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

by P. S. Newman

  "Okay." I'd sign my soul over to the devil if that meant I got to keep my life with Bella and Cecelia. Ganner, at least, wasn't the devil. She didn't have an ulterior motive besides getting me to hunt shades for her. I hoped.

  "I'm glad this worked out," she had the audacity to say. "See you on Monday." A click, and the dial tone beeped in my ear.

  My legs felt like jelly. I sat down on the couch. Under normal circumstances, I would unload on Cecelia. But she was in no state to provide a shoulder for me to cry on. And the only other person I might have talked to about this twisting ball of lead deep in my stomach was dead. By my hand. I had to handle this on my own. For the first time in my manifested life, I felt truly alone. Lonely. Grieving.

  My gaze fell on the velvet box on the coffee table. If Greyson had been planning on proposing, I'd want to know.

  I grabbed the box and went to the bathroom to finish dressing. Then I headed next door half an hour early, taking the ring. She should have the choice of wearing it when she said goodbye.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  The cemetery was packed. We'd hoped to keep attendance to a minimum by not releasing details to the press, but word had gotten out that David Baptiste was to be buried here today. The whole world had shown up.

  Good thing the Baptistes' head of security had planned for this possibility and set up a perimeter around the gravesite, across which only David's family and closest friends were allowed entry. The guards were also keeping an eye out for public enemy number one: the doppelgänger. I had the sneaking suspicion that he wouldn't miss this opportunity to make an appearance if he was still alive. I could only guess what the side-effects of cutting him off from the Pit, his source of power, would be.

  The service was somber and sad. Cecelia got through without breaking down, even when Bella dissolved into tears.

  The vicar was about halfway through when I received a text message. The doppelgänger's preferred form of contact with me had been via texts, so I checked it despite the service being in full swing. Unknown number. Oh goodie.

  I'm fading. Help me.

  Okay… not what I expected. I texted back. Where are you?

  The answer took a while. In between. Graves. Angels. Death. Life. I didn't cause this.

  He was here, at the cemetery. Dying, by the sounds of it. His connection to the Pit had kept him strong and alive. But the Pit lay dormant, the lava cooling, its powers gone.

  He could be trying to lure me away under false pretenses. But he was alone in the world, with no more chimeras to command. I decided to take my chances. It gave me something to do other than wallow in grief and guilt.

  I slipped to the back of the crowd and scanned the cemetery. Liam Webster, Sean's new head of security came up to me, a broad-shouldered man with a crooked nose and sharp mind. Today, his Irish complexion looked almost translucent. He hadn’t been getting much sleep since taking up the position vacated by his deceased former boss.

  Erin Johnson had been buried yesterday. The doppelgänger had taken out him and his team one by one at the Getty Museum, while Taylor and I fought the chimera. Only two of the men survived.

  Webster could count himself lucky that he hadn’t been on duty that night. On the other hand, taking up the mantle of leadership after such a disaster couldn’t be easy. Webster wasn’t about to let anything else happen to anybody even remotely related to the Baptiste brothers.

  "Everything alright?" he murmured at my side.

  "I think so," I answered, "but I need to check on something."

  Webster was no fool. “Let me know if you need backup.”

  “Thanks. I will." Maybe.

  I couldn't spot the doppelgänger in the near vicinity; the crowd probably kept him at a distance. Or his creator's presence, considering it would be obvious if a second Sean showed up by the grave. He had to be watching from somewhere safe and secluded. Graves and angels…

  I widened my visual search. A small copse of trees stood in the distance. Two graves with angels on the headstones lay close to it. They were the only angels I could see from my vantage point. I walked towards the trees, ready to draw the dagger I’d tucked into my thigh holster. The dagger and my shade-sense would have to do if it turned out the doppelgänger was playing me. I didn’t let myself hope that he’d brought Aunt Vy along.

  I reached the first angel-grave and walked past it, closer to the trees. As I approached, I realized they weren't trees at all, but thorn bushes. The branches were a green so dark they looked almost black. Glistening drops of black liquid quivered on the tip of every thorn. It looked like something out of Sleeping Beauty. Shades didn't make exceptions of cemeteries.

  The doppelgänger sat on the grass, leaning against the pedestal of the second angel. His dark skin held a gray tinge, like a photograph fading with age. His dark gray shirt was soaked with blood where Aunt Vy’s blade had stabbed him. His eyes were closed. His head rested against the stone behind him. A smartphone rested on his thigh - and Aunt Vy lay next to him in the grass.

  I almost pounced on her to hug her to me. Somehow, I kept my cool. “I’m so glad to see you. Are you alright?”

  For a moment, I thought she was still giving me the silent treatment. “I’m fine,” she finally answered reluctantly. “Take care of this idiot so we can go home.”

  “Idiot?”

  “Just listen to what he has to say before you eliminate him.”

  Sean 2.0 looked exhausted. If this was a ruse, it was a damn good one. He opened his eyes when I crouched down beside him, keeping my balance on the balls of my feet, just in case.

  “I’m… sad." He sounded surprised.

  "Why are you sad?"

  "The anger is gone."

  "So instead you're sad?"

  He shook his head. "Not instead. There's only sadness left. And guilt. But no more anger. Or spite. Or hate." He leaned forward with newfound urgency. "But I didn't even do it."

  "Do what?"

  "I didn't kill him." He sounded certain, but then he blinked. Confusion clouded his face. "Did I?" His eyes were wide with a silent plea. "Wouldn't I remember?"

  Not necessarily. The anger, spite, and hate may have been laid to rest with David's death. If he had fulfilled his ultimate purpose as a shade, he might not even remember it.

  I held out my hand. "I can help you."

  He flinched back, not ready to be undone. None of us ever were. "I remember everything else so clearly," he said. “He wasn’t supposed to die. That wasn’t the plan. We agreed…”

  “We?” There was only one person he could be talking about. "Who planned what?"

  “Humiliation. Ruin. Not death. Never death. Not for David.” A tiny smile tugged at his lips. “He was my brother.”

  My heart thudded in my chest. “You didn’t want to kill David, did you?”

  He shook his head, a tiny nudge left and right. “The other one did.”

  He was supposed to be ‘the other one’.

  “Who is the other one?” I asked, my voice a whisper of denial. I knew. I didn’t want to, but I knew.

  "Hypnosis for awareness,” he breathed. “Mescaline for hallucinations."

  He was making less and less sense. Like a recording with blank spots, he was missing parts of his very being.

  “Who is the other one?” I repeated. “Who killed David?”

  He smiled, his eyes focused on infinity. “We all did.”

  He was fading, mind and body.

  "Take my hand, Sean," I said, voice low and soothing. "It's time."

  He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. "He’s in love with you," he said, his voice full of regret. "But I'm not. I don't understand the concept."

  That was… terrible. No matter how much it hurt to lose Greyson, at least I knew what it felt like to love. At least I was whole enough, human enough, to experience both positive and negative emotions. "I'm sorry."

  He shrugged. "Not your fault. But it plagues him. Everything plagues him. So I wanted to hurt yo
u. Hurt David. The White Knight. Not so white anymore…”

  He picked up Aunt Vy and held her out to me with a shaking hand. “Ask her. Hypnosis and mescaline. She knows.”

  “Thank you,” I said, taking back my sword.

  He laid his hand on mine before I could pull away. "Make it quick," he said.

  I did. He was as good as gone anyway. Two heartbeats later, only the flattened grass showed that he had ever existed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  I found Sean nursing a beer up on the roof of David's house. He’d disappeared from the funeral party half an hour ago. I bided my time until I could excuse myself, then slipped up the winding staircase after him, leaving Aunt Vy with Bella. I hadn’t told anybody that the doppelgänger no longer posed a threat. I needed to be sure of something first. Although after Aunt Vy told me about what she’d witnessed while she was with the doppelgänger, there was no room left for doubt. Just disbelief and shock.

  When I couldn’t locate Sean in any of the rooms on the upper floor, I knew where he’d gone. I stepped through the door on the rooftop. “May I join you?”

  He looked annoyed at the intrusion until he saw it was me. He waved me over. “Of course.”

  I stood beside him at the edge of the roof, facing the Pacific. Waves crashed against the rocks fifty feet below. I let the silence speak for me. Guilt was a heavy constant when nothing remained to distract you from it.

  “I’m sorry I never told you the whole truth about my dream,” he blurted after several minutes of screaming silence.

  “You mean about it ending at the Pit instead of at your rooftop pool? Yes, I figured that part out.” That and other things. “It’s why the doppelgänger was a pyrokinetic, and where he drew his power from. Good thing I realized that and was able to cut him off from it by phazing the Pit.”

  “Yeah, good thing.”

  “And there’s more good news: your doppelgänger tried to crash the funeral.”

  Sean's eyes widened. “He was at the cemetery?”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry, I took care of him. He’s gone.”

  Sean blew out a breath. “Thank you.”

  We stood in silence, side by side. He sipped his beer, looking into the distance, a sad expression on his face. I wondered if any of it was genuine.

  “Are you going to keep running PharmaZeusics by yourself?” I asked. “Without David?”

  Finally, a flicker of… something. “Yes. I’ve spoken to our lawyers. I inherit David's shares of the company.”

  Wasn’t that convenient.

  "Hypnosis and mescaline," I said, done playing games. "Why would those be on the doppelgänger's mind?"

  Sean frowned. "He was talking about hypnosis?" He was a better actor than I gave him credit for. “I’ve been thinking about trying it against my insomnia lately. My therapist thinks it might work.”

  “What about the mescaline? It’s a hallucinogenic.”

  “I know what it is; I run the biggest pharmaceutical company in the country, after all. We deal with drugs like mescaline all the time.”

  “The cops found traces of mescaline in the secret lab at the Meta-Tech factory,” I said. Detective Holstein, Cecelia's partner, had confirmed that mescaline was on the list of substances found in the factory’s basement. I’d asked him about it after the funeral service ended.

  “That would explain why it was on the doppelgänger’s mind,” Sean said.

  “What could he be doing with it, I wonder?”

  “I have no idea. His lab, not mine.”

  “But you knew about it, didn’t you? You knew he redirected it from where it was supposed to go, that day he infiltrated PharmaZeusics and shot at David.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What are you implying?”

  “Nothing. I’m accusing.” I went in for the kill. Aunt Vy had been with the doppelgänger long enough to understand his ramblings as they descended further and further into incoherence. “The doppelgänger didn’t have use for a lab like that. He didn’t set it up. You did. You just made him help you and look like he was the one using it. I just haven’t figured out what you need it for.”

  Sean blinked once, twice. His head swiveled until he faced me, his features schooled into perfect confusion. “What?”

  I stepped closer to him, got in his face. “David was always supposed to die, wasn’t he? That was the plan. Except the doppelgänger didn’t agree.”

  He flinched back. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You were in cahoots with your doppelgänger. This ‘plan’ to ruin David was yours. You lied about calling him in with the Order the night he manifested. You found him days earlier. You hashed out this plan together and only when everything was set up did you call the Order. And the murdered guard at the Pit was an accident, wasn’t it? The doppelgänger had to go back regularly to replenish his firepower but that one time he didn’t manage to sneak past the guard and all the cameras. So he had to kill the guard to keep your plan in place.”

  “I—”

  “Something the doppelgänger said got me thinking,” I cut Sean off, on a roll now. “He thought of David as his brother. He was evil and he killed a lot of people, but he wasn’t evil enough to kill his brother. That was all you.”

  He rocked back as if slapped. “You’re crazy!” His eyes were wide with shock and denial, but another emotion flashed through them, too. Triumph. It was there for barely a second, but I saw it: overwhelming, reckless triumph.

  Sean knew his game was up. He grabbed my arm. “I will make sure the whole world knows what you are if you breathe a word of this to Cecelia.”

  Cecelia, the homicide detective. Cecelia, almost-fiancée of the murder victim. Yeah, that wouldn’t end well for Sean.

  He squeezed my arm in warning. “If you think your life might be worth snitching on me, think about Cecelia and Bella. I can implicate them both in harboring you, of integrating you into society. Cecelia will go to jail.”

  “So will you,” I ground out, “you helped me, too.”

  “Not at first. That was all David. And you have no proof that I killed my brother. But I have proof that he was a criminal. Oh yes! I point the cops to the right piece of evidence and the whole world will know he was using SHAID as a front to integrate shades into society.”

  “That would mean implicating yourself, idiot.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” he triumphed. “Because I, or rather the other me, made sure the only evidence was of David, and David alone. None of the other chairmen will take the fall, either. Only he and— well, you. And the Perez sisters.”

  He sounded more confident than the situation called for, considering he was bluffing. Or was he?

  “You had the doppelgänger plant something at David's house,” I realized. “Something besides the photo of me for Taylor to find.”

  “What did you expect?” he asked with a deranged chuckle, an eerie imitation of his doppelgänger. “That I’d go down with my brother and the other chairmen when their hair-brained scheme with Greyson backfired? Better to take control of the situation and be the one to reveal everything, on my terms. And David’s house isn’t the only place I’ve planted evidence. You’ll never find it all. So think well and hard about your next move. If you have me arrested, I won’t breathe jail air for long. And then people will finally respect me because of what I’ve been through: wrongly accused by a shade of killing my beloved brother. So the consequences will be worse for you than for me. Cecelia will go to prison for life, I’ll make sure of that. You will be hunted and eliminated. And Bella…” his voice dropped to a whisper. His eyes shone, drunk on his new-found power. “Bella will be alone. So think very hard about whether you want to blow the whistle on me.”

  I could imagine risking myself. I might even have managed to give up Cecelia. But I could never do either in the knowledge that Bella would be the one to suffer most. Sean had won. This round. I’d be damned if I let him get away with it forever. I swore to myself on Bella’s life
, right then and there, that I would find a way to bring him to justice.

  I dropped my gaze in mock defeat, so he wouldn’t see the determination in my eyes. His grip softened. Something sparked in his face and suddenly his fingers were stroking down my arm. “Actually,” he murmured, drawing closer, “I would be willing for you to blow something else of mine in return for my silence. That might be worth going to jail for—“

  My hand flashed under the skirt of my dress and then my dagger pressed into his groin, business end first. He went rigid.

  “You don’t want to do that.” I pushed all the hatred I felt for him into my voice. Not only David had died. If Sean hadn't started this quest for vengeance, things might have worked out with Greyson. I might not have had to kill the love of my life. “Don’t even think it. It might look suspicious if I slit your throat with all the witnesses downstairs, but from this point on, you don’t ever want to be alone with me. Understood?”

  His hand fell away from my arm. “Loud and clear.”

  My fingers tightened around the dagger. One move, one little flick… I pushed Sean away from me. “Go,” I said, my voice empty. “Make up an excuse and leave this house before I change my mind about putting this away.” I pointed the tip of the dagger towards him.

  “I never wanted to be here, anyway.” He spat on the ground at my feet, spun on his heel and strode to the door with a self-confidence he hadn’t possessed before. I could have almost mistaken him for David.

  I turned away, unable to watch. I listened to the door open and his footsteps fade down the stairs. Only then did I allow my churning stomach to empty its contents onto the roof of my dead friend’s house.

  EPILOGUE

  We stayed at David's house that night. Just Cecelia, Bella and I. Cecelia disappeared in David's room after the last guests had left. She'd managed to keep it together the entire afternoon, meeting pity and condolences with a face of stone, her fist clutched around the diamond on her finger. She'd turned it towards her palm so nobody would see it. She couldn't bear the questions it would raise, yet found herself just as unable not to wear it.