Read On a Darkling Plain for Free Online

put their arms around one another and waltzed.
    “I gave you an order, Caitiff,” she told him.
    “I don’t take orders,” he replied. “If you’re smart, you’ll go hassle somebody else,”
    “I guess I’m not smart,” she said, sneering. Something hard pressed against his navel.
    He looked down. She was holding a snub-nosed revolver against his belly. All around them mortals drank and chattered, joked and flirted, oblivious to the battle of wills being waged in their midst.
    Dan was puzzled. Though he’d had his share of altercations with Prince Roger’s flunkies, they didn’t defend their “domain” from outsiders nearly as zealously as other vampires he’d encountered; that, together with the fact that he’d been born in the area, was why he’d settled here. In fact, none of them had ever pulled a gun on him before, even when he’d provided considerably greater provocation. “Would you really shoot me in the middle of this mob?” he asked calmly.
    “Believe it,” she replied. “I could be gone before any of the kine realized what happened. And even if they did notice, they couldn’t stop me. Now, are you coming, or what?”
    “I’m thinking it over,” he said. It was almost inconceivable that a bullet in the guts would kill him. He was even more resistant to harm than the average vampire; that, and prodigious strength, were the powers his unknown creator had passed on to him. But the wound would be painful and inconvenient — too high a price to pay for the pleasure he’d derive from frustrating his would-be abductor’s desires. Besides, he was curious to discover what she wanted. “Oh, hell, why not?”
    She edged around him and jabbed the revolver into the small of his back. Setting his green beer bottle on a table, he led her toward the door, past a tiny yellow clown car and a plastic statue of a rearing elephant, twisting and sidestepping as he worked his way through the crowd. He realized that it would be child’s play to interpose one of the mortals suddenly between himself and the gun, thus frustrating her rather pitiful attempt to coerce him. But then he wouldn’t find out what was going on.
    They emerged from the stuffy, smoky atmosphere of the bar into the cool, sea-scented air. To the south, over the black waters of the Gulf, lightning flickered. “Let’s take a walk on the beach,” the female vampire said.
    They crossed the street and the largely empty parking lot on the other side, then walked onto the soft white sand. The waves murmured. A few other people, mere shadows in the dark, were strolling on the shore, while a handful of anglers fished off the concrete pier.
    In a minute Dan and the woman were well away from the lights shining in the parking area. He stopped walking and turned to face her. “I assume this is isolated enough for you,” he said.
    “It’ll do,” she replied grimly.
    “Then tell me what you want. If it’s a sex thing, 1 have to warn you, beefy, ugly women aren’t my type.” The remark was a joke, if not a very witty one. Vampires had no more sex drive than any other dead thing. When they were transformed, the desire to make love warped into the insatiable craving for blood. It was one of the many aspects of his condition that he didn’t like.
    “I want to know what you were doing last night, and three nights before that.”
    He raised his eyebrows in surprise. “What a weird question. I wasn’t thirsty” — his stomach churned, reminding him that he was now — “and didn’t need to go out, so I stayed in, playing a computer game and slogging my way through The Complete Works of Dickens. Why?”
    She ignored his question. “Was anyone with you?” “Yes,” he said sarcastically, “my hundreds of Kindred buddies. No, no one was there. And now, if you want any more answers, you’re going to have to tell me what this is all about.”
    She lifted the little revolver, reminding him of its existence. Moonlight rippled down the barrel.