Dreams (Sarah Midnight Trilogy 1) Read online

  This story is for Irene

  Acknowledgements

  More than I can ever say, thank you Ross, Sorley and Luca.

  Thank you to my mum, Ivana Fornera, and my brother, Edoardo Sacerdoti, for encouragement and belief.

  Thank you to my mother in law Beth and my father in law Bill, for being just wonderful.

  A heartfelt thank you to my lovely editors, Janne Moller, Rachel Reid and Kristen Susienka, without whom Sarah wouldn’t be who she is. Thank you for our chats over coffee and for the many times you made me laugh. And for pushing me well out of my comfort zone!

  Thank you to my agent, Lindsey Fraser, for believing in me (and for giving the best hugs).

  Thank you to Linda Strachan for the very first critique of Sarah and for being such a generous mentor to a new writer.

  Many thanks to Ailidh Forlan, Beth Pearson, Heather Arbuckle and Jamie Bell, Sarah’s reader panel, for their thoughts and suggestions: you were invaluable!

  Finally, thank you to Maire Brennan and Julie Fowlis for Sarah’s writing soundtrack.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue: Night Falling

  1 Blackwater

  2 Destiny

  3 A New World

  4 Illusion

  5 Mistress

  6 Dawn

  7 A Place Between the Water and the Sky

  8 Spirits of the Air

  9 He Came in a Dream

  10 Chosen

  11 Constellation

  12 Remember Me

  13 The Sapphire’s Song

  14 Music

  15 Apnoea

  16 Voices

  17 Beneath It All

  18 Cascade

  19 Strange Flowers

  20 A Dream of Ravens

  21 Rejection

  22 Mist

  23 Asleep

  24 The Life That Could Have Been Mine

  25 Soil

  26 In My Blood

  27 The White Swan

  28 Shadows

  29 Ley Lines

  30 King of Shadows

  31 The Man Who Wasn’t There

  32 The Heron

  33 The White Mountains

  34 Losing You

  35 Sorrow

  36 The Hand Holding Mine

  37 In Great Haste

  38 Spell

  39 Childhood Dreams

  40 Eyes That Watch

  41 Lies

  42 Nowhere to Run

  43 Final Act

  44 Flames

  45 Nicholas

  46 On the Edge

  47 Ash

  48 Leaves

  49 Masters of the Sea

  50 In Glass and Water

  51 Soul

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Night Falling

  Loneliness makes me

  Love breaks me

  You’d never think it could happen to you.

  You’d never think that one day you’d stand in a graveyard, rain tapping on a sea of black umbrellas, watching your parents being lowered into the earth, never to come back.

  It’s happening to me.

  They said it was an accident. Only I know the truth.

  So here I am, standing on the edge of the deep, black holes dug for them, knowing that they have been murdered; knowing that nobody – nobody – is ever going to believe me.

  I can never give up the fight, this fight that has been handed down to me, thrust upon my unwilling shoulders. I’d rather be buried with my parents, my brave mother and father, who lived and died by the Midnight motto: Don’t Let Them Roam.

  My parents were hunters, like their parents and grand-parents before them, and scores of ancestors behind me, hundreds of years back, fulfilling the same call.

  I must follow in their footsteps. I am the only one left to keep the promise. I am the only hunter left.

  I am Sarah Midnight.

  1

  Blackwater

  Am I to atone

  For my father’s mistakes?

  Will I fall like he did?

  Sarah was kneeling on the cold pavement, before a girl of about her age. The girl was writhing and moaning, trying to free herself from Sarah’s grip. Her face glowed feebly in the darkness, white with fear.

  And then the girl’s expression changed. Fear turned into fury, and a strange sound came from the back of her throat.

  There we go, thought Sarah. It’s beginning.

  The girl’s eyes started turning black, slowly, slowly, until they were two pools of hatred. Her skin grew a sickly white, her hair stiffened and crumbled, blowing away in the night breeze and leaving a bald, greying skull in its place. Her hands sprouted claws, her clothes ripped to reveal paper-thin skin and long, bony limbs.

  The stuff of nightmares. Literally.

  Because it had been a dream that told Sarah where to find this girl, and what she had become. Where to find the creature that had possessed the girl’s body and soul, destroying every trace of her, and was set to do the same to as many young women as it could. Sarah had dreamt of the demon in the play park, waiting, biding its time for a victim to come along – until Lily appeared. Sarah knew that the dream was telling her to go, in spite of her fear, and hunt the creature like her parents would have done. Except she’d be on her own.

  Lily’s transformation was now complete, and the creature was about to free itself. Sarah had to act fast. She closed her eyes and started calling her power.

  My first time, she thought. Just like in my dreams.

  For a few terrible seconds Sarah feared it wouldn’t happen. She feared that the blackwater, the power she had inherited from her father, would fail her. She feared that her hands would stay cold, and that she would be helpless, turning from hunter to prey in the space of a heartbeat.

  You should have been here! You should have been here to teach me!

  Grief and anger invaded her, and with them came the release. The blackwater took her like an unstoppable current, and her hands were flooded with heat. Sarah looked down in horror, expecting to see her arms in flames. The creature shrieked under Sarah’s touch, a blood-chilling screech. Its skin began to weep and dissolve. After a minute or so, all that was left of the demon was a puddle of dark water, so cold that it was painful to touch.

  Sarah sat back on her heels and exhaled slowly, as if an enormous weight had been taken off her shoulders. She looked at her hands dreamily, as if she couldn’t quite believe what had just happened, what had come out of her. She’d known about the blackwater for a long time – she’d known that her father had possessed it, and that she was bound to have it too. But to feel it happening …

  That was different.

  Exhilarating and terrible, all at the same time.

  Sarah shivered in the chill wind. She was drenched in that strange, dark liquid they called the blackwater, but really was something else, something without a name. She wiped her hands on her jeans, slowly, as if in a daze. She was drained, exhausted.

  Her first hunt.

  Her parents should have taken her, they should have guided her, but they’d been killed too soon. So she’d had to do it by herself. She had to learn, and learn fast. So many times she had asked her parents to start teaching her…

  “Back soon, my love.” Her mother’s hair brushed her cheek softly, as Anne bent over Sarah’s bed to kiss her. The gentle light of Sarah’s lampshade illuminated Anne’s delicate features and made her brown eyes shine. Sarah wanted to throw her arms around her mum and keep her there, keep her home.

  “Let me come with you …”

  “Sarah, da
rling, we talked about that. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I know!” Sarah’s pale face was flushed with the vehemence of her words. “But I want to stay with you. I don’t want to be here on my own …”

  “You’re safe. You know that your dad and I saw to that. Nothing can attack you here.”

  “It’s not that. I’m not scared for myself …” Sarah hesitated. Words were failing her. I’m scared you won’t come back, she wanted to say, but the sentence got stuck in her throat. She couldn’t put her fear into words. “I need to learn. I’m a Midnight too. I’ve never used the blackwater. I don’t know how to …”

  “The time will come. I promise. Soon.”

  “If my gran was alive, she would have taught me!”

  Anne took a deep breath. “Yes. Yes, she would have.”

  “But you won’t!”

  “We’re protecting you, Sarah. Enough now. You’re delaying us.” James, her father, had walked into Sarah’s room, a hard look in his eyes. His big, tall frame was silhouetted against the door. His tone was clear: there would be no more discussion. When her father spoke, Anne listened. Always. Sometimes Sarah wondered if her mother had ever had a will of her own.

  “Mum …” Sarah called. But Anne had followed James, and she hadn’t looked back.

  It was another lonely night for Sarah, listening out for her parents’ footsteps, wondering when she would be allowed to embrace her rightful inheritance. Wondering what she would do if they didn’t come back.

  Wondering what the blackwater felt like …

  “I’m sorry, Lily,” Sarah whispered to the girl lying dead on the ground. At least Lily had been the creature’s last victim.

  Sarah stood up. She picked up the scarf that had fallen in the fight and wrapped it around her neck, a slash of white against her black coat, her hair blowing long and soft in the breeze. She turned away and started walking home. For the last time.

  Because tomorrow she’d have to pack, leave her house, the memories of her parents and everything she knew, and move in with her aunt and uncle.

  Sarah turned the key in the door and let herself in. She took off her coat and scarf and hung them up, carefully, arranging them on the peg as if everything depended on them hanging straight. She took her shoes off too, and walked onto the wooden floor of her immaculate hallway. She bent down to wipe an invisible stain, and then again, just to make sure.

  Once in the kitchen, she started wiping all the surfaces with a cloth, painstakingly, taking great care not to miss a bit. She was so tired that her arms were shaking, but she had to do it. She had to.

  Her stomach started rumbling. She was hungry, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to swallow anything. The knot she’d had in her stomach since her parents’ death hadn’t allowed her to eat properly for days.

  Shadow came to greet her, brushing herself against Sarah’s legs with a slow, soft purr. She was completely black but for a little white paw, and her eyes were a deep, golden amber. Sarah had come home from school one day, two years before, to find her sitting on their doorstep. She was just a kitten, but she had a look of defiance, as if to say I’m meant to live with you, you can’t turn me away. Sarah had opened the door, and the kitten had walked in as if she’d owned the place. She started following Sarah everywhere, and because of that, James suggested calling her ‘Sarah’s Shadow’, which was eventually shortened to Shadow.

  “Sarah! Where have you been? I was worried sick!” Aunt Juliet stormed into the kitchen in her dressing gown and slippers.

  “Out. I needed air.” Sarah refused to look at her.

  “Air? It’s past midnight!”

  Sarah ignored her.

  A defiant, impossible teenager, thought Juliet. As if she didn’t have enough worry with her own daughters, now she had to look after this difficult, passionate, wonderful girl. Because that’s what Juliet thought of Sarah: that she was wonderful. Sarah had no idea, and Juliet would never have said. But Juliet also felt it was her duty to guide Sarah, shape her, mould her – and that’s why their relationship didn’t stand a chance, because Sarah would not be guided, let alone moulded into something she wasn’t.

  Juliet had a good heart, really, and she meant well. But she could never understand Sarah fully, just like she had never understood her own sister, Anne.

  “You can’t go wandering around alone at night. There are bad people around, surely you know that!”

  Bad people, and plenty of other … things, thought Sarah, wiping the already perfect kitchen table. Memories of the hunt came flooding back. Lily’s terrified face, the terrible heat of the blackwater in her hands … That’s how the rest of my life is going to be. Dreaming and hunting, until one day something will get me, like it got my parents.

  A lifetime of dreams. Her own private torture, one that she could never escape.

  They had started when she’d turned thirteen, like it usually happened to the Midnight girls. She’d dream of creatures that tormented, hurt, killed innocent people; and in the visions she was there, sometimes as a witness, sometimes as the victim. It was Sarah’s duty to write it all in her dream diary, down to the last detail, so that her parents would know what and where to hunt. Now that her parents were gone, it was up to her to interpret the dreams.

  It had never been difficult. Her dreams had always been detailed, precise, reliable. But since Sarah’s parents had died, things had changed. Her dreams had become unpredictable, confused. The information they gave had become muddled, the setting surreal: places she had no idea where to find, places that didn’t belong to this world. Sarah was in the dark. Her only guide was her Midnight instinct, albeit weakened by grief and fear.

  “Thank goodness you’re going back to school soon. A bit of normality. Well, if anything can be normal again,” Juliet added with genuine sadness. “When you come and stay with us, no more going out like this without telling me exactly where you’re going and when you’re coming back.”

  Sarah threw the cloth across the room in a fit of anger.

  “I’m not coming to stay with you! I’m staying here! This is my home!”

  Juliet looked at her with tenderness, but Sarah misunderstood. To her it looked like pity, and Sarah couldn’t bear to be pitied.

  “I know, darling, I know …” Juliet put out her hand to touch Sarah’s shoulder. Sarah pulled away.

  “I’m so sorry that all this had to happen to you. I wish you could stay in your own home, really I do. But your parents decided that you can’t live alone until you turn eighteen, and frankly I agree with them. We’ll look after you. There’s no other way. You can’t go against your parents’ wishes; you’d lose this house, you’d lose everything. And anyway, you couldn’t possibly defy their last wish …”

  Sarah felt her eyes well up. She thought of her home, her wonderful grey sandstone villa. She thought of her room, painted a light, silvery grey that shimmered in the sunshine and in the moonlight … the long, white voile curtains flowing in the breeze every time she opened the window … the view from her room, the vast garden, and beyond it, the moors and hills, purple with heather, wild and windy. She thought of her parents’ room, their chaotic den with clothes and books all over the floor … how upset it always made her, whenever she walked in, to see everything so … out of control. She thought of her mum’s mirrored console, where Anne used to brush her long black hair – the beautiful hair that Sarah had inherited. So many times Sarah had sat at that console, playing with her mum’s make-up and perfumes.

  Most of all, Sarah thought of the basement, now locked shut. The secret room where Anne and James kept their weapons, and their maps, and the books nobody was supposed to see. Where her mum kept the herbs and stones and candles and all the mysterious items she used for her spells and charms, one of which Sarah was now wearing around her neck, hidden from view: a small red velvet pouch filled with pine needles, a tiny garlic clove, and a pink quartz. A protection charm.

  No charm has worked for them though, Sarah thought bit
terly.

  How on earth could she have explained those things, if somebody found them, if she wasn’t there to guard them? How on earth could she get rid of them? Bury them in the garden, or burn them in a big bonfire? Her parents’ lives, turning to ash, turning to nothing. Sarah couldn’t let this happen.

  She had to find a way to stay in her home.

  “By the way, your cousin called for you today.” Juliet’s voice interrupted her train of thought.

  “My cousin?”

  “Harry. He was calling from London. I never met him. Fancy missing your own uncle’s funeral.”

  “They hadn’t spoken in years,” Sarah answered in a small voice. Her dad and his brother Stewart had fallen out many years before – Sarah had never been told why. A few years after the rift between the brothers, word had come through that both Stewart and his wife had died, leaving Harry to be brought up by distant relatives in New Zealand. He was fifteen. Anne and James got a card once in a while, but neither party had made much effort to keep in touch. Sarah suspected that the argument had been very bitter, to create such distance between the Midnight brothers.

  “Well, he said to check your email. Sarah, you’re soaking! What happened to you?”

  “It rained. At the play park.”

  “You were at the play park? In the middle of the night?”

  Sarah took a deep breath. “I’m tired. I’m going to have a shower and go to bed.”

  “You’ve had no dinner. Eat something, at least!” But Sarah had already gone up the stairs and into her room.

  She threw herself on the bed, followed by Shadow, who curled up at her feet. Sarah loved feeling Shadow’s soft pink nose against her own, and the cat’s whiskers brushing her cheek softly.

  “It’s just us now, baby, just us,” Sarah whispered into her fur.

  She needed a shower. She dragged herself to the bathroom, while Shadow remained at a safe distance from the water, perched upright on the window sill, her amber eyes glowing in the semi-darkness of the room.

  Sarah closed her eyes under the water flow, letting it wash away the blackwater, the adrenaline, the fear. She emerged half an hour later, wrapped in a towel, her long black hair dripping, and sat cross-legged on her bed, trying to keep the duvet as straight as she could. She switched her laptop on.