by Greg Sisco
“Come back to me, Eva,” he said. “Come back to me, love.” He sliced into his arm with the sword and his blood ran down the silver blade.
“Eva. Freya. Come back to me.”
He buried the blade in her heart.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Heimdall wasn’t lying next to Jewel when she awoke. She came out of the bedroom clad in a robe crossing her fingers she’d find him in the apartment but it was only Gretchen she found in the living room. She was about to ask when Gretchen spoke.
“Hey, how much did you and Romeo drink last night?” she asked with a pissed off roll of her eyes.
“We didn’t drink.”
“Whatever you say. He’s passed out in the tub if you’re looking for him.”
When the first traces of morning light came into the bedroom as he lay sleepless next to Jewel, Heimdall had felt sick on a level he’d never felt. He’d spent the morning in the bathtub with the lights off, curled up under a towel. He’d been stupid to come here. The sun wanted him dead. In the dark of the bathroom he felt as safe as he could get.
He’d been there a few hours before Gretchen stumbled in and found him there. He’d refused to get out to let her use the shower or the toilet but made no mention of the fact that leaving the room would kill him. He’d only said “I can’t,” what felt like a hundred times until she stormed out, and he couldn’t speak for anything that happened after that. He hadn’t heard from the other roommate yet, but he wasn’t off to a good start with Gretchen.
He hid under his towel and behind the shower curtain when Jewel entered, lest any light spill into the bathroom and set him ablaze. She felt his forehead and tried to check his pulse, and he confessed he’d become a vampire. Having not witnessed the remarkable recoveries by Loki and Thor following the stabbings, Jewel was not keen to believe her boyfriend’s story and instead ventured that he had probably been drugged or caught a fever after all the stress he’d been through. She suggested he see a doctor or at least return to bed, and she insisted he at least leave the apartment’s one shared bathroom, but following a solid hour of loud and rather judgmental discussion, she agreed to let him sleep in the bath until the sun was down.
He never showed her his teeth. The poor girl didn’t need that image.
Gretchen and Ellen were harder to convince than Jewel, and Jewel was the one who had to do the convincing. Gretchen was the less welcoming of the two, and even threatened to call the police and have him removed for trespassing, but Ellen stepped in and calmed her down from there.
“We’ll give him a few hours, but after that he leaves and he doesn’t come back. If you want to see him again, you go to his place.”
“Um… he doesn’t actually… He might need to stay here for a few days to figure things out.”
“Jesus, Jewel, are you fuckin’ nuts. Homeboy’s a fuckin’ junkie, all right?”
“He’s just really sick.”
“He’s having fucking withdrawals, girl. I’ve seen this shit before. He’s not worth your time and me and Ellen don’t want him in the fuckin’ house.”
This line of conversation went on between the three of them for most of the day until Ellen left for work, and then it continued with just Gretchen. No middle ground had been reached when the sun went down and Heimdall came out of the bathroom with a clean bill of health and a bounce in his step, a ball of clichés like the bad writer he’d always been.
Gretchen screamed at him to leave and he eventually ceded, fearing the cops might soon arrive on a noise complaint. Jewel offered to call in to work so they could figure things out together but Heimdall was adamant she go. He told her he’d find a solution and give her a call soon, and it took tremendous persuasion before she would willingly part with him again. He walked her to the bus stop and kissed her goodbye and when he arrived back at his parking space in the apartment complex there was somebody standing against his motorcycle.
Whoever he was, he wasn’t a person. There was a face, a figure with a body who was breathing, but he wasn’t human. Something about the absence of emotion on his face told Heimdall this being, this thing, was at least Loki’s age if not older.
“Heimdall they’re calling you—your Brothers, anyway. The newspapers prefer The Vegas Vampire, which isn’t very clever either. You might tell me no, your name is Jonathan, but let’s not dwell on names. They don’t matter. I don’t have one. Those same papers call me Butcher, but you can call me what you like.”
“Are you… one of The Chosen?”
“No, I’m not. But your fears are in the right place and that’s good to know. I’m not sure whether you’re aware just how deep the shit is you’re standing in should you sink, so I’m just going to talk for a while and you listen.
“You’ve been born into a raw deal. You’re the vampire equivalent of a baby conceived by parents who hate each other and think a child will bring them closer together. Parents like that are shit to begin with, but in your case it happens that Mommy and Daddy are also on the America’s Most Wanted list, so your situation’s worse than most. You go along with your so-called Brothers and your second life will be shorter than your first. Give it time—I don’t know how much, but not much—and Tyr and Loki will either kill each other or The Chosen will kill both of them. If you’re there when they burn, you die too and that’s a fact.
“Unfortunately you’re also a newborn, and a week-old emancipated minor doesn’t stand much of a chance in any city, let alone Vegas. So you’re fucked in that regard as well. What did you do all day, hide out in a cupboard?”
“A bathtub.”
“Did you tell your girlfriend you’re a vampire?”
“She didn’t believe me.”
“She won’t. But on day three of hiding in the tub she might just go behind your back and call an ambulance and how are you going to explain to them why you can’t leave the bath? Maybe she’ll have you removed thinking she’s helping to get you some treatment and then somebody comes to take you by force. Or how about a week from now when you’re starving to death and you bring home a hooker and kill her in your bed? Methinks the little lady might call the police after that, and how many of them do you think you can kill before things get ugly? Before you’re on the evening news and everyone in the country has seen your face?
“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.”<
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“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.”
