Dark Horizons (The Red Sector Chronicles)

Book Two in
The Red Sector Chronicles

By

Krystle Jones

There are some things that
will stay with me
forever: t
he boom of a gunsho
t;
the sensation of broken glass falling
on my face;
my twin brother
s
creaming my name as he plummeted
to the pavement below.

It’s remarkable how quickly our lives can
be ripped apart
. In the single violent span of thirty seconds, everything I believed in –
beliefs I had stood for my entire life – irrevocably changed forever.

There was no going back. There was no denying the cruel truth.

My broth
er
,
Orion
,
betrayed us the day he tried to wip
e out all vampires with a super-
virus.
And I betrayed him, in a way, when I put a bullet through his heart
to stop him
.

Shock and guilt should be what I’m feeling now.
Yet
somehow, I can only think of those tiny specks of blood
on
Aden’s
sleeve,
of
the horrible moment when I realized he was doomed.

Aden – my maker
– had caught the virus and
was going to die.

And I was completely powerless to stop it.

***

The office was a wreck. Pieces of broken furniture lay strewn across the blood-smeared marble flo
or. A few feet away sat a chair
, looking perfectly innocent, but I knew better since I was chained there only moments before
. T
he body of a small blonde girl lay
at its base
, her long-lashed eyes closed as if only sleeping
. Her death was still fresh on my mind; the blood spewing from her mouth as her insides turned to soup, the pain in her eyes as she undid my binds and set me free. Without her, Aden
and I
would be dead.

With a stone-cold feeling of dread, I eyed the bloody spots on
Aden’s
arm, where he had turned to cough a few seconds ago.

I looked back at Angel
, the blonde girl I ha
d come to think of as a friend
. M
y imagination kept replacing her image with Aden’s
, and I blinked several times to clear my vision
.
My stomach turned as fresh tears stung my eyes. Prying my gaze off her, I said, “We have to get you out of here.”

Aden combed his blond bangs out of his eyes. “Not before the rest of my team gets here.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when a gunshot rang in the hall, and the doors burst open as black-suited soldiers flooded the room. Every single one of them had on a mask.

“Good work, L
ieutenant,” Aden said to a tall, dark man striding toward us.

The man saluted Aden. “That’s an honor coming from you, Captain Knight. I am glad you are alive and well.”

“Not exactly,” I said, cutting in. I glanced around, lowering my voice as Aden’s agents combed the room. “I think he may have been exposed to the virus.”

The man’s eyes widened. “Here,” he said, reaching into his bag and pulling forth
a
mask. “Put this on.”

He handed it off to Aden, who snapped it in place with a roll of his eyes.

“Hey,” I said, quirking a bro
w and giving him a pointed look. “D
on’t sass me.”

I knew he was smiling because it reached his eyes. “I wouldn’t dre
am of it. I’m too afraid to
sass you.”

“Never stopped you before,” I muttered. I stared at the
second
mask dangling
from the soldier’s outstretched hand. “What’s this for?”

“If he’s been exposed, then
you could have been
as well
.”

I pushed his hand away. “Don’t worry. I’m immune.”
Thanks to my broth
er and
me
sharing
the same blood
, I silently added.
Guess being descended from the first vampire king has its perks.

The man glanced at Aden doubtfully. No one except Aden a
nd a few others knew I was the e
mperor’s twin sister.
“Sir, I don’t think she –”

“It’s the truth,” Aden said,
his
voice cool and strong. “That’s all you need to know.”

“But how?”

Aden’s eyes hardened.

“Er – sorry, sir.”
He bent his head toward his walk
ie
-talkie
, calling for someone
. I heard
him mention the word “hospital
.
”

I slipped in
another worried glance at Aden
and his eyes sparkled. “You know,” he said in a low voice, his shoulder bumpi
ng mine as he came up behind me. “Y
ou could always
be
my nurse, if you’re that worried.”

“Stop,” I snapped. “It’s not funny.”

He snickered, which only made me blush. I was about to reprimand him again when someone said,
“Captain.”

We all turned as a blonde woman walked up to us. “Sir, the car is ready.”

I wanted to ask Aden how in the world they had working cars down here,
several hundred feet below
ground,
but at that moment we were
steered
out of the room. The lieutenant whispered some
thing to the woman as we walked
,
and she paled. I
practically had to jog
to keep up with her as she
quickened
her pace.

T
hey proceeded to usher
us downstairs, where a ramshackle thing on wheels I took to be some sort of car sat waiting for us
by the curb
. After stuffing us into the backseat,
the woman leaned over the side of the door, gazing at Aden grimly.

“God speed, Captain,” she said, then slammed the door.

I snorted.
What is this, the Titanic?

Aden leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his forehead against the torn leather seat.

“What is it?” I asked, placing a hand on his back.

“
I’m just a bit dizzy,” he said dismissively.

A little surge of fear
zapped through me
. “Here,” I said, grabbing hold of his shoulders and gently pulling back. “Lay down on my lap.”

He tried to hide the
teasing
sparkle
in his eyes as he leaned back, using my lap like a pillow.

I
shot
him a warning look. “Don’t get any ideas.”

Hushed, ur
gent voices came from up front;
the woman was speaking with
the
driver. When they finished talking a few seconds later
,
she slapped the side
of the car
as if
it
were
a horse
and
the driver sped off,
squealing tires and leaving a cloud of dirt
in our wake.

My shoulder slammed into the d
oor as we took a turn too fast.
I winced but kept my hands firmly planted around Aden’s shoulders, hoping he couldn’t feel how badly they were shaking.

Aden
groaned as the engine growled. “What is that God-awful sound?” he
asked
, rubbing his temples.

“It’s the car.” The thing sounded
about two potholes away from completely shaking itself apart. “How are you feeling?”

“Fantastic.”
The mask made
his
words a little muffled, which only made me listen that much harder
for
any sign that his condition
had worsened.
“Aside from this migraine, I feel fine.”

“You have a migra
ine?” My brows knitted together as
I leaned forward
. The car swung around another curb, nearly flinging
me on top of him. He reached up to
steady me,
causing my breath to catch in my throat
.

“Easy now
,” he murm
ured.
“There’s room for two if you’d like to lie down.”
Mischief sparkled in his
blue
eyes. “Then ag
ain, now that you mention it, I a
m a little chilly. Care to be my blanket?”

Feeling my face heat
, I straightened and pushed back a strand of cur
ly
black
hair behind my ear. “If you can
think of
pick-up lines, then your head can’t be hurting that bad
ly
.
” I
thought
his lame attempts at hitting on me were mostly for my benefit than his, some chivalrous attempt to make me feel better, which it did to some degree. It felt normal, and not like we were rushing to the hospital because he might die at any minute.

“
You should stop talking and try
to get some sleep
,” I said.
“
We should be at the base soon.
”
I hope
.
I had no idea where we were
, since
my brother had me kidnapped, blindfolded
,
and taken to his “palace” of iron and glass at
the heart of the vampire city. Judging
from our
ludicrous
pace, it couldn’t take that long
to get back
.

“You sure you won’t accept my invitation?”
Aden
murmured, trailing his fingers along the back of my hand and sending chills up my arms.

The flush went all the way into my toes.
“I’m sure.”

He chuckled.

I bit down on my l
ip, knowing he’d seen me blush.
Though I tried to suppress it, a
smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.

I turned my head, trying to glance out the window. They were tinted to the point of being opaque, making it near
ly
impossible to see anything, even with my enhanced vampire vision.
Since
a privacy wall separated the front of the car, I couldn’t see out the front
windshield
either.
I knew we
still
had to be in the vampire city, dubbed
“
The City of the Dead
”
because vampires
might as well be
dead to the rest of the world. I wasn’t sure exactly where
it was located
, since I’d never been outside
the military base to find out.
I was curious a
s to what it really looked like.
The way Aden described it, it was a cluster-thing of different civilizations and eras, all piled on top of one another. I bet it probably wasn’t
as artsy as my imagination made
it up to be.

“Sloane?”

“Hmmm?”

Aden was studying me with concern. “How are you doing?”

“I’m great. I’m not the one with the…” I
bit down on my lip, unable to
finish
the statement
. It seemed crass, saying
,
“I’m not the one with the
vampiric equivalent of the
Black Plague.”
Saying it out loud like that stung, as it was yet another reminder of my brother’s betrayal, how he had planned on using
the virus he’d fashioned from our blood to wipe out all the vampires
for ruining his life.