Dark Horizons (The Red Sector Chronicles)

by Krystle Jones

  Around me, gunshots rang out as Dezyre fired again and again at whichever Rogues came her way. She was a surprisingly good shot, but then again I hoped she would be since they were practically at point-blank range. Rook had planted a fist in the face of the Rogue that had that attacked him. He spun around with a roundhouse kick to another Rogue’s throat, and I smiled as I heard its bones snap.

  For a moment, there was a lull in conflict as some of the Rogues hesitated, as if unsure what to do, while others ran away, howling.

  “Let’s go now, while we have a chance,” Rook said, sounding breathless.

  He made to grab my arm, but I jerked free from him. “No!” I snarled. “Let me kill them.”

  He looked at me with a mixture of confusion and horror. “Sloane, there’s no way we can take them all on, especially if they’re calling reinforcements.”

  “They won’t.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He pointed behind me. “Then what do you call that?”

  I turned. A cluster of Rogues, at least ten more than there was before, was barreling toward us.

  I licked my lips. “I call that fun.”

  Two hands gripped me by the shoulders, whirling me around and shaking me hard. “Sloane, snap out of it,” Rook ordered. “There are too many of them. We’ll be killed.”

  “Not if I kill them first!”

  “Listen to yourself!” he shouted. “This isn’t you! Do you want to risk Aden’s life so you can sate your blood thirst?”

  That hit me like a slap to the face. I blinked several times, feeling dazed. “No,” I said slowly. “No, I don’t want to risk Aden’s life.”

  “I thought not.”

  “Hello?” Dezyre yelled. “Either leave her here, or let’s go! It’ll be dawn soon.”

  My eyes flashed to the sky. She was right. The stars looked paler against the brightening light pink backdrop.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, still wondering what had come over me a few minutes ago. “Let’s go.”

  We took off at a dead sprint. The wall separating the two sectors loomed several hundred feet in front of us, but I knew even running for all we were worth, we’d never make it across the wall before dawn.

  Snarls and howls followed us, but I didn’t dare look back for fear I’d slip into “psycho mode.” “Aren’t we less appetizing to them since we’re vampires too?” I shouted.

  Dezyre scoffed. “They’re Rogues. It doesn’t matter what we are, so long as we have warm blood.”

  I shuddered on the inside at the word “blood”.

  Golden stripes cracked the sky, bathing the tops of the buildings around us in yellow light. My skin began to itch. I knew if I stayed in the light long enough for it to actually hit me, my skin would begin to flat-out burn.

  “We need to find cover!” Rook shouted.

  Frantically, I scanned for an opening but found none. We were in the middle of a long span of road with no buildings. Light poles with cracked lights looked down on us as we ran for our lives, our feet kicking up dust in our wake.

  Panic was starting to set in when Rook shouted, “There!” He jerked an arm out.

  My gaze followed his pointing finger to a hole in the side of a hill. I squinted, making out an open sewer drain.

  The Rogues were so close now that I could feel their hot breaths at my back.

  The area behind us suddenly became brighter as the sun peeked above the White Sector’s security wall, bathing the wasteland behind us in golden light. Digging my feet in, I propelled myself toward the hole, following right behind Dezyre and Rook as sunlight crawled across the land toward us, picking up speed as the sun rose higher and higher. In a few precious seconds, we would be fried.

  The Rogues began to scream as the sun’s light cooked them. Sweat ran into my eyes, stinging them, but I didn’t dare take my sight off that hole. Fire burned through my thighs and calves, and I cried out as warmth kissed my back and shoulders as the sun’s rays hit me. Smoke curled up from my skin as it began to break off into golden flakes.

  Dezyre dove first, while Rook stood by the opening. “Come on!” he yelled.

  Gritting my teeth, I gave myself one final push and lunged for the hole, diving into beautiful darkness. Rook slipped in behind me, and we all turned as the remaining two Rogues were blanketed in the sun’s light. They reared up right outside the hole, their red eyes wide as their skin turned to golden dust and they disintegrated into piles of ash.

  CHAPTER 7

  My eyes were still adjusting to the sudden dark of the tunnel, which was probably why I didn’t see Dezyre’s hand until it was smacking me across the face.

  The force was so great that my head jerked to the side, digging my cheek into my teeth. A sharp pain lit up the side of my face, and I swore, tasting blood.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Dezyre screamed. “You almost got us killed back there!” Her dollface was twisted with rage, her eyes shining with tears. The arm she used to point back to the much too bright opening was shaking badly.

  For a moment, I felt the brief sting of regret and then pity as I looked at her. But as my mouth filled with the hot, syrupy taste of my blood, a fire came to life deep inside my soul. My anger simmered there, a barely contained wildfire. I turned on Dezyre, fangs bared and hands clenching, ready to choke the life from her. “But we didn’t, did we?”

  “We could have,” Dezyre said, anger making her words sharp. “But you were too stupid with bloodlust to think about other people. You’re always too freaking selfish to see how your actions could hurt anyone else.”

  “Oh?” I purred dangerously, stalking toward her. “You tried to kill me – twice, might I add – but I’m the one who’s selfish?” I cocked my head to the side, studying her with narrowed eyes. “Now who’s the one not looking out for others’ best interests?”

  She seemed to just realize how close I was, and her mouth snapped shut with an audible plop. Swallowing, she said, “Get away from me.”

  I arched a brow, smiling around my fangs. “Or you’ll what?”

  I didn’t even flinch as she brought the gun to my forehead. Her face had turned to stone, though I could smell the fear saturating her pores.

  “Enough,” Rook said, stepping in front of me and lowering Dezyre’s gun. She scowled at him but didn’t protest. He looked at me evenly. “This isn’t you. It’s your bloodlust talking.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” With a vicious snarl, I lunged for Dezyre.

  Her eyes went wide before she screeched and scrambled to get away from me. There was nowhere for her to go, unless she wanted to be roasted. Wheeling about and searching for an escape route, she fell hard, slamming her head against the concrete wall of the sewer drain. Her eyes fluttered shut for a split second, and that was all the time I needed. I was on her in a flash.

  The feel of my hands around her throat was more pleasurable than I thought it would be. I squeezed harder, smiling wider as she clawed at my hands while I lifted her in the air.

  “Sloane, stop!” Rook yelled. “You’ll kill her!”

  “That’s the idea,” I hissed through my teeth.

  I couldn’t think rationally. I couldn’t really think much at all. The only thing my body wanted to do – that my blood, my heritage, screamed at me to do – was kill.

  Kill, kill, kill.

  I was vaguely aware of Rook’s arms wrapping around my waist. Before I could think to react, my hands were torn from Dezyre’s neck as he lifted and threw me into the opposite wall. He hadn’t been gentle. My head hit first, sending a thunderclap of pain across my skull and making shadows and stars blot out my vision.

  Blinking several times, I pushed off the wall, straightening. “What happened?” I rasped.

  Dezyre was rubbing her throat and coughing, sucking in big lungfuls of air. Her brows knitted together, and Rook studied me warily. Both maintained a hearty distance. “You tried to kill her,” Rook finally said. “Do you not remember?”

  “I…” My thoughts were racing,
as was my heart. Too much adrenaline and bloodlust were pumping through my blood, making me dizzy. I tried rewinding my memories of the last few minutes, searching for any clues as to why I had flipped out on Dezyre. She was always a bitch. I knew that coming in. So why had I wanted so badly to kill her this time? Even when she had thrown me to the wolves by revealing I was a vampire hunter in a room full of vampires, I had loathed her but I hadn’t wanted to flat-out take her head off. Though, let’s be honest, I couldn’t say the thought had never crossed my mind.

  “Yeah, I remember,” I said, my voice sounding small. I was so confused, even a little afraid of myself.

  A warm hand rested on my shoulder. “Sloane?”

  I looked up to find Rook’s dark brown eyes staring at me. “Is something wrong?” he asked gently.

  I swallowed hard. “I don’t – that is –” I groaned. I didn’t know how to answer him. Was something wrong? Or was this just part of being a vampire?

  “There’s an animal inside all of us, waiting to be unleashed.”

  My eyes subconsciously wandered down to the birthmark above my collarbone. I stared at it for several long seconds as Orion’s voice played over and over again in my mind. Chills broke out over my skin. Was that my fate? To turn into a monster like him?

  I really didn’t know much about our heritage, of how my family had ended up with the blood of the first vampire king. Orion told me our father’s side had carried the strain, but I hadn’t had a chance to do much digging into my family tree with trying to avoid being killed all the time. Maybe I should do some research, look deeper into vampire history.

  For now, it would have to wait for some time when I wasn’t freaked that I was going to turn into a psychotic monster.

  My shoulders slacked with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know. I just… lost it, I guess.”

  They stared at me, their bodies still tense, as if waiting for me to snap.

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not going to pull a Mr. Hyde again, I swear.”

  Rook seemed to relax a little, but Deyzre lingered behind him, shooting me a glare that said she clearly felt the opposite. “Bloodlust is natural for a vampire,” Rook said, giving me a small, sad smile. “It can feel overwhelming, especially in the heat of battle, but it gets easier to control with time.”

  “With time,” I muttered. “Yeah, I’ve got loads now that I’m a vampire.” Angel once told me that while vampires didn’t live forever, we lived a pretty damn long time. It was estimated we aged roughly one year for every three hundred.

  Rook studied me, as if weighing his next words. “I know it’s not the life you chose, that any of us chose for that matter.” He gestured to all of us. “But it’s not the end of the world, though it may seem that way sometimes.”

  I looked back out at the mouth of the tunnel, at the growing sunlight. The rusting, dilapidated buildings looked even lonelier during the day. Golden light glinted off the busted windshield of a nearby car, the driver’s door wide open and partially rusted off. I imagined the driver fleeing in the night as monsters stormed the street behind him.

  I closed my eyes, blinking away the image. “Sure looks like the end of the world to me,” I muttered.

  Rook’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t respond. Instead, a determined look came over him as he peered back the other way, at the seemingly never-ending expanse of dark tunnels that led who-knew-where. “Pittsburgh can’t be far, and these probably run beneath the city’s streets. Besides, we’ll be safer here.”

  “Not like we have a choice,” Dezyre muttered darkly, scowling at the sunlight.

  I didn’t share her sentiment. While it still felt uncomfortable being near sunlight, a large part of me mourned not ever being able to go back out in it again. There were so many things I loved to do in the sun: walking, running, swimming. Knowing I’d never again be able to enjoy the small, guilty pleasure of tanning was a hard pill to swallow.

  “It could take a while to navigate the tunnels,” Rook said. “We should get going, in case we get lost.”

  “Wait,” Dezyre said as he started to walk away. “We don’t know where these tunnels lead.” Fear danced in her eyes. “What if there are more Rogues down there?”

  Rook gave her a grim smile. “As you said, it’s not like we have a choice – unless you’re proposing we hang out here until nightfall and then try to sneak through the Red Sector. That is, of course, if we don’t get ambushed by another pack of Rogues.”

  Dezyre pursed her lips, smacking them when her mind was made up. “Fine. And I wasn’t saying we walk through the Red Sector,” she sneered, glaring at him and crossing her arms. “I was merely suggesting we consider all our options.”

  “Well, let’s see,” I said, ticking them off on my fingers. “We could A) fry in the sun; or B) walk through the tunnels and not fry. You know, the more I think about it, I’m kind of digging option A.”

  Dezyre cocked her head to the side. “Maybe you’d be doing us all a favor if you went and fried yourself. That’d be one less Rogue I’d have to worry about. Whoops!” She daintily covered her mouth. “That’s right, you’re not a Rogue. Yet.”

  That last word echoed around in my mind, fueling my growing doubt. What if she was right? What if I did eventually become a Rogue? They were, after all, vampires who had lost their minds and reasoning to insatiable bloodlust. And judging from how I had behaved earlier…

  I shook my head and stalked past Rook. “Whatever. Bitch,” I added under my breath.

  “I heard that,” Dezyre sang, coming up behind Rook as he followed me into the tunnel.

  It wasn’t wide enough for us to walk side by side, so we filed in one after the other. Dezyre’s kitten heels clattered along; they were surprisingly modest for what I would have pictured her wearing. When I couldn’t take any more, I whirled on her. “Will you please take those things off before you alert every Rogue within six miles of where we are?”

  Her eyes blazed, and I thought she might argue. But with a scowl, she reluctantly pulled off her shoes and continued on barefoot.

  The tunnels twisted and turned, coming several times to intersections that branched off in five or six different directions. We didn’t really say anything to each other, too wired on listening for snarls or any other sign that a Rogue was near. The tunnels were eerily quiet and very dark. There’s this classic misconception that vampires prefer doom and gloom, and tight, dark spaces with the whole coffin fetish, but I could safely say I still preferred sunlight to an endless tunnel any day of the week. Though we didn’t speak, I fully expected Dezyre to start griping about ruining her pedicure from having to walk barefoot, but to my surprise she didn’t say anything. Her eyes were glancing around nervously, her mind seeming to be on things much worse than ruining her cute toenail polish.

  There wasn’t any water or much of anything else down here besides the smell of decaying pipes and dirt. For the most part, we guesstimated which way to go. What felt like several long hours had passed before I said, “Are we lost?”

  Rook quickly tried to compose his face but failed to mask the fear in his eyes. “We’ve made great progress,” he said, sounding confident despite the nervous flickering of his gaze. “We just need to keep going.”

  “Keep going?” Dezyre had one hand on the wall, using it to maintain her balance while she massaged one of her feet. “We don’t even know where we are, much less –”

  “Wait,” I said suddenly, holding up a hand to cut her off.

  She growled. When the sound of her annoyance died away, I could make out the muffled sound of a vehicle rolling on the street above. “Do you hear that?”

  “Yes,” Rook murmured, walking farther down the tunnel. “It sounds like we’re close to the city now.”

  And that much closer to finding Orion and saving Aden.

  Rook turned to look at me, a question in his eyes. “I didn’t even hear that. How did you…?”

  I didn’t wait to consult them; my mind was too wrapped around the concep
t of saving Aden as quickly as possible. Following the direction of the sound, I took off at a dead run. I bounded through the tunnels, my sneakers squeaking against the metal, with Dezyre and Rook following close behind. Though my eyes had long adjusted to the dark, I almost sprinted into a long length of chain-link metal fencing blocking the exit. Even worse, it was made out of Scarlet Steel.

  I swore, drawing up short. I took a deep breath, grateful I hadn’t slammed face-first into that. Though I knew I would heal, I definitely didn’t relish the thought of having fence burn marks on my face.

  The others slowed behind me. Dezyre was panting, but Rook looked like he hadn’t even broken a sweat. I guess rules of endurance worked the same way for vampires as they did for humans. The more in shape you were, the less winded you would be after a jog. Dezyre was a medical student and Rook was a soldier, so of course he would probably be in better shape than her.

  “What is it?” Dezyre said, examining the area in front of us.

  “It looks like a fence,” I said flatly.

  “No, I mean what’s it doing here?” she said sharply.

  “It appears to be meant to keep intruders from entering this part of the tunnel,” Rook said, walking forward. He grimaced. “And by ‘intruders,’ I mean apparently of the fanged kind. Ain’t nothing with a drop of vampire blood getting through that.”

  I rolled this over in my mind and my eyes widened. “Do you think it leads to the Pittsburgh White Sector?”

  “Probably.” Rook straightened. “But getting through will be another issue. It’s too bad vampires aren’t super-strong like all the movies and literature paint us out to be.”

  “Plus, there’s the fact it’s made out of Scarlet Steel,” I said, shuddering.