The Preternatural Chronicles: Books 0-3

by Hunter Blain

  In unison, Depweg and I said, “It’s just John.”

  She giggled and motioned for me to climb in the back with her thumb. I obliged. It was ridiculously luxurious in the back seat. There was a TV screen coming out of the center console that had the news on mute. The seats reclined and even offered vibrating massages and heat. She even had a damn minibar. I did a double take as I noticed a crystal container of a dark, red liquid.

  “Is that…”

  “Just for you, lover,” Lily said while glancing in the rearview mirror as she pulled onto the highway.

  At the comment, Depweg flicked his ear so slightly that a mortal’s eyes would have missed it.

  I didn’t say anything and focused on pouring myself a drink. Lily was staking her claim and making sure Depweg was aware of her presence on the food chain. Depweg turned his head to stare out the window, much the same way a passenger would do if a tone-deaf driver started belting out lyrics along with the radio. As if turning away abated the awkwardness of it all.

  The tension was palpable. Should have let me take shotgun, buddy, I thought while taking a drink. It made my tongue tingle as it passed over it and washed down my throat. My eyes closed and my hairs stood on end, a moan of pleasure escaping my lips before I could stop it.

  “Tell me, boys, what is your plan for stopping Locke?” she asked, breaking the tension.

  “Go in, guns blazing!” I said with abnormal delight.

  “Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” Depweg said while glancing curiously in the rearview mirror at me.

  “You’re both crazy,” Lily said, bemused.

  “That’s what my therapist says!” I said. I was met with silence from both of my companions. “Guys,” I started after a few moments, “I’m kidding! They can’t legally say that.” My words were starting to slur a tad. I felt giddy. My head fell back and I smiled wide, my eyes closing in delight.

  “Do you like it, John?” Lily asked, amused at my reaction to her drink.

  Eyes still closed and thoughts swimming in a pool of elation, I managed to ask, “What is it?”

  “The ‘what’ should be obvious, silly. It’s the ‘whose’ that should interest you,” she said with a shark’s smile spreading across her beautiful face.

  “Whose blood is this?” I asked while trying to shake off the creeping tingle that was spreading up my head and down my body. It was hard to fight because I didn’t want it to stop.

  “Mine, of course,” she said.

  I had never drunk from a supernatural before, and now, in one night, I had imbibed from a centuries old werewolf and an ageless Fae.

  The blood was like if her pheromone scent had been extracted and magnified. My skin heated, and my mini-me leaped to attention. I wanted her. Needed her. I could feel the predator inside my head start to fight for the wheel.

  “What’s happening to him? What have you done?” I could hear Depweg ask from far away as I lay back on the reclining seat, feeling its comfort envelope me. I was so tired all of a sudden.

  “This,” I heard Lily say from the other side of a thin wall. Her voice muffled as I relented toward unconsciousness. I knew what was happening, but didn’t care. The reclining chair felt so incredibly good against my back. It cradled me and promised well-being and happiness.

  I could vaguely hear a gasp from somewhere far away. I struggled with my remaining strength to open my eyes, and I saw Depweg trying to swat at his nose, as if a particularly heinous fart had just been released. He relaxed after a one-sided battle and let his head drop to the passenger window.

  “Bitch,” was all I could manage with a yawn before sleep enveloped me. The hum of the engine faded as I fell unconscious.

  Chapter 33

  Present day

  I awoke inside my own body. Disoriented, I lifted my arm and pinched the bridge of my nose. When I opened my eyes, I could see the back of the driver’s seat through my hand. Looking down, I noticed the solid flesh of my limb was still resting on the armrest.

  Sitting up in the reclining chair of the pink Rolls-Royce, I noticed my hands were made out of mist. I stood straight up and went through the roof of the car, where my hands promptly explored my entire body. I was somewhat relieved to find I was solid to my own touch. I was incorporeal and out of my undead body.

  “Neat,” I said in a voice that echoed, growing in cadence and quickly dissipating. “Neat.” Louder this time, with a more pronounced echo in return.

  The background grabbed my attention and refused to let go. The sky was a blood orange that offered inadequate illumination of the scene around me. Trees were still green, but dull, as if I was in a painting of diluted matte colors.

  The trees didn’t move in the wind. Heck, I couldn’t even feel the wind. Then I noticed the car wasn’t speeding down the road anymore. I was frozen in time, sticking out of the top of the unmoving, solid car. Rather, nothing was moving. Birds hung in the air but appeared to be moving from a shimmer that surrounded everything. It was like looking through a mirage in a color-drained setting. The color was still there, but the once bright-and-popping pink of the Rolls was now a flat shade, as if it had aged a decade in direct sunlight.

  “Confused?” a voice echoed beside me.

  Startled, I cried out and tried to move back, but only succeeded in tumbling in midair, ass over nose. A hand grabbed my head and prevented a full rotation.

  Lily stood, incorporeal as well, though she was upside down. Scratch that, I was upside down.

  With all the elegance that only centuries of assimilating every language I came across could afford, I summoned my vast vocabulary to better express my confusion.

  “Uh…the fuck?” I said with grace befitting royalty.

  “We don’t have much time,” Lily said uncharacteristically. “I brought us to the in-between.” Her cadence had become sharp, bordering on urgency.

  “The what now?” I asked, trying to wiggle myself back upright. Lily took her hand, which was still on my head, and swiped sideways, making me tumble again. She grabbed my ankle as I spun and pulled me down to eye level with her.

  “The place between planes. Couldn’t you have figured that out by the name?” she asked in annoyance. “Now, listen carefully.”

  I listened as she spoke, darkness creeping up from my gut and my heart sinking to meet it in the middle.

  Chapter 34

  Present day

  I crept into consciousness and slowly started to gather that I was on a cold, cement floor. Head swimming, I looked around to see a wide, empty warehouse with swaths of light on the floor from the powerful fluorescent bulbs hanging far above.

  Looking straight up, I got dizzy and fell backward. A large, warm mass stopped me, and I realized I was tied to someone, back to back.

  “Dep-Depweg,” I stammered.

  He answered with a moan, like someone waking from a night of excess drinking. A skull-pounding headache greeted us like an old friend.

  My wrists ached, like they were submerged in flames. The pain spread in both directions, making my hands and forearms tingle as if electrified.

  Straining to turn my head, I saw that both of our hands were cuffed with the chains interlaced, making separation impossible. I noticed there were a number of small crimson circles on the ground. As I watched, a drop of blood fell and created another circle. Puzzled, I looked at my numb hands and saw that there was a trickle of blood coming from my palm, right where the thumb connected.

  “I told you to stay the fuck out of this, Jonathan,” a familiar voice stated from above.

  “It’s just John,” I said drunkenly. Though the effects were wearing off, I slapped the thickness on for good measure. Best to appear more incapacitated than I really was. I started scratching at the small hole in my palm, using my nail as a guide. I knew I was on the right track when I commanded the finger to move and the nail would sometimes catch on the hole.

  With a dramatic thunk, the lights above were shut off. To my left, floodlights p
ointed directly at us and thrust on, blinding me. I heard footsteps descending metal stairs, then padding on concrete. A figure stepped in front of the glaring lights and filled the entire warehouse with a long shadow. Locke’s body was unmistakable, with his freakish height and stringy frame.

  “Do you cosplay as Slender Man?” I asked with slurred words.

  He started walking forward, letting the light slowly swallow his shadow as he approached.

  “Sometimes,” he said, matter-of-factly. “It is quite popular.”

  “Plus, you get to wear a mask to hide your fucked-up piehole,” I added insolently.

  I could see his head drop to his chest as he started chuckling to himself. As if my comment made what he was about to do to us that much sweeter.

  My nail found purchase and I ripped a big chunk of my palm open. Blood started to drip more quickly.

  Locke stopped just short of where I sat and tilted his head; the gold outline of his mask glinted in the lights. I realized he was hearing the drops hit the concrete, and I moved my hands closer to the ground, pulling Depweg’s hands with me. He moaned in protest.

  I rubbed my wounded palm against the other, and then grabbed both wrists with bloody hands, making it look like my wrists were bleeding from the restraints. As Locke’s eyes fell upon our cuffed wrists, I let my hands drop back down.

  Finding nothing of substantial interest, Locke’s gaze returned to meet mine.

  My fingers found what was hidden; a small piece of iron. I gasped lightly when my fingers touched the metal, sending sparks of electricity up my digits.

  From under a mask that left only his mouth exposed, Locke smiled when he saw me wince in pain.

  “How are you enjoying your stay with us so far? Anything I can get you? A spare pillow, perhaps? Oh, I know, a mint for that bloody breath of yours.” At this, Locke covered his mouth with his fist in an attempt to hide the smile that had crept up on him.

  “The important thing is that at least you think you’re funny,” I said. His smile disappeared and he let his hand drop, clearly annoyed that I had taken his self-induced mirth away.

  A click caught Locke’s attention. Eyes narrowing, he started to walk around to my side.

  Quickly, I let my fingers drop from the cuffs again, leaving the key in place. It was facing downward, and Locke was walking on the wrong side to really get a good view.

  “Oh dear, you’ve cut yourself, Jonathan,” he said while continuing the walk around his prizes. He stopped when he was in front of Depweg.

  “Why don’t you use your pixie powers to heal me?” I challenged. This grabbed his full attention, and he was back in front of me in two furious steps.

  He crouched down and grabbed my chin with one hand. In his other, he produced a ball of light the size of a grain of rice. It was bright, like looking into a military-grade flashlight. Locke moved it closer to my face, allowing me to feel the warmth emanating from it. I tried to turn my head, which made his grip on my chin tighter. His physical strength surprised me. Either that or I was weaker than I’d thought from the iron cuffs. It must have shown on my face because a shit-eating grin grew on Locke’s.

  “Feeling weak, are you? You’ll be tickled to know that I had the cuffs made especially for you. A little iron, a little silver, and a touch of holy magic,” he said, letting the light fade from his palm.

  “You can do holy magic too? Whose dick did you suck to learn that?” I asked while removing the key and moving it to the other cuff.

  His smile grew, the corners of his mouth disappearing under the black mask. “I stole it from your priest. Now, pray tell, why did your Father Thomes Philseep have a special pair of handcuffs made specifically for you?”

  “Did you hurt him?” I asked flatly, feeling my head swirl.

  “What? Did I kill your only means of redemption in the eyes of God?” He let my chin drop and stood up, clapping his hands together gleefully. “What would you do if I did?” he said without humor.

  I looked up with a scowl that hurt my face. Tears brimmed in my eyes, threatening to blind me. I forcibly shook my head, making them fall away to the ground, and let sorrow be replaced with a building fury. There was no way in Hell I was about to let Locke see me weep.

  Locke’s smile faded as another click rang out.

  “Kill you,” I whispered in answer to his question as the cuffs fell from my wrists.

  With the blessed metals off my skin, I let my predatory side take full control of the wheel. Everything was in slow motion, but my mind was sharp and overclocked.

  In one swift motion, I half stood, half levitated to my feet in front of a shocked Locke. I grabbed him by the throat and pulled him close. My teeth pierced his neck without preamble, and I tried to inhale as much of his blood as I could before I was, presumably, gunned down, set on fire, or whatever horrors he had waiting for me.

  In my single-minded focus of relieving Locke of his pesky blood, I failed to notice the palm of his hand creeping up to rest on my chest. With a grimace, Locke uttered a command word, and a massive wave of force crashed into my sternum and threw me back so far that I crashed into the wall of the warehouse. Chunks of cement rained down all around me. As I rebounded and hit the ground face-first, I was kindly made aware that my breastbone had been effectively turned into shards of broken glass and sand. I tried to push myself up, but my pectoral muscles had nothing to attach themselves to anymore. Blood drooled out of my mouth, and I was vaguely aware that it was flowing much more freely than possible, even for having just eaten. My lungs must be punctured, and they were hemorrhaging.

  All this took a back seat to the elation I felt coursing through the pipeline of my arterial system. His blood was old and powerful. I didn’t even have to focus on my sunken chest for it to start healing. The crimson elixir carried with it such immense energy that I could barely focus.

  My sternum popped audibly, filling in again. The muscles knitted themselves back into bone, and my lungs sealed. I moaned with half pain, half pleasure.

  Whole once again, I looked up from where I was now able to push myself up, and I immediately locked onto my attacker. He had been thrown back equally from the shock wave and had just regained his footing. Locke’s mask had shattered and was falling away from his face, revealing grotesque burn scars that reminded me of the Hound in Game of Thrones; or the Phantom in The Phantom of the Opera, depending on your taste and sophistication.

  He was shuffling away while holding his neck with both hands. His feet barely adhered to his commands to walk, and his knees tried to buckle. My predatory side felt the inescapable urge to chase after my wounded prey.

  I pushed myself back onto my haunches and then launched into the air, fracturing the stone floor. My black Frankenstein’s monster of a coat billowed from the friction of piercing the air with preternatural speed.

  I was about to wrap my hands around Locke’s neck and tackle him to the ground when an unseen force smashed into the center of my back like a ten-ton garbage truck being dropped from the Empire State building. I felt claws pierce my flesh as we cratered into the ground.

  I turned my head to see a slim demon with skin that smoldered like a dying ember. The black, leather skin glowed with the differing colors of hellfire that roamed over his flesh with perfect symmetry, like a living kaleidoscope. His appendages were too long for his body and were covered in ropey muscle that had a road map of veins tunneling in all directions. At the end of his limbs were birdlike talons with thick, sharp bones sticking out like claws.

  My eyes drifted further, and I could see he was devoid of horns or tusks like most demons I had encountered. He had a normal-sized mouth that was curled in a grimace of anger, showing one row of slightly serrated teeth on both his top and lower jaws. There were two slits where a nose would have been with slightly protruding skin flaps that flailed with each breath, akin to a horse’s nostrils.

  Above that was…nothing. He had no eyes or even indentions where eye sockets would be. It was as if hi
s forehead and nose slits had decided to cut out the middleman and meet in the middle of his face.

  Even without having any eyes, I was uncomfortably aware that he was staring right at me. Assessing his prey like a vulture trying to decide if the carrion had marinated in the sun long enough.

  I heard the warehouse door burst open and then slam shut as Locke fled. He was weak, and I needed to finish this.

  The eyeless demon lifted one of his taloned feet and moved it up toward my neck. I pushed myself in a half circle with my left hand, which threw the beast off center, forcing him to let go.

  Knowing one of the best ways to kill a demon was to decapitate it, I threw my bloodwhip out and around its neck, forcing razors along its length. As I got to my feet in a swift motion, I pulled with immense force and spun in a circle, losing my balance.

  The demon had vanished right before my eyes, leaving my whip in midair, holding nothing.

  A flash of white stars erupted in my vision as the beast appeared next to me and swiped at my head with his taloned hands. Warm liquid raced its way down my neck and into my shirt and coat. Instinctively, I lashed out with my arm, where I hit only air.

  Claws smashed into my left calf and threw me in a complete 360, forcing me to hit the ground with my ankle and then tumble to the ground. My left leg below the knee was numb. I could feel blood seeping into my other pant leg.

  “Shit,” I said to myself, knowing things weren’t looking good for ol’ Johnny boy.

  I had to think of something before I was torn apart. My eyes darted around me to try and find something, anything. My gaze locked onto Depweg, who had his hands in front of him as he undid the last cuff lock. I had made damn sure to put the key in his hands before I attacked Locke.

  Depweg looked at me and nodded. I mirrored the action as a plan came to mind.

  Letting myself drop my head, I started crying out, “I give up. Please, no more!”