The Wages of Sin (Blood Brothers Vampire Series Book Two) (21 page)

Freya pushed herself across the floor with her feet
until she was sitting in the corner watching them through her
fingers.

Loki fired his gun into Tyr’s pelvic region to
distract him. As the blast of pain rendered him defenseless, Loki
swung his sword for Tyr’s legs and Tyr barely managed to block the
hit with his blade, taking only a partial hit to the knee and still
losing his balance.

As soon as he was on the floor, Loki hacked,
slashed, and shot at Tyr, swinging the sword for his chest and
neck, not necessarily trying to kill his Brother but at least
attempting to stick him to the floor. Tyr took several shots to the
torso but managed to block each blow from the sword with his own
blade.

Tyr fired only one shot from the floor, but it was
enough. As Loki prepared to bring his blade downward into Tyr’s
stomach, Tyr managed to get off a shot at Loki’s face, just along
the bridge of his nose, and spray blood up into his eyes. Loki
howled and wiped his face.

Instead of standing, Tyr passed the sword between
Loki’s open legs and Freya, behind Loki, took the hint. She gripped
the sword and rammed it through Loki’s back and out his chest
before the big bastard could take one more swing at Tyr.

Loki gasped. He tried to use the last of his
strength to gut his Brother, but the silver blade had drained him
of his energy and he dropped his sword on the floor.

Tyr got to his feet. “The chain,” he said to Freya.
She was staring at him, stunned, and he had to say it again louder
before she obeyed.

She grabbed the silver chain Tyr had been tethered
with in the basement, which she’d brought into the club when she
entered and set on the floor until now. She handed it to Tyr and he
wrapped it around Loki’s neck and towed him into the club’s walk-in
freezer. He chained his hands and tied him to a shelf in the
corner.

“Do you think anybody will come for you, Loki?” he
asked. “Do you think anybody cares enough for you? Or do you think
you’ve alienated all of us to the point that you’ll be left to
starve to death in the freezer at the club you built?”

He took the sword out of Loki’s chest and walked
with Freya out of the club. The police would be there soon. Maybe
they’d find Loki and maybe they wouldn’t. It wasn’t important. He’d
seen the fear in Loki’s eyes when Freya entered the room. Loki
wouldn’t hunt him. He wouldn’t dare associate with him in any way
again. He feared the Chosen too much.

Tyr didn’t know whether he feared the Chosen, but it
felt good not to fear Loki.

Two minutes after Tyr had left The Chupacabra,
Heimdall came into the freezer. He picked up Loki’s sword and put
the freezing silver to Loki’s neck.

“Heimdall,” said Loki. “What the fuck are you doing?
I made you.”

“You made me a killer,” said Heimdall. “You turned
me into a freak like you who prowls the night and kills.”

“It was that or death. I made you immortal.”

“I wouldn’t have had to die if you’d left me alone
to begin with.”

Loki paused. “You read the diary. You shouldn’t have
read the diary.”

“I had a life with a woman I loved and you took it
away from me.” He almost said ‘payback’s a bitch,’ but he avoided
the cliché. Instead he said, “Do you know the wages of sin,
Loki?”

Heimdall raised the sword over his shoulder but a
hand caught it before he could swing.

“Mustn’t kill our own,” said the Butcher. “Besides,
an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

“But he’s a sinner, a killer.”

“He’s one of us. It’s not our place to pass judgment
on our own. We may judge the humans, as they are a lesser animal,
but to kill our own… that would truly be murder.”

“The fuck is this?” asked Loki. “What are you doing
here? Let me down.”

“Just observing, teaching the boy a lesson. I will
let you down, but before I do, I should let you know that I’m
taking Heimdall with me. This is his choice, not mine, and I’ll see
that you respect it.”

“I don’t give a shit where he goes. I don’t give a
shit about anybody. Just cut me down and get the hell out.”

“As you wish.”

The police were arriving as the Butcher freed Loki
and gave back his sword and the three of them disappeared at once,
though Loki went a separate direction. When the two groups split,
it was to be the last any of the Brothers would see of each other
for some time.

“I don’t understand,” said Heimdall when they were
clear of the club. “If you think they’re harming the world, why
would you let them go?”

“Because it’s not my place to judge other vampires.
I have to kill humans to survive, and therefor it is in my nature
and I have permission to choose which humans live. And in terms of
my interactions with humans, this is how I can do good for the
world. But I do not need to kill vampires to live, nor could I
drink their blood even if I chose to, because it is not God’s will
for me to judge them. I can only steer them in the direction of
good and hope they one day see as I see.”

Heimdall said nothing.

“Are you beginning to understand the means by which
a vampire can live a good and honorable life?”

“I think so. By drinking the blood of sinners and
criminals and encouraging other vampires to do the same. But why
didn’t you say anything to Loki?”

“It would fall on deaf ears. I tried to show him the
righteous path when I first met him fifty years ago but neither he
nor his Brothers would listen. They are too set in their ways. So
instead, I can only show them the results of the evil decisions
they continue to make, and perhaps one day they will learn on their
own.”

“How did you know they would fight tonight?”

“I led them in that direction. Those who live in
fear and anger and hate are easily led. I’ve been leading them for
years, making sure they don’t get along, that their lives are
jeopardized as a result of their evil decisions.”

“So you… made them fight?”

“That is one way of saying it, but if they had not
made such immoral decisions I would not have been able to put them
in this position. I will continue to do this until one day they
discover the error of their ways, or until they kill one another.
And as they are immoral now, either way it will be a happy
ending.”

“And what about the apocalypse? That was a female
vampire we saw in there. Doesn’t the Augury say our species will
come to an end at the hand of a female and a half-breed?”

“Yes, it does,” said the Butcher, and the smile on
his face was one of true excitement. “And as you said earlier, the
world would be a better place without any of us. Once again… every
ending is a happy one.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE

“This celebration was supposed to be important to
you,” said Tyr. “It was going to mean something else instead of
what it means now, but I think the way it turned out, maybe it
means something better.”

They were in Times Square, standing on top of a
building and looking out at the celebration, waiting for the ball
to drop. They’d been in town a couple nights, staying in a quiet
hotel where they could be left alone during the day, and they’d
been waiting for this silly, sentimental moment that somehow felt
like the most important one Tyr had ever witnessed.

Freya put an arm around him and looked up at him
with a smile. She was ten times as beautiful now as she’d ever
been, with all the disease and sadness washed away.

“It’s a beautiful moment, Tyr,” she said. “Thanks
for making sure I got to see it.” She had little memory of her past
life, but he’d told her enough that she knew this was what he
wanted to hear.

She’d made her first drain in Vegas before they
left. A college kid who was celebrating Christmas with a few of his
buddies and hoping to get lucky with a stranger or two during his
trip since he was scheduled to be married in a few months and would
no longer have his freedom. Some would say he deserved what he
got.

Tyr had listened from the closet as Freya took the
boy to bed, gave him a night to remember and then bled him dry. He
thought he’d get a sick joy out of it but instead it made him a
little sick. He didn’t feel good about killing anymore, and the
needless casualties when he’d broken into Loki’s club a few days
prior weighed on his conscience, but with Freya in particular he
could only think of the time she’d told him she couldn’t be a
vampire, she couldn’t be evil, she’d rather be dead. It made him
think he’d been selfish in giving her the gift of a second life.
Like so many humans do at Christmas time, he’d given her a gift
that was really for himself.

With her memory gone, she didn’t share the
sentiment. In fact, she enjoyed it on a level that made him even
more uncomfortable, the same way Loki enjoyed the kill. She’d
wanted more right away, and in the days that followed she’d found
new young men each night. She loved her new life, her new power,
and he had to push aside the guilt he felt each time she fed and
remember his only other option had been eternity without her.
Anymore he only felt alive when she was at his side, and the guilt
and shame he felt when she was feeding was worth it in exchange for
the happiness she brought him any other time.

As they stood on their perch with their fingers
laced, Tyr marveled at the profound comfort he felt in the
dismantling of a thousand-year-old Brotherhood.

Thor welcomed the new millennium in a small house in
Scud City, Nevada—a poor, worthless city of delinquents and
gangsters where he felt perfectly at home. Loki was a few cities
away at his Las Vegas mansion. Having cleaned up the club, he was
still waiting to reopen in the wake of the shooting, and in the
meantime he was back to living his usual life of parties and
bloodshed, sans the company of his Brothers. Both of them watched
the ball drop on television, in bed with dates for the night, and
they would be in bed with different women the next night. It was
the rockstar lifestyle Loki had adopted for them, and their
separation from one another accentuated the loneliness that came
with such a life. Though the despair had not entirely set in yet,
it was beginning to manifest itself.

Also watching the television broadcast alone in a
dark room was Jewel, who hadn’t seen Jonathan in a few days now.
The night he disappeared she’d worked her shift with a bright smile
on her face, bragging to her coworkers that her man was back, eager
to get home, to hear from him again, but she didn’t hear back. She
called hospitals and prisons looking for him before the phone
finally rang one night and he told her he couldn’t see her anymore,
that he loved her but life had pulled him in a new direction. He
was vague and sincere and ripped her heart to shreds. Now a few
days later, she told herself she’d get through it, that she didn’t
need him.

Some nights Heimdall watched her through the window
as she slept, or from across the street as she served fast food to
tourists. He thought of rushing to her, of taking her away with him
to a new city like he had done when they came to Vegas a lifetime
ago, but he knew he couldn’t. And he knew even if he tried, she’d
say no and he’d deserve it. He’d let her down. And as he watched
her each night and stopped himself from interacting, he thought the
reality of his eternal life was setting in.

This was the eye of the storm.

Jewel’s morning sickness hadn’t started yet and
she’d been too upset over the whole affair for the possibility of
pregnancy to even occur to her. Loki and Thor were still kidding
themselves they were fine to start new chapters of their lives
alone. All of them were under the false impression, as everyone is
from time to time, that peace could last.

The Butcher and Heimdall watched the New Year’s
broadcast together, and the Butcher explained that while he no
longer believed the world would end at the stroke of midnight, he
hoped 2000 would be the year when, at the very least, their species
was put to rest. He said he’d seen signs from the Bible and the
Augury and he believed a better time was approaching, that an end
was upon them.

But it was Tyr and Freya, hand in hand above Times
Square, who welcomed the New Year as the best of humans do, with a
healthy blend of realism and romanticism. They counted down with
the crowd as the ball dropped and people all over the eastern
United States welcomed the beginning of a new millennium. They
kissed on the rooftop as everyone else kissed in the streets and in
bars and in their houses.

“You know,” said Tyr. “I’m about a thousand years
old. Around now I’m beginning my second millennium of life.”

“Do you think it will be better than the first?”

“I think it will be harder… but yeah, I do.”

They put their arms around each other and looked out
at the city, down at the crowd of people, and they took it all in
with smiling faces. In a two-room suite two floors below them,
there were two dead people, one male and one female, decorating the
furniture. As comfortable as Freya might have been with it, it
didn’t make Tyr feel good. But he didn’t know what to do to change
it. For centuries, maybe millennia, humans would die so that he and
the woman he loved could be together.

Behind his smile as he looked out at the bright
lights with his beloved, he was harboring a guilt he’d never felt
before, but his smile was perfectly genuine. His happiness was the
product of denial, but it didn’t change the fact that it was
there.

Free Books or a Chopped-Up Dick

(a few words from the writer)

As of December 2013, I’ve been giving all my books
away for free. I do that partly to broaden my readership and partly
because I’d rather stick my dick in a blender than continue to be a
marketer. I’m an artist, not a businessman, and I’m turning away
from business and toward art. It’s sunnier in this direction.