The Preternatural Chronicles: Books 0-3 Read online

  The Preternatural Chronicles

  Book .5 - 3

  Hunter Blain

  Contents

  A message from Hunter Blain

  Deliverance (Prequel Novella)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Epilogue

  I’m Glad You’re Dead (Book 1)

  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

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue—Part 1

  Epilogue—Part 2

  Dawn and Quartered (Book 2)

  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

  Epilogue—Part 1

  Epilogue—Part 2

  Shadow of a Doubt (Book 3)

  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

  Epilogue

  TEASER: MOONLIGHT EQUILIBRIUM (BOOK 3.5)

  TEASER: MOUTH OF MADNESS (BOOK 4)

  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

  The Preternatural Chronicles: Books .5-3

  The Preternatural Chronicles Boxset Book 1

  © 2019, Hunter Blain / Argento Publishing, LLC

  [email protected]

  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

  Seal of the Council

  Deliverance (Prequel Novella)


  Chapter 1

  Houston, 1990

  Frantic footsteps echoed down the dark alley, accompanied by labored breaths of panic. The would-be rapist’s feet worked faster than his reeling mind, and he stepped into a puddle that hid a deep pothole. Trembling hands shot out to cushion my dinner’s fall, but slipped on the wet concrete. I let out an eerie giggle that reverberated off the stone walls as I dramatically skipped like a theater student trying out for the role of the playful Victorian girl—overdoing it as much as possible. My eyes glowed a fierce red as I smiled, baring teeth with two elongated canines. Long black hair whipped around my head as I skipped, a few times getting into my eyes and prompting a quick swipe of my hand.

  I did so enjoy living in a densely populated city like Houston; it afforded me with hunting grounds ripe for the picking. Whenever I was hungry, all I had to do was lurk in the shadows around high-crime neighborhoods and just…wait. This night, my preternatural ears had picked up the cries of a young Latina woman whose only crime had been walking on a sidewalk in a bad part of town after sunset. Following the screams, which had been ignored by the mortals living in the area, I had come upon the crime in progress. The rapist had been tearing at the young lady’s fast food uniform, which had had a white plastic name tag with the name “Anna” stenciled upon it.

  Two glowing rubies emerging from the shadows had made Anna stop screaming, which had caught the attention of her attacker. His hungry eyes had lifted from exposed skin to see a face stunned in disbelief. Following her unbelieving gaze, the rapist had turned his head to bear witness to the consequences of his life choices. Without waiting for orders from the brain, his legs had begun pumping in an attempt to flee his fate before plunging into that very fateful pothole.

  The rapist quickly rolled onto his back, attempting to crab walk away while whimpering, “No! Please don’t hurt me!” and slipping hysterically on the wet pavement, when just minutes ago, his role had been the reverse, and he hadn’t listened to Anna.

  I leaped into the air, my black WWII trench coat billowing as I majestically soared, and landed on top of the naughty man. Black, steel-toed Doc Martens crunched delicate parts between boot and concrete. The rapist’s eyes bulged to the point I thought they were about to burst from their sockets like champagne corks. He inhaled sharply, his throat whistling loud enough that I thought a train was about to come barreling out of his agony-stricken face.

  I twisted my feet before lifting my boots off his hard-boiled eggs, which were now scrambled with a split sausage to complete the ensemble. I stepped to either side of his writhing torso while blood rushed to escape its phallic prison, staining his blue jeans a satisfying karmic crimson.

  It was then that the once-rapist finished sucking in all the air into his lungs, unleashing a high-pitched scream that would probably be heard from the moon. At least he would have if not for the swift punch to his chest that fractured his sternum like a windshield after a hailstorm. Accumulated air rushed out in a single shotgun blast, making my black hair blow back ever so slightly. His breath smelled of alcohol, cigarettes, and bad decisions.

  As veins bulged and capillaries broke in the no-longer-a-rapist’s face, I leaned down until we were nose to nose. As he stared wide-eyed into my glowing ruby pupils, I whispered, “What did the vampire say to the whimpering blood bank?”

  He answered with wordless squeaks as his gaping mouth tried desperately to suck air into his collapsed lungs.

  I moved my mouth closer to his ear and answered the question for him, “I’d like to make a withdrawal.” As I spoke, I willed my blood to ooze out of my palm and coagulate into a razor-sharp dagger, which I plunged into the thug’s blood-soaked liver. As my manifestation pierced his flesh, I began to exsanguinate him, taking the crimson life energy into my being.

  I moaned in pure elation as his blood flowed through my veins, tickling every nerve in my body like a lover running their fingers lightly across my skin. Over my entire being, hairs stood on end as wave after wave of unimaginable pleasure coursed through my eager flesh. My eyes rolled back into my head as my mouth hung agape in ecstasy.

  The Big Gulp’s heart began to flutter erratically as his blood tank went steadily from Full to Empty, relinquishing every last drop to its new master.

  As the final drop crossed the threshold, I slid my blooddagger out of his shriveled liver and willed the manifestation to retreat back into my hand. Red eyes shifted to a brilliant purple, the color of sunset, as long fangs retracted, falling back in line.

  I stood, feeling the cool night air caress my skin, which was warm from the fresh kill.

  With perfect comedic prowess, I burped before covering my mouth and exclaiming with wide eyes, “Excuse me!” to the empty alley. “Must have been something I ate,” I said to myself as I reached down and grabbed the husk of the corpse by the belt. Looking up at the roofline of one of the buildings we were between, I jumped up with ease to land on the ledge, some twenty feet above the ground. I scanned the horizon, found the landmarks I was searching for, bent at the knees, and launched into the darkness. We soared over several buildings, my coat flapping in the wind sounding like a diesel engine. My cargo lost a shoe in midflight, which made me smile for some reason. A building rushed up to meet us and I landed in a crouch, only to explode into the night again.

  In short order, I arrived at my destination on the eastern edge of the city: a wide, calm river surrounded by nature, hungrily awaiting its prize. I walked to the edge of the embankment, lifted my offering, and tore a limb from the torso. I whistled a few times, as if summoning a loyal dog, and threw an arm into the murky water. Within moments, a log emerged from the shadows and burst from the water long enough to grab the limb between its prehistoric jaws before disappearing into the inky depths. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth.

  I tore another piece of meat from its socket and tossed it in, whistling a staccato to signal mealtime. Several more alligators cruised over to the floating protein and began fighting over the morsel.

  “Whoa there, fellas. I brought enough for all of ya,” I exclaimed delightedly as I began tearing chunks of white and pink flesh, tossing them into the bubbling fray. It was a darkly humorous twist on old people feeding bread to ducks.

  As I threw the shoeless foot into the water, a smaller evidence-destroying machine came up and jerked the meal under the surface. My slight smile became a full toothy grin as the ripples on the water expanded outward, only to diminish and become calm again. I was proud of my gator babies, and I felt like I was making the world a better place, one meal at a time.

  Crickets chirped in chorus to the peaceful sound of the gentle, glass-top water as it flowed. A bright moon illuminated the grass I knew to be green, though it was hard to distinguish without man-made lighting or my preternatural eyes. When in full predator mode, I could see in the darkness as if it were the brightest day.

  The wind tugged at my coat and exposed shoulder-length black hair, blowing the loose strands over my face. A hand absentmindedly brushed the hair out of my eyes and back around my ears. Having preternatural hair I could never cut was tedious at times. Even if I buzzed it down to my skin, it would just instantly slither out of my skull like a Play-Doh toy and continue its eternal war with the wind.

  Job done, I moved my consciousness from behind my eyes and into the control room of my mind. My exact copy stood with one hand on the steering wheel standing in the center of the room. One of my own hands rested on it as well, signifying a harmonious split between my predatory self and my…um…self-self.

  Predatory Self—or PS, as I uncreatively called him—was my exact clone, with a few distinct differences. His eyes were permanently red, and his skin was darker, as if perpetually cast in shadow. He didn’t speak much—or at all. We communicated through a series of nods and me yelling at him.

  PS was the personification of my vampiric instincts, desires, and undeniable need to feed. I wasn’t entirely sure if he was a machination my mind had created after I ha
d been given the dark gift by Ulric in 1480, or if he was a metaphysical being bestowed upon me when I had drunk my maker’s blood all those centuries ago.

  PS and I had a give and take relationship; if I gave him too much control over my body, he would take everything he wanted without pausing to consider the consequences. I was ashamed to admit that he had taken full control more than a few times, with me barely getting the wheel back before irreparable damage had been done. That being said, he had also saved my bootylicious body countless times over the past five hundred years. When PS had full control of the wheel—which, fun fact, had once been reins long ago—he was an unstoppable killing machine. Because of the vampiric doppelgänger dwelling in my mind, I had defeated the likes of horrifying demons, vicious Fae, and even a vengeful ancient god or two.