Nightmare City: Book 1 Of The Nightmare City Series (Urban Fantasy)

by P. S. Newman

  Kellerman was fiddling with one of the reels, his brows bunched in a frown. Beyond him, Greyson sat on a chair, looking down at his boots. A spotlight illuminated him, turning his hair almost white and deepening the dips and hollows of his muscles. He looked more Viking than ever.

  Kellerman spotted us. “Thank God you’re here,” he said to me. “Will you talk some sense into him so we can get started?”

  “I’ll try.”

  I stopped in front of Greyson. Though he sat and I stood, I was only about a head taller than he. He looked up when my booted feet entered his line of vision. Grey-brown eyes lit up, causing my heart to do that flip-flop thing I associated only with him. Especially when he grinned and winked at me. God, he was handsome. It hit me once again, like a smack in the face. I had no defense against this man. I needed some, fast.

  He stood to tower above me. Close, too close. I stuck my hands in my pant pockets. No touching. My voice when I spoke sounded terser than I expected. “You have something important to tell me?”

  He glanced at David and Kellerman, then shook his head. “Not here.”

  “Upstairs,” I suggested. We headed to the door. I caught David's worried look.

  “Just don’t…” he began, looking at me. Then he pulled himself together and turned to Greyson. “… leave the house.”

  “I promise, if he makes a run for it I’ll chase him down,” I said.

  Greyson led the way up the stairs and into the kitchen, which was dappled in shadows and light entering through the shutters. The half-light turned Greyson's bright eyes into shining pools of darkness, but I could still make out the line of his nose, the curve of his lips. The shadows pronounced his square jaw. The patchy twilight made me bold enough to look at him. Really look at him, for the first time since finding him on top of the Union Station tower. He wasn't just handsome - he was a work of art. My work of art.

  I got so lost in the contours of his face, deepened and magnified by the shadows, that I almost missed what he said.

  "You are Elysia."

  I blinked. It took a second for me to process his words. Not this again. "Only in the dream."

  He shook his head, the mottled sunlight sparking on his bright hair, and stepped closer. I stepped back to keep distance between us until I bumped into the countertop behind me. My pulse spiked, but not in fear.

  “I’m Eden,” I said, more for my benefit than his. “Not Elysia.” It didn’t deter him. His hands closed around my lower arms, light and warm.

  "You don't have to lie to me.” His voice was low and husky. Warmth spread through me. My body tensed, like a spring ready for release. His fingers tightened on my arms.

  "You feel it, too," he said. "I knew it."

  I'm not lying, I wanted to say. I’m Eden. Only Eden. But I couldn't. My body betrayed me. My lips wouldn't move to voice the lie. Not when he was the one listening. He leaned closer until his thighs pressed against mine. His breath fanned my cheeks, my lips. I inhaled, drinking it into my lungs like oxygen. The scent and taste of him shook me to the core.

  "I figured it out, you see," he whispered, lips feathering over my hair. I wanted to turn my face into their touch. "Elysia was in the dream. She was there, right beside me, burning. She was there when the sky tore apart and the light became blinding…”

  His lips found my forehead. Warm and firm. “Then the world became… vibrant. The hellhounds were still there, with me. But she was gone.”

  Lips brushed my temple. I wanted to melt into him, into his scent that enveloped me, into his voice that surrounded me. “If she wasn’t you, she would have manifested. She would be a shade like me. But she didn't. She isn't. There’s only one reason why.”

  He drew his hands up my arms, fingers dancing over my shoulders and across my collar bone. They disappeared in my hair at the back of my head, his warm palms cupping my neck. I closed my eyes, and he was all that remained. All that mattered. I was heading for the edge of a cliff at full speed. If I went over, there was no coming back. I needed to apply the emergency brakes. If only I could think beyond the feel and scent and sound of him.

  He’d been talking… something about my dream. About Elysia. Why I had to be her. Oh right. I had to stop him from continuing down that road. But I couldn’t think. Words held no meaning.

  I felt his smile like the sun on my face. “The dreamer herself doesn't manifest in reality,” he whispered, taking that last step closer that had us pressed against each other from chest to knees. “That's why she disappeared when I manifested. You disappeared. You are her.”

  He shifted a little, just so. Our lips collided. Once, twice.

  “Zee…”

  Hearing him call me Zee was my undoing. I grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him into me. This time, we didn’t separate. There was a reason this wasn’t a good idea, but it got lost in the feel and taste of his lips, his teasing tongue, his quickened breath. The muscles in his back played beneath my hands as he grabbed my hair, angled my head further back and—

  Oh wow!

  So that’s what it was like.

  It ended all too soon. Greyson pulled back and dipped his forehead to mine. We were both breathing hard and I could have sworn the ground swayed.

  “That was easier than expected,” he half gasped, half laughed.

  Easy? He called staying on my feet when my legs had turned to jelly ‘easy’? I must have said something to that effect because he laughed and pressed a kiss on my forehead. “Not that. I meant getting you here.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You never told me where you live or how else to reach you,” he said. “Neither would anybody else; they’re all scared I’ll run away to find you as soon as I find out. It might endanger their plan if I was seen, or worse, caught by the Order.”

  My brain was slowly catching up. “You weren’t having second thoughts about the video shoot? That was just a ruse to get me here.”

  He grinned, the rogue in his eyes. “Worked, too.”

  “You didn’t have anything important to tell me?”

  “I already did. Zee.”

  Oh. Right. Crap! Reality hit. I opened my mouth, but he was faster.

  “Please don’t deny it,” he said. “There’s no need for this farce. I won’t tell anybody who you are. What you are.”

  He’d figured that out, too. Splendid. I extricated myself from his arms. I needed distance to stop my brain from frying. “How did you figure it out?” I finally asked. It was the only thing that mattered.

  “They have books at the safe house. Since it’s SHAID, they also have that graphic novel series you told me about, the one with the two shade hunters called Greyson and Elysia… I must admit, it took me a while to wrap my head around the fact that I’m based on a comic book figure, but now I think it’s kind of cool. The rest wasn’t so hard to figure out, considering your dream. It’s kind of obvious, being me.”

  “Let’s hope it isn’t as obvious for the rest of the world.”

  “Who knows about you? There must be a few people.”

  I nodded. In for a penny… “Both David and Kellerman know; they and the other chairmen of SHAID know about all the illegal shades living secretly among humans. Cecelia, David's girlfriend, knows - she was my sponsor, because her little sister, Bella, manifested me. Oh, and Sean knows, too.”

  “The one with the doppelgänger gunning for his brother?”

  “Yep.”

  “I could help you hunt him down.”

  If only that were possible. “I already have a partner, remember?”

  “Does he know you’re a shade?”

  “Heck no. He’d try to kill me in a heartbeat. You’ve run into him, incidentally. He’s the hunter who shot at you when you were protecting the old lady from the hellhounds after you first manifested.”

  “Ice Face,” he said, nodding. “I remember.”

  I blinked. “Ice Face?”

  “He wore this eternal expression of chill and brittlen
ess,” Greyson explained, arranging his features in a decent imitation of Taylor’s perpetual scowl. I had to slap a hand over my mouth to stop myself from laughing.

  “He’s still looking for you,” I told him. “As an added bonus, he’ll be at the gala, watching your video if we don’t catch the doppelgänger by then. Which we were working on until you pulled this little stunt.”

  “You weren’t complaining a few minutes ago.”

  “I’m serious, Grey. Taylor has it in for you and he won’t stop until he knows you’re dead.”

  “I’m not afraid of him.”

  “You should be.”

  He was suddenly close again. He kept his hands to himself, but the heat from his body reached me. “Let’s not talk about him anymore.” His scent and the mere memory of the kiss made me dizzy. His head lowered to mine. Bye, bye coherent thoughts.

  “Ahem.”

  I jumped with a squeak. David stood in the kitchen door, lips twitching in an almost-smile. “Sorry to break up the party,” he said. “But we’re kind of on a schedule with this whole video thing, so if you have nothing else ‘important’ to discuss…”

  He used air-quotes. I wanted to sink into the ground.

  David disappeared back down the stairs with an apologetic grin. Greyson took my arm, forcing me to look at him.

  “I do have one question,” he said. “Do you think this plan of theirs is the best thing to do? For us? Is it our best shot at being together?”

  No. Our best shot at being together would be to have SHAID relocate the both of us. But I wasn’t going to leave Bella, not even for him. And if anybody could convince the human public that shades weren’t all bad and could be useful, it was my man. So I nodded. “Yes. For the long term, I believe it is.”

  “And for now?”

  “I don’t know. I think we’ll have to wait for the reactions to your video.”

  “I won’t let them eliminate me without a fight.”

  That made me smile, even though it was a very likely scenario. “You wouldn’t be my Grey if you did.”

  He smiled back. “Your Grey, huh?”

  I looked left, right, up, behind me. “I don’t see any of the others here.”

  “There better not be any others. At least none that do this.” He hauled me against him, crushing his lips to mine in another electrifying kiss. He let me go just as quickly, taking his steadying hands with him. I swayed on my feet and had to hold on to the counter like a swooning Southern belle out of some penny dreadful. Pathetic.

  Can we do it again?

  But by the time my eyes uncrossed he was standing by the door to the basement. He winked at me, his rogue-face securely in place. “You coming or what?”

  My Dream-Study Journal

  Case Report # 13

  General Thoughts:

  Louis won’t leave me alone. He thinks I was lying about being able to manipulate my shades. He taunts me whenever he has the chance. A. V. says it’s because he’s scared or feels inferior in some way. She says him tormenting me is a reflection on him and his inferiority, not mine. Not on me. A nice thought. Except it’s me everyone laughs at when he calls me a scawed wabbit.

  I’m supposed to not let anyone make me feel bad about myself and just ‘be who I am’. Well, then I’ll be the freak that I am. I can show him. I can make him believe that I don’t lie.

  Experiment Setup:

  I was at Louis’ house for his birthday party two years ago, so I know his bedroom. I can make the shade manifest right in his room, unless it’s been changed substantially.

  I’m going for a bear, a big Kodiak, so it towers above him. I’ll make it understand that it shouldn’t hurt him, just scare him. Make him the ‘wabbit’, for a change.

  Experiment Results:

  Everything went as planned; I pictured Louis’ room and the bear inside it as I fell into lucid dreaming. To make sure I had enough control over the bear that it wouldn’t hurt him, I gave it a collar, like I did with the panther the other night. I went through one run of how the bear would scare him; towering over his bed and roaring, paws swiping the air. I held that image in my head and sort of linked it with the collar. That should be enough to make the bear not hurt him.

  I won’t know for sure if it worked until I see Louis in school on Monday, though, since it manifested at his house - if it manifested at all. He’ll be bragging about how he survived a crazy shade that came to kill him in his room. But I’ll know. I’ll know he was scared and that he only survived because the bear was only there to scare him.

  And I’ll make sure he knows that I know.

  Conclusion and Outlook:

  A.V. asked me yesterday why I love manifesting the animals so much. I think it’s because they’re most tangible to me. They’re real, they’re solid, they’ve evolved over millennia, which makes them less unpredictable in my mind, and therefore more stable in my dreams. Less volatile than aliens or supernatural creatures that only exist in fiction and have no clear distinctions.

  I didn’t tell her about the bear, though. I told her I wanted a break from experiments and just sleep. She would have talked me out of this one. Grownups are always telling you to ‘take responsibility’ and ‘own up to your actions’. On the other hand, they’re always like ‘let it go’ or ‘it’s not worth it’.

  Well, which one is it, guys?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I was still riding my smooch-induced high when I arrived at David's house to take up guard duty for the night. Taylor’s green Order van stood in the driveway, but I didn’t care about the potential speech coming my way for bailing on him this morning. Nothing Taylor did tonight would kill the warm and fuzzies in my belly.

  I entered the house and punched in the new code to disengage the alarm. I found Taylor wandering around the living room, looking bored. Boredom turned into annoyance the moment he saw me. “Finally, she shows up to do her job.”

  “Is David home?” I asked, ignoring the snark. I knew David wouldn’t be home yet, since I’d dropped him off at his office an hour ago. But Taylor couldn’t know I’d been with David most of the day. I had to keep up the pretense.

  “Not yet,” Taylor said. “Aren’t you even going to ask me how the search you abandoned went?”

  He might not chase away my warm and fuzzies, but he could very well manage to kill my patience. “Unless your way of celebrating is to stalk around with a scowl on your face, my guess is not so well. You wouldn’t be here if you’d found him.”

  “It.”

  I turned and walked to the kitchen. “If you’re looking for a fight, you’re not going to get it from me. What you might get, if you drop this attitude, is dinner.”

  He didn’t reply. I ignored him as I prepped dinner, distributing the Chinese takeout I’d bought in the city onto plates. I dared a glance towards the living room. Taylor stood in front of the glass door that led out onto the terrace. He was staring at the sun dipping towards the ocean. I couldn’t tell if he was daydreaming, sulking or brooding. Probably a mix of the last two.

  David called just when I stuck the first plate in the microwave to reheat it. Keeping up the pretense that we hadn’t seen each other all day.

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “Just in time for Chinese takeout. How was your day?”

  “Great. Got everything done I needed to do.” Translation: the video had been sent and Kellerman took Greyson back to the safe house, all as planned.

  As if he sensed that something fishy was going on, Taylor turned to look at me. I stared back until he looked away and strolled to the other window front. I allowed myself to breathe again.

  “Eden?” David's voice was still in my ear. “Everything all right?”

  “Yes, all good. I’ll see you in fifteen.” I hung up without waiting for an answer, unable to shake this feeling that Taylor could hear everything David and I were saying. And not saying.

  I watched Taylor as I waited for the microwave to ding.
He stared out of the window a little while longer, then began to wander the living room. He perused every tome in David's impressive book collection on the shelf that covered an entire wall. He stared at the Monet on the opposite wall up close, his nose almost touching the canvas that had somehow survived the Surge, unlike so many other priceless pieces of art. He studied the bronze sculpture of a skinny javelin thrower from all possible angles. Every now and then, a grunt of frustration would escape, and he’d rub the back of his neck as if to rally.

  A wave of pity seized me. Waiting for a shade to find him had to be torture for a man who usually did the finding and chasing. Not only that, he also had to sit around waiting in the home of a sympathizer of the beings he hated most in this world. It was equivalent to me being stuck in a room full of Order hunters. I’d never be able to let my guard down and I’d want to get it over with as quickly as possible.

  While I didn’t agree with him on the shade issue, I could understand his mix of ennui and intense frustration. That is, until he picked up a picture frame from between David's photo collection. “What the hell is this?”

  The warm and fuzzies I’d been holding on to chilled at the sound of his voice. They dropped, dead and heavy, to the pit of my stomach at the sight of the images Taylor was approaching with, holding the frame up for me to see. I snatched it from him in a quick swipe.

  On the left was a portrait shot of me in my black hunter’s suit, holding Aunt Vy in my right hand, looking ready to kick ass. It was the first photo of me that came up on my private shade hunter homepage. Next to it, taking up the right side of the frame, was a cut-out from one of the Dreamscape graphic novels of me and Vy against a foggy background. I knew exactly which volume it came from. Volume 26: Dream Reapers.