The Counterfeit City

by Jenna Lyn Wright

  A bit of time and distance and a scalding hot shower had done wonders for soothing the worst of my worries, and by the time I had reached the subway, I was practically vibrating with excitement to get home.

  To be out from under the shadow of Lilah’s enterprise. To stop with the lying and the deception. To start my life with David in earnest and without fear.

  A hot blast of air follows me up the subway stairs as a train blows by beneath me. I emerge onto the street, hands shoved in my pockets, and stride toward the end of the block.

  Bodegas on the corner give way to elegant brownstones. The windows on all of them are still dark. Ahead of me, the street comes to a dead end, where the asphalt gives way to a small strip of grassy land that separates the city from the water. Across the narrow channel, the docks sit silent and the warehouses poke up from the ground like cracked teeth in a dirty mouth.

  The first rays of sun cut across the water, and I jog up the stairs and into the last brownstone on the block. My fortress. My home. And, after tonight, a place I’ll most likely never see again.

  4

  In the library, I pull Paradise Lost by John Milton from its shelf and a panel in the hardwood floor slides open. The safe is an extravagance, very cloak and dagger, but I’ve come to learn that even extra precautions are usually not enough, especially when it comes to money.

  I pause before kneeling, listening for any noise from the second floor. Unless there was an emergency at the hospital, David should be home, having just finished the night shift. I just have one final task before I can fall asleep in his arms.

  Hearing nothing, I crouch down and reach inside the hidden compartment. My fingers brush the cool metal of a lockbox, and I pull it out and flip the lid open, revealing bundles of hundred dollar bills identical to the one Lilah gave me tonight.

  This is only my emergency stash. Combined with the cash I’ve socked away in various accounts, it’s more than enough money to last me the rest of my life. The rest of our lives.

  Years of thievery and murder have been good to me.

  Returning the box to its hiding place, I replace the book on the shelf and the panel at my feet slides shut with a quiet thunk.

  I stand, and the cracking in my knees is like a gunshot in the silence. I’m older than I should be for this age. I should thank David for unknowingly pushing up my retirement.

  That’s when it registers that I haven’t heard him at all. There should be noise, the sounds of everyday life being lived. The click as a bathroom cabinet shuts. The thunk of a belt buckle on the floor as he undresses and slips under the covers.

  There is nothing, and a place deep inside of me goes cold.

  I creep out of the library and down the hallway, running scenarios through my head as to why I still haven’t heard anything from upstairs.

  This is paranoia brought on by years of preparing for the worst.

  This is nothing. David is caught late at the hospital, and there’s probably a message on my phone telling me not to wait up.

  This is my worst nightmare.

  Ahead, the stairs fade and disappear into the shadows above me. The lights upstairs are off, and darkness awaits.

  He always leaves the lights on for me.

  My instincts tell me to proceed with extreme caution. My heart screams at me to sprint upstairs and make sure that David is safe.

  Avoiding the boards that squeak and groan, I force myself to ascend slowly, with my back to the wall and my blade pulled.

  The doors to both the spare bedroom and the bathroom are closed, allowing me to bypass them quickly to get to the master bedroom.

  The door is cracked open. Inside, the curtains must be pulled, as the darkness within is thick and murky. I duck low, blade gripped tightly, and gently push the door open, lifting the knob as it moves to alleviate any noise the hinges might make.

  Moonlight does its best to penetrate the curtains, and it takes my eyes a long moment, far too long, to adjust as I move into the room.

  There is a lumpy mass on top of the bed. I tell myself that it’s simply the covers, bunched up and neglected as David and I both rushed out this morning, but my hand, always steady, trembles as I reach out to touch them.

  Something is catastrophically wrong, and I feel it before I know it. On instinct, I turn and duck just as a shadow seems to peel itself off the wall to my left.

  Phht. Phht. Phht.

  Silenced gunfire.

  There’s a sharp sting as a bullet nicks my ear, catching my hair and sending it flying.

  I hit the ground and roll, flinging my blade toward the shape that charges at me. The knife goes wide and lodges into the wall across from me.

  In the space of half a breath, I pop up, only to have my assailant slam into me hard enough to make my teeth chatter. They drive me backward, and I hit the wall with a dull thud, knocking the breath from my body.

  I take one, two, three punches to the stomach, forcing out any remaining air left, and my throat burns and my eyes tear.

  Rather than struggle, I go limp, catching the intruder off guard. As I drop, I push off of the wall, wrapping my arms around their waist and shoving them back into the middle of the room. As they stumble backward, I come up, driving my elbow in the direction of their face.

  There is a wet crunch as I connect with what must be their nose, and there is a grunt of pain as they hunch over, only to spin. I catch the dark shape of their leg flying toward me and manage to get a shoulder up to take the brunt of their roundhouse kick.

  I turn, flinging my arms out, and use the momentum I have built up to snag them around the middle and trip them over my outstretched leg.

  They hit the ground so hard a picture falls from the wall, the glass inside shattering as the frame splinters.

  It is a momentary distraction, but it’s enough to give them time to drive a heel up and into my stomach, sending me to the ground next to them.

  The intruder crawls on top of me as I gasp.

  My mind blank of everything but rage and fear, I slash at their face, getting a fistful of cloth. They’re wearing a mask. I tear at it, ripping it up and off of their head.

  In the weak moonlight, I see the scar along their jaw before recognition slams into me.

  Kira.

  She twists, and I lose sight of her arm as she reaches back behind her.

  I swipe at her again, and she takes the full impact of the punch.

  Glass and metal flash in the dim light, and there is a sharp pinch in the side of my neck. A burning radiates out, crawling up the side of my face and spreading out in waves down my shoulder and arm.

  “Did you think we wouldn’t find you?” She holds up a syringe, and the droplets of fluid left inside are a shimmering silver.

  I’d answer her, but the fire that flashes through me steals my voice. The heat spreads down my torso and my legs begin to tingle.

  “You don’t walk away from Lilah. She disposes of you when she’s through with you.”

  The fire is turning to ice, and somehow the bitter cold is worse than the searing heat. I try to raise my arm again, to throw another punch, but I find that I cannot lift so much as a finger. My limbs, along with the rest of my body, are dead weight. Whatever she injected me with has me almost completely paralyzed.

  Kira leans closer to me, so close I should feel her breath on my skin, but I am numb, and it’s getting harder to breathe. “And leaving for a man? How boring.”

  She sits back, a look of pure disgust twisting her features, as she pulls something else from her pocket. “Look what I found while I was waiting for you?” She holds a square of paper up, pinching it between her fingers and slowly swinging it back and forth.

  It’s a photograph of an idyllic bungalow on a far-flung beach. A place I’d found and kept hidden even from David. It was going to be a surprise, a place we could go to be together. To be safe. I was going to show it to him tonight, now that I was free.

  How stupid I was.

  “Was this goi
ng to be your little hideaway?” she says, injecting faux sadness into her tone. “That’s too bad.”

  I can only blink, and in the back of my mind, a tiny alarm begins to sound that soon I will no longer be able to do that, either.

  The already dark room darkens further as the edges of my vision blur and dim. My lungs scream for air, and tears slide from the corners of my eyes as I try to flick a glance up toward the bed.

  I didn’t make it to him. I didn’t protect him. I knew better than to draw him into my world, but I was selfish and he was perfection and I don’t know what she’s done to him but I’m certain he has paid a terrible price for my greed.

  I failed him.

  I am a bad person, and I am getting what I deserve.

  He deserved so much better.

  Kira smiles down at me. Her face is a pinprick in my vision.

  “Don’t worry. I got him, too.”

  5

  The darkness is without end. Unceasing and unfathomable.

  For a moment, I believe this is eternity and that I will spend it entombed in nothingness. In the pitch black void, I cannot tell whether my eyes are open or closed. Whether I’m sitting or standing. Whether I have a body at all.

  A scream bubbles up from my chest and is about to explode from my lips when the tiniest of tingles begins at the tips of my fingers. I wiggle them, then my toes, and all at once my body is hit with the sharp needle-pricks of a dead limb coming back to life.

  I grit my teeth and endure it, willing it to pass yet reveling in the pain. If I can feel something, perhaps I didn’t die. Perhaps there’s still a chance to save David.

  Still a chance to destroy Ruby.

  The tingling subsides, and I raise my hand to try and feel out my surroundings. Just above my body, it hits against something tough, yet pliable. I trace my fingertips against the cool, smooth material. It feels like vinyl or plastic. More urgently now, I move around, getting the dimensions, and realize I am encased in this…

  A horrible possibility skitters through my mind, and I shove it away, unable to even begin to entertain the thought. But it returns, refusing to be denied. There are limited possibilities here.

  With a growing dread, I tentatively reach up directly above the center of my body until my fingers hit a thin, cold line of interconnected metal teeth running from the top of my tomb to as far down as I can reach.

  A zipper.

  Fumbling at the top, I manage to grasp the tiny handle and pull down.

  The bag splits, dim light filters in, and cool air rushes over me.

  I sit up, the bag falling to either side of me, and three things hit me in quick succession: I am not home, I am not breathing, and I am not alone.

  A man in a three-piece suit in the darkest black I have ever seen stands to my right, inches from where I’m sitting. His face is lean and angular, as is his body, and he is preternaturally beautiful. One of his eyebrows is raised, and I get the distinct sense that I am being judged.

  “All that time as an assassin, you think you’d know how to do something as simple as unzip a body bag.”

  A wave of dizziness washes over me, and I grip the sides of the table I’m sitting on to steady myself.

  No, not a table. A slab. My surroundings finally seep into my consciousness. Off to one side, a stainless steel table with drainage gutters sits under a fluorescent lamp. Medical supplies sit in jars on the counter along the far wall. The floor is tile, and there is a drain in the center of the room.

  I twist back to see a wall of drawers, each with labels and large handles.

  Drawers you’d store bodies in.

  My drawer has been opened, and my slab has been pulled out.

  A morgue. Something is off, though. It should be brightly lit and sterile. The shadows here are deeper, darker, and none of that matters because I’m sitting here, not dead. There has been a mistake…

  The horrible possibility I had refused to consider has now become a stark reality.

  “It’s hit you where you are, yes? If you need to scream, I understand. It’s happened before. Just give me a warning.” His voice is a low purr, a sound that should soothe, but there is an unnerving tone to it, a minor chord, that raises the hair on my arms.

  “I’m not dead.” My voice hollow and scratchy. It is a chill wind scraping leafless branches against a window pane.

  “Are you certain?”

  I’d like to say yes, but I’m afraid I’d be lying.

  “I’m… dead? But I’m…” I wave my arms, indicating that I’m moving, talking, living.

  The man in the suit leans forward a fraction of an inch. His eyes blaze. “Understand that you are only here speaking with me because I am allowing it.”

  If I’m here, then where is… “David?” I search, frantic.

  The man steps, no, glides to the foot of my slab, which allows me a view of the slab next to mine. There is a body lying underneath a sheet.

  “Him too, I’m afraid.” The man does not sound like whether David is alive or not matters to him at all.

  “No,” I croak, and fumble for the zipper on my bag. I drag it down to free my legs and pull them out. My joints crack and my muscles stretch as if they’re slowly recalling how to hinge and flex again.

  “I wouldn’t,” the man warns, but I ignore him.

  Swinging my legs over the side of the slab, I slide off and my knees nearly buckle underneath me. I reach back to steady myself on the cold metal.

  “Impressive,” the man says, but I am not trying to impress him. I’m trying to convince myself that the body under the sheet does not belong to my David.

  My hands tremble as I reach out to pull the sheet down from this corpse’s face.

  It bunches as my hands clench into fists and reality crumbles down around me as David, his skin pale and his lips bloodless, is revealed. I know that if I reach out to touch him, he will be cold.

  I have seen enough victims to know that when a person passes away, the way they look becomes different in death even if they die peacefully in their sleep. Some might say it’s the absence of the soul, but I’m not certain. I just know that they look wrong. And my David is not my David anymore.

  Now my knees do give out. I hit the tile floor hard and I am amazed that I do not shatter into a million pieces at the impact. This pain is worse than any bullet wound, any slashing scar, any torture that I suffered when I was alive.

  The man crouches down next to me. I sense his lips near my ear, and when he speaks, his breath is cold. “In your former line of work, there was always collateral damage. Never mattered until now, though, did it?”

  The world blurs as tears fall from my eyes, the liquid tinged gray as it spatters on the white tiles. I swipe a hand across my eyes and pull it back to find dark streaks on my skin.

  “Not until someone murdered the only person you ever loved,” he finishes, and I flinch back from him so fast I think it startles even him.

  “Surprised? Oh, I know that and so much more, Gray.”

  “What’s happening to me?”

  By way of an answer, he says, “I think someone should pay, don’t you?”

  Yes, and I know exactly who. I am being baited by him. I know this. And yet I let him continue because I need to know how this man is willing to help me make that someone pay.

  “Would you like revenge?” he asks, and if he knows me as well as he says he does, then he already knows my answer.

  Fury sparks in the hollow space that David’s death has carved inside me.

  “You were quite good at what you did,” he says, standing. “Murdering people, retrieving objects, et cetera and so forth.” He begins to pace between the slab that holds my body bag and the slab that holds David. His polished shoes click on the tile floor, and I swear I see tiny sparks ignite underneath the soles with each of his footsteps.

  “If you can be good one last time in service of me, I can give you the opportunity to destroy those that did this to you. To David.”

  T
he anger inside me ignites into a blazing flame, and I use the feeling to force myself to stand. I want nothing more than to take him up on his offer, but bargains, especially those from a well-dressed man in a morgue who may or may not have brought me back from the dead, are not something to be rushed into.

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  At this, he does a neat spin, and I fully understand that I am not the first person he’s done this to and that this reveal is his favorite part. With each statement, he takes a small step toward me. A punctuation of sorts.

  “I’m the Adversary.”

  Step.

  “The Common Enemy.”

  Step.

  “The Prince of Darkness.”

  Step.

  He stops mere inches from me. “I’m Lucifer, my darling, and I’m giving you the opportunity to be my newest demon.”

  His hand darts out and snags my wrist. The contact sizzles and smoke rises from my flesh. I open my mouth to scream, but the shadows in the room detach from the walls and wrap around me, tendrils snaking into my ears, nose, and mouth. Drowning me in darkness.

  My eyes roll back into my head.

  My body leaves the ground.

  The morgue disintegrates around me.

  I disappear into nothing.

  6

  I land bone-jarringly hard on a floor made of smooth stone slabs. Disoriented and dizzy, I roll onto my back and try to get my bearings. The walls and ceiling are made of the same stone, and a fire crackles in a hearth off to my left.

  The light is wrong, though.

  My head lolls toward the sound, and I find that the flames are every shade of blue and the mantle seems to be made of human bones. I’m only mildly surprised. I mean, Lucifer has chosen to reanimate me. Blue fire in a bone hearth probably goes with the territory.

  “Up, now.”

  Speak of the Devil… The pun rattles through my brain, and in my woozy state, I think it’s just about the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Lucifer frowns down at my chuckles, his hand still on my wrist, and he yanks me to standing as if I weigh nothing at all.