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

by P. S. Newman

  A few years after the Surge, a scientist had opened up a training facility as an experiment for prime dreamers to practice lucid dreaming. His goal was to help people gain control of their dreams and reduce the death-by-shade toll. His reasoning had seemed sound: being able to control your dreams would make them less dangerous.

  But either his training methods were faulty or - as experts nowadays were convinced - dreams simply couldn’t be subdued or controlled all night long for months on end. Whatever the reason, the experiment went spectacularly, horribly wrong. Several times. When the last incident resulted in almost a hundred deaths and the destruction of not only the training facility but almost the entire town it stood in, the government pronounced the act of inducing and experimenting with lucid dreams illegal. A premature and far too rigorous law, in my opinion - like many laws regarding shades. Developed properly, training in lucid dreaming could likely help primes like Bella at least be less afraid of their dreams. Although it might make other people, like this Louis, more afraid of primes than they already were.

  "So when Louis called you on your lie, you hit him?" I asked Bella.

  She looked out of the window. "I don't even remember punching him. Suddenly he was on the floor and my fist felt like I'd slammed it into a wall. I… I'm sorry."

  “Did you apologize to him, dear?” Aunt Vy asked.

  Bella pressed her lips together and watched the other cars on the interstate. I took it as a no but wasn't sure how to continue from there without making her defensive. She knew she'd have to apologize to Louis sooner or later.

  We rode in silence for a while. Traffic slowed to a crawl because one side of the Interstate 110 had collapsed due to a gigantic shade. Pairing twelve lanes down to six could only result in chaos and delays, especially during rush hour, yet it was still the fastest way home. LA traffic wasn’t much better anywhere else.

  "Louis is a jerk," Bella ventured after a while.

  "He acted like one,” I allowed. “But now he probably thinks the same of you."

  She pondered that for a moment. "I'd rather he think I'm a jerk than a coward. Maybe now he'll leave me alone."

  "Do you truly believe that?" Aunt Vy asked. She sounded genuinely interested.

  Bella didn’t answer and neither of us pushed her. Instead, we watched the black smoke pluming above the interstate half a mile in front of us. A high metal fence lined with forest green canvas hid the origins of the smoke. I'd only seen what lay beyond that fence from news footage on TV.

  "When did the Pit manifest?" Bella asked. “It feels like it’s always been there.” The gigantic, lava-filled chasm had become part of her way-to-school-scenery, like a park or a train station.

  "Four months ago, give or take," I said.

  "It's still smoking."

  "It's still growing deeper, too, if the Order isn’t feeding the press hogwash." They did that sometimes if they didn't want the public to know how dangerous a shade truly was. They made up facts that sounded bad but weren't as critical as the truth. Their PR-division was inventive, to put it mildly.

  "They should drop Louis in there."

  Aunt Vy laughed her evil laugh.

  “Please don’t encourage her,” I admonished with a look in the rear-view mirror. I could just see her red hilt sticking out from behind the passenger seat. Then I glanced at Bella. "While I get your morbid sense of humor, I suggest you don't ever say that to anyone else. Remember how many people died when the Pit manifested."

  "I was kidding," she said. "Jeez."

  She turned away again, feigning interest in the driver of a run-down Buick next to her. He was talking on the phone over a wireless headset, scratching his chin. The fact that only a few hundred feet away lay a giant chasm full of liquid fire didn't seem to worry him. Classic acceptance of unchangeable circumstances. Or maybe repression. People were experts at it.

  We inched forward another five feet, closer to the fence behind which the Pit simmered.

  "Have you still not seen it?" Bella turned back to me.

  I shook my head. "No. Captain Ganner had a condition to my request that I’m not ready to fulfill."

  "Let me guess,” she said, then gruffed out her voice in an imitation of Ganner as she continued, “join the Order or no Pit-visit for you."

  I laughed. "Nailed it."

  "She's still on a mission to recruit you, huh?"

  I nodded. "She’s… persistent." I used other words to describe Captain Ganner when less impressionable ears were listening.

  Bella sat up straighter, the exhaustion on her face replaced by curiosity. "Look," she said, pointing through the windshield. "The entrance to the Pit has been taped off. With LAPD yellow, not Order green."

  The Pit, shade that it was, had automatically been placed under the Order's jurisdiction the moment it opened up beneath the I-110. The Order had led the massive rescue operation to save the people who dropped to the lava-filled depths in their vehicles. The death toll was estimated at a little over seventy people - ‘estimated’ because the cars and their passengers that sank beneath the surface were never recovered and nobody could be completely sure that all of them had been reported missing. After the rescue operation, the Order erected the fence around the Pit's edge, including a little house in which an Order guard watched over the gate twenty-four-seven. Civilians weren't allowed to enter. Any change in the Pit was immediately reported.

  The tape sectioning off the guardhouse and gate indicated that something had happened; the yellow that it was something outside of the Order's jurisdiction.

  "Is that Lia's car?" Bella exclaimed, excitement raising her voice. Several vehicles parked in a row in front of the crime-scene tape, one of them a black Ford sedan. I couldn't make out the number plates from this angle, but Bella recognized it anyway. "That's her college tassel hanging from the rearview mirror! What do you think happened?"

  A brand new case, Cecelia had said on the phone. This had to be it. "If Lia's involved in the investigation, it's got to be murder."

  "Cool!"

  I raised my brow. "Cool?"

  She didn't take her eyes off the scene. "I mean how awful!"

  "Sure."

  She rolled her eyes. “You know I don't mean the murder itself is cool. But Lia never lets me see a crime scene."

  “You want to see a crime scene?” Aunt Vy echoed my surprise. This was new.

  Bella hesitated. The perpetual fear she lived in flashed in her eyes, but then her jaw set. "Yes."

  "Well, it won't be this one." Cecelia would kick my asterisk if I let her little sister anywhere near it.

  "Oh, come on. It's like ten feet away."

  On the one hand, I wanted to applaud her new-found courage. Maybe seeing Louis sprawl before her had finally helped her find a tiny spark of confidence within herself. On the other hand, I wished she'd chosen a different issue to go all terrier on. "That's as close as we're getting,” I said. “No matter how boldly you wiped the floor with Louis’ butt, a crime scene can still give you nightmares.”

  "A little blood never hurt anyone, real or manifested."

  "You know that's not true.”

  “Plus,” Aunt Vy added, “the body could still be there.”

  That gave Bella pause. For about two seconds. "This could be your one chance to see the Pit," she said to me.

  I gaped at her, unable to believe she would try to reason with me like that. Just considering the possibility would be wrong on so many levels. And yet…

  "Aha!" she triumphed. "You're thinking about it."

  I shook my head. Not in this lifetime.

  Determination set her mouth in a thin line. "Eden, take me to the crime scene!"

  I hit the left turn signal without conscious thought, but there was nowhere for me to drive in this traffic. I gritted my teeth, fighting the imposed impulse to bulldozer my way through. “Don’t do this, Bella,” I ground out. The compulsion of her order grew, pain rising in my fingers. It spread over my hands and up my arms.

/>   “Take it back.” Aunt Vy’s voice cut like a whip. Her interference seldom worked in this situation, though, because Bella knew she’d already gone too far. And she hated when we ganged up on her.

  She threw me a glance from beneath her eyelashes. “No. I want to see it.”

  I broke out in a sweat, hoping she wouldn’t notice the battle I raged with my body. I never told her how much it hurt to fight her commands. She couldn’t know how close I sometimes came to giving in. It would give her more power over me. She wasn’t a sadist, but she still felt a propriety over me that was difficult to argue. She had manifested me, after all. And for the first year of my existence, I had followed her every word and whim. It still shocked her when I told her ‘no’ these days.

  I found another reason. "They'll never let us in."

  "Who's going to stop us?"

  I pointed fifteen feet ahead, to where a section of the green barrier had been opened. A worn gravel track lead from there to the guardhouse. "Those two gorillas standing at the front of the driveway."

  They were busy holding back a gaggle of reporters. No way were two civilians going to slip through their attentive gazes.

  "They'd let us through if Lia said it was okay."

  I almost laughed, but then she'd think I wasn't taking her seriously.

  “So ask her,” Aunt Vy suggested.

  “What?” Bella asked.

  I understood where Aunt Vy was headed with this. "If you think she'll be okay with it…" I shimmied my phone out of my pocket from underneath the seat belt and handed it to her. "Call her."

  Bella stared at the phone as if it would bite. Her eyes met mine. She opened her mouth, ready to call my bluff.

  I narrowed my eyes. "You know she'll say no to me, too."

  Her shoulders slumped, and she fell back into the seat, an epic pout pursing her face. "She never tells us about an investigation while it's happening. This won't be any different. Might as well take us home.”

  The pain left my body in a rush and I could breathe again. The tension thrumming through me to go-go-go subsided. I wiped my brow and smothered the sigh of relief that wanted to escape. "Maybe she'll confirm there was a murder at the Pit when we see her at home," I tried to soften the blow.

  "And whether it's shade-related or not,” Aunt Vy added, sounding as curious about the answer as I was.

  Bella perked up a little. "If it was a shade, maybe Lia will bring you in as a consultant. Then you can tell me everything."

  Which was why Cecelia had never asked me to consult in any of her cases before. And never would.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As it turned out, we didn't need Cecelia to confirm that someone had been murdered at the Pit. The fact was all over the evening news.

  ‘... an employee of the Somni Order’s LA division was murdered early this afternoon,’ the newscaster reported live from that very same gravel driveway Bella and I had passed not two hours ago. The green canvas fence made for a colorful backdrop in the shot. ‘The victim was a guard at the Pit, the manifested chasm that opened up beneath the I-110 a little over four months ago, killing an estimated seventy-three people.’

  Bella and I looked at each other, the steaming lasagna on our laps forgotten. We'd decided to have dinner on the couch since Cecelia wouldn't make it home in time. I was hoping she wouldn’t be home too late. Bella hated being alone in the house and wouldn't go to sleep until she knew that someone was there to take care of the nightmares she might manifest. I couldn’t start tracking down Sean’s doppelgänger unless there was someone else home to ease her fears. At least I’d have no clients calling me; I’d diverted all calls to my hotline to a freelance hunter colleague of mine.

  ‘The guard’s body was discovered at the Pit by firefighters who responded to a fire alarm at the guard station early this afternoon,’ the presenter continued, replaced by a zoomed shot of the guardhouse. Black streaks stained the entrance’s door and parts of the wall beneath the roof. Small husks of black metal hung there, melted beyond recognition. Security cameras. The Order always set them up at large, landscape-altering shades like the Pit.

  ‘Evidence suggests that the guardhouse was set on fire with a flame thrower,’ the presenter’s voice explained. ‘The police aren’t releasing any further information at this point.’

  Two cops in uniform and a curvy, olive-skinned woman in plainclothes stepped through the gate in the green fence.

  “There she is,” Bella said, pointing at her sister on TV. Two more men appeared, carrying a body bag. Cecelia walked ahead and lifted the yellow tape for them. They ducked underneath and loaded their sad cargo into the coroner’s open van. Once the body disappeared inside, the camera zoomed in on Cecelia’s face. Despite the grainy quality of the far-away shot, her expression broadcast determination.

  Bella saw it, too. “Uh-oh, cop face. Watch out Mr. Murderer. Maybe they captured some interesting footage on those cameras before they got burned to crisps.”

  The presenter wasn’t so certain. ‘This might prove a tough case to crack for lead detective Cecelia Perez, should the perpetrator turn out to be a shade. Since the murder took place this close to one of the largest shades in the history of the city, experts aren’t ruling out the possibility of shade involvement.’

  The scene changed, showing Captain Ganner with a bouquet of microphones hovering in front of her face. The perpetual frown line between her brows was even more pronounced on TV. ‘A fire-wielding murderer on the scene of a fire-based shade? Anything is possible, of course, though it’s highly unlikely it was a shade. History and experience show that only a handful of murders have ever been committed by shades. While they often do have the destructive ability to kill, murder requires a mental faculty for premeditation that few shades possess. Of course, the Order will provide whatever assistance the LAPD needs. We want this solved as much as anyone.’

  “She’s good,” Aunt Vy said from her perch on one of the dining room chairs. “She sounded convincing enough that most people will believe it isn’t shade-related.”

  Even though Cecelia couldn’t possibly know whether a shade killed the guard or not, I silently agreed.

  “And they don’t want the public freaking out over the possibility that shades might be manifested as targeted assassins on purpose,” I pointed out. “Just because experimenting with lucid dreaming is illegal, doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there trying.”

  Bella threw me a sharp look. “You think there are people trying?”

  “There’s always another idiot willing to overstep the boundaries,” I said. “To be the first.”

  Bella’s lips pressed into a thin line, her gaze still intense. “Maybe it’s not about being the first. Maybe it’s not even about murdering people and getting away with it. Maybe it’s just about feeling safe.”

  I shook my head. “Even if someone was an expert at lucid dreaming, there’d be no guarantees. It’s not a reliable science, which makes it dangerous. Sooner or later, it’s going to backfire.”

  The news cut back to the anchor in the studio. He thanked the reporter for her coverage and continued with the next scoop.

  Bella changed the subject with a sigh. “If the Order is helping with the case, Lia won’t ask you to consult.”

  “She never does. Eat your lasagna.”

  “Well, she should,” Bella said, poking at her food with her fork. “You know more about shades than anyone. Plus, you could get rid of that Pit while you’re at it.”

  “It would raise too many questions if the Pit disappeared while I was on scene. Ganner is suspicious enough of my methods as it is. I can’t risk it.”

  “I thought that was why you wanted to see it in the first place.”

  “I was hoping not to have a posse of cops and reporters close-by.”

  Something on TV caught Bella’s attention. “Oh my God! That guy looks like I’ve always pictured Greyson.”

  Hearing his name sliced through my heart. I’d managed to convince mys
elf that I would never see my manifested version of him because the Order hunters would have eliminated him and the hellhounds by now. No such luck.

  ‘In other news, a shade proved today that not all his kind are evil by default. Having manifested in the square at La Plaza Park, this particular warrior-shade battled the flaming canine beasts that manifested from the same dream.’

  Footage shot at a distance from a passerby’s smartphone focused on the carnage raging next to the gazebo. Greyson stood at the center. Hellhounds converged on him like buzzards on a carcass. He fought them off with the sword in his right hand. The frown on his face deepened as he kept reaching for the hellhounds with his left, trying to touch one after the other without getting his hand bitten off. Whenever he made contact, his brows bunched together in concentration as he tried harder and harder to banish the hellhound shades to the dreamscape. Except nothing happened.

  “Deynar never was the brightest bulb in the chandelier,” Aunt Vy said.

  “It’s not him,” I told both my obstinate sword and Bella, hoping to head them off at the pass. But I couldn’t tear my eyes from the figure on the screen. I remembered that feeling all too well from my own manifestation; the realization that my banishing power was useless here, in the real world. The hounds couldn’t be banished, because there was no dreamscape to banish them to. That was a construct of the graphic novels, which had made it into my dream last night. And, two years ago, into Bella’s dream that had created me.

  At least I’d found a different way to use my powers by phazing their essences instead of banishing them to a dream realm that didn’t exist. Maybe Greyson would be able to modify his powers in the same way.

  Exclamations of “oh my God” and “let’s get out of here”, audible in the cameraman’s background, tore me out of my turmoil of hope, guilt, and horror at the scene unfolding on TV. The presenter continued with his report. ‘The Order arrived on the scene only minutes after the shade manifested.’