Romans & histoires City Of The Dead Jonathan Kellerman

It was Jerome. “Hello?” I called. “What’s wrong, Jerome?” “It’s Jonathan. We found him lying just at the outskirts of town,” Jerome reported. “He’s dead, Rune. Jonathan is dead.”

" Things were quiet for the next three days. I kept checking in, and Chester kept reassuring me, no weird dreams, nothing out of the ordinary. He even tiptoed around the idea of seeing a shrink, but I was not having any of it. Just when I started to relax, that's when it happened. Chester did not come home one night, and his phone might as well have been a brick. That old, uneasy feeling crept back in, and I bolted for the cemetery. There he was, sitting by my dad's grave, a mouthful of pâté and a half-empty glass of whiskey, toasting the air. My heart twisted in my chest. "Don't you dare eat that! Spit it out, now!" I dashed over, pounding on his back, desperate to make it stop.

Streetlights reflected against the wet roads in long streaks of gold and white. The city felt different at night. Colder. More dangerous. The kind of place where secrets preferred to live. Nobody spoke much inside the vehicle. Daniel drove. James sat in the passenger seat. Aria sat beside me in the back. The silence wasn't uncomfortable. It was thoughtful. Each of us processing the same question. Who killed Dr Patel? And why now? The city morgue stood near the waterfront. A grey concrete structure surrounded by security fencing and police vehicles. Blue lights flashed through the rain.

One voice of doubt won't be enough to pull them out. "Then I'll be louder." I turned to the others. "Listen to me! Those deadies we saw earlier, the peaceful ones? They're not at peace, they're being digested. The city is eating them so slowly they don't even realize it's happening. It keeps them happy while it feeds." Axel shook his head like he was trying to clear water from his ears. "What are you talking about?" "The city is alive. It's a predator. It hunts by offering exactly what you need most and then consuming you while you're distracted by the dream." I pointed at the buildings around us. "Look closer, like, really look. Don't you see it?"

"Stellan! Stellan, you're awake! I knew it! I knew you weren't dead!" She whipped around to face me, her expression twisting into something vicious and triumphant. "Elara Renworth! Your plan just fell apart! Stellan's awake! He's alive! Just you wait. The moment he gets out of there, he'll throw you out like the garbage you are!" There were more thuds, louder now. The lid of the coffin shifted, pushed from the inside, and a gap appeared. A pale hand reached through the opening. Stellan Montclair was alive.

The hatred in Sarah's eyes almost swallowed him whole. "Melinda gave you her whole heart, and this is how you treated her? You killed her! Are you satisfied now?" "Mom, what are you talking about? How could Melinda be dead? Stop fooling around." Blake panicked. "Fooling around? Have a look for yourself!" Sarah threw a document in his face. It was my death certificate. In black and white, it clearly recorded my time and cause of death.

All my life, I had dreamed of Mom caring about me the way she cared about Becca, but now that dream had come true, I couldn’t bring myself to feel happy at all. The officers exchanged glances. No one reacted to her outburst. Instead, there was only a trace of pity in their eyes. “Ma’am, we can show you a photo first, so you can confirm whether it’s your daughter. It’s just… when we found her, she had been dead for three days, and the body had started to decompose. You should prepare yourself.”

With every swing of Dave’s blade and every detonation of Laura’s will, the army of husks was reduced to nothing more than ash drifting on the wind. ​The final fragment of Catherine’s presence stood at the edge of the altar. It looked like her—impossibly tall - features sharp as broken glass. It lunged for the Codex, but Laura and Dave met it halfway. They didn't strike it; they pinned it between them. They released a shockwave of combined light that annihilated the figure instantly. The scream that followed was not one of rage but of total, absolute erasure. ​Then, silence returned. ​The Sunken City was no longer a city. It was a crater of broken stone and rising dust. The water had drained

After catching my supposedly frigid wife, Emmy Winslow, aroused by our household robot butler, I swallowed my disgust and sent the machine to a destruction facility. I never expected that decision to cost her life. On the way to chase after the robot, Emmy was involved in a horrific car accident and died at the scene. From that day on, I became notorious in our social circle as the jealous husband who drove his wife to her death. Five years passed. Night after night, I tortured myself by wondering if she would still be alive had I not been so petty over a machine. Until today, while discussing business at a private club, I passed a half-open VIP suite and heard one of Emmy's closest frie