Chapter 32: A Deal with The Actual Devil

(Aden's P.O.V)

A thin trail of sweat fell down my back. My whole body was on high alert. I felt a pressure unlike anything else weigh down on my very core. Our eye contact ended when I was forced to lower my eyes from his own.
"Interesting."
The handsome man said, studying me curiously. My back was to the balcony. I could make a run for it. Maybe even with the Meta-trigger. It was close to me after all.

I could distract them with a full powered wind blast. Nothing held back maybe…
"You're not normal are you?"
A voice said from my back. My eyes blinked and I realized…he was behind me. I know it's exhausting to keep on saying this but…I hadn't felt even the slightest bit of disturbance in the air.

My shoulders eased up and the tension left me. There was no need to panic anymore. I understood now. This wasn't an existence I could take on. Maze? I was confident in beating her. Her whole style relied on misdirection and attacking from the shadows. Lucifer? He was immortal and omnipotent in the comics, second only to The Presence and His light. Word for word. This wasn't the comics. Instead it was a mish mash of events from the DCAMU( DC animated universe) and now the Arrow-verse. To that effect, I couldn't count on anything. I couldn't count on him being a pretty chill guy or not having the crazy power level of his counterpart.

I couldn't fight him and find out just how huge the disparity was. Which left talking.
"The name is Aden. Who are you?"
I enquired.
Lucifer went to a red posh couch placed along the walls of Galiel's office and sat on it. He closed his legs and leaned back, a glass of wine appearing on his hand, magically. Yeah not fighting was the right move.
"I suppose I haven't introduced myself. How rude. I'm the devil, first of the fallen, the deceiver whom you use an excuse to explain away your sinful actions. Tis I The Lucifer Morningstar himself. Gaze into my eyes and be tempted…yada yada yada."
He finished with a roll of his eyes.

Maze snorted and started chuckling. My eyebrows rose up.
'Ooookaay.'
Lucifer pointed at the laughing woman.
"That's Maze. She's basically like my caretaker or housekeeper…"
"Fuck you."
Maze shot back smoothly.
"Anyway, now that we have those pesky intros over and done with. I'm curious about something…what are you?"
His eyes shone with a red glow and I found myself compelled to answer.

However, my mouth refused to open and my whole body froze up. My thoughts grew muddled and my chest tight. Something was wrong. I heard Maze's voice from far away but couldn't muster the concentration needed to understand her words.

I completely blacked out. An undefined time later, I woke up with a start, breathing heavily while trying to calm down my wildly beating heart. My fingers dug into the material of the couch Lucifer had been seating on before as I looked around.

"Well, that's interesting."
Lucifer said.
He had pulled up the same seat Galiel had used when I came in and was watching me with a curiosity that sent me on edge. Maze on the other hand, had a weird expression on her face. She was trying to hide it but I recognized a little bit of fear as she stared at me.
"What happened?"
I asked, running a hand over my face. Blacking out like that had never happened to me before. Not since the whole Penguin mob vs Batman and Robin thing I had stumbled in the first time.

"Nothing much. You just blacked out while we were having our conversation."
"Yeah I got that. I'm just wondering what caused it. Perhaps you have something to do with that?"
I asked, pointedly.

Lucifer had the ability to find out anyone's deepest desires in the show. It wasn't a stretch to think that he might have used that ability on me.
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
A smug smile made its way onto his lips.
"Maze can we get our friend here a glass of water?"

Maze Looked at him in displeasure.
"No, I'm good."
The only thing I wanted to do was to leave. Skedaddle. Disappear and hope I never came across the devil and his… whatever Maze was to him.
"Oh, then perhaps you prefer something else with a little bit of…kick."
Saying that, the Whiskey bottle containing the Meta-trigger appeared in his hands. I tightened my palms and forced my face to go neutral.

"I don't know what you mean."
"Really? You mortals are all the same. I'll say this incase you still don't understand who you're standing…or rather laying before. I'm the bloody Devil. You can't cheat death, the truth and lastly me." His words had a finality that I knew couldn't be refuted. He opened the stopper on top of the glass bottle and took a whiff of the contents inside. His nose scrunched up in distaste.
"I can feel your desire for this. The question that remains is…do you know what it is?"
He rolled his eyes when I refused to answer.
"Of course you do."
My jaw clenched at the turn in situation. Galiel was dead, which wasn't a bad thing but the problem is I couldn't reap the benefits with Lucifer here. God, my luck.

I swung my feet back to the floor and sat up straighter on the couch.
"What do you want?"
The devilish smile on his face was predatory.
" A proposal of sorts. See I've realized something, whatever shitshow that Galiel had going on here is…partly my fault. And Galiel is not the only denizen of hell running around in the mortal world. So I need a cleanup guy. And that's where you come in."

A dumbfounded look appeared on my face.
"What?"
Lucifer clapped his palms together and got up.
"Good. We're in agreement then?"
Wait what? I quickly got up to counter his words but he beat me to it.
"And as a gesture of goodwill, you can take the essence and a small portion of whatever you find in the safe."
His words ground me to a halt.

He had me. To be honest, if I said no to the deal I would not only lose everything I had come here for and go back with nothing, but I was also risking offending the devil. You know, that guy with power just below The Presence? The guy who can destroy me with a mere thought? Yeah… I'm not too keen on that.

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On the flipside if I did accept his deal, then it would entail interacting with the devil and his… (seriously what's Maze's role in all this?) Friend some more. Not to mention, being his clean up guy meant fighting demons and many more supernatural creatures.

Either way I see this, there's no right or wrong choice, just the choice I could live with. And for now that was choice number two, working for him. My desire to bring about change allowed nothing less than a strong conviction to do whatever I can to achieve what I needed.

I looked straight into the eyes of sinful beauty personified and made a deal with the devil.
"Fine."

(General P.O.V)

The boy had just left. Maze had seen from his face that he couldn't have been any more than 18 which was the age humans generally reached maturity. To Maze however, even a 80 year old man was like a flower yet to bloom. Too young to understand life in its full scope, yet going on about it as if they did.

She often wondered how a species so short lived had even more passion and love for life than her sisters and brothers. Then again, the very nature of their short mortality demanded a semblance of fulfillment.

She stopped herself. That train of thought was irrelevant because the boy, Aden was not a normal human at all. Not after what they had seen when the boy had blacked out. She could still remember the splendour of glowing white eyes and a presence that was in no way weaker than Lucifer's. Maze had been terrified. And she didn't get terrified. Not really. She has seen everything and anything this world had to offer. The best and worst of humanity but this…this was something else entirely.

Lucifer had at that moment gone still with a serious look on his face. He never broke eye contact with Aden or whatever the thing possessing him had been. For two minutes none of them talked but from the way they watched each other…Maze knew they must have been communicating telepathically.

"What was it?"
She asked Lucifer, breaking the silence that had permeated the room upon Aden's departure. Lucifer had gone silent, lost in contemplation when Aden crossed the door behind him. Maze's nervousness increased at his continued silence.
"Lucifer. What are you not telling me?"

"The boy…he's more special than we thought. This vacation is turning out to be very interesting."
He finally commented. His voice soft and gentle. A quality that had always managed to put her at ease but today…it only made Maze dread his next words because Lucifer was far from done. His tone took on a harder note.
"It called itself the Avatar Spirit. No real sentience, just a mass of ethereal energy running on a complex equation to simulate consciousness. A consciousness with only one role, protect the boy and destroy whatever threatens his life."

Lucifer went silent.
"And that's not even the most intriguing part. 1, it was able to guard his mind from my mental probe and 2, it's not from around here. The Avatar spirit is a being from outside Daddy's jurisdiction. And that means…"
Maze widened her eyes.
"Demiurgic power has no influence on him because he is not marked as part of God's creation. You and Michael cannot undo his existence."

Maze sat down with a look of shock on his face.
"Lucifer…how?"

"How did that thing spear through the multiversal cluster walls and into our reality?" Another glass of wine appeared on Lucifer's hand. He watched the swishing liquid inside the glass and answered.
"I don't know."

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