Dreams (Sarah Midnight Trilogy 1) Read online

  She couldn’t move. She was petrified, as if she had turned to stone.

  Had Juliet not gone home, she would have died. Had Harry not arrived, they both would have died. A million terrible possibilities swept through her mind. She didn’t move for a while, crouching on the floor, trembling. Harry kneeled beside her.

  “Are you OK?”

  Sarah looked at her wet, blackened hands. She nodded.

  “This is just the beginning,” Harry whispered gently.

  Sarah looked at him. “Are they coming for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Harry hesitated. He couldn’t tell her the whole story – he couldn’t tell her how the heirs of the Secret Families were being killed one by one, all over the world, because this would have led to her asking questions. Not only would his deception be revealed, but she’d put herself in harm’s way. Someone in the Sabha had betrayed Harry and killed him – they’d do the same with her. The time would come for her to know the truth; but for now, all he could do was keep her alive. The less attention they drew to themselves, the better were their chances of survival. Italy was sheltering Elodie and Aiko, Scotland would shelter Sarah.

  “Because they want to destroy the Midnights.” He resolved to answer. “With your family gone, there would be nobody left to fight them. And we can only imagine what they’d do if they could take over, roam undisturbed …”

  Sarah stood up, raised her chin the way James used to do, and looked at Harry with an even, steady gaze. She was terrified, but she had no choice. Her Midnight blood dictated her fate.

  “Let them come.”

  It took a long time for Sarah to fall asleep that night. The day had been so strange, so full of shocks that she was still reeling with it all. She lay in her bed with the lights off, looking out of the window to the black moors and the sky above them. She had only been a hunter for two days, and already she had turned into prey, just like she had feared. Everything she had learnt that day was swirling in her mind like a crazy carousel, and she couldn’t stop it.

  Harry was frightening, with those clear, sometimes cold eyes – and still, something in her responded to him in a way that she couldn’t understand. He’d saved her life, he’d opened her eyes to an even greater danger than she’d imagined. He was arrogant, he made fun of her – but he looked at her as if she were infinitely precious, something to keep, and protect. He was so full of contradictions, so difficult to decipher – she just couldn’t decide who he was.

  The dream from the night before kept going round and round in her head. Another one of those strange visions she’d had since her parents had died. Usually it was straightforward: she saw terrible creatures doing terrible things, and she had to remember as many details as possible to figure out where this was happening, so that her parents could go and stop it. That was it. But everything had changed now. The dreams had become mysterious, cryptic.

  She had seen the people who killed her parents – the Valaya – but who was that pale, black-haired boy? She thought she’d seen him somewhere before, but she couldn’t remember where, or when. And that woman, the beautiful, blond woman who seemed to hate her with all her might …

  You’re alone, she’d said.

  Sarah shivered at the memory. Who was she? What had Sarah done to her, to be hated so? It was like a poem in a foreign language: she couldn’t understand a word, but if she found the key, she would be able to translate it.

  At last, Sarah’s eyes closed without her being aware of it, and she drifted away, exhausted, into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

  5

  Mistress

  Frozen in the moment

  Nothing moved as I died

  Nobody knows that I died

  Nobody

  But he who killed me

  Cathy

  It took a long, long time to turn myself into the Mistress. The rage and emptiness I felt sped up the process, the hopelessness I lived with was my fuel. Another ten years to find them, my Valaya, the ones who’d help me, and we were ready.

  That day of twenty years ago, when my heart broke – that day I knew that light was lost to me forever. I was caught in the glare of the Midnight light, and burnt to a cinder. All that was left was darkness, and I learnt to live in it, while James and Anne went shining on as if nothing had happened, as if I were nothing but a memory, a painful memory to be erased as quickly as possible.

  Time to move on, he’d said.

  I had been a Midnight for a short while – I had been the one chosen to carry the inheritance, to be the daughter they’d lost. Me, the motherless, fatherless child whom they took in as their own. James and I grew up together; we were each other’s world, each other’s best friend and companion. We fell in love, under Morag’s approving gaze. It was perfect. We got married.

  I adored him.

  And then it all fell apart.

  “It’s a girl,” Morag said without the shadow of a doubt. “I can see it now.”

  She was sitting beside me, as if to watch over me, a hand on my stomach, her eyes closed. She hadn’t let me out of her sight since she found out I was pregnant. She knew first, before me, before James, before any medical test could pick it up. She said she saw the spark start in me. I was so happy at that moment, I didn’t even have words to describe the feeling. Her approval was all I wanted.

  And James’s love. I’d made him proud. I was eighteen, and I had everything. Out of our window, the sea was breaking against the Islay shore time and time again, a sound that was sweet to me, the sound of home.

  I was home.

  “You’ll train her. And she’ll be a Dreamer.” James was beaming, looking at his mother.

  “Yes. We’ll look after her.” Morag’s face was pained for a moment. I knew she was thinking of Mairead, her lost daughter. Another reason why I could help her, why I could help them all. To soften the pain for the loss of Mairead.

  That night I went to sleep with Morag’s words dancing in my memory: it’s a girl. My daughter. Faith Midnight.

  The next morning I woke up in a soaking bed. Four months too soon, my daughter was ready to come into the world.

  Her body wasn’t, of course.

  I held her like a doll, very white, very still. I was too shocked to cry. James was crying by my bed; Morag was standing beside the window, looking on like the thirteenth fairy, the one who curses Sleeping Beauty at her christening. I know now that she could see what was ahead, what the doctor was going to find out.

  The next day I was taken to hospital because of complications, and there we were told. They said it’d been a miracle that I carried Faith as long as I did. It was a miracle she’d stayed five months inside me, because I wasn’t meant to have any children at all, ever.

  “There are ways. It’s very soon to think of all that now, but you can look into adoption …” As the doctor said that, his hand kindly holding mine, Morag laughed.

  She laughed.

  Of course, adoption doesn’t bestow the Midnight talents. Witchcraft can be learnt, but not the Dreaming, nor the black-water, or the deadly Midnight gaze. They can only be carried with the blood. Morag laughed her bitter laugh, and I cried and cried, because I had lost my daughter and because I knew what was coming. I knew what Morag would say next.

  I knew what Morag would say, but I never, ever thought that James would take her side. James loves me, I said to myself over and over again.

  After a week I was home. We watched from the window the little white coffin being carried away – I was too ill to go with her; I could barely stand. That’s the time they chose to tell me.

  “Cathy, darling. Do take your time. Take as long as you need. We’ll find you somewhere to stay, wherever you like.”

  Morag’s words didn’t sink in for a few minutes. Blood was ringing in my ears and the room was spinning. Already. Already, she was sending me away!

  “James …” I pleaded.

  He was distraught, I could see it. He sat on the bed
and held me close, stroking my hair, letting me cry on his shoulder. His own tears wetted my nightgown.

  “My love …”

  Surely he wouldn’t let me go? Surely he’d say no to Morag; he’d say that he wanted me no matter what?

  “Cathy …” He held me so tight, I was sure he wouldn’t let me go. He loved me truly, he loved me too much to do that.

  And then he took me by the shoulders, and looked into my eyes. His face was so handsome, as ever, with those incredible green eyes, eyes like a wood in spring.

  “Take all the time that you need,” he said.

  My heart broke at that moment, and was never whole again. James, my one and only love, my husband, was sending me away too.

  I tried to leave quietly. I tried to hold my head high as I stepped into the car. I hated myself when, instead, I ran into James’s arms and begged him not to let me go.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said. “I can’t go against my family …”

  It was the final humiliation as Morag took my arm and led me back into the car. I looked into her face, searching for the love she used to feel for me, searching for some compassion. I found none.

  I was broken, alone. Useless. Mourning my daughter, mourning my lost love, mourning the family that had been mine.

  Mourning the mother I would never be.

  Anne slithered in among the Midnights, in my place. Maybe she had been waiting, hoping, I don’t know. I remember where I was when I found out. Cruelly enough, I read it in a magazine. You see, Anne and I had been studying music together. She was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, heading for a great career. She was already making a name for herself, even though she was so young. I had followed her success with joy, and a sense of pride, because she was my friend. We’d always been in competition, but once I had become James’s wife, my career was of no importance to me any more, so I didn’t begrudge Anne at all.

  James and Anne had met through me, in passing. Barely exchanged a word. She was so different from me, with her black hair, small, shy, always trying to hide away. I really didn’t think that James would give her a second glance.

  And now they had got married. The magazine had printed page after page of their wedding on Islay, Anne standing in white against the backdrop of the sea, James with smiling eyes, so handsome in his kilt. And Morag. Tall, proud, unsmiling, photographed as she’s looking over at her son and his wife, looking at them like she owned them.

  I remember feeling ill with jealousy, and stumbling towards the river, thinking there was only one way left for me to take. I sat on a stone bench and watched the swirling waters, trying to find the courage to dive. I wanted the water to close over my head. I wanted not to see any more, or hear any more, or be any more. I wanted the pain to stop.

  I couldn’t. My limbs would not respond. I couldn’t switch off the instinct to exist. I couldn’t wish myself dead hard enough.

  So I went on and I lived. I did what Anne used to do before she was married, and it was now me in the magazines, me on TV and in concert halls over the world. I was barren but I had a talent that I didn’t even know I possessed, until then. My fingers flew on the piano as quick as fluttering birds. I put all my sorrow into my music, and people responded.

  But it was a cold, joyless path I’d taken.

  Nothing was left of me. From the outside it looked as if I’d built a wonderful life for myself: Cathy, the young musical talent, the concert pianist, the composer that swept up all prizes. But like it often happens, things are not what they seem. Anne was fulfilling the only dream that mattered to her – James and his mission, the mission that had been mine, and that she had now made hers. I knew how happy she was, because I knew how happy I would have been, in her place. I would have given it all away, my music, my work, my life, to be a Midnight again, to be with James.

  While Anne lived with James, while she learnt all her magical skills from Morag Midnight, I was running and running on a treadmill, getting nowhere, or at least nowhere that mattered. People standing up to clap and cheer; the prizes, the all-important gigs I got; it was all a whirl of nothing to me.

  Contrary to what many people thought, it wasn’t Anne who’d lost our lifelong competition, it was me. It was me, the famous, rich one, who’d lost everything. Any chance of happiness I ever had was gone. My life was empty, and set to stay that way.

  Word came through they’d had a daughter. I was playing in Hong Kong when I found out. I felt so ill I thought I’d pass out. Their life paraded in front of me like a trophy, tormenting me every day, every night, while I played my soulless music all around the world. I knew James pitied me for the choice he’d made, the one that left me out in the cold. Anne didn’t pity me; she didn’t hate me, she wasn’t scared of me – she simply didn’t think of me at all. I didn’t even deserve a thought; I was so far removed from their lives. I didn’t matter. I never existed.

  I was in a haze for what seemed like years, sleepwalking through my life, wishing I was dead. When I came back to myself, I could see clearly: I had to be like the Midnights, I had to become them, in order to destroy them.

  The Midnights had set fire to my life, burnt it down, and walked away – but they had left something behind, like a precious stone, intact under the ash and dust of my existence. It was a little nugget of knowledge, a black seed that I could plant, and watch while it grew, its pale roots feeding on my dreams. Secret knowledge the Midnights wouldn’t touch, waiting to be cracked, waiting to come to life. And I did it, I brought it to life.

  Like Anne, I don’t come from a magical family. The blood that runs in my veins is as common and plain as hers. But she had mentors – James and Morag, who took her by the hand into the amazing, exciting, dangerous world they lived in. I was only taught briefly, so briefly. I did the rest myself.

  It took ten years to learn how to open the rivers of time – ten years to learn how to slip them into our reality, the creatures that walked the earth before we came. Demons is one of the many names they were given through time; in fact they are Surari, in the ancient language of the first human tribes. Legends and myths talk about them; the folklore of every country in the world has stories about them. Supernatural creatures, they’re called sometimes – but there’s nothing supernatural about them; they’re creatures of nature like us, just a lot more ancient. They seem unnatural because they don’t belong to this time, because they should not be here, among us.

  But they are, and they keep coming.

  The Midnight motto is: Don’t Let Them Roam. My motto is: Let Them Come.

  The Midnights and the other Secret Families around the world were entrusted with the duty to send the demons back where they came from, to the primeval waters that covered the Earth at the beginning of time – while it’s me, and those like me, who force the flow of time in order to get them here.

  The Surari we’re allowed to call are only as powerful as the magic that summons them. Some of us, like the members of my Valaya, can only call Ferals, the animal-like demons with great strength but very limited understanding. Ferals are brutal, senseless beasts. They can also fall into our world by chance, through a fold in time and space, unknowing, unwilling, and find themselves lost and raging in a strange land. They end up living in the sewage system, in condemned buildings, in the few corners of wilderness we have left, and scavenge and kill to survive.

  Some of us – like me, of course – have enough knowledge, enough power to call the Sentient ones, the strongest ones, the ones that do more, so much more than just kill without a reason. The Sentient demons want to be called, they long to come back and rule the earth again, and we can use this desire of theirs for our own gain. They have Slaves themselves, minions they use as we would use guard dogs.

  It’s not easy to keep the Sentients in check – it takes all our skills and infinite vigilance to keep them under control and to stop them from taking over, bending the Ferals to their will. I can feel the Sentient ones planning to turn the Valaya from a coven of hum
ans each with a demon servant, into a coven of demons each with a human servant. I can feel them conniving, waiting, biding their time. They’ll never succeed – it’s my bidding, or the dark waters of the world before time. I won’t show any mercy, for anyone. What mercy was ever shown to me?

  My Valaya is not the only one. Just as there are many Secret Families around the world, there are also many more of us. Many Valaya, many Masters and Mistresses, each with their own demon, each with their own territory. And above all of us …

  I can’t say. I can’t say who leads us all, the One whose orders I follow. All I know is that the Time of Demons is coming again, and it’ll be us, the Masters and Mistresses all over the world, who will rise up and rule. The Secret Families will be gone forever, and nothing, nobody will be there to stop us. It has started already. The heirs of the Secret Families have started falling all over the world, a harvest of blood.

  But Sarah – Sarah is mine. It’ll be me who puts an end to her life.

  James and Anne stayed in the light, the golden couple and their perfect world. I longed for the dark – what else did I have left? I wanted to be like them – I wanted to be them – all I could do was to become their reversed image, their negative.

  You might say I live in a nightmare – truth is, my life turned into a nightmare the day I met the Midnights. I’ve been tied to this wheel, and I can never be free until they are all dead, every last one of them.

  It was the Midnights that taught me how to lie, and I learnt well. I’m Cathy Duggan, when everyone is looking; in my heart, I am Catherine Hollow, the Mistress.

  6

  Dawn

  I call on my nightmares

  Again and again

  I am

  My own destruction

  Sarah was at the window with Shadow asleep in her lap, watching the first light spreading on the moors. Strange how even when our life has been broken and put back together in a way we can’t recognize, even when we want everything to look different, because we are different – even then, the stars don’t change their place, the wind blows like it always has done, and dawn still breaks. The world looks the same, and still nothing is the same. Like an imperceptible shift of the earth’s axis has happened: it’s invisible to the eye, but it has enormous consequences.