Midnight

by Christi J. Whitney

  ‘I believe they’ve been staying here,’ she said, turning to me. ‘Sepulchers make excellent resting places for shadow creatures. No one, either gadje or Roma, wants to disturb a grave – which means both are safe.’ She patted one column. ‘Plus, it’s cool and protected from the sun.’

  ‘Okay, but what about Augustine?’ I felt suddenly impatient. ‘And where’s Katie?’

  ‘One thing at a time, Kralitsa.’

  Ezzie continued her circuit of the mausoleums. I tried to keep my thoughts positive. Katie had to be terrified. What if Anya had done something horrible to her? Fear and nausea churned in my stomach.

  ‘They’ve been here,’ said Ezzie, her forehead creasing. She approached the smaller of the buildings, one with a triangular shaped overhang framing an iron-gate door. Ezzie tried the door, but it was locked. She pushed her head through the bars. ‘And the stench is recent, even strong. But the door is secure, and I see no evidence of anything amiss within.’

  I joined her, peering through the struts. The narrow room was framed with metal placard, six on each side, detailing the remains of the people entombed inside. In the center of the structure was a stone crypt, probably the head of the family, whoever it was.

  I studied the door handle. It was a ring latch, but it hadn’t budged at Ezzie’s attempt. I knelt beside the door and brushed away the layer of dried mud from the foundation. A tiny dandelion the size of a half-dollar had been carved into the stone. I glanced up to find Ezzie staring back at me, her brows raised.

  ‘An Outcast tomb,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I didn’t see a family name on the front,’ I replied, smiling. ‘You know how we like our secrecy.’ I reached my hand between the iron shafts and felt around the inside wall, in the same position as the outside dandelion carving. I located another carving, this one raised. I traced the etching, and then pressed it with my fingers.

  The turn latch rotated, and we heard it release.

  My smile slid into a grin. ‘I was always the one who listened to the history lessons my aunt told us about this Haven when she used to visit our clan. My brother always fell asleep.’

  Ezzie grasped the bars and shoved. The door creaked open. Cool air brushed my face, flowing in a lazy current between the gate and a small barred window on the opposite side. The room smelled pleasantly old, like a library might. It was rich and earthy, and comforting. I swallowed hard, my thoughts going to Sebastian.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, forcing my attention to the present. ‘My aunt told us all kinds of stories when we were kids, about the Court of Shadows and the Outcasts who established it. I thought all the tunnel systems were so amazing, like a magical kingdom, all hidden away.’ I wrapped the end of my ponytail around my fingers as I talked, like I was coaxing my childhood back to me. ‘There’s lots of tunnels connecting the Court to street level, but there are plenty of others that had fallen out of use and were blocked off.’

  ‘Ones that even led up to places such as these,’ said Ezzie. ‘In the early days, when the Outcasts first came to Savannah.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You’re not the only one who has heard such stories,’ she replied. She breathed in deeply through her nose. ‘And since it’s clear that chimeras have been in here, it would mean that Augustine also knows and has used this particular structure to access the tunnels.’

  Ezzie tested the slab of granite covering the top of the center crypt. ‘As is the way with our world, many things aren’t what they seem.’ She lifted it an inch. ‘Your help, Josephine.’

  I hurried over and took the opposite side of the slab. It wasn’t heavy at all. We picked it up and set it aside. I braced myself and looked inside the crypt, expecting to see the skeleton of some long-dead Gypsy. Or, even worse than that, a rotting corpse.

  The crypt was hollow, with no bottom. An iron ladder had been fixed to the inner side of the rectangular tomb, disappearing into a pitch-black opening descending far below the ground. I switched on my phone’s flashlight, but it wasn’t powerful enough to illuminate the bottom.

  Esmeralda swung herself over the side of the crypt and placed her feet steadily on the ladder rungs. ‘I can’t see in the dark as well as a guardian, but my eyesight is still better than yours. I’ll go first and call up to you when I determine it’s safe.’

  She didn’t wait for me to answer. In a matter of seconds, her form vanished from view. All I could hear were her footsteps on the ladder, which grew more faint and distant. I chewed repeatedly on my thumbnail, nerves standing on end. What was taking so long?

  I slipped the diamond knife from my back pocket. ‘Ezzie?’

  My voice ricocheted off the walls of the tunnel.

  But there was no reply.

  25. Sebastian

  I threw my hand over my face and stumbled backwards.

  The morning sun hit me hard. I could only squint, half-blinded, at my surroundings. My heart screeched to a halt. I was above ground, in the city. And it was morning.

  My senses went into overdrive. Sights, smells, and sounds. There was a couple, five yards away, staring at a tourist map. A woman walking her dog. A runner checking his time on his watch. A green sedan idling in a parking space. Three customers seated in a coffee shop’s outdoor patio.

  People. Gadje.

  Humans.

  Adrenaline poured through my veins. My breathing turned shallow and my instincts screamed. My lip curled away from my teeth. No, not now. Don’t freak out now. I took off, running for all I was worth, holding tight to my hood and keeping it low over my face. I veered from the sidewalk and into the street, searching desperately for cover.

  Then, I saw it, a tall brick wall running parallel to the street, easily five feet high. I looked frantically around, checking for onlookers, then, without halting my stride, I leapt over it, landing in a patch of well-trimmed grass.

  My shoulder lit up with fire, and I fell back against the wall, gritting my teeth to keep from crying out. The sun’s intensity eased as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, and I was able to see clearly where I was: a cemetery. Old tombstones and markers dotted the yard, scattered in various places with no clear pattern around a network of landscaped scrubs and bushes. I knew Savannah had its share of historic cemeteries, but I had no idea which one this was. Not that it would’ve helped, anyway.

  Getting out of the open was my only priority.

  That, and getting hold of myself again. My body trembled uncontrollably. I placed a hand across my stomach. I wasn’t hungry yet, but I felt strange inside – a familiar kind of strange that made my heart sink. I pulled aside the cloak with shaking fingers and examined the arrow wound again.

  Flecks of purple and silver oozed from the opening, mixed with my odd-colored blood – just like it had when the Marksmen had tainted my manacles with prah. This was more than the result of an arrow tip being dipped in the Gypsy dust. I jabbed my claws into the wound, grunting with pain, and extracted a piece of the wooden arrow, wiping it clean against my cloak.

  Though mostly disintegrated, it was plain to see the arrow was hollow, and it had been packed full of prah. I slumped sideways into the grass. No matter what I did, Augustine kept chiseling away at me in his efforts to create … what? A leader for his army? All the prah did was make me a furious, slobbering beast, totally out of control.

  I started to pull back my hood and froze at the sight of my arms. The black veins running underneath my grey skin were heavily visible on the underside of my arms and along the backs of my hands.

  If Augustine turned me into a chimera, the way he’d done with his gargoyles, why would he think I’d serve him? Anya and the others only seemed to hate him more. In fact, all they seemed capable of was hatred and vengeance, fueled by a primal evil that turned my blood to ice the last time I’d encountered them.

  And what army?

  My chest tightened. The Sobrasi. They’d let Augustine into the Court of Shadows, let him speak freely, didn’t negate anything he’d s
aid about me not standing trial. Did they have something to do with whatever army Augustine was so bent on?

  Cold shuddered my body, turning my tremors to full-on shakes. Adrenaline continued sparking along my skin, making my scalp crawl. The prah hadn’t caused me to totally snap, like Augustine’s other doses, but I felt it lurking in each beat of my heart.

  The arrow’s casing must’ve prevented the prah from entering my bloodstream immediately, but as my gargoyle body kept trying to heal, it broke down the parts of the arrow that were wood, rather than diamond. I could only assume Augustine knew this would happen, and that knowledge was nearly as painful as the arrow itself.

  I pulled the cloak taut against me and scanned the cemetery for a place to hide. Far in the distance, I spotted a row of domed structures, waist high and lined with dark-red bricks. I slinked between trees and hedges until I reached them.

  The cemetery was quiet and deserted here. Oaks with gnarled, twisted branches obscured the sun completely. I breathed in deeply, glad for the reprieve. Long tendrils of Spanish oak clung in thick bunches to every branch, some hanging so low to the ground that I had to maneuver around them.

  The thick shade prevented grass from growing. Sprawling roots curled above the topsoil like snakes. I stepped over them as I made my way to the unusual structures. As I approached, I realized they were graves, fashioned above ground to keep them dry, but they looked more like giant beds.

  Stacked bricks constructed in rectangular and oval shapes made up the headboard, and shorter stacks of bricks on the opposite end were the footboards. In the center, instead of a mattress, lay a thick granite mound. It was easy to imagine what lay underneath the stone covers of that bed.

  Something felt weird about the place. My gargoyle senses were still on edge, so why not put them to the test? I planted my feet and took in a very slow, calculated breath, taking in everything about me. I allowed scents to filter through me – all the normal things first – the earthy scents, plants and flowers, the pungent scent of the moss and decaying bits of trees. I could even smell the city beyond, from individual cars exhausts to foods being cooked for lunch.

  Then, finally, my senses focused in on other things, Roma things. The air mingled with the spiced and exotic smells I’d come to associate with Outcast Gypsies. Most were so faint I could barely discern them, but some were more recent. I went deeper into my senses, moving past those to something a lot less pleasant.

  Shadowen.

  A snarl rippled across my lips. Shadow creatures lived here. Grotesques, hiding from the sun and the light of day. While there was nothing visible within the confines of the cemetery, I felt their presence, growing inside my head – their primal, inhuman sounds buzzed like static.

  For one fleeting instant, I wanted to scream in my head, to order them to show themselves to me. The urge was so wild, so fierce that I took a step back under the weight of it. I felt a twinge of fear, because I had a terrible feeling that if I were to broadcast that thought, they might actually obey.

  Another presence filtered through my senses. Chimeras had been here, too. The stench of rotting fish and decaying things lingered. Compelling by my instincts, I moved around the side of the largest grave.

  A large rectangular opening had been built into the brick headboard wall, but it was covered over by a newer layer of bricks, sealing it off. I crouched in front of the grave, tilting my head to the side. I felt something stir within me, an emotional current. The air caught in my throat.

  Josephine.

  I didn’t see her, but I felt her – kneeling in a similar place, somewhere else in the city, another cemetery, like this one. Our bond, our connection or whatever it was planted the feeling, caused my hand to move, almost on its own, to the corner of the sealed opening. I knew that Josephine was doing the same thing wherever she was, like we were mirror images of each other. I swallowed nervously as my claws scraped against a single brick, narrower than the others. I blinked, unbelieving.

  A tiny dandelion was etched into the brick.

  I tugged on the slab, and the piece slid out easily, like pulling out a cabinet drawer. My gargoyle ears picked up a grating sound from the other side of the wall, the scraping of stone on stone. And then, the sealed part of the wall came free from the rest of the structure. It opened outward, like a hinged door. Old scents filled my nostrils, but there was another smell. Not Gypsy. Not Shadowen.

  The opening was just big enough for me to slide into, if I kept my wings pressed tight against me. I didn’t stop to think. I shoved myself in, headfirst. Immediately, the space widened. This wasn’t a grave at all. It was an entrance.

  Wide stone steps led straight down several feet. I turned, carefully pulling the brick door shut, and allowed my gargoyle vision to snap everything into focus. I hunched my back to avoid the low ceiling created by the top of the structure, and I descended the stairs, one at a time and very carefully. The last step led to a room with a ceiling high enough to stand upright.

  It was clean and well kept, with rugs on the floor and fabric over the rock walls. Nothing about it smelled musty or stale, so there had to be air flowing from somewhere. A desk and chair nestled in one corner, surrounded by mounds of books, and sleeping cot took up the opposite corner.

  Augustine’s scent permeated the room, enacting my gag reflex. So this is where he’d been staying. I reached down and took one of the books in my clawed hands. I opened the cover to find nothing but blank pages gaping back at me. But I knew better. These were Sobrasi books. Since I wasn’t a Gypsy, whatever was written in them was totally invisible to me.

  I replaced the book on the stack. Three passages led out of the room, going in different directions I took the center one, led instinctively by the new scent I’d smelled at the entrance. It was one that I somehow knew, not from my days as a gargoyle, but from a time before that.

  The tremors wracking my body spread downward to my legs. The effects of the prah seemed to be increasing at a slow, steady pace, rather than an instant rush, like before. I clutched my wrist in my other hand. Under my skin, the black veins carried the tainted blood, traveling into my fingers. Maybe I was just imagining things, but it seemed as though my claws had lengthened.

  Then, I heard something.

  A sniffling sound. A shifting of a body and the creak of a chair. I halted in the passage, listening carefully with my sensitive hearing. It felt as though a heavy weight dropped from my chest to the soles of my feet. I continued, reaching the end of the passage. Another room, roughly twice the size as the other, but furnished only by a single table, six chairs, and two oil lanterns.

  Seated at the table, with her back to me was a girl. Her long blonde hair spilled down her back. The girl picked at a plate of food, a peanut-butter sandwich by the smell of it. I caught a whiff of perfume, potent, flowery stuff, and I realized what the strange scent had been all along. And why I knew it.

  My heart wedged itself like a knife in my throat.

  Katie.

  No, this wasn’t possible. The prah was making me hallucinate. That had to be it. She couldn’t be here. There was no way she could be here. I stumbled backwards into the passage. A half-gasping noise escaped my mouth.

  The girl spun around with wide eyes.

  There was no doubt now. Katie Lewis, my best friend since sophomore year, the girl who loved shopping and blasting music from the Putrid Melons while driving, was sitting across the room from me, in the middle of Augustine’s hideout, deep underneath a fake grave in the middle of the city cemetery.

  She brushed a strand of hair out of her face. ‘Who’s there?’

  I retreated further into the darkness of the passage, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Questions fired like a Ping-Pong match in my head, but I couldn’t decipher them. The shock of seeing her rattled my already teetering instincts. My head pounded, and my wings quivered.

  Katie stood and hugged her arms to her chest. She peered blindly into the passageway. ‘I know somebody’s there.�
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  Her voice was remarkably steady, despite the terrified expression creeping over her face. I started forward, but my shaking hands pulled me up short. Heat had begun to seep into my veins, and the memory of what I’d nearly done to Hugo flashed in front of my face like a neon warning sign.

  She took a tentative step forward. I cringed. Even my blending abilities wouldn’t keep me invisible if she got too close. I dropped to a crouch and dug my claws into the dirt, using them as an anchor. I inhaled deeply and spoke.

  ‘Katie, it’s me.’

  I managed to keep my tone soft and disarming, but it didn’t make a lot of difference. My voice had already changed into the more gravelly version as adrenaline and instincts coursed through me.

  I cleared my throat and tried again. ‘It’s Sebastian.’

  Her expression fluctuated across her face, going from doubt to realization, and then suddenly, astonishment. Her brows shot straight up her forehead and her mouth gaped open.

  ‘It’s … it’s really you?’ she breathed.

  ‘Yes.’

  She hesitated, squinting suspiciously. ‘You don’t sound like you.’

  ‘Katie, it’s me,’ I said, choking down the tinge of snarl that crept into my voice as I talked. ‘I promise.’

  Her shoulders sank in relief. ‘Oh, thank God!’

  She rushed forward, heading straight for the passageway. Primal instincts flared to life, and a growl burst from my lips. ‘No, don’t!’

  Katie turned on the brakes so fast it would’ve been funny, in another time and place. I watched guardedly as she backed up, hovering in the safety of the light spilling from the oil lamps on the table.

  I reined myself in, regulating my breathing. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘Growl at me?’ she finished, clutching the table.