The Preternatural Chronicles: Books 0-3 Read online

  My mind repeated the events of the night with Da, Val, and Father Thomes over and over. I was almost impressed with myself. Having the ability to alienate three out of the four people whom I could call friends was reserved for made-for-TV villains.

  “Note to self: send an edible arrangement filled with meat to Depweg,” I said to the air as I lay back on the bed. The day was still holding my energy hostage, dampening it.

  I closed my eyes and let the little death come.

  Chapter 27

  Present day

  Night came. While the sun slept, my vision became supercharged and I surveyed the room, searching for anything I could use. The room was empty besides the bed. Though I couldn’t touch it, I could feel the door to my prison was made of iron. It only took an hour—or half a night, I have no sense of time—to give up and put all my eggs in the basket of Father T eventually freeing me.

  There was no sound that my ears could pick up, nor a single smell that my nose could detect that was out of the ordinary. If the father was in the building, he was being remarkably quiet. Either that or I was deep in the catacombs beneath the church. Which, if true, would be exceptionally impressive for a church in Houston.

  I sat in my cell throughout the night, staring at the ceiling. As the hours dragged on, I could feel dawn approaching, even though there were no windows. My vision began to diminish and my energy dropped, filling my limbs with concrete.

  When morning was fully upon me, I let myself slip into unconsciousness. I awakened again at dusk to the same scenario, and felt the first pangs of the thirst. I decided to try and free myself with fresh eyes and a more determined mind. Thirst was a powerful motivator.

  I spent the better part of the night trying to figure out a way to free myself. Yanking was fruitless. He must have blessed the metals, effectively canceling my preternatural strength. I tried piercing the stone wall and digging around the restraint, but it, too, would not budge.

  “The hell is on these walls? Iron paint?” I asked, realizing that’s exactly what it was.

  A sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach began to form as the realization that he had made this room specifically for me crept into my mind.

  Nights passed without any semblance of the father being home. Hunger started to overtake my every waking thought. Even my dreams were erratic and focused on blood, creating imagery that I had only seen in movies where the hero started tripping after imbibing an unknown liquid.

  PS crept from the shadows, threatening to take charge if I didn’t feed. I hadn’t had my fill after my encounter with Locke, or even the demon before that, and I was weaker than a newborn kitten.

  “Locke,” I exhaled through gritted teeth. My train of thought locked onto his gaunt, smiling face. All other thoughts were held hostage from the raw hatred that bloomed from the seed long since thought lost in time. The memory of my parents being brutally executed was all-consuming, replacing all reason and logic with pure, unbridled rage. I lived to wrap my hands around Locke’s skinny neck and crush the life out of him. I wanted to rip his head off and then laugh in his blinking face before he went to Hell. Hating him became a part of me again, and that piece slipped right back into place, like an ample ass returning to its favorite recliner. No matter how much time passed, the indentation was always there, welcoming.

  I allowed the hate train to pass, focusing back on my predicament and the events that had led me to it. Damn Da. Damn Val. And damn the mortal that kept me as a prisoner. I was tired of trying to do what everyone else wanted me to do. I was going to get out of here.

  Following the chain with my eyes, I muttered a curse and decided what I was going to do.

  I stood up and moved far enough from the bed to tighten the chain. I reached down and shredded the leather cuff that prevented the iron from touching my body, then rolled up my pant leg, exposing my skin to the enchanted iron. As I did, jolts of lightning and waves of fire shot up my leg and into my core. My breath was taken away as every muscle constricted in agony.

  Shaking, I picked up some of the leather pieces and put them between my teeth. Biting down, I brought my leg back toward the wall, shut my eyes, and kicked forward with everything I had.

  My ankle exploded, with bones splintering through the back of my leg. The chain dug into my skin, bringing with it a new existence of excruciating pain. I collapsed to the ground, spasming violently and whimpering with each reflexive breath.

  The leather muffled my sobs. My vision blackened to a pinpoint. I forced myself to relax and take in deep breaths, which was purely a mental relaxation technique, as I didn’t actually need to breathe.

  I commanded my hands to find purchase underneath my body, which now seemed to weigh a shit ton. After a couple tries, I was finally able to push myself up and rest on my hands and knees. I pivoted and looked at the damage.

  The chain was halfway through my ankle, but what alarmed me was that the iron had started to make my flesh necrotic, and it was quickly spreading up my calf. Panic provided all the strength I needed to get up on my good leg. I expressed this verbally with a barrage of superb vernacular efficiency that would have made Sir Shakespeare jealous.

  “Shit, shit, shiiiiit!”

  I leaned forward, brought my leg back again, took a deep breath, and kicked as if I were trying to knock down a bank vault.

  The kick carried through and the momentum threw me into a backflip, where I landed on my stomach. The electricity stopped flowing through every nerve in my body, and I just lay there, lightly shaking.

  After a few moments, I was able to get up on my one good foot and look around. My foot had landed on the bed behind me, still in its shoe. The flesh looked as if it had come from a zombie—the appendage completely consumed by death.

  Looking down and balancing on one foot, I lifted my pant leg to see that the decay had spread all the way up to my knee.

  “Oh, shit!” I said to myself at the realization that if that last kick hadn’t been successful, I wouldn’t have been able to move my leg a third time. I would have died in one of the most agonizing ways a vampire, or any living being, possibly could. At least the sun was quick compared to this necrosis.

  As I continued to watch, the decay spread over my knee with insatiable appetite.

  “Oh Lilith!” I cried out in horror. “Damn you, holy man!”

  I looked around the room for anything to stop the expansion. My eyes landed on the chain, and I laughed as my panicking brain desperately tried to convince itself that it would make a good tourniquet.

  The deterioration continued to creep up my leg. My knee had already withered, exposing the bone. The tendons snapped and the joint crumbled away, dropping what remained of my leg to the ground, where it evaporated into powder.

  I was not about to let this thing take my junk…and my life, of course. I focused on my palms and forced blood through the skin, congealing into a giant pair of bolt cutters.

  Placing the living flesh of my thigh between the crimson jaws, I cried out, “Green Lantern ain’t got shit on me!” in reference to my blood manifestation, and slammed my hands together, severing the leg just below my pelvis.

  The rest of my stump fell to the ground, where it was quickly ravaged by the holy enchantment. I watched in fascination as the once plump and supersexy flesh blew away like a dried-out sandcastle on a windy day. Still holding the supersized bolt cutters, I let the blood liquefy as I brought my palms to the gaping wound that was spilling my life force. I wasn’t able to grow the limb back with my lack of energy, but I managed to at least close the wound before the blackness completely swallowed my vision.

  I let myself fall to my hands and knee, shambling to the bed. Once I climbed onto the mattress, I turned to face the door while my vision regained control and fought back the darkness. After several minutes, my head stopped swimming, and I pushed myself up to my remaining limb.

  “I’ll never model for Victoria’s Secret again,” I said to my now lonely foot, whose workload had just d
oubled. I hopped over to the door and placed my hand on it, feeling the iron exciting my molecules. “Feck’n knew it,” I muttered to myself, letting some of my mother tongue slip through.

  I turned in circles, which I was confident looked hilarious, looking around the room, trying to spot the giant sledgehammer that I must have missed before. Alas, there was still no superconvenient tool just lying around. Not even a gas-powered jackhammer.

  “Yelp will hear of this atrocity! One star!” I yelled to the ceiling.

  Turning to look at the bed, an idea sprouted through the packed earth of my mind filled to capacity with movie facts and references. I stepped forward, eager to fulfill my plan, and then fell on my face.

  “Right. The leg…situation,” I reminded myself.

  My eyes latched onto the door hinges. They were also made of iron, but the peg through the middle had to be a different, stronger metal to support the door.

  I got back up and hopped over to the bed, where I grabbed the old comforter and threw it in front of the door. Tossing the mattress to the side, I grabbed the wooden frame of the small twin bed and ripped it in half. I repeated the process on the edge of the frames and took two of the wooden legs in my hands. I awkwardly hobbled to where the comforter now rested as if oblivious to its upcoming fate. I set the two wooden pieces against the wall and picked up the comforter, tearing it into shreds and setting the pieces aside.

  I picked the legs back up, placed them together, and started rubbing them against each other. Slowly at first, then faster. After a few seconds, I was rubbing faster than a teenage boy discovering his first porn site. Smoke started to drift from the wood, and I accelerated to supe speed, causing a bright flame to burst from the legs. I set one down and started wrapping the comforter above where the flame was, careful not to catch myself on fire. After I set the torch on the ground under the bottommost door hinge, I repeated the process for the other leg, which I propped just under the middle hinge. Hopping back to the bed, I grabbed a third leg, returned to the door, and used the fire from the first to ignite the wood. After it was wrapped and blazing, I held it up to the topmost hinge, and waited.

  At that moment, I heard the big doors of the church entrance swing open then shut again. The sound was faint, but I would recognize the front doors I had entered countless times from anywhere. I could tell that I was, indeed, far beneath the church.

  A lump in my throat grew, as I was past the point of no return. I was in his domain, and he could easily extinguish my life. Had you asked me yesternight if I thought Father Thomes had it in him to execute me, I would have heartily laughed. But now, after revealing the monster inside me and killing an innocent, I was just as sure that he would.

  After what felt like an eternity plus one, the bottom hinge expanded and broke the casing. A few seconds later, the middle one exploded and went flying, ricocheting around the room. I nervously chuckled at the thought that an iron door hinge could end my life if it hit just right.

  Another door lock above was forcefully turned. My eyes were focused on the last hinge, licking my lips in anticipation. Sweat would have beaded on my forehead if such a thing was possible. At that moment, I wondered how I could cry and salivate, but not sweat.

  Footsteps started to descend a large, stone spiral staircase.

  My face was inching closer to the flame as I slightly bounced on my one good leg.

  “Please, please, please, please, please,” I pleaded with the hinge.

  As if on cue, it exploded, skimming my forehead as it flew past. I grabbed the door and pulled back with all my might, feeling the iron singe my hands. It gave way and I ripped it away from the wall and let it drop on the ground with a thunderous bang.

  The footsteps stopped.

  I dropped to my hands and ran like a three-legged dog in the opposite way the steps were coming from. I had no idea where I was or what I was going to do. I just kept running, desperate for a window or a…

  “Fireplace!” I cried out in happiness as I approached a dark reading room filled with ancient books and scrolls. I leaped over a red velvet chair and slammed into the empty firepit and looked up. The flue was standard metal, so I grabbed it and ripped it off, bringing down a torrent of ashes.

  Father Philseep ran through the hall and stopped in the room, looking frantically at me.

  “John, I can’t let you leave!” the father said sternly, with urgency creeping into his voice.

  “You really need to clean your chimney more, Father Asshole. It’s a fire hazard!” I said before starting my ascent through soot-encrusted darkness.

  After a few feet, I heard Father Thomes chanting from below, and then there was a small, fierce fire growing at the base of the pit. I looked down and watched it increase in ferocity, changing colors until it filled the entire base with red, white, and blue flames; very patriotic of him.

  The heat was immense and immediate. My remaining pant leg started to singe, which was my cue to hurry the fuck up.

  Running on fumes, I hauled ass up the chimney, slipping constantly. The growing flames below attempted the most uncomfortable rim job I’d ever had. Each tongue lashed out with the promise of oblivion if I slowed down.

  I reached the top with a photo finish, the flames struggling to reach that high but giving it their all. I clawed at the chimney cap and tore the metal apart like aluminum foil, freeing me from a fiery doomy-doom.

  Climbing out, I fell onto the slanted roof and lay there for a moment, my head clearing from the blazing heat. He had actually tried to kill me.

  There was a sting at my good ankle. I looked down and noticed my smoldering pant leg had just caught fire. I quickly sat up and patted it out with a curse. Earthen fire was terrifying enough, but holy fire? That was something I wasn’t curious in the least about testing with my own flesh.

  A giant, cold stone hand grabbed my shoulder and turned me around effortlessly. I was paralyzed to see one of the grotesque angel statues had come to life and had unsheathed his sword, hefting it above his head in preparation for a fatal blow.

  My predatory instincts shoved me out of the driver’s seat and took control. I darted to the side and used my new favorite leg to sweep the angel’s own out from under him. He fell on his back and started to slide down the slope of the roof.

  The golem shoved his sword into the roof and used it to slow his descent, tearing a long crevasse along his path. He must have weighed a literal ton. Maybe even a shit ton.

  I wanted to jump down the other side of the roof and run away, but PS had the wheel, and he was pissed. Exhausted and with no mortals around, I let him.

  I jumped right at the statue as he attempted to find purchase with his feet. Pivoting in the air, I landed on his back, digging my claws into the stone. The rock monster was tough, but I was still strong enough to crush old, crumbling stone. After my fingers dug in, I made fists and yanked out chunks of the angel, then repeated the process. The golem made no noise or indication that he was in any pain, which was creepy as hell.

  Unable to reach me, the statue simply let go of the sword, and we started plummeting down the roof. I stopped attacking and jumped off him. But as I did, he grabbed my leg with a vise, forcing me to fall the several stories to the ground with his added weight.

  Normally I wouldn’t worry about heights, but I was severely injured and drained of energy—seemed to be my luck as of late. I had also been starved for several days, which normally wasn’t that big of a deal, but I had already been hurt and in need of energy. We fell, and I briefly wondered what would happen once we hit the ground.

  As we fell through the rushing air, I struggled, but had no leverage. What was worse was that the golem was steadily pulling me under him, making sure his weight would land on top of me. Both his hands were on my leg now, squeezing tight. Tight enough to shatter bone. The thought of someone wringing bubble wrap came into mind as my last leg crumbled. The pain was a distant memory as I panicked, trying to prevent my assured death.

  My spi
der-sense tingled, and an idea came to me. I reached my open palm toward the rushing windows, ledges, and statues, and forced a bloodrope out. It found purchase around the neck of a gargoyle statue, and I gripped the rope with both hands as tight as I could. It went taut, and I felt a dull thud and heard a ripping sound that reminded me of a turkey leg being pulled off at Christmas dinner. There was a thunderous crash from below that shook the dirt from the windowsills as I swung freely through the air, smacking into the wall of the stone church.

  White-hot pain shot through my body like a bolt of lightning splitting a tree, stemming from where my new favorite leg was no longer there.

  Dangling from my rope and trying not to pass out, I said in a half-assed Arnold voice, “I nheed a vhacation.”

  I noticed the stone wall in front of me was moving downward. I looked up, and to my chagrin, the gargoyle whose neck I had wrapped around was yanking me upward to his gaping maw and clawed paws.

  “No, gargoyle! Bad gargoyle! That’s a bad rock monster!” I weakly yelled at it, on the verge of passing out.

  I had two choices, and both of them sucked: I could disconnect the blood from my palm and drop to the ground, which would mean losing all the precious energy left in the rope forever; or I could face the monster head-on while weak from lack of feeding and missing both my damn legs. Oh, and I was bleeding from the new wound. This situation was what the Himalayan monks called, bullshit.

  PS had given back control of the wheel, and shrugged at what to do next.

  Concentrating on my hand, I closed my eyes and prepared for what was about to come. I healed the wound and disconnected the rope, dropping to the ground. Losing the energy was like being struck in the solar plexus, rendering me momentarily stunned on the ground. It could have also been plummeting to the ground that had stunned me, but more than likely, it was a combination of the two. I promised myself I would buy a lottery ticket the next chance I got because my luck had to change sooner or later.