Thicker Than Water (Blood Brothers) (5 page)

It was in aspects like this that a vampire such as Thor became a dangerous thing, and the precise reason a system of boundaries such as The Augury needed to exist. A child of the West, and son of a brothel-owner, Thor was what would be referred to in later years as a sex-addict. In many ways even as a human he’d been a vampire. When the brothers met him he’d been damn near the same as he was now, a 17-year-old hotheaded pretty-boy seated in a brothel and saloon in Tombstone, Arizona circa 1894.

CHAPTER SIX

“Barkeep!!” a rowdy drunkard was banging his mug on the bar in desperate need of a refill. Belligerence to one another was a given at Al’s, but belligerence to the staff was not, and Al likely would have been personally shooing the drunkard out the door with his six-shooter if not for the man’s rapidly-expanding reputation.

Al—along with most of the clientele—had seen the paper and was enough a part of the gossip to be aware that Buddy “Fats” McGovan, the red-bearded Irishman banging his mug on the table and swearing up a storm, had shot Garth Gallagher a week earlier. A former town icon, everyone was aware Gallagher was tough; and so it was nobody’s intention to rile Fats.

So there was Al, patting him on the back and submitting, trying to calm him down and assure him they were taking special care of him. And there was Fats, waving his hand in Al’s face and cussing at the barkeep between refills of lager he slopped mostly down his face. And there was Michael, son of Al, at a table in a darkened corner of the bar with whores Mindy and Mitsey on either side of him, holding two pairs of playing cards and trying to play it off as four of kind.

And there was Tyr. And there was Loki. Tyr in his duster, black as pitch, greasy brown hair pulled back and hanging to his shoulders. Loki unshaven for a good three weeks in his off-white vest and his white leather hat fit snuggly over his head and hanging over his eyes to conceal them from the other gamblers.

Loki loved the American West. He was one for finding enjoyment in any time period that made its way to him. Tyr struggled by comparison, sometimes barely able to let go of ways of the past as time carried them from one era to the next. Loki was always eager for what was new, from language to technology to popular culture. No matter what the times brought, Loki found himself the poster child for the era. Any time, any country, he was always surrounded by fans and praise while Tyr was always stuck wandering around upstage left. Charisma was lifeblood and to have more of it than another was to have the better life. Tyr’s envy over this was as obvious to Loki as it was satisfying.

“Jesus Christ! Can’t hear
my own
thoughts in this shithole; how the fuck am I s’posed to hear yers?” Michael threw his cards on the table and punched them as Mindy and Mitsey rubbed his chest and kissed his neck.

Loki glared at Michael without a word as he raked in his winnings. He had barely spoken a word all night, playing his silent stranger character to perfection. His infinitely deep black eyes never giving the faintest hint of personality, he succeeded in containing any subtle tells he might have had from Tyr’s eyes, let alone a mortal’s.

They’d both taken to the game and mastered it years ago. There was challenge in playing one another, but to play with a human was for a champion boxer to fight a crippled toddler. When Tyr played he let the humans win now and then to thwart their confidence and create the illusion they had a chance; Loki on the other hand, with his addiction to causing trouble, preferred take each hand for everything it was worth, bankrupting men, ruining marriages and driving anyone he could to suicide in few enough hands to count a carpenter’s fingers. It was Loki’s disposition to bring chaos to a room, much as it is the disposition of ice to melt in fire.

Michael shuffled and dealt another game. Upon looking at his cards his eyes gave the slightest twitch of excitement, invisible to the casual player, but to Loki and Tyr he might as well have jumped on the table and waved his arms wildly. When Loki threw down four silver dollars, Tyr foresaw a fight. He dropped his cards and let the hand go by, glancing at Loki so Michael might understand to do the same. While Tyr’s gesture seemed to affect Michael slightly, he was battling Loki’s charm and he was fairly certain this was to be Loki’s game as usual.

Michael glanced back and forth between his cards and the table, his whores once again clinging to his body. After a minute he slapped the cards face down and yelled to Mindy, “Get yer fucking hand off my dick! There’s a four-dollar bet in question. I don’t need no goddamn hand job at this moment!”

Loki glared his solid black glare, a tension on his lips resembling a smile.

“Ya lay ‘em once, ya know?” Michael waved his hand, implying the whores were being unfair to him.

Loki moved—rare for the night—to put his arm around Mindy. He pulled her toward him, took her hand in his, and guided it into his pants, moving it back and forth for a moment and leaving her to it once she got the rhythm right. He never took his eyes off Michael, taunting him with that sardonic sneer just behind his poker face, telling him that if he wanted to be bitter and unkind then Loki would take advantage of all the juicy circumstances life had to offer, and what’s more, he would do it while taking the remainder of Michael’s hard-earned money.

Mindy kissed Loki’s neck just above the shoulder and he brought his arm around to her right, pulling aside her baggy lace top so her tit pounced out in plain view of everyone at the table. He ran his hand along it, pressing just tightly enough so her nipple would poke between each of his fingers as he ran his hand up and down, perfectly replicating the motion of tapping his fingers as he stared crudely at Michael, ridiculing his indecision and getting a laugh from the whole table.

Tyr instantly stopped worrying about the potential hell-storm of mortal blood that was rising to a boil and his agitated mind suddenly set on the fact that Loki had already landed his catch with Mindy. She was to be his drain tonight, which likely left Tyr with Mitsey—who was homely, unkempt, and used goods on this occasion.

Michael inhaled deeply through his nose, snorting congestion back into his throat as he shook his head side to side. As Loki was intending, he took the taunts personally, hoping they were part of a very confident bluff. He tossed four dollars on the table, and after a brief hesitation to look up at Loki, he tossed his last three dollars on the pile as well.

On the other side of the room, Fats had taken to shouting again in his thick Irish accent. “Getcher fookin’ arse back here! Ye call these pints? Line me up another three of ‘em maybe and give yerself two minutes I won’t have to call ya!”

Loki tossed down his cards with a cocky grin that said, ‘Sorry, you’re fucked.’

Michael cursed under his breath, pushing at Mitsey and getting to his feet. He was preparing to take his rage out on Fats rather than Loki, saving his own life without knowing it. All eyes went to the encounter and Loki had to pass a dollar to Mindy and remind her to continue stroking.

There was a proud grin on Loki’s face, watching the turmoil he’d started between the strangers. Michael shouted something at Fats as he grabbed hold of his neck and kicked the stool from under him, slinging the three-hundred-pound man backward into the wooden flooring like a malfunctioning catapult. As he hit the ground, he seemed to crack the perfectly solid texture of the floor before he half-rolled half-slid along the wood with a furious grunt. He reached for his gun which was a predictable reflex easy for Michael—who had the advantage of being sober—to counteract. As soon as Fats’ left hand gripped the pearl handle of his Smith & Wesson, Michael dug the spur on his right boot into the fat man’s hand.

Fats reeled, grabbing at the fresh wound, spraying a little blood that tantalized the boys back at the card table. Before Fats could manage any movement beyond futile rocking, spitting, and swearing, Michael had the same spur pressed tightly against the flabby fucker’s throat. Fats fell as silent as anyone else in the bar save for Loki, who was bellowing his obnoxious car horn of a laugh.

There was a fascinating blend of fury and terror in the fat man’s eyes. He breathed heavily and kept his good hand pressed to his bad one, staring up with a scowl on his face that made him look like he might burst into flames. Al was across the room, standing as still as a Mormon at an orgy with a deep concern for the health of his spoiled son.

After a long moment to let Fats recover from his fury—or to let the crowd revel in it—Michael rotated his other foot to slip the revolver out of Fats’ holster and kick it across the floor as best he could while suspending his other foot on Fats’ neck. The gun slid only a few feet, but far enough for Al to take the cue and pick it up. It was a few more seconds before Michael lifted the spur from the gelatinous bearded blob that was Fats’ neck.

While Loki and Tyr had ridden into town just before sunrise only a few days prior and therefore were not privy to the gossip enough to know the full story of Fats and the fear he incited in most of the other men, the fear itself was clear as day—or clear as they imagined day to be. It was obvious as he hooted from his place at the bar that a lot of them had wanted him gone and they had battled their wills to stomach him.

Loki had been waiting for an opportune moment to approach the loudmouth cocksucker himself, but as he watched Michael from the table, he felt proud for the kid. He took an instant shine to Michael not just because Michael had attacked a beacon of terror and come out victorious, but because Michael had left his own guns at the table with the poker players—which was reckless, boastful, and the kind of thing Loki would have done.

“On yer feet, ya sack o’ shit,” spat Michael, “Come back for the gun tomorrow sober and I’ll think about it.” He clawed at Fats’ clothes and tried to pull him to his feet, but the man was a boulder and he let himself lie there like a stubborn child.

Loki took this as his opportunity to share the spotlight. He made a ruckus of standing up enthusiastically and taking Mindy’s hand out of his trousers, where it had been sitting still for some time now. He gave a happy jog toward the turmoil and indicated a gun with his hand, playfully shooting at Michael, whose curiosity and apprehension were racing to a climax.

A soon as Loki reached them, he bent down and grabbed hold of as much of Fats’ hair as he could fit in his right hand. Fats gritted his teeth and seethed. Loki pulled up hard and all at once, tearing a clump of red fur from the top of the screaming man’s scalp. As Fats tried to punch at his knees and his crotch, Loki kicked him in the ribs just hard enough to keep him under control. He looked at the ball of greasy hair in his hand. The bits of skin and blood. He was laughing quietly to himself.

After his laugh become louder, Loki addressed the crowd. “Well whaddaya say we try that again?”

Tyr chuckled and slapped the table lightly as most of the room roared with laughter. Loki grabbed hold of Buddy McGovan’s hair one more time—this time from the back of his head—and dragged him up a little slower, now with the full cooperation of the other party. When Fats was back on his feet, Loki stepped closer so they were eye-to-eye with an inch between them.

“Death borders upon our birth, and the cradle stands in the grave,” the words came out of Loki’s mouth simply as something to say, and he said it low enough so as to be heard only by Fats and none of the others. Loki had read the words somewhere and it meant nothing to him; he said it solely for the theatrics of it because he knew it would disturb his victim. Sure enough, all of the fight slipped out of Fats and his face became a twisted mask of fear. He ceased to be anything but a tortured and terrified victim in the grasp of a monster. Loki gave his standard demonic grin as he gripped Fats again, this time by the shirt collar, and, with a tug that surpassed mortal strength only by a thin enough margin so as not be detected, hurled him toward the door.

The door to Al’s was heavy—a thick, oak slab hand-carved from one enormous piece of wood and lined with steel rims. It took a good deal of force for one to pull it open to enter, but when Loki lobbed Fats at it, it swung open with the force of a bullwhip, striking the wall on the outside of the building and bouncing back as Fats passed through the doorway just in time to club him once more, ripping loose two of his teeth and sending his unconscious body spiraling onto the porch out front. It would be days if not weeks before Fats was in any condition to start shit in Loki’s town again.

Michael’s jaw was on his chest but the corners of his lips danced upwards in a flabbergasted smile. Loki was a gladiator. He spun from his post near the door striding with all the pride and confidence a victory in the coliseum might have brought. He made a victorious fist that he held at his side and Michael copied him. The two met on the floor and they shook hands and laughed. There were thundering applause and hoots and screams from the crowd.

Tyr was among them, giving a faint and understated laugh as he brought his hands together quietly just enough to fit in.

This is how it always was.

Loki took Mindy in an alleyway out back rather than one of the rooms. Convincing a whore to do this might not have required much finesse even for some other overweight wrangler or blacksmith indulging his deviance in the sleazy saloon, but Loki brought her here feeling it was her idea and it most certainly was not. He undressed her partially and they rolled like wild animals in the mud, the rain doing little in the way of washing away anything.