Demon (GAIA) Read Online Free

died away. All the Titanides turned to look at him.
    Cirocco Jones slowly lifted her head. Conal realized she had been looking at him for some time—in fact, since before he approached the table. She had the hardest eyes he had ever seen, and the saddest. They were deep-set, clear, and dark as coal. She looked at him, unblinking, from his face to his barearms to the long-barreled Colt in the holster on his hip, his hand opening and closing a few inches from it.
    She took the cigar from her mouth and showed him her teeth in a carnivorous grin.
    “And who the hell are you?” she asked.
    “I’m the Sting,” Conal said. “And I’ve come to kill you.”
    “Do you want us to take him, Captain?” one of the Titanides at the table asked. Cirocco waved her hand at him.
    “No, no. This appears to be an affair of honor,” she said.
    “That’s exactly right,” Conal said. He knew his voice tended to get high and squeaky when he raised it, so he paused a moment to slow his breathing. She wasn’t going to let these animals do her dirty work for her. It seemed she might make a worthy opponent after all.
    “When you came here, hundreds of years ago, you—”
    “Eighty-eight,” she said.
    “What?”
    “I came here eighty-eight years ago. Not hundreds.”
    Conal refused to be distracted.
    “You remember someone who came here with you? A man called Eugene Springfield?”
    “I remember him very well.”
    “Did you know he was married? Did you know he left a wife and two children back on Earth?”
    “Yes. I knew that.”
    Conal took a deep breath, and stood straight.
    “Well, he was my great-great grandfather.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “It is not bullshit. I’m his grandson, and I’ve come here to avenge his murder.”
    “Mister…I don’t doubt you’ve done a lot of crazy things in your life, but if you did that, it wouldbe the craziest thing you ever did.”
    “I came billions of miles to find you, and now it’s just between you and me.”
    He reached for his belt buckle. Cirocco jerked almost imperceptibly. Conal never saw it; he was too busy unbuckling his belt and throwing it and his gun to the floor. He had liked wearing that gun. He had worn it since his arrival, as soon as he saw how many other humans went armed; he thought it a pleasant change from the Dominion’s stuffy firearms laws.
    “There,” he said. “I know you’re hundreds of years old and I know you can fight dirty. Well, I’m ready to take you. Let’s step outside and settle this honorably. A fight to the death.”
    Cirocco shook her head slowly.
    “Son, you don’t get to be a hundred and twenty-three years old by doing everything honorably.” She looked over his shoulder and nodded.
    The Titanide behind him brought the empty beer mug down on the top of his head. The thick glass shattered, and Conal slumped to the floor into a pile of orange Titanide droppings.
    Cirocco got up, tucking her second gun back into the top of her boot.
    “Let’s see just what sort of dirty trick he really is.”
    There was a Titanide healer present; she examined the bloody scalp wound and announced the man would probably live. Another Titanide pulled the pack from Conal’s back and started going through it. Cirocco stood over him, smoking.
    “What’s in it?” she asked.
    “Let’s see…beef jerky, a box of shells for that cannon, a pair of skates…and about thirty comic books.”
    Cirocco’s laugh was music to the Titanides because they heard it so seldom. They all laughed with her as she passed the comics around. Soon the place was buzzing with tinny balloonchip voices and sound effects.
    “Deal me out, folks,” she told the people at her table.
    ***
    Conal woke with the worst headache he had ever imagined. He was being bounced around, so he opened his eyes to see what was causing it.
    He found himself suspended head down over a two-mile drop.
    Screaming hurt his head badly, but he was unable to stop. It was a high-pitched, child’s scream,