Demon Prints (Infernal Inheritance Book 1)

by Nazri Noor

  “Um. Are you okay, Quill?”

  I pushed myself off the ground, my head spinning when I realized I’d gotten up too fast. “Of course I’m not ‘okay,’ Pierce. How could you possibly think that?”

  He backed away, raising his hands. “Okay. Geez. It was just a question.” I noticed that his arms were covered in scratches. Then that meant only one thing.

  “You’re joking,” I groaned, rubbing my face. “Mother kicked you out? And Mr. Wrinkles, too?”

  The Sphynx cat “mrrowed” miserably at the sound of his name, padding up to me, but not quite close enough to greet me with a head bump or by rubbing himself up against my leg. Instead he started mewling in my face, as if complaining about our shared predicament in his cat language.

  “Not just us, actually,” Pierce said. “And you’d think I’d get at least a ‘Thank you’ for personally carrying that devil cat of yours in my bare arms, but – ”

  The end of his sentence was cut off by the loud buzzing, followed by the loud screaming of a helleportation rift tearing open in the air just behind him. A glimmer of hope sparked in my chest. Had Mother changed her mind? Impossible. Surely not so soon.

  I was right. Half a dozen leather trunks and suitcases went tumbling out of the screaming portal, followed by a single, wrinkly old book, which dropped into the grass with a heavy thump. Before any of us could react, the portal slammed shut again, taking its horrendous screeching with it.

  Shakily, I staggered towards the suitcases, recognizing the Q embossed onto each of their surfaces – custom made for me, and packed with all of my shit, whatever the servants could fit into them. Full of books from the Repository, presumably, but I had time to check on that later. I had hoped that the book on the ground itself was something from my collection, perhaps a well worn favorite, but it shuddered and flapped to life, making spitting noises at little clods of earth erupted from within its pages.

  “Dantaleon?” I went down on my haunches, my chest twisting with cold realization. “Mother threw you out, too?”

  This was serious. She was not fucking around.

  “Confound it all,” the book roared. Dantaleon hovered up off the ground in a drunken zigzag, like he was just getting his bearings back. “And blast you, Master Quilliam, for failing at something so bloody fundamental. Look where it’s gotten us!”

  I fell on my butt as the truth of it all came crashing heavily down on me, my problems condensed into a huge, proverbial boulder. “Then it’s true. She really did banish me.”

  Dantaleon wailed. “For centuries I served as your mother’s advisor, her vizier, her lieutenant. And here I am now, reduced to a tattered castaway, left to wait for a horrible water-logged fate in the rain in some blasted field meant for peasants.” He spun in a desperate circle, observing our surroundings for the first time with his unseen eyes. “You’ve ruined us, Quilliam. You’ve ruined me.”

  “Stop calling attention to yourself, you fool,” I shouted at him, a rare and certainly risky case of me actually chastising Dantaleon. He never did take any lip from me, and as a teacher, he had very interesting and painful ways of demonstrating his displeasure. Corporal punishment had never been so agonizing. But what did I stand to lose? “Stop yowling. Stop flapping about, for that matter. Someone might hear you. Someone might see you.”

  Dantaleon’s form began to shudder as plumes of smoke issued from between his covers. Cartoonish, perhaps, but I’d seen this happen in his anger. You know that saying? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire? This put a spin on the proverb, and in potentially very dangerous ways, too. Pierce and I would have been wise to duck for cover. I bent down, scooping Mr. Wrinkles up in my arms, just in case. His warm, velvety coat was comforting – the very definition of a support animal – but he hissed and spat at me, jumping out of my clutches. So. Even my own cat couldn’t stomach being kicked out of Lust’s prime hell.

  “There is no one for miles around,” Dantaleon said. “Do you know how I know, Master Quilliam? Because I cast a detection spell the very moment I arrived. We are trapped out here, lost in the midst of nothing. With no currency, no wealth with which to pay our way.” His pages fluttered as he made an awful moaning. He’d never sounded more like an old man. I almost felt sorry. “No study for poor Dantaleon to call home. No bookcase for him to rest his weary spine.”

  Pierce scoffed. “You guys are being way too dramatic. It’s not over for us. Not by a long shot.” He puffed his chest out, the big damn hero – then he reached into his pants.

  “I have no qualms about sex work, Pierce,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice even. “But surely there are other options for us to consider before you turn to publicly playing with your – ”

  He pulled out a gleaming candelabra. Out of his pants. The kind that could hold three candles, even. “Weren’t expecting that, were you?”

  Even Dantaleon stopped blubbering for a second. I was genuinely surprised, and genuinely impressed. “So you’re suggesting we pawn it? I mean, it’s a start. How the hell did that even fit in your pants?”

  He shrugged. “How the hell does anything fit in my pants?” He tugged on his waistband, looking down at himself theatrically. “I mean, there’s plenty of room for my enormous balls.”

  I pushed my face into my hands. “Neither the time nor the place.”

  Pierce yelped as the candelabra burst into flames. He had just enough time to hurl the entire burning thing into the river. It hissed and steamed angrily as it hit the water. Pierce and I rushed over to the river, and I could sense Dantaleon following us from behind. I held my hair away from my face as I searched the water. There was nothing there but a twisted black lump of dubious origin.

  “Don’t touch it,” I said as Pierce reached into the water. He pulled it out, grimacing. The burnt candelabra had the size, shape, and appearance of a dildo that had seen far better days.

  “Oh, dang,” Pierce said, his eyes huge as he stared at the thing in his hand. “That could have exploded right in my – oh, dang.”

  “Well, what were you expecting?” Dantaleon said, sniffing. “Prince Asmodeus has protective wards installed on all of her possessions. All of them, even the ones decorating Quilliam’s apartments. No servant has ever stolen from Her Highness and lived to tell the tale. Surely you know that, Pierce.”

  Pierce rolled his eyes as he tossed the ruined candelabra over his shoulder. It landed in the river with a pathetic splash. He threw his hands up. “Well then, I guess we’re fucked.” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Unless – Quill, would you be willing to sell any of your precious books?”

  I glowered at him. And weaken my gift of Inscription? Hah. “Over my dead body,” I growled.

  “Of course,” he said, harrumphing.

  We trudged back to my pile of suitcases, where Mr. Wrinkles was rubbing himself against the closest trunk.

  “Wait,” I said. “If these are my things – Pierce, where’s all your stuff?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t really own much. And don’t really wear much, either. Makes it easier in the long run, you know? Especially if I ever needed to, aha, go on the run.” He unsheathed both of his daggers, twirling them between his fingers like a pair of six-shooters. “My babies are all I need.”

  “So no savings, either,” I grumbled.

  He blinked at me. “Why would I need savings? We had all our needs met at home. Duh.”

  “But you just said that you wanted to be ready to go on the run.” I could have pulled all my hair out. “What kind of idiot watches as many heist and action movies as you do and – ”

  “Children,” Dantaleon bellowed. “Enough. We won’t get anywhere with all this arguing. The priority is to find shelter.” He shuddered about as well as a book could shudder. “Preferably not in that abandoned property right over there.”

  I glanced over at the decrepit building I’d noticed earlier, grimacing. For once, Dantaleon and I agreed on something. But speaking of savings and property, that reminded me. I pushed a
damp handful of hair out of my face, beads of river water dripping down my forehead as a forgotten corner of my mind pulsed with remembrance.

  “Wait,” I said, smiling for the first time in what had felt like hours. “We can go somewhere. I know a place.”

  14

  By some unholy miracle, I managed to get Dantaleon to stop wailing long enough to squeeze a teleportation spell out of him. Instinct – and fine, a map application on my phone – told me that we were somewhere in California, fortunately not too far from the outskirts of a city named Valero, a place that was familiar to me. I pointed in that direction, then told Dantaleon to send us there.

  “Where, precisely?” he rasped.

  “Just – there,” I said, waving my hand vaguely towards the horizon. “Somewhere in the city.”

  Pierce nudged me in the ribs and whispered. “You know him, dude. He’s going to teleport us right into traffic.”

  “Unlikely,” I muttered back. “He’s alone and defenseless out here, just like us. He needs us.”

  Whether or not Dantaleon heard us didn’t matter. We all knew I was right. A faint light emanated from his pages, bathing Pierce and me in an aura of magic, disassembling us piece by piece as it sent us to our destination. As our bodies faded, I told Dantaleon one last thing.

  “Take care of Mr. Wrinkles for us, won’t you?”

  Pale fire burst from his pages, accompanied by angered tendrils of smoke. “Well, how in blazes am I supposed to take care of that hairless, verminous – ”

  And just like that, Dantaleon’s voice was gone, replaced by the honk-honk of urban traffic and the low, nonspecific murmur of city life. I groped at myself, checking that I still had all of my parts and pieces. Pierce was doing the same, tugging on his waistband and peering into his pants. I glowered and yanked him by the wrist.

  “Come on,” I growled, leading him out of the garbage-filled alley that Dantaleon had designated as our endpoint. Hey, it was better than appearing in the middle of rush hour traffic.

  Far more relaxed, too. Conventional teleportation, that is, if cast by a sorcerer as competent as Dantaleon, meant that you could blink and instantly find yourself transported from a strip mall in Vegas to the sunny shores of Mykonos. Proper teleportation didn’t involve all the muss and fuss of helleportation, which always involved the screaming, swirling vortex of the chaotic Hexus. Much worse than Tom Bradley International, take my word for it.

  As for why we’d teleported all the way? This was my plan. You’ll realize that I take great pride in my intellect, and part of that is knowing that I couldn’t depend on Mother and her riches forever. I also knew that I couldn’t simply maintain the apartments in her dimension as my only stronghold. In case of emergency, I’d decided long ago, I would also need a base of operations on earth. A proper villain, as I was raised to become, needed multiple hideouts, after all. Or maybe that was just something I picked up from spy movies.

  Without telling a single soul – not even Pierce, and not even Mr. Wrinkles, for that matter – I’d invested in a simple house of my own, somewhere within a quaint, if expensive residential district in Valero. Five bedrooms, a four-car garage, self-heating swimming pool – you know, simple. It made for a cozy nook, too, far enough away from city traffic to be restful and peaceful, but close enough to all of its conveniences and amenities that I wouldn’t have to drive too far with one of the several luxury cars I kept in my collection.

  So that’s where I was taking Pierce. I’d stopped pulling him by the wrist a few blocks back, because he could very well walk on his own and was very much capable of snapping my arm if he got too sick of being tugged along like a dog on a leash.

  “That’s honestly super smart,” he said, beaming at me with excitement. “I can’t believe you kept it a secret from me for so long.”

  “You’ll be thrilled,” I said. “You’ve got your own room and everything. But mine’s bigger, of course.”

  He shoved me in the shoulder, laughing. “Doesn’t matter, we all know that I’m biggest where it counts.” Idiot. But I laughed back, the fear and anxiety of being turned out onto the street finally exiting my body through the soles of my feet.

  I wasn’t sure why I’d panicked so much when I first arrived in that blasted field by the abandoned building. Quilliam J. Abernathy is no fool. Over time, I’d made investments and transferred what I’d saved of Mother’s wealth into earth money and trappings. It seemed the sensible thing to do. Pierce and I turned the corner into the subdivision, my chest stuck out with pride, a smirk on my face as I quietly congratulated myself on being so crafty, being so smart.

  There was just one problem. Mother was smarter.

  The house I’d purchased was on the far end of Calvert Lane, in the quiet confines of a development called Pleasant Pines. But even from the opposite end of the street, it was easy to see the huge plumes of smoke rising from what was undoubtedly my earth home, the one with shingles only slightly redder than the rest of the houses because that blasted homeowner’s association was so bloody afraid of individuality.

  My knees nearly buckled underneath me, my heart sinking as I watched plans B, C, and D go up in smoke. Half of Pleasant Pines was already on the street, watching my house roast in fires that were in no way of natural origin.

  “Is that really the house?” Pierce muttered, holding me up by my elbows. “No way. She knew. She always knew.”

  The two of us staggered to the end of Calvert, though I wasn’t sure why. There wasn’t anything we could’ve done to stop the destruction, and half of the house had been irredeemably charred to ashes, anyway. The faces of our would-be neighbors alternated blue and red in the light of emergency sirens, and I heard firefighters yell at each other, bemoaning how the flames simply wouldn’t die down. I knew why: because they were fueled by Mother’s infinite fury.

  I watched as the cinders fell like burning snow, as I once again accepted that we were all well and truly fucked. Asmodeus’s influence was far-reaching, and she’d made her point patently clear.

  “We shouldn’t stick around for this,” Pierce said. “I can tell it’s hurting you.”

  I scowled at him, doing my best to show a stiff upper lip, but Pierce knew me too well. I grudgingly nodded in agreement, following him behind a hedge. He unsheathed one of his daggers, slashing it in a vertical motion, drawing a line taller than a man in the air. He scratched the back of his head when nothing happened.

  “That can’t be right,” he said, grunting as he made a second slash. Still nothing.

  “But that’s impossible,” I said. This was how helleportation worked. You cut a slit in reality, access the Hexus, then ride the currents of chaos wherever you need to go. “Let me try.”

  I bathed my right hand in arcane energy, then mimicked Pierce’s actions, raising it up to my fullest height, then bringing it down in a quick, decisive chop. The tear that was meant to open – well, it simply didn’t. Horror bubbled up in my throat as I understood what had happened.

  “She’s banned us from the Hexus,” I mumbled.

  Pierce’s dagger shook in his hand. “You’re kidding. Fuck. Then we can’t go anywhere. And wait. That means that – ”

  Yes, exactly. We had to trudge all the way back to wherever the hell we’d left Dantaleon and Mr. Wrinkles, which, according to the map on my phone, involved at least three miles of walking.

  Let me make this clear. I am the son of a demon prince. Walking more than half a mile in any given direction was simply inconceivable, but in case this hasn’t yet been properly established, Mother was very, very pissed. At least I still had my phone in one piece, for as long as the battery held out. In truth, I was surprised that it hadn’t already burst into flames, too.

  This was a test. It had to be. And Dantaleon, as much as he wanted to keep up the dramatics, hadn’t been kicked out of Lust’s hell. As petty as Asmodeus could be, she wouldn’t have thrown out such a powerful and important member of her inner council for something I’d done. Maybe P
ierce hadn’t figured it out yet, but it was very clear to me. Dantaleon had been sent to spy on us.

  When Pierce and I arrived at our destination, stinking of sweat and with our legs turned to jelly, the first thing we did was to use our final reserves of energy to dash straight for the river and drink our fill. Three miles, on foot, with no hydration? Asmodeus’s cruelty knew no bounds.

  “And what did you find?” Dantaleon said, fluttering out of the darkness to question us. Somewhere in the grass I heard Mr. Wrinkles make a mournful mewl.

  I shook my head grimly. “The holdings I acquired out here, what I thought could be our temporary home? Mother knew about it. She burned it all to the ground.”

  Dantaleon fell in a slow, despondent spiral, flopping pathetically onto the ground. “Then we are doomed.”

  “Couldn’t you teleport us to the Palace of Veils?” Pierce asked hopefully. “Just somewhere Asmodeus won’t see us, long enough so we can grab some valuables and run.”

  Dantaleon groaned from somewhere in the tall grass. “Without access to my study, my abilities are severely weakened. But even if I could? Well. If you are comfortable with the thought of bursting into flames the very moment we enter the palace, then by all means, Pierce, allow me to teleport you to your doom.”

  Pierce’s legs collapsed underneath him, and he joined both book and cat on the ground, stretching his legs out and groaning. “So basically, we’re doomed, no matter what we do.”

  “There,” I said, pointing at the abandoned building. “We’ll take shelter there for the night. We can take stock of things in the morning.”

  I hadn’t been raised to just keel over and give up, after all. If Mother wished to disown me, well and good. Demon I may be, but I couldn’t just give up on minding the well being of my friends. Well – of my friends, and Dantaleon.

  Pierce flicked his wrist at the pile of my luggage still waiting in the darkness. “What about your stuff? We should probably haul it all in.”