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

by P. S. Newman

  "Of course.”

  "Thank you. Now please excuse me, I have to check on someone." Both she and the cameraman watched me walk back into the courtyard and look up at the balcony. "Bella?" I called. "Are you okay?"

  No answer.

  "Sean?"

  “They’re gone!” The voice was faint but unmistakable.

  I almost dropped my spare sword in surprise. “Aunt Vy?”

  “He took them.” She sounded miserable. “He took them and there was nothing I could do.”

  “Who took them?” Deep down, I knew. But I wanted to be wrong. Maybe Johnson had managed to get them to safety. Except Aunt Vy wouldn’t sound so wretched about that, even if she’d been left behind. “Where are you?”

  “I’m useless. A useless stick of metal on a pretty handle.”

  She had to be up on the balcony. “Hold on, I’m coming to get you!” I hurried inside, found the next stairwell and headed to the upper floor. Access had been restricted during the gala, but the shade alert had overridden the restriction and opened all doors. Most public facilities sported a shade-attack protocol in their security systems that allowed people in the building to make a quick exit. The safety of priceless ancient art and artifacts came second to that of peoples' lives.

  I reached the landing on the second floor and ran through an open door into a large hall. More statues and busts on plinths stood along the walls and down the middle. My leather-soled sandals tapped across the marble floor as I ran to the other side. A crumbled shape at the end of the hall made me slide to a stop. Oh no. With my sword in a defensive stance in front of me, I walked closer to the twisted body lying on the ground.

  The man was dead. At least, the angle of his head suggested that he wasn't lying on the cold marble floor to take a nap. His eyes were closed. He wore all black. 'Security' was written in white block letters across his chest. One of Johnson's men. The man's arm looked broken in two places. A gun with a big funnel attached to the tip of the barrel lay next to his outstretched right hand. My net gun.

  I checked his pulse, just in case, but got nothing. Looked like a clean break of the neck. This was the doing of a cold-blooded assassin. The tiny sliver of hope I’d been holding on to withered and died. He was here. The doppelgänger was here, might have been here all along. On the balcony with Bella.

  I ran.

  I found the window-front overlooking the courtyard. The door to the balcony stood open and I burst through it. The balcony stretched to my left and right, providing a wide view over the courtyard, including the fountain and the beheaded hellhound. I ran to the banister to look over. Taylor lay below. Two paramedics were kneeling beside him, a third wheeling a stretcher into view. No Bella. No Sean. No doppelgänger.

  I went cold and still. This would have been a great spot from which to watch the fight. Or to orchestrate it.

  “I’m over here,” Aunt Vy called out. She lay by the wall as if dropped there at random. I rushed over and picked her up. She felt light in my hands. Diminished. “How did you get here?”

  “Bella smuggled me in, tied against her stiff leg underneath her dress.”

  That would explain the more pronounced limp. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t considered that she might try to bring Aunt Vy along after our big family blowup over Luis and her shade bear. I also couldn’t believe that Aunt Vy had gone along with the whole ploy and kept quiet, but this wasn’t the time to have that conversation. “What happened?”

  “The doppelgänger kidnapped Bella and Sean,” she said, confirming my fears. “Bella tried to wield me to stop him, but we weren’t fast enough. He disarmed her, dropped me here, and… there was nothing I could do. Nothing. Not even scream loud enough for you to hear me down there. Not a damn thing.”

  “This isn’t your fault, Vy.”

  She snorted. “If I told you the same, how would you feel?”

  Like she was humoring me. “There was nothing you could have done.”

  “Exactly.” She sighed. “Never mind. He left you a note. On the banister.”

  Something flapped in the breeze, stuck to the top of the white banister. A sticky-note. I suppose it was always going to be the hard way. Time to dance. Sean 2.0

  "What does that even mean?" I ground out, dialing Cecelia's number. It rang once. Twice. Kept ringing. "Hello, this is Detective Perez of the LAPD. I'm unavailable right now, but please leave--"

  I hung up and tried David's number. Same result. Sean's phone went straight to voice mail. So did Bella's. Johnson still wasn't answering either. I'd run out of numbers to call.

  Or maybe not.

  I ran downstairs, Aunt Vy in my hand. The paramedics were wheeling Taylor across the main hall. Taylor lay still, an oxygen mask covering his face. March's cameraman followed them, still filming as they disappeared through the front entrance. March stood in the doorway to the courtyard, watching.

  "Miss March!" My voice snapped through the hall. She spun towards me, eyes wide. "Did your anonymous tipper give you a way to contact him?"

  Her eyes darted to the left. "No, no, why would he--?"

  Aunt Vy’s blade kissed her exposed neck in a flash of steel. She froze.

  "Your poker face needs work," I said. "Hand it over."

  With trembling hands, she pulled her phone out of her purse and scrolled through the address book. "Here.” I took it with my free hand. "He told me to call this number."

  I hit the call-button, never taking Aunt Vy away from March's neck. It rang twice before Sean's voice - the doppelgänger's voice - came over the line.

  "Do you have her?"

  The blood froze in my veins. He thought March was calling him. I locked eyes with her. I'd suspected her of being in touch with the doppelgänger. I hadn't expected her to be his accomplice in kidnapping Bella.

  "Yes." I kept my voice low, hoping it sounded enough like March's. If I played this right, he might give away details that would help me find him.

  "Excellent," he said. "Everything is going as pla--"

  “Behind you!” Aunt Vy screamed, just as something solid and heavy smashed into the back of my head. Stars exploded before my eyes. My knees folded beneath me. Aunt Vy clattered to the marble. My head hit the ground. Through the dancing sparkles, I saw the cameraman hovering over me, holding his camera high above his head. Had he really just hit me with his camera?

  "I'm sorry.” March's voice reached my ears even as the lights went out, one by one. "He promised me this would be the scoop of a lifetime."

  The world went dark.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The headache woke me; a dull throb that drew me further out of sleep with every pounding heartbeat. By the time I drifted to full consciousness, it felt like someone was taking a pike to my skull in a steady, excruciating rhythm. My stomach churned. Even when I managed to rub my eyes open, my vision remained blurry. It took a lot of effort to focus. At least my bed was soft.

  My grasp on my memories was fuzzy, too. Why did everything hurt?

  “About time you woke up,” Aunt Vy’s voice helped me crawl further out of my stupor, though it did nothing to sort through my confusion.

  “What happened?” I asked. It sounded more like whahapa?

  “March clobbered you over the head and brought you here several hours ago.”

  “March?” I managed to sit up, my body as sluggish as my thoughts. I took stock. The fact that I still wore my sheath strapped to my body explained the aches and twinges. I wanted to stretch my limbs, loosen my muscles, but even that seemed like too much of an effort. Why hadn’t I taken the sheath off before going to bed? And why the hell was I wearing a dress underneath? At least I’d had the presence of mind to take Aunt Vy and my other blades out of the sheath before going to sleep, even if I had laid them out on the right side of my king-sized bed.

  Aunt Vy sighed. “You’re feeling the aftereffects of being drugged. And you may have a concussion. Go get some water, then we’ll talk.”

  Water sounded like the best
idea ever.

  It seemed to take forever to stagger downstairs and reach the kitchen. With every step, my limbs grew heavier, my head lighter, the pulse in my brain harder. Darkness lurked at the edges of my vision. Finally in the kitchen, I pulled a glass out of a cupboard and held it underneath the tap. Cool water spilled into the glass and over my shaking hands. I downed the entire glass in a couple of gulps and chased it with another.

  “Slow down, child,” Aunt Vy snapped from her perch against the wall.

  I slowed down after the second glass, though I still poured myself a third and sat there, sipping it at my small kitchen table. I already felt better, though my vision was still blurry and my head continued to pound. A concussion felt plausible though I still couldn’t remember how I’d hit my head. And Aunt Vy had mentioned me being drugged, which seemed highly unlikely. I didn’t do drugs.

  I looked down at myself, hoping for more clues. The pink dress was torn and smeared with blood—

  I shot up from my chair, memories rushing in. “The gala! The chimera!” Nobody answering their phones. The note on the balcony - time to dance.

  “Hallelujah, it’s coming back to her!”

  And the KCW reporters, who hit me over the head. That was the last thing I remembered. “How did I get here?”

  “March and her cameraman brought you here,” Aunt Vy said. “After knocking you out, they drugged you, took you home and made you comfortable. Well, sort of.”

  “For a scoop?” I remembered what March had said just before everything went dark. ‘He promised me the scoop of a lifetime’. “None of that makes any sense.”

  “I believe,” Vy said slowly, “they were just buying time for the doppelgänger to set up the next step of his plan. They even brought your van back. That’s how they got onto the property. They left the van in the yard and dragged you into the house through the garage.”

  I glanced out the kitchen window. Sure enough, my van stood in the driveway. The electronic key attached to the steering wheel had given them access to my whole house. “Why would the doppelgänger want me to have my van?”

  My phone vibrated in its pouch at my hip with a text message, making me jump. The reporters must have stuck it in there, leaving it with me along with my weapons. Very accommodating. I looked at the phone, hoping against hope it was Cecelia, Bella, David, or even Sean. Maybe there was a logical explanation for why they hadn’t answered back at the museum. No such luck. The text was from an unknown number.

  I took a deep breath and opened the message. You awake yet? Time to join my party. Sean 2.0

  White-hot rage boiled through me. I hit the call button and listened to the ring. Pick up, asshole! I dare you to speak to me.

  “Finally!” Sean’s voice boomed in my ear. “Welcome back. Instructions are forthcoming.” A click sounded and the line went dead. I blinked and stared down at the screen, caught off guard. Instructions?

  The phone buzzed in my hands. Another text. The party’s at the abandoned Meta-Tech factory. The fireworks are scheduled for 2 am. You'll have to hurry for a front-row seat. If anybody else shows up, it might go off a tad early…

  There was a file attached to the message. I opened it, hands shaking. It was a picture of Sean - the real Sean, presumably - gagged and bound to a chair. A logo on the wall behind him read ‘Meta-Tech’. His eyes shone with rage above a filthy gag. But it only exacerbated his helplessness in the face of the blocks of explosives tied to a leg of the chair he sat on. The inscription on one of them was visible: C4. A digital timer between his legs was set at 00:30:00.

  I glanced at the digital clock in the top right corner of my phone. It was 1:32 am on the night of the gala. The chimera had attacked the Getty Villa at around half-past eight. I’d been drugged and dropped off at home by March several hours ago. Aunt Vy was right; the doppelgänger had needed time to set up this… ‘party’.

  I doubted very much that March knew this part of the doppelgänger’s plan. He’d promised her a big scoop and she was ambitious enough to sell her grandmother for one. But murder seemed out of her league.

  “There’s got to be more to this,” I muttered. “If Sean dies, so does the doppelgänger. Why would he risk his own life?”

  “You’ve got twenty-nine minutes and twenty seconds to get to the factory before the doppelgänger’s C4 blows Sean to bits,” Aunt Vy provided, in case I hadn’t fully grasped that fact. “Might want to get a move on.”

  The phone buzzed in my hands. Another text. Everything inside me screamed not to look. But I had to. What he said. Only we're at David's place. Whose party are you gonna go to? A photo was attached to this message, too. Cecelia and Bella, gagged, bound to chairs, rigged with C4 and a timer that read 00:30:00.

  My head grew light. Blood roared in my ears and my vision swam. The factory was only ten minutes from here, but David's place was at least half an hour away in normal traffic, in the opposite direction to the factory.

  “We’ll never get to both locations in time,” Aunt Vy said.

  “No shit, Sherlock!”

  The doppelgänger was making me choose between my friend and my family.

  I ran outside, back to my van. It was 1:33 am.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  On my race to David’s house, I thought about calling Jerry Holstein, Cecelia's detective partner, but dismissed it. The doppelgänger’s message had been clear. If anybody besides me showed up, he would detonate both bombs, killing Bella, Cecelia, and Sean, including anyone close enough to try to help them.

  “You had to make a choice, child,” Aunt Vy said in a somber voice.

  “But the doppelgänger would know it wasn’t a difficult choice for me,” I said, feeling miserable. Sean was a good friend but Cecelia and Bella were my family. The doppelgänger had to know I would choose them over him. Not to mention the fact that if Sean died, so would Sean 2.0 and our problem would be solved.

  The worry still niggled at me. There had to be more to this game the doppelgänger was playing.

  I arrived at David's EnerShield gate in record time. Thank God for curfew. Even with the green-flashing shade hunter lights clearing the way, I wouldn’t have gotten here this fast during traffic hours. I punched in the code and flew up the driveway.

  “It’s one fifty-one,” Aunt Vy informed me. She’d been ticking off the minutes since we left my place. “You have nine minutes to find them and deactivate the bomb, or cut them loose and make a run for it.”

  Bella wasn’t a fast runner. We’d never get far enough to avoid the blast. “Not helping,” I ground out. Panic smoldered in my chest, threatening to rise and overwhelm. I pushed it down and concentrated on driving. Now was not the time for a meltdown.

  I screeched to a stop in front of the house. I jumped out of the van, drew my Walther PPT, and ran inside, Aunt Vy strapped to my back. I typed the number to disable the alarm system into the pad, costing me more precious seconds. The time on the video screens said 1:53. Seven minutes.

  The house lay in darkness, only moonlight seeping in through the windows. I kept to the cover of the shadows as much as I could while checking every room as fast as possible.

  Living room, clear.

  Kitchen, clear.

  Dining room, clear.

  Staircase, clear.

  I ran upstairs, the torn skirt of my stupid dress flying around my thighs. Hallway, clear. I didn’t bother with the rooms but kept climbing. The photo had been obvious as to their location.

  The door that led out to the roof stood open. I slowed and tip-toed up the rest of the stairs, hugging the wall. I stopped at the top, still in the shadows. Light flickered on the concrete ground from around the left corner. All I heard was the murmur of the ocean in the distance.

  I took a deep breath and stepped through the door, gun at the ready. My gaze was drawn to a single gas lamp that sat on the floor. In front of it stood the chair out of the photos, with a person tied to it, the explosives attached to its legs. The digital timer underneath
read 00:03:11.

  The flickering light cast the person’s face in shadow, but I didn’t need to see a face to know this was neither Bella nor Cecelia. I recognized that tall frame, the curly black hair, the angle of the jaw. Sean.

  I glanced around the other corner of the stairwell with wild eyes. The roof on that side lay dark and empty. No Cecelia. No Bella.

  I rushed back to the other side, gun raised. Sean's body jerked against his bindings when he heard he was no longer alone. Eyes full of panic met mine above a gag that covered the bottom half of his face. 00:02:54. My eyes saw the seconds ticking away, but my brain focused on a different detail. One that turned my heart to ice: Painted on the stairwell wall behind Sean was a crude imitation of the Meta-Tech logo.

  The doppelgänger had tricked me.

  Vy realized it, too. “He knew we’d choose to rescue Bella and Cecelia over Sean.” But he never wanted me to reach them. He wanted me to come here and realize that their time was running out. That they were going to die while I stood in the wrong location. And that Aunt Vy and I would die along with Bella.

  00:02:38.

  Oh God.

  “He wanted us to fail them.” Aunt Vy’s voice was soft and resigned. Hopeless. “I did fail them. Again.”

  “We both did.” My voice sounded as defeated as hers. I tried to come up with something encouraging to say, but what was the point? Bella and Cecelia were going to die. I was going to die.

  My knees buckled. My arms turned to jelly. The Walther suddenly weighed a thousand tons. I would have dropped it if Sean's muffled screams hadn’t penetrated the roar in my head. I focused on those, on his body rocking and jerking in the chair, on anything but the horrific realization that in two minutes I would stop existing.

  Sean kept screaming, his panicked eyes boring into my head, hoping, pleading, imploring. I concentrated on him. On my friend. Maybe I could at least save my friend.