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

Chapter 5

No amount of grief I had experienced in my short life could come close to the pain I now felt. As Aden's revelation took form in my head, Orion's smiling face shattered in my memories, which were all I truly had left of him. Though he had been gone for three years, and despite that Leo and several others had kept telling me to accept his loss and move on, a part of me still clung to the hope that he was somehow miraculously alive. It made the pain more bearable if I had something, no matter how small, to hold on to.

"How do you know?" I asked in a tiny voice.

Aden was silent, running his hand methodically over his mouth. "I saw his corpse for myself."

I couldn't be sure what he said next. My brain had refused to listen after the word "mutilated" came out of his mouth, until his voice was a mere drone in the background of beeping machines and the rapid beating of my own miserable heart. Hot blood pooled in my cheeks, and a single tear traced its way down my face, splattering on my birthmark.

Aden at last finished and bowed his head, not apologizing. "I'm sorry" seemed inadequate anyway, and I was glad he didn't say more.

At first, I tried to deny that Orion was truly gone, to console myself by believing in the impossible. But after those first early seconds of denial had passed, I was rendered nearly immobile by shock. My lips wouldn't move. My ears had become deaf to the sounds around me as two guards came to undo the cuffs and escort me to a cell, like a common criminal. They had even given me a black prisoner uniform to wear, stamped with a number which had become my name.

I wobbled to the mat/bed and sat down with a heavy plop as the barred door rattled closed with a resolute wham. Aden appeared behind the door. "This is only temporary, until we... sort some things out."

My hands were loosely clasped in my lap, my back stooped over, as I stared blankly at the floor and vaguely registered what he was saying.

He turned away. "I'll leave you to your thoughts," he said quietly.

When I awoke from my shock-induced coma and looked up, Aden was gone. I was alone, save for a single female guard humming outside my cell.

Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into hours as the night or whatever time of day it was dragged on. Meals were brought to me, simple, human things like oatmeal and fresh fruit and milk, but my appetite had vanished. The plate grew cold and the guard at last removed it, leaving me once again at the mercy of my emotions.

Shock gave way to anger, anger to despair, as I switched from pacing and lying down, to screaming and pounding my fists against the chaffing stone walls so hard they bled. Drained and defeated, I slumped to the floor, biting a hole into my lip as the blood from my torn skin mixed with the silent tears pooling beside my head.

***

That cell became my sanctuary. As I mourned and accepted the loss of my brother, the extinguished flame inside me rekindled, tiny but burning all the same. A constant stream of thoughts tumbled through my head, from my brother to the recent events, to pondering how I fit into this world, if I still did. Clearly the vampires didn't trust me – and why should they? I wore the Black Cross, branding me a hunter for life, however short that may be – but my vampire blood made me the sworn enemy of the human race and, therefore, what was left of my family and my friends. I had become a walking paradox.

My troubled thoughts held more worries than just the loss of my brother. Going off the information Aden had given me, the humans had much more to fear than the monsters that roamed the Red Sectors. I wondered more than once about the difference between the two types of vampires, how one became less of a man and more of an animal, and if it was choice or if they were born that way. Regardless, both vampires were incredibly dangerous, especially if my prediction came to pass. The humans deserved to know, to somehow be warned of the impending Armageddon.