The Wages of Sin (Blood Brothers Vampire Series Book Two) (2 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I’m so… I’m
just so…” What fun it was to play seducer with such a meek
character.

“It’s okay,” she assured him, putting her arms
around him and resting her head on his shoulder. She kissed his
cheek.

Thor let her have it, that moment of human ecstasy.
He kissed her again and let his character throw all his inhibitions
to the wind. Finally a little of the real Thor took the stage and
they fell back onto the bedraggled sheets.

She kissed him. He was courageous and handsome and
wonderful and it was raining in his heart.

She kissed him. He was a beautiful blue-eyed angel
delivered by God.

She kissed him. He was the closest real life got to
the storybook hero.

He kissed her. She was sold.

No one would find the body out here for at least a
few days.

CHAPTER
TWO

“Where is she?” asked Loki.

“You didn’t need to come out here. I could have
taken care of this myself.”

“You’re my Brother and you’re a fuck-up. Of course
I’m gonna be here.”

It was true. Since Eva had come along, Tyr had
become the most sniveling, sorry excuse for a vampire the twentieth
century had seen. He’d been swearing for weeks he was hours away
from resolving it and now things were worse than any of them had
imagined they could get.

“You’re not going to do anything rash, right?”

“Tyr, it’s been a rash few months for all of us.
What you’re asking is if I’m going to do anything smart.”

“Well, are you?”

“Never.”

Tyr guided Loki up the stairs to the bedroom. He
thought of apologizing or attempting to explain himself, but it was
pointless. Nothing he could say would be anything more than noise.
Loki was his usual confident self and Tyr was more human than
vampire lately.

Outside the bedroom, Tyr said, “It can’t be for much
longer. She’s terminally ill and not doing too well.”

“Just open the door,” said Loki.

Tyr turned back to the door and pushed it open. Eva
was lying on the bed with one end of a chain around her feet and
the other end padlocked to the furnace. There was no fear in her
eyes, just a quiet, sad look of defeat.

“Jesus, Tyr,” Loki muttered.

Forty-eight hours earlier, Tyr told her what he was,
told her he was a thousand years old and he’d fed on humans for
centuries and he was in love with her. He’d shown her his soul and
she’d laughed in his face. He had to bite into her neck to save
face, drawing blood for an instant before pulling away fangs-bared
and bringing back repressed memories of the vampires who’d killed
her parents.

She became hysterical. She screamed and threw small
appliances and waved her arms like a turtle upside down.

Apology, he found, was futile, as was any
explanation he could conjure up. He’d meant to kill her when he bit
down, but as soon as the taste of her blood hit his tongue he
wanted to gag. The blood of a drain he’d denied himself so long
ought to have been all the more satisfying, but no, it killed him
to hurt Eva. He couldn’t let her die any way he could prevent, and
least of all by his own hand. Problem was, he’d ruined the
relationship as soon as he’d bitten her neck open.

As a poet might say, he had his dick between a belt
sander and a cattle prod. He was too emotionally weak to kill her,
but to let her go on living was… well, it was the belt sander.

For two days he’d had her tied up in the bedroom,
trying to backpedal his way out of looking like a maniac.

“I don’t want this to be how our relationship ends.
We’ve had such a good time together and—”

“You drank my blood!”

“I know. I fucked up and it was stupid, but I love
you. I really love you.”

Their first fight as a couple. It was bound to
happen eventually, but it was uncharted territory for Tyr. A
thousand years spent mastering psychology and language and he was a
rank amateur at resolving a lovers’ quarrel.

“I don’t believe you, Tyr. If you loved me I
wouldn’t be chained to a fireplace.”

“That’s just temporary. I’m going to make all this
better.”

“You can’t! You were about to kill me, you can’t fix
that!”

“It was a lapse in judgment, I’ve explained this. Am
I not entitled to a lapse in judgment? Can’t we just forget it
happened?”

Funny. She’d been mostly bedridden for days now,
with no more than a few weeks left of life—weeks that would be
spent doing little more than occupying space—and Tyr’s actions were
unforgivable? Humans could be so irrational about misunderstandings
that were so small in the scheme of things.

“You’re a vampire, Tyr! Do you realize how fucked up
that is?”

“I know, it’s crazy. I’m a thousand years older than
you, a higher species, and yet I’m in love with you. I can’t
explain it.”

“That isn’t what I’m talking about.”

Goddamn it. His whole psyche was
broken. The old Tyr could have gotten out of this mess in ten
sentences, convinced her they were role-playing or that by tying
her up he was somehow demonstrating her importance to him, but the
sentences coming to him were things like, ‘
I’ve killed over a hundred thousand women and you’re the
first one I ever didn’t want to do that to. That should tell you
how special you are.’
Maybe this was the
reason the Augury banned romantic relationships: because they made
you fucking stupid.

Eva lay down in the bed and surrendered.

She asked Tyr to kill her.

He said no.

She begged.

He still said no.

She begged for two days.

He called Thor and Loki.

“Am I going to become a vampire now?” asked Eva on
the ride to Loki’s place.

She was lying across the back seat with her head in
Tyr’s lap. The question had been on her mind for days but it was
the first time she’d asked.

“No,” said Tyr. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Because I couldn’t do it. I can’t kill people. I
can’t be evil like you.”

“You won’t. You won’t be one of us, ever. Even if
you wanted to, you couldn’t be.”

“I don’t want to be. I can’t be. I’d rather
die.”

“You will. And that will be it.”

“Good. Because that’s what I want.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

Loki shook his head as he drove. He felt like a
father driving a damn teenaged couple to high school. If Tyr’s
mental breakdown didn’t reverse itself soon, he was going to reach
his own breaking point. If he was a religious man, he would have
said a prayer the bitch would die fast, naturally or otherwise.

“It’s not worth it,” said Eva, “living forever and
being evil. It’s better to just die.”

Loki made a fart sound.

“I was good to you though, wasn’t I?” asked Tyr. “Up
until now.”

“It doesn’t matter. You do more evil than good. You
have to, to live.”

“It’s the way it has to be.”

“You ever read Nietzsche?” Loki cut in. “Man and
superman? All that shit? When you rise above the species, all bets
are off, babe. The life of humans doesn’t mean shit.”

“Calm down, Loki,” said Tyr, wishing it had been
Thor who’d shown up to drive them.

Eva said nothing. She’d never heard of Nietzsche,
but she didn’t care for vampire books.

“Why didn’t you just kill me?” she asked Tyr after a
moment. “Everything would have been so much better.”

“Good call,” said Loki.

“I can’t kill you, Eva. I don’t know why.”

They drove in silence for a while.

“Vampires killed my parents, you know.”

Tyr said nothing.

“Did you kill my parents?”

“No.”

Loki stared ahead. The whole thing was so sad. Not
so much the part about killing her parents, just the fact that he
had to lie about it. What a sad, sad conversation. He’d have to fix
Tyr, and soon.

CHAPTER
THREE

“Jesus Christ, man. I said I don’t know. What the
fuck do you want from me?” asked James Highmore after taking a
second staple to the thigh, making it five staples altogether.

This wasn’t the kind of stapler
that goes
chik-chik
either. It was the kind that goes
CLACK!
A heavy-duty compressed-air
gun a little bigger than an electric drill, loaded with one-inch
staples used for assembling furniture. No matter how into S&M
you are, your dick still goes limp when baby puts this bad boy to
your junk. This is not to mention the man on the other end of it
was, in this case, the kind of seven-foot bridge troll you don’t
want to be alone in a room with, pneumatic stapler or
otherwise.

“You’re the only lead I’ve got,” said the bridge
troll, “and until I’ve got another lead, I’m going keep putting
staples in your tender areas.”

“I swear to God, dude. I have no idea. I was fucking
her for like two weeks and it was months ago.”

James was twenty-eight years old with more tattoos
than braincells and a piercing for each chromosome—one too many.
The bridge troll was a man named Horace. He’d worked as a police
detective in Scud City years ago but he’d been let go after a few
months for being too aggressive, which in Scud City was a bit like
being kicked out of the NBA for scoring too many points.

CLACK!

“Aaagh! Please, dude. Stop. Please.”

This staple had been put where his thigh met his
groin, right where the pubic hair begins on a real man.

He was being pressed down on the hood of his car on
the third floor of a parking garage. He’d called out for help
immediately before the staple in his left nipple had been put
there, but needless to say it hadn’t played out well. He had a
knife in his pocket but you couldn’t have paid him enough money to
make a move for it. He’d never met this giant before but the fucker
had jumped him as he was unlocking the driver’s side door and the
bitch he was with had bolted. Probably for the best, considering he
was getting grilled about a chick he’d been banging on the
side.

“You knew her. So tell me about her. Who did she
know? Where did she go?”

“
I
didn’t
know
her, dude. I was just fucking her. What are you, her dad or
something?”

CLACK!

“Yes.”

“Aaagh! Fuck! Dude, stop! I don’t know what you want
me to say!”

“Where did you meet her?”

“I don’t know. Some fucking club.”

CLACK!

“What club?”

“Man, fuck you and your slut daughter! She sucked
m—”

CLACK!

“—aaagh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it, man. She never
did that for me.”

“Give me the name of a club.”

“What do you want from me, dude?”

Horace groaned in frustration. He unzipped James’
fly and shoved a hand inside.

“What the fuck? What are you doing, you freak?”

“This is really easy and you’re making it really
difficult. All I want is a lead.”

He came out of James’ pants with a relatively
enormous appendage that he didn’t want to imagine his little girl
having anything to do with. He was about to put the stapler to the
kid’s dick when he noticed the piercing in the fold of skin under
the head.

“Oh I see there’s a hole in there already. Let’s
just take this out, shall we?”

He pulled the piercing out. James howled and tears
were shed.

Horace pressed the poor bastard’s dick into his
abdomen, positioning the dispenser of the staple gun over his
urethra.

“Give me the name of a club!” He raised his voice
for the first time.

“You fucked up, man. I’m gonna fucking kill
you.”

“You have three seconds to give me the name of a
club or you piss like the Bellagio fountains for the rest of your
life.”

“Liquid Skin! Liquid Skin! Liquid Skin!”

Horace took the stapler away. “You make me ashamed
of my daughter. I cannot imagine what she saw in you.” He walked
away, leaving James lying on the hood of the car with his bloody
dick out. In a few moments, James regained his confidence as could
be expected of an idiot.

“She just wanted my dick, old man! Your daughter
liked to get fucked! And she sucked cock like a pro!”

Horace turned around and moved toward James again.
This time James pulled the knife. Horace grabbed him all the same,
pushed him against the car, and put a staple in his neck. The kid
spit blood and lost his balance and Horace took his knife away and
stuck it in his chest.

He turned to leave. If he really cared, there was an
off chance a few friends back in Scud could get it called
self-defense, but he didn’t give a damn to try. He didn’t give a
damn about much at all anymore. He’d been drinking himself to death
for months. Now, with his daughter murdered, he at least had one
purpose in life. If he could just find the guy who killed Samantha,
at least he’d know he did one thing right.

CHAPTER
FOUR

Five months maybe? More? Less? I should have paid
better attention to the date earlier on, really committed it to
memory. The gravity of things didn’t hit soon enough I guess.

As a writer you spend so much time trying to face
off against bullshit demons like writer’s block and rejection
letters, you shouldn’t bitch when a real demon kicks you in the
balls, locks you in a room, sets the house on fire and yells
‘write!’ so maybe I should shut the hell up.

Still, I haven’t seen Jewel, haven’t had a drink
with friends who weren’t violent criminals, haven’t had sex with a
woman in five months. I’ve barely left the damn room.

But oh, the booze nice. Good beer and great scotch.
All the cigarettes I can smoke. The bed is comfortable and the
women of Playboy make for about as fine a girlfriends as one can
hope to find outside of flesh and blood.