Of Light And Shadows

“That was quick,” Sellik said as she returned with a bunch of different items in her arms. “I was only gone a few minutes and you’ve kissed and made up already.”

“We didn’t kiss,” Jia said quickly.

“Relax, I’m just teasing.” Sellik flashed her pointed teeth in a smile, green eyes twinkling. “I need access to your knife wounds.”

Lucifer nodded and sat forwards, taking off his jacket and tie. Jia took them from him and moved to sit back on her bed, laying them on the mattress beside her.

Sellik pulled on a pair of gloves and a medical mask as Lucifer unfastened the buttons of his shirt and sat back. She frowned at his pact mark but said nothing about it.

The wound over his heart had torn from the force of Evan’s punch. Sellik clucked her tongue disapprovingly as she pulled out a blue ointment and dabbed it on his skin.

“This is going to be unpleasant,” she warned. “You were unconscious last time.”

“You might want to look away,” Lucifer said to Jia. Sellik picked up a scalpel and pricked his skin with the tip where it had been covered in the blue stuff.

“Did you feel that?” The Demon shook his head. She nodded and Jia sucked in a sharp breath as Sellik sliced open the knife wound in one clean cut. Lucifer grunted quietly as Sellik slipped her fingers through the incision. “I can’t numb the insides,” she said.

“I know.” His teeth were gritted as he replied. Jia felt the colour drain from her cheeks as Sellik took out a syringe with a long needle and shone a bright light into the wound.

“It’s not too bad. I shouldn’t need to open you up any further to fix it. Cracking through the sternum would be a pain.”

“You think?” He kept his eyes on the ceiling.

“I can see the laceration causing the bleeding. It’s long but it looks like there’s only the one. The weakened heart tissue must’ve split when it whacked into the sternum. It’s opened up right along the existing scar but not too deeply.”

“How do you fix a tear in a heart without surgery?” Jia asked, hearing the tremble in her voice. Lucifer turned his head to look at her, focussing on her face instead of the attendant.

“With this.” She withdrew her bloodied fingers from the small hole in his chest to pick up the needle. “I have a version of the healing ointment that’s safe for internal use. Lucifer has a habit of getting bruised up so I thought it would be useful.”

She revealed a small vial of liquid the same colour as the cream she used to heal Jia’s bruises.

“I can inject it directly into the torn tissue and it should be good as new within a few days.”

“As nice as this is,” Lucifer said quietly, “can we move faster? Having my heart exposed hurts.” Sellik nodded and filled the syringe half way, testing it to make sure it wasn’t blocked before leaning over to position it correctly.

She slipped it between his ribs and depressed the plunger slowly. Lucifer’s fists clenched in pain and Jia heard his broken fingers splinter. Sellik sighed in frustration.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’ve done your fingers again?” she snapped.

“I was preoccupied,” he muttered through gritted teeth. His breath came in short gasps as he waited for Sellik to finish up.

She set the needle aside and pinched the wound shut, reaching for another ointment and what looked like a surgical staple gun from the human world.

When the wound was closed she wiped away the blue cream and replaced it with the other ointment she used on Jia’s bruises. She pressed an adhesive gauze pad over it and passed him a cup of pink liquid to help with the pain.

“There. If you get hit in the chest again I’m going to leave you to bleed, now give me your hand.” He did as he was asked and she frowned when she touched his forearm. “Is your arm broken too?” He nodded. She examined the break and frowned. “This injury is the same as Jia’s.”

“I know.” Sellik glanced down at the pact mark partially concealed by the gauze dressing and her eyes widened as she realised what it was.

“You made a pact? Lucifer, you know how dangerous that is!”

“I do. I must ask you to keep it to yourself. If my father finds out he’ll kill me again.”

“I won’t breathe a word.” She turned to Jia. “I expect you to report any and all injuries to me as soon as they happen, Jia. Anything that happens to you will be reflected by the pact and inflicted on Lucifer as well.

"Even if he refuses to accompany you, you must come here and be healed. His wounds won’t disappear from him until they disappear from you.” Jia nodded and Sellik turned back to him. “For the Prince of Demons, you’re a gigantic idiot.”

“For a medical attendant you act more like a scolding mother.”

“You need somebody to tell you off the right way. God knows your father doesn’t discipline you in a healthy manner.” She set to work putting his fingers back in the right places and taped them up. “Done. You’re on bed rest, mister.”

“I don’t have time for bed rest.”

“Tough. It’s that or you stay here. You know I’m more than capable of finding the binding shackles for you if I have to. Those are your choices.” He scowled.

“Fine, bed rest it is.”

“There’s a good boy,” Sellik grinned. “Jia, you’re responsible for making sure he behaves himself, okay?”

“I’m on it,” Jia beamed. Lucifer rolled his eyes and sat up slowly, refastening the buttons on his shirt.

He shrugged the jacket on and went without the tie, unable to fasten it properly with his newly taped fingers. Jia took it and slipped it into her blazer pocket as he stood.

“If you experience any more bleeding or unexpected pain, summon me to you,” Sellik said. “And the more rest you get the quicker you’ll heal.”

“Thank you.”

Lucifer turned to leave, looking completely unharmed save for his fingers and the stain on his shirt. Jia walked quietly beside him as he headed up towards the dormitories on the higher floors.

“Will you tell my brothers I’m out of commission again?” he asked.

“Of course. As soon as you’re settled in bed I’ll let them know.” She smiled. “Sellik isn’t afraid of you at all, is she?”

“Not in the slightest,” he snorted. “She calls the Demon Thrall my bossy voice. If anybody else did that they’d be banished.”

“The Demon Thrall?”

“That’s what it’s called when my father and I use our power to command people. Mine rarely makes an appearance but Satan is very fond of his trick. It works on everyone except me.”

“Would it work on me?”

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “Theoretically, yes. I’m not willing to try it though,” he added quickly. “I hate using the Thrall.”

“I hope we never find out if it works.” Her mind flashed to Satan instructing the other Devils and how they’d been able to do nothing but obey. She didn’t want him to ever have the chance to do that to her.

“Hopefully I’ll be back on my feet soon,” he answered, sounding troubled. “I can’t defend anyone from him in this state.”

“Does he always kill you with a knife?” Lucifer turned and blinked at her.

“What an odd question. No, not always. Why do you ask?”

“I dunno,” she shrugged. “Morbid curiosity I guess.” He laughed.

“Morbid is the right word. Last time he strangled me.” She shuddered at the thought of being throttled to death.

“What an awful way to die.”

“You can say that again.”

“What an awful way to die.” He sighed, arching an eyebrow at her.

“Dork,” he muttered.

“You told me to say it again,” she grinned. He chuckled and slipped his hands into his pockets. “Louie?”

“Yes?”

“You looked really sad when I couldn’t answer your question. I’m sorry I made you feel that way. It’s not what I wanted.” She frowned, keeping her eyes on her shoes. “I’m not sure what I want.”

“Are you referring to what you want from me, or what you want from your life?”

“Both, I think. Everything I knew was wrong. My life wasn’t the best in the world but at least I knew what to expect from it. I could go to class and study and I had a plan to get me out of that house and that was all I had to focus on. Surviving until the day I could leave.” She frowned. “Now I don’t have that plan anymore.

“Abaddon is never going to have that control over me again and I don’t even have to return to the human world if I don’t want to.” She looked up and met his gaze as they stopped outside his room. “But I have the threat of your father on one side, Evan on the other side and then there’s what I might want to do as well.”

Lucifer opened the door and stepped aside to let her in, closing it behind him.

“Think about it logically then,” he answered. “We can’t control what my father does next. Even with all the power in the world I’m still just his equal. The only way to stop him is to get lucky in a one on one fight. It’s just as likely that he’d win. You can’t worry about what he does until he does it.”

“I guess that’s true.” She turned away while Lucifer changed into something more comfortable. “What about Evan?”

“What about him? He’s going to go back to the human world, his family and partner are going to reject him and he’ll end up back here.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“They’re human.” His voice was muffled as he pulled a shirt over his head. “He has a short temper and humans are terrified of Vampires. All it will take is one of them to say the wrong thing and he’ll get angry and frighten them away forever.” She heard his breath hitch as he pulled his chest injury.

“He might not.”

“Perhaps not if he spends months getting control of himself, but he won’t. He hates me and he’s impatient. It’s hard enough stopping him from tearing at his chains as it is.” There was a pause. “You can look now.” She turned back to find him in dark joggers and a t-shirt the same shade as his eyes.

“You think he should stay longer?”

“I think he should stay here permanently. He’s a danger to you, his best friend and a half-Demon. There’s no telling how he’d be around people he now considers food.” Lucifer climbed into his bed and sat back against the headboard. Jia crawled up beside him and sat facing him with her legs crossed on the blanket.

“You can’t make him stay using your bossy voice?” He arched an eyebrow at her, but shook his head.

“No. It won’t work on him because he isn’t a Demon. Vampirism is a virus. We have no cure for it and it completely changes the person it infects into something entirely different.

"We’ve been trying to reverse it for centuries. I have no control over anyone that isn’t a Demon.” He cocked his head. “I’m confident in saying that Evan will rush into returning home and it will go wrong. I think it’s safe to assume his life will be here from then on.”

“Okay. So if I can’t worry about Satan because there’s nothing I can do about it, and it’s likely Evan will stay here, what do I do?”

“What you want is the only thing left to consider. You shouldn’t expect yourself to know everything right away.” He smiled. “It’s okay not to know.”