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

by P. S. Newman

  If I'd known how good the view of the Pit was from up here, I might have connected the dots earlier. Or at least not believed Sean so readily when he told me the Pit hadn't factored into his dream. The empty stretches of broken interstate that ran up to the edge were a sad reminder of how many people had been lost to the depths - ready stimulus for anybody's subconscious imagination.

  "Maybe later then.” He put the bottle on the table next to a couple of whiskey tumblers and came around the desk to greet me. "To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?"

  I tore my gaze away from the Pit and faced him. "Tell me the safe word."

  "Moon Walk." He stopped in front of me, his hand twitching to the lapels of his suit when he looked me in the eyes. I was making him nervous. "You have news about the doppelgänger, I assume."

  “He just tried to kill David down in the parking garage.” The secretaries had known; how could he not have heard?

  "What?"

  "Damn it, Sean, you were supposed to tell him. Isn’t that what you called him into the office for so late.”

  “I haven’t gotten the chance. We got side-tracked by an emergency.”

  I threw up my hands in exasperation. “A shade assassin gunning for your brother is a bigger emergency than one of your clients running low on supplies. Jesus, Sean. David thought it was you shooting at him. It’s time to tell us the truth. The whole truth. Or I quit and you can find someone else to deal with this." I wouldn’t, not while David’s - and by extension, Cecelia and Bella’s - lives were in danger. But maybe the threat would shake him out of his reluctance to tell the truth.

  Color rushed to his face, turning his dark complexion almost purple. I’d finally gotten through to him. "Let's go.”

  We headed through the door and down the hallway.

  "Jessica, if Mr. Yamamoto calls, please tell him that we’ve had a family emergency come up and that I’ll contact him first thing tomorrow," Sean said as we crossed the lobby.

  Jessica looked up from behind the desk and nodded. "Of course, Sir, right away." The two secretaries cast guilty glances at each other. It dawned on me why Sean hadn't known about the attack on his brother; nobody in his own company had wanted to tell him about it.

  David was pacing the wide expanse of his own birds-eye view when we entered. Greyson stood off to the side, behind the chair David had probably offered him to sit in. Sean glanced at Greyson, then focused on his brother before his gaze slid back to Greyson. His eyes widened, taking in the tight-fitting body armor, the sword, the long blond hair tied together at the nape of the neck.

  Sean looked at me. "Since when do you work with a partner?"

  "I guess you haven't been watching the news," David jumped in, "or you would recognize LA's first-ever shade hero."

  Sean's stared at Greyson as if he knew something was up. "Does he have a name?"

  Crap. We still hadn't figured out a code name for Greyson.

  "He can speak for himself," Greyson said, coming forward. He held out his hand to shake. Sean took it before I could stop the introductions. An eerie sense of déjà-vu settled over the scene. "My name is Greyson Deynar."

  Oh boy.

  Sean blinked as he looked from Greyson to me and back. "Are you kidding me?"

  Greyson frowned as if he sensed there was something more going on. The two men locked gazes.

  "Sean!" David's voice cracked through the room like a whip. "You have something to tell me." I'd never heard him talk to his brother that way. David's legendary patience had limits, after all.

  Sean tore his gaze from Greyson and deflated like a balloon. He lowered himself into one of the black leather chairs standing in front of David's desk and rubbed his hands over his face. He looked at his brother. "Are you alright?"

  David stopped pacing and dropped into his throne-like swivel-chair on the other side of the desk. "I'm fine, thanks to Eden and especially Greyson. Except for the fact that my heart almost stopped when I thought it was you aiming a gun at me. What the hell, Sean? Why wouldn't you tell me about your doppelgänger?"

  "I didn't think he was so dangerous," Sean whispered, his voice strained with guilt. "I didn't think he would have the guts to go after anyone in broad daylight."

  "Just because you don't?" David said.

  My jaw did some sort of circus acrobatics as I tried to stop it from dropping. Sean's head whipped up and his posture shifted from contrite to defensive. He opened his mouth to retort, but David was quicker. "I'm sorry," he said, dropping his head into his hands. "That was uncalled for. I just... you scared me, Sean."

  "Not me.” Sean crossed his arms in front of his chest. "My doppelgänger."

  "I didn't know that.” David’s hands shook as he drew them through his hair. The shock was catching up to him again.

  "I think we could all use a drink," I said.

  “I second that.” David rose from his chair and walked around the desk to a solid-wood cabinet lining the wall across from the window. He opened a door to reveal a small but fully-stocked bar, including glasses of varying shapes and sizes. David grabbed a bottle out of the impressive collection and poured three glasses. He handed his brother the first one. Sean knocked it back in one big gulp.

  David gave me the second glass, then turned to Greyson. "Do you drink?" he asked.

  "Drink what?"

  "Whiskey." The Baptiste brothers loved their Scotch. I held my glass up for Greyson. "Sniff it first."

  He stuck his nose into the glass and breathed in. He jerked back when the aroma hit, his face screwing up as if he'd sucked on a lemon. He shook his head. "No thanks."

  "That's got to be a first, little brother," Sean said. "Someone saying no to you and your more than a hundred-year-old whiskey. Others would sell their grandmothers for such an opportunity."

  David put the bottle away and took a sip of the third glass. When he lowered it, he had regained his composure. His gaze was shrewd, fixed on his brother. "Is that what this doppelgänger is about? Your jealousy of me?"

  For the second time that day, my bottom jaw almost cracked the floor tiles. Silence rang through the room. So much for lifting the mood.

  "You thought I didn't know you were jealous," David said, nodding as if it all made sense. "You thought you hid it so well. Well, Sean, I do know and I don't give a damn how you feel about me. That's your cross to bear, not mine. Having said that, here's how I feel: you're my brother, now and always.”

  Sean blinked at David as if he'd sprouted horns. He must have expected his brother to be mad or at least hurt for a while longer. I knew I had.

  David looked at Sean’s stunned face. "I know you'd never consciously hurting me, but that doesn't mean you don't sometimes resent me for being more popular than you. We all know what happens when we suppress our feelings."

  Suppressed feelings made for some of the most dangerous and volatile shades, like volcanic eruptions, man-eating wardrobes, and killer bunnies. Or doppelgänger assassins.

  "Tell me about the dream, Sean," I said. I took the scabbard off my back and hung Aunt Vy over the back of the free chair next to Greyson before sitting down, at once grateful and suspicious that she was keeping her promise of silence. "Everything this time. It could mean the difference between David's life or death."

  "You think that's what he's after?" Sean asked. "To kill David?"

  "Yes. For one, he was lying in wait for David at his house. Two, down in the garage he fired to kill. The shot would have hit David if Greyson hadn't stepped between them. I don't know if killing David is the doppelgänger's sole purpose but it's high on his list of priorities."

  "Alright." Sean took a deep breath and sat up straighter in his chair. "My dream didn't take place on the roof of my house, at least not entirely. The scene switched between there and the rooftop bar of the Andaz West Hollywood hotel."

  “The former Riot Hyatt?” I asked. “I thought the shade of a giant TV crushed it?”

  David nodded. “It did. Over a year ago. Sean and I bought the
ruins and rebuilt the hotel. We had some disagreements about what the pool and bar on the rooftop should look like. We ended up compromising.”

  “Compromising,” Sean snorted. “Is that what you call getting your way?”

  David narrowed his eyes at his brother. “You agreed to my designs.”

  “Because there was no point in fighting them. You would have pushed them through, no matter what I said.”

  “So you’re mad at me for the fact that you caved?” David said. “Mad enough that your subconscious needs to deal with this issue.”

  Sean pressed his lips together. “So it would seem.”

  “Why not tell me this?” I asked. “Why give me all that hogwash about being caught in a riptide?”

  “It wasn’t hogwash, that happened. Locations switched during the dream, but as I woke up my dream was set on my roof. The doppelgänger manifested on my roof, like I said. So I didn’t think it made a difference.”

  “I told you to let me be the judge of that. It made enough of a difference for you to send the Order hunters there.”

  “It was the operator’s idea that he might head there when I told her about the dream.”

  I stared at him. “You told the operator but not me?”

  He looked down at his Armani loafers. “I didn’t tell her the other parts, either.”

  “You mean the ones you’re going to tell me about right now?”

  “Yes.”

  Hallelujah!

  “I wasn’t alone in my dream,” he continued. “David was there, too. We were sitting in the Jacuzzi together, discussing the designs for the Andaz. Which was weird, because we were on the rooftop of the Andaz, and it was all finished, the way it is now. Our argument was pointless.”

  He paused, took a deep breath. Looked at his brother. “I need you to know that what happened in my dream isn’t how I really feel.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” David said with furrowed brows.

  “In my dream, you disregarded everything I said about my visions for the Andaz,” Sean continued. “You made all the decisions without me, as if I wasn’t sitting right next to you. I got mad. Really mad. And hot. The water in the tub started to boil. The next thing I knew, flames were shooting out of my fingers.” He looked at David. “You tried to escape; you jumped out of the hot tub. I shot more flames at you and you caught on fire like you were made of bone-dry wood. Like a torch. You crumbled to ashes within a few seconds.”

  Sean paused, looking down at his hands. David and I exchanged a glance that held morbid fascination.

  “Then what?” I prompted.

  Sean cleared his throat. “I got out of the hot tub; that’s when the dream shifted to my roof. Suddenly it was my hot tub. I went to get a closer look at the pile of ashes. They stirred in the breeze. They tickled my bare feet. The remains of my brother were tickling my feet and I suddenly realized what I’d done.”

  He paused again, dared a glance at David. His eyes dropped as soon as they met his brother’s. “I was shocked at myself. Horrified. And then a man stepped up beside me. I looked at him and into my own face. At first, I thought I was looking into a mirror, but there was this crazy glint in the other one’s eyes, one I wasn’t feeling at all. His lips moved when mine didn’t. He said, ‘leave it to me’. Then he reached into my chest and grabbed my heart. He pulled it out. It was on fire, flames licking out between his fingers. For some reason, it didn't hurt. I just felt... peace."

  As crazy as it sounded, it made sense in a twisted sort of way. The doppelgänger had wrenched all of Sean's negative emotions out of him and taken them on, absolving Sean from them. Dreams weren't always subtle. I wondered if Sean understood, but he kept talking. "That's when I woke up." At home in his bed while his doppelgänger popped into existence on his roof, harboring all those negative emotions Sean had been carrying around for his brother.

  Sean was staring at David, an anxious look on his face. David stood by the cabinet, glass in hand, his gaze lost somewhere in the birds-eye view of the city beyond the window. "David?" Sean pleaded. "Say something."

  "What do you want me to say?" David asked. "I guess I'll have to hire a bodyguard to follow me around until Eden catches your doppelgänger."

  "That's it?" The fierce undertone in Sean’s voice surprised me. "I send an assassin after you and that's all you have to say to me? You'll hire a bodyguard? Dammit, David." Sean shot out of his chair. "For once can't you just act normal and get mad or scared or something. This Superman routine is getting old."

  "He knows it's not your fault, Sean," I said. "Not on a conscious level. Nobody can control their dreams. They don't work that way. And we know you're not holding the doppelgänger’s reins anymore."

  "But I created him,” Sean said, guilt written all over his face. “He sprung from those deepest, darkest places inside me."

  "Are you waiting for us to acknowledge that you have them?" David said. "Because, surprise, we all do. Eden is right. You're not responsible for your shade’s actions. Only for helping her catch it."

  Sean still stared at his brother, relief, confusion, resentment, and anger warping across his face. For the briefest of moments, something bright glimmered in his gaze, something almost like hope. But then he closed his eyes and shook his head. When he looked at us again it was gone, along with all the other emotions. His face was a blank mask. "Thank you, for understanding. I... was afraid of you finding out. That's why I didn't tell you about it immediately." He looked at me. "Or tell you everything about the dream."

  "I know now," I said, letting him off the hook. Hopefully, next time, if there ever was one, he wouldn't hesitate to tell me everything. "Except for this plan the doppelgänger was talking about. Though I think it's safe to assume that killing David is his main goal."

  David looked at me. "Does any of the information Sean gave us help in catching him?"

  “Possibly,” I said. “I still have one question. Is there a reason the doppelgänger might be interested in the Pit?”

  Sean frowned at me. “What are you talking about?”

  Time for a good bogus reason to bring up the Pit besides ‘your doppelgänger is already a murderer’. “Ganner called me, asking why you might want access to the Pit. Apparently, you - by which I guess it was the doppelgänger - were trying to get a permit from the Order.” There. That sounded feasible.

  Sean frowned. “Why would she call you and not me?”

  “How would she know it’s you answering, not the other one?”

  He thought about that for a moment, then dismissed it with a shrug. “Fair enough.”

  He was evading my questions. Again. “Do you know of any reason why your evil shade twin would want access to the Pit?”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea. I meant it when I said it never featured in my dream.” He sounded sincere.

  “The Pit might be the reason you killed David with fire in your dream. You have a fantastic view of it from your office, after all.”

  “This is all conjecture,” David interrupted. “We need to stick to the facts. This shade is trying to kill me.”

  “Which is why I should get back to tracking it down right away.”

  “Where will you start?” David asked.

  “I have a few ideas,” I told him. I wasn’t going to mention that the Pit was my first destination. Hopefully, I’d find some clues as to what the doppelgänger had been up to at the Pit or why he would want to murder the guard.

  "Let me know if I can help,” Sean said.

  "I will," I promised, "as long as you promise to call me the second you remember any more details from your dream."

  "Done. Now one other thing."

  "What?"

  Sean jerked his chin at Greyson, who had kept silent since Sean began his tale. So silent that I’d almost forgotten he was there at all. Almost.

  "What the hell is Greyson Deynar doing here?"

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  "You can't be serious!" Sean stared at David as if his b
rother had proclaimed he was flying off to Neverland. "You want to make a documented shade our mascot?"

  "He saved my life," David stated. "He's a hero. If there was ever a shade to change peoples' minds, it's him."

  Greyson was watching the brothers from his chair. He appeared relaxed, leaning back, with legs crossed and hands lying on his knees. Yet the slight tension in his shoulders told me he was alert and ready. If they decided he needed to be eliminated, he'd be out of here in a flash. Greyson Deynar would never go easily into that dark night.

  I knew something else, too. I wouldn't be able to eliminate him. Just looking at him was tying my stomach into knots. This was it. If David couldn’t even convince his brother of Greyson’s value, there would be no point in trying with the SHAID leaders.

  "How do you propose we present him without setting ourselves up for a fall?" Sean said. "Harboring shades is illegal, in case you forgot. If we support him, someone is sure to dig deeper. Deep enough to discover the other shades we've managed to integrate and keep hidden all these years. We'd be risking everything, David. Everything. No shade is worth that, even if it saved your life. They're not even... real."

  Aunt Vy guffawed but stayed quiet. Her silence must have cost her a lot because I was practically bursting to snap at Sean. You thought me real enough to date me and be angry when I ended it. I clamped my jaws together. Greyson didn't know that I was a shade and I wanted to keep it that way. For now.

  David saw the hypocrisy in Sean's words, too. "They're real enough to kill us," he shot back, a subtle reminder that he was lucky to be alive. "Real enough to integrate into society, something you yourself promote. Real enough to become our friends." This with a glance in my direction. Sean followed his gaze and turned a nice shade of red. He opened his mouth to say something, but the ring of my phone interrupted his struggle for words. Thankful for the distraction, I answered without looking at the caller-ID.