...That was not hell.

Raven trusted she knew that much. A red childhood in these pits left a vivid image in Raven's mind; they were a long way from Kansas...if by Kansas you meant the steaming heap of sin known as Trigon's realm.

Cold, unrelenting metal met her neck. Raven's feet were planted. A passing car sent her hair sprawling over her eyes.

"Where are we?" Damian asked.

Raven had thought him attractive, drawn him in to her arms, and perhaps she'd allowed herself to forget how dangerous he was. The blade could have sliced through her neck before she'd even blinked under the street lamps. He was a killer. Sophisticated, thorough. Klarion had told her the stories. The massacres. He was exhilarating, she knew, but the callousness that sometimes flattened his eyes, it was frightening.

Raven looked up in to the twilight of a blue moon and and assortment of planets brazenly suspended overhead, like a magnified marble collection. She looked down the stretch of asphalt that she could decipher neither beginning nor end of. Lining the motorway were shops, their signs swirling a multitude of languages- the angelic tongue too- as they swayed in some barely tangible wave. This dark sky bore no clouds, only speckles of silver setting the background for the bowling-ball celestial bodies.

Damian had asked a rather good question that she didn't have an answer for.

It was paradoxical. You couldn't open a portal to an unknown place. There were laws of magic- the supernatural equivalents to the laws of physics.

"I swear-"

"What is your word worth?" Damian bit back, sword not shifting an inch.

She glanced at him in the corner of her eyes. He'd slit her throat before she could pronounce any formal spell. A repulsive burst of magic would only send the sword slashing through her. What then? Hypnosis? Emotional manipulation?

She looked in to his eyes and knew that it wouldn't work. Raven didn't imagine that sex and some casual flirting had created enough of an attachment between them- if any at all- to stop him from painting the pavement with her blood; only a human vegetable wouldn't feel some mental probing.

"Listen, I don't know where we are, or how we're here. But killing me will only leave you stranded here- wherever 'here' is."

Unwinding his tense jaw, Damian resheathed the katana. He was reassured in her bodily responses: dilated pupils, increased heart rate- he had made her afraid. Damian wouldn't have to worry about being defenceless against this demon. The moon that hovered far overhead was bright. The rest of the sky was blacker than the Earth's view of the heavens- none of the cloudy navy. He wondered what kind of creatures this sky watched over.

A beep beep gave him the answer needed.

A car, lean and hellishly fast (as in, flames billowing from behind it) slammed to a stop in front of them, real casual like. The tinted window rolled down to reveal a read interior and-

"Well hello there, I thought I felt a chill sweep the realm."

"Uncle Lucifer!"

Raven breathed a sigh of relief.

Lucifer the Morningstar, cool as a cucumber and perfectly debonaire, let his sunglasses droop a centimetre lower to survey the man with his own, two, red eyes. The Devil smirked.

"Hop in kids." The door nearest to them popped open.

The red leather awaited them.

Damian glanced at his companion; she raised an eyebrow and tilted her head towards the car. He climbed in before her, laying his sword on his lap. Raven closed the door with a soft thud.

Lucifer began to drive.

Raven waited until the quiet had settled before asking, "Uncle Lucifer, if I may, what's going on?"

The dark-haired demon looked at her in his mirror, "You're not going to introduce me to the new plaything?"

Damian's grip tightened around the sword hilt, but he felt no inclination to unsheathed it.

"Play...thing?" He narrowed his eyes at the mirror- the little reflected sliver of Lucifer in the front seat.

"Oh don't you worry little demon," Lucifer chuckled back, "I know your blood well enough, Al Ghul- savoures enough of your grandfather's...Now there was a man unafraid of the dark side... what a pity your old man snatched his afterlife away," He glanced at Raven, "I would so have liked to rekindle our relationship."

Damian was unsurprised. The Demon's Head had bathed in the blood of innocents and demons alike, passing in to the world's of the supernatural with pen and paper in hand, his soul on the auctioning podium.

"No, I was merely referring to the stench of sex hanging about you too." Lucifer drawled. "It's not like an Al Ghul to waste time though, is it?" His eyes glimmered behind the shades.

The world outside the car was a blur. Damian felt as though he were sitting on the world's most comfortable cushion rather than the Devil's red leather seats. The fabric beckoned him to a slumber- it was all Damian could do not to drift off. Leaning against the door opposite, Raven had already curled up. She was comfortable with Lucifer- he'd been there for her, in his own way, for many a year. In Lucifer's worlds, Raven was safe. And if Lucifer was in this place, then it was most definitely a wicked one. That brought her comfort: she could always deal with the wicked; it was the "good" that always seemed to reject her.

The old demon continued on the same line. Raven knew it well. She closed her eyes.

"Go on, tell me what you desire, little demon." He probed. "Oh I know all your wants. The indulgences. The trapped little secrets. But I want to hear them from your lips." Lucifer had done this for millennia. Since the first fruit and the great fall.

"TT. Buy me a tea and I might tell you." Damian said.

Raven batted her eyes open lazily to smirk. That was a good response. She knew Lucifer would like him.

"I think I'll leave that to your charming girlfriend."

The car relapsed in to silence, comfortable silence, for a period that Damian couldn't put a figure to. Staring out at the mess of passing blue, Damian sighed at the dribbling of rain that began to trickle down the windows. Raven cleared her throat. He looked to the side. He hadn't realised the soothing sound of her light breathing had warmed the atmosphere until it stopped.

She was beautiful when she slept- even a light nap like this.

He wondered where they were going. Staring at the katana in his lap, Damian thought of home. He thought of his father and siblings... then he thought of his mother. Damian hadn't thought of Talia in a while.

"Now now, what this moping for?" Lucifer asked.

Damian closed his eyes and leant in to his seatbelt. He felt young sometimes. So young. Like he was still ten. Still vulnerable, impressionable. Hell, maybe he was! Damian had followed a beautiful demon to magical lands and in to Lucifer's backseat.

"Where are we going Lucifer?" The man opened his eyes.

The devil gestured with a hand that ought to have been on his steering wheel, "This is a new measure put in place by the Magic Counsel. Too many cross-overs from hostile realms and you get this sort of thing put in place. A pocket realm spliced between realms. A great road, if you like, between the worlds. Makes it a pain to cross- unless, of course, you happen to have a car like this beauty."

"Why are you here?"

The devil removed his glasses from existence. He left the steering wheel; the car continued at a hundred miles an hour. Turning around, Lucifer met the young ones with a keen eye. Staring back at him was a dark creature of hell, blinking sweetly and drowsily, and a man nursing a katana and the urge to take Raven's example. Not an hour prior, he knew, they had left a fledgling assassin's guild with ambitions of slicing some particularly troubling parchments in half.

He looked at them, and they were so small. Little demons. Twenty years, give or take, on the Earth. It was the blink of Lucifer's eye.

"You must really be trying to impress this boy, my dear." He raised an eyebrow. "A sudden inkling in your father has put rather a spanner in your works. Trigon's holding a conference of sorts today- the worst of our kind, slinking out of the shadows to hear what that old goat has to say. Suicide frankly."

Raven was wide awake.

She shot a guilty, round-eyed look at Damian. His skin crawled with thoughts of the alternate universes where Lucifer hadn't been there. All the bloodthirstiest demons of the hells, convened in the place they would have travelled to. He was fortunate to still have a heart in his chest and skin over his bones.

The empath was sick to her stomach. She could have killed Damian- killed them both- with her egoism. Think of Damian...the keen, gorgeous, bronze-skinned angel (with enough blood to his name to turn the Euphrates red)...torn apart by her own head-fastness .

"Oh Azar- Lucifer..." she trailed off, helplessly, throwing her hands up. "Fuck! I should've sensed something-"

Damian folded his arms as Lucifer twisted back and placed his hands on the steering wheel. The shades were back, blanketing his eyes in darkness, from nowhere.

"What's in it for you?" Damian was sharp. There was a comfortable affection between Raven and Lucifer, he knew, but the devil remained...well...The Devil. Fallen. God-cursed. In his eyes glinting red, Damian had seen more darkness than had ever crossed his grandfather's.

Raven crossed her arms the same, "Good question. What are you offering?"

The car ground to a halt. Damian's katana jolted from his lap and Raven flung a string of magic out to catch it before Damian's fingers. The man, dishevelled by the sudden stop, narrowed his eyes at the foggy windows. Parked neatly, Lucifer's car sat in front of a bubblegum pink establishment. On the sign outside, two colourful milkshakes crossed and underwrit were three lines- the upper, in rather circular and simple characters that Raven later identified as old Pixish; the lower, giving the West Elvish meaning; the lowest, an English translation-

MIMI'S MILKSHAKES

"TT. Cute."

Damian's tone was repulsed and it made Raven smile in spite of herself.

"Right. You two hang out here. Have a little something to eat on me." Lucifer, between his pointer and middle finger, handed them a roll of crisp notes over his shoulder. Raven took it apprehensively.

The demon took off his glasses and folded them, placing them in a black velvet-lined case, and then placing that in the black, velvet-lined interior of his jacket pocket.

"I know which contracts you're after. And I will bring them to you. In exchange for a little favour." His eyes smiled in the front mirror.

And POP!

The two were on the pavement, words unspoken still hanging in expectant throats.

Damian looked up at the shop. Mimi's Milkshakes.

They had better be good.

A.N:

Hiya my darlings, I'm so terribly sorry that I skipped putting a chapter out last week. I've been under a bit of pressure from school work and also had a nasty little sickness last week (which wasn't fun). But thankfully I'm going much better and to compensate, I've made this chapter extra long!!

So I hope you've enjoyed!

-Bats