by Greg Sisco
On this day it was Thor and Loki duking it out. Loki with a mace and Thor with a flail, they pounded at each other’s immortal flesh over and over, each pulverizing the other’s face and spilling blood on the walls and floor. Tyr sat back, drinking from a glass of apple brandy and watching the others grunt and wince and scream.
By the end, Loki was on his knees and Thor had wrapped the silver chain of the flail around his neck, pulling it tight and pushing his head forward into the chain with his foot. While Loki’s body didn’t require him to breathe, the neck was a particularly sensitive area, especially to silver—a substance that tended to burn a little on contact as well as diminishing their strength and leaving them feeling weak and powerless. Much like garlic, its effects were often exaggerated in stories, but there was certainly a reaction. Thankfully these beliefs had taken a seat behind crosses, holy water, and stakes to the heart, which did jack shit unless it was the kind of Holy Water to which humans didn’t have access.
Loki tugged and grasped at the chain and tried to swing back at Thor, who forced his neck forward with even greater force into the silver chain until Loki gave up and tapped his hand repeatedly on the floor. Thor let Loki loose and he fell forward, grabbing at the marks on his neck. There were bleeding wounds all over both vampires, but they’d be gone in a minute or two.
Thor stood over Loki and looked down.
“You gotta learn to move faster, boss. Don’t think so much.”
Thor had been acting a little strangely the past few days, projecting a subtle but unmistakable hostility towards Loki. The reason behind this was something neither Loki nor Tyr had called to attention as the they could see it was insubstantial and would come to pass in time. They ignored it, never drawing the connection that the feeling had stemmed from last week when they had dropped into a theater at midnight to watch The First Great Train Robbery.
Loki pulled himself together, pressing his hand to the floor and getting back to his feet.
“Hell of a fight, Thor. You’re getting pretty strong.” He walked to the bar and poured himself a glass of scotch. He drank it quickly, opening his throat and letting it burn as it flowed down in one long gulp.
“I’m serious,” Thor told him. “If you weren’t so hyper-analytical you’d be better at acting. It’s like they say. You talk the talk, I walk the walk.”
This didn’t ring true to Loki or Tyr. Tyr was the hyper-analytical one. Loki was a loose cannon, typically acting too quickly, if anything. Something was up.
“The fuck are you building to, Thor?” Loki asked with a smile. “Do you want something from me?”
“I’m just saying that if I were in charge, we’d get more shit done. We wouldn’t talk about things and never get around to them. Train robbery, anyone?”
Tyr laughed. Loki rolled his eyes.
“Hey, Tyr and I robbed trains before you were around. I’ve been on train robberies. You just had the shitty luck of being born at the end of the era. Nobody robs trains anymore.”
The room fell silent. An idea was quietly formulating in all of their minds.
“Security’s better these days,” Tyr said. “And they don’t ship to Fort Knox or anything anymore. I don’t know what you would take.”
“Passenger train,” Thor said instantly.
Loki and Tyr looked at one another and smiles appeared on their faces.
“Commence the plans,” shouted Loki. “Tonight we commit The Great Train Robbery of 1986!”
The Great Train Robbery of 1986 was not as great in outcome as it had been in their imaginations, and by the next morning Loki was throwing Tyr across the clubhouse and knocking over the table.
“You call yourself a vampire?” He shouted as Tyr flailed his body around, overwhelmed with fear and fury, trying to defend himself as he was sent sprawling across the room.
Thor was motionless in a corner, watching the quarrel with a disturbing lack of emotion.
“There was no need for it, Loki! She was six years old!”
Tyr broke a bottle out of the air with his hand as Loki lobbed it at him.
“There’s no need for any of them, damn it!” Loki was irate, tossing furniture and breaking appliances as he ranted and screamed. “We are gods! You are God! God kills indiscriminately! Thou wouldst let her suffer juvenescence, come into her being, develop to her prime, and pluck her from the Earth when she is ripe for all its givings; yet thou wouldst refuse feeding on the seed from which thy victuals bloom? Pronounce it fiendish to spare these fucks the barbarism of their youth and yet rejoice in slaying them at an age of wisdom with merit to offer their world? What the fuck is wrong with thee?”
It was characteristic of Loki and Tyr to sometimes slip out of character in times of rage or loss of self-control. When they became excessively angry, the times did not register and vocabularies from different periods would blend together, usually leaving Middle English as the front-runner as it was what they had spent most of their time speaking.
“Thy throne hath tainted thy head, Loki!” Tyr shouted. “Thou art a fool! Thy ways have become dysig and thou art shunning The Augury!”
“Shunning it?” Loki kicked a chair across the room. “The times are changing and the world changes with them! The Augury itself hath become dysig and thou hast stooped to its level and become a coward, you fuck!”
“Oh, fuck you, Loki. You use The Augury as a weapon to do your bidding and disregard whatever passages don’t suit your needs.”
Tyr stormed toward the door. There was still an hour or so before sunrise. He could find another place to stay today. At sunset he could leave town and wait for this to blow over.
Loki grabbed him from behind and hurled him to the floor.
“Let’s not forget who’s led us this far.”
“And for what reason am I to call thee master? That you came to me and used my device to kill our true master? I built this house as much you!”
Tyr got to his feet and pulled a spear from the wall, which he swung in Loki’s direction. Loki grabbed his mace from the floor and narrowed his eyes.
“Are you sure you want to play it this way?”
Tyr swung again, gashing Loki’s side but not doing any real damage. Loki rushed him, getting in close and rendering the spear useless before striking Tyr’s head and sending him reeling to the floor. He loomed over his kid Brother, pummeling his skull with the mace, cracking at the bone and tearing apart the skin so blood was pooling already beneath his head.
Tyr raised his spear vertically to parry a blow from the mace, angling it downward so it struck the floor. As he did this, he kicked one of Loki’s feet out of place and dropped him to one knee. Loki’s knee hit the floor just as Tyr brought up his free hand and clutched Loki’s neck. He pulled him down, pressing his foot into Loki’s stomach and forcing him upward, propelling him into a somersault to land on his back inverted to Loki. Each took a moment to get to his feet.
Loki raced at Tyr again and Tyr raised his spear in a bid to stick it in Loki’s chest. Loki struck the spear with his mace, once again getting in close to Tyr and readying his backhanded swing. Tyr caught this blow with his free hand and pounded his foot into Loki’s stomach, dislodging the weapon from his hand. This time it was Tyr who swung with the mace, striking the side of Loki’s head and sending him stumbling into the wall of the bar.
As Loki turned to face Tyr, Tyr drove the spear through his stomach, out his back, and into the wall, sticking him there in intense, bristling pain.
Loki cursed and screamed, pulling vainly in his weakened state at the silver shaft protruding from his torso. Tyr looked down at the mace in his other hand. For a moment he envisioned himself raising the weapon and striking repeatedly until he knocked Loki’s head off his body and resolved the dispute permanently, but before he had time to follow through with the fantasy Thor put his hand on the mace.
“That’s enough,” he said, using his other hand to pry open Tyr’s fingers and slip the mace away from him. “Do what you
will, but leave him alone.”
There was a profound silence. Tyr and Thor looked into each other’s eyes without the slightest indication of judgment from either of them. Loki just watched wide-eyed and with gritted teeth, displaying an overflow of emotion.
But nothing happened. Tyr looked up at Loki one last time, then turned to face the door, not looking back at the Brother he was in the process of disowning or the one who had just stopped him from murdering the former. He reached the door and walked out, shutting it behind him.
A moment after he was gone, Thor pulled the spear out of Loki’s chest and handed him a drink.
For thirteen years, the only two Blood Brothers who were siblings by birth had not spoken or stood in a room together. But that was about to change.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
While Tyr and Thor were still confabulating atop the scale model of the Eiffel tower across the street, Loki was arriving back at his suite with an actress on his arm.
The show had been entertaining, especially for the fact that its plot had been completely unfounded. There was often tremendous humor in the shows where vampires were slain by humans. As far as Loki was aware such an event had never once occurred in history, and it was comical to see it played out time and time again in the minds of these self-righteous two-legged animals so overindulged with spunk. ‘Anything’s possible,’ they often told one other. Silly assholes. Half of them couldn’t afford the drugs they were addicted to.
In the play, Betsy—who was now getting undressed in front of Loki—had played a young English maiden of the mid-1800s who is kidnapped by vampires who wish to summon forth an ancient spirit from her body. Her true love hears of this and comes to her aid, fighting off the vampiric pussies with crosses and getting the drop on them while they sleep in unguarded coffins. The young man gives his life to save the maiden as he defeats the last of the evil creatures and when she is emotionally unfit to destroy him, he makes her a vampire. It was mostly a Dracula rip-off with needless displays of female nudity and exaggerated violence and therefore was a joy to watch.
Loki had picked Betsy as his drain because of her petite build. Just shy of five feet tall and no more than ninety pounds, she could fit easily into his suitcase so disposing of the body wouldn’t be a chore. After a good fifteen minutes helping her to chip the tile on the walls of the shower, he covered himself in a stream of blood from her neck that sprung forth with all the vibrancy of the fountains at the Bellagio down the street. The dual showerheads did more than enough in the way of cleaning the mess and Loki left the water running over the body as he stepped out of the shower to embrace the night.
With only a bath towel draped from the back of his neck, he stepped into his room to be greeted by a familiar face. The man was sitting on the edge of the bed with his legs crossed and resting his hands on his knees, a determined smile on his face. They hadn’t spoken since Nazi Germany, but Loki recognized him immediately from the meeting years ago and from the police sketches in the papers.
“Butcher,” he said cheerily, grabbing a bathrobe from the bed while ostentatiously positioning his crotch as close to the Butcher’s face as he could. “What brings you to my personal space?”
The Butcher rolled his eyes. “I hear tell you bought some property a few blocks off the Strip.”
“And what do you know about that?” Loki cocked his head to one side.
“Oh, I know you’re planning on opening your own little club out there, and I just thought I’d take it upon myself to let you know that word’s getting out.”
“Word’s getting out?” Loki gave a derisive snicker. “Maybe that’s because I published a story in the fuckin’ Chronicle.”
The Butcher laughed, “I know. I know you did. I just wasn’t sure you were aware that The Chosen were discussing what’s to be done with you.”
“The Chosen?” Loki said derisively. “What fuckin’ Chosen? Mr. ‘I know all the secrets of Ofeigr’ has suddenly got a job working for the big man himself?”
Loki lit a cigar and held one out to the Butcher, who took it graciously.
“No, Loki, I’m the same as I always was. A lone wolf roams freely among all the other packs. And I know some of The Chosen well enough to hear the gossip.”
“Alright, I’ll bite.” Loki said, blowing smoke in the Butcher’s face. “What’re The Chosen planning to do with me?”
“Well, if you play your cards right, and I know you’re a hell of a player…” he took a moment to strike a match and light the end of his cigar before he looked up, eyes reflecting the embers through the cigar smoke. “There’s talk of making you a member.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The next night at Cirque Du Soleil with Eva, all Tyr could think about was killing her and burning her in the incinerator. At five feet six inches, she would fit easily into the steel drum, especially with all the weight she’d lost from the illness. If there was one thing cancer was good for, it was helping a person fit into tight spaces.
Eva was enjoying herself, totally oblivious to the vile thoughts brewing in the perverse mind of her lover. There was a smile on her face and a warm feeling in her heart. She generally kept away from the bigger parts of the city, but this was a show a part of her had always been a little curious about and since she had been feeling particularly well tonight, Tyr had wanted to see to it she saw the show before her health declined further and she couldn’t go out. What a sweet man he was.
He’d have to kill her right away, he thought. If the Butcher was going around talking about him, The Chosen could arrive at any moment. He’d have to kill Eva tonight. And afterward he might have to leave town. He couldn’t be sure who among Eva’s acquaintances might have at least a basic idea of where he lived. If she suddenly stopped existing with no death certificate or hospital visit, somebody might try to contact Tyr. It would be safest to pack up and leave.
Kill her tonight, then pack up and leave tomorrow.
The men and women of the “Circus of the Sun” were doing their thing, engaging in bizarre acrobatics and bending their freakish bodies in ways a human usually only bent when being jammed into an incinerator. Before you doused them in gasoline and fired up the air compressor. Before you superheated them to 1,500 degrees and relegated them to water vapor. Before you struck them from existence.
“Are you enjoying it?” Eva asked Tyr suddenly. He was staring solemnly at the twisted human shapes, dancing a phantasmagoria of haunting steps in an otherworldly atmosphere that reminded him of a sort of dark rite he imagined The Chosen might administer.
“Yeah,” Tyr nodded his head and murmured the word under his breath. He certainly didn’t sound genuine, but he couldn’t do any better under the circumstances.
After another moment of watching the performers, Eva asked, “How did your meeting go last night?”
“Hm?”
Tyr had to think for a moment before he recalled telling Eva he had to take her home early because of a meeting with Doug, an old business associate. He had told Eva he was working on securing property to build a bar. It wasn’t true, but what the hell. She wasn’t going to live long enough to find out, whether he drained her tonight or not.
“Oh! It went fine. Four of us met up at a club and talked for a while. They were into us right off the bat and Doug and I really walloped them.” Tyr tried to amuse himself with this statement, but it didn’t help. If Thor was there to laugh, it would have made him feel better.
“So you think you’ll get the contract?”
There was a big smile on Eva’s face. She was excited for him. It made him fucking sick. She was deeply, sincerely in love with the mortal man he had invented. He asked himself how she’d feel about the immortal man. The immortal man who killed a woman last night after a half-hour of vehement anonymous sex but refused to make love to his girlfriend right up until she was no longer healthy enough for it.
The immortal man who saved her life once.
Could a mortal blame a vampire for acting on his n
ature, for feeding upon a feeble species that existed mostly for nourishment anyway? It didn’t matter. He couldn’t tell her anyway. Maybe if he drained her immediately after. Then it wouldn’t make a difference, right? He could tell her tonight, and then kill her once he got her reaction.
Kill her whether she accepted him or not.
Jesus.
Love sucks.
“So where is the site exactly? Near the Strip?”
“You know what I was thinking?” Tyr tried to change the subject and the words spilled out of him. “I was thinking it would be great if you moved in with me.”
Eva suddenly forgot the insatiable itch she’d been working at on the back of her neck. Her yellow eyes went wide and her face contorted in a beaming smile.
She threw her arms around him and kissed his lips again and again. Tyr kissed back and faked an eagerness of his own. The obvious truth was living with a human was among the worst things a vampire could possibly do.
That settled it.
It was time to kill her.
They spent the morning on the couch. When the sun had risen, Tyr put Fright Night in the VCR and they watched the old vampire film in each other’s arms. Eva mocked Tyr’s allergy to sunlight, calling him her vampire. Tyr laughed and flirted back with obscure tidbits from vampire folklore, a man who knew everything about everything.
At the scarier points of the movie, Eva would jump and Tyr would grab and console her the way mortal dates did in the movies. He’d laugh at her and then they’d kiss. Eva would giggle every time the evil vampire would call out the name “Amy.”
“My roommate’s name is Aimee. Was Aimee,” she told Tyr. “She’s a fucking bitch.”
“Yeah? And you want her to get eaten by vampires?” Tyr asked, laughing.
Eva nodded excitedly, giving her best wicked grin.
She fell asleep around ten o’clock in the morning, just before the movie ended. Tyr let her sleep in his arms as he lay there next to her. He shut his eyes and relaxed. She still had belongings to pick up from the house where she had been staying. He wouldn’t kill her until she brought them over. Once she told her roommate she was moving in with Tyr, that would buy him some time. It could be days after her death before anyone wondered where she was. Maybe weeks. The girl wasn’t exactly a social butterfly.