Dreams (Sarah Midnight Trilogy 1) (39 page)

Nocturne went for Leaf, who was looking at the demon with burning eyes. Leaf didn’t move; he just stood there. Panicked, Sarah realized what he was doing. He
wanted
them to take him. So that she would be left alone.

“Leaf, no!”

Nocturne easily lifted Leaf and shook him until he was floppy in his hands. He disappeared into the night, with Leaf under his arm. Cathy walked to Sarah and kicked her in the ribs, trying to break another one, for good measure. Then she knelt down beside Sarah, her voice slow and menacing.

“There. Your boyfriend will suffer and it’ll be all your fault. I’ll take my time killing him. Make sure I enjoy it properly. Then I’ll come for you. And there’ll be nobody there to help you.”

They walked away, into the darkness, and left Sarah broken among the growing flames.

“Sarah,” Sean called. He never knew it’d be possible to feel so lost, so bereft.

Sarah looked at the black sky above her.

“Go away.”

“Let me help you.”

“I never want to see you again! You killed Harry! You killed the last one of my family!”

“Sarah, no, you’ve got it all wrong …”

With huge effort Sarah sat up, and then she stood, holding her side.

“Why? Why on earth did you kill Harry? Why did you pretend to be him? What do you want from me?”

“Let’s go home, I’ll explain …”

“That’s not your home. I don’t know who you are!” she sobbed, for the pain, the disappointment, the betrayal.

“Sarah …” He was crying too.

The sound of the fire brigade filled the night.

“I never want to see you again.” Her words cut him like blades.

Sarah dragged herself home, every step an agony, and lay on the living-room floor until dawn, shaking with shock and fear.

Pebbles on the shore

Every stone a thought of you

Grand Isle, Louisiana

They came from the sea, and slithered up to our cottage like snakes among the stones. We were expecting them. We knew they’d come.

We couldn’t use our computers or our phones to tell Sean about what we’d discovered. But there was another way. Something I hadn’t done before in my whole life, believe it or not. I wrote a
letter
, a proper letter, not an email. I wrote it in great haste, and I was about to drive away, to send the letter, not to escape – I knew there was no point in escaping, they’d find us anyway. Nowhere to hide at that stage. They’d find us. We’d stay and fight. Die, probably, but hey, we all have to die some day. The only thing that mattered was the letter.

I’d nearly made it to the car, when they came.

The letter burnt in my pocket as I ran towards the shack. I left it on the table, hoping and praying with every ounce of my strength that someone would find it and send it.

Then I walked out and waited. It didn’t take long. They were on me in minutes, their tentacles long enough to wrap themselves around my waist and drag me down underwater.

How did I live to tell the tale? Nothing short of a miracle. I learned to swim in the icy Canadian lakes, and that helped. But the truth is, they were a lot more interested in Niall than they were in me. Which is why I’m alive and Niall is dead.

He distracted them as they were dragging me under, so that they left me alone, half drowned and concussed, but still alive. I saw them tying their tentacles around Niall’s waist, and dragging him into the deep.

I thought they would be back to finish the job, but they must have assumed I was dead. I waited and waited, hoping that Niall would resurface; and he did, but he wasn’t breathing.

I hid under the pier, among the rotting, salt-encrusted wood. I sat by my friend’s body, drinking myself stupid to try to forget the pain. But how could I, when he lay so white, so cold, his lips blue, his hair matted with sand and seaweed? He was young, and he was brave, and he was dead.

Grief was like a boulder on my chest. I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t raise my head, my very bones crushing under the weight of it. A little sliver of moon watched over me from above the water, and I sat and drank until I fell, until I felt the sand against my cheek and the water lapping at my toes.

That moment I knew

It was all over –

I was the one outside the circle

I was gone.

By the time dawn had broken, Sarah realized she was definitely going to be killed. There was no way out. She knew it was going to happen; it was just a matter of time.

The blackwater was lost, and she was alone. She didn’t want Harry –
Sean
– anywhere near her, and Leaf had been kidnapped. They were going to kill him, and yes, Cathy was right. It was her fault. She’d be responsible for Leaf ‘s death, as she was for Leigh’s.

And her own life was at an end.

What a shame. She was never going to fall in love, play her music … have a life, she thought, watching the sky getting lighter and lighter. She fell asleep again, a dreamless, black sleep where she knew no pain, a sleep that was a bit like death.

Maybe that’s what it feels like
, she thought as she was slipping away.

Two hours later, she woke up again. The pain in her ribs was horrendous, so bad that it made her sick.

Sarah dragged herself upstairs, followed by Shadow, and took two caplets of codeine to try to ease the pain. She realized she hadn’t eaten since the day before. She went into the kitchen and toasted some bread. The smell made her feel faint with hunger. She made herself a cup of tea too, and polished the lot, quickly, greedily.

Harry.

Sarah felt her heart calling to him, calling, calling. She silenced it, resolutely.

Liar. Murderer
. To think that he wasn’t even that good a liar, to think that he had betrayed himself, in the end. She wouldn’t have. She would have done it properly; she would have kept it going.

We’re both rotten then.

Except she never chose to lie, she
had
to.

Why? Why did he kill Harry? Why did he pretend to be my cousin?

She looked at her watch. Nine o’clock. Nine o’clock on a Sunday morning, when families wake up to spend the day together.

She would spend the day waiting to die. Because they were going to come back, of course. And she had no way of stopping them. She had nothing, except a little dagger and a whole lot of weapons she didn’t even have the strength to use.

Too late now. Too late for everything. She could only sit there and wait.

She wasn’t scared. She was beyond that. She felt some sort of inevitability. Of course they were going to kill her. How could she ever think she’d survive the Midnight inheritance? She was the last of her family. Her parents were dead, so were her aunt and uncle, and now she knew that her cousin was dead too. There was nobody else to share their blood.

It’s all over.

She went into the living room and tried to play, to lose herself in her music, but her ribs were too sore. No more playing her cello, ever again.

She desperately wanted to say goodbye to Bryony and to Aunt Juliet, but she couldn’t put them in danger. She couldn’t go anywhere; she couldn’t see anyone.

I’m like a curse, a curse that’s about to be lifted.

She sat at the window and waited. How lovely it all looked, now that she knew she wasn’t going to see another autumn.

To think that only yesterday she and Harry had been chatting in that same living room, with the ease of two people who’d known each other forever. She could still see him sitting across from her, joking about making her soup after the concerts … She could see his face, she could feel his hands holding hers, she could hear his voice. Only yesterday.

Sarah didn’t know that Sean was watching her from the garden, shaking with pain because of Nocturne’s blow, but staying put. Just like when he’d followed her to school, or to the shops – invisible, but there.

Because he wasn’t going to let her die.

He might have lost her, but he was going to protect her, until the very end. He was going to keep her alive.

“Sarah. Sarah, wake up.”

Sarah opened her eyes in the darkness. She was in her room, and yet she was in a dream.

It was her mother, sitting on her bed again, her black hair shining.

Sarah gasped.

“Mum … They’re going to kill me,” she whispered.

Anne shook her head. “You need to be strong, you need to fight …”

“I’ll be with you and Dad soon,” Sarah said desolately.

“No, you won’t. And Sarah, please forgive me. Forgive me for not having taught you more, for not having prepared you for all this. I’m so sorry. I was trying to protect you, and I put you in even more danger.”

“It’s OK, it’s OK, Mum.” Sarah felt the tears roll down her cheeks, and fall through her mum’s immaterial hands.

“If I could do it all again …”

“No, please, don’t blame yourself …”

“If I could do it all again I’d teach you all I know, like your grandmother did with Mairead. But I can’t. I can’t do it all again. It’s your turn to live and be happy. Sarah, you must survive this, and live your life. Do you understand me? You must.”

Sarah nodded over and over again. She was sobbing.

“I’ll try. I’ll try. Mum, are you with Dad? Where is he? Where are you?”

“I can’t say. I’m sorry,” Anne said, and she stood up, becoming more and more transparent, until she dissolved completely. “Forgive me,” was the last thing Sarah heard her saying.

Sarah sat in her bed, stunned, until she felt some sense of reality come back to her. She grabbed her duvet and her pillows, and went downstairs. She got out of the house, and into the garden, followed by Shadow.

She walked to her mother’s patch and lay there, wrapped in her duvet, like a chrysalis. She looked at the black, cloudy sky above her. Not one star was shining; the moon was nowhere to be seen. The silence was perfect. She closed her eyes and drifted off at once.

She opened them again as a grey dawn was breaking over the garden.

I didn’t dream
, was the first thing she thought.

She sat up, breathing in the lovely smell of her mum’s herbs, and the scent of wet earth, and looked at the sky.

I must go and face them. It’s up to me. Nobody will do it for me, nobody will help. I have to go and fight Cathy, if it’s the last thing I do. And I know it will be.

Too late to care

Too late to tell the truth

Sarah took a hot shower, to warm her after the damp night in the garden. Shadow was pacing around her. She knew that something was terribly wrong, and she was scared in that electric, charged cat-like way.

Today is the last day of my life. But I’ll fight. I’ll fight. I won’t go like a lamb to the slaughter; I’ll fight as long as I have breath left in me.

The last day of this crazy, doomed life I was given.

To think that Anne had
chosen
that life. She must have loved her father very much, to let herself be dragged into all this.

I used to dream of experiencing that love. But I won’t. I’ll never know what love is now. Just like Leigh, I’ll go before my life has even started. I’ll see them all again soon. My mum, my dad, my grandmother. Mairead, Angela, Leigh. Leaf, if they have killed him already. Harry, the real Harry. My cousin.

She thought of Sean – she struggled to call him that; to her he was Harry – and it made her feel so alone.

I can’t believe he’s done this to me
. She let herself imagine him calling her, or coming to the door, saying it had all been a mistake, that it was all a big misunderstanding. The thought of his face, of his voice, was like a stab through the heart.

But there was no mistake, no misunderstanding. He wasn’t there.

What would happen, when she was gone? What would Aunt Juliet think when she saw her parents’ things, their weapons, their magical equipment? Sarah couldn’t imagine her reaction. She couldn’t imagine anyone’s reaction, in front of all that. Juliet would think that they were all crazy, that she’d been right all along, about her father, about the Midnights. That Anne should never have gone near them. What if Juliet tried to use anything? What if someone, something, got wind of it, and came looking for Juliet and her family? Sarah couldn’t let it happen. She had to warn Juliet. She had to destroy her parents’ things before she died.

Sarah hid her face in her hands. She couldn’t bear the thought of setting fire to their things, burying them. She couldn’t do it, not this way. She sat at the living-room window with her silver diary, and started writing.

She wrote everything, about the Midnights, about what her parents did, about her dreams. She wrote about the Valaya and how they’d killed James and Anne, and hunted her next. She also wrote what was going to happen to her at the hands of Cathy Duggan.