The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner Chapters 5

Every ace knows that old-timey vampires had to stay in coffins during the day, I went on. To keep verboten of the sun. Thats common knowledge, Diego.Youre function. Al the stories do verbalise that.And what would Riley gain by locking us up in a lightproof basement one big group coffin al day, anyway? We just demolish the place, and he has to deal with al the fighting, and its constant turmoil. You layaboutt tel me he enjoys it.Something Id say surprised him. He sat with his mouth open for a second, because closed it.What?Common knowledge, he repeated. What do vampires do in coffins al day?Er oh yeah, theyre vatic to sleep, right? But I guess theyre probably just lying there bored, cause we dont Okay, so that parts wrong.Yeah. In the stories theyre not just asleep, though. Theyre total y unconscious. They cant wake up. A serviceman can walk right up and stake them, no problem. And thats another thing stakes. You real y think someone could overeat a piece of wood through you?I shrugged. I havent real y cerebration just about it. I mean, not a normal piece of wood, obviously. Maybe sharpened wood has some smorgasbord of I dont know. Magical properties or something.Diego snorted. Please.Wel, I dont know. I wouldnt just hold stil while some human ran at me with a filed broom turn overle, anyway.Diego stil with a sort of disgusted look on his face, as if antic were real y such a reach when youre a vampire rol ed to his knees and started clawing into the limestone above his head. small stone shards fil ed his hair, entirely he ignored them.What are you doing?Experimenting.He dug with twain detainment until he could stand upright, and then kept going.Diego, you get to the surface, you explode. Stop it.Im not trying to ah, here we go. at that place was a loud crack, and then another crack, but no light. He ducked back down to where I could see his face, with a piece of tree root in his hand, white, dead, and dry under the clumps of nastiness. The edge where hed impoverished it was a sharp, uneven point. He tossed it to me.Stake me.I tossed it back. Whatever.Seriously. You know it cant hurt me. He lobbed the wood to me kind of of catching it, I batted it back. He snagged it out of the air and groaned. You are sosuperstitiousI am a vampire. If that doesnt prove that superstitious people are right, I dont know what does.Fine, Il do it.He held the ramification away from himself dramatical y, arm extended, like it was a s denomination and he was about to impale himself.Cmon, I state uneasily. This is sil y.Thats my point. Here goes goose egg.He crushed the wood into his chest, right where his heart used to beat, with enough force to plug through a granite slab. I was total y frozen with panic until he laughed.You should see your face, Bree.He sifted the splinters of broken wood through his fingers the shattered root fel to the floor in mangled pieces. Diego napped at his shirt, though it was too trashed from al the swim ming and digging for the attempt to do any good. Wed both have to steal more clothes the next time we got a chance.Maybe its different when a human does it.Because you felt so magical when you were human?I dont know, Diego, I said, exasperated. I didnt thrust up al those stories.He nodded, suddenly more serious. What if the stories are exactly that? Made up.I sighed. What difference does it make? Not sure. But if were going to be smart about why were here why Riley brought us to her, why shes make more of us then we have to understand as much as we possibly can.He frowned, every trace of laughter total y gone from his face now.I just stared back at him. I didnt have any answers. His face softened just a precise. This helps a lot, you know. Talking about it. Helps me focus.Me, too, I said. I dont know why I never thought about any of this earlier. It seems so obvious. But working on it togetherI dont know. I can stay on track better.Exactly. Diego smiled at me. Im real y glad you came out tonight.Dont get al gooey on me now.What? You dont want to be he widened his eyes and his voice went up an octave BFFs? He laughed at the goofy expression.I rol ed my eyes, not total y sure if he was making fun of the expression or of me.Cmon, Bree. Be my bestest bud forever. Please? Stil teasing, but his wide smile was pictorial and hopeful. He held out his hand.This time I went for a real high five, not realizing until he caught my hand and held it that hed intended anything else. It was shockingly weird to touch another person after a whole life because the last three months were my whole life of avoiding any kind of contact. Like touching a sparking downed ply line, only to find out that it felt nice. The smile on my face felt a little lopsided. Count me in.Excel ent. Our own private club.Very exclusive, I agreed.He stil had my hand. Not shaking it, but not exactly holding it, either. We need a secret handshake.You can be in gripe of that one.So the super-se cret best friends club is cal ed to order, al present, secret handshake to be devised at a later date, he said. First order of business Riley. Clueless? Misinformed? Or lying?His eyes were on mine as he spoke, wide and sincere. There was no change as he said Rileys name. In that instant, I was sure there was nothing to the stories about Diego and Riley. Diego had just been around more than the others, nothing more. I could trust him.Add this to the list, I said. Agenda. As in, what is his?Bul s-eye. Thats exactly what weve got to find out. But first, another experiment.That word makes me nervous.Trust is an essential part of the whole secret club gig.He stood up into the extra capital space hed just carved out and started digging again. In a second, his feet were dangling while he held himself up with one hand and excavated with the other.You better be digging for garlic, I warned him, and backed up toward the burrow that led to the sea.The stories arent real, Bree, he cal ed to me . He pul ed himself higher into the hole he was making, and the dirt keep to rain down. He was going to fil in his hidey-hole at this rate. Or flood it with light, which would make it even more useless.I slid most of the way into the escape channel, just my fingertips and eyes above the edge. The water only came up to my hips. It would take me just the smal est fraction of a second to disappear into the darkness below. I could spend a day not breathing.Id never been a fan of fire. This might have been because of some buried childhood memory, or perhaps it was more recent. Becoming a vampire was enough fire to last me. Diego had to be close to the surface. Once again, I struggled with the idea of losing my new and only friend.Please stop, Diego, I whispered, knowing he would probably laugh, knowing he wouldnt listen.Trust, Bree.I waited, unmoving.Almost, he muttered. Okay.I tensed for the light, or the spark, or the explosion, but Diego dropped back down while it was stil dark. In his hand he had a longer root, a thick snaky thing that was almost as tal as me. He gave me an I-told-you-so kind of look.Im not a completely reckless person, he said. He gestured to the root with his free hand. See precautions.With that, he stabbed the root up(a) into his new hole. There was a final avalanche of pebbles and sand as Diego dropped back onto his knees, getting out of the way. And then a beam of bril iant light a ray about the thickness of one of Diegos mail pierced the darkness of the cave. The light made a pil ar from the ceiling to the floor, shimmering as the drifting dirt sifted through it. I was icy-stil, gripping the ledge, ready to drop.Diego didnt jerk away or cry out in pain. There was no smel of smoke. The cave was a hundred times lighter than it had been, but it didnt seem to prompt him. So maybe his story about shade trees was true. I watched him careful y as he knelt beside the pil ar of sunlight, motionless, staring. He seemed fine, but there was a slight change to his skin. A kind of movement, maybe from the settling dust, that reflected the gleam. It looked almost like he was glowing a little. Maybe it wasnt the dust, maybe it was the burning. Maybe it didnt hurt, and hed corroborate it too late.Seconds passed as we stared at the daylight, motionless. Then, in a move that seemed both absolutely anticipate and also completely unthinkable, he held out his hand, palm up, and stretched his arm toward the beam.I moved faster than I could think, which was pretty dang fast. Faster than Id ever moved before.I tackled Diego into the back wal of the dirt-fil ed little cave before he could reach that one last inch to put his skin in the light.