World of Darkness - Vampire - On a Darkling Plain by Richard Lee Byers

Author:Richard Lee Byers [Byers, Richard Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN: REPORTING IN

I will have this done, so I order it done; let my will replace reasoned judgment.

— Juvenal, Satires

Now dressed in the new, unperforated, unbloodied jeans, T-shirt and denim jacket he'd burgled from a second-hand shop — he hadn't wanted to return to the cache of clothes in the auto repair shop and risk running into any of the anarchs — Dan found a pay phone outside a grubby little bar on the fringes of Ybor City, Tampa's historic Latin quarter. Living in Sarasota, he'd heard vaguely that the area was undergoing a revitalization, filling up with trendy nightclubs, restaurants, boutiques and art galleries; but if so, the process of renewal hadn't reached this shadowy corner of the district yet. Most of the streetlights were broken, and many of the shops were boarded up. Discarded paper cups, beer cans and the stinking body of a dachshund, its legs stiff with rigor mortis and its flanks pocked with stab wounds, filled the gutters. Through the wall of the tavern sounded a dirgelike death-metal anthem: "Kill, kill, kill the children, generation last-—"

Glumly reflecting that the tone, if not the lyrics, of the song suited his mood, Dan dropped a quarter in the public phone's coin slot and punched in the digits Melpomene had bade him memorize. The phone whirred and clicked repeatedly, and he imagined his call being routed from one dummy number to the next, making it more difficult to trace.

The phone went dead. Frowning in puzzlement and annoyance, Dan wondered if he should hold on or hang up and dial again. Then a soft white light flowered behind him.

Startled, his hand jerking reflexively toward his .38, he spun around. Melpomene was standing on the cracked, uneven sidewalk behind him. Something about her looked strange, and after a moment he realized what it was. Though the air was still, strands of her dark hair were stirring as if a breeze were blowing, leading him to suspect that she was only present in spirit.

"You didn't tell me you were going to appear to me," he growled, hoping that she hadn't noticed how he'd jumped. "I thought we were just going to talk on the phone."

"So did I," Melpomene said. "But I like to see a person's face when I converse with him. And I can discern that no other Kindred are nearby. So why shouldn't I come to you, particularly when I can sense that you're in distress?" She gave him a sympathetic smile.

Even if she weren't physically present, her charm was no less potent than it had been during their previous encounter. Abruptly he felt grateful for her show of concern, and ashamed that he'd greeted her rudely. Struggling to suppress those responses, he said, "Yeah, I am upset. I'm not cut out for this spy stuff."

She caressed his cheek with her slim white fingers. He couldn't feel the touch, but, remembering the silky smoothness of her skin, he imagined it, and that was enough to wring another outpouring of affection from his soul.

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