Free Dreams (Sarah Midnight Trilogy 1) by Daniela Sacerdoti Page A

strongest ones, the ones that do more, so much more than just kill without a reason. The Sentient demons want to be called, they long to come back and rule the earth again, and we can use this desire of theirs for our own gain. They have Slaves themselves, minions they use as we would use guard dogs.
    It’s not easy to keep the Sentients in check – it takes all our skills and infinite vigilance to keep them under control and to stop them from taking over, bending the Ferals to their will. I can feel the Sentient ones planning to turn the Valaya from a coven of humans each with a demon servant, into a coven of demons each with a human servant. I can feel them conniving, waiting, biding their time. They’ll never succeed – it’s my bidding, or the dark waters of the world before time. I won’t show any mercy, for anyone. What mercy was ever shown to me?
    My Valaya is not the only one. Just as there are many Secret Families around the world, there are also many more of us. Many Valaya, many Masters and Mistresses, each with their own demon, each with their own territory. And above all of us …
    I can’t say. I can’t say who leads us all, the One whose orders I follow. All I know is that the Time of Demons is coming again, and it’ll be us, the Masters and Mistresses all over the world, who will rise up and rule. The Secret Families will be gone forever, and nothing, nobody will be there to stop us. It has started already. The heirs of the Secret Families have started falling all over the world, a harvest of blood.
    But Sarah – Sarah is mine. It’ll be me who puts an end to her life.

    James and Anne stayed in the light, the golden couple and their perfect world. I longed for the dark – what else did I have left? I wanted to be like them – I wanted to be them – all I could do was to become their reversed image, their negative.
    You might say I live in a nightmare – truth is, my life turned into a nightmare the day I met the Midnights. I’ve been tied to this wheel, and I can never be free until they are all dead, every last one of them.
    It was the Midnights that taught me how to lie, and I learnt well. I’m Cathy Duggan, when everyone is looking; in my heart, I am Catherine Hollow, the Mistress.

6
Dawn
     

    I call on my nightmares
    Again and again
    I am
    My own destruction

    Sarah was at the window with Shadow asleep in her lap, watching the first light spreading on the moors. Strange how even when our life has been broken and put back together in a way we can’t recognize, even when we want everything to look different, because we are different – even then, the stars don’t change their place, the wind blows like it always has done, and dawn still breaks. The world looks the same, and still nothing is the same. Like an imperceptible shift of the earth’s axis has happened: it’s invisible to the eye, but it has enormous consequences.
    Sarah was dressed already: black leggings, a blouse and short black skirt, and her ever-present boots. Her hair was tied back in her usual perfect ponytail. She had only slept for four hours, but her sleep had been heavy. She felt rested, in a strange, charged kind of way. Like a coil ready to spring.
    She thought of what happened the night before, of the demon-dog that had attacked her in her own home. Never, never before had a creature dared to attack the Midnight home. But with her parents gone …
    One thing is for sure: I’m not going to sit here and wait to be killed.
    The Valaya. Human beings, not demons. People like her, like her friends, her teachers, her neighbours, her classmates. People who looked into the abyss and decided they liked it, that that’s where they belonged; who formed an alliance with the ancient forces of the land, to claim it back for themselves. She never thought that anyone would ever willingly ally themselves with demons. Not after all she’d seen.
    For the thousandth time, she went through the list of names she had copied from