by Greg Sisco
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.
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.
I don’t ask for much in return for the free books. Actually, I don’t ask for anything. But if you want to help me, here are some big ways I really appreciate:
LEAVE A TIP (GregSisco.com/TipJar): I think of myself as the writer equivalent of the street musician playing his music for the public with an open guitar case. If you think the book was worth it, and if you can spare it, I would hugely appreciate your dropping a little something in my online tip jar (GregSisco.com/TipJar). I can’t promise I won’t buy booze with it, but
you know that homeless guy you gave a buck to one time just because he had a funny sign? Well my sign was two-hundred pages long and had vampires in it. Is that worth anything? Some readers will no doubt scream “Get a job!” but, well… I was kinda hopin’ this could be it.
TELL THE WORLD: People are weird. They only read books if somebody says they’re good. It’s like, “Fuck you. Be an individual.” Anyway, one major way you can help me is to post ratings and reviews on whatever website you got this book from. Or mention it on your social media site of choice. Hey, you’re not even really spamming your friends if it’s free, right? Free stuff is awesome. Your friends are gonna love you. And me. And if you can’t afford to tip me, maybe they can. And then everybody wins. Fuckin’ ay! Technology and shit, right?!
BE A FRIEND: I invite anybody who enjoys my work to become my friend on my personal Facebook page (Facebook.com/TheGregSisco). Until recently, I had kind of a phony Facebook fan page, but I gave that up because it felt like it kept “fans” at arms-length. Fuck that. Come be my friend, bullshit with me about movies, enjoy my inappropriate drunk posts, and I’ll let you know whenever I’ve got something new coming (or you can just “follow” my page if you don’t want me seeing what you’re up to). I’m also on Twitter (Twitter.com/TheGregSisco) but I hate it and never use it. Facebook’s the best. I practically live there.
And finally…
READ MORE FREE BOOKS: If all this stuff sounds too tedious, expensive, or otherwise shitty, but you still liked the book, please consider reading another one. You’ll find an up-to-date list on my website (GregSisco.com/Books) with links to where you can read them for free, or just go back to the site you got this one from and search my name. They’re all free. Book three of Blood Brothers is still in the works as of this writing, but in the meantime, I recommend the standalone One-Night Stan’s. It’s my personal favorite.
