Drink, Slay, Love

Chapter Four

Sunrise.

It pooled on the horizon like liquid gold. Seconds later it spilled over the hills and houses and coalesced into a puddle of light. As it rose higher, molten light dripped from the curve of the sun as if it were wet. Sunlight painted the clouds, tinting them cute, cheerful colors like pink lemonade. Above, the sky paled into a blue that washed out the stars.

Fumbling with the keys, the two boys unlocked the cage.

"Oh, crap, crap, crap," Chubby said. "You're going to tell the police, aren't you? So screwed. She's so telling the police. And then they'll tell my dad. Crap, I'm dead."

"You gotta understand," Tall said as he yanked off the padlock, "we're totally impressionable youth. Blame the video games. Corrupting our innocent, corruptible minds. Late-night TV, bad for the soul. Nearly bought a Bowflex last week, that's how impressionable. I own a Snuggie! We aren't the sorts to normally kidnap innocent girls."

"Just tell the police not to tell my dad, okay?" Chubby said.

"'Kidnap' is a harsh word," Tall said. "I prefer 'protective custody.' Really, when you think about it, we were protecting you. Or protecting someone from you, which is almost the same. Except for how it's totally not."

"He's had a rough time at work," Chubby said. Bracing himself, he dragged the cage door open. It shrieked and whined. "Recession. He can't take this right now. Last Tuesday he flipped about late garbage pickup. Tears, screaming, snot flying out of his nose all over the wall until it looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. Not a pretty sight."

Pearl felt the sun on her face. It felt like a warm breath.

"Kind of funny when you think about it, us believing we had to protect a dude from you," Tall said. "In a few weeks we can all grab a cheeseburger together and laugh about this. I mean, a hot chick like you couldn't possibly be a vampire. Seriously, though, you might want to cut down on the black garb."

She walked out of the cage.

"Not that you were in any way 'asking for it,'" Tall said. "A woman can wear whatever she chooses without fear of being mistaken for a fiendish bloodsucking nightwalker. But have you thought green? Green would look great with your eyes."

"She's got killer eyes," Chubby agreed. "I mean, awesome eyes. And legs. Dude, did you say you own a Snuggie? Seriously?"

Pearl waved her hand at the wannabe vampire slayers. "Shut up."

Both of them shut up.

She tilted her head back to look at the sky. She'd seen daylight in photos and on Antoinette's TV. But it couldn't compare to this feeling of the sky widening above her as it brightened, as if the world were opening up like a flower blossom. Around her, color flowed into the buildings, into the rust on the metal scraps, into the green-brown grass of the lawn, into the feathers of the birds that clustered on the telephone lines.

"You need a ride home?" Chubby asked, all solicitous.

"'Sorry' doesn't begin to cover this situation," Tall said. "Anything we can do to make this up to you, you just say the word. Consider us your knights in shining armor, milady."

Pearl brushed past them, eyes fixed on the horizon. As it rose higher, the sun, now a semicircle, bleached whiter and brighter. "You're still not shutting up."

"Do you need us to call anyone?" Chubby asked.

As she picked her way across the yard between rusted spare parts and unloved lawn equipment, the two "hunters" trailed her like puppies. She considered biting them to keep them quiet, but she didn't want the distraction from the sunrise. Plus there were two of them, which would make it awkward. She couldn't bite them both simultaneously, and there were too many rusty tools around here that the other could use as weapons if she bared her teeth at one of them. She didn't want to survive dawn only to be sliced up by Tweedledum and Tweedledee. It would be simpler to just walk out of here, eastward into the sun.