The Scarlet Dagger (The Red Sector Chronicles, #1) (2 page)

“
He wouldn’t give up on me,” I said firmly. “And I’m going, so just drop it.”

The phone call abruptly ended. I called Leo’s name a few times, but there was no response. Maybe the call had been dropped. Reception – and electricity, in general – grew more unstable the farther out one went in the sector, and I was on the far eastern boundary. No one exactly knew why it did this. Still, I couldn’t erase the feeling that something was wrong as the bus hobbled to a stop.

This is it
, I told myself.
In a few minutes, with any luck, you’ll be in the Red Sector.

Shaking slightly, I rose to my feet. Despite my efforts to remain calm, my knees trembled as I made my way to the front of the bus. I looked up at the TV just as my mother’s speech went silent, replaced by a vibrant red screen that said BREAKING NEWS in the center. A news anchor appeared, with a picture of a pretty, teenage girl to her upper left.

The color drained from my face as I stared back at my senior portrait.

Oh God. Leo, you didn’t!

All the sound faded away, and I barely registered that the anchor was rattling off my description and something about a high dollar reward for a tip leading to my whereabouts. Panic surged through me, and I gripped one of the cold metal handrails to keep myself upright, suppressing the urge to fret about my plan falling apart before my very eyes.

Think, Sloane! What are you going to do?

The way I saw it, I had two options. I could let the Scarlet Guard seize me and drag me back to my mother’s wrath. Or I could run, hoping I made it to the fence before the Guard could catch up to me. Maybe then I could get away from them in the unknown dangers of the Red Sector. And honestly, given the choice of facing my mother or a vampire, I think I would always choose the latter.

My skin tingled with the sensation of being watched, and my eyes rose to meet the driver’s in the rearview mirror. His eyes were squinted, flicking back and forth from the TV screen to my face and growing wider each time. His hand slowly sank into his pocket. Without hesitation, I reached beneath my skirt to my thigh and whipped out a small, silencer-rigged pistol as he put the phone to his face.

His fingers paused over the keypad. Holding the pistol in one hand, I walked up to him until the barrel was only an inch from the back of his head. “Drop it,” I commanded, and the phone clattered to the floor. I picked it up, and stuck it in my coat pocket.

The driver coughed and spit blackened chew on the floor, right at my feet. “Think I’ve never had a gun put to my head, little girl? Seems you’re worth a lot of money. You know somethin’? Ain’t nobody out here but me and you. And they didn’t say anything about you bein’ dead or alive.”

My breath caught in my throat as his other hand appeared, cocking the trigger of a large, menacing black handgun. I had enough control of my senses to swing my foot up, kicking it from his hand as he fired a shot, shattering the front window. The gun hit the dash and fell to the floor. As the driver scrambled to recover the weapon, I threw open the door and stumbled outside, landing hard on the cool pavement. My kneecaps flared with pain, but the sound of another gunshot propelled me to my feet, and I tore off down the street as he radioed the Scarlet Guard.

A brand new Scarlet Steel factory loomed ahead of me, ominous and black against the red, particle-saturated sky. Though Leo said Scarlet Steel posed no threat to humans, the government built their factories in the least inhabited zones, “as a precaution,” Leo had quoted his father. It made me sick to think that they cared so little for the lives of the destitute who still lived out here.

Though it wasn’t quite so bad downtown, the atmosphere here was bulging with Scarlet Steel particles, making the filtered moonlight appear red. Though I had seen a full lunar eclipse (the moon had rusted over the night of the Eclipse), seeing it appear as though it had been dipped in blood was an entirely unsettling feeling. But the eerie moonlight was the least of my problems, and I focused more on my surroundings as my foot found a pothole. My ankle painfully twisted before I caught myself and continued running, teeth clenched tightly together.

I had spent some time in this part of the city before it became a sector, so I knew the path well as I tore through the night. After the Eclipse, the city went through major rearrangements. Generally, the less wealthy lived along the outer edges of the sector – which was shaped in a gigantic, jagged square – while the people with money lived closer to the center, where Sovereign McAllister’s mansion and all the government headquarters were located. Living there also meant an influx of Scarlet Guard, which had completely replaced our policemen. They were everywhere, locking up people for the slightest venture outside the laws my mother’s Parliament had laid down. Most people had a love/hate relationship with the Guard, loving them for the protection they provided, but at the same time, fearing and even resenting them for their sometimes violent manner of dealing with even the most petty of crimes.

The heels of my boots
clip-clopped
like hooves across the pavement as I ran straight through the Cherry Hills Mall parking lot. Cherry Hills, like so many other locally owned businesses, sprang up after many shops and restaurants closed down, post-Eclipse (it inhabited an old building that used to be a community center). Other businesses – thrift stores, salons, and knick-knack shops – had planted themselves in abandoned homes or buildings. They saw a lot of business, as quite a few people still lived in this area, though most of them would be either locked up in their homes or downtown for the memorial. Nobody wanted to be roaming about on the eve of the Eclipse, as it was considered a day of ill-omen by many survivors.

Eclipse or not, this area was pretty much deserted this time of night. A forest of security cameras watched me, their wiring like vines as they choked the light poles that shone down on me. The lights flickered, yellowed and weak, as I cleared the lot and raced down a blackened alley between two stores, my boots slapping through sludge and knocking over trash bags. The putrid smell of garbage clung to my nostrils, and I gagged as I emerged on the other side.

There, narrowly more than ten feet away, was the fifty-foot tall steel fence that wrapped around the entire sector, cutting it off from the outside threat. A large sign hung near the electronic gate:

WARNING: RED SECTOR. TRESSPASING STRICTLY PROHIBITED AND PUNISHABLE BY FEDERAL LAW.

Situated next to the gate was a tiny box, blinking innocently at me with its eyes of little green lights. I stared at it, my heart pounding harder and harder inside my chest.

This was it. The moment I had been waiting three whole years for. If the code I’d stolen from Leo’s father worked, I could be on the other side within a minute or two.

In my mind, Leo’s warning screamed at me while I tried to convince myself to move forward, like I was going on a picnic and not a suicide mission. I swallowed hard against the knot forming in the base of my throat.

There was a high-pitched hum and then a brief patch of pure darkness as the power failed and struggled to come back to life. If I didn’t make my move now – if the electricity went out altogether – I could lose my chance. There’s no way I could scale the wall. Sirens wailed in the distance, and that was all the prodding I needed.

Racing to the box, I holstered the pistol and grabbed my cell phone, pulling up the code. I was so nervous that my fingers shook, and I punched in the seventeen-digit access code as quickly as I could. My body practically buzzed with adrenaline as I waited for the entry light to change from red to green. At last, I let out a huge sigh as a series of thick bolts slid back into the wall, unlatching the door.

The sirens were so close now that their high-pitched frequency hurt my ears.
Come on. Come on
, I thought as the heavy metal door slowly swung open with a groan. It felt like an eternity passed before it opened wide enough for me to go through; the gap looked to be little over a foot across, or so I estimated. My foot tapped impatiently, and I whirled around as car doors slammed shut just outside the alley. Gritting my teeth, I grabbed hold of the door and pulled as hard as I could, but my petite frame was far too weak against its crushing weight.

Without warning, the power died and my sight suddenly vanished. My breath was ragged as I flipped open my cell phone, using it as a makeshift flashlight, and I eyed the pitch black gap between the now ajar door and the fence.

Shouts echoed off the alley walls behind me as the Scarlet Guard closed in.

It’s now or never.

Pulling my coat on and tossing my phone back inside a pocket, I grabbed the pistol and aimed it toward the hole. Then I edged myself through the chasm, into the darkness of the Red Sector.

Chapter 2

I clung to the fence, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark while keeping one palm pressed flat against the cool metal, as if to ground myself to the world I was about to leave behind.

You can do this, Sloane. You have to, for your brother.

“
For Orion,” I whispered.

Heavy footsteps along the other side of the fence told me I didn’t have time to linger. I ran without looking back.

My pupils had dilated enough for me to see clearly, and the pale moonlight bathed everything in a ghastly red light. I knew where I was – the neighborhood I grew up in. The same place I had once called home, where pedestrians were mercilessly killed in drive-by shootings at night and where gang members once reigned supreme. A little more than three blocks to the north was my old house, the only home my father could afford on his meager wages from the textile factory. Life here was sometimes brutal, but as long as he and Orion were in my life, it didn’t matter because I knew they would never let anything happen to me.

Now they’re both gone, one because of you.

No matter how hard I tried to suppress it, my guilt always remained buried just beneath the surface, threatening to overtake my confidence and pride at any time. Some days I was willing to let it, but I knew I had to hang on long enough to find my brother, if he was still alive. I couldn’t – wouldn’t – give up without knowing I had done everything I could to try to bring Orion back home.

Though I tried my best to watch my footing and move as stealthily as I could, there was so much debris – empty aluminum cans, shards of glass, broken furniture… all dropped by people in their haste to evacuate – littered along the ground that I couldn’t help but tap or stomp on something as I went. I chanced a glance behind me, sure I’d see the blood red uniforms of the Scarlet Guard closing in, but there were nothing but abandoned, run-down houses, many with bars on the windows, and the windshields of rusty, unused cars staring back at me.

Staring at the ruin around me, it was like reliving the Eclipse again. The worst part was, nobody ever saw it coming. Sure, the government was prepared for terrorists’ attacks, natural disasters, and even nuclear war, but no one quite knew what to do when vampires descended upon our cities like ants, viciously killing and eating anything that moved.

There were signs along the way, leading up to that horrible night. Missing posters of children, adults, and animals alike started springing up, becoming more and more frequent until entire blocks were plastered in the faces of missing loved ones. Reports of red-eyed, shadowy creatures dominated the news and magazines. Everybody was convinced it was an elaborate hoax, something dreamt up by a group of teenagers somewhere who wanted to get a good scare out of people around Halloween.

I wished so badly it had been a prank. But on All Hallow’s Eve, my life became something out of a horror film. That night was still fresh on my mind, even three years later:

I rushed home from the Miller Mansion, drenched in Orion’s blood and hysterical. I threw the black Camaro into park before I’d even fully stopped, nearly tripping as I raced toward our front door. That’s when the sirens went off. Confused, I whirled around, seeing people fleeing their homes. Those with cars tossed as many possessions as they could carry into the trunk and sped off as fast as they could. Others ran in all directions, their faces panicked and afraid. A door slammed behind me and my father sprang from the front porch. He glanced at the Camaro, confused, before grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me hard.

“
Where is your brother, princess? Where is Orion?” he asked, a wild, desperate look in his eyes.

I stupidly sputtered something about a monster, too choked up on my own tears to make much sense. Somewhere down the block, people began screaming, followed by snarls that made me ice cold with fear.