Dark Horizons (The Red Sector Chronicles) (30 page)

That produced a soft, if not raspy, chuckle from Rook,
but
did little for chasing away my building fears. I recognized this crushing, sinking feeling, like the sun
was never going to shine again. I
t was the same way I felt when watching the life drain from my father’s eyes that night at the hospital.

Dezyre bumped me as she knelt beside Rook, interrupting my tortured memories. I blinked, then looked at her in confusion. She was clutching Rook’s hand to her chest and gazing at him while tears streamed down her face. In a way, I wanted to hit her. She even managed to look pretty while crying.

Footsteps approached from behind. “We’re clear,” Leo said, coming to stand beside Arika. “People are running everywhere from the theater, and it looks like the Black Cross Guild and the Scarlet Guard have their hands full with each other.
Apparently the Guard showed up right after we bailed.
”

No one had a chance to say anything else, because Rook’s spine arched and he began violently convulsing.

"It's the bullet!” Dezyre said. “It must still be inside him.”

Without warning, she ripped open his shirt
, snapped on a glove,
and plunged her fingers into the bloody hole in his chest. I turned away, tasting vomit. If anything, she
had a stronger stomach than I did, but then again
I guess she would have to, being a medical student.

“Hold him down!” Dezyre shouted, struggling to keep Rook from bucking her off. Leo and Arika immediately went for an arm each, straining to hold him still enough for Dezyre to work. Blushing and feeling like a pussy, I sat on Rook’s legs, pushing all my weight into the floor while he t
h
rashed.

“Dammit, come on. Dammit, dammit
,” Dezyre muttered, fishing for the bullet.

My adrenaline spiked, and I thought I would black out from the stomach-churning mixture of ice-cold fear and burning dread coursing through me. Through it all, I heard a furious thumping noise, pounding for all it was worth, fighting to survive.

I gasped, realizing what it was.

Rook’s heart.

The thumps were beginning to slow, or time was stopping – one or the other.
“No,” I whispered as Dezyre’s brows knitted tighter, her delicate face squeezed up in concentration.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump
.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Dezyre reared back,
gasping. H
er fist
shot
out of the wound and
rose
into the air, victoriously clutching the bullet. Blood ran red rivers
down her wrist and onto her arm.

Aside from her gasps and my own heavy breathing, the air was still.

Silent.

No.

My eyes snapped to Rook’s. He stared at the ceiling, pupils dilated.

And
looking
very dead.

I scrambled off him and crawled forward. Dezyre deflated like a balloon, her mouth open in shock, tear-filled eyes wide and pinned to Rook
’s face
.

Arika’s
jaw flexed
as she
stood and stepped back, giving us some space.

Leo sat there,
looking
as stunned as I felt. He had known Rook just as long as I
had
.

I blinked, fighting back the hot sting of tears.

“It doesn’t end this way,” someone said quietly.

My gaze fluttered upward at the sound of Dezyre’s voice, just in time to see her sink her fangs into her wrist and force the streaming wound between Rook’s gaping lips.

“Drink,” she snapped, her voice rough with emotion. “Drink, damn you. You are not leaving me alone, not again.”

I paused, brows furrowing.
Again?

No one moved as Dezyre poured her life into Rook; I don’t
think
anyone even dared breathe.

I was so caught up
in
trying to figure out what she was doing that I almost missed the dull, hopeful pumping of Rook’s heart.

My breath hitched, and I leaned over him, searching his eyes. They were slowly coming back into focus, and I heard a strained breath seep into his nose, lifting his chest slightly.

“Oh
,
my G
od,” I breathed, closing my eyes and slumping forward with relief. This was real. Rook wasn’t going to die. The gentle throbbing of his blood pushing through his veins, thrumming with life beneath my fingertips, told me this was happening.

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 w
as 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, i
t 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 a
nd 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 th
e 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.

“
T
he
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 on
stage, 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 stud
ied 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
n
or you
ever
knew you had a sibling?”

Dezyre shook her head. “No. I only found out because I had tas
ted 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’l
l 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 th
e stock market,
and they had to scramble to find enough money to put food on the table.