City Infernal Read Online Free Page A

skipping beats. Her hands frantically dragged up the bedsheets, used them to wipe the blood and brains off her face.
    She quavered, the silent cry on her lips, and then fell back into the pillows. Her heartbeat paced down; she looked at the bedsheets.
    No blood.
    No brains.
    Just the curse of memory.
    Two long years and the nightmare still marauded her at least once a week. Better than every night, she reminded herself, which had been the case until they’d moved out here. After Lissa’s suicide, Cassie’s mental troubles had compounded, not just the recurring nightmare, but further introversion, two failed suicide attempts of her own, and a month in a private psychiatric hospital where the regimen of psychotropic drugs had reduced her to a stumbling zombie. The scars on her slim wrists were the only tangible results. Group therapy, hypnotic-regression, and narco-analysis had also failed. Ironically, it had been her father’s idea to break away from all of that. “To hell with all these crackpot doctors and drugs,” he’d said one day several months ago. “Let’s just get out of the city, get out of this shark-tank. Maybe that’ll be the best medicine for both of us.” Cassie had no reason to object, and with that, her father, the rather famous William F. Heydon, controlling partner of the third most successful law firm in the country, quit his influential—and very lucrative—post with a single one-sentence letter of resignation. The jurisprudential power circles in D.C. had experienced the legal equivalent of a grand mal seizure, and her father never went back to the firm again. Clearly, the two minor heart attacks and repeated angioplasties had shown him the light. “Every day above ground’s a good day, honey,” he told her. “Don’t know why it took me so long to see that. We’ve got everything we need. Besides, I’m sick of the chauffeur, I’m sick of lunch every day at the Mayflower, and the Redskins suck. Who needs this town?”
    “But what about all your friends at the firm?” she’d asked, and he just laughed back. “There’s no such thing as friends in a law firm, Cassie, just more sharks who’d stab you in the back without a second’s thought. I wish I could be there to see them fight over the big piece of raw meat I leave in their laps. I’ll bet those blood-suckers are even fighting over my office chair.”
    It was all fine with her; Cassie’s own insecurities had barred her from any real friendships herself. Who would want to hang out with someone perpetually half-dazed by psych drugs anyway? What guy would want to date a “Thorazine Queen?” And the city’s Goth scene was dead to her now.
    She knew she could never walk into another Goth club again because they’d only remind her of Lissa.
    Her father’s spur-of-the-moment plan had worked. Since the day they’d moved into Blackwell Hall—a month ago now—her emotions seemed to start balancing out. The nightly dream of her sister’s death reduced its recurrence to a weekly basis. The dread of seeing her psychiatrist evaporated; she didn’t go to her any more. Release from the battery of anti-depressants and other psycho-pharmaceuticals rejuvenated her to a degree she found astonishing.
    She felt alive, vibrant, more so than she could remember.
    Maybe things will really work out, she thought. Maybe I’ll get past this, and have a real life some day.
    She was learning quickly that one step at a time was the best way to handle things.
    She slid out of the high, four-poster bed, drew the heavy drapes, and immediately shielded her eyes. The harsh sunlight seemed to barge into the room. She opened the French doors and sighed at the caress of fresh air. Standing on the balcony in only panties and bra left her with no reservations. Who’s going to see? In D.C., that would be another matter altogether. But this was the country. All that looked back at her near nudity were rolling hills and distant pastures. The sun rose over the