Dreams (Sarah Midnight Trilogy 1)

by Daniela Sacerdoti

  And those hands of hers. It broke his heart to see them dry and cracked, bleeding with that obsessive thing she had about cleaning. How could they have put her through all that? The Midnight mission, he thought in spite. A little girl made to dream of horrific things every night, left alone to scrub and line up her stupid shoes until dawn.

  He wanted to hold her hands against his chest, make her still, so that she could rest. He wanted to heal her, and with her, to heal himself.

  Something else bothered him. Those leaves. The guy who sent the ravens, and visited Sarah in her dreams. If he could control the spirits of the elements, it meant that he was incredibly powerful. Someone you wouldn’t want as an enemy. Why did he help them? Who was he? Had he been a Secret heir, Harry would have known about him.

  Leaf.

  Sarah had seemed strange, when she was talking about him. She’d looked away, and she’d been uncharacteristically submissive – Sarah submissive, that wasn’t something you saw every day. She’d agreed too readily to let him know if he contacted her. He feared that the vision must have told her more; he feared that more had happened.

  His gut told him to watch out for the leaves: to keep Sarah safe from a possible danger – and because he’d seen something in her face when she spoke about that boy, something that he couldn’t put into words. He didn’t want to put into words. He wasn’t jealous. He couldn’t allow himself to be jealous.

  Harry rubbed his face with his hands, exasperated by his own thoughts. He hadn’t planned to fall for Sarah. He couldn’t have planned for it. She had entered his blood, she had become part of him. Maybe it was a Midnight thing. Harry had been his only true friend, and Sarah his only …

  Harry stopped his thoughts at once. He couldn’t think it. He couldn’t think the word. No point in torturing himself, if all he could ever do in her eyes, and in the eyes of the world, was be her family. He knocked down the whisky he had poured for himself.

  “Harry!” Sarah’s voice resonated through the house, distressed.

  He ran upstairs, praying that it was a dream, that it wasn’t another attack.

  Sarah had felt the tide turning, her sleep changing into the trance-like state that brought her the visions. She tried to get up and go back downstairs, in the safety of the living room, with the TV and the lights on, but it was too late. The dream had taken her away already, and there was nothing she could do, nothing but get through it.

  She was in that strange place again, the grassy meadows. It was the middle of the night, a clear, moonlit night. She was crouching on the grass, and she was cold, a cold too deep to be natural. She could feel a presence, something invisible, threatening.

  A little white cloud materialized in front of Sarah, swirling onto itself like a sphere of milky mist, as if it had been alive. The sphere moved down to her hands, and started covering her left hand with mist, moving up her arm, and onto her chest.

  Sarah started feeling breathless again. She often did when she was scared, or upset – but this time it was different. It was as if the little cloud was stealing her air, making her lose consciousness slowly. She was falling asleep, a deadly sleep …

  Suddenly, Sarah realized there was someone else there. She was on her knees, paralyzed in the mist’s grip, so she couldn’t see who it was; but she was hoping …

  “Not Sarah!” a man’s voice shouted out.

  Leaf?

  The mist left her, and started twirling in front of her eyes. Sarah fell to the ground. The mist floated before her for a few seconds, and then it seemed to condense into a sort of creature whose features kept changing and changing. It hovered over Sarah, waiting for the right time to strike again. Sarah tried to cover her face with her hands, but she couldn’t move. A whisper caressed her ear: Sheila, it said.

  “No!” shouted the voice again.

  Sarah was slipping away. With one last, enormous effort, she managed to look up, ever so slightly … and she saw Leaf ‘s pained face. He was kneeling beside her, whispering. At first she couldn’t hear what he was saying, but then she made out some words.

  “I’m too late. I’m too late … Sarah, no …” Sarah saw that his cheeks were wet with tears.

  At that moment the misty creature engulfed her again, and she felt her life leaving her, trickling away like a little stream she couldn’t stop … She died, and she felt every second of it, every terrifying moment, until she was no more.

  She opened her eyes in the darkness, and sat up, panting. She put her hands on her heart, making sure it was still beating. She was drenched in sweat. The rain was tapping on the windows, incessant, pouring over the hills and moors around it. The wind had risen suddenly, and it was howling among the oaks in her garden, shrieking like a banshee around Sarah’s window, and lifting dead leaves in little whirlpools.

  I can’t take it. I can’t take it any more.

  She realized that Harry was sitting on her bed.

  “It’s OK. You know it was just a dream,” he was saying. She must have called him in her sleep. She looked into his clear eyes, as if clinging to them.

  “I died,” she whispered.

  “Oh, Sarah …” Harry dried her tears with soft fingers.

  How did she manage, all that time, waking up alone in an empty house? How did she manage before I arrived?

  “It was like some sort of mist. It took my breath away. It sent me to sleep, and then it killed me.”

  She didn’t tell him about Leaf. She wanted to, she desperately wanted to, but she couldn’t. Why? Why can I not say his name?

  “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you, you know that.” He took her hands in his. They were still shaking from the vision.

  “I know,” she whispered. Harry took her hands to his chest, in a gesture so loving that it broke her heart.

  “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. You’re all I have.” His secret mantra. He’d said it aloud.

  Sarah’s heart skipped a beat. Nobody had ever said anything like that to her. Even for her parents, she wasn’t all. Their mission came first.

  “You’re all I have.” So this is how it feels to be somebody’s world.

  With Harry sitting on the bed, her hands in his, she felt herself unknotting. She was tired, so tired. Maybe she wasn’t going to get up and tidy her room, like she normally did after a frightening dream. Maybe she was just going to stay in bed …

  She leaned back on the pillow.

  “Try and get some sleep now.” Harry tucked her in, like you would a child. Sarah thought that he hadn’t done it the right way, that her duvet wasn’t lying the way it was supposed to, but she didn’t rearrange it. She wanted to leave it the way Harry had done it. Also, her very bones refused to get up.

  “Is this the way my life is going to be? Forever?” she whispered, looking into Harry’s face, clinging to his blue eyes like a lifeline.

  “I don’t know.” I wish I could make it stop.

  “Sometimes I feel like I can’t take it any more. How did my grandmother manage? Years of this …”

  “She was very strong. She lived for her mission. She was hard, ruthless even. She didn’t want anything else, but to hunt.”

  “But I do. I want my music. I want to fall in love.”

  With whom? Who will you fall for, my Sarah?

  “Don’t think about this now. Try and get some sleep.”

  Sleep. Her own private torture.

  She was too tired to stop it.

  If I dream again, I swear, it’ll kill me. For real.

  19

  Strange Flowers

  The strange flowers of darkness

  For a little while, forever

  Leaf

  I’ll be there. I’ll keep you safe. This dream will not come true.

  I’ll burn them all before they can touch you.

  20

  A Dream of Ravens

  Signs and omens

  The many names of fear

  “I’ll do my best. Yes. Speak later.” Mike was just ending a c
onversation with Sean when Niall walked into the shack, his hair dripping. He’d been swimming. Again.

  “Hey Niall, listen here. Sean just asked me to find out something about this guy who came on the scene. He appeared in Sarah’s dreams. It looks like he saved their lives. Coffee?”

  “Aye, thanks.”

  “Sure. So, yes. This guy. He sent some ravens to help Sean and Sarah dispatch a Feral or two. Not real ravens. Spirits of the air, you know, Elementals. You don’t happen to know anything about this kind of thing?”

  Niall didn’t reply. Mike looked up, and saw that he had grown pale. Lines of worry were suddenly etched on his young face. To see Niall worried was like seeing the tide standing still. It looked strange at best. Chilling at worst.

  “Niall?”

  He shook his head.

  “Sorry. It’s just that … I used to dream of ravens. When I was a wee boy. And they weren’t nice dreams, if you know what I mean.”

  “There. Have this.” Mike handed him the coffee and also poured some Bourbon for both of them. “Sean is on guard anyway. Doesn’t trust the guy. He made it quite clear to Sarah.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “They don’t know. They call him Leaf, because he gives her leaves. As gifts. Weird, I know. Ever dreamt anything about leaves?”

  Niall shook his head. “No. But those ravens …”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. Just memories.”

  Just things that I’d rather forget.

  21

  Rejection

  Easier to give in

  Than to fight for happiness

  This is what happens

  Unless someone fights for you

  Cathy

  I was Cathy Midnight. For two years, that was my name.

  Morag had chosen me because I’m strong, so much stronger than Anne could ever be. Had Sarah been our daughter – mine and James’s – she would have been strong too, not helpless and frightened like she is now. I see her; I see her shaking and crying – what a shame for the Midnights, to have their fate resting on her useless shoulders. How horrified Morag would be, if she could see her granddaughter tossing and turning into her destiny, instead of accepting it, instead of being proud of it. They were fools to send me away, and look at them now. The Midnights are finished – with that strange man pretending to be one of them, and Sarah believing him.

  Yes, they’ve dissolved another one of my Surari – maybe the Midnight blood is having the best of her, and giving her the will to fight, for a change – but it’ll all end soon. This is the way I want it: when we finally meet I want us to be alone.

  When I killed James and Anne, I made it quick for James and slow for Anne. I was going to kill Sarah too. And then I changed my mind. It wasn’t an act of mercy – far from it. I called it off because I wanted Sarah to know who her parents were, before she died. I wanted her to understand how cruel, how selfish they really were, under that golden exterior. She idolized them, I know – I know a lot about her, a lot more than she can imagine. I left her alive because it was time for her to hate her parents, for leaving her alone and helpless. And I enjoyed it, in a bitter way that was more pain than joy.

  Beautiful, sweet Sarah Midnight, the one who should have been my daughter. She plays so well, the world should stop to listen. I fall asleep to her music. Not only do I watch her, I listen to her too …

  If I didn’t hate Sarah so much, I’d love her with an intensity that only a mother could experience.

  Closer, closer. Every step brings me closer to her.

  And when Sean is unmasked and Sarah is alone, then she’ll know how I’ve felt all these years.

  It’ll be her time to die, and my time to be free.

  22

  Mist

  Save me from my secrets

  Sarah walked straight to the coffee machine without uttering a word, her face like thunder. A grey, rainy dawn was breaking in the sky.

  “Sit down. I’ll get you a coffee.” Harry looked up from his iPhone, and did a double take. He could never get used to how she looked, to how much he loved her face, her hair, her body. She was wearing jeans and a long purple top, her hair tied back in a long braid, giving her an old-fashioned sort of look, like a character out of a Victorian novel.

  “You look lovely,” Harry blurted out, and immediately busied himself with coffee-making. Sarah blushed and didn’t reply.

  “Anyway, let’s lie low. I say you’re not going back to school until Monday.”

  “Good.” Four days at home. Bliss. Sarah loved school, especially the music lessons, but she was finding going to school, and her dreams, and all that was happening around her, just too much. She was constantly afraid that she’d be attacked there, and that someone would get hurt.

  Sarah downed her coffee. “See you later.”

  “Where are you going?” Harry was alarmed. He didn’t like her going out alone.

  “Just into the garden,” shouted Sarah, already out of the door. Harry grabbed his jacket and followed her. He was about to step out when the phone rang, and he walked back in to answer.

  Sarah walked down the sandstone steps … and there it was. A leaf. A golden one, a million different shades of yellow-gold. An oak leaf, perfectly beautiful, with its map of symmetrical veins running through it. Sarah felt the world spinning around her, and her legs gave way for a second. She was so happy, so happy, in a strange, dazed sort of way. It was as if mist had come over her eyes, and all she could see, all she could think about, was that perfect, beautiful leaf. As if nothing else mattered.

  He’d found the way to say ‘I’m here’, though for some reason he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t talk.

  As Harry appeared in the doorway, Sarah hid the leaf behind her back, and blanked her expression quickly. Part of her knew that she was breaking Harry’s trust; part of her wanted desperately to tell him. But she just couldn’t. Something was stopping her, and she couldn’t figure out what it was.

  “Who was it on the phone?” she asked Harry coolly.

  “Marketing.”

  Sarah let Harry walk on into the garden, and as soon as he turned his back, she hid the leaf in the pocket of one of the jackets hanging in the hall. She stroked it one last time, before running out again.

  When? When will I see him again?

  She ran across the garden and into her mother’s corner. She kneeled on the damp, black soil, under a steely sky, and looked up. The clouds were galloping, galloping, like wild horses. With delicate fingers, Sarah touched the rosemary, the sage, the thyme, the mint … Who’d guess that these humble herbs hide such power?

  “Can I help?”

  “It’s OK, don’t worry. I just don’t want my mum’s herb garden to be neglected. It’s up to me to look after it now.”

  “Do you want some peace? Do you want me to go?”

  “No, stay.” Sarah smiled unexpectedly, one of those rare smiles that lit up her face.

  Harry sat on the little stone wall that framed the herb garden, and breathed in the fresh morning air. He looked around him: the green lawns strewn with leaves, the oak trees at the back, the duck pond in the distance, covered with water lilies. A miniature park, just for the Midnights.

  “This house is amazing.”

  “Yes. I hope I never have to leave.”

  “You won’t. Don’t worry. I’ll see to that.”

  Sarah looked up, frowning. She couldn’t bear the idea of being made empty, flippant promises. She looked at him with dark, serious eyes – and Harry met her gaze. She saw that his face was solemn too.

  He means it.

  A quick, near-imperceptible smile lingered on her lips – it was all she would allow herself, for now. She couldn’t let herself believe he’d really stay, yet.

  They sat in peaceful silence, Sarah weeding, Harry lost in thought. After a short while, Sarah got up to stretch her legs.

  “Cup of tea?” asked Harry.

  “I knew you’d say that!” sh
e laughed, but stopped abruptly.

  She’d heard a noise, a faint noise, like a sigh. They’d both heard it, and they both looked around, alarmed.

  “Did you hear something?” Sarah whispered.

  Harry nodded. He was tense, alert, looking around like an animal that just smelled a predator’s scent. He freed his sgian-dubh, readying himself for a fight, or a spell.

  A raven landed beside them in a flurry of wings and feathers.

  “Harry …”

  Harry shook his head, and brought a finger to his lips.

  Sarah felt something at the base of her neck, a gentle, imperceptible touch that gave her goose bumps. A tiny sigh resounded in her ears, so low she barely heard it. Suddenly her arms felt cold.

  “Harry,” she whispered again, looking down. A white, icy mist was enveloping her arms slowly, threading itself from thin air, as if an invisible silkworm were spinning it. Like in my dream.

  “Oh my God …”

  Harry started tracing his runes and whispering his secret words. The mist was climbing up Sarah’s arms, towards her chest. It felt cold and numb, like an anaesthetic, slowly running through her system, sending her to sleep. It got to her neck, and was swirling around her like a caress, soft and deadly. Sarah’s head started lolling. She tried to keep her eyes open, but she couldn’t. The mist covered her face, and she fell on the cold, hard ground.

  Harry threw himself on the ground beside her, and kept weaving his spell, but it was no use. There was no stopping the mist. The raven cawed three times, as if calling for help. But how could help ever arrive in time, when Sarah was already barely breathing? Harry kept whispering his secret words, even if it was no use; he kept murmuring, like a prayer or an invocation.

  “Sarah!” A voice filled the air, coming from the edge of the garden. A boy, standing on the garden wall. His hair was so black it was nearly blue, and he was dressed in black from top to toe – he looked like a moving piece of night, like he’d been made of darkness. Harry stopped his spell abruptly and jumped up, his sgian-dubh raised in defence.