The Preternatural Chronicles: Books 0-3

by Hunter Blain

  Two of the thugs went around the side of the car, one on each side, knives ready.

  My arms shot forward, breaking the fingers of the punk that had been holding me from behind. He inhaled sharply as he held his fingers in front of his face. His eyes were the size of cue balls.

  Turning to him, I tilted his head to one side with a finger, then pretended to put a napkin in my shirt while licking my lips.

  I could sense the leader behind me, frozen in surprise, still holding the gun on me.

  Whispering in the tax-paying citizen’s ear, I said, “Now, this may sting a tad,” and bit into his neck, letting the blood flow from him to me. My nerves were alight with renewed energy, and my legs started healing. The bruised feeling over my body withered and was replaced by strength and energy.

  The Big Gulp started sinking to the ground, weak in the knees, as I started to rise, growing at the knees. His eyes rolled back into his head and his cheeks became sunken. I let him drop, lifeless, to the ground, skin matching the color of his wifebeater.

  I stood on brand-spank’n-new legs and turned to the leader, who was rubbing his eyes muttering, “It’s a bad trip, man. A bad trip!”

  His gun barked as I stepped toward him, his free hand unironically clutching a crucifix that hung from a gold chain around his neck. My acting classes paid off as I did my best Bugs Bunny impersonation of when he was shot. I made “oooh” and “ahh” noises while stumbling around jerkily, my face contorted in hilariously dramatic poses.

  “Get out of the car! Now!” one of the men barked at the werewolf.

  “It’s a jeep, not a car,” Depweg said as I heard the door open.

  “Stop playing around,” Depweg commanded as one of the goons flew toward the front of the jeep, landing next to the leader. Confident footsteps walked around the back of the vehicle and approached the remaining moron. This was followed by a shaky voice screaming a machine-gun succession of noes that were interlaced with the growing epiphany that a mistake had been made. His body flew onto the street in front of where I stood.

  Shocks protested as Depweg walked back around and got into his jeep.

  Taking my cue, I grabbed the leader and pulled him close with one hand. With the other, I plucked the cheap, gold-painted cross from his chain and brought it up to his bulging eyes, where it was crushed between forefinger and thumb. By reflex alone, he kept the gun pointed at my chest, barking until empty. Even as I drained him, the clicking sound could be heard as the trigger was squeezed repeatedly. The clicking slowed and eventually stopped, along with his heart. I let him drop and finished off the other two morsels with my bloodwhips, draining them completely before climbing back into the jeep with Depweg.

  “Feeling better?” Depweg asked.

  “Oh, man, I am stuffed to the rafters!” I claimed, rubbing my stomach with enthusiasm.

  “Did you have to scare him so bad with the cross?” Depweg asked, only half accusingly.

  “First, how the hell did you see that? And second, yes. He clearly wasn’t the churchgoer he pretended to be. Otherwise he wouldn’t be in his current predicament, now would he?”

  Depweg pointed forward and I followed his finger to the hood, which was still up. At the bottom, I could see the gap that had allowed Depweg to view my theatrical performance.

  “Oh, sorry about that. Didn’t think you’d see me go all antihero on him.”

  “Not that,” Depweg started, “The hood. Close it.”

  “Right. The…the hood,” I said as I slid out of the passenger’s seat and walked to the front, slamming the hood down.

  As I got back in, Depweg looked at me and said, “They deserved their fate. They made the bed, now they sleep in it.” As he finished, he looked forward and started the jeep up, continuing on our journey.

  As if to further cement his approval, Depweg broke the silence and said, “Well, I see you got your shoe holders back,” while nodding at my legs.

  Taking the lifeline, I said, “To the shoe store!” while pointing forward, relieved to have him on my side.

  Depweg smiled, and we were on our way back to his cabin in the woods.

  Chapter 30

  Present day

  Depweg and I had a long talk about different things, resolidifying our bond as supernatural brothers from another mother…and species. We hadn’t spoken as much since Father Thomes and I had begun our missions, and it felt good to catch up. Though I knew I had been doing the right thing with Father T, it had caused me to separate myself from my only true friend. I mean, Da and Val are—or were—friends, but they didn’t understand me like Depweg did. He was my hetero soulmate.

  Depweg filled the time by further explaining about his canine shelter and how he had built every kennel himself—he had used wood he’d chopped down from the trees on his vast property. He had enough stories about the dogs and how they had come to be in his care that the car ride felt like minutes instead of the hours it actually was. The most heartbreaking was Tiny Tim’s, who had been abused by his drunken master for being different, culminating with the piece of shit throwing a cinder block at the poor pup and snapping its little back. I wanted to pay a visit to the bastard, but Depweg assured me it had been taken care of. I wasn’t entirely sure if he meant by the mortal authorities or by the justice of the food chain.

  He asked about the father, and I explained how we had met during a time when I had felt aimless in my unlife. I had been doing good things, but on a small scale: stop a murderous cartel ring here, catch a serial killer there. There had been so much more good I could have been doing with my abilities, and Father Thomes Philseep had provided just the direction I had been looking for. Plus, it hadn’t hurt to be doing favors for an emissary of the Big Guy upstairs.

  All caught up on what we had been doing since we had last parted, we discussed our next plan of action, which meant grabbing some of his arsenal from his house/lair. The silver-and-iron bullets would make our lives so much easier when dealing with what was coming. There were semiautomatic rifles, bolt-action sniper rifles, shotguns, and varying sizes of easily concealable handguns we could use. Plus, body armor that could cover us from head to toe. Nothing would be able to stop us!

  At one point, I asked Depweg to pull over. I picked up a nice, baseball-sized rock, and heaved it across the road into a certain tanning salon/auto repair. Chuckling to myself, I got back into the jeep to face an astonished Depweg.

  “He’ll fix it,” I said confidently. “He’s good with glass.”

  Shrugging, Depweg pulled back on the road and toward the beginning of the end.

  As we turned to pull down his long gravel driveway, we saw the black smoke drifting into the sky. Depweg saw it first, eyes growing wide with dread.

  He slammed on the gas, throwing us back in our seats. We traversed the gravel driveway with highway speeds, bumps and potholes threatening to dismantle the undercarriage.

  The smell of burning wood, grass, fur, and flesh grew denser in the night air as we closed the distance.

  I could hear Depweg next to me crying out in dismay as the wind let up, allowing the sound of whimpers and piercing howls to fill the vast expanse of his violated property.

  Depweg smashed on the brakes and we skidded to a halt. I used the momentum of the braking to propel myself forward, and sprinted on bare feet toward the burning house. The fire raged red and orange with highlights of green hellfire. The heat forced me to slow and shield my face. I was intent on getting the silver weapons though, and pushed forward.

  From the house came a barely audible whimper over the rolling thunder of the hungry flames.

  “Tim!” I screamed in gut-wrenching panic. That gave me all the motivation I needed, and I ran full speed at the engulfed cabin, veering at the last second to jump through the rainwater collector attached to the side of the house. I burst through the white plastic and came out drenched from head to toe in cool water.

  I could hear Depweg behind me, running for the kennels. His breath came in raged,
panicked gasps, as if he were barely holding on to his sanity.

  Leaping through the flames and the already broken window of the living room, I called out to Tiny Tim. I was met with the deafening roar of flames as they consumed everything in the house. I ran through the house at preternatural speed, looking for my little buddy. The sound of pure anguish being screamed at length into the night from outside made me pause. Depweg had made it to the kennels.

  Water evaporated in plumes off of me at an alarming rate, snapping me back into focus.

  Feeling the fierce strength of the hellfire threatening to eat my protective layer and burn my essence, I continued my search, desperate to find Tim. A fresh scent of singeing fur caught my attention, and I followed it into the bedroom where the bed was a pit of dancing fire. Throwing myself on the floor, I found him. There, underneath the inferno, was Tiny Tim, wheelchair overturned and fur smoking and shriveling before my eyes. His breathing was quick and shallow, and I grabbed him by the chair and pulled him out. I stood, pulling him to my chest, and leaped through the bedroom window onto the back porch. Twinkling glass rained down around me like the stars winking in the night sky.

  I set down Tim, who was limp, and noticed he had stopped breathing. Dropping to my knees, I frantically started CPR, trying my best to not blow out his little lungs. Between breaths, I placed my index and middle finger on his sternum, pressing in and letting up in quick succession.

  “Come on, little buddy! Don’t leave me!” I begged between breaths.

  I put my ear to his chest, and I could hear his little heart fluttering erratically. I placed my lips around his snout and continued administering CPR. After a few more breaths and compressions, I leaned down again and listened.

  His heart slowed, and then gave up, beating for the last time. I lifted my head up and looked down on him in dismay. His little mouth hung open with his tongue hanging out the side. His eyes were half-closed, with only the whites showing. The fur on his body was black around the edges. I leaned down and kissed his little nose, which had split open from inhaling the blistering smoke of the hellfire.

  My head shook back and forth in disbelief. I swallowed hard and said to myself, “No. It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair!”

  After a few moments of staring down at the lifeless body of Tiny Tim, I removed him from the constraints of his blackened wheelchair and clutched him against my chest. I raised my head and saw Depweg slumped on his knees in front of rows of burning kennels. The sound of crackling flesh and the smell of burnt fur lay heavy in the air, competing with the black smoke from the house on which could be the first to choke one of us. Depweg’s chin rested on his chest, and his arms lay motionless in front of him, the backs of his open hands resting on the ground. There were red plastic gas cans littered around the grounds.

  Through the crackling of the fire, I could hear the deep sobs emanating from my friend. The only friend that understood me and the constant, unyielding battle between my conscious and predatory sides. I had alienated everyone else in my life; Da for losing control and feeding on a grieving mother in front of her child; Valenta for breaking the rules and putting a target on my head; and Father Philseep for both reasons. Now, the only person who was in the same boat as me had been targeted and attacked simply for being my friend and helping me.

  I looked back down at Tim and said to him, “This is my fault.”

  My jaw locked in anger, and I could feel myself starting to shake with unbridled wrath. I jerked my head to the side and sent sheer energy empowered with anger into the ground, exploding a hole big enough to bury the form that was now lifeless because of my actions. I placed my little buddy in the hole and covered him up with dirt, whispering my last goodbyes to him, promising to punish the person responsible.

  It hit me like a kick in the nuts. Lifting my head with wide eyes and yelling through clenched teeth, I screamed, “Locke!” Spittle flew and speckled the ground.

  Depweg, weak as if the will to live had been syphoned from him, turned his head to look at me. His head bobbled and swayed, like he was ready to pass out from pure anguish. My words hit him and everything in him tensed. He rose a few inches as his legs tightened at the command from his brain telling him the time for grieving was over; it was time for bloodshed. Depweg stood up from where he sat and turned his body toward me, eyes blazing—literally. The flames that were consuming his home were reflected in his eyes. I didn’t know what to expect as he started to approach me, but whatever he was about to do, I deserved it.

  There was power in his steps as Depweg strode over to me. Shadows danced on his features from the house fire, while crackling flames roared behind from the kennels. I sat there, staring at him like watching a car crash in slow motion; helpless. This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t come here. Whatever was about to befall my head, I wouldn’t fight back.

  Depweg stopped in front of me and stood for a moment, fists the size of lunch boxes pulsating with barely contained rage. I waited for what was coming.

  He unclenched a fist and extended his arm to me, fingers spread. He must have seen the look of confusion cross my face, for he shook his hand, signaling me to take it. I reached out and grabbed his forearm. Depweg’s monstrous fingers clasped around my own, and he pulled me up. We stood, face to face, grasping each other’s forearms as he spoke. But what came out of his mouth was made by an animal’s vocal chords, deep and rumbling.

  “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” As he spoke, his eyes shifted to yellow slits, and his teeth elongated into long rows of razor-sharp fangs that faced slightly backward, all the better for grabbing you with, my dear. A vengeful smile creased my own face, and I let my own eyes shift to their predatory aspect, and my canines elongated into surgical points.

  Chapter 31

  Present day

  We spent the remainder of the night hashing out ideas as we buried each of Depweg’s canines. I created the holes, and he used a shovel and a bucket to keep the charred remains together so they could be buried in one piece. Blackened bones pierced the ashes, reaching out to the stars.

  Depweg sobbed off and on, as if losing a war with his emotions. I caught myself frozen as the thought of Tiny Tim flashed through my mind, reinforcing my resolve to punish Nathanial Locke, the warlock. Lilith, what a stupid made up name. Oh how I hated everything about him.

  After the house fire died out, we searched his cache and found that the hellfire had melted the silver with its anticelestial heat. With no weapons aside from the remaining rounds from my Glock, Depweg and I would have to rely on our brains.

  I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right, so I’ll naturally be leaving most of the decision-making to the military mind of Depweg. My brain is mostly filled with movie trivia. For instance, did you know that Jack Nicholson didn’t take a salary for the 1989 Batman? Instead, he opted for a percentage on the back end, including merchandise. Up until R.D.J. reprised his role as Iron Man for The Avengers, Jack had made the most money of any actor in history. Neat, right? Locke doesn’t stand a chance against me!

  As we finished the ceremony of respect, I handed the gun and spare magazine over to Depweg. He looked at it and then back at me, smiling.

  “Won’t be needing that.” He gestured with his human hands and wiggled his thumbs. I caught on. He wouldn’t have opposable thumbs once he transformed. Werewolves had supernatural strength that rivaled that of ogres and outright beat vampires’, but they couldn’t open a jar of pickles. When choosing their attributes, werewolves put everything they had into strength and let dexterity slide to the wayside. I liked to think vampires were a healthy mix. Though I was faster than any werewolf, if I were to be cornered, there would be little I could do to stop a fully transformed were from mauling me to death and feasting on my assumedly tasty meat.

  I placed the Glock back into my waistband at the small of my back and pocketed the spare mag.

  Depweg grabbed the handle to his back door, turned the knob, and pulled. The entire
door came off its frame and crumbled into pieces at his feet. Still holding the knob, Depweg looked at his hand and let the brass piece fall from his opening fingers. Watching this happen gave me a ping of regret and I flinched, knowing that the simple action personified him losing everything he had.

  Depweg stepped through the threshold and looked around at what had once been his home. I walked up beside him and placed my hand on his shoulder, saying,

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Nothing to worry about, buddy. They were just things. The walls and ceiling were wood, as was the furniture. I made them all and can remake them, with time,” he said.

  He stepped away from my hand and walked to the kitchen with purpose. He stopped in front of the scorched refrigerator and grabbed one of the handles. As he pulled, nothing happened. He put some force into it, and the fridge opened with a wail of protest. The smell of cooked meat, veggies, and melted cheese escaped, along with the odor of melted plastic. Inside, the shelves looked like a Salvador Dali painting. All that was missing was a melted clock on one of the shelves.

  Depweg crouched, grabbed a warped shelf, and pulled it off its hinges, letting it hit the ground at his feet. With ease, he ripped the top of the shelf off and reached in to pull out something wrapped in butcher’s paper. It was seventeen inches long and slightly curved, similar to a banana.

  He turned and set it on a small piece of his countertop that still remained, and began to respectfully unravel it.

  Wrapped in the paper was a kukri blade sheathed in old, worn leather. The handle was five inches in length and made from a dark wood. It had been well cared for over the years, with the handle being treated with oils. He grasped it and pulled out the blade, which was a full foot long and hummed with power.