Sunshine

Sunshine is a fantasy novel featuring vampires written by Robin McKinley and published by Berkley Publishing Group in 2003. Sunshine won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature in 2004. Plot summary The story is set in an alternate universe, taking place after the "Voodoo Wars", a conflict between humans and the "Others". The Others mainly consist of vampires, werewolves, and demons, though the main conflict occurs between humans and vampires. As a result of this war, "bad spots", or places where black magic thrives, have appeared more frequently. Rae "Sunshine" Seddon, the pastry-making heroine of the novel, has the misfortune of being caught off-guard at her family's old lake side cabin and is abducted by a gang of vampires. She is confined to the ballroom of an abandoned mansion with Constantine, a vampire shackled there by vampires of a rival gang, led by Constantine's enemy Bo. Bo's intention is to allow Constantine to slowly die of hunger and exposure to sunlight. Rae is brought as bait for him, and the vampires cut her upper chest as temptation. However, Rae not only manages to defy the supposed power that any vampire has over a human, but also uses her all-but-forgotten magical powers of transmutation, taught to her by her grandmother, to effect an escape. Rae realizes that the magical lineage she has ignored allows her to draw power from the sunlight, ergo transferring her ability through touch to Constantine and allowing him to be under the light of day, so long as contact is maintained. Through this symbiotic relationship, the two of them make an escape.