Holy Sheoly
Holy Sheoly
Preternatural Chronicles Book 6
Hunter Blain
Contents
A message from Hunter Blain
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Epilogue Part Two
MAKE A DIFFERENCE
ABOUT HUNTER BLAIN
BOOKS BY HUNTER BLAIN
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Hunter Blain
Holy Sheoly
Preternatural Chronicles Book 6
© 2020, Hunter Blain / Argento Publishing, LLC
info@argentopublishing.com
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
A message from Hunter Blain
My name is Hunter, and I’m a wordaholic. I’m also about to break the fourth wall…of your mindhole. Because there is a true story behind this…well…story.
It begins with two best friends who grew up together, breaking rules and raising hell as they shaped each other’s personalities into the shameless assholes they are today. Well, at least for one of them, but I’ll get to that in a moment. These two boys—let’s call them Hunter and John—were all but inseparable. John excelled at creating music powerful enough to make angels weep and being the funniest asshole in Texas while Hunter dabbled—poorly, I might add—in his humble writings. Because they were self-declared brothers from other mothers, John respected Hunter’s humble writings as much as I—I mean Hunter (stupid third person perspective)—respected John’s musical magic. John’s tunes could have changed the world, one day…
One evening, after reading one of Hunter’s horrifically detailed short stories about a serial killer, John asked Hunter to write a story about him.
“Hell yeah, dude! What do you want to be?” Hunter asked, brimming with honor and biting back a very manly squee.
“A vampire,” John responded with a mischievous gleam in his eye. “But not one of those sparkly ones. A true bad ass!”
“Done!” Hunter crowed with a smile and an accompanying high five.
“No, dude. Promise. Promise you’ll write and finish a book about me. You are the most prolific writer of our generation!” John said. (Something like that. I might be paraphrasing a little, but you get the gist of it). “I would consider it an honor to live on for eternity with your words as my life’s blood.”
Hunter agreed, never to realize the weight of that promise until one Sunday morning when his mother called, crying incoherently.
John…had died.
Hunter was left in a cold world without his best friend and doppelgänger, and still thinks about that phone call to this day. How the morning light crept through the bedroom window while Hunter stared at the ceiling, noticing how the popcorn texture created cruel, jagged shadows. How everything started to blur as his chest was crushed beneath the weight of what he was hearing, each word stacking heavily upon the other until only fitful, ragged gasps of air could escape his throat. Only fiery tears existed, especially after the horrific realization that Hunter now had to make some of the hardest phone calls of his life to the circle of friends who orbited around John’s solar pull.
Their bright star was no more, extinguished in an instant, leaving their universe a colder and darker place.
John not only left Hunter, but a friend named Valenta as well. There was also Nathanial and Depweg. The friends were each stricken numb with the loss of such a beloved flare of life. But…
When the three found out that Hunter was keeping his promise to write the greatest story ever told—starring their dear friend, John—they demanded to be a part of the adventure. Each of them immediately knew what type of supernatural character they wanted to play in this urban fantasy eulogy. It would be a funeral pyre of words, and their fictional personas would be John’s pallbearers.
So please, as you read the following pages, feel free to laugh. Laugh at the situations John is placed in and his dickish dialogue to those around him, because John is 100% in this story without alteration (albeit he is a vampire). Laugh and let his memory live on inside the theater of your mind. Like he does in ours.
Thank you, sincerely, from the bottom of my beating heart, for giving my best friend the chance to live again. You are part of this magical ritual, and that would make him the happiest man in the…well, wherever the hell he is.
Cheers,
~Hunter
Epigraph
“Gaze upon me, boy, for I am the mirror from which your darkest fears are reflected. I am that which you cannot escape, could never escape. I am the Omega to your Alpha, the ending to your beginning. I am the bringer of fate and the key to unlock a new eternity. Fall to your knees and beg for mercy, John, for I have none left to give.”
—Ulric, What The Hell
* * *
“Neat.”
—John Cook
Seal of the Council
Prologue
Pristine white loafers hissed through virgin snow the same color as the one-of-a-kind shoes. Ice violently melted where the foot touched, leaving behind a molten trail of glowing prints that resembled hooves rather than the soles of feet.
A dark castle built into the side of a mountain that scraped the sky sat ahead of the man dressed all in ivory. The tip vanished into a solid cloud cover that perpetually released snowflakes. Two mountain ranges formed a nearly perfect V, with the Unseelie Court located in the bottleneck, providing a drastic advantage should the castle be sieged upon.
Angry, freezing winds surged around the stranger, but not even a single strand of his golden hair moved. Beautiful, all-knowing eyes matched the glowing color of his curling mane, seeming to burn like a fervent fire. A confident smile lifted one corner of his mouth at what was to come.
An explosion of snow didn’t even give the stranger pause as a pair of ice giants burst from the ground at the castle gates. Snow hung in the air while solid shards of ice fell like a mortar strike toward the stranger. It could have been construed as pure luck when every jagged piece missed the stranger.
The pair of giants comprised completely of dense blue ice lumbered into position, standing several stories tall and wielding threatening weapons made of the same material. In their bailiwick, the ice weapons could destroy steel as easily as if it were nothing more than mere cardboard. None had ever made it through the gates unless the queen willed it so.
“Who dares trespass on Queen Lilith’s lands?” one of the guards rumbled in challenge while glaring d
own at the intruder.
The beautiful man didn’t even break stride as he brought up an index finger and pressed it to his full lips before blowing out a gentle, steady hiss of air in a, “Shhhhh.”
The guard who had spoken was blown by a searing, violent wind coming straight from Hell itself that instantaneously began melting the ice giant. Large beads of water rocketed off the shrinking frame like bullets, coating the castle walls in sloshing liquid. An entire arm was ripped free with an earsplitting crack as the shocked giant began shrieking in agony and terror. The snow under his feet had completely melted, and the rock underneath began glowing as it was forced to flash boil into white-hot magma.
As the first guard was being reduced to a bubbling pool that hissed in the lava, the second hefted his massive ice club with a roar and slammed it down on the unknown intruder. It broke into several pieces as the man continued striding forward as if nothing had happened. The guard, completely petrified with shock, regarded the broken weapon that had been by his side for millennia.
Huge, wide eyes locked onto the small man in white that wasn’t even tall enough to look over the ice giant’s foot.
The guard, seeing the last chunks of his brother melting into a roiling mist, brought down both hands in a combined hammer strike.
Before his fists could make contact, something unseen grabbed the giant’s limbs and yanked him upward with enough force to crack his joints. The guard screamed as he looked up to see sheets of snow being sucked into a point no bigger than the giant’s open hand. There was blackness beyond, littered only by countless specks of snow.
Horror struck as the giant’s reeling mind understood that what he was seeing wasn’t snow but stars. They were the same glinting specks that he witnessed through the veil of Faerie, undiminished by the false light man created on Midworld.
With a horror never before experienced by the formidable ice giant, he knew that the stranger had created a hole in space to suck him through. The force lifted the being that was several stories tall as if he weighed nothing more than a flake of snow, sending him hurtling through the air with a thunderous cry of fear.
The giant’s lower back smashed into the hole, holding him in place as the snow that hadn’t been thrown into space began to lightly fall back to the ground. It was then that the ice giant knew that his insides were going to be sucked out through an opening so small that he wouldn’t be able to stick even a leg through it.
“No, that’d be too quick,” said the man in white, drawing the giant’s attention with complete authority, as if nothing else in the world mattered but the commanding voice that rang out inside his head. “How about an eternity in space? Perhaps you will wait eons before you come close enough to a star and finally feel the sweet release of death. Yes, that will do just nicely. Enjoy the vacuum of space, my friend, where not even your own voice will be your companion.”
The ice giant sucked in a breath to ask a simple question before the stranger’s words registered in his panicked mind. The hole expanded to fully encompass his entire girth, sending him into the cold loneliness of space.
The giant tumbled head over heels over and over again, watching with sickening realization as the hole grew smaller and smaller with each revolution. The gray light of Faerie dimmed before fading, leaving the being alone in the vast expanse of nothing. He screamed, but no sound reached his ears, prompting him to put forth more effort with the same result. At that moment, he envied his brother, who had been melted and was already in the Veil.
Now, unmolested, the man in white walked to, and then through, the stone door of the castle that was large enough to allow an army of ice giants passage. Molten stone fell to the ground in glowing globs as the stranger strode as if he knew exactly where he was going.
Queen Lilith sat upon her throne, scowling from beneath a sheer veil of frost that stemmed from her crown and traveled down her face. A single frozen tear went from the side of one eye and down to the corner of her pouty lips that looked like they belonged on a drowned corpse, colored the blue of death.
Eyes so pale as to be thought white flashed crimson as Samael, the Lord of Hell, strolled into the throne room. He held an air of authority around him that infuriated the queen. Then again, there wasn’t an overwhelming number of people in the world that could honestly say they would be happy to see their ex.
“What are you doing in my plane, Cursed One?” Queen Lilith demanded as she raised her chin in absolute authority.
“Lily, please—” Samael began peaceably before a glass-shattering shriek interrupted him.
“Do NOT call me Lily! That is reserved for the one I love, and I do not love you, Mephistopheles.”
Samael raised his hands in placation while donning an award-winning grin.
“Lilith, then,” he appeased. “But please, call me Samael. Those other names—though entertaining to me—are reserved for those beneath us who are forced to play the game.”
“You think that everyone is beneath you, Satan,” Lilith barked in response.
“When you are responsible for the universe being created, then I suppose what you say might be correct. Where Father was the engineer, I was the artist. Where He formulated the math that governs the universe, I gave breath to the beauty of the stars, creating life in the ultimate violent explosion. But that’s not why I am here.”
“I know why you are here, and I won’t do it! I love him!” Her breath billowed in a white mist as she spoke, pushing at the frost veil that flowed down her face.
“Oh, Lilith. Dear, sweet Lilith. You will do exactly as I command.” Golden eyes flashed the color of hellfire in warning for only an instant.
Lilith shot to her feet, raising hands that wavered with raw, unseen power. The virgin snow that made up her flowing dress hardened into an icy armor. Canines elongated as eyes glowed crimson.
“Foolish man, you are in my plane. I created it from nothing. I am God here.” As she spoke, chains shot from the darkness to wrap around the intruder’s limbs, waist, and neck while ice began forming where he stood. It inched up his feet and legs, freezing him in place within a prison that no fire could ever melt. Queen Lilith bared a fanged grin as Satan became her prisoner.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Samael responded while looking at the ground and shaking his head. “I had hoped this visit to be amicable, given our past and all.” He walked forward, snapping chains and shattering the ice that had formed up to his waist as if the restraints that had held him in place were nothing more than Scotch tape.
Lilith spoke the word that the ice giant had tried to get out before being sucked into space, “How?”
“You may have created this plane, dear Lily, but I created the entire universe that your plane resides in. No, you are not God. How can you be? I am God.” Samael’s face grew flushed as veins bulged while proclaiming his title. Four horns pierced through flesh at even points around his skull and started to grow, violently. The ivory extended upward for a full foot before a second portion that was halfway up broke off and circled around at a ninety-degree angle to latch onto another horn, forming a halo of bone. Heat wafted up from the circle of ivory, making the remaining six inches that jutted toward the sky dance in the haze.
Samael shot a hand up, holding his fingers in such a way that it looked like he was grasping an invisible cup, and yanked Lilith through the air pugnaciously. He wanted to make sure she understood that what he was saying was the truth.
Searing fingers wrapped around Lilith’s frigid neck, making her yelp before her airway was constricted by Lucifer’s tightening grasp.
Hellfire poured from the eye sockets of the beautiful face that was now distorting grotesquely, like watching a rubber mask be heated by an unseen blowtorch.
Lifting Lilith—Adam’s first wife—up to his face, Samael rumbled with a voice comprised of distant thunder, “You will do exactly as I say, or I will break your mind. Then, and only then, once you have gone insane from disobeying my life debt command, I will burn your pla
ne to cinders before shattering it like a hammer to glass. Do you understand, Lily?”
Knowing he was telling the truth and would do exactly as he threatened, Lilith nodded while desperately gasping for air.
Shifting back to his angelic voice and slightly relaxing his grip, Samael smiled before cooing, “Good. Now listen carefully...”
1
King Taylor of the Seelie Court and I walked through the portal, laughing about my absurd request to find Magni a girlfriend. We stood in my mausoleum just outside the gate to Faerie, which was positioned between the wall and the marble throne that acted as the hidden entrance to my Fortress of Solitaire. The brown of the living portal drastically stood out of place amongst the pure white marble of the entire mausoleum.
“Is the requirement that ‘she like video games’ a deal breaker?” Taylor asked around a chuckle while using air quotes.
“Nah. I know I was reaching with that one. But still, it only makes sense for someone like Magni to date a supe.”
“You don’t think he would be better off with one of his kind?”
“What kind do ya mean? A supe hunter or a human?”
“Well, I meant human, but you do bring up a good point.”
“I don’t follow,” I said, arching an eyebrow.