The Blood Rite

Chapter Twelve

Ruby didn't know who she was or where she was when she woke. At first, she couldn't open her eyes, too lost within the darkness in her mind to feel the brush of her lashes. A familiar thudding echoed in her head. Thump. Thump. Thump. When at last she pried open her heavy lids, her vision swirled.

A smooth white ceiling. A blank space for her to gather herself.

Ruby. I am Ruby Diaz. She swallowed hard against a sand dry throat. I am 24 and last night I. . . last night I. . . last night. . .

Her brows furrowed. She couldn't remember what she'd done the night before. Thump-thump-thump-thump-

She shot up in a smooth, fluid motion and took in her surroundings. She laid on a twin size, the slate gray cover thrown over her legs. The rest of the room was small with a dark wood desk and chair shoved into the space between the wall and the bed and a dark brown door she assumed led to a bath. The walls were of a dark blue pinstripe wallpaper.

The room was wholly unfamiliar to her. Worry pricked at her heart as she swung her legs over the edge and - paused, staring now at her legs. The black knit tights she'd worn beneath her dress were entirely torn and blood crusted. However, it wasn't the blood that caught her attention but her skin.

Her legs were a warm beige and bound to display the extremely attractive veins beneath her skin. It was something that, although inconvenient, was inevitable and normal to her. The legs she was staring at now were smooth and entirely clear as if she were a porcelain doll. They were so smooth that she had to poke them to make sure they weren't glass. The skin still dipped and squished beneath her finger but she gave herself a sharp pinch to be sure. There was barely any pain for how hard she squeezed. The two red crescents left behind faded almost instantaneously.

She recoiled, suddenly very aware of the feeling of her own flesh. Something was tugging at her mind, begging and screaming for her to remember. But she couldn't. For the life of her, Ruby had no idea what was wrong with her, where she was, or what had happened the night before. Did it have something to do with why her legs were so weird? With why she felt so weird?

A shudder raced through her followed by an intense, discomfortable feeling. The feeling was a mix of both thirst and hunger as if she hadn't drank anything or eaten for days. For a few long moments, she continued to sit there, pondering over her confusing circumstances and this new alien body of her's.

When she realized she wouldn't get any answers sitting alone in some stranger's room, she slipped off the bed. Another shiver passed through her, bones and all, as her bare feet touched the floor.

The hallway made her stop dead as a memory of strong, emotionless men dragging her and someone else through one just like this. Then more images came. The car accident, Halle and her lying on morgue trays, the powerful man whom she'd been both terrified of and drawn to.

Not a man, she remembered, a vampire.

She cringed back, her chest rising and falling fast as everything came back to her in a violent torrent. Talon, Lexi, Rex, and Beau. The Dixie chick. The metal digging into her stomach and the blond vampire drinking from her and then giving her his blood.

"Oh my god," she breathed, doubling over herself. Why had she agreed to his offer?

Would it have mattered if she hadn't? She thought of Halle who'd been turned without giving anyone her permission.

The shimmering, dizzying haze of the night before returned and that feeling, the strange mix of thirst and hunger, slammed into her causing her to jerk straight and freeze. She inhaled deeply. Tentatively, she ran her tongue over her teeth. A vague pain shot through her tongue and blood bloomed in her mouth. She had fangs. Short as kitten teeth but sharper than her pocket knife.