The truth shall set you free

2. Hell-o

Written by VeGirl 2018

Chloe's phone vibrated as she raced to her door. Several missed calls from Ella indicated severity and her work swooped into her mind again. She would have to deal with that, but not now. She opened her front door to make an exit but was instantly swept into a familiar embrace. "Chloe, Chloe..." Dan held her tight to his chest. "Where did you go?" He loosened his grip of her to examine eventual injuries. "I've been calling you like crazy."

"I'm sorry, I was out of count for a moment." She tried to laugh carefree but the pandemonium in her mind wouldn't cooperate.

"Out of count? How did you get here? Last I knew bullets were flying and we found Pierce dead, but no sign of you or Lucifer." Dan was rambling while raking a hand through his hair.

"L-Lucifer wasn't there?" She cursed her own disability to snap back, and she cursed the stutter that revealed her internal chaos.

"No, there were no sign of any of you." Once again, his hand flew to his hair to reveal his worry. "I just couldn't risk losing both Charlotte and you." He hugged her close again and Chloe remembered the earlier events. Charlotte was dead.

"How are you holding up?" Chloe stroked a hand over his cheek to find it wet and pulled out of her ex-husband's arms. Tears were streaming down his cheeks and he hastily wiped them off. "Better now that I know you're safe." He exhaled, trying to hide his worry with a smile. It was ineffective. "I have to call Ella, she's out of her mind worried." He pulled up his phone which rang once again. "Hell-o..." he paused and listened. "Yeah, she's okay."

Chloe stood there, distanced from everything, watching as Dan stroked a hand over his face as if that would erase what he had been through.

How would she be able to function properly after what she had seen?

~ ~ ~

Chloe's mind was racing as she sat next to Dan in his car, towards the crime scene. She couldn't stop thinking of who she had invited into her home. The Devil had been in her home. She had introduced the Devil to her mother and her daughter. Chloe couldn't think about the crime scene even as she was guided through it. Ella and Dan were doing their best to explain and question her about what had happened.

"It was a fight to the death." Ella cleverly deduced. "The room bore witness to it, but no one else."

"I saw it." Chloe cleared her throat. "I was hiding up on the ledge." She pointed up the flight of stairs, wondering how she would be able to tell the little details she could comprehend. The display of strength between the two fighters had been unreal; not human. Was it true that Marcus Pierce had been what Lucifer said, was he the Sinnerman? Lucifer had said he was Cain, as in Cain and Abel. Chloe's brain was on the verge of boiling with a mix of true and fantasy and she was pulled into that vortex.

"Chloe!"

She flinched, grateful for the help from the worried looking Ella. "Come here!" The smaller girl clamped her arms around her co-worker and hugged her close. "This must have been terrifying for you."

All she could do was nod.

"So, you got up on that ledge while those," Ella swooped a hand to indicate the thugs with guns that scattered the crime scene. "While they were shooting?"

"Eh, no." She cleared her throat again. "I was shot and Lu-Lucifer carried me to safety." Once again she cursed herself for not being able to say his name without stuttering. Had she seen wings, protecting her from the bullets?

Chloe's mind worked overtime as she tried to put pieces together. The bursts of inhumane strength were the proof she needed; neither of the men in her life had been human. Thank God she had Dan, he was at least a man. She turned to get a good look at him to make sure but Ella interrupted her.

"But neither of you were hit?" Ella was amazed.

Chloe almost shook her head to refocus. "Oh, we were both hit." She looked surprised. "Hasn't he told you?"

"I haven't been able to reach him."

Chloe looked over at Dan who brought that piece of information while signing a form as someone carried the bodies out of the room. "It's as if he has vanished from the face of the earth."

A strange feeling of loss surged through Chloe, even if she was relieved not to deal with... with the Devil.

"I have swept the scene," Ella informed them as she shifted the camera over her head and tucked it into her bag on the floor. "I'm heading over at the morgue to see what they have found." She left the former married couple. They were so caring and attentive to each other, Ella couldn't figure out why they had split up. Last time she had tried to play match-maker had been a disaster, so she hurried up her steps and headed to her car, a Dodge Neon SRT-4. The pull had been that it looked average but it performed superiorly. The accelerator was thoroughly used; she had a mystery to solve.

She couldn't for the life of her figure out how Pierce had been found not in the center of the crime scene, but some distance away with not only a gun wound but a knife in his chest.

"The strange this is that the knife in his chest don't seem to fit the pattern. It is as if the blade that did the deed had a curved blade and that this was placed afterwards." Ella was standing over the body at the morgue, discussing the matter with the coroner on the other side of the slab.

"I found that peculiar as well," the doctor commented. "That knife have been changed but it holds no prints."

"It was not cleaned, but it holds no fingerprints."

They watched each other bemused. "No residue from any types of gloves, and yet no fingerprints."

"That is a mystery indeed."

.