Dark Horizons (The Red Sector Chronicles)

by Krystle Jones

  The question was how it had been possible.

  When Rook’s breathing strengthened, I couldn’t pull my gaze away from Dezyre. At last she sighed. “I’m sure you have questions,” she said tiredly. “Both of you,” she added, flicking her eyes toward Leo. “I’ll tell you everything, but not here. I can’t here.” Her voice sounded tinier with that second part, and her gaze inadvertently wandered to the now sleeping Rook. He must have blacked out from the pain.

  Leo and I quickly glanced at each other. “Okay,” I said, not meaning for my voice to come out as a whisper, but it was all the volume I could produce with a dry throat.

  Rising to her feet, Dezyre pulled off the glove, wiped her wrist – no longer bleeding – on her dress, and motioned for us to follow.

  “Stay with him?” Leo asked Arika, pausing.

  A look flashed through her eyes that said she would rather be set on fire than play nurse to a vampire, but she reluctantly nodded and took up a spot on the floor – as far away from Rook as she could possibly get. Her fingers began furiously worrying the chain around her neck.

  Rolling my eyes but too tired to start something, I trailed Dezyre and Leo into the main laundry room. She stood with her back to us, arms crossed.

  For a moment, I didn’t think she realized we were waiting until she spoke. “I haven’t always been such a snot.” She laughed, but it wasn’t the token charming Dezyre laugh. It was bitter and sharp, like broken glass. “My therapist said it was a defense mechanism. I developed an abrasive personality because I was trying to keep people at bay, to not let anyone get too close. If no one got in, then I couldn’t get hurt.”

  I blinked. I definitely wasn’t expecting her to say that.

  We waited for her to continue. She sighed, her shoulders sagging as if in defeat. “I was born into privilege. Or given to it, is more like it,” she said bitterly. She turned around, her defiant eyes shining. “My family was wealthy, from the kind of money that involved ruining lives and sacrificing family for the company. I was always trying to be perfect so I could finally be noticed. But my mother was pretty much dead inside from having endured years of neglect from her husband. They were going to have a child, but she lost it during labor. Their relationship was never quite the same, since they found out her goods were damaged after that, and she would never be able to have children. I was going to be their new start to life.”

  “You were adopted,” I said quietly.

  “Yes.” She swallowed hard, pacing. “It wasn’t until after I was older – and a vampire – that I realized where I really came from.” She stopped, staring off at nothing as her voice lowered. “I’ll never forget that night for as long as I live. I became a vampire when I stupidly walked down a dark alley one night, right after people had started disappearing, and was changed into a vamp. You always think it’ll never happen to you until it does.”

  “Do you know who your maker is?” I asked.

  Her mouth turned up at one corner in a wry smirk. “No. You’d be surprised how many ‘orphaned’ vampires are running around in the City of the Dead.

  “After the assault, it wasn’t long before I realized I was no longer human. Afraid to go home, I ran away and began living in old, abandoned houses. The city had just auctioned off my old haunt, so I was on my way to the Miller Mansion when I heard screaming.”

  I sucked in a tight breath. The Miller Mansion was a bit of an urban legend. Rumor had it that Mrs. Miller went crazy and killed her family and then herself in that house. One Halloween, little over three years ago, Orion, Rook, and I decided to be festive and get in a late night scare. We didn’t know when we entered the old, spooky house that the Rogue that actually killed the Miller family was still there. Waiting.

  And very hungry.

  “I crouched in the tall grass nearby, watching the horror unfold and feeling powerless to stop it,” Dezyre said. “Vampires are strong, but weaponless, there was no way I could go up against a Rogue.” She shot me an apologetic look, and I blinked, taken aback.

  “After you drove off to get help,” she said, gesturing to me with a nod, “I saw the Rogue drag the dark-haired boy back into the house.”

  I cringed, knowing she meant Orion.

  “It left the other boy abandoned in the field, crawling around like a toddler.” Her eyes misted over. “I don’t why, but something about his blood called to me. Before I knew what I was doing, I was by his side, drinking what little blood he had left. And that’s when I realized the truth, like a slap in the face.”

  She looked at me, pausing.

  “The boy – Rook – was my half brother.”

  Leo and I both stood there, shocked.

  Finally, I regained enough of my senses to speak. “So your parents gave you up for adoption and not him?”

  Hurt flashed briefly over her face before she composed it once more. That gesture was oddly familiar to me; I’d had to use it several times when greeting foreign politicians or while onstage, smiling for the cameras and pretending everything was all right when it was anything but.

  “I found out later that I was older than him, by about a year and a half. My real mother had an affair with one of her coworkers. Not wanting to break up her ‘perfect marriage,’ she got rid of the evidence – me.

  “She played off the pregnancy well. I read in her diary that her husband had never been so happy. At one point, she considered just keeping me in the hope he would never notice how I didn’t look quite like him. But the possibility of him suspecting her betrayal was too great, so she opted to dump me altogether.

  “After the birth, she faked a kidnapping. It was all over the papers – ‘Local CEO of Goodsend Enterprises Distraught Over Losing First Child.’ What had really happened was she had sold me to the highest bidder, a wealthy politician who had just found out his wife couldn’t have children anymore, and wanted a baby because it would increase his favor with voters.”

  Neither Leo nor I said anything for a while. “Wow,” I finally said.

  She snorted. “Yeah. Wow.”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, Dezyre. I didn’t mean it like that, to sound so careless.”

  She studied me for a moment, and I half expected her to comeback with some smartass remark. Instead, she gave me a ghost of a smile. “It’s okay. I know you didn’t.”

  Still staring at her, the corner of my mouth twitched, almost forming a smile. Clearing my throat, I said, “So neither Rook nor you ever knew you had a sibling?”

  Dezyre shook her head. “No. I only found out because I had tasted his blood and then had our DNA tested once the underground laboratory was setup and I met Paris. After finding out our cells partially shared the same structure, I did some digging and found all the dirt on my real family.”

  “So Rook doesn’t now.”

  I already knew the answer from the secretive sparkle to her eyes. “No,” she said quietly. “He doesn’t know.”

  I was about to ask why when I pressed my lips together. She’s scared of what he’ll think, that he’ll abandon her too, just like her real mom.

  “Why haven’t you told him?” Leo asked, sounding a little defensive. “Rook’s had it hard.”

  It was true. Shortly after Rook was born and the economy tanked, his father’s business sank like a rock. He lost nearly everything he had, since most of it was tied up in the stock market, and they had to scramble to find enough money to put food on the table.

  Seeing Dezyre’s face wash cold with fear at Leo’s question, I said quickly, “I remember you said something about blood ties or blood connections back at the cottage, between brother and sister. Is this how you found out, when you turned Rook?”

  She looked at me oddly, almost with gratitude, and then nodded. “I could sense him after that. If he was hurt, I knew. I could even share dreams with him, though I’ve heard that can also happen between a maker and his child.”

  I flushed, thinking of my dreamland rendezvous with Aden.

  “If we were supposed
to somehow ‘sense’ each other, then how come Orion didn’t find me sooner once I was a vampire?” I asked.

  Dezyre shrugged. “Probably because he hadn’t tasted your blood. I think both parties have to share blood. I don’t know exactly how it works. It’s weird, and none of my tests have been able to provide a concrete, scientific explanation for it.”

  “Speaking of scientific explanations, were you able to resurrect Rook back there because you’re his sister? Or is it because you’re his maker?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “It’s not just that – my blood can heal anyone, so long as they are only on the brink of death. I can’t bring anyone back from the dead.”

  “But Rook –” Leo started.

  “Was not dead,” Dezyre finished, her voice hard. The pallor of fear remained in her eyes, betraying how scared she had been – and still was – for her brother’s life. “His heart was barely beating, but he still had a pulse. Had I waited any longer, I might not have been able to bring him back.”

  A stray thought crossed my mind, and my eyes eagerly flashed upward. “If your blood can heal, then do you think it could reverse the Red Death?”

  Dezyre shook her head. “Paris was already way ahead of you on that one. When she approached me one day and randomly asked for a sample of my blood, she wouldn’t tell me what she needed it for. Only later did I find out about her experiment.”

  My heart sank. “I’m guessing it didn’t work?”

  “No,” Dezyre said with a sigh. “My blood cells reacted the same way any other vampire’s would.”

  So much for using that idea to save Aden. I wanted to stomp my foot but refrained. I thought back to when I had fried myself trying to save Mrs. Knight, and Paris said Dezyre healed me. “You fed me your blood, didn’t you?” I asked. “Back at the base, when I had my playdate with an electric bracelet.” Frost had ordered I be tagged with an electric bracelet, set to activate only when I stepped outside of Aden’s apartment when I wasn’t supposed to. When a group of religious radicals came to make an example out of me for being a vampire hunter, they took Mrs. Knight instead, almost killing her. They would have had I not stepped out of the home and stopped them, unfortunately frying myself in the process.

  Dezyre’s lips turned up into a smile. “You were close to death,” she said. “But yes, I fed you my blood and you came to a few minutes later.”

  “Have you always been able to do this?” Leo asked. “Heal people?”

  “I’ve always been drawn to medicine,” Dezyre said, tucking a frizzing curl behind her ear. “But I only learned what I could do when I told Paris how I had changed Rook and she studied my blood, suspecting something was off.”

  “And what did she find?” Leo pressed.

  “She couldn’t tell,” Dezyre said. “My cells bond differently. That’s all I could gather from the Greek spewing out of her mouth. I was a fledgling medical student then, so I didn’t know what all the terminology meant. And you can forget about asking Paris De Lange to repeat herself. ‘You should have been listening the first time. Asking for repeats is a sign of incompetence.’”

  I snorted. That sounded like our cuddly French doctor.

  I stared at Dezyre. Now it all made sense, how she had risen to the top of her class, being hailed as somewhat of a medical rock star.

  “Guys!”

  We turned around; Arika was standing a few feet away. “He’s waking up,” she said.

  I heard Dezyre’s breath catch and our eyes met. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t say anything. Neither of us will, right?” I said pointedly, looking at Leo.

  He gave me a curt nod, and we all walked back into the other room.

  Rook was sitting up with a groan when we walked in. Dezyre immediately went to him, one hand at his back while the other probed his face, checking him out. “You should lie back down. You had a really close call.”

  His eyes were squeezed shut, like he might be having a killer headache. “What happened?” he asked between gritted teeth.

  “You were shot by Scarlet Steel,” I said, kneeling next to him and resting a hand on his arm. “Dezyre dug the bullet out before it did too much damage though.”

  Blinking several times, his eyes focused on his exposed chest. An ugly, gooey, circular scar was planted right over his sternum. He patted it, staring in wonder. “I was shot in the heart and survived?”

  I glanced at Dezyre; her face paled and she minutely shook her head. I smiled brightly at Rook and stood, shrugging. “Guess you must have one hell of an immune system. I wish I could sleep off my injuries as well as you do.”

  His forehead creased with confusion, but then he stood.

  “Careful,” Dezyre said, taking his arm and helping him rise. “You’re still probably weak from blood loss.”

  Rook looked at her and then his gaze slid down to her hand. He arched a brow but didn’t say anything. He looked at the jacket, sniffing it. “What is that smell? It’s like blood and beer all in one.”

  “Eau de asshole,” I said, crossing my arms and shuffling my feet. “I snatched it off Orion before he got away. Sorry, it was the only thing I had, and you looked like you could use it.”

  “You saw Orion?” Rook asked, his voice turning sharp.

  My throat constricted. “Yes,” I said, my voice small.

  “And you let him escape?” Rook said, brows rising.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Leo interjected from beside me. “The Black Cross Guild started shooting up people, and saving your life took a priority over running after Orion.”

  The faintest of blushes stained Rook’s cheeks, and he had the decency to look embarrassed. “Sorry, Sloane. I didn’t mean to be a dick.” He sighed, wincing as he stretched his arms over his head. “I just feel like crap, and it’s kind of making me edgy.”

  “It’s okay,” I said lightly, giving him a half-hearted smile. “I can totally relate.”

  Something slipped out of the jacket pocket, fluttering to the floor and landing faceup in the small pool of light from the deteriorating bulb.

  I knelt to retrieve it, frowning. “What’s this?” It was a faded piece of paper with a symbol sketched on it in pencil. It looked hauntingly familiar and I gasped.

  Now I knew what the symbol was on the map, the one that was too faded to see clearly.

  It was a forget-me-not. The Mark of the Creator.

  Leo took it, eyeing it like he had seen a ghost. “It’s the symbol for Elkhorn Labs, where my father worked.”

  “But that was destroyed, wasn’t it?” I asked, trying to phrase it as gently as I could so as not to dredge up any painful memories for him.

  Too late. His eyes saddened and he swallowed hard before speaking. “Yes, but they had another facility for backup, deep below ground in case the main lab was destroyed.”

  “Do you think Orion could be trying to find this place?” Rook asked. His eyes flicked to mine, serious, and I knew he had drawn the connection between the symbol and the Mark.

  “It’s possible,” Leo said, eyeing the paper a moment longer before looking at Rook and then me. “The question is why.”

  “Guess we’re going to have to go to the lab to find out,” I said. “Do you know where it is?” I asked Leo.

  “Maybe,” Leo said, chewing on his lip. It was a token gesture that drove many girls crazy. I’d put up with years of listening to my friends’ fangirling while not really paying it any attention. “I’d have to do some digging, find a map and maybe get on the Internet.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Rook said. “We’ll go to this secret lab and find out what Orion’s after.”

  Dezyre’s mouth stretched into a yawn. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said, steeling her voice. “You almost died. You need to rest.”

  “Sleep doesn’t sound like a bad idea for any of us,” Leo muttered, yawning. Seeing him yawn, I started to. I’d always heard yawns were contagious, like watching someone yawn could produce one.

  “All
right,” I said, clapping my hands together and making everyone jump. “We’ll camp out here and hit up the lab tomorrow night. We can’t do much of anything right now anyway.”

  The crack of light around the boarded up windows was beginning to lighten, meaning it must nearly be dawn.

  Settling in, Dezyre said she would watch over Rook, who continued to deny that he needed help but promptly shut up – or rather, gave up – when he realized she wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I made her look at Leo’s neck first though. To my immense relief, it didn’t look nearly as bad after all the blood had been cleaned away. For a Rogue, the bite had been a little rough but clean, puncturing just deep enough for it to drink but not sever an artery like most Rogues did.

  After Dezyre finished patching Leo up, he and Arika sat in a corner off to themselves, chatting quietly.

  I was too tired to feel jealous, if that’s what it even was. It didn’t feel the same as when I learned Aden and Dezyre had previously dated, maybe even slept together.

  Not having the mental capacity to even begin to sort out my tangle of emotions, I crawled on top of a pile of clothes, not caring if they were dirty.

  Before I could form another thought, I passed out into the sweet embrace of sleep.

  CHAPTER 19

  “Sloane. Sloane, wake up.”

  The voice sounded distant, like it was yelling underwater. Groggily, my eyes cracked open. Murky light shone down on the poppy meadow, drowning everything in shades of gray. There was no breeze; everything was perfectly still, as if holding its breath, waiting for something.

  Squinting against the obnoxious glare of the overcast sky, I sat up, nearly bumping heads with Aden.

  He let out a long sigh, his shoulders relaxing. “Thank God. I thought you weren’t going to wake up.”

  “Technically, I’m still asleep,” I said, rubbing my temples. I’d had migraines before, here and there, but this one put all the others to shame. It felt like a gremlin had crawled inside my head and was taking a sledgehammer to my skull.