Fall From Grace, page 1
part #9 of the Preternatural Chronicles Series
FALL FROM GRACE
PRETERNATURAL CHRONICLES BOOK 9
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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
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
Fall From Grace
Preternatural Chronicles Book 9
© 2022, 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
“Some men fall from grace. Some are pushed.”
—Jim Butcher
* * *
“People are not rain or snow or autumn leaves; they do not look beautiful when they fall.”
—Naveed A. Khan
DEDICATIONS
This book is dedicated to Michelle and her husband, Steve. May he enjoy a beer with John in Heaven.
SEAL OF THE COUNCIL
PROLOGUE
How could I let this happen? Magni shamefully asked himself from within the prison the Ether had constructed around him. It occurred to the young man this must be what it felt like for a cave explorer to get lodged in a path that wasn’t even big enough to fully expand burning lungs.
Wriggling did nothing but make the unyielding walls push further inward, precisely the way a serpent squeezed its prey before consuming its lifeless corpse. Only Magni wasn’t going to die from asphyxiation, being nothing more than a mental projection inside the control room of his own mind. It made the torment all the worse, as the reprieve of death would not come to him as lungs burned for breath out of nothing more than a habit accrued over a lifetime.
“The time has come,” an eerie, deep, muffled voice said, drawing Magni’s attention with its unquestionable authority. His lungs also seemed to notice, and tentatively decided to stop screaming their need for air.
Shifting his focus from the constricting walls that would not give way, Magni listened intently.
“Open the door…free us…”
“It will be done,” the now familiar voice of the Ether answered.
Without Magni realizing it, the walls of his prison began to relax as a small portion near his ear began to grow thinner at his desire to hear more.
“My brothers and I hunger…” the creepy voice rumbled, drawing a yearning from Magni he had never experienced. He wanted—needed—to see who was speaking.
A section pushing against Magni’s face began to thin to the point where it was no thicker than a sheer veil, allowing the young man to see through the wall as easily as looking through a heavily tinted window.
What he saw made his literal mind nearly bleed.
“Uh!” Magni sucked in a sharp breath as bulging eyes saw what no mortal was meant to bear witness to.
The Ether waved a hand through a screen made of mist, and the maddening creature disappeared like closing a browser window.
Striding toward where Magni continued to gape with disbelieving eyes, the Ether reached out, dissolving the prison around the wizard’s face, and tightly latched long fingers across a trembling lower jaw.
“You are not worthy of beholding The Unspeakable.”
White-hot agony lanced from Magni’s cheeks, making his ears ring painfully and drawing him back from the edge of insanity.
He tried to scream, but the Ether’s long hand covered the entirety of Magni’s lower face.
“Fear not, child,” the Ether purred as its indignant rage faded and grip relaxed. “You’ll soon be one with my maker, along with the rest of this universe.”
The long hand slid off of Magni’s aching face, and the prison swelle d to life, crushing him as the darkness swallowed all that could be seen.
Before he was consumed by the caliginosity of his constricting prison, Magni heard the Ether whisper words that made him feel like a rabbit caught in a hunter’s trap, doomed to its inescapable fate.
“The finite flesh surrounding the sumptuous repast of your soul will serve as the first sacrifice. Be honored, child. Be honored…”
1
“You know it’s a trap,” Locke gently stated as if he already knew there was no swaying me from the choice I had made.
“I heard the troll loud and clear,” I answered coldly, thinking about how Russell had told us about the man in white setting a trap for Lily.
“Only we both know it isn’t a trap for her, is it?” Locke asked, slowly crossing his arms over his chest as he stared at my sour expression.
“I know,” I said, spitting on the ground for a reason I couldn’t put into words. “What I want to know is why the feck she thought it a good idea to go to Hell.”
“Elders Tafoya and Scymanky told me that Magni has taken control of both crowns of Faerie. I-I-I can only guess that it has something to do with that.”
“Hmph,” I agreed, grabbing my hips as my gaze dropped to the ground.
To emphasize Locke’s point, the ever-darkening sky cracked with a bolt of lightning that was almost blinding even as I stared at my feet. Thunder followed close behind, building in ferocity like a rolling rock down a mountain that steadily picked up more boulders until a deafening avalanche was born.
Purple eyes rose to the sky to see the roiling obsidian clouds outlined by pure, glowing white.
“Magni…” I breathed out as I thought about the words in the last book of the prophecy. I was to become a father figure to him, after Ludvig.
Turning my gaze to Locke, I asked, “How could this happen? He…he was such a good kid with a heart bigger than any of ours.”
Locke broke my gaze and lifted his single eye toward the sky as he contemplated my words. I dared a glance at the eyepatch perfectly fastened in place without the need for straps, impressed at the magic which held it in place.
Another roll of thunder drifted across the sky, bringing with it a chill in the air that made the hair on my arms and neck stand on end. It wasn’t that it was cold; rather, it was the implications of what the change in temperature meant.
The sound of footsteps on concrete brought us out of our thoughts, and we turned to see Depweg and Meli walking toward the forest that surrounded my home.
“What about him?” Locke asked quietly, knowing that something was amiss between my best friend and me.
My mind flashed to our intense exchange of words, which had been aimed directly at one another’s heart. I knew that Depweg would be all but combat ineffective until he had time to process the loss of the family he had formed while on his separate stream of time. I only hoped that Meli—the real Meli—could help guide him back to normal.
“I don’t think he’ll be able to help us. Not this time,” I answered flatly as I turned away from my best friend and looked back to the building clouds above. I could feel the symbolism of such an action, and it made my heart ache to turn away from my brother.
“John,” Locke said sternly, drawing my gaze to his. “What happened?”
“Long story short,” I breathed out as I yanked my beanie off my head, letting my shoulder-length black hair spill over my face. “The bomb you dipped into the fourth dimension somehow threw Depweg back in time…but on a different stream that broke off from our singular river.”
Shaking my head to clear the hair from my eyes, I was slightly surprised to see Locke was following along and not the least bit shocked by what I was saying.
I replaced the beanie over my head, crossed my arms with a squeak of the Fae silk that perfectly resembled leather, and continued the story.
“Gabriel made me bring Jose back in time to help find Depweg. Which he did.” One corner of my mouth curled up in a smile at the joke that only I would get. It was all a joke…one big joke, and I was the punch line.
“Who’s Jose?”
“Right,” I breathed out, letting my gaze go unfocused as I formulated an answer. “The short of it is, Depweg made Jose while he went all feral and wrecked holy hell throughout Mexico. And, apparently, Jose wasn’t too happy about it, though I’m not sure why. I mean, I hate Ulric, but that wasn’t until centuries later when I realized he had strung me along like an entertaining jester to a king. I don’t see Depweg doing anything like that to Jose, so I don’t get what the beef was.”
The sound of a portal opening, followed by a voice dripping with barely controlled rage, startled Locke and me.
“Because he killed his family when he was first turned!” Depweg all but barked as his obsidian portal closed behind him.
Spinning to face the source of my surprise, I took a hurried step back as Depweg stomped to where I had just been. Had I not moved, we would now be nose to nose.
Locke lifted a hand to rest gently on Depweg’s huge, rounded shoulder. The were was taking heaving breaths as he continued to speak.
“That’s why he took mine from me. And you brought him straight to them!”
“Is this true?” Locke asked me without an ounce of judgment in his voice. I knew he was only trying to ascertain the entire story.
In answer, I turned my entire head away from Depweg, unable to even look him in the eyes. I noticed Meli was watching from somewhere just out of earshot, even for a were.
“You said Gabriel made you bring Jose back with you, John?” Locke asked.
Using all the willpower I had at my disposal, I forced my gaze to land back on Depweg’s, and nodded once.
“He tricked me…”
“Why would he do that?” Locke asked, letting his hand slide off of Depweg’s shoulder.
“To do exactly what Depweg said…” I answered just above a whisper, shame stealing my ability to formulate a normal tone of voice.
“Something doesn’t make sense,” the perceptive Locke mused as he stroked his chin with one hand.
Still looking directly into Depweg’s hateful eyes, I finished connecting the dots for him.
“The stream of time that Depweg was in had the potential to crash into our river…and destroy everything. Gabriel told me that I had to bring him back, at all costs.”
Depweg bared his teeth and clenched his fists before turning away from me.
“I couldn’t bring…them…back with us,” I answered the question that Locke didn’t know to ask.
“For fear of potentially crashing the stream into the river,” the wizard breathed out, putting the pieces of the puzzle together much quicker than I possibly could have in his position.
Depweg’s head cocked to the side as if Locke’s words had been a punch to the were’s face.
I could see Locke’s eye scanning the air as he finished putting everything together.
“Gabriel made you bring back Jose, knowing he would do…what he did.” Turning toward Depweg’s back, Locke once again rested his hand on the were’s large shoulder, and said, “You wouldn’t have come back without them…would you?”
In answer, Depweg jerked his shoulder forward, letting Locke’s hand fall away.
