Night Prayers Read Online Free Page A

nothing. Okay… he was dead. Good.
    He groaned.
    Bad.
    Allison tore his head off and tossed it over her shoulder.
    Sucking the blood off her fingers, she turned and watched for any sign of
after
life. The head landed upside-down against the fence… silent, still, pressed to Abraham's bosom. The ultimate Dead Head.
    "Thank God."
    She flinched at the sound of her hands hitting her face as they clapped
across her mouth. What the hell was she doing thanking God? Shit, talk about
courting disaster! She was a frigging Vampire! One of the Undead. Forever
damned. With knowledge and forethought she'd forfeited her soul and —
    Allison let her hands drop into her lap and looked up into the night sky.
    — and there was nothing HE could do about it.
    Smiling, Allison leaned over the decapitated corpse and began lapping the cooling puddle of blood up off the blacktop.
    Not as good as fresh, she decided, but still edible.
    "Holy-fucking-
shit
!"
    Allison's head snapped up and turned back toward the sound. Her ass, raised high and proud, was outlined in a white halo of light.
God
?
    Dropping her butt quickly, Allison sat up and squinted past the glare. She could just make out the overall shape and size of an electric golf-cart-turned-security-car… and the two wide-eyed Rent-A-Cops inside.
    So much for a vampire's heightened sense of hearing.
    "Do-you-fucking-see-what-she's-doing?"
    The words were spilling out of the man's mouth so fast it was even hard for Allison to keep up. She lifted her hand to her eyes and a small glob of Buck fell, white as a snowflake, back to the ground.
    "Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God…"
    And
that
was as good an exit line as she'd ever heard.
    Three decades (plus) of human conditioning took over and Allison bolted like a half naked jack rabbit across the empty parking lot.
    With the golf cart's little whirring electric motor right behind.
    "Hold it right there, lady! Stop, God damn it! This is Security!"
    Halfway across the lot she had the fleeting image of running shoes and instantly felt the hugging comfort of Nike's encasing her feet.
    Satin running shorts followed.
    Being a vampire and having been caught in the act of feeding was
nothing
compared to charges of Indecent Exposure.
    At least not in California.
    Thrilled that she'd finally gotten the basics down, Allison concentrated on becoming a bat.
    And found out that only happened in movies.
    God damn Hollywood anyway!

----
CHAPTER 3

     
    Hollywood, California was the modern world's answer to Sodom and Gomorrah, which was what brought Mica there in the first place.
    Actually, it was the round-trip bus ticket the First Congregational Church had awarded him for his essay "Ask Not If God Is Dead, But Rather If YOU Are" that brought him. With it he was to compete against the soulless radical youth from across the nation in an Intra-collegiate debate on whether or not God existed at all, win by proving He did, and come home to Tulsa bathed in glory.
    Mica (still Milo, at the time) had no doubts that he'd win hands down. God, after all, was on
his
side.
    After a brief stop at the Holiday Inn where the contestants were paired up and given rooms (Mica's "roomie" was a wild-eyed, black haired youth from Maine who farted a lot and called it Divine Atomization), they were all piled into a school bus and driven to Paramount Studios where the debate was to be taped for later broadcast.
    On obscure public access stations.
    Late at night.
    But even the thought of appearing on television, just like the late night Preachers, made Mica light-headed with anticipation.
    He didn't bother trying to explain the feeling to his black-haired seat partner. It wouldn't have done any good anyway. Two minutes after sliding into the seat, he'd laid his greasy head against the window and fallen asleep.
    Mica took the opportunity — and blessing — to find someone with whom he might be able to share an
intelligent
conversation.
    He found her sitting near the back of the