Archive of Our Own ^beta

As violet dawn breaks across the horizon, the Bell tolls. It echoes mournfully down the silent streets of Pentagram City, along the cobblestone streets of Old Town and beneath the bass of the bars still hours away from last call. It sways the cars on the deserted Ferris wheel at Lu Lu World and rumbles the Hotel’s foundation.

It’s like a dream, at first. Lucifer groans and buries his face in Alastor’s chest as the first toll fades. Then, the grandfather clock beside the fireplace ticks once, twice — seven times, and the Bell tolls again. 

The Hotel shudders. A thin cloud of plaster drifts lazily from the ceiling and dusts over their bedspread. Lucifer wakes all at once and sits bolt upright. A frigid dread trickles down his spine. He extracts himself from Alastor’s arms, stumbles to his feet, and throws open the curtains of their window. 

Fragments of torn paper swirl on the opposite side of the glass. They collect on the ground like ash, blanketing the hill that leads up to the hotel in fuzzy white. 

The bell tolls again. In the distance, a flock of crows take flight. 

“Alastor,” Lucifer says in a small voice.

Behind him, the blankets shift; Alastor stretches his shoulders with a disgusting crack, a habit that drives Lucifer nuts, but he can’t find it in himself to complain now.

When Alastor speaks, his voice is thick and groggy. “Hm?”

“What day is it?”

“The first of June.”

Lucifer lets out a shuddering breath. The dread building inside him drops like a stone and settles in his gut. He backs away from the window and plops onto the mattress, where he curls up in a little ball and hides his face in his hands. 

Alastor's gentle fingers stroke Lucifer’s hair. “What is it?” he says. “What's happened?”

Lucifer shakes his head. He doesn’t have the words yet to explain the gravity of his mistake. Alastor pulls Lucifer back into his arms, and Lucifer still doesn’t say anything — he just burrows deeper into Alastor’s embrace. 

Soon, he’ll need to face them all. He’ll need to explain to Alastor, and the rest of Hell, what all this means: 

That Tax Season has begun.

Lucifer pushes his wet hair back out of his face and blinks up at the flickering blue light in the distance. He’s exhausted, sore, and completely soaked by acid rain. He climbs on over wet, uneven rocks, cursing his Father with every step.

Alastor had insisted on coming with him. Lucifer needed to make a deal just to get him to agree to stay behind. But he’s grateful for the promise he made — for the night of solitude they’ll need to carry it out, just him and Alastor in bed for hours after all this is over. It warms him when the rain turns from cold to freezing, an echo of Heaven’s ice storms that his body still remembers. 

It has been many centuries since Lucifer last climbed the mountain at the edge of Pentagram City. The only plant that grows in this place is fraxinella. On rare days when his Father is pleased and the eternal storm releases the base of the mountain, their pink blooms are visible from across the city. But near the summit, where the storm is unending and relentless, the wrath of God salts the Earth, and nothing grows.

Every time Lucifer comes back here, the climb is even worse — as though with each ascent the summit is higher, the rocks sharper, the rain more relentless. He climbs further into the thick clouds and everything that isn’t touching him freezes: the tips of his hair, the sleeves of his jacket. He could easily warm himself with magic, or rewire his nervous system so he no longer feels the cold, or teleport to the summit, but he doesn’t; to do any of those things would interfere with his Father’s perverse pleasure and cause the blue flame of His voice to sputter out. 

This is the highest point in Hell, where the land itself claws upwards toward Heaven. When he Fell, Lucifer’s first order of business after peeling himself off the shattered stone was to get away from this awful place — yet as the borders of Pentagram City expand, the mountain looms nearer and nearer. These days, some sinners live in inexpensive neighborhoods around the base of the mountain but no further. The eternal storm that rages here makes the mountain’s slopes unsuitable for habitation. 

Over the years, a handful of curious sinners have wandered up here, drawn by the blue light at the summit. If they manage to reach it, their souls are eternally obliterated by his Father’s own Hand; the sensation of their second deaths is unmistakable, like a strand of hair plucked out — one fewer voice in the eternal chorus of human suffering that sings in the recesses of Lucifer’s mind. 

This is no place for them — for humans. 

Lucifer steps onto the summit. The light of Heaven shines only thinly through the swirling storm and offers little warmth. No — the only possible source of relief from the otherworldly cold is his Father’s voice, flickering mockingly in the heart of the crater — the crater that is a perfect outline of Lucifer’s body minus his wings.  

Even after all these years, the memory of this accursed place makes Lucifer’s skin and eyes sting. He fights the compulsion to fall to his knees in front of the flame, to beg it to warm and embrace him. Instead, he drags his gaze away, upwards; he thinks of the Temple, directly overhead now — of the last time he felt the delicate grass of his home, kneeling before the steps and awaiting judgement. 

He draws the paper form out of the stiff pocket of his frozen suit jacket. Before he left, he magicked it to stay dry, and now it’s the softest and warmest thing he’s touched in hours, but the sensation is more agony than relief — his fingers have long passed the point of numbness and moved into a burning, bone-deep ache. The pain helps. It makes the helplessness of his failure easier to metabolize into anger. 

“Here’s your extension form, you sadistic bastard,” he says. He punctuates this by crumpling the form into a ball and hurling it at the fire, which consumes the paper with a mocking crackle but otherwise says nothing. 

Lucifer folds his arms to still their trembling. He holds the warmth of his rage in his stomach, stares directly into the flames, and waits as though the freezing wind isn’t biting deeper into him with every second he spends standing here. As though it isn’t killing him to be here, as though staring at the crater’s outline — shaped just like it’s his own Shadow — doesn’t make it so much harder for him to keep his grip on this place and time, to keep the river from dragging him backwards to relive his worst memories. 

“Come on,” Lucifer says at last. “Save us both the trouble of this charade.”

But his Father has always loved His charades — loved to act out the same stories over and over. A lamb must be sacrificed not just once, but every year, or whenever it suits Him — the manna must be gathered fresh. 

So he isn’t surprised when a low chuckle echoes through his mind — followed by his Father’s voice. 

My covenant with the sons of man is not so easily broken. The season is come when they shall pay their due.

Lucifer looks down at the glimmering lights of Pentagram City, smudged by fog. 

“But so many of them will die,” he whispers.

The souls of the unrepentant shall be cast into the abyss. But they shall live who are sorrowful, who humble themselves before me, and who keep my commandments which I shall set forth to you.

Lucifer scoffs. “Good luck with that. You’d be better off picking one or two. I can’t even get those fuckers to drive on the right side of the road.”

Bring me a tablet of stone, that I might set forth my commandments upon it.

Lucifer steps back through the portal to their room, tosses the tablet carelessly onto the mattress, and drops to his knees on the carpet with a huff. 

The worst part had been his Father’s Hand reaching through the fire to write on the tablet. Funny how Lucifer still knows the lines on every knuckle, how the shape of one’s family is impossible to scrub out — no matter how much time passes. No matter that Lucifer and his Father are now reverse sides of the same coin, orbiting each other like the sun and moon, and can no longer truly occupy the same space. Even if he wanted to, he’ll never see his Father again. 

He’s shaking, and where he isn’t numb, he burns — his nerves screaming as they awaken in the warmth of their room. 

“Darling?” 

Lucifer snaps his head up. 

Alastor waited for him. He’s here, in the armchair by the fire, reading the novel Lucifer purchased for him last week — the story about a man who returns to his mother’s hometown to meet his estranged father but finds there only restless ghosts. 

Alastor sets the book on the console table without marking his place and crosses the room in three steps. He kneels and takes Lucifer’s face in his hands; his fingers leave a trail of agonizing heat over Lucifer’s jaw.

“You’re freezing. What’s happened to you?” Alastor says. “You look like a drowned raccoon. Why are you all wet?” 

Lucifer can’t speak yet; he just leans further into Alastor’s warmth. Alastor waves a hand, and Lucifer is suddenly naked before Alastor wraps him in a warm towel. 

“I’m going to start the bath,” Alastor says. “I’ll only be a moment.”

Then, Alastor is gone. Lucifer draws the towel tighter around him, already so much warmer now that he’s out of his wet clothes. 

“Now, dear, we have a few minutes to wait,” Alastor says from behind him, and then he gathers Lucifer up into his arms, and his warmth feels so good that Lucifer goes totally lax in the embrace. “Why don’t you tell me where you’ve been?” 

Lucifer twists around to straddle Alastor’s lap and bury his face in his shirt. He breathes deeply — in all the time he’s been alive, nothing has ever calmed him like the smell of Alastor’s skin beneath his shampoo and lavender detergent. This is hardly Lucifer’s worst mistake — Alastor knows the worst of them already, every regret and secret and twisted desire. 

“I fucked up,” he mumbles into Alastor’s chest. “I’m sorry.”

Then, he tells Alastor everything.

Since the first souls were ferried across the great river — since Pentagram City was a hamlet in a desolate plain — the operation of Hell has come down to paperwork. 

Lucifer’s job as the ruler of Hell is mostly to wrangle forms from Heaven designed to frustrate and confuse him. His inevitable mistakes are punished meticulously. There was the decade when the sinners in Hell couldn’t comprehend speech because Lucifer forgot to renew the rights to their brains’ simulated auditory ventral streams. There was the month Lucifer spent in hiding as an ordinary sinner because he misspelled his own name on the sovereignty form. 

The tax extension form seems kind in comparison. Its only stipulation is that each year, Lucifer must sign and file it after June 2 and before May 31. It consists of a single question: 

Defer payment of Hell’s tax obligation to the next fiscal year?

▢ Yes ▢ No 

It takes seconds to file, and Lucifer has done it correctly more than eight thousand times — but if the labyrinth of bureaucracy has taught him anything, it’s that with eons of repetition it’s possible to fail even the simplest tasks. 

“Hell is meant to have a tax system,” Lucifer says. “The idea is that serious sins should still be punished after judgement — that sinners must repent of a percentage of their sins in order to continue to exist. But the bill has never actually come due because I file an extension every year.”

They’re all in the lobby’s sitting area. Lucifer looks away from the armchairs where the hotel’s staff and guests have assembled. Instead, he stares up at the far wall, where he’s been painting a mural of ducks. He only notices he’s gone silent for too long when Alastor, at his right hand as always, rests his fingers on the small of his back and traces gentle circles there. The unexpected contact takes the edge off Lucifer’s anxiety. It must be obvious to Alastor how close Lucifer is to completely coming apart, because he almost never touches Lucifer in public.

“This year,” Lucifer forces out, “I forgot. The bell — the weird vibes — the paperwork falling from the sky. All of that means the beginning of Tax Season. It lasts for 42 days, and when it ends, any sinner who hasn’t paid their tax obligation will be obliterated.” 

“You’ve gotta be fuckin’ kidding me,” Angel says.

“I'm not.” Lucifer’s voice comes out small. 

"You’ve just been filing an extension every year?”

“Yep.”

“How come I didn’t know about this?” Charlie says. 

Lucifer shrugs, still looking down. “It only takes a second to file. The form only has one checkbox.”

“So you had a whole year to check a box,” Husk says dryly.

Alastor fixes Husk with a glare that could melt stone; Lucifer flushes but doesn’t respond.

“So how the fuck do we pay?” Angel says.

“I’m working on that.” Lucifer opens a portal and pulls out the tablet. “This morning, I got some clarification from upstairs. I’m still translating it.” 

Angel leans over his shoulder. “Is that Hebrew?”

“Close,” Lucifer says. “It’s Old Hebrew — an ancestor of the modern language. I haven’t spoken it in a few thousand years, so I’m a little unclear on the, uh — nuance.” 

“Why the fuck would they give you the tax law in a dead language?” Husk says.

“Because God wrote this, and for whatever reason, once the humans came up with Old Hebrew, he refused to write in anything else?”

The room goes silent at this, all of them studying the Hebrew letters with a greater sense of fearful reverence. 

“Well, what does it say? Can you give us, like, the abridged version?” Angel says.

“It looks like only major sins are taxed,” Lucifer says. “They must have been committed knowingly and intentionally. And they must involve something — this word here, כבד, means, like, serious. So each sinner will have to count how many serious sins they’ve committed — how many there are will determine the rate at which they’re taxed. There are also instructions here about how to actually repent. Attending church services, making amends with those hurt — uh, it also says you can read the Bible and that’ll count.” 

“We’re all going to die,” Husk says. 

“Nope,” Lucifer says. “I’m definitely not letting that happen. Let’s see here. Uh —” he skims ahead. “This says you don’t need to pay taxes if you’ve sinned against God directly, I guess because you’re no longer eligible for forgiveness? That must be why I don’t have to pay. But that won’t work for you guys. Even if you could get an audience with God, he’d just obliterate you, and some of you want to get redeemed someday…”

“Where the fuck am I supposed to find a church down here?” Angel mumbles. Lucifer glances over to see that he’s dropped his head into his hands. 

Charlie rises to her feet, crosses the room, and rests her hand gently on Angel’s back. “Everything’s gonna be okay,” she says. “My dad and I are gonna figure this out. We’re not letting you all die.” She glances up at Lucifer. “In the meantime, we should probably tell everyone what’s going on.”

“I’ll handle that,” Alastor says smoothly. He stands. “I’ll be on air within the hour. Would you like to join me, my dear, or would you prefer to rest?”

“I’ll come with,” Lucifer says. After the morning he’s had, he’ll be staying glued to Alastor’s side for as long as he’s allowed. Alastor must sense that he’s feeling clingy, because when Lucifer reaches for his hand, he laces their fingers together and pulls Lucifer to his feet with unnecessary abruptness, then tugs Lucifer into his arms when he inevitably stumbles. Lucifer laughs and wraps his arms around Alastor’s waist.

“God, you two are gross,” Vaggie says, but she’s smiling. Lucifer smiles back, flips her off, and then Alastor draws them both down into the shadows. 

Lucifer’s radio interview with Alastor is effortless. He just sits there and lets Alastor play him expertly with easy questions that lead to easy answers, and when Lucifer reaches across the desk, Alastor takes his hand and doesn’t let go, not even when the interview ends, not until they’re back in their room and undressing each other, falling into bed and kissing languidly like this will never end, like they still have all the time in the world. 

It was one of the biggest surprises about this thing with Alastor, how much Alastor likes to touch him in private — one of those details that only makes sense in hindsight, like his fondness for cinnamon tea. Alastor is possessive, and he allows no one else to touch him — so in their quiet moments his hands are on Lucifer almost always. 

It’s well past dinner when they’re cleaned up and dressed again. They head downstairs to the empty kitchen and eat leftover spaghetti from the same container, perched on the counter, and Alastor makes a game of their two forks battling over the meatballs — which is another of his surprises, how the same jabs that once made Lucifer want to level the whole Pride Ring can also turn everything into a game, as long as they’re delivered with that soft smile Alastor reserves just for him. 

Neither of them talks about the truth hanging over them like a hangman’s axe: Alastor’s unquantifiable sins and the steep slope to repentance. The understanding is there in the silences — in the fear that flickers in Alastor’s eyes before he tucks it away behind his smile. Perhaps tomorrow — this season has only just begun. 

Lucifer doesn’t strictly need to sleep, and that night, he remains awake for hours after Alastor dozes off in his arms. The miracle of Alastor’s unsmiling face will never get old — nor will the way Alastor clings to him. It makes him feel wanted — irreplaceable — loved, as though he has become Alastor’s home just as surely as Alastor is his. 

He runs his fingers gently through Alastor’s hair. Tries not to guess at Alastor’s number of sins. Tries not to think of how high the cost will be to keep him. Tries not to imagine what it would be like to lose him. Magic bleeds out of Lucifer of its own volition and drapes Alastor in divine devotion and protection. There are moments — like Alastor’s stumbling confession when all this started, or the first time Alastor ever touched him gently, or the first time he heard Alastor humming unfiltered in the privacy of their room — when fragments of Lucifer’s power shake free like molted feathers and attach themselves to Alastor’s soul. 

It is a natural consequence of being loved by the Devil. Alastor will always be human, but maybe one day he’ll be stronger, and when Lucifer holds him his soul will feel less fragile, and Lucifer can stop worrying about how easily the one soul who has ever truly understood him — who knows him and wants him anyway — could die. 

Lucifer’s interview with Alastor is easy. His interview with Vox the next morning is anything but. 

Lucifer shifts restlessly under the harsh studio lights. He hates this — but as with so many of his responsibilities in Hell, he has no choice but to grin and bear it. He needs to warn as many sinners as possible, and tapping into Vox’s audience will help the message spread faster. 

Unless Lucifer bombs the interview — and, well.

Alastor had made Vox out to be a buffoon in their practice interviews, which makes it even more insulting that Vox is currently running verbal circles around Lucifer. Somehow, he’s managing to play off his acerbic jabs as if they’re inside jokes — except Lucifer is the punchline, and it’s a punchline Vox never tires of, so he’s just punching and punching and punching — and Lucifer can’t keep up, so he’s gotta sit here like a dumbass and take it. He might be a little bit out of practice at this.

To be fair, he’s got a lot on his mind. Somewhere beneath the din of TV signals is an insistent buzzing and crackling on the radio frequency he’s come to know as Alastor’s. He’s trying to contact Lucifer, probably to let him know he’s bombing this. Which — thanks, dear — he knows. He shuts it out and fights to keep his consciousness from drifting out of his body and away from this horrible interrogation. 

“Right. Well — with all due respect, Your Majesty,” Vox says, “you’re feeding me a load of bullshit.”

Lucifer blinks. “I assure you I’m not.”

Vox leans in over the table, drapes his wrists over his knees. His grin is sharklike, and every word from his mouth drips with sarcasm. “All right, then — let me get this straight. Your daughter’s pet project is all about this sort of altruism, right? And now you walk in, claiming we all have to ‘repent or die.’” He shifts and makes an exaggerated thoughtful expression towards a nonexistent studio audience. “Very convenient, no?”

No, actually, it was incredibly inconvenient. That was the point. Lucifer opens his mouth to respond — 

But he’s stopped short by a deafening crack of thunder. Lucifer looks up at the ceiling, as if he expects that to answer anything. Then, he crosses his eyes a little, channels his divine omniscience, and looks through the ceiling. Overhead, the clouds hang low over his realm with corporeal oppressiveness; a bolt of lightning cracks through a nearby skyscraper, which offers its own tendril of gray-black smoke into the building miasma. 

Lucifer catches a glimpse of something between the clouds in the place where Heaven should be. It looks like the sun — the real sun on Earth — but then it expands, and as it grows, it takes on the shape of a Hand. 

“No way,” Lucifer murmurs.

It isn’t possible. It’s not possible. 

The Hand swipes away at the clouds, bringing its silhouette into sharp focus, and it speaks:

I cast you down into the pit by my own Hand, and still you deny me. 

There are several shrieks near Lucifer’s body, which drags a fragment of his consciousness back to the studio where the camera technicians, assistants, and mic operators are all clamping their hands over their ears. Red blood drips down the bezel of Vox’s screen and onto the rug. The few sinners who have heard the voice of God in the past didn’t survive to answer Lucifer’s questions about how it felt. This is worse than Lucifer imagined — like the voice of God is melting their brains from the inside out. 

Unbeknownst to the demons, the Hand overhead points its index finger directly at Lucifer in the studio. 

Let this be an example to you of the judgement that awaits the nonbelievers.

The flow of time slows to a trickle, and there follows an instant when Lucifer is genuinely afraid — when he wonders if there isn’t a way for his Father to kill him after all. What better time than on television, in front of every sinner and Hellborn in all of Creation?

Across from him, Vox makes a choked noise. It happens in seconds: he turns his face up toward God, as though he can actually see His Hand in the heavens — and then his power snaps like a guitar string. The color drains from him, and his body takes on a ghostly translucence. He reaches for the table as if it could tether him to this plane, but his hand passes right through it. Then, the life drains out of Vox’s eyes, and then Vox himself drains down through the floorboards, and his soul is scattered to the four corners of the universe where it rejoins the miasma of Creation. 

All the threads that bind Vox to souls in Lucifer’s realm snap at once. The lights in the studio flicker and go out, and Lucifer lets out an undignified wheeze. Every soul that enters or leaves Lucifer’s realm is known to him, but where the obliteration of an unseen sinner normally feels to Lucifer like a hair plucked out, Vox’s second Death right in front of him is more like a punch to the gut. 

Lucifer has no affection for Vox — but he can’t watch an Overlord dissolve like cotton candy in a rainstorm and not think of Alastor — of the life and color bleeding out of Alastor’s soul. 

“Lucifer?” Alastor says over their channel — and his voice is a little strained, but he sounds okay — like maybe the voice of God isn’t hurting him like the others, and the idea that Lucifer’s protection might actually be worth something floods him with relief. 

“Not now,” Lucifer says quietly. He silently begs Alastor to stay quiet, prays that the Hand of God still looming above Pentagram City won’t take notice of the one human soul Lucifer would raze Heaven to protect.

Lucifer takes a breath and feels around for the channels of Vox’s power, still in the air around them but fading quickly, like an abandoned road overtaken again by forest. He pours his own magic in place of Vox’s. The studio lights come on again, and Lucifer stares directly into the camera lens, where the little red light is back to blinking. 

“Everyone stay calm and stay inside,” he says. Then, he drops the broadcast, staggers to his feet, and crosses the room to the window. The streets below are still blanketed in flakes of white, but they are not silent. Sinners and Hellborn caught outside are running from door to door in search of cover, pleading with those on the other side to let them in. Beneath God’s light, their figures cast harsh shadows across the pavement. 

At the stroke of midnight on the forty-first day, my spirit will pass through the Pride Ring and deliver eternal Death unto all those whose debt of sin is unpaid.

“Stand back,” Lucifer says to the staff in the studio, and then he unfolds his wings from his back and smashes through the window.

He shoots up into the sky. Lucifer hasn’t seen so much light since he was in Heaven. It burns his eyes, and the closer he gets to the Hand of God the more nauseous and wrong he feels — like he’s forcing two magnets of the same polarity together. 

“Thanks for the assist, but you’ve made your point,” Lucifer says. 

His Father, of course, ignores him. 

And lo — henceforth shall the damned be marked by the count of their debts. Even unto the hour of judgement shall they be marked. For I the Lᴏʀᴅ am merciful, and no longer shall I suffer the damned to forget their debts.

God snaps his fingers. 

The snap reverberates through Pentagram City like a shockwave. The world goes dark; Alastor drops the hand he’d been using to shield his eyes and blinks to bring the world into focus. 

For several horrible moments, it seems that God has sucked the light from Hell and left his unfavored children to languish in darkness — but then the shape of the Hotel’s avenue comes back into focus, and Alastor realizes the pitch black is illusive, that Hell is merely resettling beneath its usual twilight. 

There is a protracted city-wide silence where the only sound is shredded paper fluttering in the faint breeze and skidding along deserted pavement. 

Eventually, Alastor makes out the shape of Lucifer in the sky, barely visible in the distance.

Below, Angel stumbles out of the hotel’s entrance and onto the cobblestone drive, coughing. The front of his shirt is soaked with blood of uncertain origins.

Hearing the non-voice of God was unpleasant, and Alastor will certainly be contending with a headache for the remainder of the day — but Angel looks as though he’s lost a fight with a weed-whacker. 

“Are you quite all right?” Alastor calls; his voice echoes down the silent avenue. 

Angel turns and looks up at the balcony with wide, frantic eyes. It is then that Alastor notices the ornate plaque that now hangs in the air in front of Angel’s forehead bearing the number 214. It follows his every movement, and when Angel reaches up to push back his fur, his hand passes right through it. 

This must be the promised mark — the one representing Angel’s number of sins.

“Fuckin’ Hell, Smiles,” Angel says, looking somewhere above Alastor’s eyes. 

“Quite the unprecedented turn of events,” Alastor says lightly. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“No — I mean, yes — I mean, will you just look in a mirror?”

Alastor tilts his head and conjures one. In it, he finds his own serenely smiling face — and above that, a number. 

6,378,244.

The number’s last four digits clip through the image of the plaque and into the open air. 

Alastor is speechless; his smile nearly slips off his face. He reaches up, dumbly, and passes his hand through the numbers, as if he could shoo away the excess digits like errant houseflies. 

“Well,” Alastor finally says with forced brightness. Then, a choked sound escapes him, and he is forced to make a second attempt at speech. “Well, that certainly is unexpected,” he says faintly.

Lucifer lands on the balcony behind him in a flutter of wings.

“Let me see it.” he says and turns Alastor with his hands on his hips. 

Lucifer gasps sharply. “No,” he says faintly. “That can’t be right. No. Nobody can get up to that much trouble, not even you.” He reaches up, strokes his fingers absently over Alastor’s jaw, and gazes off through the open French doors to their unmade bed while the gears in his head turn. “91,118 major sins per year… That’s more than 250 per day since your death! 10 per hour! And this is supposed to be a fraction of the total? There must be a mistake.” 

“I’m gonna get Charlie,” Angel says.

“Good idea,” Lucifer says. 

Angel disappears back into the Hotel, and Lucifer’s eyes flicker back to Alastor. “Can I take a look at your soul? Maybe the math He used is in there somewhere.”

Alastor nods, still numb with shock. 

“Get down here,” Lucifer says and pulls their foreheads together. 

Alastor returns to himself at some point while he and Lucifer are standing there with their eyes closed. Alastor leans in further and brushes his nose over Lucifer’s cheek, but Lucifer makes no response; he is already somewhere else, in his own world, in one of those unfathomable, divine places where Alastor can’t follow. 

“Dad? Alastor?” Charlie says softly from below. “What’s going on?”

Alastor fights the urge to jerk away from Lucifer like he’s been caught in the act. 

“My sins are slightly more numerous than anticipated,” he says softly. “Your father is investigating the matter now. Performing an audit, if you will.”

“I see,” Charlie says. 

Angel whispers something to Charlie, which she answers with a sharp intake of breath. 

Then, Lucifer draws back, and his eyes open. In the twilight, they are two glowing embers. Incensed. 

The expression on his face is one Alastor has only ever seen on his own. It is cold, cruel rage. Lucifer squeezes his eyes shut and exhales a thick puff of smoke. 

“I — okay. Just a sec,” Lucifer says. “I’ll be right back.” He pauses, frowns. “Probably.”

He dissolves into red sparks without further comment. 

“What the —” Angel begins.

Then, the mountain erupts. 

A plume of glowing magma reaches for the sky with an otherworldly shriek — and then the magma contorts and reshapes into a dragon with seven heads, each with two horns. The Beast opens seven pairs of blue eyes, so bright they’re visible across the city like stars. It lifts its wings, raises its heads to the sky, and screams white fire at the Heavens. The flames illuminate the dim skies like a comet. 

Angel swears and ducks back into the hotel; Charlie remains on the steps, transfixed. 

If there was ever any doubt that the Beast is Lucifer, it is banished when the Beast speaks in a divine voice that is not a voice: 

Hypocrite. 

Monster. 

Coward.

And the voice is steeped in agony and rage, and with each word, the very Earth shakes. Behind Alastor, in the room he shares with Lucifer, something shatters. 

Haven’t you already taken enough from me?!

The beast screams more fire across the sky; Alastor grips the balcony railing, hard. 

40 Days Remaining

Lucifer rages for several hours, unanswered by God; he returns home in the early hours of morning smelling of smoke. 

Alastor is asleep, but hears everything, and he stirs at the sound of the doorknob turning. He opens his eyes just as Lucifer closes the door behind him. Lucifer leans against it, warily regarding the bed, and doesn’t take one step further into the room. 

“You’re back,” Alastor says, his voice fuzzy from sleep. 

“Yes,” Lucifer says hoarsely. His hair and clothing are streaked with dirt and soot.

“Come to bed,” Alastor says.

“I can’t,” Lucifer says.

Alastor waits for an explanation, but several moments pass in silence. 

“Why?” Alastor says.

“Alastor.” Lucifer’s voice cracks. “It’s my fault. Your number — it’s because of me. Every moment we’ve spent together is a mortal sin. I’ve already —” Lucifer rubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand, and it’s only then that Alastor realizes he’s crying. “I doomed you. I’m so sorry. If I could …” he trails off. 

“Come to bed,” Alastor repeats. Then, softer: “Don’t be ridiculous.”

Lucifer laughs sadly. “That’s all I ever do. Be ridiculous. What’s the point? How can this possibly be worth it to you?”

Alastor sighs, kicks the covers off, and sits up in bed. He crosses the room to the door and kneels in front of Lucifer, who looks so small there, curled up on the carpet. It’s difficult to imagine him as the enraged Beast at the top of the mountain — but that’s Lucifer. A divine paradox. 

Alastor channels magic into his hand and wipes a tear off of Lucifer’s cheek; just like that, Lucifer is clean and dressed in his favorite pajamas, which were once Alastor’s. The red silk pools around his wrists and ankles. 

Lucifer looks up at him with wide eyes. “How are you not mad?” he says softly. 

The truth is dragged out of Alastor against his will, as it so often is when Lucifer is like this, small and soft and vulnerable.

“There is no one and nothing else I desire more, on this or any plane, in my afterlife or whatever may come next.”

A faint smile breaks across Lucifer’s face. “Holy shit,” he says. “You’re crazy.”

“Perhaps.” Alastor reaches out, and Lucifer takes his hand, lets Alastor pull him to his feet and lead him across the room. With his free hand, Lucifer hikes his — Alastor’s — pajama pants up past his belly button to keep from tripping over the hems — the only equal to the desire Lucifer’s unmatched power awakens in Alastor is this one, the desire to wrap Lucifer up and keep him safe forever. 

“I’m not yet convinced that nothing can be done,” Alastor says. “And even if I were doomed, I refuse to deprive myself of your company in my final days. Your Father should know better than to try to sway me. I’ve never been one to do as I’m told.”

Alastor presses Lucifer up against the bedpost. “Come to bed,” he says again. 

This time, Lucifer must sense the hidden meaning, because his gaze falls to Alastor’s parted lips, and then he drags Alastor down and kisses him like he’s drowning, like he can only breathe if the air comes from Alastor’s lungs. 

He flips them around, and the backs of Alastor’s knees hit the mattress. Alastor falls back willingly and Lucifer clambers on top of him, still kissing him, working his hands between them to undo the buttons of Alastor’s shirt. 

“Mine,” Lucifer murmurs into Alastor’s mouth, and the word washes over Alastor and settles into his skin like magic. Lucifer parts Alastor’s shirt and ducks his head to leave a messy trail of kisses down his chest. 

“I’ll do anything,” Lucifer says, and Alastor thinks again of the eldritch entity at the top of the mountain, calling down the wrath of God. “Anything you want,” Lucifer says. “How do you want me?”

29 Days Remaining

“So, uh,” Angel begins, “did you really have to make it like that?”

Alastor is standing in the hotel lobby with the rest of the staff, studying Lucifer’s newest creation, which he’s just introduced as the Sin Aud-o-matic Auditor Machine. Alastor must admit he admires Lucifer’s steadfast devotion to his personal brand of whimsy, even in the midst of adversity. The creation before them has all the trappings of a carnival fortune-teller machine. It is large and boxy, and behind its glass exterior is a Lucifer body double wearing a slight variation of his typical ringleader attire. The figure stares out through the glass, expressionless. 

It is somewhat unsettling how the overall effect resembles a boxed porcelain doll, but at this point, Alastor knows better than to offer creative input — Lucifer has already magicked a machine onto every street corner in Pentagram City.

Instead, he turns back to his Lucifer, whose eyes have taken on a sheen that is eerily similar to his mechanical double. It’s a sign that his consciousness has drifted beyond his body — through space or through time, it’s difficult to say, but Alastor has gotten better at guessing, especially in these past weeks. 

Alastor squeezes Lucifer’s hand to bring him back. Lucifer blinks as he resurfaces. He turns first to Alastor, then meets the expectant expressions of the rest of the group. 

“Uh — could you repeat the question?”

“Angel asked if you had to make it ‘like that’, dear.” Alastor points his cane at the lifeless Lucifer inside the machine.

“Oh! Yeah. Yes.” Lucifer nods. “The, uh — the tax code says that the audits can only come from ‘the lips of the Serpent of Eden’, which is — y’know, me. When that was written, there were only like, a few hundred of you guys down here, tops, so it was hypothetically manageable, but now, like, eight thousand years later, there’s a bit of a, um, scalability issue.”

Angel frowns. “That is a fucking insane rule. How can they expect you to personally audit every single sinner? Who comes up with this shit?”

Lucifer blinks. “My Father?” 

The group remains silent. Lucifer looks back to Alastor. “I mean, he’s kind of an asshole. Is that not clear at this point? Working around his bullshit rules to keep things from unraveling is, like, most of what I do.”

The skeptical looks Lucifer receives from the others send a pang of displeasure through Alastor. Even he doesn’t know the finer details of all Lucifer does, every indignity and inconvenience he subjects himself to so that Hell remains even minimally functional. 

Angel crosses all four of his arms and cocks a hip. “Like… what?”

Lucifer seems surprised at the question. “Like the sun — filing the Requisition of Holy Light, so it’s not dark all the time down here. And the border policy forms have to be filed each month, so new sinners can actually get into Hell instead of drowning in the river over and over — and there are separate forms for the Hellborn, and all the structures in Hell, so they can keep existing and not get re-incorporated into the miasma of creation. Yep. Just stuff like that.”

Even Alastor is thrown by how nonchalantly Lucifer describes Heaven’s sadistic maze of bureaucracy. Angel has gone slack-jawed, and Husk seems uncomfortable and guilty. 

Perhaps they are reassessing their view of their King. Alastor himself had once thought Lucifer callous and aloof, with no interest in the affairs of his subjects. But on the morning after their first night together, Lucifer apologetically slipped out of bed to file some form or another. Alastor followed him to his office with the intention of catching him in his lie, only to realize that Lucifer truly was toiling away behind the scenes at all hours of the day and running himself ragged in an eternal game of cat and mouse with his Father, knowing he could never win, that the paperwork would never end, but wanting to spare his realm further suffering. 

“Anyways!” Lucifer twirls his hand with a showman’s flourish. “Who wants to give it a whirl?”

“I’ll try,” Husk says. He steps forward and places his hand onto the palm reader. The Lucifer behind the glass whirs to life: its eyes shine, its jaw unhinges, and it prints out a long white receipt, which shoots out the front of the machine with jarring speed. Then, its jaw snaps shut and tears off the end of the receipt. Its eyes fade back to glassy lifelessness. The receipt weaves through a slot in the front of the machine. Husk grabs it and looks it over. 

“Yeah, pretty much what I expected,” Husk mumbles. “Gonna be a bitch and a half to meet my quota, but it’s doable.”

They go around and repeat the process for the rest of their motley crew with similar results. Then, it’s Alastor’s turn. He rests his palm on the machine and it jolts to life, shuddering and sparking. The receipt shoots out at an absurd pace, slices Alastor’s forearm, and gives him a vicious papercut. And it just keeps printing. 

The receipt rolls along the floor and folds back on itself over and over in figure-eight patterns until the stack falls over, and then it snakes along the rug, coiling around their legs and the furniture, covering every square inch of available space at a prodigious rate. 

Alastor catches brief glimpses of entries on the receipt — there are the occasional inclusions of Cannibalism and Murder, which he deems fair enough — but the acts Alastor considers his true sins are are far outstripped by the thousands of lines that end in “with the Devil”.

Alastor is not pleased to see his private life and preferences spelled out so plainly, but he is incensed by the inclusion of completely innocuous activities that seem to only be classified as mortal sins due to Lucifer’s mere presence:

Personal Grooming with the Devil

Breaking Bread with the Devil

Conversing with the Devil

Dancing with the Devil

Around him, the room devolves into chaos. Lucifer tears open a portal to his office and everyone frantically shovels the receipt in before it can completely fill the lobby. Alastor pays them no mind; he picks up a section of the receipt at random. The date next to each entry is from early in his relationship with Lucifer; the section in Alastor’s hand covers a period of five minutes, and it chronicles the scene in sufficient detail that Alastor can remember the moment these “sins” were committed. 

He’d been feeding Lucifer pancakes in bed as penance for a lost bet; every bite Alastor offered him is listed, as is every smile. Even Alastor’s thoughts are itemized, how he imagined the sickly sweet taste of Lucifer’s lips before he leaned in and found out for himself. It unsettles him to see the memory laid out so clinically, with each line phrased as an accusation. 

Alastor is not sorry. Not for any of it. He turns to Lucifer, who is cursing and shoveling the receipt through the portal with divine speed. The instant they’re alone, he intends to lengthen God’s list of complaints. 

Charlie tugs the receipt from his hands as she shovels her own overflowing armful into the portal. Soon, the group manages to get the entire receipt on the other side, though the machine shows no signs of slowing. It’s now printing directly into the portal and piling up in Lucifer’s office, where Lucifer is accommodating it with non-Euclidean spatial manipulation.

The machine prints directly into the portal for twenty-four hours.

The next morning, Lucifer locks himself in his office to itemize Alastor’s sins. Even with his dominion over the flow of time, the process will likely take hours. It is a rare opportunity for Alastor to get his affairs in order; Lucifer has been a near-constant presence at Alastor’s side since his sins were counted.

He drops into the shadows and materializes in the hotel’s administration office, which he shares with Charlie. She is at her desk as she always is at this time of day, twirling a gel pen between her fingers. When Alastor takes shape behind her, she squeaks and drops it.

“Holy —” she says. “I thought you’d be helping Dad.”

“My presence would be more of a hindrance.” Alastor sits in his chair and folds his hands on his desk. “Could we speak privately?”

“Sure? The door’s already shut.”

“I have two matters to discuss. First, I would like to appoint you the executor of my will.” He reaches across his desk and offers his hand. “Do you accept?”

Charlie wheels her chair across the room and takes it.

“Of course, but Alastor —”

The instant she consents, a thread of magic forms in the air and binds her to the document in Alastor’s jacket pocket. He removes it and slides it across the table to her. 

“For safekeeping,” he says. 

She takes the document and slides it into her own jacket. “Alastor —” 

“Second,” Alastor interrupts, only because he’s finding the discussion of his own imminent demise a little more disconcerting than expected, “you and I both know that my death is inevitable. My sins are too numerous; I see no acceptable path to repentance. But Lucifer still hopes. When I fail, it might — he may —”

He trails off and meets Charlie’s eyes, which are steady if a little watery. 

“You must promise me that you will not allow him to languish in despair or convince himself of his guilt. You must care for him in my absence. Please.”

“Of course I will,” Charlie says softly. “But, Alastor, I — I wish you wouldn’t just give up. Please don’t give up. My dad and I, we — uh — we —” 

Alastor realizes, to his horror, that Charlie is about to cry. 

He has seen her cry before, but never because of him — he thinks of all the stories Lucifer told him about how, when she was a child, he would cave to most of her demands at the first sign of tears. Alastor suddenly understands their power.

“There must be something we can do,” she says. “I don’t want you to — um. Sorry. Not about me.” 

She wipes at her face; Alastor scrambles for a way to fix this. He hadn’t expected Charlie to be so upset — not even Lucifer has cried like this. Not yet. 

“I apologize,” he says.

“God, don’t,” she says. “It’s fine. I just — don’t you think you should at least try? Have you actually tried anything?”

“Hm,” Alastor says. “Perhaps you have a point. What would you suggest?”

Charlie perks up. “Oh.” She rolls her chair back over to her desk. “Well, I’ve got a copy of the translated tablet somewhere. Let’s see if I can find it.” 

She digs through the pile of papers on her desk. Charlie’s desk appears organized at a glance, with colorful file organizers and a neat row of souvenir mugs where she stores her pens. Above her desk is a calendar where she writes all of her hotel-related appointments in her round, looping handwriting, and she never goes anywhere without her planner. When Alastor first met her, he’d taken these as signs of an orderly mind — but it only took a few days of sharing an office with her to realize that utter chaos lurks beneath the veneer of sticker books, colorful post-its, and novelty binder clips. Alastor handles the hotel’s administrative tasks for good reason: like her father, Charlie is awful at paperwork. 

“Oh my gosh, there it is. Okay. Well, one of the fixes listed here is reading the Bible. Why don’t you try that? Maybe you’ll find more options. Stuff God likes.” 

“Hm. I must admit the prospect is marginally less distasteful than eternal obliteration.” 

“Oh my gosh, idea — I’ll read it with you. It’ll be fun! Like a book club.”

Alastor opens his desk drawer, rifles through it, and pulls out its Hᴏʟʏ Bɪʙʟᴇ. The title is embossed on the cover in gold lettering. The damned things pop up in every drawer and cabinet in the Hotel and are impossible to destroy, like an infestation of cockroaches. Is this what his afterlife has come to? Has he sunk so low as to open this infernal book?

He flips through the pages; the scripture inside is rendered in minuscule serif font and printed in two columns. The book is thick, and the paper is thin — it will take an age to read through it. 

“I suppose we’d better begin now if we hope to finish in time,” he says. 

He flips to the first page. 

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The funny thing about the administration of the seven rings of Hell is that there are no vacations, even when everything is already falling apart. 

The morning of Lucifer’s quarterly meeting with the other Sins, he wakes and gazes down at the city from the window of the room he shares with Alastor. In the past four weeks, the falling scraps of paperwork have accumulated in enormous drifts. They don’t respond to magic, so it’s impossible to go anywhere without later picking bits of the stuff out of one’s hair and clothes. Lucifer really feels for the fuzzy demons. Angel and Husk have come to resemble stuffed toys lost under a couch — both are perpetually covered in a thin layer of statically charged paper that they’ve given up on picking out of their fur. 

The Sins arrive at the palace one by one, each complaining about the air of despondency that hangs over the Pride Ring. Angel is the only sinner Lucifer knows of who has paid his tax; Husk is staying on track by attending nightly church services, and Lucifer hasn’t seen Niffty in two weeks, though Alastor claims she’s merely carrying out her own plan for settling her debts. The streets are congested with pop-up churches and charities in makeshift tents. The hopeless drink and fuck away their final days with reckless abandon, while the rest shuffle from tent to tent, sometimes muttering prayers but usually in silence. 

Lucifer and the Sins settle in at the long conference table they always use for these meetings, picking paper off their clothes. Lucifer pulls out an overstuffed portfolio of paperwork — he’s able to file most of Hell’s paperwork on his own, but some matters require the signature of every Sin. 

The hue agreements, for example — Hell’s limited supply of light from Heaven goes a lot further if they agree to split the spectrum. Once every century or two, one of the Sins will get sick of their color and demand a different one. Lucifer hates these meetings most, when the Sins wield paperwork against one another like bludgeons. They forget so easily that if they don’t file the Requisition of Heavenly Light in time, it’s lights out for a whole year. 

In early evening, Lucifer is nursing his seventh latte and doodling in the margins of the Application for License to Conduct Business — without which all currency in Hell would cease to exist — when something huge, mangled, and black clatters into existence on the table right in front of him. 

Lucifer jerks back and sloshes coffee all over the form he’s working on. Ozzie and Bee jump to their feet and pull out their weapons. Mammon raises an eyebrow. Belphegor merely observes the scene impassively. Lucifer leans closer — what he first took for a grotesquely tangled, charred pile of wood is actually the skeleton of a smallish creature, the bones cracked and contorted beyond recognition. 

“Jesus fuck, Lucifer, would you put your skeleton away?” Satan says. “Have a little professionalism.” 

“It’s not mine!” Lucifer says, though as he speaks he realizes that isn’t true. This skeleton is his now, even if he’s never seen it before. It’s been so long since he received a proper burnt offering that it takes him several seconds to make the connection. In the early years, skeletons used to pop in like this all the time, ruining his furniture, sprinkling bone and charcoal all over the carpet. 

But there’s something unusual about this one. Familiar. He frowns, leans closer, and sniffs — his eyes close, and he sees a memory of Alastor in their room a few minutes ago, wearing a bloodstained white robe, leaning over a burning altar and chanting. Behind him, inexplicably, is Charlie, pumping her fist in encouragement. 

“What the fuck,” he says aloud. 

He takes a portal back to their room. The altar is still there, the smell of smoke and charred meat thick in the air, but no one’s here. Vaggie’s solemn voice filters through the open bathroom door. Lucifer approaches the sound.

“Do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior?” Vaggie says, her voice impassive. 

Alastor’s voice. “I do.” 

Lucifer peeks around the corner to the bathroom. Alastor and Vaggie are standing in the bathtub dressed in white robes. The tub has been made deeper — the water reaches up to Vaggie’s neck. She looks miserable. 

“Alastor Thomas, having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” she says. 

She dunks Alastor swiftly under the water. Alastor comes back up a moment later, his hair a solid curtain over his eyes. He splutters and pushes it back. 

“I don’t think he went all the way under,” Charlie says. “His sin count didn’t go down.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Vaggie sweeps Alastor’s knees out from under him and shoves him down. Water sloshes over the side of the tub; Charlie hastily picks up the book resting on the tile, and Lucifer catches a glimpse of the title. 

It’s the fucking Bible. 

“What’s going on here?” Lucifer says. 

Vaggie and Charlie both jump. Alastor comes up out of the water in a chaotic frenzy of sprawling limbs, like a cat trying to escape a bathtub. In the chaos, he splashes Vaggie directly in the face. 

Then, Alastor gets his feet back under him. He must have gone all the way under on the second attempt, because his sin count has gone down by 75. Alastor shakes the water from his hands. “I swear upon all that is holy, you will live to regret that,” he says.

“Haven’t I already been punished enough,” Vaggie grumbles to no one in particular, wringing out her soaked hair. 

“What’s going on here?” Lucifer repeats.

Alastor pushes his hair back out of his face. “Oh, hello, darling. We’re merely making a little headway on my repentance.” 

“By sending an offering… to me?” Lucifer says. “It showed up in the middle of our meeting. Ruined a bunch of paperwork.” 

“Oh. Hm.” Alastor turns to Charlie. “There must have been an error in the Hebrew this time. Are you certain we translated the scripture correctly?”

“I’m positive!” She flips through the Bible and stops on a page with a neon, hand-written sticky note. “Oh… maybe I messed up. I think I might have negated this verb. It would’ve made the offering descend to God, not ascend to God.”

“A simple mistake,” Lucifer says dryly. 

“But look!” Charlie picks up a compact mirror off the bathroom counter and holds it up to Alastor. “Your sin count went down!”

“Now he just needs to get baptized 85,037 more times, and we’ll be set,” Lucifer says. “Is this what you guys have been up to while I’m doing paperwork?”

“We’ve been looking for faster ways of bringing down Alastor’s sin count,” Charlie says. Then, to Alastor: “My dad is right. We need to try something else. There’s gotta be something that would clear like a thousand sins at once.”

“My dear, I struggle to imagine a means of repentance that would be ten times more effective than baptism.” 

“Good point. Baptism is the strongest thing we’ve found so far. I wonder if it would work a second time?” 

“Alastor Thomas, having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Vaggie shoves Alastor under the water again.

Alastor comes up with his antlers extended and blinks open his eyes, which are glowing green radio dials. His number holds steady at 6,377,821. “Enough,” he spits.

“Yeah, I don’t think it’ll work again, Vaggie.”

“Great.” Vaggie climbs out of the tub. “I’m gonna go track down another sacrifice.” 

“You can go back to your meeting, Dad.” Charlie smiles brightly. “We’re going to figure this out.”

And despite the impossibility of the task, for a time, Lucifer believes her. 

Alastor is performing maintenance on the equipment in his radio tower when the clock on the mantel strikes midnight and the final week of Alastor’s afterlife begins. 

Lucifer is in the sitting room, staring at the fire. He’d wanted to join Alastor, but he could tell Alastor wanted to be alone. Lucifer has been glued to his side since Tax Season began, and though Alastor has accepted Lucifer’s presence with gentle patience, he has always needed his space. 

When their time together seemed infinite, giving him space had been easy. Now, it’s agony. He could be with Alastor right now, holding his hand or rubbing his back or just listening to him hum jazz standards under his breath while he organizes his record collection — but he isn’t, and he’ll never get these precious seconds back, the ones that will mean everything to him if one week from now, Alastor is gone forever.

The second hand circles the clock. One minute, two. It’s Alastor’s clock; it’s a replica of the one in his home in New Orleans, meticulously crafted with Alastor’s magic. Lucifer likes to imagine him soft and human, in a warm house with his kind mother. Alastor rarely talks about his human life, except for some nights when it’s all he talks about. Lucifer receives each story like a gift and files them away in his mind, where they map a blurry shape of his favorite human soul. 

At 12:05am, Lucifer realizes that Alastor is going to die. That they’ve tried everything, and his tax obligation has barely budged. That if Lucifer had just filed the extension on time, this wouldn’t be happening. He’d have spent tonight making a new duck, secure in the knowledge that Alastor would soon be back in their bed, in Lucifer’s arms, with eternity in their hands like a popcorn bucket with unlimited refills. 

He slides off his chair and curls up on the floor, so close to the fire that it burns his skin. He has the weird urge to claw his ribcage open; self-loathing is an affliction he’s accustomed to, yet the knowledge that this is his fault — that he did this to Alastor — is completely unbearable. 

He cries until he throws up. Then, he cleans himself up and climbs in bed, alone, which is where Alastor finds him twenty-three wasted minutes later. 

He listens to Alastor prattle about his day, only half-comprehending; Alastor finally managed to obtain a rare record for his collection, which seems pointless when there is so little time left for Alastor to enjoy it. 

Then, Alastor’s story cuts off abruptly. 

“Are you crying?” Alastor says.

“Sorry,” Lucifer says. 

Alastor frowns. Even in private, it’s a rare expression. Lucifer really must look horrible. 

Alastor kicks off his shoes, climbs in bed, and wraps his long limbs around Lucifer. It still shocks Lucifer that Alastor is this good for him, that he’s so good at reading Lucifer and always knows whether to offer comfort, silence, or a witty argument. 

Alastor gently strokes Lucifer’s hair. It’s so unfair. It’s so unfair that Lucifer has finally found someone who can do this for him, who can be everything to him, only to lose him in a cosmic blink. 

“You’re going to die,” Lucifer whispers.

“Your concern is about ninety years late, dear.”

“You know what I mean. You’re going to die again. You’re going to disappear.”

“I was always meant to,” Alastor says. 

Lucifer frowns; he turns over in Alastor’s arms to look at his face. “No,” Lucifer says. “You aren’t meant to die. You’re meant to stay in my realm forever. With me, if you want. But I fucked up. I fucked up, and now I’m gonna lose you.” 

Alastor leans down and kisses Lucifer’s forehead. “You’re wrong,” he says. “This was always destined to end with my death. Had you never considered that you will inevitably outlive me? That I can die, so with eternity before us, I eventually will?”

“I thought I could keep you,” Lucifer mumbles. 

“Can’t you? You’re hardly bound by linear time. Even after I’m gone, you can always return to a time when I still exist.” 

Lucifer imagines it: millennia stretching before him, and his memories of Alastor behind him, a scant handful of years to last until the universe stops expanding and contracts again, until all of existence folds back into a single point and everything finally ends: Lucifer and God and the whole damned business of creation.

Lucifer buries his face in Alastor’s shirt and wills the smell of his skin to stay perfectly preserved in his memory forever. “I just want more time,” he murmurs. 

“As do I.” Alastor kisses his forehead. “I always will.”

Lucifer doesn’t expect to sleep on the last night of Alastor’s life. He holds Alastor, weeping inconsolably. Alastor kisses him and strokes his hair. Lucifer still hasn’t seen Alastor cry — even now, so close to the end — so Lucifer grieves for both of them. 

Eventually, there is a soft knock on the door. Alastor answers it despite Lucifer’s weak protests. Charlie is on the other side, and when she takes in Lucifer’s distraught expression, surrounded by his pile of handkerchiefs, her face crumbles. 

“Dad,” she says. “I’m here. I’ve got you.” 

She kneels on the bed and pulls Lucifer into an embrace while Alastor strokes the back of his head. A long moment passes, and she doesn’t let go. Suddenly, Lucifer feels exhausted. He pulls back — Charlie’s eyes are glowing red, and her horns have sprouted from her forehead. 

“Go to sleep, Dad,” she says. 

“No.” Lucifer’s voice is thick and groggy. 

“Yes,” Alastor says softly. “I love you, dear. I’d like you to rest.”

“Love you,” Lucifer mumbles. “So much.”

Charlie squeezes him tighter and pours more of her magic into him, like the cough syrup he used to give her when she got a cold, willing him to succumb, to sleep it off. He tries to pull away, but Charlie holds him tight, and Lucifer is weak from grief. Moments later, Charlie’s magic overpowers him and drags him under. 

When he wakes, Alastor is gone. 

Alastor doesn’t want to die. 

It is this certainty that fuels him as he approaches the summit one labored step at a time. He doesn’t want to die, but if he must, he certainly won’t do it peacefully in his sleep. He refuses on principle to meet his end in a manner so pedestrian and undignified. 

If God is so determined to kill him, He’ll need to do it Himself. 

Alastor is finally nearing the summit, so cold he can barely move. Every gust of wind seems to unmake him, to further strip away the vestiges of his power. He glances down at his hand and finds, for the first time in ninety years, his human fingernails, thin and fragile.

He laughs — for a moment, he almost feels Alive again, with a capital A — as if he were climbing toward his first Death rather than his second. 

He steps onto the summit, weak and gasping. There is the outline of Lucifer in the stone, a shape Alastor knows so well and loves so dearly — and in the center, above Lucifer’s heart, is a small blue flame. Alastor falls to his knees on the unforgiving stone. 

Alastor Thomas.

The voice of God is painful, but no more unbearable than the cold. 

“Yes,” Alastor says. 

You have made offerings to me and been baptized in my name, though you are unrepentant. Why do you now defile this sacred space? Are you come to bargain for your life?

Alastor rehearsed his speech on the way up. In his head, it had been punctuated with curses and enraged screams — but the climb has drained everything from him, and now that he must speak, he can’t recall where he’s meant to begin. 

“If you wish for my death,” he finally says, “I demand you carry it out personally.”

The hour of my judgement approaches, when you shall surely perish alongside the other non-believers.

“No,” Alastor says — and there is the anger, the righteous indignation. He tries to stand, but his knees give out. They strike the stone with the unmistakable crack of breaking bone, but he doesn’t feel a thing. “You have singled me out for the company I keep. You have made my repentance an insurmountable task to ensure my destruction.”

The flame is silent. Alastor tries to rise and manages three steps this time before he collapses again. “It occurs to me that you and Lucifer both have equal claim on the title of God, and these things are a matter of perspective — so tell me.” He crawls forward into the indentation of Lucifer’s body and leans over the flame. “If Lucifer is my God, what does that make you — to me?” 

The flame flickers orange and singes Alastor’s frostbitten skin. He smiles through the pain and doesn’t flinch. Instead, he leans in further, gathers what little excess moisture remains in his mouth, and spits on the flame.

Very well.

It happens in an instant — but in that instant, Alastor suddenly understands what Lucifer means when he says that every second contains its own eternity. 

The last vestiges of Alastor’s power ignite like gasoline and rend him apart from the inside out. The sting of Death illuminates every detail of his body, how it is made up of tiny particles. He feels each one break away and drift off into parts unknown. 

His last conscious thought is of Lucifer’s eyes as he drifts across time and space. Perhaps being dead will be just like that. 

White.

The faint whine of an electric lamp.

A thick and cottony stillness. 

When Alastor woke in Hell the first time, it was as though he had merely blinked — closed his eyes in one place and opened them in another. 

When he wakes in Hell for the second time, it is as though he is surfacing from the depths of a bottomless sea without knowing which way is up — he claws at the emptiness until, suddenly, his head breaks the surface. He gasps for air, and then he opens his eyes and he is on his back at the summit of the mountain, staring up into the storm. 

He groans, and his mind resettles in his body. Everything aches. It is a Herculean effort to push himself up onto his elbows.

He’s human again, though his skin and clothes are grayscale and blurry like a figure in a daguerreotype. He’s sitting in an indentation the shape of his own body. His arm overlaps with Lucifer’s imprint. Beside him, the flame still burns, faded back to blue.

“Am I alive?” Alastor says.

The protection of your false god strengthens you, but it cannot deliver you.

“Lucifer couldn’t have saved me; he’s unconscious.” 

You bear his devotion. A fraction of his spirit resides within you, just as my spirit can be found in the hearts of the righteous. 

Alastor reassesses all the times Lucifer’s touch settled over him like magic, all the times Lucifer held him like he was the most precious thing in the world. Until he met Lucifer, Alastor had never been able to imagine himself in a romantic partnership. But falling in love with Lucifer was as effortless as falling asleep. 

He lays back against the stone. He’s so tired — only tethered to this plane by the thinnest thread. Blackness creeps in at the edges of his vision, and he struggles to keep his eyes open. 

Lucifer couldn’t save him, but he granted him this — these stolen moments to watch the clouds. 

“It’s killing him that he let this happen,” Alastor says. “But he’s awful at paperwork. He’s been drowning in it since I met him. That’s the point, isn’t it? To make him suffer.” 

Alastor is slipping away now — his eyes close, and he drifts into a sea of stars. 

The Devil suffers that he might atone for his sins.

“But he’s alone,” Alastor mumbles. “You didn’t send him here alone — he wasn’t meant… to suffer alone.”

The third time Alastor wakes in Hell, there is light shining in his eyes. He groans and shields his face. 

“Alastor?” 

It’s Charlie’s voice. Alastor tries to focus on the source of the sound, but his vision is blurry. “Charlie?”

“Oh, my gosh. Oh my gosh — oh my gosh.” She hauls Alastor up into a crushing embrace; Alastor groans in pain, and she releases him. 

The world is finally coming back into focus. They’re on the summit of the mountain overlooking Pentagram City, but the clouds have parted and the freezing winds have stilled. Alastor is back in his demonic form, and his longer legs spill past the outline of his human body. He glances over at Lucifer’s matching outline. The flame of God’s voice that once flickered above his heart is gone. 

“Dad is going to be so happy,” Charlie says. “I’m so happy. I can’t believe you’re still here! I tracked you down when your will didn’t activate. What happened? How did you get up here? And what is that?” 

Alastor follows her gaze to a sheet of paper he’s clutching in his hand. It’s damp, crumpled, and dusted with soot — he unfolds it.

זֶה הַסֵּפֶר מְעִיד כִּי עֲלַסְטוֹר תּוֹמַס נִתַּן לוֹ הַסַּמְכוּת מֵאֵת לוּצִיפֶר מוֹרְנִינְגְסְטָר.

Tʜɪs ᴅᴏᴄᴜᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴄᴇʀᴛɪғɪᴇs ᴛʜᴀᴛ Aʟᴀsᴛᴏʀ Tʜᴏᴍᴀs ʜᴀs ʙᴇᴇɴ ɢʀᴀɴᴛᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴏᴡᴇʀ ᴏғ ᴀᴛᴛᴏʀɴᴇʏ ғᴏʀ Lᴜᴄɪғᴇʀ Mᴏʀɴɪɴɢsᴛᴀʀ.

Alastor hands Charlie the paper. Then, he tilts his face up to the sky and laughs. 

Alastor’s power is still weakened, so Charlie takes him back to the hotel. Across the city, the survivors are celebrating the end of Tax Season; Alastor skips the lobby where the residents are drinking and dancing. Their music and laughter carry through the walls, all the way up to the room he shares with Lucifer.

He finds Lucifer sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring dead-eyed at the wall. When Alastor enters, Lucifer utters a single, disbelieving Alastor? that shatters Alastor’s heart. Alastor heaves in a breath that trembles on its way out, steps forward, and stumbles.

In a divine flash, Lucifer appears in front of him, steadying him with his warm hands. 

“Gotcha,” Lucifer says. His magic settles over them both like a blanket, and Alastor is instantly warm and clean, the smell of smoke a distant memory. 

“Hey.” Lucifer gently tilts Alastor’s face down. “Don’t cry.”

“I’m not,” Alastor forces out.

Lucifer smiles faintly and runs his thumb over Alastor’s cheek, producing a glistening tear for Alastor’s inspection. 

“Oh,” Alastor says. “So I am.” 

Lucifer laughs. “C’mere.” 

He lifts Alastor effortlessly into his arms. Alastor buries his face in Lucifer’s chest and sobs. Lucifer ducks his head to nuzzle at Alastor’s hair. 

“I’ve got you,” Lucifer whispers. 

The next morning, Alastor slips out of bed before Lucifer wakes and files next year’s tax extension.