Kissed by Midnight

by Cate Corvin

  Blood dried in clots and tugged at my fur. Shane was ragged, covered in slimy black filth and uttering a constant stream of snarls. He looked shell-shocked, maddened with rage.

  Dark blood glistened at the corners of Locke’s mouth, and ragged silver scars were slowly healing over his chest and arms. Ten ghouls at once had almost taken him down. That had been too close a call for my taste.

  Steele was as destroyed as the rest of us, wiping his forehead on the back of his sleeve. Several of the charms he’d had to unravel had involved walking into the deadside via a palm-sized mirror he kept in his pocket, but the candle we were using was burned halfway down. Something in Death, a hidden guard-spirit, had sliced right through his cheek and took a chunk of his ear with it.

  Not even halfway down, but we couldn’t stop. Not until all of us were dead or we had Blondie.

  Steele unraveled what seemed like a deceptively simple charm on the next door, and Locke burst forward the instant it opened, slamming into a figure standing on the other side.

  He shoved them into the stone wall with a low snarl and gripped their head, wrenching it right off their shoulders. We all watched with total impassivity as the revenant’s head hit the ground with a thud and immediately began rotting, years of delayed decay catching up in moments as the necromantic curse faded.

  They’d had bright red hair and pale eyes; clearly the Gilts continued to serve their coven even in death.

  I hated the idea of them making a mockery of Lu’s body, reanimating her to stand guard for a hundred years, her spirit trapped and unable to rest. It just made me want to fight harder, keep going until we hit the bottom.

  But we wouldn’t last long if we just jumped in without thinking.

  The dark stench of rot billowed out of the room, indicating far more bodies than just the Gilt corpse. I edged inside and physically recoiled from the smell alone; it was like being punched in the nose with a decaying fist, burning the lining of my hyper-sensitive nostrils.

  The far side of the room was lined with stacks of old wooden boards that had gone gray with age. Several completed coffins were laid out on the floor, but the fragile remains of bodies were piled on top, like someone had started filling the coffins with care, but had given up halfway through their grisly task and tossed them instead.

  “Do you sense any of your kind?” Steele asked Locke. The vampire’s head twitched as Shane edged closer to the corpses, taking in their scent with a growl.

  “Many, far below us. Their music fills my head.”

  I glanced at Locke, but he seemed normal, or as normal as vampires ever were. His amber eyes were focused and sharp, taking in the room and its stomach-turning contents with unnerving calm.

  Steele nodded, his skin gone slightly grayish. He plunged his hand in his pockets. “I’m almost out of salt.”

  Well, that was bad fucking news. The salt and iron coffin nails had been our best bet up to this point, driving back revenants long enough for us to dismember them.

  “We used to keep salt stores down here.” Locke’s gaze ran over the walls, his eyes clouded over with some distant memory.

  I doubted the Gilts had any interest in keeping around one of the few things that would dismantle their necromantic protections. When we ran out for good, the journey to the depths would be that much harder.

  Steele gazed down at the tangle of corpses left on the coffins. “School uniforms. These were Cimmerian students.” He used the tip of a dagger to move aside a scrap of fabric. The flesh of the corpses looked like it’d been sucked dry. “No bite wounds. They may have been fed into the Vita Machina.”

  He let the fabric fall back into place, obscuring the body, and a moment later we all wordlessly headed for the next door. Fatigue dragged down every cell in my weary body. The coppery reek of blood had all but obscured Lu’s trail, and even my superior nose was overloaded with the sheer amount of death and decay festering here.

  But as long as she was alive, as long as that hum was filling my bones, we would keep going.

  Hang on, Blondie, we’re coming for you.

  Chapter 15

  Lu

  The Hole.

  The name described it exactly. It was a perfect circle of blackness on the floor, a well falling into depths far below my feet. The Weird Sisters hadn’t bothered to light our way, so I had no idea where we were, only that the room was devoid of anything but the hungry circle that glared at me from the floor like a large, watchful eye.

  Holly had proved the future could be changed. All I had to do was keep a tight grip on my sanity before I found a way out of here.

  Eleanor shoved me towards it without warning, her jagged nails scratching my back. I ignored the shooting pains in my broken hand and gripped their arms, digging my fingers into handfuls of fabric, screaming at the top of my lungs.

  “No! If I’m going in, you’re fucking coming in with me!”

  Blood, hot and wet, bloomed under my fingers when my sharp nails tore through their thin flesh. Annabelle screeched in my ear, shaking me loose and raining heavy blows on my head.

  I shifted all my weight to Eleanor, but she slapped my face hard, dazing me just long enough to slip my grasp. Her fist slammed into my chest, knocking the breath out of me, and my arms flailed as I fell into empty space-

  And slowed to a halt, like the air around me had thickened into molasses.

  My toes finally scraped rough earth and I collapsed into a boneless puddle, struggling to refill my shocked lungs. A loud scraping noise came from overhead, and I looked up. What dim light had filtered down into the pit vanished as the Weird Sisters shoved a cover over the Hole’s entrance.

  The total darkness was a palpable weight, flooding my nose, mouth, and ears, pushing down on me like a pile of bricks. I struggled to take another breath, filling my lungs with warm, fetid air.

  I could survive this. I had no choice but to live if I wanted to burn them all down.

  Outer agony, inner peace. Block it out.

  I pulled my knees up to my chest, feeling bits of my singed uniform flake away as I focused on breathing and covered my eyes with shaking hands. It was just a dark hole in the ground. There was nothing to be afraid of.

  Something bumped against my back. I stiffened, straightening up where I sat, but when I moved my elbow back there was nothing but stone walls. I was completely enclosed and alone, with less than two feet of space to move in.

  Agony. Peace. Fear. Peace.

  A slimy, cold appendage crept over my bare ankle and I jerked my feet in, biting down on my lip until I tasted blood.

  I opened my eyes, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to see anything in the perfect, complete darkness.

  I was wrong.

  The darkness was living, moving around me in a vortex full of hungry mouths, their teeth scraping over my skin and pushing in close to me. The warm air I was breathing was the creature’s breath, penetrating every cell in my body until I felt like I was made of nothing but darkness too.

  I swallowed convulsively and forced my eyes shut again, grimacing as sharp pain shot through my bitten lip. I wouldn’t give these fuckers the satisfaction of hearing me scream. It was just a revenant. Albrecht wanted me alive.

  The Hole’s denizen retreated, and cool air touched my skin. I shivered, curling myself into a tight ball and focusing only on peace.

  Wooden floorboards creaked beneath me. I opened my eyes in shock as buttery afternoon sunlight pierced through my fingers and eyelids.

  I knew this place. It was my neighbor’s house back in Claremont, the tidy little farmhouse with its white cupboards and wildflower wreath on the front door. Mrs. Cooper would usually make a devil’s food cake on Sunday, her little joke, she always said…

  I slowly stood up in the middle of Mrs. Cooper’s kitchen, not quite believing my eyes. Several of the white cabinets had been ripped off their hinges, smeared with blood and the remains of the splattered devil’s food cake. The red-and-brown trail led up the stairs. I’d
seen this all before.

  I lunged for the door, but it no matter how many times I flipped the lock, it refused to open.

  The only way to go was up. I followed the trail on shaky legs.

  I already knew what I would find. Her bedroom door was open, and small, quavering noises came from it.

  What remained of Mrs. Cooper was laid across the lace coverlet, turning her tidy bed into a butcher’s counter. Her ribs were laid open, exposing the weak, erratic pulse of her still-beating heart and loops of violet and gray intestine.

  The ghoul crouched over her body was barely recognizable as the deceased Mr. Cooper. Fool woman had buried him under the apple tree in their backyard without an exorcism. Even for a grieving widow, it’d been the height of blind ignorance.

  He rooted around in her abdomen, gripped her quivering heart, and ripped it out with a grunt before forcing it into his mud-blackened mouth.

  I shrieked and burst into flames I couldn’t feel, stumbling down the stairs as the house went up in an inferno around me, slammed into the kitchen door-

  It fell open and I burst into the living room of Ashdarke House. The door slammed behind me, blocking off the wall of superheated air.

  Alicia Darke, my matriarch and unloving mother, sprawled on a couch and stubbed out a cigarette in one of my grandmother’s Tiffany glass bowls. She exhaled a long drag of smoke into the air, filling the dark room. The only working lamp flickered sporadically, its yellow light thankfully not highlighting much at all.

  It was a grim place, just like my grim matriarch, stained, soiled, uncared-for. No amount of my care or love had ever fixed it, like the house itself soaked up Alicia’s emotions, stained itself with them, and reflected them on its outside.

  “Why couldn’t you have been born with a useful talent?” she sneered. She clutched a near-empty bottle of gin. “We could’ve used a mirrorwalker. Even earthshaping would do! Hecate fuck me, I should find that bastard’s name and drop you on his doorstep.”

  “Who?” I asked, but I hadn’t tried to form the words. It was just the past playing out in front of me, forcing me to be part of it. When I was fifteen, this conversation had about ripped out my heart. “Who was my father?”

  She shrugged and almost toppled the gin. “Who knows? A wandering vagrant. No wonder he was covenless.”

  “Good enough for you to f-” I’d stopped myself there, afraid to say the words out loud in front of her.

  Alicia’s smile was dark and dangerous. “I would’ve been happy with witchfire in the family line. You could’ve applied for Warden training. But what you’ve got is useless at best, dangerous at worst. I should’ve dumped you on Lord Ember when I had the chance.”

  “Did you sleep with him, too?” I asked. My younger self’s voice was bitter but tinged with hope. If she’d slept with Lord Ember, there was the tiniest chance he could be my father…

  “Don’t get your hopes up, kiddo.” She popped another cigarette between her pursed lips and lit up. “Your daddy was some wandering loser, and I was dumb enough to think you’d be worth something to this coven. You’re a mistake.”

  I spun on my heel and wrenched the front door open.

  In real life, sunlight had flooded the dark confines of Ashdarke House before I strode out with tears running down my face.

  Now, with the Hole pulling my worst memories to the forefront of my mind, I stepped into a barn with motes of chaff drifting through the air.

  The barn where my ex-boyfriend had tried to force himself on me, and I’d burned him.

  Jonathan Arrow lunged towards me, his brown eyes impatient as he shoved me against a wall of hay bales and ripped my shirt open. “You already knew what you were getting into,” he said, batting my hands aside roughly and yanking my jeans over my hips. “You’ve got no money, no connections- look, I’m doing you a favor, Lu.”

  “Stop,” I snapped, gripping the torn edges of my shirt and trying to yank it shut over my exposed breasts and stomach. “Don’t touch me, I said we’re through!”

  Jonathan laughed, pushing his hips against me. My stomach lurched. “You’re being ridiculous. Covens do this all the time. I know your matriarch is a bitch about it, but we could use some witchfire in the family.”

  I pushed his hand away from my crotch. “You’re not hearing me, asshole. I said it’s over. Get your fucking hands off me.”

  The amusement in his narrow eyes faded. All that was left was something dark and empty.

  He slapped me across the face, hard, and even now I tasted phantom blood.

  It’s not real now, I told myself, it’s long past, but my heart was pounding so hard my chest ached.

  “You’ve got no other prospects, Lu,” Jonathan whispered. “And you’ve fucked me before- what’s the big deal now?”

  He shoved his fingers into my underwear, and I slapped a hand across his face as flames ignited in my palms, gushing from every pore.

  Like the past, my mind skittered to a halt, reality flickering through my head like photographs. Jonathan bursting into flame. Jonathan rolling on the scattered hay, his clothes melted to his skin.

  I stumbled out of the barn and it was like the sun was blown out. Everything was dark. A cold iron chair sat in front of a jury.

  Powerful hands gripped my biceps and pulled me forward, thrusting me into the chair.

  “Do you plead guilty to the deliberate maiming of Jonathan Arrow, of Arrowmark coven?” A wizened old man leaned over the towering podium: a Judge.

  “I…” My lungs squeezed shut for a painful moment. “No! He tried to rape me, I only wanted to stop him-”

  I looked around frantically for help, for a friendly face, but there was no one. Two of the Wardens were women, and they looked sympathetic, but the other six were men. Not one of them looked like they cared.

  “It didn’t occur to you to call for help?” the questioner asked.

  I stared up at him in disbelief. “There was no one around to hear me. We met out by the forest-”

  “Why would you have met a young man alone if you didn’t have nefarious intentions?”

  I drew in a painful breath. My tongue felt numb. “I wanted to break up in private. That’s all.”

  The Tribunal judge made a skeptical face, and cold rage iced my veins. “According to prior interviews, you asked him to meet you in that barn, alone, on the outskirts of Claremont. That sends a mixed message, wouldn’t you agree?”

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to get up from this chair and slap past me into speaking her mind and telling this jumped-up old asshole exactly what had happened, but I was stuck in my memories. They couldn’t be changed.

  A red-haired Warden- Vega, I knew now- smirked and rolled his eyes, and whatever courage I’d had at the time quailed. A flood of hot shame took its place.

  “I… I suppose so,” I whispered, just as I’d done in the past. “I didn’t mean to do it. It just burst out of me.”

  The judge let out a sigh. “A complete lack of self-control. And now a fine young man from an upstanding coven might never recover. Have you no shame?”

  I looked down at the floor, blinking back tears, while the real me, the current me, raged to change things. But in the past, I’d only cried silently as the Judge twisted every word that came out of my mouth until all I could do was capitulate to his version of events.

  A low rumble rolled through the Tribunal’s silent court room: a wolf’s growl.

  I shot out of the iron chair and blinked. The Tribunal and the Wardens were gone.

  A field of cairns stretched before me. Shane stood next to me, dark curls brushing his neck, the moon illuminating his dusky skin.

  “Shane,” I breathed, relief flooding me. I stepped towards him, but the cold look in his eye stopped me in my tracks.

  A feral grin stretched across his face. His fangs distended, filling his mouth until I saw was sharp points. “It’s a dog eat dog world inside these walls, Bambi.”

  I stared at him. This wasn’t a real memory.


  Roman slinked from the shadows, blood dripping from his snout.

  “Run,” Shane whispered. He exploded into fur and claws.

  I sprinted away, jumping over cairns, stumbling on stones and roots as the twins chased me, their howls blasting through my ears like sirens. I felt hot breath on my legs, the spray of saliva when they snapped, mere inches away from my skin.

  The school loomed ahead, light spilling through the open North Entrance door. My heart hammered like it was going to burst in my chest as I put all my energy into covering the last few yards, bolting through the door and flinging it shut behind me-

  Locke looked up from where he crouched on the checkered floor. Daphne was sprawled in front of him, her arms bent at awkward angles.

  He ran his tongue along the inside of her thigh, a slow, almost seductive tease… then bit down hard. Blood gushed around his lips as he pulled straight from her vein.

  “It’s not real,” I whispered, clenching my shaky hands. I could talk, I could move- these were just illusions. “Not real, Lu. Just keep going.”

  The wolves scratched at the door behind me, then began throwing themselves at it. I flinched as a loud howl cut through the slams, reverberating through the hall.

  I took a deep breath and turned away from Locke, but I’d barely gone ten steps when he appeared in front of me.

  He was as beautiful as ever, flushed and bronze, but there was no recognition in his amber eyes. He licked his lips, eyeing my neck.

  “Where are you going, sunlight?”

  My heart ached at the rough, emotionless flatness of his voice. There was nothing of the Locke I knew in it.

  “Not real,” I said, meeting his gaze firmly and pushing past him.

  Right into Dominic’s arms.

  “Did you really believe we were any different?” He looked me up and down with a sneer. Dark armor covered him from neck to toe, the ouroboros gleaming on his chest. “The Tribunal let you off far too easy. What should the punishment be this time, Locke? The first one doesn’t seem to have made any impression.”

  Dom’s fingers dug into my arms as the vampire drew closer. Harsh fingers wound through my hair and yanked my head back, exposing my throat to sharp fangs.