The Wages of Sin (Blood Brothers Vampire Series Book Two) (20 page)

“The Chosen don’t like this stuff. You try to
survive by yourself and one way or the other you’re going to draw
them here. Now to be honest with you, none of us know much about
that group and it’s not my place to say for sure whether they’d
kill a youngling with negligent parents who’s only trying to find
his bearings. Maybe they’d take you in and make something of you.
But in my opinion, more likely than that, they’d kill you and your
lady friend and wipe their hands of it. So you can see why I’m
sympathetic. You go it alone and you’ll get yourself killed, you go
with your masters and they’ll get you killed. It’s a tough place to
be.”

The Butcher gave a dramatic pause and Heimdall took
his cue. “What are you coming to?”

“I think you and I would get along. I heard your
conversation with Thor last night and I heard a lot of myself in
some of what you said. You’ve got morals. You’re a humanist. Those
are traits you don’t often see in our kind. Somebody like Loki
might say it makes you weak, but I say it has the potential to make
you just the opposite. You and I… we’re the anti venom.”

“Who are you?”

“No one important. Just another man who shares a few
of your views on morality.”

“You don’t kill?”

“I do, but not innocents. I kill for hire, and I
stick to murderers and thieves, the kind of people who do more harm
in the world than good. You can’t live without draining somebody at
least once a week, but you can choose who that one is.”

“And if I’d rather die?”

“Stand here till sunrise. Nobody’s stopping you. I
live by the Augury and the Bible. I do as much good as I’m able.
You want to die, that’s your business. I’m not here to pass
judgment.”

“The Bible?”

“That’s right. Envy, gluttony, wrath, sloth… not my
cup of tea. Under circumstances like ours, we have to amend ‘thou
shalt not kill’ but other than that it’s easy.”

“How did you find me?”

“I’ve been watching your Brothers for a long time.
They scare me. They’re the opposite of us. They have no moral code
at all.”

“Are you hunting them?”

The Butcher laughed. “How long has it been since you
fed?”

“A couple days.”

“It’s a nice night. Let’s walk.”

“That’s a knife you feel in your back. Don’t look at
me. Just take your wallet out of your pocket and pass it back.”

“Okay, man,” said Heimdall. “Don’t hurt me. Please.
Just let me get my wallet.” It wasn’t hard to act scared. He wasn’t
fully aware yet of his own strength and the moment still raised his
adrenaline the way it would a human’s.

He was in a back alley the Butcher had told him to
walk down. The two had been walking for at least an hour with the
Butcher continuing to dodge the question of his connection to the
Blood Brothers when they’d come upon the alleyway and the Butcher
seemed to sense something.

“Play the part of a sucker,” the Butcher had said.
“No matter what happens, act as a human would. I want to show you
something.”

It was an uninviting night in the city and the
streetlights lit nothing but the fog. The alley was dark and
narrow, providing a shortcut from a business district to a
residential area. Heimdall was halfway down it and the Butcher had
disappeared before a hand grabbed Heimdall from behind and
something sharp was pressed to his back.

“Come on, come on…” said the voice as he dug in his
pocket for his wallet.

Before he could withdraw it, the hand behind him
jerked away suddenly and a grunt was heard, followed by a scream.
When he turned to look, a man with a knife was being pressed
against the wall on one side of the alley and the Butcher had
bitten his throat.

The man’s screams became the quiet, frantic moans
the body makes in shock. The Butcher pulled away.

“Drink,” he said.

“I… This is… murder,” said Heimdall, but the smell
of the blood running down the mugger’s neck drew him subconsciously
nearer.

“Please,” said the mugger in the same tone with
which Heimdall had begged a moment ago. “Don’t hurt me. Let me go.
I swear I won’t do it again. This was my first time.”

Without thinking, Heimdall bit into his neck and
drank. Unlike his first drain at the club, this felt
semi-voluntary. He felt himself make the choice to bite the mugger.
And though the choice brought him shame at first, the more he
drank, the more the shame faded or became masked by purpose.
Drinking the blood felt right. It felt just.

“Let him go,” said the Butcher. “He’s dead.”

Heimdall let go of the man’s chest, not even
realizing he was holding him up, and the limp body landed on the
concrete in the alleyway.

The Butcher looked down at the blood stains on
Heimdall’s shirt and said, “Zip up your jacket. You’re a sloppy
eater.”

Heimdall obeyed and as they walked on the Butcher
said, “This is our blessing, and our curse. We are monsters,
killers, and we cannot live without bringing death. But we can
bring death to sinners as I do, or to the innocent as your creators
do. We can be angels or demons.”

“Angels? And kill people?”

“
My,
it
has
been a long time since you’ve read the Bible, hasn’t it? Yes,
we can kill for God, for good; or we can kill for ourselves, for
evil. The women who your brethren defile and bleed, do you believe
the world is a better place without them?”

“I believe the world would be a better place without
any of us,” said Heimdall, but he was less convinced than when he’d
said it earlier.

“And this thug? This man who makes his living by
coercion, threatening harm upon others, perhaps even visiting it?
Do you think the world is a better place without him?”

“I…” Yes. But he didn’t want to say it. “I don’t
think that is our decision to make.”

“Luckily for you, we don’t have to. Thou shalt not
steal. The Lord made it easy for us.”

“He also said thou shalt not kill.”

“We’re not His children. We’re the children of
Ofeigr. But we can be the Lord’s mercenaries. By living on the
consumption of evil we can become vessels to make the world
greater. ‘For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’”

“I don’t like this reasoning,” said Heimdall, but he
wasn’t convincing either of them. The truth was a part of him—nay
most of him—wanted to go kill another mugger right now, maybe a
murderer, a rapist, a politician.

“Someone whose belongings would otherwise have been
stolen tonight, who might have been killed, will instead come home
safely to her children,” said the Butcher with a warm smile. “This
is true of tonight, and tomorrow night, and on, and it is because
of what we did in this moment. This action, this just execution,
will echo in eternity. You say the world would be better without
us, but the world needs us. Until we reach a time when we are no
longer necessary, it needs us to push steadily in the direction of
our own obsolescence.”

Heimdall searched for an argument, but he couldn’t
find one.

“This is what killing looks like when it is done for
good, and what it leads to is a better world for God’s followers.
You’ve seen what killing looks like for evil, now let me show you
where evil leads.”

The Butcher turned out of the alley and Heimdall
followed. It was some time before he realized they were heading for
The Chupacabra.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

Eva had made a new person out of Tyr. New Tyr was
empathetic toward humans, sometimes even compassionate. He killed,
but he killed only to survive, and he no longer took joy in the
slaughter of humans. He saw the value in human life, and did his
best not to cause harm to the world.

This is who Tyr had been for a few months now, but
when the doors to The Chupacabra opened and Tyr and Loki met eyes
across the room, it wasn’t New Tyr who was entering the building,
not by along shot. It was Old Tyr. Medieval Tyr.

There were two bouncers out front, but they were
dead already and the crowd of people who were a moment ago waiting
to be approved to enter were running through the streets looking
for police and calling 9-1-1 from their cell phones.

Tyr had a sword in one hand and a semi-automatic
pistol in the other. He walked through the club stabbing and
shooting left and right until the crowd cleared. Somebody with a
concealed carry shot him in the chest and Tyr shot him back. Nobody
else made a stand. In thirty seconds it was only Tyr and Loki in an
empty club and there was a look of shock on Loki’s face Tyr hadn’t
seen in some time.

Tyr shouted across the room, imitating the voices of
young people, “‘You want to go to the Chupacabra?’ ‘Oh, isn’t that
the club where that maniac killed six people with a sword? Nah,
fuck it. Let’s go somewhere else.’”

The shock left Loki’s face and his car horn laugh
filled the room. He shook his head from side to side. “It sure is
good to see the old Tyr back. You may have fucked my business for
good, but goddamn is it good to see this side of you.”

“You’ve never seen this side of me, Loki.” Tyr fired
three shots at Loki, who winced and ran for cover behind the
bar.

Tyr ejected the magazine and loaded a fresh one.

“You plan on using that sword?” Loki called. “You’ve
got me at a disadvantage. Mine’s at home.”

“That was the idea, Loki. You had me at a
disadvantage when I was tied up in the basement and you killed my
Eva, but I found a solution. Maybe you can too.”

Loki had grabbed the gun they kept behind the bar
and taken the safety off, but he didn’t jump up and start shooting
after he heard Tyr’s esoteric statement. Instead he stood up and
said, “What does that mean, Tyr? What solution?”

Neither Tyr nor Loki spoke or fired. They both
turned to the front doors and there was a woman standing in the
club with them wearing a white dress that almost looked dark
against her pale skin. She looked vaguely like Eva, but not frail
or sick. There was no jaundice in her eyes, no weakness in her
bones. She stood as a healthy woman of twenty years stands, and the
most cynical of grins was on her face. She was holding a sword as
well. Loki’s sword.

“Hello, Loki,” she said.

“Tyr… What did you do?” That look of shock was on
Loki’s face again, along with something else. Terror. It was a
strange sight to behold.

“Meet Freya,” said Tyr. He shot Loki in the
head.

Loki dropped behind the bar again, clutching his
face. He laughed, but it wasn’t his standard
‘horror-is-funny-to-me’ laugh. It was the kind of laugh a person
laughs in defeat, just before death.

“Okay Tyr, you win. I have to hand it to you. I put
my picture in the paper and risked a good chewing out, but you just
risked the future of our whole fucking species. The dick-measuring
contest is over. You take home the blue ribbon.”

“We didn’t have to do it this way. You could have
backed off and let things take their course and none of this would
have happened.”

“Don’t put this on me. You turned her and if they
kill us all it will be because of you.”

“I’m right here,” said Freya. “Don’t talk about me
like I’m not.”

“Has Tyr told you the Chosen are going to kill us
all over you?”

Freya’s eyes sank.

“Don’t listen to him, Freya.”

“What’s he talking about, Tyr?”

She became frightened. Her memory only extended two
hours and she’d only started to feel comfortable thirty minutes
ago. It had been explained to her that there was a score to settle,
and she’d been instructed not to believe anything Loki said, but
this talk made her uncomfortable.

“Forget it. We’ll talk about it later.”

Freya held to her sword with both hands, standing as
near to the entrance as she could. Tyr had told her to keep her
distance, to kill Loki if he ran at her but otherwise to stay
back.

“You didn’t think ten fucking minutes ahead, did
you?” said Loki.

“Shut up.”

“Tyr, what’s happening?”

“He’s trying to turn you on me. Ignore him.”

“
As soon as her
eyes opened we became fugitives. Now they’ll kill us. You, me,
Thor, Heimdall, and especially your beloved
Freya
. We’re all marked
for slaughter, and you’re as dishonest with her in death as you
were in life. I almost hope the little lady
does
end our species just to teach
you a lesson, just so you can die knowing I was right. This was
your decision, Tyr. You’ve damned the five of us.”

“
No. No, Thor’s
gone. He left, sick of both of us, because he’s the only
responsible one left. And he tells me Heimdall’s gone too, so my
responsibility is to myself and myself alone. I risked myself to
give her a chance.
I
decide whether you have a chance.”

“When you die together strapped to bidets that shoot
Holy Water, I hope it will feel worth it.”

“Enough!”

Tyr ran at the bar with his sword leveled as Loki
rose and fired twice. Tyr was disoriented just long enough for Loki
to leap from the bar and make a run for Freya.

Freya readied her sword, but had no experience
fighting in her prior life or her current one and was no match for
the thousand-year-old barbarian coming toward her. He fired twice
at her stomach and when she buckled in pain, he grabbed the sword
and tried to pry it from her hand.

Tyr made a run for Loki, firing his handgun as he
approached and managing to catch him in the neck. Loki went down
and took Freya with him, still fighting her for the sword. By the
time Tyr reached them, Loki had managed to force Freya under him
and pull the blade out of her hands.

Tyr attempted to slice open Loki’s torso a moment
too late. Loki turned and parried the blade with the sword he’d
just acquired and jumped to his feet and faced his Brother.