Dreams (Sarah Midnight Trilogy 1) (40 page)

        
I know you’ll find all this hard to believe. Just look at the things in the basement, and you’ll be convinced. Don’t use them though; don’t do anything of what my mum’s diary says. Burn and bury it all, quickly, the same day that you read this diary. I don’t want them to know of you, I don’t want them to come for you and Trevor and the girls. Forget about the Midnights. I’m so sorry …

She wrapped the diary in white tissue paper, and put it on the coffee table, with a note:
to Juliet, from Sarah
.

She sat and waited for the night to fall. As soon as she saw the shadows gathering on the moors she put her jacket on, and went out. The evening was bitterly cold, but it felt so sweet to her, the freezing air and the evening sky, as she was about to leave it all.

She started walking. She knew they were going to find her soon.

She wandered around for a while. Ghosts of herself appeared at every corner – Sarah as a child, walking down the street with her mum; on the swings in the playground of her old school; coming out of the sports centre after her swimming lessons, with wet hair and a little pink rucksack; in her school uniform, on an outing to the library with her class; with her cello in its purple case, waiting for the next train into town; chatting with her friends in front of the newsagents.

And finally, the ghost she was looking for: the little girl with the red coat, sitting on the roundabout, not knowing she was being watched, not knowing that death was so close to her that it could have brushed her face with its cold finger.

Everything was still and dark at the play park. Nobody around but drunks and police cars. A nightly world that was scary to most people – but not to her. The world she lived in was a lot more frightening.

She sat on the roundabout, beside the little girl. The seventeen-year-old Sarah and the seven-year-old Sarah looked at each other.

So this is who I’m going to be?

So this is who I was?

Sarah felt the irresistible urge to touch the girl’s black hair, to hold her and protect her from what was to come. To save her from all that was going to happen, to save her from her dreams.

They looked into each other’s eyes, and they were one again, the little girl taking her place inside the young woman, hidden, but there.

Sarah didn’t have long to wait. Nocturne soon took shape, a mound of darkness against the river. He was holding someone by the arm – Leaf, battered and bruised, but still alive.

Sarah sprang to her feet.

He’s alive. Leaf is alive.

Then Cathy emerged from the darkness, confident, smiling and cheerful, as if she’d been at one of her concerts, at some social event. Beautiful, slender, graceful.

“Ready, Sarah?”

“I want you to free Leaf.”

“Oh, so that’s his name. I don’t think so. We’ll kill you and keep your friend.”

Sarah closed her eyes, then she opened them again, slowly. She looked into Cathy’s eyes. Cathy moaned and folded unto herself, holding her head. She could see two green blades dancing in front of her eyes, cutting her over and over again.

Nocturne let Leaf fall on the ground, where he stayed, too weak, too hurt to get up, and ran to Cathy. He took her by the shoulders with incongruous gentleness, lifting her up and putting her down again, away from Sarah.

The Midnight gaze didn’t seem to work on Nocturne. Sarah knew she didn’t stand a chance, but she didn’t want to just wait for Nocturne to wring her neck. The silence was deafening. Sarah wondered where the night noises had gone, the cars, the owls, the river flowing. She couldn’t hear a thing, like everything was suspended, everything was waiting.

She looked into Nocturne’s red eyes. He lifted his arms, those long, muscular arms hanging down to his knees. Sarah didn’t look away, didn’t whimper, didn’t beg. She stood her ground, and looked at him. She felt that they were watching her – Anne, James, Morag, Mairead, Harry. She felt that the Midnight family was watching the last of their own being killed, and that she had to go with dignity.

“Nocturne!” someone shouted.

Harry’s voice.
Sean’s
voice.

He had materialized out of nowhere, the way he always did, silently. He had been watching her all along, Sarah realized, like he used to do when she was at school.

Sean raised the knife and started tracing signs through the air. Cathy started doing the same at once – it was like a strange duel, where they fought with their fingers, and without touching each other. Sarah could see the concentration on their faces. Under the orange light of the streetlamps, Sarah saw a drop of sweat trickling down Sean’s forehead. Cathy lifted her other arm and gestured to Nocturne, still tracing the mysterious signs in the air. Sean growled, his movements growing quicker, sharper.

In the same instant Nocturne shuddered and shook himself, freeing himself from the invisible cage that Sean had built with his runes. He made a strange, deep sound, like a lament – then he grabbed Sean as if he’d been a doll, lifted him up, and threw him down on the tarmac. Sean didn’t move again. Sarah saw his blood on the ground, trickling down from his side onto the grass behind him.

He’s dead
, she thought in despair, and she looked at Cathy with such hatred, such spite that Cathy felt herself burning up, burning with all the anger and jealousy she had accumulated through the years.

“You think you’re better than anyone else, don’t you? A
Midnight
! And your parents thought the same. They thought they ruled the world. You look at me like your mother looked at me. Like she despised me. Like I was nothing. And look at me now.”

“Yes. Look at you now,” said Sarah, with a calm, even voice.

Cathy couldn’t bear it. She shrieked in anger, and for a moment she looked more like a demon than Nocturne.

“Just like your mother, aren’t you? Looking at me like I’m nothing compared to you!”

Sarah shook inside at the mention of her mother.

“What do you mean, just like my mother? What did she ever do to you? What did I ever do to you?”

“Of course they wouldn’t tell you, would they? I’m not even worth a mention. Like I never existed.” Cathy’s chest was rising and falling fast, her face contorted. Sarah felt struck by a wave of rage, and nearly took a step back as if it had been a physical blow – but she stood her ground, and waited. “It was all planned, all arranged. Morag had adopted me, she had taught me. James and I loved each other. Anne—” she spat out the word— “took everything away from me. Everything.”

“My parents loved each other. You didn’t come into it, Cathy. They loved each other more than anything else, more than they loved me.” The realization of what she’d just said hit her hard, and her heart fluttered.

“James loved
me
, until Anne came.
I
was supposed to be your mother.”

“But you aren’t! You aren’t my mother, are you? And you did all this … all this … because your boyfriend left you twenty years ago?”

A moment of silence.

“My
husband
. I was your father’s wife.”

What?

“Do you want to know why he cast me aside and married your mother? Because I couldn’t have children. Our baby died. I was told that was it, for me, no more children. The same night, Sarah, the same night …” A sob interrupted her. “The same night Morag and your father told me I could take all the time in the world to recuperate. They told me they would pay for the best doctors. That they would look after me until I was better. And then, I was to pack my bags and leave their house.”

Sarah gasped. “My dad wouldn’t do something like that,” she started. And then she stopped. He would. And so would Morag Midnight.

“I couldn’t be your father’s wife, because I’m barren,” Cathy hissed, every word a drop of her blood being spilled. “They sent me away because I couldn’t provide their precious heirs!” Her face was streaked with tears. For a moment, she looked like the heartbroken, abandoned girl she’d been twenty years before. Sarah shuddered.

Then she dried her eyes, and her faced changed – she was Catherine Hollow again, The Mistress. She was there to finish what she had started. She lifted her hand, and drew a rune in the air.

Nocturne heard her call, and he knew the moment had come, the moment to kill the last of the Midnights.

Sarah closed her eyes. The last thing she saw was Leaf, looking at her from the tarmac with those obsidian-like eyes, unable to get up. Then the blow came, and it was devastating. Sarah fell on the pavement, her head exploding with pain, and she saw black.
That’s it, this is how it feels to die.

But the grass and the asphalt came back into focus, and the feeling of the hard ground against her cheek.

I’m not dead
. But with consciousness came pain, a sharp, terrible, sickening pain in her chest, every time she breathed. She started crying silently, because the pain was so strong, so unbearable, she couldn’t take it. And it was just the beginning. She wondered how long it would take her to die, whether they were going to be merciful, and do it quickly – or let it linger.

She clutched her stomach and closed her eyes, waiting for another blow.

And then she heard a sound.

A suffocated scream.

It was Cathy.

Sarah opened her eyes, and what she saw was etched into her memory forever.

Time for me to burn,

Time for me to rise anew

Leaf was standing, one of his arms extended, the palm of the hand raised and exposed. Nocturne was immobile, frozen, his chin lowered to his chest, swaying gently from side to side.

Cathy was looking on in disbelief. This boy whom they had taken without him posing any resistance, whom they had tortured and played with – he had stopped Nocturne and was keeping him prisoner. How could it be?

“Who are you?” she shrieked.

“I am fire.” His voice was soft, barely a whisper. All of a sudden, Sarah could smell dead leaves, moist earth, and smoke – all the scents that Leaf seemed to carry with him.

Cathy raised her hands frantically, trying to weave her runes. She suddenly looked very small, her beautiful face turned towards the night sky, as if in prayer. It was no use. The ravens were on her in a flurry of black wings, and this time they hit in perfect silence, without a single cawing. They covered her completely, so that all Sarah could see was the top of her blond head, now tainted with red, and her twitching feet.

When they had finished they raised in flight, dozens of little beaks lifting up what was left of Cathy. They dropped her in the river, her body disappearing in a gentle noise of waves and splashes.

Leaf lowered his hand – and for a second, a split second, Leaf and Nocturne looked at each other.

And then flames sprung up all around Nocturne, blue flames that rose up to the sky quicker than the eye could see. They licked Nocturne’s body, then bit it, then devoured it, and still Nocturne wouldn’t move, wouldn’t cry out.

The blue flames burned and burned in front of Sarah’s horrified eyes, until all that was left was a charred, shapeless mound, smouldering like coal.

Everything had happened in an eerie silence. Cathy hadn’t even had time to scream, and all she could do under the ravens’ beaks and claws was whimper; Nocturne hadn’t made a sound, except the noise of his skin crackling, and a hollow thud as he’d fallen on the tarmac, half burnt already. The flurry of the ravens, the soft splash of the water as it swallowed Cathy’s body, the hissing of the flames as they rose: the silence of the night had barely been broken.

And the whole of Sarah’s world had changed.

Sarah had lifted herself up, kneeling on the tarmac, holding her side. She had blood on her hands, her own blood – but she wasn’t sure where exactly it came from, where the cuts and bruises were, and she didn’t bother to check.

It was over. Cathy and Nocturne were dead, at Leaf ‘s hands. She saw that Sean was standing behind Leaf, stooped, shaking.

At least he’s alive
, she thought with relief. And then she remembered.

Murderer.

“Who are you?” Sean cried out at Leaf ‘s silent figure. “And don’t give me that
I am fire
shit. Who are you?”

Leaf turned around. Sarah had to blink as she saw his face – his eyes were so black, his skin so pale, his features were perfect, nearly angelic; it was as if she saw him for the first time.

“My name is Nicholas Donal. Of the Donal family.”

“A Secret Family?”

A secret family? What does that mean? A family like ours, like the Midnights? Are there more like us?

“Yes.”

“I’ve never heard of you.”

“We’re not in the Sabha. We keep ourselves to ourselves. Not that I owe you an explanation.”

Sabha?
Sarah’s head was spinning.

“Go away, Sean.” Sarah was trying to stand up, but her legs were failing her. Both men took a step towards her, but Sarah recoiled from Sean’s hands and took Nicholas’s instead. He wrapped his arms around her waist to sustain her. Sarah let herself go for a second. She was tired, so tired, and so sore. She clung to Nicholas, and her thoughts started to dissolve. The mist that Nicholas always brought with him started to rise, leaving her warm, dazed, unable to let go.