Dark Horizons (The Red Sector Chronicles) (14 page)

He had a
Scarlet Steel knife in one hand
and was trailing the tip over the black tattoo on the inside of his right wrist, in the same spot mine was.
It couldn’t be comfortable, since Scarlet Steel was still a little acidic to humans, but McGuiness’
s
expression of pure hatred never changed.

I glared at him, silent.

McGuiness grinned and shook his head. “I can’t believe our luck. We’ve been looking for you.
Vampire
.” He suddenly laid the knife across my throat, right beneath my chin. My head lifted painfully in an effort to not touch
the knife, but it was no use
. I couldn’t bend my spine back any more than it already was.

McGuiness leaned in. The smell of
chewing
tobacco on his breath made me want
to gag. He chewed so much of it that
his teeth were perpetually st
ained yellow. One of the curses –
or gifts, depending on how you looked at
it –
of being a vampire meant a heightened sense of smell. “I knew you’d come up to the surface eventually, like a rat always does. I can’t wait for you to see what I have in store
for you.” Without another word
he straightened, blessedly taking the knife along with him, and snapped his f
ingers. “Take them back to HQ.”

Cool air lapped
at the burn marks on my throat.
I was about to breathe a quiet sigh of relief when someone wrapped a Scarlet Steel chain around my neck, right in the wound. I strangled a cry of pain, gritting
my teeth so hard my gums hurt. The person who
had hold of me jerked back o
n the chain, forcing me to stand
.

Whoever was handling me wasn’t taking any pains to be kind about it. They gripped my arm, tight. “Let’s go, vampire,” a husky voice said beside my ear.

I nearly choked on my breath. I spun around, my eyes widening as they landed on a tall, handsome guy with olive-toned skin and curly black hair. He stood a few inches taller than me, with deep brown eyes and
lean
muscles that suggested he spent a few hours
lifting weights
every day.

I eyed him up and down, not able to drink enough of him in. It felt like a dream – or maybe a nightmare. The hard look in his eyes suggested the latter.
Something twisted painfully in my heart at the way he looked at me, so cold, like any vam
pire hunter would eye a vampire
and not
his
childhood best friend.

“Leo,” I whispered.

My last memory of him came flooding back to me before I could stop it, accompanied by a tidal wave of guilt. We stood in a playground, arguing, then kissing, and then with him moaning and grinding up on me as I drank from his neck.

I blushed at the memory, looking away in shame. To say things between us had been left in a rocky place would be putting it lightly.
I hadn’t meant to bite him. It had just kind of happened. Apparently any kind of sexua
l encounter, no matter how mild –
although there had been
nothing
mild about his kisses –
triggered the need to feed. Thankfully, I hadn’t drained him, and I’d run away in horror before I could explain anything. I didn’t even know how to begin to apologize for that.

I reached out to him with my glamour, trying to read how he was feeling about me.

He blinked a few times, realizing what I was do
ing. A
moment later, the chain tightened around my neck, breaking my concentration. “I don’t think so,” he hissed.

All right, so he was pissed
and rightfully so. My heart sank a little. There was so much history between us, and I wanted more than anything not to lose my best friend.

My confusion was underscored by a thin thread of irritation with myself. No matter what we had between us, he was still choking me with Sca
rlet Steel, a
nd I was having an internal meltdown over the status of our relationship. It shouldn’t matter right now what he thought of me or what
had
happen
ed between us. And yet it did. It mattered s
o, so much, and I couldn’t help that.

Ten
tatively, my eyes met his again.

Leo, my closest ally
, looked
back at me with burning hatred, the
last thing I saw before a bag was put over my head.

CHAPTER
8

It
was the most painful walk I had ever endured.
Every step felt like it drove the cuffs and the chain deeper into my already blistering skin, threatening to break all the way down to bone. I winced beneath the bag, biting a bloody sore into my bottom lip from the effort of holding in my screams.

This was almost as bad as the time General Frost had tortured me for information, and that was saying something because that downright
sucked
.

They marched us down a street
and
into
what sounded like some kind of an alley because of all the reverb. A metallic door groaned open
,
and then they were shoving me down
some
stairs,
being
so rough
with me that
I didn’t have enough time to find my footing
,
and nearly slipped and fell.
T
he hunters
wouldn’t let me though
. Every time
I tripped
, they jerked back on my hair, using it to support my weight until I regained my balance, which was fairly quick considering I had a pretty tender scalp to begin with.

“Keep moving,
” Leo growled, twisting my arm
painfully.

I thought my heart would literally crack down the middle
,
and I’d keel over right there. All during the march that would probably lead to my death,
I had
tried to think about anything else other than the fact that Leo
was the one holding me captive. Tears stung my eyes, making my face hot, but I refused to let them fall. A turbulent mixture
of emotions fought for control:
I felt
anger at myself and the whole situation
;
resentment toward Aden for making me this way and being the ultimate reason of the
tension between myself and Leo;
and incredible sadness
for
knowing things could never go back to being the way they were between us. It just felt useless,
like
all these years of friendship
had been
destroyed in a blink of an eye.

I knew we’d arrived at wherever it was we were going by the sudden spike of emotions riding the air. My “sixth” sense was nearly overwhelmed as I struggled to block the pounding waves of fear, loathing, curiosity, and rage geared toward us as we were paraded through the crowd.

When I’d first learned how to use glamour, I’d nearly lost my mind in trying to shut out all the feelings that weren’t mine. Thanks to Angel, I’d learned how to control them.

The hood was ripped off, and I was nearly blinded by bright white warehouse lights.
Every now and then
they flickered, meaning we must still be on the outskirts of the White Sector. Electricity got sketchier the farther out one went in the sector. I never knew why until I discovered the underground vampire base had been siphoning the city’s electricity.

The flickering lights m
ade it hard to focus on any
thing for long.
I didn’t recognize the place, which meant the Guild had changed locations again. It was typical protocol, as the Guild operated under the government radar, and
it was illegal to cross into the Red Sectors to begin with. Hunting vampires was a federal offense that could land
a person
in jail for life.

Metallic walls rose up on the four sides of the large, rectangular room. At least a hundred people were gathered, shouting crude things as they marched us through.
I vaguely registered someone preaching in the distance about “the people’s rights” and “how vampire hunting should be made legal.” Beyond the row of spectators, it looked like a gro
up was clustered around a riled-
up hunter.

For the most part, I didn’t recognize anyone, though the people who did know me looked either shocked or disappointed when I passed. I tried not to make eye contact, as I figured it would only make things worse. It might even spur some of the more enraged hunters to take action and go medieval on us right then and there.

I was all too aware of the startling assortment of Scarlet Steel weapons I saw dangling from t
he belts of the other hunters; t
he strangest of which
were two scarlet sai
, their handles wrapped up in black leather. They looked like something
you would
see in a samurai movie, the type of weapon a muscular warrior in plate armor might use. So when my eyes lifte
d and found the face of a young
Asian girl about my age instead of Bruce Lee, I was a little surprised.

I couldn’t see much of her because she was standing in the back, but I could tell from the small frame of her shoulders that she was petite, with beautiful, slanted eyes, one blue, the other purple, and a stern set to her full lips. Her hair was short, almost a pixie cut, with two long
, red-dyed
strips framing her face.

She held my gaze,
glaring back at me,
the only person around who wasn’t going completely crazy at our presence. I couldn’t quite read the expression on her face; it was somewhere between thoughtful and stoic.

I blinked
and she was gone.

Leo shoved me hard from behind. “Move,” he growled.

With careful practice, I kept my face perfectly
composed, appearing indifferent and
maybe even a little annoyed, though I felt like I was falling apart inside.
I wanted to turn around and wrap him up in my arms like we used to do when we were little kids. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, and that I wanted things to just go back to being the way they were between us. But I knew it would take a lot more than wishing to fix things that were this jacked up.

The sound of the crowd died away to a low mumble as they led us through a narrow corridor and down a small set of concrete steps into a prison block. The bars weren’t Scarlet Steel, but then
again they didn’t need to be;
the horrible red stuff wrapped around our necks and wrists
was more than enough to keep us in check
.

The w
alls were
made from
cinder
block
s
;
about five cells stretched down one side. Chairs sat in them, some stained by rust and what appeared to be dried blood. McGuiness produced a set of keys and opened one
of the cells. A
rickety-looking wooden chair
sat in the middle
of the floor
. “Put her in there,” he ordered.

Leo shoved me inside, roughly sitting me down before removing the chain from around my neck and wrapping it around my shoulders instead, binding me to the chair. Every muscle and tendon within me screamed with pain, fueled by the burning sensation emanating from the no doubt swoll
en, tenderized flesh at my neck.
But
I didn’t even bat a lash as Leo finished securing my binds. He rose, looking down on me,
his
eyes nearly black with hatred.

I stared back at him, a hundred different emotions warring inside me.

Without a word or a backward glance, he turned and stalked out of the cell past McGuiness, who shut the door behind him and locked it. Leo didn’t even spare a glance for Rook, who was bound to a metal chair
in the cell next to mine. Fa
rther down, a hunter I didn’t recognize was tightening a length of red chain around a miserable-looking Dezyr
e. Her bottom lip was trembling. E
ven from two cells down, her fear was stifling.

Good. She
had
reason to be afraid. Knowing McGuiness,
he would
just line us all up,
blindfold us, and shoot us
. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t let us have blindfolds…

Leo stood behind McGuiness and clasped his hands, staring blankly forward. My eyes narrowed as I studied him. Now that I had a chance to really look him in the face, there was something off about it. He had a haunted look about him, enhanced by the shadows hanging under his eyes and the slightly sunken in look to his cheeks, making his cheekbones look sharper. My eyes roved the rest of him, and though he was still nice to look at and muscular, his fr
ame had gotten smaller, like he ha
d lost a lot of weight.