by Nazri Noor
And he wasn’t exaggerating about the whole combat thing, either. Pierce didn’t just live with us because Mother discovered that we tolerated each other well enough. Nobody ever used the word around him, but all had a silent understanding that he was the closest thing I had to a bodyguard. A kitchen knife, a finely crafted dagger, even a ballpoint pen were all murder weapons in Pierce’s hands.
Pierce shoved me, then backed off, settling into a stance with his feet spread evenly apart in the middle of the hall. He glowered at me, his arms folded, his ever-present pair of daggers tucked in little sheaths at his hips, holstered there like guns. Kind of appropriate. In Pierce’s hands, an edged weapon was basically a death sentence to all who opposed him, anyway.
“And where have you been, exactly?” he said, frowning.
I cocked an eyebrow as my heels clicked to a stop, so that we were standing barely a foot apart. I scowled right back. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, Pierce.”
He blinked, pressed his lips together, then stamped one foot, his tough demeanor shifting to that of an irritated teenager. “Dude, I’ve been so bored. And your tutor’s been hounding me all damn morning. You’ve got to stop sneaking out like that.”
I’d known Pierce my whole life, and I knew he hated being left out of things, especially fun things. I shook my head. “I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
“You know how he gets when he’s bored, Quill. He follows me around and nags me all day. He just wants someone to talk to all the time. Did I tell you how he tried to rope me into a lecture about demonic hierarchy last week?”
I sighed. “It’s Dantaleon’s whole deal, I think. Some people just want to be teachers forever.”
Pierce scoffed, folding his arms and pouting. “He had me trapped in that study for three hours,” he grumbled. “I was clawing at the walls. Can’t pick the locks when the locks are magical.”
“I’m sorry you had to sit through that,” I said, curving half my mouth into a grin, the way that I knew would annoy him. “Must have been positively awful for you.”
“Come on, man. At least warn me before you pull this shit so I can go into hiding. Or maybe I can come with you. I’m real sneaky. I’m good at stealing things.”
I lifted my nose. “First of all, I’m not a thief. I’m a collector.”
He grunted. “So you keep saying.”
“And second, I work best when I work alone.”
“Bullshit,” he growled. “Complete bullshit, and you know it.”
I was used to this sort of banter with Pierce. Again, in human terms, the guy was probably my closest friend. At his best, he was a relentless killer, a skilled fighter, and a cruel hand with a pair of daggers. At other times he was a pouty little shit when he didn’t get his way. My little brother, really, in everything but blood.
And yes, I’ll admit, it’s tough for me to judge him because I’m basically the same. Part of why we got along so well, I suppose.
Pierce was handsome, objectively speaking, but then again, I was pretty sure that was true for every incubus. Those were very common in Mother’s kingdom, as were succubi, naturally. Pierce kept his hair up and swept back from his face – to keep his field of vision clear and help him stab things, as he liked to say – and was fond of golden earrings and adornments, and not very much clothing above the waist, if I’m honest. Again, quite in fashion for an incubus his age, which was twenty-three, just one year younger than me.
The only physical trait he had that pointed to his demonic heritage was his impish smile. He had these fangs that had a habit of sticking out too much when he grinned. It meant that it was easier to bring him along to the earth plane for excursions because, like me, he wouldn’t need to wear a vessel or a husk to pass for human. I suppose it also ruled out any real reasons for me leaving him to fester at home. As for why Mother took a particular liking to this specific incubus, fostering him from such a young age and treating him like her own son – at times more favorably than even me – I’ll probably never know.
Pierce’s lip turned up even higher, to the point that I was worried it would eventually swallow up the top half of his face. I sighed, shaking my head, then relented.
“Fine. You can come along next time. We’ll make it an adventure. Just you and me, breaking and entering and maybe beating up one or two humans. Would you like that?”
He nodded briskly, perking up a little and giving me a small smile.
“But hey,” I added. “At least you didn’t have to deal with Mother looking for me.”
Pierce visibly quivered. “Dude. No. Hard pass. Give me Dantaleon any day of the week.”
“Gladly. I’m gonna go put this grimoire away, then maybe deal with Dantaleon. See you at lunch?”
Pierce kicked at the ground, still sore, but slightly appeased by the promise of companionship. “Fine,” he said, drawing out the syllable, his gaze flitting between my eyes and the floor.
I squinted at him. “Whiny baby.”
He squinted back. “Jerk.”
“You can do better than that,” I grumbled, sweeping past and leaving Pierce to sulk in the hallway.
He’d get over it. I had more important things to do. Find a proper place for my precious Testament, for example, and I guess defuse the ticking time-bomb that was Dantaleon’s temper. He had no functioning limbs, but when you’re smart and experienced enough, a voice is all you really need to cast powerful – and painful – magic. For the truly adept? No mouth required. Ah, to kill with a thought. A boy can dream.
A crimson carpet deadened my footsteps as I approached the end of a long hallway, the circular room where I kept my precious babies, arguably the most important and well-defended room in the entire estate. It was sacred to me, so much that it was essentially designed with ancient temples in mind. A pair of braziers flanked the ornate brass double doors leading into my Repository, their green fires burning cold. Hey, I’m not crazy. Those were there for atmosphere, not for paper-unfriendly heat. Magical heat was reserved for my sauna and indoor pool, two corridors down.
I settled the palm of my hand against one of the plates on the righthand door, pressing my forehead lightly against the back of it to speak the word that would grant me access. Again, I’m not crazy: I’m not saying what that is. Those books were mine. All mine. The entire room was magically warded and coded to me, and me alone.
We had one nosy servant who insisted on getting into the Repository to poke around for himself. Fortunately, his employment didn’t last very long. Neither did his life. The maids did a good job of vacuuming what was left of him off the carpet, though.
An internal mechanism of enchanted clockwork slid and clicked in response to my presence, gradually unsealing the Repository. I threw open the double doors to my study, the brass on the handles cool to the touch. I breathed in the heady scent of ancient wisdom and arcane power. Dozens upon dozens of rare, powerful tomes lined the walls, but one among them was special, and a little unwelcome.
It hovered in the center of the circular room, its pages rustling irritably as it turned in place slowly to face me.
“Young Master Quilliam,” the book said. “It’s about bloody time.”
4
“Dantaleon,” I snarled. I hated when he called me Master. He only ever did that when he was pissed at me, the way a parent uses your full name to let you know that you’re in trouble. “How in all the hells did you even get in here?”
“Oh, is that the greeting your beloved tutor and mentor gets after so painstakingly waiting for your lazy, misbegotten hide to clamber back from yet another misguided escapade? Your protections are child’s play to me, boy.”
He said all of this with a sneer, which was quite the challenge for someone who could speak with no mouth. Magic was strange like that. There are different ways to pull off a spell, and sometimes someone with a weaker grasp of the art will need a variety of accoutrements to actually make magic. Athames, altars, and sigils can all amplify the power of a s
pell, but ultimately, what the modern, mobile mage wants is an ability to reduce magic to its basest parts.
With experience, a more learned mage can do away with scrolls and staves, and eventually, even hand gestures or words of power. The deadliest wizard of all is one who can raise a tornado, call down thunder, or split the earth open with no wands or words at all – to warp and command reality with nothing but pure force of will. They could be sitting in the corner of a coffee shop, sipping on black Arabica, while they drown a man in his own blood half a world away.
My particular talent for magic still required words and gestures to work properly. Dantaleon was far more advanced, and could trigger powerful effects with simple words. The book that served as his body was only a vessel, of course. Despite the relative immortality of demons, Dantaleon’s corporeal form had grown so ancient and decrepit that the best option was to house his essence in a book of spells. His personal book of shadows, that is, one that I would have killed to acquire, except preferably in a form that didn’t come with a cantankerous old fart preinstalled in its pages.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I plug up the place to make sure the doors only respond to me – down to needing my handprint and skin contact to even unlock to begin with – and here you come traipsing in with no hands or even skin to speak of.”
Or a face, for that matter, but I could hear the triumphant smile in Dantaleon’s voice when he gloated. “Must I repeat myself? You are an infant compared to the immense store of knowledge contained within my soul. I am full of arcane wisdom and experience. You know better than anyone that you could do well to learn from me.”
Now, I think pretty damn highly of myself, but Dantaleon had me soundly beaten in that particular area. I grumbled under my breath, partly hiding my mouth behind the cover of the Testament of Spheres. “You’re full of something all right.”
“What was that?”
“I said you’re amazing, and brilliant, and smart.”
The old book that was Dantaleon’s mortal husk rotated in place, again, its pages facing me in a way that told me he was staring me down disapprovingly. The only indication that showed his expressions in any way was a series of gemstones embedded in his spine, which tended to pulse and glow in time with his speech. The louder his voice, the angrier he was, the brighter they shone.
Don’t even start with where the voice actually comes from. There was no mechanism or mouthpiece on the book itself, yet the sound of Dantaleon’s voice came directly from within. It was certainly expressive enough to evoke the entire range of his sometimes volatile emotions.
“And exactly where have you been?” he barked, the disdain smearing his voice. “I’ve been looking for you all morning, because you were late again for your lessons, and come to find out that you’ve been gallivanting out in the human world again. To what end?”
I rolled my eyes. “Would you calm down, please? You’re going to get more wrinkles, which is saying something.”
It really was. Dantaleon took the shape of a book for very specific reasons, but when he got angry like this, his papery form tended to get especially creasy. Ruffled. Hah!
“Your education is of the utmost importance, Quilliam,” he said primly.
“Dantaleon. I’m twenty-four now. What is this, a master’s degree? Most people move on by then. I don’t need more education.”
“Preposterous. Your learning need never end. I will keep teaching and instructing you until the day I die. Which is never, of course.”
I hugged the Testament of Spheres to my chest, grinning happily. “My mistake, actually. This. This is my education.”
Dantaleon zipped through the air, his pages rustling ominously as he came to a complete, threatening stop bare inches from my face. “No, Quilliam. This? This is a distraction. What good is the acquisition of power when you cannot turn within yourself to create more of it?”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose and sighed. This old lecture again. I braced myself, prepared for the worst.
“You should be like an artist. An author. A musician. Study the works of others, master it, so you may turn within yourself and create your own masterpiece, your own manuscript. Your own symphony of annihilation! Why, I remember when I crafted my very first spell. It was three hundred years ago, to this very day.”
My lips tightened into a straight line as I pretended to listen. Damn it, it was always exactly three hundred years ago, no matter what day of the year it was. I’d heard this story dozens of times before. The gist of this whole, droning lecture would inevitably end in Dantaleon telling me, once again, that I needed to stop paying so much attention to the works of others.
“It is high time you attempted to craft your own spells, Quilliam.” It was the first time all morning that Dantaleon’s voice had approached anything friendly. He was speaking softly, the way he might when he was trying to impart an important lesson. “Have you not learned enough? Have you not acquired so many of these grimoires, these toys and distractions? You are a man now, no longer a boy.”
His pages flipped slowly as he spoke, his own way of getting his point across visually. Sheets upon endless sheets of crackling parchment were lovingly inscribed with the complex illustrations and instructions that detailed a valuable arsenal of spells and enchantments, each of them researched and created by Dantaleon himself. My mouth watered at the prospect of learning even a fraction of the rare and powerful magics he kept in his private collection – no, in his own body.
I knew that I was going to piss him off, which was probably part of why I did it, but in response, I only shrugged and said a few words. “This is more fun. This is easier.”
That did it. The temperature in the room dropped several degrees, which was frightening enough for me considering what that might do to my precious collection. It only got worse when Dantaleon’s pages began turning briskly, shuffling like the world’s angriest, deadliest deck of cards.
And then his pages burst into flames.
5
Damn it. First Pierce, now Dantaleon? Things just weren’t going my way. And I hadn’t even eaten a thing all day. Granted, totally my fault that I skipped breakfast, but how else was I supposed to sneak out stealthily if I showed up for eggs benedict and some of Hornbellow’s morning latte? Mmm. Latte.
My stomach grumbled, or so I thought. It was actually the low rumble of Dantaleon’s voice, transformed in his fury, emanating from the pages of his book like dead thunder.
“Must we have this conversation each time, boy? You know better than to taunt me.”
I settled the Testament of Spheres down on a nearby table, bracing myself for Dantaleon’s attack. “I know well enough that this is how you think you test me, but all you’re really doing is showing off, Dantaleon.”
The room shook when Dantaleon roared, the air almost electric. “Fool boy,” he said. “Why do you antagonize the very ones who would show you wisdom and love? Why, even your royal mother – bless Her Infernal Majesty – must contend with your impudence and your smart mouth. You truly are not as cunning or as clever as you think you are, Quilliam.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m smarter.”
Was it foolhardy to taunt him even more when he was already pissed off? Sure, maybe. Was it fun to do so? Almost certainly.
The ink on Dantaleon’s pages shifted and bled until they formed into the vague depiction of a wrinkled, demonic face, a bizarre and horrifying projection of what his head looked like in life. It peered at me evilly out of black eyes, its mouth drawn back in a sharp, fanged sneer. “Brace yourself, child. It is not in my syllabus to harm you, and yet here we find ourselves, day after day.”
I folded my arms and raised my chin at him. “What’ll it be this time, Dantaleon? A barrage of ice? A hail of needles? Or maybe more of those exploding bats?”
Remind me to tell you about the exploding bats. It wasn’t pretty. The little bastards hurt, and they left their guts all over the place. Granted, the viscera disappeared afte
r some hours – they weren’t real animals, just Dantaleon’s conjurations – but my mouth happened to be open when the first salvo exploded. It’s hard to get the taste of raw flying rodent out of your mouth.
“Such impudence,” Dantaleon said, his tone calmer. The Repository’s temperature was going back up, too. See? I was learning. I paid attention to his lessons all the time. He was going to attack me with fire magic.
The face on Dantaleon’s pages broke into cackling laughter as it faded from the parchment. The book spun in a circle as it hovered in place, issuing a slow, creeping wall of flame as high as the ceiling. My stomach fell.
He wasn’t attacking me. He was attacking my books.
I reached out, eyes huge, the sweat on my skin instantly gone ice-cold. My arms spread apart as I unleashed the only spell that I knew would have even a snowball’s chance in hell of working.
“Arma grandia,” I screamed.
A sphere of red light manifested between my palms, then expanded outward in a flash, adhering to the bookshelves arranged in a circle along the Repository’s walls. My breathing was ragged, the sound of my heart pounding in my ears as I begged for my shielding to be sturdy enough, as I poured more of my essence into the barrier, the life leaking out of me in exhausting waves.
The flames reached the bookshelves, and my mouth went dry.
Sparks of red light flickered as the wall of fire threatened the structural integrity of the shielding spell. I held my breath, my teeth grinding to powder as I focused ever more energy, as I waited for the horrible, inevitable shattering of glass that signaled a force field’s destruction. But over the roar of fire and the peals of Dantaleon’s laughter, I heard nothing but the pounding of my own heart.
“Dantaleon,” I shouted. “Stop this. Now.”
He only laughed more as he turned in a slow, deliberate circle, spraying fire across the room from within his pages, laying down an even spread of horrific demonfire. I could feel the shielding splinter, sense the spiderweb cracks in its surface as it gave under the weight of Dantaleon’s terrible power.