Free On a Darkling Plain by Unknown Author

rapture of guzzling her life so possessed him that he was nearly incapable of sensing anything else. Yet, dimly, his eyes closed, he felt a cool fingertip tracing a design on his forehead. The touch left a tingling trail on his skin. Then Melpomene laid her free hand on his brow and shoved him suddenly and hard, like a faith healer thrusting the power of God into one of his flock.
    Another blast of energy crashed through Dan’s body. This one was painful, but he was so lost in the bliss of consuming Melpomene’s vitae that the hurt didn’t matter. The world began to spin, and his knees buckled. Still clinging to the ancient’s arm, he collapsed onto the sand. She flowed down to the ground with him and covered his shuddering form with her own.
    FOIIRi DELIBERATIONS
    You may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman, or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together — what do you get ?
    The sum of their fears.
    — Winston Churchill, The Blast of War
    Elliott paused at the foot of the stairs to run a comb through his hair, straighten his tie and vest, adjust his cuffs and make sure his handkerchief was protruding from his breast pocket properly. At the same time, he reflected again on Henry V, Shakespeare’s most heroic and charismatic king, trying to cloak his own despondent apathy in the role’s dynamism. Gradually his back straightened, and his jaw set in bogus resolution. When he felt as ready as he imagined he could be for the ordeal to come, he strode on into the room that Roger humorously referred to as the arena.
    With its vast expanse of gleaming hardwood floor, its high ceiling and its glittering crystal chandelier, the arena would have made a satisfactory ballroom. Indeed, on occasion Roger had moved the furniture out and used it for precisely that purpose. Currently, however, the chamber was full of comfortable antique sofas and easy chairs grouped into conversation pits in a manner that reminded Elliott of a posh hotel lobby or a gentlemen’s private club. Holbein’s portrait of Roger hung above the ornately carved fireplace where someone, heedless of the warmth of the evening, had kindled a crackling yellow blaze.
    Many of the Kindred of Sarasota had assembled in the room. Some were lounging with an enviable display of poise, but others were sitting on the edges of their seats or nervously prowling about. A pungent blue haze of tobacco smoke hung in the air.
    To better assess the mood of the crowd, Elliott invoked a perceptual power he hadn’t bothered to use in a long time. The pale auras of his fellow vampires shimmered into view. As he’d suspected, most of the envelopes of light were tinged with orange, the color of fear.
    Judith Morgan, a Brujah elder, was sitting on a maroon leather sofa talking to the rest of the primogen. Judy was as tall and thin as a fashion model, with skin the color of cafe au lait. She was dressed in ragged jeans, a black leather halter, a choke-chain necklace and a blue Union infantry soldier’s cap. Long scars crisscrossed her naked shoulders and back. When breathing, Judy had been a slave. She’d been transformed into a vampire in the early 1830s and released from her sire’s supervision in 1861, just in time to help the North win the Civil War. Sensing Elliott’s presence, she turned and beckoned to him urgently.
    As Elliott started toward her, his remaining peers twisted in their seats to look at him. Schuyller Madison, a fellow Toreador, gave him a welcoming smile. Sky was a poet and a patron of human poets whose delicate-looking frame, soulful, wounded eyes and languid, abstracted demeanor made him a caricature of the dreamy, oh-so-sensitive aesthete. Even Elliott, who’d grappled with more than one crisis at the versifier’s side, had difficulty remembering just how misleading this appearance could sometimes be.
    Gunter Schmidt, the remaining elder, gave Elliott a hostile glower. The actor had never understood why the burly, piggy-eyed