Canto I

Chloe Decker has no idea where she is.

There is nothing around her to every side but endless, swirling mist. There is no apparent source of light, but nor is it completely dark, just some eerie red half-glow like the sullen breath of a dragon. It's cold enough to make her shiver and clutch her arms, but she could swear that a second ago it was uncomfortably, breathtakingly hot, Los Angeles on a mid-July day with wildfires in the mountains and no rain for six months hot, strip off your clothes and dive into the nearest water hot, Death Valley record-breaking, tourist-killing hot. If it was, though, it's not any more. Her teeth are chattering almost hard enough to bite her tongue, and her breath wafts in frigid silver gusts. There is no sign to indicate which, if any, way she should go. She can't remember how she got here. Nothing, no hint of anything or anyone, moves in the shadows. Desolate does not even begin to describe it.

"Hello?" She takes a step. The ground seems firm, but with a strange, unpleasant give, as she tests it. It seems liable to hold her weight, so she chances a second one, fumbling for the gun usually at her belt. It's not there, and neither is her LAPD badge. Must have been lost in – whatever just happened. Her keys and her wallet, likewise. God, she's going to feel really stupid if some mugger got the jump on her (but would even the most desperate meth head really go after an armed police officer?) and this is just a foggy back alley in Compton. She doesn't appear to be physically hurt, although there are two strange, ugly red burns encircling both her wrists that she can't account for. Was she in cuffs, and had to get out? But unless they were superheated, they can't have blistered and seared like that. Sick.

Chloe takes a third step, still hearing the echoes of her hello careening off into the mist. She thinks the ground is sloping down underfoot, but it's hard to tell, and she spreads her arms, teetering along like a kid on the balance beam in gymnastics class. It would be really nice if she wasn't, you know, accidentally walking directly toward a cliff, and she feels with her foot before each step, making sure there isn't nothing but thin air beyond. But it at least keeps going, although she's not certain that is a good thing, and twists and turns and levels out into something like a garden labyrinth, with high black hedgerows to every side and a chain of slick stepping stones leading into it. Mist clads the entire thing in a silent, icy shroud.

"Right," Chloe mutters, blowing on her freezing hands and tucking them into her armpits as she regards the utterly forbidding prospect. She's pretty sure there isn't anything like this in Compton, and she's hard pressed to think where else it might be, either. Definitely maximum points for creepy effort. All they need is an evil scarecrow pinned up at the entrance, daring anyone brave enough to face the Maze of Terror, like a Halloween haunted-house or spooky cornfield attraction. That's never really been Chloe's thing, but she's a homicide detective. She sees tons of worse things on a daily basis, and not for entertainment. They – whoever they are –are not going to scare her. Or for that matter –

A murder of huge black crows bursts out of the hedge directly in front of her, shrieking and flapping, beaks and claws tearing at her hair as she screams and shields herself with her arms, as they take flight in a cawing, writhing mass. Chloe stays crouched down, heart hammering against her ribs so hard she thinks it might break them, until she's absolutely sure they're gone. Fuck. Fuck. Okay. Maybe they're going to scare her a little. Only once, though.

At that, she hears her own voice in her head, telling Trixie that the best way to stop being afraid of something is to face it. Solid practical advice. The deep end of the pool isn't so scary once you've been in a few times. The half-open closet can be investigated with a flashlight and showed to contain no monsters. Whatever is in there, it won't be as bad as it would be if she just keeps huddling here and psyching herself out. They're just birds. Yes, she's seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie, but that is beside the point. They caught her off guard once. Now she's ready.

Ignoring the slightly watery feeling in her knees, Chloe rocks to her feet and makes her way toward the mouth of the maze, wondering if the Triwizard Cup is hidden at the center. Which, considering it would then transport her to Voldemort's rebirthday party, is probably to be avoided. The hedges have thorns on them the size of daggers, so she has to be careful not to brush too closely. Whoever owns this place must really not be into visitors. Or anyone, really.

The sky is a dun dark blue, like a winter sunset just before the solstice. Ash sifts from it like snow, settling in Chloe's hair and shoulders, and it rasps between her fingers when she tries to brush it off, makes her cough when she breathes it in. The stepping stones are increasingly cracked and jagged beneath her feet, the path zigging and zagging, as the air grows darker and lower and Chloe can taste a distinct note of sulfur in the back of her throat. What is this, near a hot spring or something? How did she get this far away from the city? For some reason, the mugger hasn't taken her phone, but when she pulls it out of her pocket, the screen is cracked and blank. She shakes it, as if this will magically produce some bars, but all it does is tremble slightly – then, as she drops it with a yelp – explode, fizzing red-hot electric bits all over the slippery stones. Right then. No calling 911, which is fine. She can handle this.

After a few more – minutes, she thinks, but it's awfully hard to tell time for some reason – she emerges into the center of the maze. No Triwizard Cup, which is good (presumably). Just a fountain of some sort, overseen by a not-at-all-foreboding stone angel, filled with dark, clear water that reflects her face like a black mirror. There is no apparent other way out of the maze; the wall of thorns rises impassably to all sides. Either she goes back the way she came – if that is indeed the way she came – or, clearly, she drinks. There is a cup next to the water, a silver goblet. For no apparent reason, it seems to be smoking slightly.

Chloe looks back over her shoulder. Maybe it isn't too late. She can still retrace her steps, climb out of the maze – she's prepared for the crows this time, they can't scare her – get back through the mist, and. . .. find wherever she came from. There has to be a door, or a path, or something. There has to be some way out. Or maybe this is just a bad dream, which explains why she can't remember anything and nothing seems to make particular sense, the way the world is blurred and jumpy at the edges like a badly edited film. Feels incredibly real while it's happening, but then vanishes when you wake up, and hence it doesn't actually matter what you do. She already tried pinching herself and that didn't work, but perhaps different rules apply. To. . . whatever this is.

There used to be an opening in the hedge walls behind her. Now there's not. The mist is getting thicker and blacker. So is the reek of brimstone.

Chloe hesitates an instant longer, then picks up the goblet, dips it in the water, and drinks.

All at once, something happens. Everything snaps like a stretched rubber band, dancing and reeling and crumbling, and the ground goes out from beneath her, and she's stumbling and struggling, fingernails trenching out the freezing earth, as the walls of the maze vanish and do does the mist and the stones and the fountain, and it's dark and it's dark and it's dark and she doesn't even have enough sense of things to know if she's falling, or she's just suspended in sheer nothingness. Then out of nowhere a bottom comes rushing up, smacks her in the chest hard enough to wind her completely, and she rolls over and sprawls out, fruitlessly sucking air and ragging and retching. Thinks suddenly of lying on her back among the broken glass of Jimmy Barnes' recording studio, shot in the shoulder, tear tracking down her cheek. I don't want to die. Lucifer above her, hand on her face. Chloe. . .. I'm afraid Father's just going to have to wait for you. Met her less than twenty-four hours ago and already certain she's going to heaven, shielding her with his body. Jerking and grimacing as he's shot six times and somehow not a scratch – but then she shot him later and he –

Oh God (especially ironic, considering, but still). Lucifer.

Where the hell (even more ironic) is Lucifer?

The burns on her wrists – there's something there in her head, a face, half-human and half-something more, disintegrating every instant into something beyond terrible, bad enough that her brain has blocked it out. A voice hissing like a snake. Oh, my name isn't Charlotte Richards. That's just what they call this useless flesh sack I borrowed. My name – my real name – is –

Chaos and static whirl in Chloe's head. The word emerges like a searing brand.

Lilith.

Charlotte – no, Lilith – grabbing her wrists. Something shifting, tearing, opening up. And if I'm going back to hell – if that's what all of this has come to – then my son pays the same price. You're coming with me, little mortal. We go down together.

A frantic, furious pounding on the door. Lucifer shouting, screaming. Detective. Detective! Mother! Mother, don't you dare – I swear I'll tear you apart, eternity of torment doesn't begin to cover it – you won't – you'll never –

The door bursting open. Her eyes locking onto his. His lips shaping around a word – no, two.

Chloe! No!

And then, nothing.

Chloe lies there shaking as the memories rip through her like a hot knife. She doesn't want to face it, doesn't want to wrap her head around it, but if that is what happened, if that's what's going on – no, there has to be another explanation – but she knows there isn't. Despite all her disbelief and skepticism and tolerant humoring of Lucifer's supposedly cosmic origins, she's never really bought it – because who would? But what's left in her mangled, melted, overloaded brain is enough. Char – Lilith, as in Mother of Demons Lilith – she has taken her – taken her –

Chloe sits up slowly, bruised and dazed and breathless. She's not a crier or a screamer or otherwise someone given to open displays of strong emotion, has learned to hold it in. A detective doesn't do the job by bleeding her feelings everywhere, after all. But this is something she can't solve, a case she has no idea where to even begin, and she's well aware that she is in far, far over her head. If it's true – if it –

"What the hell," she says out loud. A demented giggle escapes her lips, cracking on the edge of a sob. "I think I'm in hell."

Up on Chloe's previous plane of existence, Lucifer Morningstar is, in fact, losing his mind.

"This is all your fault!" he snarls at Amenadiel, having torn through the penthouse for about the fifth time, leaving a trail of broken glasses, scattered books, upturned cushions, and tilted furniture in his wake and having confirmed that the hellmouth is closed, Mum and Chloe are gone without a trace, and there is no way to reopen it. "I don't have my bloody Pentecostal coin because I had to use it to stop that filthy maggot you hired to kill me, I likewise wouldn't have been shot and had to make that deal with Dad if not for him, and since you made me burn my bloody wings and Maze used the last feather to save your pitiful life, and now you're being punished for your abject failure and lost your wings and your powers – this is all your fault!"

Amenadiel is ashen-faced and groping for a denial that doesn't seem to present itself. "Luci – look, Mom escaped from hell in the first place because you – "

"Escaped because I left, yes, we bloody know that. Escaped after you carried her down there yourself, ever the good little foot soldier for Dad!" Lucifer's eyes are entirely aglow like cinders, his face slipping between its handsome human form and the raw red skull of the torturer, the one all the worst see when they're mewling and begging and suffering for their sins, drawn back into its insane rictus of a smile. "I've let you live too long, brother. Some of us just don't change after all, do we? I don't, and neither do you. And I don't think you're just skipping home to cavort among the heavenly daisies and play divine tiddlywinks with Uriel! No, I think I'm going to really enjoy flaying you limb from bloody limb!"

"Luci, don't –" Amenadiel raises his hands. "Listen to me – "

"Oh no! Not this time! Not until you pay for this!"

With that, Lucifer launches headfirst at his brother, hammering every inch of him he can reach, as Amenadiel tries to defend himself without hitting back (much). They wrestle and grapple around the living room, crashing against the piano with a jangling bong, as Lucifer gets his fists into Amenadiel's collar and bangs him against the keys as if trying to perform an especially thunderous and furious version of Wagner. Amenadiel rolls away, but Lucifer is right there to meet him. Amenadiel decides on the spot that his principled pacifist stance isn't going to save his hide on this one, and throws a punch back, staggering Lucifer back against the desk; books tumble out in an avalanche as he spits blood from a broken lip. He's just tensing to spring when the elevator door dings, a demon dagger hisses through the air and lodges in the far wall, and they are startled just long enough for Maze to yell, "Enough!"

They whirl on her, but she doesn't back down. "Why do I always have to stop you two Neanderthals from killing each other? Honestly, I think it would be a favor to everyone if I didn't bother. What the hell's going on? Where's Charlotte? I saw her come up here with your pet detective, and there's no way that can have – "

"No," Lucifer snarls. "No, it can't possibly go well, can it? Brother dearest, care to explain?"

"We all tried to warn you! I did, Uriel did! If you didn't leave your human job and focus on stopping Mom like you promised, there were going to be – "

"Consequences?" Lucifer's lips peel back in an even more terrifying smile. He stalks to the bar, grabs the nearest bottle, twists the top off without looking, and gulps half of it down at a go. "You thought I somehow didn't know what those were? Such as the fact that they only ever seem to happen to me, and not to you?"

"They happened to me!" Amenadiel takes a step, as wind starts to whistle through the broken plate-glass windows of the balcony. "Like you said, I've lost my powers, my wings! You're right, a lot of this is my fault, and I've only barely started to pay for it!"

"Oh, Daddy's slapping you on the wrist after millennia of pummeling me like a prizefighter? Yes, that sounds like a perfectly fair and equitable punishment!" Lucifer finishes the other half of the bottle and throws it violently on the floor, where it explodes in glittering glass shards. "Hurts, doesn't it, Amen? You haven't gone through the merest fraction, the merest bloody fraction, of what I have, and I don't think there's enough eternity to make it up to you! Maze, give me that knife, I'm killing him right here."

Maze retrieves the knife and replaces it somewhere in her skintight leather catsuit, which somehow contains an improbable quantity of deadly weaponry. "I don't think I will."

"You're my demon, Mazikeen." Lucifer's eyes look like the heart of an erupting volcano. "You do as I say. I own you. Now."

"In hell, maybe. But you know what? Things are different in the human world." Maze's eyes flash back at him. "And I never thought I'd be the one to say it, but maybe that's not so bad. You want that knife, come here and take it. And make sure you don't get a scratch from it either."

There is an exceedingly fraught pause, as Lucifer contemplates the possibility of doing just that. Maze shifts her weight, bracing for an attack, as the lights flicker with the force of the uncontrolled supernatural energy burning through the air – a bulb explodes with a puff and a clatter, and the pages of the fallen books flutter madly in the gathering storm. Amenadiel is thinking that he might in turn be forced to tear them apart, which could well end up with all three of them dead, but after a moment, Lucifer backs down. The red glow goes out of his eyes, and his face reverts to human. He looks utterly wrecked. "Both of you. Just get bloody out of here."

"What are you going to do?" Not sure he wants to know, and sorely feeling the need for a stiff drink himself, Amenadiel grabs a wine bottle out of the glass-fronted cupboard, twists out the cork, and takes a slug. "If it's something stupid – "

"Oh no, all my actions are perfectly wise and reasoned, didn't you know?" Lucifer bares his teeth. "If nothing else, I do need to plan out how I'm going to punish you for the next few thousand years. If you have anything useful that might induce me to knock a century off your sentence here and there, now would be the time to offer it."

Amenadiel and Maze exchange a helpless look. It's Maze who wades into the breach. "She took Chloe, didn't she? I told you, Lucifer. I told you that your mother was up to no good, but you wouldn't even listen to – "

"Yes, go ahead and chastise me, you're as comforting as lemon juice in a paper cut!" Lucifer coils his fist back and slams it into the bar counter, causing the fine black marble to splinter a webwork of cracks. "If we catch up to her, you can be sure that you will have my blessing to inflict anything you can think of on her – no wonder Dad's stupid thing is forgiving people, not mine, because nobody bloody deserves to be forgiven! Just so they can turn around and stab you in the back when it'll hurt the most? Shows what an idiot I let myself be played for, eh?"

"Luci – " Amenadiel has no idea how to get through to him. Knows that their mother expertly preyed on Lucifer's scars of abandonment and exile, reached that small wounded part of him that still hungered for the love of his parents, the chance to come home, the reunion of the family torn apart quite literally between heaven and hell, and now that she has burned that, there is nothing but scorched earth. He's utterly unpredictable now, dangerous and vengeful and merciless, and leaving him to it would be the worst mistake Amenadiel has ever made – and by now, he has to admit grimly, that is saying quite something. But you can't stand next to a blaze like this for too long without it consuming you too, and there is no safe way to even consider the task that lies implied and terrible before them. Feeling like a man trying to cross a minefield, blindfolded, Amenadiel has to carefully point out the obvious corollary. "Lucifer, your detective. . . she's mortal."

"Thank you for that observation, Captain Obvious! Anything else you care to – "

"If Mom did take her to hell. . ." Amenadiel hesitates. "The only mortals that go down there are the bad dead ones. Except for the one time that Italian poet decided to pop in for a visit, but – " He hesitates again. As gently as he can, he says, "It's entirely possible she didn't survive the trip."

He wants to bite his tongue the instant the words are out. He has never seen a look like that on his brother's face – or anyone's, really. A look of such naked desperation and panic and cutting anguish, as if he's just ripped Lucifer's spine out and it's only an accident that he's still standing up. At that, Amenadiel knows at once that it's far more of a mess than he thought. Oh, God. Not the Devil Incarnate, not the Prince of Darkness, not with a mortal woman. It's not possible, it's never – no, this is going to make the entire imbroglio so many uncounted degrees worse. Nobody says anything, until Lucifer whispers in a chillingly hoarse and hollow voice, "If she's dead, so are you. So are all of you."

Maze's eyes flicker. Even she doesn't try to tell him that it's just another short-lived human, that it should make no more difference to him than a moth flying into the light. "Look," she says, clearly striving to be reassuring, in her own Maze way. "We know the detective is a tough little human, and she's immune to you. You're the ultimate source of hell's power. If that's the case, she won't react like a regular mortal. I can imagine it's not exactly the greatest day of her life, but I really don't think she's dead."

Lucifer's awful expression likewise shifts, trembles, as he looks away from both of them. His shame and guilt and fear is almost overwhelming, filling the room with a shadow as tangible as the threat of his rage. He clenches a fist, opening and closing his fingers as if in search of a suitable neck to strangle, the black stone in his ring winking in the half-glow of the shattered bulbs. At last he says, "Mum is still on the loose in hell. If she opens all the cages – "

"All the damned souls would likewise escape." Amenadiel doesn't even want to think about it. "She could lead them as an army in a second war against Dad. The human world would be caught in the crossfire. It would be. . ." He doesn't need to say the word. They're all thinking it. "Luci, you know we can't let her do that."

"Oh no?" Lucifer's lips are dead white, even as he's starting to smile maniacally. "I'm not sure how exactly that's my responsibility to stop. I could do with a good war against Dad! I'm a bit of a leading expert on the topic, you know! Maybe it would actually induce him to step in and protect his little human science project in its tank in the garage, rather than pouring more and more water on the anthill and amusing himself seeing if they can scuttle free in time! Get me some bloody popcorn and a lawn chair, I'll sit back and watch the show!"

Amenadiel winces. "Lucifer," he says. "I know you care about humans. You always have. That's why you like punishing the bad ones, because you hate seeing what they did to the ones who didn't deserve it. Because it feels good to you to be the one to mete out their just desserts. And that's why you've never been a senseless killer. Your own sense of justice runs too deep to allow innocents to suffer, and you haven't lost that driving force, even after all this time. And that's what the world will be, if they get caught in a war between our parents. It would be punishing the innocent, not the guilty. And you don't do that."

Lucifer's eyes smoke back at him like a supernova, but he doesn't have anything to say to that. Finally, however, he comes up with his stirring rebuttal. "You're a dick."

"Noted."

"A really big, ugly, hairy, veiny one. With wrinkly balls."

"Noted," Amenadiel says, with somewhat more of an edge. "I'm sorry about Chloe. I really am. I never wanted her to be hurt, you know that. I tried – "

"Oh yes, you try so well. Gold star king of the world, that's you. Too bad it never amounts to more than a miserable damn. Why couldn't Dad have just kept her safe, without making me bargain for it?" Lucifer's almost in tears. "Always has to spit in your face even when he's supposedly doing you a favor! She did not deserve that! She did not deserve any of it! But since when does he care how many of them do or not? Probably laughing his arse off right now!"

"Luci." Amenadiel very cautiously ventures an approach. "You're right. Chloe's innocent. No innocent person has ever been dragged bodily into hell before, especially when they're still alive. Like Maze said, it changes the rules. If we can find a way to follow them – "

"So what?" Lucifer looks at him scathingly. "You can accidentally shut the door behind me and throw away the key? How convenient for you if you can just trick me back into hell and make sure I stay this time, like a good little devil! Get your wings back and you're all bloody set!"

Amenadiel winces again, not least because the thought admittedly, for half a second, crossed his mind. "I swear. I'm not going to do that."

"Sorry, bro. Don't believe you." Lucifer takes out a cigarette and lights it with shaking hands, blowing a stream of smoke into Amenadiel's face. "And I don't want any help you think you're planning to offer. Go have four-letter relations with yourself. I'm handling this alone."

"Lucifer." Maze moves forward. "That's insane. You can't fix this, you can't face both your parents and whatever else has happened in hell while you've been gone, by yourself. You've been living and indulging in the human world for too long, you're not as strong as you used to be. At least let me come with you."

"Oh? I'll think about it." Lucifer takes a drag. "Right, thought about it. Answer's no."

"What? I'm your – I'm – " Maze struggles for the right term, having shut down his old possessive streak earlier. "Let's be honest, I can kick a lot more ass than you can right now. We can leave Amenadiel out of it, I don't care. Just you and me. Like old times." She saunters closer, plucks the cigarette from Lucifer's fingers, takes a drag of her own, and places it slowly back into his mouth. "It'll be fun."

"It bloody well will not be fun."

"Wait," Amenadiel says. "No, you can't leave me out of it."

"I'm sorry?" Lucifer looks around with an exaggerated expression of confusion, holding a hand to his ear. "Is somebody talking?"

"Luci, I – " Amenadiel is vastly tempted to reach back for the wine bottle, but he's trying to break the habit. "I want a chance to redeem myself."

"Ask Dad, then, if the line's not busy. I hear he's in the habit of giving those out, just never to the people who want one. As for the devil, amigo – " Lucifer flips the cigarette butt over his shoulder, where it smokes and sputters on the counter, and grins mercilessly. "No can do."

And with that, he whirls on his heel, snatching his jacket off the chair and shrugging it on so violently that he almost tears it. Maze reaches for him, but he dodges away from her hand. Steps into the elevator, pushes the button, and as the doors close, is swallowed in shadow, and sinks.

After a lot of sitting in one place, blinking very hard, pinching her arms black and blue, and everything else she can possibly think of has failed to wake her up, Chloe is faced with the ludicrous fact that this appears to be happening, and she'd better get up and do something about it. Put on her big girl panties, as the saying goes. She's not sure where she was now – the waiting room of hell, as opposed to the front vestibule? Is she supposed to wait for some infernal bureaucrat to appear and process her papers (if this place looks like the DMV, she will not be surprised)? She doesn't have those. Will they decide there's been a mistake and just put her on a plane back to the mortal world? Or just shrug and invoke the "you broke it, you bought it" rule?

Chloe takes a ragged breath through her nose and starts to walk. She thinks she can see buildings in the distance, rising through a heavy film of smog that's worse even than L.A. on a particularly bad day, but they keep flickering and sputtering out of focus. It's impossible to judge distance or any kind of spatial relation, really, and the ground is squelching underfoot, water lapping at her ankles. It's cold, it's really fucking cold. Isn't hell supposed to be hot? Not that she's especially eager to broil either, but this is getting on her nerves. She's from California, anything lower than fifty degrees Fahrenheit is jacket weather. Unless the whole point is to –

"Mommy?"

Chloe's heart flips sickeningly in her chest. She skids to a halt, looking madly in every direction, feeling as if she's been punched. No, oh no – did Lilith somehow get her claws into – if she isn't the only one that a very angry demon dragged down here – no, no –

"Trixie?" She starts to run. "Trixie, baby, is that you?"

"Mommy?" The voice is closer now, just a few yards away in the fog, and she can see a faint, small silhouette out in the water. Trixie is bedraggled and shivering and scared-looking, perched on a slick black rock. "Mommy? Can we go home?"

"Don't move. I'm coming to get you." Chloe takes a step, and immediately plunges into freezing water up to her thighs with a small shriek. Her heart continues to bang against her ribs like a drum. How did she – it's all she can do to fight off total panic. The water is up to her chest now, and she has to kick off and start swimming, fighting shock from the cold – she knows how fast you get paralyzed, and then you die, in water this temperature. She doesn't know if that applies here or not, but she's in no hurry to find out. "I've got you, baby, I've got you, I'm coming."

Trixie looks at her with huge, terrified dark eyes. The water level is starting to creep up her rock, and Chloe isn't making much headway. "Mommy, I'm scared."

Chloe tries to answer, but her breath is being knocked out of her. Every stroke feels as if she's taking it through molasses. "Trix. . ." she gasps. "Trixie, just hold on, I'll – "

The water is now up around Trixie's waist, and she's standing desperately on her tiptoes trying to stay above it. "Mommy!"

"Don't move!" Chloe can't feel her hands, or her arms, and the rock still isn't getting any closer, and the water is up around Trixie's chest, and her daughter's lips are turning blue, and she can't control the searing, desperate terror slicing through her head like a buzzsaw, as Trixie kicks feebly but can't go anywhere. Then a wave breaks over the rock from behind, toppling Trixie head over heels and knocking Chloe herself like a bowling pin struck with the ball, and it's a tumbling, seething greyness like being caught in a washing machine, and when she surfaces, she can't see anything anywhere. No rock. No Trixie. Nothing but endless, crashing emptiness.

"TRIXIE!" she screams, kicking forward, gulping and diving, forcing her eyes open against the stinging dark water, sculling madly with her hands, gasping and choking in horror. She used to have a nightmare like this, about being at the beach one day and seeing Trixie get caught in a riptide or something, pulled out to sea and drowned before she could do a thing. "TRIXIE, NO!"

Nightmare. Nightmare. This is hell. Trixie isn't here, this isn't happening, this is just a trick it's playing on her to break her, and Jesus, it just about worked completely. Still gasping in terror, Chloe closes her eyes, pressing her hands to her face, gulping down her shaking sobs. "This isn't real," she mutters to herself, over and over like a mantra. "This isn't real. This isn't real."

Something shifts around her, and when she opens her eyes again, the ocean has gone. She's dripping wet and shivering, but she's standing on dry land, at the entrance to the strange, desolate city beyond. It looks like Los Angeles in a post-apocalyptic film, a few hundred years after the zombie takeover or whatever, windows broken and tumbleweeds drifting down deserted eight-lane highways, walls mossed over and the skyscrapers tilted and tumbling. She expects to see a wrecked spaceship or something, some quarantine zone. Nothing.

Chloe hugs herself tighter and starts to trudge up the beach. By the time she reaches the road beyond, her clothes are inexplicably dry, and she wonders insanely if she's supposed to thumb a ride from some passing car (is hitchhiking in actual hell any more dangerous than hitchhiking in the real world? You have to wonder). But there is no car coming, and she walks down the cracked sidewalk, doing her best to come up with a plan. Plan. Plan. Plan.

She has no plan. She has no idea what to do. She has no way of getting home and no clue what awaits her down here, if Lilith is coming back for a second round, or if she's just going to exist, in stasis, forever. She thought purgatory was the place where nothing happened, where you were supposed to expiate your sins, but then, this is hardly her area of expertise. She vainly hopes that maybe it is purgatory, as that sounds preferable to hell, but she knows better.

At last, she reaches what would be downtown in a real city, though of course there's nobody here. Junked, burned-out cars are parked along the street, and she keeps having the sense that she's being watched, whipping her head around every other second and still catching nothing. She's starving, not to mention exhausted, but she has a vague memory of some story somewhere – Hades and Persephone? – that if you eat the food of the underworld as a mortal, you have to stay forever. It doesn't seem worth risking it.

Finally, up ahead, she sees something that looks like a person, and runs toward it, bracing herself for the possibility that it's going to be a half-rotted skeleton or a human with a monster's face, something else sinister and sick and twisted. "Excuse me. Excuse me!"

The – it seems to be a person, at least, not quite young or old, male or female, unsettlingly blank, featureless – looks up at her like a badly wound clockwork. "Name?"

"My name's Chloe Decker. I don't think I'm supposed to be here." She shifts back and forth, glancing over her shoulder again. God, this place is creepy. She went to Japan with a boyfriend when she was eighteen, explored some of the abandoned amusement parks and empty islands and "Suicide Forest" at the foot of Mount Fuji, all the recklessness and invincibility of the young, and all that doesn't even come close. "Can you possibly just. . . send me back?"

"Nobody goes back." The not-person doesn't appear interested. "You only go on."

"I don't – I'm not going there, I'm not – "

All at once it looms above her. It doesn't look anything like a person anymore, and the shadow it casts is hideous. "GO. ON."

Chloe bites her lip smartly enough to taste blood, turns on her heel, and does her best to walk, not run, away from it at a measured pace, down the road beyond. This appears to be the first port of call for new arrivals. There are other people for sure, but none she exactly wants to talk to, shuffling in a long line that wraps back and forth into a low steel building. Check-in for the damned, apparently. Even worse than your average TSA screening.

At any rate, Chloe isn't about to find out. She starts walking faster, as if they won't notice. Lucifer has to be coming for her, she tells herself. After what just happened – after they – well, the point is, there's no way he's just going to sit back, say, "Well, that's unfortunate," and wander off to see what's on Pay-Per-View. Unless he did, just went down to Lux for a drink and a beautiful woman to salve his pain and will be completely fine and dandy by tomorrow – but for better or worse, she doesn't think so. He'll get down here, they'll deal with his mother, and then they'll book it out of here. She just has to not go crazy until he does.

There's something that looks like a hotel up ahead. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave, she thinks, and has to bite her lip. Lets herself in, crosses the dingy carpet to the front desk, and raps on it. The poor soul behind it was clearly someone who treated service staff badly in life, and is now subject to being one and dealing with the literal customers from hell for all eternity. It's a fitting punishment, really, and Chloe can't help but admire the artfulness of it, feel the prick of a strange curiosity to know, to do more. "Can I help you?" it drones.

"I need a room for the. . ." Do night and day exist down here? "I need a room."

"Can I have your name please?"

"Chloe. Chloe Decker."

At that, it looks up. Something lights in its dull eyes. For the first time in however long since it died, something seems to come over it, excitement, attention. "Chloe? Chloe Decker?"

"Yes." Is Lucifer here already? Is he waiting for her? Is this all about to end? Please, oh please, oh please. "Why?"

"My lady." The soul – it's hard to tell much about it, the same way it was with the gatekeeper, after a few endless years of suffering, it wears you away – gets to its feet, babbling and bowing. "My lady. Come with me, please. At last. At last. We've been waiting for you."