by Hunter Blain
There was a blur of motion, and JD was in the clutches of a man Depweg recognized but couldn’t quite place.
“Don’t!” was all Depweg could say, taking one step forward while placatingly holding his hands out.
The man had a tight hand on JD’s shoulder while his other held out a long leather strap with a crystal at the end of its length.
Depweg recognized what the necklace was immediately, but not why the man had it.
“What do you want?!” Depweg asked with a shaking voice, completely at the mercy of this man.
“I know you remember me, cabrón…don’t you?” Jose asked with a snarl. His subtle Spanish accent gave Depweg pause.
From somewhere deep inside Depweg’s mind, the wolf let out a teeth-rattling growl that could shake walls.
“Jose…” Depweg breathed out, hyperventilating as the pieces began to fit. All of a sudden, Depweg cursed the foolish desire from a few years ago when he had wanted to make amends with Jose.
“That’s right,” the intruder confirmed with a show of teeth before angrily throwing the crystal he held behind him, where it soared through the air to be swallowed by the thick grass near the edge of the woods.
With his hand now free, Jose pulled out a silver knife and made a show of bringing it toward JD’s little throat.
Being an offspring of the powerful Jonathan Depweg, JD began struggling with all his might as the blade drew closer.
“Please!” Depweg cried out, taking another step closer. “Don’t hurt my family!”
“Family?!” Jose barked with a voice that rumbled with preternatural vocal cords. “What do you know about family?!”
Depweg didn’t know how to answer, his eyes flicking between his struggling son, the glinting knife he knew to be silver, and the man in control of the situation.
“You killed my family, you bastard!” Jose yelled, pressing the blade in and making JD yelp in surprise. Then, in a chillingly calm voice, the man with the silver knife whispered, “Now I’m going to kill yours.”
Moving with the smoothness of a prodigal cello player, Jose’s arm swiftly glided to his right and began his symphony of sorrow.
29
John
“Where are you?” I groaned through a clenched jaw and tight lips. My eyes scanned everything I could see, feeling as if I could match the speed of any computer doing the same thing.
Then I heard it…
A haunted train howled from somewhere a few miles north of me.
“Oh no…” I wordlessly hissed, knowing the feral cry from Depweg meant I was too late.
Like a flip of a switch, my mind shifted from dismay to determination, and I jumped through the air in the direction of the wolf’s cry as the sun continued to set in the west.
Darkness was coming.
30
Depweg
Meli sucked in a sharp breath that immediately began leaking from her quivering lips as wide eyes stared at her son. JD’s little body went limp as he fell to the ground, dragging his mom’s heart down with it.
“NOOOOOOO!” Depweg screamed with feral vocal cords that mutated into a horrific howl that could be heard for miles. He leaped the distance between him and his son, the transformation to his feral wolf form almost instantaneous.
Jose sidestepped into a portal with a cold expression of unbreakable determination and revenge.
The Earth gave way beneath Depweg’s feet as he landed and skidded to a halt, creating twin ditches behind him for several feet. The clothes that had been shredded during the instantaneous shift floated to the ground like hypnotic dancers, ignorant to the world around them.
A massive, fur-covered hand reached down to caress the still warm child whose eyes stared at nothing.
“JD,” Depweg rumbled as a part of his brain—the wolf living inside his mind—attempted to warn that the fight wasn’t over…or hadn’t even begun.
Meli let out a cry of anguish at seeing her son be taken from her, only for it to be cut off short and ended with a sharp gasp.
Sensing the change, Depweg let the wolf take control, and furious yellow orbs with black slits flicked to see that the symphony of sorrow was just getting started.
“How does it feel, monster?” Jose barked as he stood behind Meli, one hand clamped on her shoulder while the other was hidden behind her body.
Something pressed through the front of Meli’s shirt, pushing outward, like holding a dish towel using only the tip of your finger. A blooming crimson circle immediately followed before the knife imbedded into Meli’s lower back and pushing through her stomach started to rise.
Meli couldn’t scream as one of her kidneys, large intestine, and even her stomach were cut through with the hungry silver blade.
“NOOOOO!” Depweg bellowed as his body went on autopilot and charged the intruder.
Chunks of grass and dirt were thrown up as the bipedal wolf dropped to all fours and exploded forward with impossibly powerful limbs.
Jose yanked the blade free and disappeared into another portal, leaving Meli to collapse to her knees.
“No, no, no, no!” Depweg cried out as he skidded to a halt, catching his mate before she fell to her side.
Large hands gingerly wrapped around Meli as she was lowered to the ground, sweat beading on her forehead as wide eyes struggled to focus.
Depweg whined as his mate’s skin began fading to an alabaster and her lips dulled to a dark blue.
“Jonathan?” Meli asked with a tiny exhale while the grass underneath her lightly bowed from the oozing, copious amounts of blood escaping her body.
She didn’t draw in another breath.
Wheezing on a level of grief that was impossible to describe to someone who had never experienced it firsthand, Depweg nudged his mate’s pale face once. His snout left a wet nose print on her cheek from the tears that flowed down his face.
The pupils of her eyes relaxed, and the black dots spread to encompass almost the entirety of her irises.
“Know my pain, wolf. Feel my torment and know this was all…your…fault.”
Depweg set his mate down on the grass stained with blood that was almost black in the darkness of night.
With an explosion of rage, Depweg’s massive hand slammed into the ground as he pivoted his crouching body and then threw a chunk of dirt and grass toward where Jose’s voice had been.
Surprised, Jose began to open a portal right as sections of earth traveling faster than a cannonball smashed into his face with enough impact to shatter teeth and crack bones.
While stunned, something massive viciously wrapped around Jose’s waist, pulling him in the opposite direction of his portal.
A feeling of extreme gravity yanked on all of Jose’s limbs as he was thrown through the air with enough force to launch a car across the Mississippi River.
As Depweg threw Jose into the nearby woods, he immediately began sprinting with powerful legs in furious pursuit of the intruder, a bellow of rage filling the night air like a haunted train.
Jose recovered while in midair, wiping dirt from eyes that healed faster than any werewolf should have been able to, and seeing the thick trees fast approaching.
Upon hearing Depweg’s howl from behind, Jose summoned a portal and flew through it, traveling at the same incredible momentum that the feral wolf had provided.
With the exit of the portal opening in front of a suddenly confused Depweg, Jose launched straight at the feral beast, tucking his body into a roll.
Once within range and before Depweg could understand what was happening, Jose shot out his legs and used his momentum to deliver a double-legged kick to the wolf’s torso.
Bones shattered, organs were violently shifted, and a terrible blow was struck, but Depweg continued forward, much to Jose’s surprise.
Physics could be a bitch, and Jose was learning that the hard way.
Unlike with cartoons and movies, Depweg was not launched backward through the air while Jose was left to do a cool flip and la
nd on his feet. Why, you may ask? Well, if two objects were traveling at similar speeds toward one another, the larger object was actually carrying considerably more kinetic energy.
Though Depweg had his ribs broken, it was the much smaller Jose who had his bones shattered up his legs before he was forced forward at the waist and had his own skull slammed into his knees. Not to mention all those tender organs that got to play a game of musical chairs while inside Jose’s quickly decelerating torso.
Depweg landed on top of Jose, crushing him beneath the weight of a twelve-foot-tall werewolf who tipped the scales somewhere north of a full ton.
Rolling over, Depweg struggled to catch his breath and let his ribs slowly heal again.
In the ground, smooshed like the last bag of bread at the grocery store, Jose blinked only one eye, the other having been pulverized by his own shattered kneecap.
Depweg glanced over at his opponent with a wince, briefly relieved to see the fight was over, before letting his head rest on the ground and staring up into the night.
Something popped, and Depweg wasn’t sure if it was his own slowly healing ribs, or something else.
Another pop, and Depweg saw movement in the peripheral of his vision.
Several more pops, and Depweg once again turned his head to see something that should have been impossible; Jose was healing faster than any werewolf should have been able to.
The images of Jose traveling through obsidian portals exploded in his mind with an urgent wailing of sirens, and Depweg understood what the man was.
“Were-pire…” he breathed, desperately willing his ribs to finish healing, as he knew the fun was just starting.
Feeling the urgency give him a renewed bout of strength, Depweg growled as white-hot pain coursed through him as he rolled over onto his side, ready to finish the job.
Jose continued to heal at an alarming pace, and all of a sudden, Depweg knew how John’s enemies felt after besting him in combat. They thought he was down and out, and then he basically did the equivalent of reloading a save point in a video game, ready to fight again.
As Depweg lifted a massive hand tipped in dangerously sharp claws and positioned himself to strike at Jose’s heart, something passed in front of Depweg that looked surprisingly like John.
Depweg froze in place as his mind played back exactly what he had seen. It was as if someone had superimposed a single frame of a screaming John flying through the air just over Depweg and Jose.
The house exploded like an asteroid had struck it, debris spreading in an arc and stretching out for miles.
Depweg was completely dumbfounded and could only stare at the remains of the crumbling house that Meli had designed.
His brain—being fully stretched to its limits by everything that had happened in the last two minutes—all but shut down, leaving the giant wolf poised over Jose.
Another series of pops, followed by movement, brought Depweg back, and he instinctively struck at his target with his claw-tipped hands.
Two human hands blurred to grab Depweg’s index and pinky fingers, effectively stopping the huge wolf’s attack.
With a gasp, Depweg looked down to see the broken half of Jose’s face snap back into place, both eyes blinking as a furious scowl marred the freshly healed forehead.
What was even more concerning to Depweg was that Jose’s irises were now glowing crimson as the whites of his eyes surged a bright yellow.
The woods exploded as something crashed into the trees from the direction of the crumbled house.
Debris started falling all around with various degrees of thumps.
The last of Depweg’s ribs healed with a loud pop, giving the all-clear that he could now move without mind-clouding pain again.
Depweg leaned on his side, trying to push the tips of his claws into Jose’s chest, only a few inches away.
An angry hiss filled the air as Jose bared a mouth full of fangs, with his four canines longer than the rest.
Depweg moved to position his entire body on top of Jose, but the crater they had created was snug around the human-shaped man and didn’t allow Depweg to put his weight directly on Jose.
Moving his hands up in a blur, Jose threw Depweg off balance, making his claws slice into the ground instead of Jose’s flesh.
With all his weight on the arm, Depweg’s hand disappeared into the ground halfway up to his forearm, leaving him vulnerable.
Rolling into a ball faster than Depweg could position his other hand to strike, Jose kicked the wolf in the jaw, dazing him.
A portal formed under Jose, who disappeared like a crocodile beneath the surface of a murky lake.
Before Depweg could yank his arm free, something landed on top of his massive back and began raining punches down, feeling like a parade of bowling ball–sized hail dropping from the sky.
With renewed vigor, Depweg ripped his arm free with an explosion of dirt and violently pivoted in an effort to buck his attacker off his back.
The punches continued to rain, but were halved in speed as something else was pulling on Depweg’s fur. In his tactical mind, Depweg understood that Jose was holding on with one hand while still attacking with the other.
Moving his arms down and behind him where he thought Jose wouldn’t be able to see his plan coming, Depweg grabbed his attacker’s feet in a viselike grip and jumped high into the air, letting his feet become parallel with his head at the peak of his leap.
Over two thousand pounds—multiplied by terminal velocity—were about to come raining down on the much smaller Jose. From how high up Depweg had jumped, the amount of force that was about to be directly applied to Jose’s human frame was the equivalent of being strapped to the front of a car and then being dropped from a second story. The ground would absorb much of the impact, as it had just moments before when the two had collided, but this time, Depweg would be ready to deliver the killing bl—
An obsidian ring passed around Depweg before the ground was all of a sudden facing him…only from about a hundred feet up.
Confusion locked his brain as Jose began to growl and shudder in Depweg’s grip.
A flash of light accompanied an explosion that seemed to echo, drawing Depweg’s attention for a moment and further confusing him.
Jose’s legs were growing denser as Depweg held on, and he understood that the man was shifting to his wolf-suit.
Steeling his mind, the former marine focused on the sole task of defeating the enemy.
To signal the severity of the situation, the wind seemed to shriek in Depweg’s sensitive ears as the pair picked up speed as they fell.
Letting go with his right hand, Depweg turned in midair while still holding onto the shifting Jose with his left and grabbed the emerging wolf around the head.
A surge of darkness in the forest beyond his backyard caught the edge of Depweg’s awareness as his peripheral vision caught trees being knocked flat like blades of grass underfoot.
Depweg’s massive hands wrapped entirely around Jose’s still human head, looking like a normal hand gripping a small avocado. Unfortunately for Jose, Depweg was intending on making guacamole. As he squeezed, Depweg could feel Jose’s snout trying to push out as he transformed, making the huge monster double down on his grip until it felt like his tendons were going to snap.
The ground neared as the pair fell, and Depweg dared a glance at the house that had been destroyed. Then he saw Meli and JD lying in the grass, unmoving.
Grief swelled in his mind, and Depweg’s death grip began to slacken mere moments before Jose’s expanding skull was crushed into sand, blood, and gray matter.
Feeling the sudden relaxation, Jose was able to pull free his silver knife, and plunged the blade deep into Depweg’s long throat.
31
John
Once I jumped through the air a distance I thought was accurate, I let my wings take over as determined eyes scanned the area around me.
A few hundred yards to my left, I saw a home that backed up t
o an unfenced wooded area, and I knew that had to be him.
Changing course in midair, I flapped with powerful wings while beginning to lower myself closer to the ground.
Another howl from the haunted train created a wave of anxiety that made my forehead tremble from how hard I was furrowing my face.
There, somewhere between the only home in the area and the woods, was the feral wolf I knew to be Depweg.
He had leaped through the air as I landed, and it confused me to see him wrap giant hands around Meli. Blood was oozing in a circle around where Depweg carefully lowered her to the ground.
“Wha…” I began asking the air before I became unable to even finish the simple word. In the grass several yards away was the still body of a boy with a gruesome scarlet necklace.
“Oh no…” I breathed as a hand went up to cover my mouth.
Turning to see my friend, I began jogging to him and called out, “Depweg!” but he didn’t seem to hear me.
“Jonathan?” Meli asked with her final breath.
“Dear God…no…” I mouthed, unable to process the train wreck that lay before me.
“Know my pain, wolf,” I heard Jose say as he emerged from a portal. He was about to continue his monologue when I blurred the distance between us and punched him in the fucking face.
My hand crumpled like driving over an empty water bottle.
Pain lanced out like searing lightning as I stumbled back several steps while holding my busted wrist.
“Fuck!” I barked, wondering what had gone wrong.
Jose continued his speech as I saw he was no longer wearing the necklace that tethered him to my time line. Just like the dog chasing the squirrel, I was unable to do anything to stop Jose now.
As my hand healed, popping like bubble wrap, I considered taking off my armor so I could fight…but Gabriel came to mind once again. I couldn’t lose my connection to my own time line; otherwise, I might never get back. Or worse, I might create another stream of time and risk destroying the original.
