“What do you mean?”
He disappeared down the stairs. I followed, clutching at the wall to keep my balance. “What are you trying to tell me? Who are you really? What are you?”
His voice echoed from somewhere down below. “I’ve known you for a while. As I said, yours is an attractive magic . . . I really couldn’t help but love you.”
“What are you, Mellon?”
The silence was painful. By now I’d come to the huge brass stairs, and I had to slow down so I wouldn’t fall. Without Jonathan to hold on to, I had to slide down and, knowing we came to hunt, I had the presence of mind to bring a flashlight instead of a romantic but relatively weak candle or lantern. For the first time, I could see the deep scratches and slashes clawed into the metal.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, half to myself.
I reached the bottom of the stairs, and Jonathan waited for me, eyes wide. “Daytime up above is night down here. And at night . . . the creatures of night claim their share of the world.”
A low growl rose from beyond the garden’s walls.
“Part of what they seek to claim is you. But I won’t have it.”
He came to me, seared my lips with a final kiss. “What am I, Mireya?” He held me as the growls got closer. I passed him the flashlight, but the darkness engulfed us, thicker than velvet.
He shook his head and laughed. “It doesn’t matter any more, what I am. My father fell in love with my mother, a woman from the dark places. The walled garden is mother’s domain. The creature that attacked you is likely my mother’s creature.
“But all that matters is you, Mireya. I first saw you at the bottom of a ditch in Riverside Park, and you were fighting for your life. I didn’t let him get you then, and I won’t let him have you now.
“Listen to me, Mireya,” Jonathan continued, as the growls rose to a horrible shriek. “I’m going to take care of the monster that attacked you. Very few pure mortals have a magic like yours. It’s a rare and beautiful light, my love – but it attracts the darkness, too. Go back up the stairs, quickly.”
“But, Jonathan, sweetheart . . .”
“Don’t argue. Go. When it’s safe, I’ll come for you.” The shriek grew into a guttural scream. “Go!”
I had never run away from a fight, not in my entire life. But I knew better than to argue with him – after all, I had met that evil beast before, and had barely survived my first encounter. Now, too late, I understood that Mellon alone had stopped it from snuffing me out. The only way to thank him was to try to survive this second time.
I ran back up the stairs as best I could, half blinded by tears and by the loss of the flashlight, and it wasn’t until I stopped for air in the middle of the Quad that I realized it . . .
I still had the map, wadded up in my back pocket.
I finished the rest of the school year in a haze, doing what I knew I had to do in a world that had become a faint dream. I picked up my old nemesis, the telephone, and called Colleen for help; my old friend forgave me for my neglect of our friendship without saying a word. She kept my body and soul together somehow, much asshe had the first time I had been attacked. But I think she knew I hadn’t really made it back this time, and that I wasn’t going to stick around for long.
It was the end of school for the year. I packed up my two boxes of earthly possessions and mailed them to my darling grandmother in New Hampshire. My move thus completed, I bequeathed my drooping spider plant to Ali, the ancient security guard, and he smiled and nodded in silent thanks.
My last night, I sat alone on my bare bed, where I had once made love to a creature of starlight and shadows, and I looked out the window, smelled the wild apple-scented fragrance of the night, and knew I was alone, wild and free. Jonathan’s gift to me.
The door trembled under the gentlest of knocks.
I turned, and rose. Scooped up my map, walked slowly to the door. And without hesitation, I answered it.
The door opened to a walled garden. And Jonathan.
Catch the Lightning
Madeline Baker
Prologue
The great white stallion sniffed the freshening breeze. The Apache called him a spirit horse; the Cheyenne called him a ghost horse because of his colour. But Relámpago was both, and neither. For hundreds of years, he had wandered the path between the past and the present, saving countless lives, bringing lost souls together.
Ears pricked forwards, he heard a faint call for help carried on the wings of the wind. With a toss of his head, Relámpago descended from his home high in the Chiricahua Mountains.
One
