A Song For the Dead (Carousel Series #3)

Chapter 1: Santa Cruz, CA | 1988

The alarm buzzed uselessly from the nightstand and finally shut off. Vampires ran to the beat of their own internal clock. As soon as the sun sank below the horizon, they woke up. It was a simple, unending beat of an invisible drummer. Unquestioned through the eons of time since the creation of the first of the undead.

Ruby stretched, shoving the twisted sheets down to the end of the bed. Winter had come to Santa Cruz, bringing a lot more hours of darkness. She kept silent, stretching her arms in the air, trying to unknot the muscles in her back and shoulders.

Satisfied she'd recovered quickly enough from all the exercises she'd been running, she pushed off the mattress, her feet hitting the wooden floorboards with a muffled slap. David had been putting her through her paces for the last three weeks, running defensive drills and attack patterns. Fighting as a vampire was ten times more complicated, and far more efficient, then as a human. Vampires had grace and subtlety, with the capability of making the slightest movements while extracting maximum damage.

Being his childer, David had not cut her any slack. Ruby saw it in his eyes when he thought she didn't; he was still haunted by the attack of the Bloods in Los Angeles. The very attack that had killed her and brought her over to the vampire side of reality. He went at her without mercy at times, but he knew Ruby had the strength and stamina to take what he dished out. She knew he was afraid they might still come after her and the Boys. David wanted her to be ready, just in case.

Ruby stretched again, hearing the soft pops as her spine stretched and realigned. It was cold in the house; they really saved a fortune by not bothering to hook up the gas for heat. Yawning softly, she tugged the dingy white undershirt back down over her stomach and padded out into the hall.

Not bothering with a light, she headed up the hall towards the bathroom. The house was pitch black in the back half; David had rigged a light in the great room with a timer, so it looked like people actually did inhabit the house. She heard the soft hum of its electric bulb as she reached the bathroom.

Groping for the switch, the snap of electricity coming on as the overhead fixture came to life still amazed her. Being a vampire for roughly six months hadn't given her the chance to become used to all the new abilities and extensions of normal senses. She shut the door softly, noting the click in the door jam. She reached into the shower stall and twisted the taps, the spray blasting the glistening white tiles.

Yawning again, and absently scratching the small of her back, Ruby looked at herself in the mirror. The light overhead made her skin luminescent; she was paler then she'd ever been. Set off by the long red hair that ran down past her hips, the vampiric gift David had given her had made her even that much more of a beauty. The roundness of her human days, what had been in her face, was gone and replaced by the sharp lines of a practiced killing machine. Her eyes were ice cold, blue-silver orbs in that china face. The silvery lines of her last mortal wound still traced like webs down her throat and neck, spilling down and fading into the undamaged skin of her shoulder and chest. Any new wounds she sustained, during sparring practice with David or in an accident, they erased every day while she slept, knitting back flawlessly.

Even the love bites David gave her faded away into nothingness by the next night.

Without thought, she slipped the four-band puzzle ring from her finger and set it on the counter. She only removed it for fear it would go down the drain and be lost; at all other times she wore it. Grabbing the hem of the undershirt, she slipped it off over her head, dropped it on the floor on top of the crumpled pile of her panties and stepped into the shower.

Ruby hissed as the shock of the scalding hot water hit her stone cold flesh. The steam was thick; she must have turned it completely to the left again. Quickly, she twisted the shower knobs until it was a much more comfortable temperature. Vampires weren't exactly all that affected by burns and scalds from hot water, it was just highly uncomfortable. Soon her flesh gave in and took on the warmth from the water, heating the remnants of last night's feed in her veins.