The Scarlet Dagger (The Red Sector Chronicles, #1)

by Krystle Jones

  What had gotten into me? It had been so innocent – a kiss, nothing more – and then I was feeding off of him like he was a Capri Punch.

  My stomach churned, and I tasted vomit as I ducked toward the man hole, hastily uncovering it and jumping inside. I landed hard, scraping my knees along the rough earth, but I quickly stumbled to my feet. The burning sensation in my skin immediately vanished in the dark.

  A cruel realization hit me, and I felt an overwhelming wave of sorrow. I’ll never be able to feel the sun on my skin again.

  Snatching up my gear, I took off down the tunnel. Tears stung my eyes as I ran, retracing the path in my mind. My eyesight was super-clear now, as was my hearing, and I swore I was even moving faster.

  It’s Leo’s blood. It has to be.

  It made me sick to think of what I’d done to Leo, especially after he had confessed his love for me.

  My head swam with thoughts, making me dizzy. How was I supposed to feel about Leo now? I had never really thought of him that way. Not that I had to worry about that now. He would probably kill me on sight if he ever saw me again.

  “If Rook’s been turned, then he’s the enemy now, pure and simple.”

  I brushed a stray tear from my cheek as I climbed the ladder and emerged from the tomb, slamming the lid shut behind me.

  I immediately sensed I wasn’t alone and whirled around, fists ready, to find a lone figure dressed completely in black sitting on one of the tombs.

  “Aden,” I rasped.

  He regarded me with a lazy smile. “Did you accomplish what you needed to?”

  I blinked, confused by his polite tone. I was sure he would be furious once he found out I was gone, but here he appeared amused more than anything. I shrugged, hugging myself. “I’m not sure,” I replied, voice trembling.

  His eyes sharpened as he rose. He walked up to me, and I had to bite my lip to keep from bursting into tears right in front of him. Aden studied me in silence. “I’m sorry,” he whispered softly.

  He stepped forward and wrapped me into a gentle hug. I let him hold me, burying my head against his shoulder and fighting back the sobs rising in my throat. I felt pathetic, a complete emotional wreck, and all the more embarrassed for it because I was so close to breaking down in front of Aden.

  I tried to pull away when my silent tears began soaking Aden’s shoulder, but he held me close. “It’s okay,” he murmured into my hair, tightening his grip on me. “Go ahead and cry.”

  Those words were so gentle, so understanding, that I finally allowed myself to do something I hadn’t done much of these past three years. I cried. It felt good, a relief almost, to be able to just let it all out. He held me for several long minutes until I somewhat calmed down. Mostly I felt numb, unable to feel any more pain. I’d had enough to last a lifetime. He tucked me under his arm and led me outside. We were alone. Wherever he had sent the guards, it wasn’t here, as we walked away from the mausoleum and toward his apartment.

  He didn’t speak a single word to me on the way home, and I was almost grateful to be going back to his place. I felt at home – welcome – there, which only added to my confusion.

  Leo’s angry words burned in my memory. Why was I defending them? Since when had the vampires, who I had spent three whole years loathing, become my friends and family?

  Aden opened the door for me, and I stepped inside the apartment. I raced up the stairs, too eager to get in my room. Aden followed.

  “Do you need anything?” he asked quietly, and I paused at my door, my back to him and one hand on the knob.

  I leaned my forehead against the door. “I don’t know.” My voice was barely a whisper. I turned to look at him, feeling weary and broken inside. “Does anyone else know I was gone?”

  Aden shook his head. “Just me. And Angel, I suspect,” he added with a touch of annoyance. “I wasn’t too worried about it, so I didn’t see the need to inform anyone.”

  I stared at him. “Why not?”

  His eyes shone with unspoken emotion. “Because I knew you’d come back.”

  I blushed, staring at him a few seconds longer before letting myself into my room. I didn’t hear him leave as I closed the door and placed my cheek against it, as if listening for the beating of his heart.

  I closed my eyes hard, wanting so badly to ignore the thrumming of my pulse, and the need for Aden’s arms to be wrapped around me. When he had held me earlier, my life hadn’t seemed like a complete train wreck. I painfully had to admit to myself that he’d been the only thing holding me together when I had come back.

  Growling in frustration, I balled up my fists, wanting to punch something. Why did I have to respond this way to him? He was my sworn enemy. I was supposed to hate him!

  I fell onto my bed and buried my mouth in the fluffy pillows, letting them swallow my scream.

  Behind my closed lids, I saw Leo’s mortified face as he stared back at me. And all I could see reflected in the terror in his eyes was a monster. I sniffed, fighting back tears.

  That world is lost to me forever. This is where I belong now.

  Chapter 27

  I slept all weekend, content to just remain holed-up in my room while I sorted some things out. Aden told his mom I wasn’t feeling well, and after assuring her I didn’t need to see a doctor, I was relatively undisturbed (except when she brought me food). I appreciated Aden and Mrs. Knight’s understanding; God knows if I had remained at the mansion, I’d probably be dead by now, most likely sentenced to death by my own mother. It hurt to think about that, like every time I did, my heart tore that much deeper.

  Sunday night, there was a light knock at my door around dinner time. I sat up from the couch, folding up the novel I’d emerged myself in. “Book worlds” were so much more appealing than the one I lived in.

  “Come in,” I called, expecting Mrs. Knight.

  I gasped a little as Aden walked through the door. Honestly, I hadn’t seen much of him since I’d been back. I didn’t know if he had been taking pains to give me some space, or if he’d just been incredibly busy. Either way, I didn’t mind when he brought me a tray and sat down beside me.

  “How are you feeling?”

  I chuckled darkly. “I was never sick, remember?”

  “I’m not talking about that,” he said quietly.

  I stared at the plate, picking at the fresh veggies with my fork. It smelled delicious, but I suddenly wasn’t very hungry. “All right, I guess.”

  “Just all right?”

  I stabbed at a carrot. “I don’t know, honestly. Confused. Guilty, maybe.” I sighed. “I’m just so sick of feeling… bad. Over Orion and now…”

  He waited, not pushing me as I collected my thoughts. “I bit my best friend,” I whispered, cheeks flaming.

  I thought maybe Aden would be furious, thinking I’d betrayed the vampires and told them about the base’s whereabouts. But he appeared perfectly calm as he settled back into the couch. “I figured that would happen. It’s in our nature, the thirst for blood. It’s something that can be controlled but not always helped.”

  “Then how come I haven’t felt this raw need for blood before? I’ve been a vampire for over a month now.”

  “Our desire for blood becomes much stronger around humans,” Aden explained. “As we don’t have any here – since it’s technically against Nero’s Laws – you simply haven’t thirsted for blood.”

  Huh? One of Nero’s Laws?

  I thought of the lab full of deceased human bodies, of the dead face of the little girl I had tried to help escape. Paris admitted Nero was with her the night I camped out in the lab. He definitely knew about the bodies, which meant he was breaking his own laws.

  My thoughts were so hung up on Nero that I almost missed what Aden said next. “Now that you’ve tasted human blood, you’ll need to feed more regularly.”

  My eyes widened. “I am not biting another human being.”

  He held up his hands. “Relax. I’m not asking you to go on a killing spree.
We have blood bags here to help with ‘the thirst.’ Paris happens to know a vamp who ironically works at a blood bank on the surface.”

  When I didn’t respond, he added softly, “If you don’t drink it, you’ll die.”

  Good, I almost thought, then pushed the notion away. No way was I going to just give up. If I did die, I would go down putting up a fight.

  I crossed my arms. “Fine.”

  Aden leaned forward, and I felt his eyes on me. “It’s not your fault, Sloane, feeding on your friend, that is. Did you drain him?”

  I paused. “No…”

  “Then no harm done.”

  I eyed him. “How do you know it was a him?”

  Aden stared back at me for a few seconds, stalling, before finally admitting, “I saw glimpses of him in your memories, when I turned you.”

  My eyes widened as the full meaning of his words sank in. “That’s not fair! It’s almost worse than reading someone’s diary! Those are my memories! They’re personal. How can you spy on –”

  Aden lifted a hand, cutting me off. “They were only glimpses, nothing more.” When he saw I wasn’t going to say anything else, he continued. “Memories can be imprinted in one’s blood, but they’re never crystal clear. They’re more like Impressionistic paintings; the image is there, but it’s not in full detail.”

  I crossed my arms, still glowering at Aden. “How much did you see?”

  “Only snippets, brief flashes of places and people,” he replied calmly. “You can never see full memories from drinking someone’s blood, only pieces of them.”

  I paused, remembering how I’d seen memories of Leo and me when I had bit him. He was right; I’d only seen “snapshots” of our time together.

  I gave him a curt nod, as if to say “I trust you.”

  He clasped his hands together, and I decided to change the topic. “I didn’t tell anyone about the base, in case you’re wondering.”

  Aden shrugged, looking as if he could care less. “I’ve never been particularly worried about anyone finding it. Humans never want to believe in the impossible, in the real, live horrors that walk this wretched earth.” He suddenly sounded thousands of years old, despite the fact he had only been a vampire for less than two years. “People have known about us for centuries, ever since the Dark Ages, yet history and science have painted us to be nothing more than a myth. Those who have seen us convince themselves it was a dream, that they were hallucinating when they saw our fangs, that it was a trick of the light when our eyes glowed red as we licked a drop of blood from our lips.”

  I thought about what Aden said, staring at the coffee table, but it was hardly enough to divert my thoughts from what was really bothering me. “I didn’t mean to,” I said softly. “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

  “And you didn’t.” Aden put a hand on my arm, and I felt his warmth through my shirt sleeve. “Just as you didn’t mean for Orion to die the way he did, which, by the way, also wasn’t your fault.”

  I stared forward, distant. “I don’t really know what to believe anymore.”

  “Forgive yourself.”

  Aden said it with such fire that I turned to look at him. “You can’t wallow in misery over things of the past. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

  I blinked, wondering about something. “When we went out to dinner,” I said carefully, “you had a photo. You said the man in the picture was your father, right?”

  Aden tensed, pulling away from me, but I placed my hand over his. “Please,” I said. “I want to know.”

  His eyes grew hard, his expression guarded. He glanced down at my hand and sighed. “Yes, he was my father. Still is, I suppose.”

  “So he’s alive?”

  “Yeah,” Aden spat. “He’s probably still living in Pittsburgh, right where we left him, or rather, where he left us.”

  I listened as Aden opened up to me. “My father was a politician, always trying to get ahead. He finally won the job of Mayor, and things were going well for a while… until I was changed.”

  I thought of the man’s face, and another memory came back. That’s where I’ve seen him before, in the newspaper and on TV. He was the Mayor of Pittsburgh before my mom took over as Sovereign.

  “What happened?” I asked softly.

  Aden smirked. “Believe it or not, I was quite the rebel. I used to sneak out of the house and go to wild parties, drinking and smoking and getting high. Really idiotic things, now that I think about it.”

  I was surprised. Cool, collected Aden had never struck me as the wild, “bad boy” type.

  “One night,” Aden said, “I was completely hammered, so much that I was blacking out. I must have passed out on my way to the bathroom, waking up in a pool of my own vomit, because the next thing I knew, this shadow was leaning over me. I thought I was hallucinating – it was a guy, that much I could tell, but he looked odd, like he had fangs. He told me everything was going to be all right, and then I blacked out. Then, I woke up down here with this pounding headache and two bite marks on my neck.

  “I was so gone, I didn’t even remember my own name. Paris was the first person I met here, other than Dezyre, who saved me. Turns out, my body didn’t take to the change so well, something to do with the blood of the vampire who made me.”

  My mind was hooked around one detail. “Dezyre Drake saved you?”

  Aden blushed, looking away. “She’s not all bad. We dated for a little while,” he mumbled. “But though I was grateful she had ultimately saved my life, I couldn’t develop anything more than gratitude toward her. We broke up about a week before you arrived.”

  So that’s why she was so hateful toward me. She thought I was moving in on her man.

  I’d have to mull that one over some other time. “How did your mom become a vampire?”

  Aden’s eyes darkened to indigo. “I went back to tell her what had happened about a month later. Paris thought I was crazy, but I went anyway. My dad flipped out, saying he didn’t want anything to do with me, that I was going to hell and he didn’t need anything tarnishing his reputation, even though he ended up losing his job to your mom a few months later.”

  I winced. His dad sounded so much like my mom.

  “The morning after he had moved out, I found my mom sitting alone in the living room, staring at a picture – the one you saw – in her hand. She had been up all night crying. Just when I thought she may scream at me to get out, her bloodshot eyes met mine. I had never seen her look so haunted.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Without saying a word, she held out her wrist, inviting me to drink.”

  “So you changed her?”

  “Believe me, I didn’t want to.” His face was pained. “But she begged me, and so I did. Then we both came here, abandoning our old lives.”

  I sat back, absorbing all this. “I’m sorry about your dad, for what he did to you and your mom.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t be. I’m not.”

  Aden rose, rubbing his palms against his jeans. “You’d better eat that while it’s still edible,” he said, pointing to the tray.

  “Aden,” I called and he stopped, turning around.

  I stared at him, unsure why my heart started beating so fast. “Thank you. For telling me, that is.”

  He nodded, almost walking away, but then paused. “I almost forgot about this,” he said, pulling a box from his pocket.

  I groaned, remembering the chip inside. “No way am I letting Paris put that thing back in my arm. Do you have any idea what I went through to get it out?”

  He handed it to me. “Chill. I was just going to tell you to throw it away.”

  “Oh.” I sat the box in my lap, then looked up at him, puzzled. “Why the change of heart?”

  Aden’s eyes danced. “I think you know.”

  I blushed, not sure how to respond, but thankfully I didn’t have to. He smiled at me, making me flush deeper, and strolled to the door before letting himself out.

  I sighed and fell back against the couch. No wond
er Aden hadn’t wanted me to go to the surface. It wasn’t job related – it was because he had first-hand experience in being shot in the back by his family.

  Maybe he wasn’t a villain, as I had thought. But if he wasn’t working for Nero, why did he share the same spice scent? What game was he getting at?

  I closed my eyes, suddenly tired. Sleep came, accompanied by the feeling of Leo’s lips upon mine. But this time, they didn’t bring their usual wave of guilt.

  This time, I felt regret.

  Chapter 28

  When Monday came, I returned to the academy. Angel looked visibly relieved to see me.

  “Did you go?” she hissed to me during calculus.

  “Yeah.” I gave her a small smile. “Thanks for covering for me. The camera thing was great.”

  She waved my praise away. “And?”

  I sighed. “I said goodbye.”

  “Oh. Good, then.”

  And that was that. She didn’t bring it up the rest of the day, bless her. I guess I really did look that sullen, trying to push Leo from my mind.

  Following Aden’s suggestion, I’d thrown the chip away. Seeing as I’d only been gone one night – and since the chip apparently really was dead – no one had noticed anything out of the ordinary. I tried really hard to banish my memories of Leo, to forget about the kiss we had shared and what that meant. My biggest regret was never seeing him again. How could I ever face him? The kiss made things twice as bad.

  It doesn’t matter. You’re never going back there. This is where you belong now.

  I spent a lot of time worrying about the virus, wondering when they would unleash it. I wanted to stop it down here, to head it off before it ever had a chance of reaching the surface, but I had no idea how I was going to go about doing that. Despite that dilemma, I felt marginally better after warning Leo. At least someone up there knew what the vampires were planning, and I prayed Leo would heed my premonition before it was too late. That somewhat eased my guilt, knowing I had possibly saved his life. I could forgive myself if he lived.

  Word had spread about my fight with Rook, and the other vampires more or less started to accept me as one of their own. Some of the other soldiers – mostly my classmates, the ones who were there to see the fight – even started treating me with respect. I was thankful for the acceptance, as it meant I didn’t have to worry about trying to constantly tune out everyone’s hatred and anger. Though I kept my mental block up, I still stayed alert for any “warning signs,” like the one I received at the arcade right before the shooter fired. But life remained blissfully dull, and I preferred it that way. It made it easier to settle into a routine.