Prologue
Sometime around 900 A.D.
“Thy be banished from these holy grounds henceforth, foul fiend! The serpent hath no place in the House of God!”
An entire bucket of Holy Water hit Quirion square in the chest. Which he didn’t mind in itself, because the only remotely godly thing about that water was the rather unholy amount of bacteria living in it. Bacteria that could kill a human—which was probably the reason people thought Holy Water was effective against evil beings like vampires and witches, when in reality it simply weeded out the weak—but were no match for a demon’s system and definitely showed Mother Nature’s ingenuity impressively. What he did mind were the droplets splashing all over the pages of the book he was in the process of correcting, smearing the ink and rendering his hard work naught.
“And I was almost done,” he groaned. Looking around for something to absorb the liquid from the pages in the hope of saving his work, Quirion reached for a promising-looking dry cloth.
Another bucket of water hit him.
“I said be gone, foul fiend!” The monk, a rather unpleasant man with the name Edwy, who claimed to be the abbot of this monastery somewhere on an island on Earth—Quirion never bothered learning countries’ names, they changed too quickly—was starting to sound hysterical. Next would come the frothing around the mouth, from which it always went downhill andfast. If his father hadn’t been so adamant about humans not being harmed by demons—even indirectly through a coronary, not that people already knew about coronaries, oh no! Dark Age, how aptly named indeed—he would have simply waited till the annoying idiot was shut up by his own body. As it was, Quirion sighed deeply.
“For the last time, I’m not a foul fiend, the devil as a concept does not exist and you should be grateful. I’m doing you a huge favor here. You wouldn’t want books with so many mistakes out in the world.”
Edwy blinked. He looked like the giant toad that lived in Quirion’s moat, guarding his library against unwanted guests. Not that anybody ever found their way to his little haven, but if they did, his toad was there. Technically it wasn’t his toad either. She had been there when he first encountered the small universe consisting of one huge ocean battering endlessly against a rock island atop which Quirion had built his library. The constant dampness wasn’t ideal for preserving paper books or scrolls made of animal skins, but a few well-placed spells had taken care of that problem. The toad hadn’t minded, as far as Quirion could tell, and just kept on sitting there. Once he had completed the moat, she had moved in. If there were others of her kind, Quirion had yet to meet them, and he wasn’t in a hurry to do so. He was rather fond of their living arrangement. He had someone to come home to who never uttered a word or disrupted his days and she kept to the moat. A perfect situation as far as he was concerned.
“… foul fiend, serpent!”
Aaandhe had gotten distracted again. Edwy, the Abott of the Toad Eyes, was indeed frothing now, which put the books in his library at an even greater risk. Human saliva didnotgo well with sensitive parchment. Not to mention what would happen if the man did die and spilled all kinds of other nasty fluids.Quirion decided that enough was enough. He was trying to do good, helping fellow scholars—well, not scholars in the strict sense of the word, not compared to him, more like novices, no, lowly peasants who dreamed of becoming novices, yes, that was accurate—to make their writings as flawless as possible even though said writings had even more flaws in their logic than in the actual spelling. Peasants, dreaming of being novices. And all he got was anger.
Wouldn’t a bit of gratitude be so difficult to show? No, most certainly not, yet he was called a serpent, even though he had his scales hidden at the moment, which couldn’t be compared to those of reptilians anyway. They were made of completely different material to begin with, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to fuse with magic.
Anyway, Quirion had had enough. He stretched to his full height of over seven feet, let his wings and scales show and started grabbing books, throwing them into several large sacks that were lying around quite handily while Edwy was now on his knees reciting prayers in Latin instead of defending the books. This monastery clearly didn’t deserve to keep them. They would be much better off in Quirion’s library, where he could correct them in peace. It was all so tiresome. Quirion shook his head. He simply couldn’t understand why people didn’t appreciate his efforts.
* * * *
The recent past
The sound of a thunderclap alerted Quirion that one of his family members had entered the library. Assigning the different wards protecting his sanctuary different tones was a stroke of genius, even though he had to give humans credit for it. Cell phones might be inferior pieces of crap, but individual ringtones—thathe could appreciate. The door to his study was shoved open with enough force it bounced back from the wall.
“Dre, how nice of you to drop by. I hope you left the menace at home.”
“A good day to you, too, brother. Sammy is fine. Thanks for asking.” Dre was, as always, either immune or oblivious to Quirion’s sarcasm. “He says ‘hi’, by the way.”
“I can imagine,” Quirion grumbled. “He can say that all he wants, as long as he stays away from my books. The heathen.”
It took him some effort to contain the fondness in his tone and to suppress the smile tugging at his lips. No need to encourage Dre in the worship of his mate.
“You love him, and we all know it.”
Apparently, that was futile anyway. Quirion sighed from the very depths of his soul. “Why are you here?”
“If I said it was to see how you’re doing, would you believe me?” Dre grinned, showing his fangs.
“We both know the answer to that. Don’t insult my intelligence by pretending otherwise and don’t waste my precious time with your games.”
“Geez, you’re a real ray of sunshine.” Dre threw himself on the chaise at the left wall of Quirion’s study, stretching his long legs. “I need your help.”
“I assumed as much.”
Dre mumbled something along the lines of ‘arrogant asshole’ but not loud enough for Quirion to clearly understand, which told him that whatever his brother wanted from him was more important than his nagging.Interesting.
“Are you going to tell me or am I supposed to guess?”
“Ass.” This time Dre didn’t hold back. “Anyway, what do you think about taking on an assistant for your library? I’m sure you could use the help.”
Quirion understood the words his moronic brother had just uttered, he just couldn’t make sense of them. No matter in which succession he brought them, they remained ridiculous. One look at Dre’s hopeful expression told him his brother wanted to hear an affirmative. “No.”
