Caught in the Fire

Chapter XXXIII: A Blood-Stained Sword

It was early in the afternoon. Chloe had just been filing out the paperwork on The Hawthorne Mall case, using the 'mass hysteria' excuse to explain away any Demiurge-related details. She'd also been doing some research on her phone regarding Samson's claims about Michael. Nothing had yielded any results tying Michael to the killings. But she did find one thing: the Amalekites had to have been the civilization that unknowingly worshipped the Devil—the ones that Michael wiped out.

Chloe heard the door open, and she saw Michael coming over. She quickly put her phone down on instinct. "Hey, Michael." I wasn't just googling your name or anything. "Have you learned anything yet?"

"Other than the names of many, many, many drinks? No, and we are soon running out of candidates. I thought for a moment that Bluestone was the traitor, but he only feared me because he believed he owed me money for the drinks he consumed at the Lux party."

"Weren't the drinks free for co-workers?"

"Yes, that is how intoxicated he was at the party," he said with amusement, "But perhaps it is not someone from this department, but someone higher up? Perhaps the chief of police, Olivia Monroe?" Chloe gave him an inquisitive look. "I told you—I pay attention, Ms. Decker."

"Well, she's the one who made Lucifer a civilian consultant in the first place. In return, he helped her clinch her ascension from the rank of lieutenant to chief of police. If she knew he was the Devil, no way she'd let him work here. Then we got Pierce, and finally Mitchell a few hours after his death."

"A few hours?" Michael inquired, and Chloe nodded. "That is suspicious. Are you certain it is not her?"

"She didn't fear you, remember? Besides, she approved my vacation time. Why would she do that if she wanted me dead?"

"Right." Michael sighed, frustrated at the constant dead ends. He saw the folders on the conference table, and he looked them over. "The Blind Sinnerman?" He picked out the folder and looked it over. "This is the one whom Samson claimed went rogue. The one who may have known about Father's decree. There might be something there."

"It's a cold case. We don't even have a name for him. It's just another dead end."

"Let me have a look." He took a seat at the table, opened the folder, and started looking through it. "As Father's sword, I often had to solve cases of sorts."

"Right. The Sword of God." She glanced at her phone again and wondered how many of those events Michael was responsible for. "So, uh... I was wondering..." She struggled with how to word what she wanted to say and came up empty.

He could send her trepidation, and he tried to reassure her. "You can ask me anything, Ms. Decker."

"All right. Samson pinned some Old Testament events on you." She saw him visibly tense, and a part of her wanted to stop, but the Detective in her couldn't help but push for answers. "I was wondering how much of that was true. Like Noah's Flood?"

"I was not responsible for Noah's Flood."

"Good to know." She was relieved that at least he wasn't responsible for the deaths of millions of people in a global flood. "That was Goddess, right? Lucifer told me about her. I thought she was his stepmom."

"It was Father," he said under his breath.

"Oh." The way Amenadiel worded it, it sounded like he was blaming it on Goddess. Maybe he didn't want to make his Father look bad? Or maybe he was in denial about the kind of monster his Father could be. "God drowned all those people? Why?"

"I do not know. I was not involved in that. Father only asked me to deal with the bodies. I turned them into salt and scattered their remains across the sea." His eyes looked haunted. "There were so many..."