By Midnight

by Mia James

  ‘Because I can smell you,’ he growled, and his nose turned upwards, his grin stretched wide, his teeth bared. As his long fingers tightened around her throat she flailed with her arms and legs, trying to get a grip on something, tearing his shirt, nails sinking into his bare chest.

  ‘Don’t struggle, little rabbit,’ he said. ‘We’ve got all the time in the world.’ He squeezed tighter and tighter and April could feel herself getting weaker. She reached out desperately with her fingers, the tips just touching something rough. She scrabbled, trying to get hold of it, of anything, before her breath finally gave out. With one last buck of her chest, she forced out a groan. ‘Grrun … Arllee … Haaart.’

  ‘What’s that? Did you speak?’ He chuckled nastily.

  ‘GRRuN … arllHee … Hubt,’ she tried again, her head swimming.

  Marcus loosened his grip just slightly, curious as to what his prey was trying to communicate.

  ‘What?’ he whispered into her ear, his mouth opening, slowly licking her neck with his cold tongue.

  ‘Don’t … call me … rabbit!’ she snarled and swung the rock in her hand with all her might. It caught him square on the temple, spraying blood and goo up her arm. Howling, he tried to roll off her, but she clung on, using his momentum to swing over on top of him. Straddling him, she raised the jagged rock again and smashed it down into his eye, feeling a twisted joy as he screamed, then brought it down again, smashing his mouth open, teeth pink and broken. ‘Don’t call me rabbit!’ she screamed, crashing the stone into his face again and again. ‘Only my dad can call me that,’ she shouted, the rock rising and falling in a frenzy. ‘And he’s DEAD! Because you killed him, you BASTARD!’

  Finally she could lift it no more and she collapsed on top of Marcus, her shoulders heaving with the exertion, her lungs choked with sobs, her throat raw from screaming and from Marcus’s death-grip. She crawled away through the snow, pulling herself up on a gravestone.

  Is this it? she thought. Is this what being a Fury is? Beating out someone’s brains in a cemetery at midnight?

  ‘Is this your prophecy?’ she sobbed out loud. ‘Is this my future?’

  ‘What prophecy?’ said a rough voice, and then with a great roar, she was flying through the air, her back slamming against the monument with a crunch. He’s still alive, she thought with an almost amused detachment. How can he be alive?

  ‘What prophecy?’ Marcus yelled down into her face, spittle and blood flying from his shattered teeth. He lifted her again and threw her into the air as if she was a broken toy, and then there was sudden crunching, piercing pain as she landed on top of a fallen stone cross. Agony lanced through her side as he lifted her again and slammed her back down. Her head lolled around and she saw that he had dropped her on top of a flat coffin-shaped tomb. She couldn’t move her right arm, could see it sticking out at a crazy angle, and she could taste the sharp metallic tang of fresh blood in her mouth.

  Again he gripped her throat and she felt more pain, a terrible dark, sapping pain in her chest.

  ‘Tell me about the prophecy, April Dunne,’ he said softly, stroking her face. ‘Tell me everything you know before I make you beg for death.’ He wrenched her arm and she screamed, the white-hot agony filling her mind. ‘How do you know about us? Was it your dear dead daddy? Who told you?’

  This time he didn’t give her chance to speak, instead squeezing his grip tighter. His voice was getting fainter, more distant. The cold from the tomb seemed to be seeping into her body, pulling her down into its embrace.

  ‘Whoever it was, perhaps you’ll know we can recover from wounds,’ he was saying in an almost conversational tone, sounding as if he was walking away down a tunnel. ‘And you’ll know we gain strength from your blood, so your death won’t be in vain …’

  Then it was as if a tornado had rushed into the cemetery. April heard a gurgling scream, like someone drowning in treacle, then she was bathed in white. She could see a kind face above her - was it Gabriel? - and the cold and the pain faded. She would have been happy to stay here and just sleep on this nice warm rock, let the black duvet wrapping itself around her swallow her for ever. And then it changed again and she was filled up, and up and up, like that man she’d seen at the circus who blew up a hot water bottle until it burst. And suddenly the pain came rushing back into her arm and her side and her head.

  ‘No,’ she tried to say, tried to stop him. ‘You mustn’t!’

  But Gabriel was smiling down at her, bringing his lips to hers, kissing her so tenderly, so softly, so full of love. ‘I’ve been waiting so long for this,’ he whispered. ‘I wouldn’t want to be in this world without you.’

  And, tears running down her face, she lifted her chin to join him in the kiss, feeling the warmth of his skin, wanting to pull him closer and closer, at once horrified at what he was doing, and so full of happiness that she might melt. She opened her eyes again and she could see fluffy white snowflakes falling towards them, landing on her cheeks and eyelids as his warm lips brushed against her ear and he whispered, ‘I love you, April Dunne.’ As if in slow motion she gasped, kissed, laughed, suspended in a perfect moment of peace and wonder and joy, then suddenly Gabriel was gone and the rest of the world was sucked in, with noise and movement and lights. Another face was there - it was Mr Osbourne, Davina’s dad, the one who wasn’t a vampire - and he seemed angry and he was shouting orders and pointing and talking into a phone. Then she turned her head and looked down at her arm. And then she was screaming again. The world was snow and blood and broken bone, and everything hurt. And she had killed Gabriel Swift, the boy who said he loved her.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Caro had eaten all the grapes again. April would have laughed if it didn’t hurt so much. During the week she had been in hospital, Caro had come in every day after school bearing a plastic carrier bag of fruit, crisps and unhealthy fizzy drinks to ‘help build up the patient’s strength’, despite having been repeatedly told that April was not allowed - was unable, in fact - to eat anything except the pureed hospital food. ‘Ah well, can’t let it go to waste,’ she would shrug, reaching for the Wotsits. April actually enjoyed the routine and was glad to have her friend to distract her with stories of the world outside, particularly details of the aftermath of what Caro now referred to as ‘The Winter Ball Massacre’. April was amused to hear that the school had bequeathed her a ‘Wall of April’ opposite ‘Milos Wall’, which was crammed with cards and letters from well-wishers, the same well-wishers who had so recently been exchanging gossip about her supposed loose behaviour at the Halloween party.

  ‘That girl Emily from your Philosophy class is now claiming that you and she are best buddies and that you’re going on holiday together when you get out of here. Clacton, I think it is.’

  April giggled and immediately winced. On top of the pain in her bruised neck, laughter would also bring on shooting pains in her side where she had broken three ribs. Considering she had been attacked by a bloodthirsty monster from hell, April considered herself to have got off lightly. She’d had eighteen stitches in her head, a bruised spleen, a broken little finger and damage to her larynx. Worst of all, her arm had not been broken, it had been bitten, torn open down one side. ‘It looked like a Rottweiler had got hold of you,’ the surgeon had told her later. It was currently stapled together pending another operation, and bound up in bandages two inches thick.

  Apart from an awful lot of very dark blood, no trace had been found of Marcus and the police were working on the theory that he had somehow managed to skip the country. According to DI Reece, who had visited the day before, they were also keen to talk to him in connection with both the Alix Graves and Isabelle Davis murders, although April guessed that this was due to pressure from his superiors to clear up the unsolved cases, rather than from a wealth of evidence. April’s statement was, she suspected, all the evidence they had.

  ‘There are about fifty theories going around school about Marcus,’ said Caro as she unzipped a banana
. ‘Crack addiction, radiation poisoning, some sort of gay love tryst.’

  ‘I take it that last one was Simon’s?’ asked April.

  ‘You know him too well.’ Caro smiled. ‘The funny thing is that no one’s really going for the—’ she lowered her voice ‘—vampires angle, especially considering it all happened in Highgate Cemetery. I was convinced the media would be all over it, but maybe Nicholas Osbourne has managed to hush the whole thing up.’

  April smiled. Even now, Caro couldn’t let the conspiracy theory go, despite the fact they had proven Davina’s father was neither a vampire nor the heartless fiend Caro had claimed. In many ways, April owed Nicholas Osbourne her life. After Gabriel had carried her onto the lawn, Davina’s dad had realised that it would take too long for an ambulance to reach the house, so he’d carried April to his car and driven her to A&E himself - mercifully close to the house - at high speed, running red lights and taking corners at sixty. Of course, without Gabriel, she would never have made it that far. Without Gabriel’s sacrifice, she would be lying next to her dad right now.

  Oh God, Gabriel, what did you do? she thought for the hundredth time. Why did you do it?

  When she had come round, two days after the attack, the doctors had told her how the young man had used his shirt to skilfully bind her wound. ‘An amazing job,’ said the consultant. ‘Without it, you would have bled to death for sure.’

  But that wasn’t all. No, Gabriel had done something else, something so wonderful and terrible it still made her heart lurch to think of it. He had given her the kiss of life, despite knowing it would kill him. He had put his lips to hers and breathed life into her, even as she stole his away from him, infecting him with the Fury virus. April had done little else but lie there and think over the past few days and she would swing from anger at his stupidity to amazement at the incredible, selfless, loving thing he had done. Because it was love, she was sure of it. He hadn’t just resuscitated her, he had kissed her - he had kissed her there, half-dead in the snow of the cemetery, a full-on, passionate kiss that she had felt from her toes to the tips of her ears. And then - it made her heart leap so hard it hurt - he had told her he loved her. He loved her. More than that: he didn’t want to be in the world without her, those had been his actual words. April had tried to bring it up, to discuss it, to dissect the meaning when Gabriel had visited over the past few days, but she had found that whenever she tried to repeat the words, her throat closed and she choked, and instead she had simply held his hand and whispered, ‘Me too.’ Right now, April decided to concentrate on simpler matters.

  ‘So how’s everyone else?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah well, Davina’s thriving on the fact that it all happened yards from her bedroom and the fact that her dad was the unlikely hero. I was right about that too, by the way - the power of positive PR. Agropharm’s share price has gone through the roof after his heroics. I wouldn’t like to suggest he only saved you for the publicity, but …’

  April smirked. ‘You’re still miffed he didn’t turn out to be the Regent, aren’t you?’

  Caro pulled a satsuma out of her bag and began to peel it. ‘A bit.’ She smiled. ‘But it doesn’t mean that the Regent, whoever he is, isn’t the one behind the school. And there’s still that email from Nicholas to Hawk to explain. I mean, what does he want Ravenwood students for, exactly?’ She noticed April’s troubled expression and pulled an apologetic face. ‘Hey, you don’t need to worry about all that now,’ said Caro. ‘You just concentrate on getting better. Besides, Gabriel and I had a bit of a pow-wow last night and Big Gabe reckons the suckers will back right off now. There’s too much heat on them at the moment. Plus they must have loads of Christmas shopping to do. Capes, candles, that sort of thing.’

  April giggled and winced again.

  ‘So how’s your mum coping?’ asked Caro.

  ‘It’s ironic, but I think it’s been good for her, having her daughter in intensive care,’ said April. ‘It’s given her something else to fret about. She certainly looks healthier these days and she and Grandpa Thomas seem to be getting along better. They’ve promised to give me “a big talk” when I’ve recovered, God knows what that’s going to be about. Stay away from crazy boys, probably.’

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ said Caro, looking across April’s bed and nodding towards the door of her room. She turned to see Gabriel standing there and her heart did a cartwheel. He was wrapped up in a big coat and he looked tired.

  ‘Hey there, hero,’ said Caro, standing up. ‘Your turn to cheer up the patient.’

  ‘Don’t go on my account,’ said Gabriel, but Caro held up the empty goodie bag. ‘I’m all out of supplies,’ she said, leaning over to kiss April goodbye.

  When she was gone, Gabriel pulled up a chair and they smiled at each other awkwardly. April was glad he had come, but it hurt her to see him looking so drained. There was so much she wanted to say to him, but she just didn’t know how. She pushed herself up and swung her legs off the bed.

  ‘We’re going for a walk in the garden,’ she said to a nurse as they left April’s room, then took Gabriel’s arm and they walked slowly down to a wide silver lift that opened into the same lobby she had stood in the night her father had died. They walked to the rear entrance, into a garden overlooking Waterlow Park to the north and the East Cemetery to the south. Through the trees they could just see the top of the Osbourne mansion and April shivered. Gabriel draped his coat around her shoulders, almost a ritual between them now, and they walked along the path.

  ‘So how are you feeling?’

  ‘Not bad,’ said April, gesturing to her injured arm. ‘Apparently I’m healing really quickly. Not as quick as you, of course. Well, I mean, as quick as you used to heal. Sorry, I didn’t think.’

  Gabriel laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m okay. I quite like it in a funny way.’

  ‘How can you like it?’ said April with sadness in her voice. ‘You’re dying.’

  Gabriel let a long breath out, his cheeks pink. ‘I haven’t been ill in a hundred years. Not a cold, not a headache, barely even a scratch. When you get used to being that way, it makes you complacent and arrogant. You lose touch with life.’

  They stopped where the wall bordered the cemetery. There was a little green space with benches and they sat down. Gabriel ran a hand over the bare branches of a shrub growing next to their seat as if he was seeing a tree for the first time.

  ‘Nature is all about things being born and dying, isn’t it?’ he said quietly. ‘In a few months there will be leaves here and flowers in the beds. There’s a flow to the world that you can only see when you’re vulnerable. Normal people get sad when it rains, they worry about germs, they look forward to spring. None of that matters to a vampire, because nothing can touch us. It’s funny, I feel more alive than I have in years, now that I’m dying. And now that I have you.’

  ‘But maybe you’re not going to die,’ said April, tears springing into her eyes. ‘Maybe there’s a cure.’

  Gabriel put his cold hand up to touch her face. ‘There is, April.’ He smiled. ‘It’s you. You are the cure.’

  She was crying now. ‘But I’ve only just found you,’ she sobbed. ‘Why does everything I love have to go away?’

  He took her face in his hands and kissed her. His lips were soft and warm and April could feel him next to her, his heart beating as hard as hers. God, is this how it feels? she thought. Is this really love? Then suddenly she pulled back, pushing him away ineffectually with her one good arm.

  ‘Oh God, what have you done?’ she said. ‘You can’t kiss me!’

  Gabriel laughed. ‘Oh yes I can!’ He chuckled, gathering her up in his arms and kissing her again. ‘You can’t infect me twice, can you?’

  April looked unconvinced. ‘But maybe I’ll make it worse or something.’

  He shook his head and placed two fingers on her lips. ‘Trust me, I’m a doctor.’

  ‘You’re a what?’

  He threw his head
back and laughed, but there was a rasping sound to it that April didn’t like at all. ‘I’m over a hundred years old, remember?’ he said. ‘You stick around long enough, you can learn a lot. Got to fill your time with something - we don’t all play the church organ in the dead of night, you know.’

  April stared at him open-mouthed.

  ‘You’re a doctor?’

  Somehow this was harder to believe than him being undead.

  ‘Remember I was a student when I was turned? I switched from law to medicine. I needed to be near blood, so it seemed logical. Unfortunately, I have to keep doing the exams.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I look like this,’ he said, pointing to his face. ‘I can pass for early twenties, but I’m perpetually a junior doctor, so every few years I have to start again and requalify in a different place.’

  ‘But doesn’t seeing all that blood send you into a feeding frenzy or something?’