Crack the Sky: Preternatural Chronicles Book 8 (The Preternatural Chronicles)

by Hunter Blain

  Depweg exploded toward Jose after launching a huge mound of earth that smacked the man in the face, hard.

  Hope began to blossom in my chest as I saw the massive twelve-foot wolf dashing for the much smaller man. Then all the hope taking shape in me was introduced to a torrent of flames in the form of terror.

  “What took you so long?” Lolth purred from behind me.

  Whirling on her, I screamed, “Why are you doing this?!” I was absolutely aware of how pointless the question was, but I was unable to stop the words from exploding from my lips.

  “It has been my sole desire to see the universe bathed in darkness, with me as divine ruler. But after the humiliation of suffering defeat by your hand…I now want nothing more than to see you suffer,” Lolth proclaimed. “Truly suffer, vampire, with an exquisite agony unlike any known throughout all of time. I will take from you those you love, one by one, before snuffing the light from your world.”

  “Neat,” was the only thing I could say as rapid movement caught my eye, and I looked to see Depweg and Jose leap at one another like some sort of epic movie battle. I cringed as I heard Jose’s bones shatter after trying to land a double kick into the huge Depweg’s chest.

  “Welp,” I exhaled while pretending to stretch in various dramatic poses. “I’m just gonna have to kick your ass again, aren’t I?”

  “You’re in my time, vampire. Not even your little sword can hurt me here.”

  “Gasp! What’s that over there!” I cried out in mock terror as I pointed behind the Shadow goddess.

  Knowing no one could withstand my flawlessly executed, clever ruse, I turned and blurred toward the woods at impossible speeds, giving my brain some time to figure out a pla—

  Darkness swarmed in front of me faster than I could process, and a pillar the thickness of an old tree smashed directly into my chest like a pool cue crashing into the cue ball.

  I flew through the air—completely dazed—and saw in a flash where Depweg was on top of Jose. My best friend seemed to notice me, which took me off my already compromised guard, right as the big country house caught me like the world’s largest catcher’s mitt.

  On instinct, I manifested my wings and threw them out to try and slow my momentum, but only succeeded in throwing debris for miles in all directions.

  “Oops,” I drawled before a feline cackle snatched my focus.

  Lolth was sitting on top of Meli, completely content with the madness going on around us.

  An idea came to me, and I willed Mjolnir into my grip, hoisting it to the sky while keeping my other hand out of view.

  “You tried that already, foolish vam—”

  I stepped forward with my right foot and lobbed the ball of light I had been forming in my left hand. As the sphere left my grasp, it exploded into a beam of concentrated light that I focused on a cone directly in front of me.

  Shadows rushed in an attempt to form a shield in front of Lolth, but to no avail.

  To the Shadow goddess’s surprise, the sphere wasn’t just a simple ball of light. Oh no. I had taken a ball of plasma and dipped it into a higher dimension, allowing the cone to be both burning light and particles of matter moving with terrifying kinetic energy.

  I had taken the lesson Michael had taught me while on the surface of Mars and applied it, though with a high level of restraint, as I didn’t want to destroy Depweg in the crossfire.

  Lolth shrieked as the higher-dimensional attack slammed into her, rocketing her backward with a trail of smoke following her like an Acme rocket.

  Sensing movement, I looked up and was completely surprised to see Depweg and Jose careening toward the ground from several hundred feet in the air.

  An explosion of cracking wood brought me back to my target as I turned to see a ring of shadows flatten several trees where Lolth had landed.

  Gulping, I readied myself for what was to come next.

  32

  Depweg

  The pain was immediate and blinding, flooding Depweg’s mind with a hurricane of agony that seized his thoughts like a fission-powered stun gun.

  On instinct, both massive hands released Jose and shot up to push away the attacker, sending the still transforming man flying through the air and leaving the knife inside its new sheath.

  Taking control of his thoughts now that the immediate danger had been thrown away, Depweg used his index finger and thumb to carefully slide the burning silver knife from his throat. Blood was making the hilt slippery, like trying to remove a thumbtack from dense wood with wet fingers.

  With a grunt, Depweg yanked it free, feeling an instantaneous relief as the burning subsided.

  Using the index finger of his free hand, Depweg touched where the knife had been, and determined it had been close to his artery but had missed by only a few inches.

  Depweg’s spine turned to frozen ice as he realized that, if Jose had been able to take only a brief moment to aim, the silver blade would have severed his artery and prevented any healing.

  With all of this happening in mere seconds, Depweg reminded himself that Jose had been closer to death, with his skull nearing the fracture point. And with his mate and child murdered, it would have been worth it to forfeit his own life in exchange for vengeance.

  Snarling lips pulled back to reveal huge fangs as rage fueled Depweg’s muscles.

  Slamming into the ground with an explosion of earth, the feral wolf roared its fury, dropping the silver knife—which was the size of a toothpick in his hands—to the ground.

  He hadn’t watched where Jose had been thrown to, but knew he had to have landed somewhere in the woods.

  Knowing he had precious seconds before the man finished his transformation into a wolf, Depweg crouched and then exploded in the direction of the dense trees.

  The wind whistled past his sensitive ears while cooling the hot blood that flowed from the wound in his neck. All this did was enrage Depweg even further.

  A deafening crack of wood pierced the sky as a blast of splinters rocketed from where Depweg crashed through a staggered line of tall, proud trees.

  Skidding to a halt, Depweg sniffed the air and pivoted his ears until he heard the final growls of a painful transformation.

  With another howl that would have made the T-Rex from Jurassic Park blush, Depweg sprinted on two legs toward the sound, cutting down entire trees with swift slaps from his enormous, powerful hands.

  In answer, an almost identical yet vastly louder howl shook the very air, giving Depweg pause as he assessed not only what he heard, but also what he felt.

  The ground rumbled once, accompanied by a low roll of organic thunder that sounded like a heavy industrial machine rather than a wolf.

  Depweg took a single step forward, turning his body in a defensive stance as another teeth-rattling growl sounded.

  Through the staggered prison bars of trees, Depweg could barely make out something huge that touched the canopy, cracking branches as it moved.

  At twelve-feet tall, Depweg towered over most opponents with a few exceptions. And those exceptions made the feral wolf nervous.

  Another quick rumble that was in sync with the dark, moving object made Depweg’s heart begin to race as he realized what was causing the sound.

  Trees cracked like gunshots as something the height of a house moved toward Depweg, the ground shaking with each footstep.

  “Jesus…” Depweg whispered as his gaze continued to climb up the approaching monster.

  Glowing in the darkness, yellow eyes with crimson centers looked down from a horrendous, mutated snout as lips pulled back in a sickening grin, revealing jagged teeth resembling a deep-sea nightmare rather than a wolf.

  Powerful legs rippled with bulging muscles as hands the size of refrigerators dragged the ground. A barrel-shaped torso began to shudder as the creature of nightmares began a throaty chuckle.

  With Depweg still in complete shock at the sheer size of the monster that towered over him, the beast bellowed in challenge…and charged fo
rward.

  33

  John

  Trees groaned, and tens of thousands of leaves rustled, sounding like a stadium full of applauding fans.

  An object the size of a man streaked like a blur to land with a thump somewhere in the woods a few hundred yards from where Lolth was gathering the shadows unto herself.

  A miasma of panic swirled around the perimeter of my thoughts like a school of piranhas ready to swarm in the blink of an eye.

  Depweg landed several yards in front of me, impacting the ground like a missile, sending up debris in a mesmerizing circle all around him.

  “Depweg!” I cried out, extending a hand as I reached for my best friend.

  Throwing a crimson-covered knife on the ground, Depweg roared before leaping through the air with enough force to warp the ground beneath his feet.

  Disappearing into the trees with an entourage of shattering wood that sounded like gunshots, Depweg hunted his target.

  Without mentally expanding on a notion that swelled in my mind, I blurred to the scarlet knife that looked almost black in the moonlight. I didn’t know why the knife felt important, but I decided to go with my gut.

  Bending over, I picked up the folding knife by the sticky handle, and shook my hand at preter-speed, slinging all the liquid off the weapon like a dog shaking its fur after a bath.

  The ground faintly rumbled as tremors of impact caught my attention.

  Looking up, I gasped hard enough that it sounded like a scream right as a serpent the thickness of a buffalo slithered from the woods at the speed of dark.

  On instinct, I threw my hands in front of me in a useless defensive gesture, only to be rewarded with a speeding train plowing into me.

  Bones broke. Stars bloomed in the void of my closed eyes. And the all too recognizable feeling of flying made my stomach lurch.

  But there was something else, too, which my brain caught during the skull-shattering impact.

  A screech…and probably not from me. Probably.

  I mean, I have shrieked, screamed, shouted, and some would say, squealed, but I don’t think I have ever screeched.

  Latching onto that thought, I focused all of my celestially enhanced preter-healing on my skull and the contents therein.

  Within maybe a second, my fractured skull popped back into place, allowing my brain room to recover.

  Impact jarred my thoughts once again as I hit something hard and began to tumble end over end.

  “Rah!” I grunted with furious effort as I willed the world around me to slow by dipping myself into the fourth dimension.

  I all but froze in midair, doing a rag doll cartwheel that would have netted me absolutely no points at the Olympics while also putting the gas to my celestial power bank.

  Seeing my feet were above my head, I began twisting my body to right my position, only to be met with a bolt of pain that shot up my shattered body.

  The shadow snake had plowed into me hard enough that my body was smooshed against the celestial armor that was supposed to protect me. It was like holding onto the end of a pillowcase and swinging it around your head; the pillow would be squeezed into a compact lump from the inertia.

  I sent the emergency signal to focus my well of energy and celestial batteries on healing my basically liquefied body.

  While that was going on, I did a playback of the attack, wondering why I hadn’t just exploded like a cannon stuffed with ground beef.

  While time around me was frozen—for all intents and purposes—I let my body heal while sending my consciousness into the theater of my mind. It was better this way in regard to distracting myself while my body painfully mended the countless severe injuries.

  As I focused on rewinding my memories, the theater periodically shook as if being subjected to a series of low-level earthquakes.

  There! I said inside my empty theater, pointing at the screen right at the moment Lolth appeared from the tree line.

  Leaning forward in my recliner, which I had replaced the old theater seats with, I interlaced the fingers of both hands and rested my chin on them, letting my elbows bear the weight while on the armrests.

  I narrowed my eyes ever so slightly, and the scene moved forward the equivalent of a fraction of a frame at a time.

  Lolth locked on target and shot forward like a bullet.

  With how slow the frames were moving forward, I could see the monster approaching like a car respectfully traveling down a residential neighborhood.

  Slowly opening my eyes a tad, the scene sped up until Lolth was mere feet in front of my face.

  From my point of view on screen, my head turned to the side as my lids began to close in anticipation of the impact, but something flashed in the corner of my vision.

  Opening my eyes fully and mentally projecting my desire, the scene froze, and I focused on zooming in on my right hand just as the theater stopped rumbling. That meant my healing was complete and it was time to party.

  That’s it…I said just below my breath before flying back into the control room of my mind.

  With my conscious self behind the wheel once more, I oriented my body and attempted to turn myself in midair again. This time, my healed body didn’t protest.

  Once righted, I let the massive energy drain of being in the fourth dimension drop, returning me to the normal reality. However, my armor let me know it had depleted a noticeable amount of its reserves to heal while in the higher dimension. At least the information I had gained was worth the trade-off.

  Landing on my feet, I used my left hand to make a show of dusting my shoulders while turning the right side of my body away from Lolth.

  The Shadow goddess had dropped her serpent form and opted for the old tried-and-true brute form. A single purple eye peered at me with fury blazing at its core.

  Flicking my gaze to her other eye, I saw the lids were closed, but had a vertical gash that leaked black ooze.

  It took every ounce of my willpower to not look and see if the silver knife I held in my right hand was covered in her blood. Remembering the frozen image inside the theater of my mind, I correctly calculated my hand had been in just the right position when she had charged me. This made me smile.

  Standing over twice my height, the featureless monster regarded me with a level of disdain that I could feel, like walking by an overzealous space heater.

  “Hey!” I called out with bravado. “You and Locke could start a club!” To emphasize my point, I covered one of my eyes with the palm of my left hand, careful to keep my right fist hidden from view.

  All I had to do was agitate her enough to rush me in a blind rage, allowing me the opportunity to cut her fucking head off with the silver knife that was now tied to her time line thanks to Jose.

  The hulking monster stood several yards away from me, her remaining amethyst eye roaming over my entire frame.

  “Hey, perv! Stop undressing me with your eyes! Oops! I meant eye. Ha!”

  Lolth grew visibly livid, her body trembling as white, gleaming teeth were unveiled through a snarl.

  Then she did something that made my throat go dry.

  The frown turned upside down…and Lolth smiled back at me.

  “Oh…shit…” was all I could get out as the goddess of shadows slowly raised her outstretched palms to the sky.

  34

  Depweg

  The twelve-foot-tall feral wolf leaped backward in an almost graceful backflip, using his long limbs to catch the ground and then roll to the side as the nearly house-sized demon wolf charged with swiping hands.

  Entire trees were reduced to toothpicks and sawdust in an instant as the powerful behemoth wildly swung at the much nimbler Depweg.

  In that precise moment in time, Depweg was beyond thankful to have spent the last couple years in Faerie training with King Taylor and his subjects.

  With one leg poised in front, Depweg dropped his torso nearly to the ground as the monster that was once Jose tried to backhand where the agile wolf had just been.


  Using his posted legs to explode up and forward, Depweg smashed into the ample torso of the monster, using the long, sharp claws of his hands and feet to latch onto its flesh.

  With long, powerful swipes, Depweg’s blurring hands tore shallow ditches within moments, mimicking a dog trying to uncover the hidden bone he had buried in the yard.

  The monster rocked back with pain and shock before regaining equilibrium.

  An arm—as thick as any tree in the forest they were in—swiped down the Goliath’s body in an effort to swat the nuisance away as if Depweg were nothing more than a Chihuahua nipping at the heels of a Great Dane.

  Seeing the massive limb moving downward like a speeding truck, Depweg gave a little push off the beast’s torso while throwing his hands and feet out to flatten himself.

  As the arm passed, the demon wolf realized the play, but was unable to stop the momentum in time to prevent Depweg from latching on again.

  This time, Depweg climbed with the finesse of a spider until he had maneuvered over a shoulder the size of a couch and flipped around to take its back.

  The heavy feet slid into muscles around the demon’s spine and began raking downward until Depweg’s maw was in position to latch onto the cervical bone that protruded the furthest through black fur and thick skin.

  As teeth the size of AA batteries pierced flesh and clamped around the demon’s spine, massive hands fastened around the trap muscles located on top of the monster’s shoulders. This gave him leverage as he began to twist and yank on the large knot that was the cervical bone.

  The demon wolf bellowed in rage, tickling Depweg’s breastbone with its intensity, and began pivoting its upper body back and forth in an effort to dislodge the unrelenting werewolf.

  Then the beast stopped thrashing, drawing concern from Depweg, who doubled down on his efforts. As the bone cracked and began to loosen in place, Depweg saw something in his peripheral vision.