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

by Greg Sisco

  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 wom
an 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.

  Feels like a contract gig for some Hollywood big shot, spending days and nights in a four-star hotel and always being told to keep typing. Like I’ve finally got that book deal I always wanted and my computer is sitting under the Sword of Damocles. Woe for those writers who fear mediocrity, who fear rejection from New York publishing houses and literary magazines. Let them show their work to a serial murderer each morning and pray he laughs at each account of his own vile escapades. Let them write about murders and robberies spanning a thousand years in which said psychopath insists he participated and pretend with smiling faces it’s all so plausible. Let them document the travels of this bizarre and terrifying man, then see if they’re bothered when their mothers think their next manuscript is ‘just so vulgar.’

  Fuck them and their prude mothers and petty problems. Fuck that version of me from six months ago.

  Me being me, I’m sure I’ve yet to acknowledge the precariousness of my situation on the level a smarter person would. I don’t know if I’ve got a real Jeff Dahmer locking me up here or just some schmuck with a thirst for fame. My hunch leans in favor of the latter, but better to err on the side of the former, better for the book and potentially for my health if I write like I believe.

  Doubtless, if I keep my intake of Vitamin Walker Black at the right level, I can stay productive and keep from wallowing. So bottoms up.

  I try not to wonder whether he’ll kill me when the book is done, when the club opens and his name is in magazines and newspapers all over the country and I have nothing left to offer him. I give myself fifty-fifty.

  Again, bottoms up.

  On an evening in mid-December—an evening when, unbeknownst to him, a terminally ill young woman was being moved into the bourgeois prison cell opposite his own—a man by the name of Jonathan Price wrote these words in his journal. The journal was something he kept to himself, since he considered himself a man’s man and was vaguely embarrassed at the decidedly feminine habit. The way vampires hate journals, Jonathan’s choice to keep it to himself may have saved his life, especially considering the secrets held within.

  Hearing commotion outside, he stuffed the journal into his desk drawer and made like he had been doing something productive. A minute later, the door opened.

  “Tyr, Jonathan. Jonathan, Tyr.”

  Jonathan stood up and offered his hand. Up until now he’d had his doubts as to whether Tyr was even a real person. He appeared in most of Loki’s stories and had allegedly been estranged since The Great Train Robbery of 1986—what everybody else called The Amtrak Massacre.

  Tyr shook Jonathan’s hand with what Jonathan took to be an expression of quiet hatred, the way one looks at a dog turd on his living room floor. To Loki, whose powers of observation were stronger, the expression was a confused and apprehensive one.

  “Jonathan is writing our story,” Loki told Tyr. “When the club opens, we’re going to put out a book, get our pictures on every magazine and news station. He’s gonna make us rockstars.”

  Tyr looked at Jonathan the way Jonathan looked at obnoxious drunks before slugging them in the face. Jonathan gave a goofy smile.

  “Loki. This is… This is irresponsible. Can’t you see how irresponsible this is?”

  “I didn’t kill your girlfriend; don’t you kill my dream.”

  Jonathan was less comfortable than usual. Loki talked of murder when he told stories, but the casual intonation of ‘I didn’t kill your girlfriend’ in combination with a blank look from Tyr felt a little more real than the story of an Old West massacre told in the first person by a man who couldn’t have been much older than thirty.

  “I’ll leave you two to get to know each other,” said Loki.

  Jonathan took a drink, edgier now than he had been a moment ago in the presence of the frightening stranger who’d taken an instant dislike to him.

  “So how the fuck are you?” Jonathan asked, trying to be friendly.

  Tyr poured himself a drink. “I’ve been better. How long have you known my Brother?”

  He and Jonathan took seats opposite each other and talked. It was to be the closest thing to a conversation between friends the two would have.

  Add Ammonium Hydroxide to Nitrobenzene and Allyl Sulphide (but wear gloves and a mask when you do it), mix it with Sodium Hydroxide and Trichloroethane and you get what vampires call Holy Water. This turns vampiric skin into a bubbling, gooey mess faster than any flamethrower—but keep your distance because it’s not doing you any favors either.

  Now take a drop or two and dilute it with LSD and phencyclidine and you get a little thing called Liquid Christ. It’s not easy to get a good buzz with a vampiric blood flow, so a vampire has to go balls to the wall if he wants his reality enhanced.

  If you want Loki’s patented variation on Liquid Christ, a little amalgamation by the name of Black Jesus, blend Liquid Christ with black tar heroin. For best effects, snort one line of coke with each nostril beforehand and chase it with a bottle of absinthe.

  Now you’re there. You’re where Loki and Thor were the night they met Jonathan.

  Liquid Christ will kill a human dead and isn’t advisable for anyone outside of a few 1970’s rockstars, but Jonathan had downed six shots of whiskey and eight beers and was operating on a similarly blurred plane of existence. He was medicating another rejected manuscript and consumed three beers fewer than he would have in celebration had the novel been accepted. Following his night of drinking, he had administered a self-breathalyzer consisting of rapidly exhaling into his hand with his mouth and inhaling through his nose. He deemed himself suitable for highway travel and headed home in his Station Wagon.

  Loki and Thor were blazing around the city in Thor’s silver Rolls Royce coupe, smoking cigars with the windows down and taking in the heat of the night. They drove as could be expected of coked-out vampires, taking corners too sharply and skidding their tires, running people off the road, and turning their headlights on and off at opportune moments to frighten other drivers.

  The pleasure cruise was short-lived before Thor found himself driving next to Jonathan on a two-way road. He inched in the direction of the Station Wagon to make his fellow late-night driver nervous. This had little effect on Jonathan’s alcohol-warped mind as his concentration was focused on the streetlights, blurring slightly as he passed each one.

  Thor closed the gap.

  The distinct and unambiguous sound of colliding vehicles rose in the night. Cracking fiberglass and thumping metal. The bang of finely-crafted products demolishing one another. That unmistakable sound as clear as pain, like an alarm to be sure the world is aware that what is happening was not meant to happen. A few sparks illuminated Loki’s malicious, laughing face through the open passenger window. Thor pulled away from the Station Wagon, opening the gap again.

  Jonathan struggled for breath. He was in an accident, which instinct told him was almost certainly his fault. His self-breathalyzer had malfunctioned and he had nobody to sue but himself.

  He stepped on the brake pedal. The wheels on the Station Wagon locked and the rubber burned. Tires screamed on the asphalt skating rink like kittens in boiling water.

  Thor pumped his brakes to stay behind the Station Wagon as it spun out, doing his best to blind Jonathan with his headlights and give the vampires a view of the silly human scrambling anxiously for control, twisting his steering wheel blindly in either direction, his face a mask of terror and self-loathing.

  The cars made contact again.

  The Station Wagon spun faster, danced the dance of a drunken preteen until one end caught the driver’s side of the Rolls and sent it careening off the street. Loki lost his cigar out the window, grabbing for it vainly as it went. The Station Wagon came to a stop perpe
ndicular to the two lanes of the road it filled.

  Thor and Loki climbed out of the Rolls, which had come to a less-than-gracious stop against a birch tree, and Loki lit a new cigar.

  “Nice driving, Sherlock,” he said to Thor, which would have been an odd thing to say had they been sober.

  Jonathan was gasping for breath, swearing profusely and subconsciously. He tried to assess the situation, to come back from the adrenal blackout. He was broke, new to town, unemployed, did not have a publishing contract, and already had made the first ‘life’ mistake of his new Las Vegas life. He would be made to either spend time in jail or pay a fine he couldn’t afford. His out-of-state license was as good as gone.

  A fist full of jewelry was knocking on the window next to his head. The man from the other car. Shit. Were they all right? What was next?

  Get it together, Jon. Sort out the catastrophe first, worry about the lifelong repercussions in a moment. Baby steps.

  Loki and Thor stepped back, having a guess what was coming. Jonathan fumbled with the door, swung his feet out, and looked up at his victims.

  “Are you—” he began before his esophagus tightened. A stew of bar food and partially digested alcohol formed a lagoon around his shoes in two bursts, the first one short only in comparison to the second.

  “I’m sorry, was that a question?” Loki smiled around his cigar.

  “Is everyone all right?” Jonathan asked, coughing and spitting up the rest of what had caught on his teeth.

  “Everyone except her. What’s her name?”

  “What? Who?”

  “Your car.” Thor smiled.

  “Huh?”

  Loki laughed. “No fuckin’ name!” He was higher than Thor.

  “A car ought to have a name. Otherwise who cares if she gets hurt? Who is she?”

  Jonathan blinked. “Oh. No name. She’s a piece of shit.” He forced a laugh.

  “Well, she fucked up MacBeth.” Until now the Rolls had never had a name.

  “I… I’m sorry, uh… I have insurance.”