Thriller City Novels & Stories

Dante Moretti – Penthouse, Midnight The city glimmered below like a wounded thing pretending not to bleed. Dante stood at the glass wall of the penthouse, back to the room, eyes fixed on the lights blinking far beneath him. Each one felt like a pin on a map, a variable to account for, a potential threat. He didn’t blink. Not when the building creaked. Not when his burner phone buzzed once on the table behind him. The static hum of the city had become background noise to a mind sharpened into something colder than steel.

The city didn’t. My phone vibrated against the metal table beside the cot, dragging me awake. I reached for it without hurry. The screen lit up with headlines. Lawson City Terror: Three Doctors Slain by an Anonymous Sniper. The Return of ‘Ghost.’ A quiet laugh slipped from my throat. “Return,” I repeated under my breath. I turned on the small mounted TV. A reporter stood outside the hospital, police tape fluttering behind her. Flashing red and blue lights painted everything in harsh color.

The wail of the sirens didn't just climb the eighty stories of the Blackwood Spire; it clawed its way up the cold, glass skin of the building like a living thing. It was a jagged, mechanical scream that pierced through the howling storm, vibrating in the very marrow of Elias Thorne’s bones. Below, the city of Chicago was a blurred mosaic of red and blue light, a hive of activity reacting to the bodies that had just rained down from the heavens.

I have been listening since I was nine years old and he hid under a kitchen table during a summer storm and told me the thunder was only sky furniture moving upstairs. The text appears slower now, as if each word costs him. THE CITY HAS THREE HEARTS. CORE BLOOD. POWER STACK. RESIDENTIAL TRUST. The phrase is so ugly and so Sector Seven that I almost laugh. TRUST RUNS DOORS PEOPLE THINK ARE CHOICES. I need to remember every word. I need to remember the timer. I need to remember the cameras, the kettle, the fake lemon smell, Damian’s silence beside the plant, the way the child has gone very still under my palm.

The city grid, in a synchronized, impossible heartbeat, flickered once, twice, and then hummed to life with a blinding, terrifying intensity. "We run," Pim said. "And we hope it’s still playing the game." The sirens grew louder, converging on the alleyway. The sisters turned and bolted into the labyrinth of the city, their shadows stretching out before them, long and thin, as the streetlights of Bangkok buzzed to life one by one, watching them go. The hunt had only just begun, and this time, the hunter was everywhere.

And suddenly frowned. Interesting. Very interesting. The First Memory stepped forward. "The city is resisting him." Everyone froze. "What?" The woman pointed toward the ground. Silver light flowed beneath the streets. Ancient symbols illuminated. The city itself was waking. Not the frozen citizens. Not the statues. The city. The City of Lost Possibilities had been built for a purpose. And now it was remembering that purpose. The Third Silence noticed too. His smile faded. And then, something impossible happened. The city attacked him.

It had taken much more than a new coat of paint and new front door. He had completely gutted the place and practically built it new from the floor up. Then all the business that he had gotten had come from the morbid horror chasers and those who are obsessed with true crime. He likes to refer to them a bottom feeders, vultures or the classic 'fucking freaks' depending on his mood.

By the time I came back to my senses, we were behind a hut in a dark alley that looked void of life and Human. I was about turning back when I heard voices. This time, it wasn't only me because I heard Shirley gasp and as fast as I could, I covered her mouth. Slowly and stealthily, I walked towards the sharp. edge of the hut, wanting to see what made that noise. The first thing I saw was a gun pointed at a dead and bloodied body. I traced the hand holding the gun, and my sight met that of the pair of eyes that'll forever hunt me.

Rival’s POV New York never shut up. Even in the dead of night, when the sky sagged heavy and black over the streets, the city still rattled — sirens screaming in the distance, taxis honking, drunks shouting about nothing that mattered. The noise was a heartbeat, constant, ugly, alive. And I couldn’t stop hearing it as a countdown. Every block we crossed dragged us closer to the pier. To him. To whatever trap he’d wrapped in promises and threats.

She would be near family and away from the judging eyes of Glenville, Iowa. She turned her computer off and went to bed. She dreamt she had moved to a new city that had merged all five cities into one with the townsfolk of Glenville following her everywhere pointing and whispering ‘murderer.' She found herself in that room that she tried so hard not to remember. She was surrounded by blood and three dead faceless bodies with gunshots. She heard herself screaming even though she hadn't actually screamed at the time. The blood kept pouring out of the bodies where the gunshots were and began filling the room. The blood was pouring and pouring out, and she watched in horror as the puddle grew un