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

  Loki reeled himself back to reality. “No, that’s no good. We don’t deal with insurance. How much cash do you have on you?”

  Jonathan could feel the rest of his drinks coming up. These weren’t men you wanted to run into in a dark alley, much less a Station Wagon.

  “I’m broke. I just moved here.”

  Thor took a gun out of his jacket and trained it on Jonathan. Time slowed.

  “Give him your wallet anyway,” Thor said. His voice sounded muffled and distant as Jonathan tried to keep from passing out.

  He dug into his pocket and fished out his wallet. Loki flipped it open and looked at the driver’s license.

  “Idaho,” he read aloud. “What brings you to Vegas, hillbilly?”

  “Uh… Writing?”

  Loki’s eyes lit up. “No shit?”

  “Uh… No. No shit. I mean, yeah. I mean…”

  “I know what you mean. You mean you’re not shitting me.”

  “No. I mean, yeah, I’m not.”

  “Stop talking. Who are you writing for?”

  “Well, I’m not really. I’m looking for work just doing freelance stuff.” He wanted to add that this was just temporary until a publisher recognized his genius, but he set aside his pride.

  “You gonna write about us?” Loki asked.

  “What? No. No, of course not. This was all my fault.”

  “Clearly,” said Thor.

  “That’s not what I’m asking,” said Loki, pocketing the wallet. “This isn’t worth writing about. This is a car wreck. Happens every day. And a mugging. Happens every day also. People wave guns at each other all the time in this city. This is mundane. But I’ve got stories I could tell you, man, you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Tell me.” Jonathan would have said anything to prolong his judgment. He wanted the gun pointed away from him, even just for a minute while Loki spoke, only to be brought back up to finish him off afterward. He wanted safety, even false safety, for one more moment.

  “Not right now,” Loki said. “Right now it’s your story that’s important, because mine goes on regardless. Who would be the first to notice if you disappeared tonight?”

  The answer was Jewel, his girlfriend of two years. They were living together in a cheap apartment and he could bet she was waiting up for him right now. He didn’t want to think about her. He didn’t want to think how he’d talked her into Las Vegas against her will, how she hated the heat, how her life would be empty if he didn’t come home. He didn’t want to think how they’d abandoned their life in Idaho and started anew here with only each other, how they’d already overdrawn their bank accounts in the move. He didn’t want to think how if this was the end of him, she was stuck in a town she hated, unemployed, in a shit apartment she couldn’t afford. He didn’t want to think how she’d get evicted and end up on the street, probably begging for money from gamblers and asking sick men for shelter, getting abused or thrown out for not sleeping with them.

  He didn’t want to think how if he died quickly and painlessly on an empty street, she would suffer for the next few years, falling apart slowly with no one to turn to before something killed her, be it a stranger she shouldn’t have trusted, suicide through lack of hope, or the diabetes she couldn’t afford to medicate anymore. He didn’t want to think about any of it.

  All he could think about, maybe because of all the pulp fiction he read, was the possibility that Loki was a sociopath who got off on power, on destroying lives. Maybe that’s why he didn’t beg, why he left Jewel out of it.

  “Probably my apartment manager,” he said. “But he’d just think I ducked out to avoid getting evicted.”

  “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 hav
e 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.

  “Hell no. Loosen up, Thor. Don’t be so focused on business. Have some fun. Get yourself laid.”

  Thor forced a smile. Loki ordered another round of shots.

  “Can we make out?” Vivienne asked after they drank and Loki laughed and kissed her.

  Thor drank his shot and lit a cigarette.

  “Ouch!” said Vivienne and drew back. Loki had bitten the skin on her neck. She put her finger there and looked at the speck of blood, then she put her finger in her mouth and smiled around it. “You’re kinky,” she said.

  Loki and Vivienne kissed again and Thor looked down at the table. He’d fallen victim to Loki’s charm. Tyr was absolutely right.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “What day is it?”