Manipulating Fate (Carousel Series #2)

Chapter 3: Los Angeles, CA | 1987

The sun had set but the sky was still hazy with its light when Ruby awoke again. She was curled in a tight ball on the mattress, under David's huge trench coat. She wondered why she slept so neatly when she'd seen some of the Boys sleep all splayed out like big tomcats. Maybe female vampires were neater, daintier?

Twisting her head, she found David awake and working on his bike. He was replacing the bigger parts he had removed and seemed nearly finished. Perhaps they'd go home tonight, if there was enough night to travel through. Ruby studied him; she had seen him without his trench coat before but never enough to give it study. He was lithe under the clothes. Muscles weren't prominent, but well defined and his skin molded to them like the leather gloves he wore on his hands. A graceful back under the black shirt he never took off. Ruby's eyes followed the curve of his lower back downward. He always wore those leather pants that were cut only to fit him. How did they look from the back?

David dropped his wrench and it clattered on the concrete floor. "I'm so going to have to teach you to shield your thoughts." He didn't turn around and face her but Ruby felt him blush inside. She was totally checking him out and hadn't realized. Her gaze immediately dropped to the dirt floor beside the mattress and if her cheeks could have gone red they would have been crimson.

Internally she chastised herself. She was Marko's girlfriend! She could never have David or be with him! Wait, why would she want to in the first place!

"Ok please just stop Ruby." David groaned softly, rubbing his eyes with a gloved hand.

"I'm sorry David." Ruby bit her lip and tried to blank her mind.

"No it's ok. It's not really all your fault. I actually expected some of this to happen, since you're full of my blood. But it doesn't prepare you for the shock and embarrassment when your childer starts checking out your butt you know." He snatched the wrench from the floor. "Time for a lesson. I know you catch on quick so this should help both of us."

Ruby sat up, shrugging off his trench coat. David came over and crouched in the dirt. "Clear your mind. First part of this is we'll lay the foundation, then it will be easier to build on in future lessons."

David guided her simply through their bond, showing her how to empty her mind of thoughts at first then build a mental shield around herself. Her first attempts were short but they were a beginning. She could build enough that would reflect David off her fleeting thoughts.

"Very good childer. That's excellent for the first time of really getting down and making a shield. At least now you won't catch me off guard half the time when you try to check me out." He chuckled, lighting a cigarette. Ruby was again glad vampires couldn't blush.

"How's the bike?" she quickly changed the subject.

"Nearly done. A few tweaks and we should be out of here."

"Tonight?"

David thought for a moment, the cigarette perched on his lower lip. "I don't know if there's enough dark to cover it. If it had been winter, we'd have been fine. It's summer though, and that limits us."

"So maybe another night here." Ruby tried to hide her disappointment. She just wanted to get home.

"So do I, Ruby. Los Angeles just isn't the way it used to be, and the Bloods are probably still looking for us. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner I'll feel better." David rose, heading back to the bike. Ruby started to follow, but when she set her bare feet down on the dirt there was a crunching sound.

"Eww!" Ruby looked at the soles of her feet. They were covered in a dirty white substance. It was dry, and crunchy.

"Ahhh shit!" David tried not to roar his disappointment too loudly. "I knew it. I knew I was going to run out of time."

"What?" Ruby was scared now.

"That's salt on the bottom of your feet. Since basically your entire diet, as a vampire, is blood, you have huge abnormal amounts of salt in your system. It has to go somewhere or we'd be bloated looking corpses. So it leeches through the bottoms of your feet. Usually this doesn't happen until you're sated with a first kill, but...

"I've got all your blood in me."

"Yup. Two full weeks of blood in you without a first kill." David flicked his smoke away into a dark corner. "Ok we have no choice. I think we can pull it off. We only need six hours to get up the coast, and it'll be a miracle if there's little traffic." He went back to working on his bike, fingers blurs as he moved with vampire speed. Ruby did her best to scrape the salt from the bottoms of her feet and get back into her shoes. While David worked, she cleaned up and returned the garage into looking like it had sat empty these past two weeks.

The roar of the engine broke Ruby from her cleaning. David sat on his bike, gunning the engine repeatedly to test it. He turned it off, satisfied. "They put a bunch of vampire blood in the gas and oil tanks. It can be corrosive and damage things, if you know what you're doing." He grinned wickedly. "They didn't. Of course, they didn't ask the first vampire who figured that out."

"Who was?"

David's grin widened. "Me." He slithered off his bike and gathered up his trench coat from the mattress. It flew out and swirled behind him like wings as he slid back into it. "We gotta go. I'm sure they heard the bike, if there's scouts in the area."

Ruby nodded and slid her own meager coat back on. She had a feeling she would be riding in a manner that once would have been dangerous to her. Probably could have killed her. But now...

"Let's go home David."

Ruby was right; the way David was moving and weaving in between cars and trucks on the I-5, she probably would have screamed or freaked out. But it seemed as though he and the bike were one being and each controlled the other, thus averting injury or accident. Even when traffic had been at a total standstill on the 101, he'd flew by the stunned drivers and made good time.

Her hair whipped around wildly, occasionally stinging her eyes or face, but she wasn't cold. Her arms were steel bands around David, hanging on for dear un-life as it were. To kill time she practiced shielding, but found that as focused as David was on driving his own shields were lowered enough. It was temptation, because Ruby knew she was smart enough to slip in and read. The curiosity about him and who he'd been, and when and where, were very overwhelming. But she knew he'd be able to tell she was in there, what little focus he had set on guard. Instead she was good and practiced on, rewarded with a single fleeting thought that skipped across David's mind: he really liked the way she was hanging on to him. Even got a bit reckless at times to make her hold tighter.

Ruby wanted to smack him. He was doing parts on purpose to result in her clinging to him. This opened a new set of questions, but no way to ask them presently.

"What a geek." She thought.

"I'll take that as a compliment." David's voice was in her head, complete with trademark smirk, although he hadn't spoken aloud. Ruby's mouth fell open and she regretted it instantly. "Yeah, we can talk mentally. Sorry. I would have said something but you're far more advanced then any vampire before his first kill."

Instead of answer Ruby bit his right shoulder blade through his coat. It was meant as a joke, to show she was unhappy. Instead, David nearly rocketed off the bike and exploded inside with a warm feeling Ruby had never felt before.

"Don't EVER do that again!" he was trying not to roar at her, to be too angry. Apparently she didn't know what she'd done and David knew that. His thoughts were too fast to pick on, but whatever she had done was serious cause for alarm in David's head.

Then she remembered back to when she and Marko would lay in bed in the early morning, just before the sun rose. She had bitten his arm, playfully. Marko too had exploded but she had not felt the feelings he had felt like she could with David. Marko had literally jumped from the bed and had stayed there to calm down, telling her to never do that again. Not unless he told her to. Back then she hadn't understood but when she had bit him, he'd slid into his vampiric self. That's why he hadn't opened his eyes and barely opened his mouth to talk. She'd set something off in him and now done the same with David.

"Sorry." She mentally apologized to him. David said nothing but she knew he had heard. His focus went back to the bike and they continued speeding up the coastline.