Patient Darkness: Brooding City Series Book 2 Read Free Page A

know,” he said. He raised a skeptical eye and looked pointedly at his nephew’s sweaty brow and wobbling stance. “But you haven’t touched any of these, so what’s up? Are you getting sick?” He reached forward to feel Greg’s forehead, but the younger man retreated.
    “I’m fine,” he said. “You know how it is when the temperature starts to drop. It’s probably just a flu or something, and I’m the first to catch it.”
    False .
    Brennan grunted noncommittally. His nephew was a recovering addict. Chamalla copycats had flooded the streets at half the price. Brennan was rarely home to keep watch over him. It didn’t take an enormous effort to connect the dots, and he knew an easy way to confirm his suspicions.
    “Sam mentioned he might be catching something, too,” Brennan said, rubbing his chin. “He said his body was burning up; he could barely stand to keep his jacket on, even when we were outside.” The words followed each other like ducklings in a row, the lie coalescing as easily as dew drops on a cool morning.
    “I feel the same thing,” Greg said. He was rubbing at his arm, same as he had been coming out of the bathroom.
    “You should get out of that long-sleeved shirt, then, and put something lighter on.”
    Greg shook his head. “No, no, that wouldn’t be a good idea.” His eyes darted up; they were bloodshot, with a hint of dark bags starting to form beneath the heavy lids. “It’s still cold out, you know. I don’t want to catch something worse by being exposed like that.”
    Brennan sighed. “All right, look, here’s the deal. I know you’re using, and I know you’re hurting from it right now.” He extended a hand. “Let me help you.”
    Greg continued to shake, but it seemed beyond his control. He nodded jerkily and moved to sit down on the couch. Brennan sat next to him and rolled up Greg’s right sleeve; the skin was clear, except for an extremely faded square-shaped scar that was only really visible because he knew where to look. When Leviathan had been active, their Chamalla patches had produced hallucinations and a strong addiction to the drug, but some other ingredients had been responsible for slowly burning away at the skin of the application zone.
    Hesitantly, Brennan moved on to the other sleeve. Three-quarters of the way up, the shirt material peeled rather than rolled away from the skin, and he had to force his stomach not to rebel. The skin all around the patch was like an open sore, oozing clear pus and blood even as the patch pumped something black and toxic into Greg’s system. Brennan started to lift the patch away, but Greg yelped out in pain; Brennan had to hold his arm to keep him from recoiling away entirely.
    “I can’t get it off!” Greg sobbed. “That’s what I was trying to do in the bathroom, before you got home. This thing, it’s—it’s bad, real bad.”
    “What the hell were you thinking?” Brennan was more exasperated than angry. Clean for just over three months, somehow his nephew had fallen off the wagon, this time with an even worse concoction flowing through his veins.
    “It’s going to sound stupid,” he mumbled, looking anywhere else but Brennan’s eyes.
    “You can trust me. Whatever it is, I won’t get mad. I just want to help.”
    “It’s like—” He stopped to rub at his eyes and wipe across his nose with his free hand. “I just wanted to feel it again, you know?”
    “Feel what again?”
    “The fever dreams,” Greg said wistfully. “I felt like I could do anything, because I could see everything . The past, the future…it’s hard to explain. Did you ever wish you had a superpower as a child?”
    Brennan shook his head. If he were honest with himself, he might admit that he already did have a superpower. But these days, it was beginning to feel more like a curse than a blessing.
    “To have that kind of sureness about something,” Greg continued, “is so liberating. And I can do some good with it, too! I helped