The Wages of Sin (Blood Brothers Vampire Series Book Two) (4 page)

“You don’t know anybody here?”

“I hardly knew anyone in Idaho.” He gritted his
teeth before he finished. “But here I am utterly alone.”

Jonathan looked down Thor’s gun-barrel. In his mind
he could see all the way through the blackness and into the
chamber. He could see the bullet, the primer, the firing pin locked
in place by the hammer just behind it. He could see the pin leaping
forward, sparking the primer, igniting the miniature firework in
the brass shell and propelling the lead forward, the hollow tip
spinning toward him, drilling through his eye and into his brain,
continuing its own journey as his ended on the upholstery. He saw
it all and waited for it to happen.

But it didn’t.

Loki put his hand on Thor’s gun and pushed it down.
They smiled. Thor didn’t know the plan yet as Loki’s mind was mad,
but his thoughts were never boring.

“I like you,” said Loki. “Let’s go for a ride. I
want to tell you some ideas I have.”

Jonathan swallowed and struggled to keep his fluids
in his body as the three of them climbed into MacBeth. They backed
away from the tree they’d parked against and rode the curb until
they passed the nameless Station Wagon.

A sober Loki would have known Jonathan was lying
when he said he had no acquaintances, and Jonathan would have died
on the side of the road and many lives would have been saved. But
Loki was not sober and the lives would not be saved. Black Jesus
works in mysterious ways.

CHAPTER
FIVE

Loki should have paid better attention to Jonathan’s
e-mail.

As Jonathan put together Loki’s autobiography, he
did research into each historical era via the Internet. Loki had
supplied him with a computer and a modem, trusting the guy because
he wanted to trust him.

Had Jonathan asked for the Internet as a ploy to
gain access to e-mail, Loki no doubt would have seen the subtle
tells in his expressions, but the fact was Jonathan had made the
request innocently, genuinely feeling he could not ghostwrite
Loki’s book without the Internet. The use of e-mail was a thought
which occurred later.

Despite friendly behavior from his captors, Jonathan
remained terrified of them. So it was only when he was sure the
Brothers were out of the house that he logged into AOL and e-mailed
Jewel.

The first one had been the hardest. He was fairly
certain there were no cameras recording his behavior but he wasn’t
technologically savvy enough to be sure whether Loki could track
his use of the computer. A few times he’d started to write e-mails
and decided against it before sending them.

When he finally did send the first message, after
drinking most of a bottle of Johnnie Walker to find his nerve and
thereby impairing his ability to write anything of value, he sent
this e-mail:

SUBJECT: Hello…

MESSAGE:

Dear Jewel,

I am sorry I haven’t contacted you sooner. The night
I disappeared I was in a car accident and got kidnapped by psychos
who think they’re vampires. They want me to write a book about them
and they have me locked in a room in their house.

I am probably risking a lot to send this, but I need
you to know I’m okay. Are you okay? Please reply.

-Jon

This was the reply he received:

SUBJECT: WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!

MESSAGE:

Are you serious, Jon? You talk me into moving to
this shitty fucking city then disappear and leave me unemployed and
broke and now that I’m about to get kicked out of the apartment you
tell me you’re being held hostage by vampires and forced to write a
book??? I knew you were crazy but I didn’t know you were that
fucking cruel! What did I do to deserve this?

I called hospitals and prisons, I filed a missing
persons case. I’ve been going out of my mind worrying, I can’t
sleep at night, I break down and cry without warning because I
don’t know what happened to you, but it’s good to know you were
just kidnapped by book-loving vampire fans.

You’re an asshole.

Fuck you.

It was not the reply he was hoping for, but when he
went back and reread the e-mail he had sent, it felt like the
appropriate response. He tried again, slightly less inebriated,
with this:

SUBJECT: I’m so sorry.

MESSAGE:

Hi.

Let me try this again.

I had to drink a lot in order to write that e-mail
because I’m afraid I could be killed if I am caught. I should have
left out the part about the delusions of my captors because it’s
obviously overwhelming.

I was in a car accident with two people who took me
at gunpoint and locked me in a house. They did this because they
found out I was a writer and they want a biography written. These
are insane men with severe mental issues of whom I am
terrified.

If you believe me, do not get the police involved.
I’m afraid it would only increase the danger I’m in.

Are you okay? I don’t want to hurt you. If you would
just tell me you are going to be okay I would sleep better at
night.

It’s tough here. I don’t know if they’ll kill me
when I finish the book. I wish I could see your face again. I’m
sorry for everything.

I love you.

-Jon

Jewel didn’t reply. She didn’t reply to his next six
or seven e-mails either as he begged for forgiveness over the
following weeks. About three months after his imprisonment began,
Jewel sent him her second and final e-mail. It read as follows:

SUBJECT: Goodbye.

MESSAGE:

Jon,

I wasn’t going to bother replying to you but I think
the man I knew once deserved it and if he’s still there somewhere
then this is for him.

I should begin by saying I don’t believe a word
you’ve told me over the last few months. I don’t know what has
happened to you but you have caused me a lot of pain and I can’t
understand why. I’m not asking for an answer, and I’d rather not
speak to you anymore, but I did want to say goodbye.

You’ve asked repeatedly whether I’m okay, whether I
have someplace to live, whether I’m working, and whether I went
home. You don’t deserve a response, but I’ll give one. I took a
minimum wage job flipping burgers at Wendy’s and I’m living with
two girls I found in a classifieds ad. I’m writing this message
from a public library.

The life I’m living isn’t the one you promised me
when you talked me into moving here, but its as fair a one as most
of us get and at least its mine. If you’re genuinely worried about
me, rest easy knowing I’m stronger than you seem to think I am.

I don’t want to have this conversation anymore and
I’m not interested in hearing anything else from you. Everything
you say now hurts me, so please stop. I’m writing this e-mail to
give us closure. I loved you once, but I don’t anymore.

Thank you for two beautiful years. You were
wonderful back then and maybe I never made that clear enough, but
I’m glad we got those perfect years.

I don’t think there’s anything else to say.

Goodbye, Jon. Take care. Pull yourself together.

-Jewel

Jonathan read that e-mail at least
a hundred times, committed it to memory, right down to the
forgotten apostrophe in the word
its
. He cried over it. He printed it
out, folded it up, and stuck a copy in his diary and he felt like a
fourteen-year-old girl.

But he didn’t reply. He gave her that much. This
remained the final piece of discourse between the one-time lovers
until the night The Chupacabra opened.

CHAPTER
SIX

“Friends. My name is Loki. And I am… a vampire.”

As soon as The Chupacabra opened on Christmas Eve,
Loki more or less started pissing in the face of Ofeigr and the
Augury and beckoning the Chosen to give him their best shot.

The crowd roared as Loki bared his fangs on stage
and the spotlights whirled around him.

Tyr and Thor were in the back of the room next to
Jonathan, who had been allowed to come along since the opening
night was the kind of thing worth writing about for magazine
articles and Loki’s autobiography. It was the first time he’d been
out in public in months and he was tempted to run like hell and see
if he could find a cop before the Brothers caught up to him.

“The fuck is he doing?” asked Tyr, but Thor seemed
to shake it off without much trouble. Loki had insisted up until
the last minute that the club would be a legitimate business and
nothing more. They’d been open less than an hour and already he was
onstage breaking the rules as blatantly was possible to do without
impregnating patrons or turning the women.

“You’ve heard of us in the papers,” said Loki.
“That’s Tyr and Thor back there. Thor’s a hundred years old and Tyr
and I are a thousand. We picked up our names terrorizing Vikings in
the eleventh century. We’ve robbed trains, stormed castles, we saw
the bombs fall on Germany at the end of World War II. We watched
Guy Fawkes drawn and quartered. We’ve seen Shakespeare in its first
run. We’ve been backstage with Elvis and watched Cole Porter
perform in Paris. If it happened in the last thousand years, we
were there.”

Tyr handcuffed Jonathan to a table and beckoned Thor
to come with him.

“Today we stand before you the product of a thousand
years of human history,” Loki continued. “We’ve taken the bodies
and blood of a hundred lifetimes’ worth of the most beautiful women
the world has had to offer and today we’re giving something back.
We are the Blood Brothers. Welcome to The Chupacabra.”

Cue the music.

“Are you ready to die again over this club? Because
I’m not,” Tyr said to Thor in the alleyway outside.

“What are you on about?”

“Everything Loki has told me up to this point has
been about how he wanted to quietly push in the direction of fame.
Now I find out he’s got a writer working on releasing his whole
autobiography, he’s on stage showing his fangs to the crowd—this
isn’t a gradual push, it’s an all-out war with the Augury. If
there’s anyone watching—I mean, Ofeigr or otherwise—it’s a death
wish.”

“Tyr, man, it’s really time to quit being a pussy. I
don’t know what’s come over you with this human love all of a
sudden, but you’ve got to let it go.”

“This isn’t about that, at all. Between you and me,
you know I don’t believe any of that Chosen shit. The Augury,
Ofeigr, it’s all a ruse to keep guys like Loki at bay. But there’s
a reason for all of it and it’s because as soon as humanity knows
we’re out there, they forget about all their little squabbles and
we become the enemy. It doesn’t take Ofeigr to enforce that; it
just takes a few smart vampires to keep an eye out for guys like us
who are being stupid.”

“Loki says they like the idea. He says they’re
behind him.”

“Yeah, on the word of the Butcher? I swear, that
fucker wants his whole species extinct.”

“What are you suggesting? Mutiny? Burning the place
down? You with your human girlfriend?”

“I told one person what I am and she’s an orphaned,
terminal cancer patient who’s in love with me. Loki just screamed
it to a crowd. You can’t see the difference?”

“She believes you—that’s the difference. Every last
one of those idiots in the club thinks Loki bought a pair of
forty-dollar canines at a costume shop. This girl of yours believes
beyond any doubt that you are what you say you are. Yeah, I see the
difference. Do you?”

“
I’m getting
sick of admitting I’ve done a stupid thing. I know it, you know it,
Loki knows it. It’s out there. Now, are we all aware of how
stupid
Loki’s
being, or is it just me?”

“To them he’s some guy running club. That’s
all.”

“
No, to them
he’s some guy running a club who claims he’s a vampire. And when
the book comes out he’ll be some guy running a club
who’s
obsessed
with being a vampire. And after a year of speeches like the
one he just made he’ll be a clinically insane guy who
believes
he’s a vampire.
And soon, maybe very soon, when he inevitably starts picking his
drains from the customers at the club who worship him and they all
start disappearing, he’s going to be an insane guy who believes
he’s a vampire and is under investigation for murder. That’s when
the more open-minded people start to go along with him and it’s
when the media gets more involved than they already are. Police
want to bring him in for questioning. All of a sudden it’s a
clusterfuck, and we both know Loki won’t stop until it’s a
clusterfuck,
if then
.”

“Watch that slippery slope, Tyr. It’s a doozy.”

“Do you disagree? Does he really have you convinced
or are you just pissed at me?”

Thor sighed. “Go back to your girlfriend, Tyr.”

Tyr took his advice. Thor went back into the
club.

“Awesome club, but aren’t vampires, like, so 1985?
Near Dark was, like, a long time ago, dude.”

Thor was seated with Loki, Jonathan, and a drunk
girl in her early twenties named Vivienne whose hands were all over
Loki.

“I agree. We’re due for a comeback, aren’t we,
babe?” said Loki with a grin.

Vivienne blushed and gave Loki that look girls had a
habit of giving Loki thirty minutes before they were dead.

“Loki,” said Thor. “Maybe we should check out that
other new club opening tonight, get a feel for the
competition.”

There was no other club opening, but watching Loki
interact with the girl, Thor suddenly had a sick feeling. Loki had
said a dozen times they wouldn’t be picking drains from the
club.

“You’re gonna leave your own club?” asked Vivienne,
pouting.