Spirit Read online

  “It’s my kill,” Sarah hissed. Sean’s hand stopped in mid-air, but as Sarah was about to reach for her sgian-dubh, the creature spoke, its voice raspy and barely audible.

  “Curse you, Sarah Midnight, bride of the King of Shadows. Maledetta!”

  “It speaks!” Niall exclaimed.

  “You are the shame of the Secret Families. Curse you to hell,” it snarled. Sarah was still for a moment, as shock froze her thoughts and her hands. A trickle of blood seeped out of the creature’s mouth, smearing its chin with red.

  “Shut up,” whispered Sarah coldly, and raised her dagger.

  “Wait!” cried Elodie, and threw herself on the ground beside the demon.

  Before Sarah could wonder what was up with Elodie, the creature raised its feathered head and spat in Sarah’s face. Without missing a beat, without hesitation and with a cry of fury, under the bewildered eyes of her friends, Sarah sank her sgian-dubh into its neck, as deep as it would go. A gurgle, a stream of blood on her hands. Her eyes widened as she saw red splatter her white skin – she was used to the Blackwater, the dark lymph of demons.

  “I’ll never be the bride of the King of Shadows,” she hissed. “Never.”

  The demon gasped for breath, a steady stream of blood flowing out of its neck.

  “He’s not a demon!” Elodie cried out. She took hold of the feathers around the creature’s head and pulled. The black halo came loose, together with the black skin of its face. But it wasn’t its face. It was a mask. “He’s human,” Elodie said. “It must have been him I’d felt just before we entered the Shadow World.”

  Sarah recoiled.

  She’d just cut a human being’s throat.

  We don’t kill human beings, she remembered telling Sean when she’d been horrified by his ruthlessness.

  And look at her now.

  “But why . . . why . . .” Her voice trailed away as she looked at her bloodied hands. Human blood is so red, she thought confusedly.

  Sean wrapped an arm around her waist. “It’s okay, Sarah. It’s okay,” he whispered in her ear.

  The demon-bird spoke. The colour was draining from his face as his life leaked out of him. His eyes were already opaque, losing focus. “Sean Hannay. Where are you? I have something to tell you.”

  “I’m here. What do you have to say to me?”

  “You are a Gamekeeper. You are loyal to the Secret Families. You must kill Sarah Midnight. I’m begging you.”

  Sean’s chest heaved in anger, and he had to stop himself from twisting the man’s neck. They had to listen to what he had to say.

  “She is cursed. It was my mission to destroy her.”

  “Who are you?” Sarah cried out.

  “Tancredi Falco, of the Falco Family. We hail from Tuscany. We’re the greatest family in—”

  “Greatest? All you did was jump on me! It was like fighting a child!” snorted Sarah, and her laughter turned into a sob. She was watching a man slowly die by her hand. She was as white as snow, panting hard, unable to steady her heart.

  “We’ll all be dead soon. All of us but her. By a demon’s hand, or by the Azasti. Have you spotted the signs already? Have you?”

  Elodie’s skin looked even paler all of a sudden. Once more Sean read fear in her eyes.

  “How did you get into the Shadow World? Nobody can enter here with a body . . . unless they know how,” said Sean, lifting his arm to show the burn mark.

  Tancredi laughed, a bitter, gurgling sound that sounded like death. “The Shadow World? So this is where we are. I guess I entered because I’m as good as dead, my friend. I’m in between. And the shadows know that.”

  “We’re here to kill the King of Shadows. Not to help him!” Sarah exclaimed, as if it were important for her that he understood. As if it were important that man knew she wasn’t a traitor to her kind, like he believed.

  “You fools . . . Kill the King of Shadows!” he sputtered. “That can never happen.”

  “What?” Sean cried out.

  But Tancredi’s eyes rolled and trickles of pinkish saliva dribbled from the corners of his mouth. His clawed hands curled in a final rictus.

  “Sean Hannay, listen. Please. My little sister . . . the last of the Falcos . . . she’s done nothing to you. If you are a true Gamekeeper, find her . . . protect her.”

  “What is her name?” asked Sarah. Maybe she had a chance for atonement.

  Tancredi opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He breathed in softly, a quick, imperceptible breath, and then his whole body relaxed in death.

  Sarah closed her eyes, and felt empty, drained of all life. Pity ravaged her chest as she took in Tancredi’s gaunt face, the signs of his long suffering ingrained in his features. But then she steeled herself. There was no time for pity, and certainly not for someone who’d desperately wanted her dead.

  13

  Like the Moon

  The shadow of the wheel of fortune

  Against the white sheet of our lives

  Who ever said

  That our books are unwritten?

  Sean

  I take Sarah aside for a moment. She’s rigid with shock, eyes wide, like she can’t believe what she has done. I hold her close, but she doesn’t soften in my arms. She’s trembling.

  “He wanted to kill you,” I whisper into her hair. “You had to do it.”

  “I could have let him explain. I could have given him more time.”

  “There was no time! The guy tried to kill you three times, Sarah. I don’t know how he knew about you and Nicholas.”

  “He must have been a Dreamer.”

  “Whatever. It’s finished now, finished. He’s dead.”

  “Sean . . .” She calls my name like I can try to help her figure out what just happened, what made her kill the man. And I do know what happened inside her mind: her fighting instinct took over, generations of hunters before her told her what she had to do. I take her face in my hands and look into her eyes. She doesn’t look like Sarah the huntress any more. Right now she looks like the Sarah she was when we met. Fragile, hurt. Unsure of herself.

  When we first met, Sarah cried often. As her power grew, as she acknowledged how strong she really was, her tears grew few and far between. But now she’s broken. I can see it, and I fear the consequences of this will be long lasting.

  “I am a murderer. Like my grandmother,” she whispers.

  Morag Midnight, Sarah’s fearsome grandmother, drowned her own daughter Mairead when she was just a child. Mairead wasn’t strong enough to bear the power of Dreams, and Morag despised her for that. Morag had also planned to destroy Winter, and she had rejected my own mother when she needed Morag’s help the most. Sarah’s grandmother was a cruel, cruel woman.

  “You are nothing like her.”

  “I am. I must be. It’s in my blood.”

  “No, listen to me!” I fix my eyes on hers. You’re so beautiful, I can’t help thinking, even in this terrible moment. Her face is as white as the moon, her eyes the colour of new leaves, a shade of green I’ve never seen before. The shape of her forehead, the curve of her nose, the unique geometry of her face . . .

  “You are nothing like her. You are nothing like your gran. You are Sarah.”

  She buries her face in my chest and I feel her trembling. I hold for a few moments, until she disentangles herself and raises her face to me.

  “We need to go,” she says, and she’s guarded once more.

  “Will you be okay?” I can’t help asking.

  “Yes,” she replies simply. “Yes. I’ll be fine.”

  I nod. I know she’ll keep going, but I also know she’s not fine. She’s feeling her true self slip away with every kill, even if the victims are Surari. And this one – a human being. Something no heir should ever face. I know how that feels, to sense yourself changing into someone you struggle to recognise, losing what used to be your identity and becoming someone else. It happens when you take one too many lives. A bit of your soul departs and wi
ll never come back. You’ll be forever grieving the person you used to be, the innocence you used to bear in your heart. Without it, even if your purpose is the complete opposite of theirs – to preserve, not to destroy – you are a step closer to them: the Surari.

  “Sean.”

  “Yes?”

  “You said I’m not like Morag. But she’s in my blood, so how can I not be?”

  “Your blood doesn’t define who you are, Sarah!”

  She looks at me more intensely, and suddenly I know where she’s trying to lead me.

  “If that’s true, why does your blood matter to you so much?”

  “Sarah, please. We can’t change things, okay? We can’t.”

  “But your runes. Did you see . . .” I read hope in her eyes, and it hurts. So much rests on this. If I have powers, if I am somehow a Secret heir, then we can be together . . . but to hope is to open yourself up to hurt and disappointment.

  “My father was a Lay. I can’t have powers,” I say brusquely.

  “I know. But you saw it yourself.”

  “It’s just my runes being stronger than usual. I told you, it’s a skill. Please let’s not talk about this any more.”

  “Sean,” she interrupts. “It doesn’t matter if you have powers or not.”

  “It matters to me,” I reply, and her face crumbles. We are so close we’re nearly touching. I could hold her now, take her in my arms and kiss her. I wish the world could change for us. But it won’t, I know that, and a sense of despair fills me until there’s nothing else to feel or think. A world without Sarah. Having to let her go, having to disappear so that she’s free to live her life with another Secret heir.

  For a moment I’m frozen, studying her face, burning it into my mind, knowing that one day a memory is all I’ll have left. All of a sudden, I see a strange reflection on her skin – bright pink and green. Her eyes are wide, but not with fear – with wonder. I follow her gaze and turn around. There’s a gap between the trees just behind me and the starry sky is filled with dancing lights, pink and green and blue. I have seen many things in my life, but I’ve never seen anything like this before.

  For a moment, we watch in silent awe. The beauty and power of the Shadow World have surprised us. None of us knew what to expect – maybe I was imagining volcanoes and burning pits and boiling seas, but this tree-laden world is in my genetic memory, because this is where my long-gone ancestors used to live. This is the way the world used to be thousands of years ago and more, pure and untouched and beyond the control of human beings.

  “Sean! Sarah!” A voice breaks our spell. It’s Nicholas. Sarah walks away, and the sudden separation knocks the breath out of me for a moment, like when she’s not around I can’t breathe. She’s all I need, all I want, but there is no time or place for us. We join the others. As she steps within the group, I see that Sarah’s tears have dried up. She’s ready to fight again.

  14

  Burning Lion

  Look through the iris and you’ll see

  The life I left behind

  The northern lights had faded and the sky was black once more, dusted with endless stars. The night had reached its peak and the first grey hints of dawn had started in the east.

  “Shall we bury him?” Winter asked, gazing with pity toward Tancredi’s lifeless body. He had attacked her, too, back on her native Islay. How helpless he looked now, his almond eyes closed forever, his face gaunt, his limbs tightening. She thought she could see blood staining his lips and feathers. Clearly, in life he’d been very ill. Compassion filled Winter’s heart.

  “No time,” Sean answered.

  Winter’s throat constricted at the thought of leaving this dead man alone to decay, with no one to give him a burial. What if he’d been Mike? Or her? “We can’t leave him like this. He’ll be eaten by animals . . . and demons.” She shuddered. “We can’t.”

  “We have no time,” Nicholas intervened. “We need to keep moving. We’re two days’ walk away from my father.”

  Sarah closed her eyes briefly. Behind her controlled exterior she felt physically ill. She hated the thought of leaving the Falco heir like that, but she knew they were right. She knew that they couldn’t waste any time digging a grave when they might be attacked any second, and then they’d join Tancredi in the hole they’d just dug for him. She steeled herself.

  “Let’s go,” she whispered, feeling like she’d left yet another little piece of the old Sarah behind. The girl who’d been left helpless by her parents, who’d been sheltered from the knowledge and skills of the Secret Families – the child who’d been lying alone at night, terrified, listening for her parents’ footsteps up the stairs, back from their nightly hunt – was now capable of things that would have horrified her old self.

  “We can cover him with those stones,” Winter insisted, pointing at some flat grey rocks that covered the ground like a natural pavement, ferns growing between them. “It really won’t take long,” she nearly begged.

  “He’s an heir. We can’t leave him here,” Niall said in his gentle way, speaking for the first time since Tancredi appeared. Sarah could read the abhorrence on his face, his shock at the suggestion of leaving Tancredi unburied, and trembled inside. Maybe he despised her because she’d killed an heir, and he’d be right to, she thought, drowning in a wave of self-hatred. Well, there was nothing she could do.

  “Never mind being an heir! He’s a human being!” whispered Winter, looking around her as if she couldn’t believe what was happening. “His spirit might go wandering, like those lost at sea,” she added.

  At Winter’s words, Sarah felt a sudden disquiet. “Fine then. Let’s cover him with stones.” Sean gazed at her, surprised by her change of mind. Her eyes were haunted, and he understood. They’d take what little time they had to bury Tancredi. They’d run the risk.

  “We can’t—” Nicholas began.

  “It’s been decided,” Sean interjected. “Elodie, keep watch,” he said. He didn’t want her to be lifting heavy stones; he’d spotted blood on her back during the fight with the moon-demons. The wounds she’d suffered at the petrol station were far from healed.

  In perfect silence, Winter composed Tancredi’s body, folding his arms in his lap and covering him with his cape, the feathery headdress resting on his face. She thought of the little sister he’d been talking about, and her heart went out to the unknown girl. Sarah looked on, eyes dry and no expression on her face. Only her pursed lips betrayed her inner turmoil. Together, she and Winter began to pile stones on top of him.

  Sean threw a glance at Elodie. She was standing a few yards away, sgian-dubh in hand, lips black. There was something about her that ate away at him. She looked weak somehow. She acted weak, like everything was too heavy, too tiring – even breathing. Sean was afraid to think what the reason might be.

  “Nicholas,” he whispered while everyone was gathering stones. “What is this thing, this . . . Azasti?”

  “What? Do you not know? None of you knows what the Azasti is? The ailment, some call it. It’s an illness of the Secret heirs. Rotten blood,” he said. “It kills you slowly, painfully. That’s how my father got the Sabha to work for him in the first place. He had his Valaya there offer a cure.”

  “That’s how he corrupted the Sabha? They wanted a cure for this thing?”

  “Yes. A cure he couldn’t give. But the Secret Council were desperate. They collaborated.”

  “And Harry knew,” Sean said. “He tried to stop it.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. He certainly knew the Sabha were working with my father, otherwise he would have entrusted Sarah to them and not to you.” Nicholas replied. “But I don’t know if he was aware that my father had offered a cure for the Azasti.”

  “So Sarah is in danger too? Of getting ill, I mean?” Sean forced himself to ask.

  “For some reason, there has been no trace of the Azasti in Scotland or Ireland. Maybe it’s because they’re on the edge of Europe, remote, by our standards. That’s one of
the reasons why Sarah was chosen as my bride.”

  Niall had overhead Nicholas’ words. “I’m glad you didn’t choose me,” he joked. He was his usual self, ready to smile when things were far from funny, but his eyes were hard.

  Sean felt sick to the pit of his stomach. “So that’s what you meant when you said that Sarah’s blood was strong.” His hands were shaking. How he would have loved breaking his nose and a bone or two for good measure right now. He tried to steady his heart, beating too hard. His fury had nowhere to go for now. It would just consume him.

  Sarah placed another moss-covered stone on Tancredi’s body, the last one. It was done. She closed her eyes for a moment, still on her knees, recovering herself.

  May your little sister be safe, she prayed silently. They were now a few yards from the makeshift grave, which they’d hidden among ferns and stones.

  Suddenly, the whole world exploded in a golden light, blinding them all. Sarah covered her face with her hands but peered between her fingers, squinting through the glare. A spiral had appeared in front of them, twirling and tearing a hole in reality. It looked like the Gate they’d used to step into the Shadow World, but golden, and more violent – like a gash in the air, one that hurt and bled, one that wasn’t supposed to exist, but somehow had come to be.

  15

  Into the Gold

  Rising out of golden light

  The woman I will be

  Venice

  Micol forbade herself from thinking. Had she stopped and pondered what she was about to do, she would have never gone through with it. Where did the golden spiral lead? Where had Alvise gone?

  Micol closed her mind and her instincts and opened her heart, her caged heart that only wanted one thing: freedom. She pushed open the heavy wardrobe doors and bolted in what felt like a single jump towards the iris, vaguely aware of someone shouting and Lucrezia’s endless lament. She knew she had to touch Lucrezia’s hand before she jumped, because that was what Alvise always did.