earth, Peter took over power in the group, with Paul as a close second. They continued to preach his teachings that man no longer needed priests, and at the same time it became so that man would only find the way to heaven through the teachings of Jesus, of which the apostles and their later successors were the guardians. In this way they unwittingly, or perhaps willingly, created a whole new class of priests who were no better than the old. In many cases, in later centuries, much, much worse, if you look at the Crusades and the Inquisition, among other things. The same stupid stuff that's diametrically apposed to Jezus teaching still stand today. From the seven sacraments that a lay person, at least Catholics, can receive, from baptism, to confirmation, to marriage, to your funeral, you pay the Church. But regardless of the Church to which you belong, the faithful are always called to give to the Church as generously as possible. So much so, in fact, that it used to be the norm to give ten percent of your income to the church. On the one hand, you had the landlords and the kings bleeding you to death with their taxes, and on the other hand, you had the church expecting you to give ten percent to God on top of that, not caring that your king had just squeezed you like a grapefruit. In that regards nothing except the names and attire has changed."
She nodded at these words, sighed and asked quietly:
"Did you know him?"
The expression on his face softened and warmed as he thought of Jesus. He answered:
"We met a few times and talked for hours. He is one of the few people in my family I can stand, for whom I have no negative feelings. You've never been a believer, Detective; do you know where this whole fasting thing comes from that Christians do today?"
She shook her head slowly. She had a vague idea; she knew the subject had been raised once in primary school and she seemed to remember bits and pieces of things Daniel and his Catholic family had once said. However, she had never paid any attention to it, simply because she could not believe in something for which she had no airtight proof. Lucifer continued:
"Fasting is an ancient Jewish tradition that Christianity adopted in later years. Just like the fact that my brother was not born on the 25th of December. Many of the holidays in the Christian calendar have their origins in pagan festivals. People celebrated the winter solstice as a sign that the shortest day of the year had come and that from then on the days would grow longer, announcing the rebirth of spring, which promised warmth and food. Christians simply annexed the day and made it the birthday of Jesus to make it easier for pagans to convert to Christianity. The fasting as Christians know it comes from the time before Jesus was arrested by the Romans. He had withdrawn from his followers on a mountain to pray and meditate. This praying did him as much good as it did me, detective, absolutely nothing. For Father did not answer his prayers! I visited him on that mountain during that period to keep him company. To try and stop him from going back down, which would start all that Pontius Pilate shit. But he was not to be distracted from the plan, Father's plan. I never offered him to the world in exchange for his submission, detective. This is another lie that has been spread among mankind to put me in a bad light. I just wanted my little brother to stay alive because deep down I already knew his sacrifice would change nothing about the primal instincts in humans."
He drank the rest of his glass and shook his head, as if to clear his mind of the images he saw before his eyes. He said almost inaudibly:
"I have seen the bloodiest scenes, the most abominable things that man is capable of. I was there at the crucifixion, and it was as if I was dying on that cursed cross. It was the most heartbreaking thing to witness, having to see my brother die on that damn cross and being able to do nothing because he made me promise not to intervene. Even Michael apparently went totally dark that day because the moment he died there was a total blackout of the sun. Before that moment, I was absolutely furious with Father for having me throw into hell. Afterwards, I hated him completely. He sent his son, my little brother, to mankind to teach them a better way, and when it became clear that his little plan wasn't going to work and that it was going to end fatally, he took his hands off everything and let Jesus die on that cursed hill without saying a damn word!"
There was silence in the penthouse for a moment until he heard Chloe say quietly:
"I'm so sorry for you, Lucifer..."
He snorted deeply and straightened up; he had worn his heart on his sleeve long enough. He looked her sternly in the eyes and asked coldly:
"That's the God man believes in, Detective. Your so-called omniscient, omnipotent, infinitely patient God who seems to love everything but his own children. One he lets die on a cross, and the other he throws away because he is supposedly defective. So tell me, what was it that Kinley wanted you to do in the name of this God?"
Chloe couldn't look him straight in the eye, and that told him that what she had to say wasn't going to be fun. His eyes lit up with Hellfire for a millisecond and he asked again:
"Then how was the good priest going to do it, Detective, and what about this so-called prophecy?"
"There is an old prophecy in the Vatican that says if the Devil were to walk the Earth and be united with his first love, the end of time would come."
He shook his head and smiled pitifully, stood up and walked towards the wall of booze. Without looking at her, he said:
"You humans made it into a rebellion. You made it a war in which some of my brothers and sisters would have died. You humans made it a thing that I want revenge and start a new war to overthrow father and claim the throne myself. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was just Father and I having an angry discussion about free will. I wanted us angels to have the same free will as humans. Something to which he did not respond with enthusiasm, with all the consequences for me. I never took up arms in heaven; I did not want a revolution; I did not want to oust Father from his throne and replace him. I have never hurt any of my brothers or sisters. And tell me, give me one good reason why I would want to destroy the world and humanity. I like it here on Earth, and I enjoy the company of humans. I prefer living among you and having you as my company to Heaven and the company of my own family. I hate Hell like the plague! If I were to destroy the Earth and humanity, there would be nothing left for me but to return to Hell and the company of the Demons. I admit that I can enjoy the company of some of them, such as Maze. But the vast majority of them are worse than my family. I will never, ever go back to Hell Detective; I would rather die!"
He was afraid of her answer to his next question, so he did not look at her and asked quietly:
"How did Kinley plan to send me back to Hell, and what would be your part in it?"
Chloe confessed what the plan had been, and it was as if every word that passed her lips made a new crack in his heart. When she finished, she was crying, but Lucifer could not bring himself to go and comfort her. Instead, he stepped out onto the balcony, lit a cigarette with trembling hands, and silently shouted at his father. It came as no surprise when the latter remained silent.