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Infernal


Officer#340

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Greetings all. I wasn't going to post this, mostly because I'm just trying to get the book done rather than worrying over what people think about it. But I decided I'm going to share it anyway and see what people might think. I always appreciate critique, that's how you improve after all. However, I am more than likely not going to implement any changes until I've written quite a bit of the novel. My goal is to finish it and then make any changes required. 

 

 

 

INFERNAL ORIGINS

A Jackson Grey Novel


 

Chapter One

 

I didn’t like being tied to a chair. It brought up bad memories for me. I sighed inwardly, this was supposed to be an easy job, get in and get the item for the client, and get out. Quick and easy, that’s what this was supposed to have been. Someone had once said that most plans don’t work out exactly the way they were intended to, and I was beginning to find that statement to be very true indeed. I had driven from my office in downtown Meridian to the upper residential area. I had parked and observed this house, waiting for the owner to leave. Once he did, I had broken in using my magic to force the lock.  Sadly, that’s where the plan had fallen apart. The house had wards, runes etched into its walls that activated upon my intrusion into their masters home. The jolt of magic that was sent coursing through my body had knocked me out, hence my current predicament. The client had been human, he hadn’t made this seem like a supernatural issue. “He stole an item from me. A ceremonial dagger. Chinese in its origins. I want it back, get it for me and I’ll pay you well. Use any means you have available to you, just don’t kill him. I’m no murderer, even if he did steal from me.”

 

 Quick and easy I had told myself. Your rent is due soon, I had told myself. No need to do the normal legwork you usually do, just get in and out, I had told myself. Myself was an idiot of the highest caliber. I strained against my bonds, to no avail unfortunately. The rope was threaded with silver. Silver was bad for us supernatural types. Looking around the room, I tried to see if there was anything of use. There were some cabinets and a couple of shelves attached to the white walls, and I noticed that off to the side of the room there was a table that appeared to be inlaid with several types of glyphs. I could feel the magic pulsing from it, but what really interested me was the knife that laid on top of it. It looked nice and sharp, perhaps sharp enough to cut through my bonds.  I prepared to call forth my air magic, when the door to the room opened. A young man stepped into the room. His hair was brown and wavy, his features average, though he wore black rimmed glasses. He wore an expensive looking tan suit, which fit his lean frame well. He smiled at me, and it wasn’t the nice kind of smile. It was a predatory smile, one that implied that there was some unpleasantness in the future.

 

 “Hello there, little thief,” He said to me, his voice honey smooth. I smiled back at him, “Hey there bud. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m currently tied down here. Would you mind maybe letting me go and grabbing me some water? Thanks.” The young man punched me in the face, hard. It snapped my head to the side, my long wavy black hair became tangled in front of my eyes. I shook my head and blew the hair out of my face. Anger filled me, hot rage sparking within me. Sue me, but I didn’t like being hit in the storming face. I spit to the side and glared up at the young man, “For that, I’m going to storming eat you.” I snarled the words at him. That seemed to give him pause. He looked at me with a raised eyebrow, “What are you some kind of thieving canabal?” I didn’t respond to him, instead I reached within myself, where there resided three sources of power, I gathered up the power, leashing my will and casting it forth, thinking about what I wanted it to do, It was vastly weakened due to the silver, but I was strong and it was enough. Snow white glyphs appeared on my arms, wrapping themselves from my wrist upward, I used the magic to wrap the knife on the table in tendrils of soft air, and then I yanked on it. The knife flew from the table at a deadly speed and buried itself into the back of the young man. He cried out and I kept tugging on the knife with my air magic, causing it to bury itself deeper into the man’s back, deeper and deeper the knife went, and as I used the magic to literally yank the knife through the man's body, he screamed. Oh man did he storming scream. The knife finally cut through the mans chest, and he dropped to the floor, very dead. The knife floated in the air, wrapped up in the tendrils of magic I had used on it originally. Pulling on the tendrils, I floated the knife toward me, and finally behind me and into the waiting grip of my right hand.

 

 It took me a bit, but I managed to position the knife into a cutting position about the silver threaded rope that tied my hands together. I reached again within myself and gathered up called upon the demonic magic within me and sent it coursing through the knife. A thread of red lightning coated the blade like a thin edge, and I used it to cut through the rope and the accursed silver that were its threads. Once free, I allowed the knife to fall the floor before standing up and shaking my hands out in front of me, trying to restore circulation. I felt the magic within me surge to its normal strength and as I did, Lilith appeared before me.  Have you ever seen Jessica Rabbit? LIlith looked a bit like that, except her eyes were a luminescent green with cats pupils instead of human ones. Her skin was a pale ivory white and her presence felt absolute. The demon was apart of me, her very essence was tied to my soul, the energy that made me who I was. She had a satisfied smirk on her face as she looked down at the dead man.

 

“Your penchant for murder grows, my host.” I shrugged at her words. “He hit me, and tied me up. I don’t like being tied up.” I said the last words with a huge helping of anger. Lilith’s eyes softened as she said, “I know Jackson.”  I shook my head, ready to move past the issue. It took me a while, but eventually I found the dagger. It was in a locked safe in one of the upstairs rooms. Once I had found it, I made my way out of the house, or at least I tried too. In the living room, I found guests waiting for me. Four of them to be exact, and they looked none too happy to see me.  “Well, hello folks,” I said to them.

 

 They didn’t say hello back, and I have to say, that hurt my feelings a little bit. Lilith appeared before me, there was no flash or anything special to announce her presence, one moment she was simply there. “What will you do now, my host?” She grinned at me and vanished. Lilith loved violence, reveled in it actually.  One of the four men stepped forward. He addressed me in a gruff, deep voice. His voice reminded me of gravel. “You are Jackson Grey.” He made it a statement, but I answered him anyway. “Why, do I owe you money?” The man nodded at this and waved a hand toward me, “Take him.” The men, including gravelly voice man, rushed me. I dodged one as he swung a punch toward my head, but even with my supernatural reflexes, I was unable to dodge the punch that one of the men aimed at my side. It storming hurt, let me tell you. Normally, I would be unconcerned with a mere human punch, but this wasn’t that. The punch launched me sideways and into a wall. I crashed into it, banging my head and falling to the ground. Ooh boy, so these fellas weren’t merely human. That punch had some kind of magic behind it, I could feel the waves of it pulsing off of them now.

 

Magic was kind of like a living thing, it wanted to be used and when it was, if you knew how, you could feel it. Think back for a moment on a time where you felt truly happy, think about all of those warm feelings you had at the time. That was what magic felt like. It just made you happy to use it. Which was dangerous if you weren’t careful. These men loved it, I could see it in their eyes, they loved using it and as a result, they were loving what they were doing to me.  I got up from the ground, groaning. Luckily I healed pretty fast, or I probably wouldn’t be getting up right now. “damnation guy, that hurt. I suppose it’s my turn now.” I gathered forth the elemental power inside me and I formed tendrils of air, shaping it into a sphere like vortex that hovered just above my open palm.

 

  Then I accessed a different power within me, one of the three, it was a dark demonic magic, gifted to me by my bond with Lilith, black glyphs appeared on my arms, mixing with the white, and I added that to the spinning ball of air. The result was a ball of crackling red lightning. It wasn’t much power for me and the entire process of forming my demonic lightning ball, as I had taken to calling it, took next to no time. The men were apparently very surprised that I could do magic.

 

 They were transfixed on the demonic lightning ball, and I raised my hand a bit, their gazes followed it. “You shouldn’t have come here, fellas. You shouldn’t have attacked me. I should kill you all, but I’m going to give you a chance to run away, far away, to a place that I will never find you.” I had hoped my threats would be good enough to make them run away, to spare me from having to kill them. They weren’t, instead they merely spurred the men out of there reverie for my magic and into action. They ran at me again, their fists ready to deliver more pain. They didn’t get the chance, as I hurled the demonic ball of destruction at them.

 

It exploded on impact, lightning crackling forth with a kind of chaotic glee. Being struck by lightning is nothing to joke about, if you don’t believe me, look it up sometime. As the magical ball of lightning, supercharged with demonic energy struck the men, it engulfed them. Normal lightning would have popped their blood vessels, maybe made their hair catch fire. This lightning however ate at their skin, burning them and their bones to ash. They didn’t even have time to scream before they died.   In mere moments, the men who had attacked me where nothing but ash. Unidentifiable piles of ash. Easy to clean up for TAI, The Arcadian Investigators. I reached inside one of my leather dusters pockets and pulled out the dagger that my client had tasked me to retrieve. So much violence, for such a simple weapon. It didn’t appear to be magical, I would have felt it by now if that were the case. So, why then, were people trying to kill me over it?

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50 minutes ago, Officer#340 said:

However, I am more than likely not going to implement any changes until I've written quite a bit of the novel. My goal is to finish it and then make any changes required. 

That's the way to do it. Finish the first draft first, then go from there.

Pretty good story, all told. I'm intrigued by the amount of magic this guy has, and even though I know it wasn't intentional, I'm laughing at the filter that changed some of the curses into "storming" and "damnation."

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Chapter Two

 

I could call upon the forces of magic to smite my foes, I could heal at rates that boggles the mind, I was slightly over two hundred years old and I had an ancient demoness tied to my immortal soul, and despite all of that, I still did something as normal as picking up my daughter from School. Meridian Elementary taught the young children of the city while their parents went to their nine to five. The school was small, a mere three buildings and a blacktop for recess. The black top was surrounded by a gate, the gate had an entrance located nearest the administration building. Parents were required to wait on the blacktop for their kids to get released from school. So I waited, along with the other parents. I hadn’t had time to really clean myself up from the previous events of the day and as a result my unruly long black hair was even more unruly than usual. My black leather duster was clean enough but part of my white T-Shirt was ripped and so were my faded blue jeans.

  The other parents gave me a wide berth, some gave me sideways glances as they talked with one another. I paid them no attention, what strangers thought about me wasn’t something I cared about much. People always talk about how their child is the most beautiful child in existence. I had never understood that until Kasey Irene Grey was born. I recalled the day I held her in my arms, I remembered how I felt, no, how I knew that I would never be the same. I just knew that for the little girl in my arms, I would do anything. That shift in the universe was monumental for me. Suddenly I wasn’t just responsible for myself, but now I was responsible for this little human that depended on me for safety. It had changed me, and I think broke me too. Lilith appeared beside me, a warm smile on her face as she too recalled the memories of our little girl. She always insisted on saying that Kasey was ours, despite Kasey’s Mother having had been human. Lilith had said that a portion of herself was also tied to her as it was to me, a side effect of being tied to my soul. I couldn’t claim to understand it completely, but I learned to accept it.

  Kasey shared a lot of my features. Her raven hair was tied up in pigtails, her blue eyes were the color of ice, same as mine, though they were filled with a childish innocence. Her features were angular, like my own and she wore a pink sweater and a child sized pair of blue jeans. Her backpack was baby blue and it jiggled up and down as she ran toward me, a smile on her face. She threw herself into my waiting arms as I hefted her up. “Oof. Don’t hurt your old man now, Kasey.” I smiled at her. “Dad! School was so fun today. I got to color a pony! I colored it pink, and after that we did Math. I hate Math, Dad. That’s okay though because we did reading afterward and we read Where The Wild Things are, that’s such a good book Dad!”

  She went on like that for some time as I settled her on my shoulders, walking to my silver dodge charger that I had parked on the street. Kasey was always that way, full of energy and life, talking my ear off at a rapid pace. I enjoyed the experience, however, never growing tired of it. There were some things in life that you would never get to enjoy again, those things had taught me to enjoy the little things, like rapid fire speech from your daughter.

  I drove us through Meridian’s traffic, heavier than normal due to it being evening and people were getting off of work and heading home for the day. Eventually I parked outside a simple one story white home with a vegetable garden outfront. Kasey scrunched up her tiny face, “Do I really have to go here, Dad?” I turned and looked back at her in her carseat. “Yes, Kase, you do. I know you want to come with me, but there are things I have to do that you shouldn’t be around. Beside, you love miss Crenshaw.” Kasey sighed heavily, a surprising sound coming from such a tiny girl. I got out of the car and went around to the side door to unbuckle her and remove her from the stea, setting her on the sidewalk. She grabbed my finger in her tiny hand as we walked up the walkway that led to Miss Crenshaw’s home.

  Miss Crenshaw was the tiny old lady that I had employed to watch Kasey during the days I worked or was exceptionally busy. She was sweet and caring and had a quick but endearing temper. She opened the door as we got closer, she was wearing a faded blue sweater over pale brown overalls, blue jeans and sturdy looking shoes. Her gray white hair was held together in a tight ponytail and she wore wire framed glasses. She may have been tiny and old, but her frame was lean with strong muscle. Miss Crenshaw loved to point out how there was nothing like a hard days work and that earning your keep was important.

 The tiny aged woman spent most of her days gardening and often had Kasey help her. Kasey didn’t complain much, Miss Crenshaw always rewarded her with homemade chocolate chip cookies. “Hello there, young man, and young lady.” She gave us a warm smile, and I returned it. “Hey there Miss Crenshaw, thank you for looking after Kasey today. It’ll just be for a few hours this time, no need for her to spend the night like last time.” She shook her head, “It’s really no trouble, lad. Miss Kasey here is pleasurable company to an old biddy like me.”

 I laughed, “Wise though you may be, I would hardly call you a biddy.” I got down on one knee to look at Kasey, “Now, you be good Kase. Do as Miss Crenshaw says, okay?” She nodded and I hugged her tight, “I love you.”

I bid a farewell to Miss Crenshaw and got back into my charger. It’s always the little things you miss.

Edited by Officer#340
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