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

by Hunter Blain

  Now that I had witnessed the incredible power of warping the literal fabric of reality, I understood why Gabriel didn’t want me coming out of the black hole with a line directly pointed at Earth.

  I shuddered to think about flying at nearly the speed of light into and then through the Earth, coming out the other end with presumably enough kinetic energy to es’plode the world from two different points, kinda like eating a Ghost Pepper.

  For those of you who are science nerds: IF I was flying near the speed of light by using classic methods of propulsion, then something my size probably wouldn’t make it through to burn the other side, like a weak Jalapeño. BUT, if I slammed into our planet while using the warp drive theory, then I’m willing to bet both sides would feel the pain, no matter how many wet wipes you used.

  A sort of static dawn loomed on the horizon, and I had to remind myself that the moon wasn’t rotating like the Earth did to reveal the sun.

  As I flew toward the bright side of the moon, I could see the sun’s corona as it bloomed over the horizon, reminding me of what it was like to stare at the sky as a vampire just before dawn.

  “Wow…” I breathed in a loose impression of Owen Wilson before passing the dark side of the moon and revealing the beautiful globe that I called home.

  Except it wasn’t really my home, was it? This was an alternate stream of time that had branched off from the river our universe resided upon.

  To clear the accumulation of uncomfortable thoughts that arose from understanding this was not my Earth, I shook my head like I was trying to erase a dollar store Etch A Sketch.

  Even from over 200,000 miles away, more of the world continually came into view, trying its best to convince me of its legitimacy, and doing a damn good job of it. It did, however, make it easier to see the Earth half cloaked in shadow, making it look like a video game area that I hadn’t yet unlocked.

  “It’s not real,” I said to myself, attempting to solidify the fact that the realistic Earth before me wasn’t home. I didn’t know why it was important to do so, but I also didn’t fight the feeling of importance at remembering my Earth was awaiting the success of this mission.

  Once the moon was directly behind me, I took a moment to notice how the sun was skewed to the side. It seemed an awkward place to be in reference to all the space movies I’d ever seen. They usually made it where the Earth was always bright blue and the moon was a glowing gray, with the sun somehow illuminating both astral bodies perfectly.

  I could probably think about the positioning of the Earth, moon, and sun for several minutes, but now wasn’t the time.

  Orienting on the western hemisphere of Earth—judging by the collection of lights that outlined North America—I saw the United States was heading into the early dawn hours.

  A thought came over me, and I glanced across the ocean toward Europe.

  “If I was Deppyweg…where would I be? Home in Germany?” Shifting my gaze back to North America, I continued with, “Or in the good ol’ U. S. of A.?” Looking down the coast of Florida and into the Bahamas, I quickly shrugged off the notion of Depweg relaxing on a white sandy beach somewhere with a dog bowl of margarita mix.

  “Heh,” I chuckled. “Dog bowl.”

  As I neared the Earth, I dramatically slowed my approach to what felt like a crawl as I let my eyes glide over the Gulf of Mexico.

  “Or home near Houston,” I considered in a statement rather than an outright question, at the very least trying to get a gut feeling of where he might be. His cabin near Lufkin was slightly elbowing me, but not hard enough to produce a confident conclusion. I mean, it made sense for him to go there…unless the alternate Depweg was already there.

  I shrugged and continued scanning the world as it grew larger the closer I approached, revealing more details.

  I knew he wasn’t a beach kind of guy, preferring as many trees around him as possible…and deer! Yeah! He loved him some fresh venison. So deer and lots of trees. That eliminated a decently large chunk of the United States, such as the deserts, coastlines, and snowcapped mountains, which I could clearly see from my vantage point.

  I almost cursed at seeing how much green was being illuminated by the sun as light raced from east to west, revealing an enormous area of potential land Depweg might call home. States like Arkansas had spring water, breathtaking mountains, and plentiful forests…but lacked a ley line.

  Shooting my gaze back toward Houston, I desperately tried to remember Locke talking about the points of concentrated energies that dotted the world.

  I could almost hear him now.

  “Ley lines blah blah blah supes instinctively collect around blah blah blah it’s important to remember blah blah blah of vast importance to blah blah blah.”

  “Stupid Locke with his stupid boring knowledge.”

  Looking over the world below, I couldn’t decide where my best friend would set up shop and await rescue. A part of me felt ashamed of not knowing my bromego well enough. Then again, I don’t expect many friends sit around the campfire and casually ask, “Hey, bro. If you were to get stuck back in time, where would you wait for me to, like, come get you and junk?”

  Stuck with indecision, I turned to Jose and asked, “Can you, um, feel him yet?”

  As I spoke, I let the manifestation drop so I could see the were, only to remember that he didn’t have supercool angel armor.

  Jose wordlessly screamed while clutching at his throat and wildly kicking his feet.

  “Shit!” I yelped before manifesting the sphere again, complete with the equivalent of Earth’s atmosphere while at sea level.

  I cringed with a whoopsy face as I felt Jose angrily pounding on the walls of the sphere. I couldn’t hear the thump thump thump due to the vacuum of space, but I could sure as shit feel it through my manifestation.

  Turning back to Earth, I briefly wondered if the International Space Station was close by. Heh, how great would it be if I flew over and knocked on one of their windows before pointing and laughing as they did a classic cartoon double take.

  Looking around, I couldn’t see the space station, and then remembered Gabriel said I was going back to 1960. We hadn’t even landed on the moon yet, much less constructed a permanent fixture in the orbit of Earth.

  “Aw, man,” I moaned in disappointment as I kicked at a spot in space as if I were moving a pebble with the toe of my boot.

  My celestial batteries gave me a courtesy ping that the recharge of unfiltered sunlight was going swimmingly—whatever that meant—and I turned my head to see I was now alongside Earth in relation to the sun and moon. As the Earth rotated counterclockwise, I had oriented on the US as it was entering the dawn, effectively putting the moon to my left, sun to my right, and the beautiful globe of home right in front of me.

  “It’s not home!” I reminded myself, regrouping my focus to the mission at hand.

  Revving up the old warp drive, I ever so slightly increased my speed to travel just outside of Earth’s atmosphere, least I do some accidental harm like Gabriel had suggested I might.

  Once above the Gulf Coast, I let my warp drive completely drop and extended myself out into a freefall position as Earth’s gravity did the rest of the work, pulling me home. I mean, not home!

  Once I hit the upper atmosphere, I nearly had the breath knocked out of me again as I felt the thin air pushing against my body.

  While keeping a focus on Jose, I pulled my feet together and arms close to my sides, hands touching my thighs, effectively making me a John-missile. As I pulled my arms out to my sides and my legs slightly apart, webbed material comprised of ivory manifested, providing me with an impromptu flight suit.

  Focusing on the cluster of industrial complexes that I knew to be one of the oil sectors of southern Houston, I moved my arms and legs until I felt myself start slicing through the air instead of falling directly toward the ground.

  Heat began at the tip of my nose as wind harshly screamed into my ears. My armor reacted by covering me from h
ead to toe with angelic protection, though I noticed it had been modified for flight instead of fight.

  My helmet, for one, had a clear visor that allowed me to see. It was also shaped like a bird’s head or a jet with a cone at the front to help with aerodynamics.

  “Woooo-ho-hooooo!” I cheered as I zipped through the morning sky and moved my arms to do a series of insanely fast spins in midair, resembling a skydiving ballerina. I was going so fast that it looked like the Earth was spinning in front of me instead of me turning like a top.

  Leveling out, I noticed the heat continued to build as I traveled into thicker portions of the Earth’s atmosphere. My teeth also began rattling in my skull as the world around me bounced like an overzealous quarter machine massage bed in a cheap motel.

  To combat this, I willed my armor to send out a tiny parachute from the bottom of my feet in an attempt to start arresting my momentum. It was then that I became aware that my foot bone was connected to my ankle bone, and my shin bone was connected to my, um, knee…um…bone?

  “Ow!” I barked between teeth as I tried not to lose focus on my wingsuit, the direction I was flying, and Jose’s trouble bubble. Having the joints in your legs and hips yank apart sure did demand a lot of attention in the form of wonderful, plentiful pain signals.

  After a moment, the small parachute did its job, slowing the world around me and allowing the pain in my legs to recede as joints and tendons healed.

  Returning my attention to where I was flying, I saw I was quickly approaching the outskirts of Houston from around five miles up, and dropped my parachute and the wings of my flight suit.

  As gravity tried to change my trajectory, I manifested my old tried and true angel wings, complete with a full set of magnificent feathers that shimmered with gold in the direct sunlight.

  As I soared like a majestic eagle, I oriented on what I hoped was there, and aimed for the portion of town where my cemetery home would one day be built in, along with Val’s Saloon and the church of Father Thomes Philseep.

  Sending out a silent prayer, I also dared to hope that Depweg might be there, waiting for me with a handmade sign and a big smile as if he were picking me up from the airport.

  My prayers, it would seem, would not be answered this day.

  18

  Depweg - Grand Island, Nebraska, 1983

  Depweg was all but completely healed and feeling considerably better than when he had first arrived. The beast in his mind had reset the hourglass and returned to the shadows.

  A gentle, cool breeze glided over his skin as if to make sure he was, in fact, healed up.

  The thin rubber sole of the just-too-small Converse shoes thudded against the sidewalk as Depweg focused on just barely curling his toes in an attempt to buy some room.

  Meli noticed the odd footfalls and debated on making a reference to how dogs walk whenever their owners put little shoes on them, but decided the joke might be in poor taste.

  “Want to tell me more about the battle I apparently helped you win?” Meli asked.

  “I was just thinking about that,” Depweg admitted, visibly choosing his words with a face that crinkled and then relaxed again. “I’m not sure how much I should say. I mean, we barely won, so if I told you something, it could change the future.”

  The pair thought for a moment as they casually strolled on the sidewalk belonging to Meli and Tiffany’s neighborhood.

  “Well,” Meli began, thinking the situation through aloud. “In the future, did I say anything about this?”

  Depweg looked over to see Meli gesturing all around with her hands, and got her meaning.

  “No. No, you never told me we had met before.”

  “Right. And I would like to think that I’ll always remember the time a fellow were traveled back in time from fifty years in the future after having won a gnarly battle against evil, with me fighting on the side of the good guys.”

  Depweg chuckled at the statement, realizing she was right.

  “I don’t really know what to say,” he admitted with a broad smile as he looked forward. “John has always been the one who is good with science and math.”

  “Isn’t he an idiot?”

  Depweg barked out with a fit of laughter that brought tears to his eyes.

  “He is and he isn’t,” Depweg admitted, giving the notion a serious once over. “I know for a fact that the angelic armor makes things a lot easier for him, and that includes vaguely understanding the math that governs the universe. But I’ve also known him to be imaginative on his own. Sometimes he has the mind of a child—all emotion without seeing more than one step ahead. Then others…” Depweg thought about some of the conversations the pair had shared over the years. “Other times, he is self-aware and incredibly insightful, as well as being remarkably resilient. That man has suffered more than anyone else I have ever met, and has kept his mind intact.”

  A dark memory flashed through Depweg’s mind like an obsidian strobe light, showing image after image of countless innocents being devoured, disemboweled, and mutilated by a feral werewolf who had gained control from a weak man who had once caged the voracious beast. Countless people had been slaughtered in Mexico, but only one man sprang to the forefront of his mind like the symbol of all the collective suffering: Jose. Because Depweg had let the feral beast loose, Jose had been infected with the were virus and had killed his family during his first transformation.

  For all weres, the first full moon forced the virus to fully take hold, and a newborn wolf was set free, with the human’s mind trapped until they eventually learned how to control the beast…or were put down.

  Depweg remembered the story of Joey and Dawson’s first transformation, and how they had killed not only their parents but also dozens of innocents trapped inside a hotel ballroom.

  Now that the pain of losing Joey and Dawson had been truly felt, Depweg sympathized with the man who had lost his family in a way he couldn’t have been able to comprehend before. Though the pain of loss that stemmed from a shattered pack could never rival that of losing one’s immediate family, Depweg was still able to somewhat grasp the unnecessary agony he had forced on Jose.

  Feeling a deep pang of regret, Depweg briefly wondered if he would ever see Jose again and be given the chance to make amends. Surely he understood how powerless a man could be when the beast took over.

  His mind cleared without warning, leaving Depweg staring blankly at the world around him. His feet had stopped receiving signals from a brain that was preoccupied with marinating on pain that felt fresh and visceral. Then again, what were memories if not relived moments played out in the theater of your own mind.

  “Jonathan? You okay?”

  “Huh?” Depweg asked.

  Blinking eyes shifted to and then focused on a concerned Meli.

  “You went all mental on me.”

  “I, ah…I went somewhere I didn’t like.”

  “Want to talk about it?” Meli asked. Depweg understood she wasn’t asking to find out information for her own selfish reasons; she simply wanted to see if she could help.

  “Not…just yet.”

  After a brief moment of time that felt appropriate had passed, Meli suggested, “Shall we continue?”

  “Huh?” Depweg said before seeing Meli gesturing toward the sidewalk. “Oh, um, yeah.”

  The pair continued walking, but the nagging thoughts of horror lingered in the recesses of Depweg’s mind.

  “Can you tell me something about you?” Depweg asked, trying to force away the dead faces that haunted his mind. It was as if every cloud in a darkening sky and every lengthening shadow pretended to be the victims of the feral wolf. Where children might see bunnies or butterflies in the clouds, Depweg’s mind projected death and torment. Where Meli might see the elongating shadows as nothing more than an effect of the setting sun, Depweg saw laid out corpses with faces that stretched in terror.

  “What would you like to know?” Meli asked, unknowingly pulling Depweg’s focus from be
low a suffocating surface.

  Depweg quickly followed up with, “Anything.”

  “Okay, um…let’s see…”

  “Where’s your brother?” Depweg suggested, just trying to get her talking about anything.

  Cold silence greeted him, drawing Depweg’s attention. The pair stopped walking, and it was Meli’s turn to have a thousand-yard stare.

  “Prison.”

  Depweg began to ask what everyone did whenever they were told that someone had died or gone to prison, but decided at the last moment that how wasn’t a polite question.

  Meli seemed to sense this and answered anyway.

  “Drugs,” Meli admitted somberly. “He ran dry and went out to get a fix, however he could. He…he hurt some people, bad. Been in prison ever since.”

  Depweg took in what she was saying as the pair started walking again. A loud car with a worn serpentine belt drove by, giving the weres a few extra moments to process the weight of the conversation.

  To his disgust, Depweg was happy that the heaviness of her admission had successfully pulled him free from the waters of depression and regret.

  As the pair continued, a question began to form in his mind. Meli was already anticipating it, and answered before Depweg could ask.

  “He said he didn’t shift or anything. But even if he didn’t…you know how strong shifters are.”

  Depweg nodded in understanding. One were in human form had the strength of at least ten men. Now that he controlled the feral beast, the power that came with it had also drastically increased.

  Meli continued, interrupting Depweg’s thoughts about being a feral werewolf.

  “After he came home from raiding a drug house…it was me who convinced him to turn himself in.”

  Depweg looked at Meli with an understanding expression that exuded respect.

  “I know how hard that must have been.”

  Meli wiped a tear from her eye in a quick jerking motion, embarrassed at having shown weakness, or maybe vulnerability.