Helping Hand of the Fallen

Chapter 2: In Health and Stitches

Shhhh shhh hhh...

Lucifer gritted his teeth, eyes squinting as the pain intensified. He could feel the pressure building, knowing full well that he was moments away from vomiting up more of that vile black goo. But he couldn't afford to lose focus now—not when Alastor's magic might retaliate if it realized he was depriving it of a power source, even if that source was toxic.

"Argh!" A small explosion erupted from the sinner's neck, sending Lucifer flying backward and shattering his concentration. He landed hard, immediately hacking up the black goo he'd filtered out.

ckh cough cough hackhk!

Coughing violently, he spat the last of it out and wiped his mouth with a grimace.

'Oh, come on...!' he thought, exasperated. But his troubles didn't end there.

"...You've gotta be kidding me," he groaned aloud, as he noticed something new—a glowing chain wrapped around Alastor's neck, pulsing with ominous energy.

"A chain of a deal?" Lucifer muttered in disbelief. 'Busboy's soul is tied to someone else?'

'Of course it is,' he thought bitterly. Vagatha had told him Alastor had come to the hotel just to amuse himself, to witness its inevitable failure. But for someone as prideful as Alastor to bind his soul to another? It was almost unthinkable. Had he been so caught up in his own self-deprecation that he'd missed this glaringly obvious detail?

Lucifer's eyes narrowed, frustration mounting. In a place like the hotel, soul deals weren't exactly rare, but this? This was different. And now he had to deal with the tangled mess of contracts and pacts on top of everything else.

"And here I thought this was going to be a straightforward rescue," he muttered sarcastically, rubbing his temples as he prepared for the next challenge.

"Ain't that depressing?" Lucifer muttered to himself, the thought twisting bitterly in his mind. Not that he would have cared much under normal circumstances—except for Charlie. Deals were meant to benefit both parties, after all, and while some might be lopsided, it wasn't as though sinners could force their kind into something as complex as soul-binding.

'Well, this sucks.' He considered the consequences of breaking the chain. Whoever owned Alastor's soul might come after him, and while Lucifer technically ruled over everything in Hell—including the souls of its denizens—meddling in sinners' affairs was a muddy business he preferred to avoid.

'Should I just let him die here...?' The thought was tempting, but the idea of walking away now, after coming this far, gnawed at him.

Lucifer gritted his teeth.

"Fuck it all!" he growled, reaching for the neon chain and shattering it into pieces. The rippling effect of the break likely caused other soul contracts to slip away as well, but he'd deal with that later. 'Let him get bitchy about it if he wants.'

He replaced the broken chains with ring of ownership, marked by the King of Hell himself. Unlike soul-deals, these weren't as all-consuming, but they were still binding—perhaps even more so, depending on how one looked at it.

A golden, snake-shaped ring coiled around Alastor's finger, a symbol of Lucifer's control over the eldritch magic within him. The better Lucifer managed that control, the easier the absorption process would be.

"Let's see if this helps," he muttered, focusing on his task once more. With the ring in place, he could suppress or unleash Alastor's power at will, making the process of dealing with the wound—and the poison—far less daunting.

Swish swishh swish

A quiet swishing noise broke through the tension, drawing Lucifer's attention to the shifting shadows that often trailed the radio demon. They gathered around, poised to strike, only to hesitate and glance at each other in confusion.