Thicker Than Water (Blood Brothers) (6 page)

Likewise, Tyr had brought Mitsey to some stranger’s den that he assured her was his own and they tainted some poor sap’s just-laundered sheets, sucking on necks and chests, hands and tongues scavenging for pleasure in any place they might find it.

Of course the pleasure Loki or Tyr took in such an act had more to do with the pleasure felt by a partner than anything he felt himself. In all their years they’d mastered lovemaking the same way they’d mastered poker, finding by the slightest spasm in another’s face the key to any pent up desire she might have been burying in her subconscious. The best sex of their lives was the gift that Tyr and Loki gave to women—being sure of it by ending the life soon after. These women would die in and of ecstasy.

They played the climaxes for all they were worth. Mitsey screaming like murder before murder came as she straddled Tyr, nails digging into his shoulder and his back, and he gripped tightly to her breast, pressed offensively upward by her tugged-down corset as his mouth worked its way from her chest to her shoulder to the tender meat at the base of her neck. Loki, pounding downward like a piston into Mindy, his left hand laced with the fingers on her right, her voice shrill in its absence like a shriek lingering on her lips she hadn’t the ability to let loose, and Loki’s fingers between her teeth and the slightest flavor of his copper ring on her taste buds, and tears in her slammed-shut eyes, and rainwater, and mud, and sweat, and come, and blood—Oh blood! The moment of orgasm. The peak. Where Tyr let his fangs slide out of his gums and pierce the vein like needles, and Loki in his ecstasy brought forth his carving knife and ripped the skin open like fresh fruit so that in that instant, at the height of intimacy and at the height of exultation, they brought on the Rapture. And the blood that flowed forth was blood at its finest, rich with sexual release and the vibrant luscious flavors of human satisfaction at a pulse that it reached only in such instances of blissful coupling. The moment a vampire lived for.

But they were only whores.

The moment of gratification was reduced on such an easy target. This was no medieval princess, no duchess, and no saint. They felt it stronger when it was forbidden, when it was horrible by the standards of mankind. Especially Loki with his sickening self-image felt an unrivaled sense of achievement in watching a proper, comme il faut, young virgin rubbing his seed into her skin like lotion before he brought forth the blade to drink.

And he drank with the blade not because he had to, but because he chose to. The stream of the blood ran faster, thicker, flowing down his gullet as he guzzled and gulped, gluttonous hedonist heathen that he was. Oh yes, he drank with the blade for the sport of it.

But as is always the case with sex, reality set in quickly when it was over and lying on their backs covered in blood, sweat, mud, rain, and human juices; they knew they now had work to do. They’d been seen with the girls and so it would have been foolish to leave the bodies where they would be found anytime soon. In such a lawless era, two slain whores were hardly a loss to warrant tracking and vengeance, but Loki had no intention of paying Al a cent for the merchandise he’d rendered useless.

They loaded the dead whores into their stagecoach and rode to the desert, where the mutilated bodies of Mindy and Mitsey were to be left to decompose swiftly, perhaps feed for the coyotes in the heat of the following days.

For Loki and Tyr, the American West was an easy place to call home.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Hi,” said Tyr to the young lady working at the check-in counter at the Excalibur. “I have an old friend named Douglas Thor who is staying here on vacation. He doesn’t know I’m here, but I want to go up to his room and surprise him.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t give out the room number of a guest in the hotel.”

“This is really important. We haven’t seen each other in a very long time. How do I talk you into making an exception?” Tyr gave her a charming smile, melting her a little but not enough.

“Aw, I’m sorry. I’m just really not allowed to. I could lose my job.”

Tyr leaned over the counter as though to whisper in her ear. As she leaned to meet him, he slipped her five folded up hundred-dollar bills—what they call ‘honeybees’ in Las Vegas.

“2316,” she told him almost immediately.

A few minutes later, standing outside 2316, Tyr could hear Loki’s voice engaging in casual conversation with Thor. While their demeanor was pleasant, Tyr got a sick feeling in his stomach upon hearing his own brother’s voice.

He might have knocked, but he couldn’t find the confidence to begin the confrontation. Really though, what would Loki do? They weren’t about to tear each other’s guts out in a suite on the Strip, were they?

Hell, why not? He’d seen Loki fly off the handle on more than a few occasions. What reaction would Loki have to seeing Tyr’s face after all this time? It sure as hell wouldn’t be all hugs and gaiety. No, he’d best not knock on that door. He’d best wait to approach Thor when he was alone.

“Can I help you?” a member of the housekeeping staff asked, her voice already threatening to call security and report Tyr for eavesdropping.

“No, I uh… Just leave me alone.”

“Is this your room, sir?”

“Yeah, with my boyfriend. I’m afraid he might be cheating on me.”

With that, the woman left him the hell alone.

“How do you pick just one fucking drain?” Loki and Thor had said together when they stepped out onto the Strip after The Tournament of Kings.

They separated immediately after leaving the casino as Loki wanted to catch a stage show about vampires being put on nearby and Thor was eager for the kill.

Thor set his sights on a small gothic club called Liquid Skin which was off the Strip and in a dirtier part of a dirty city. Choosing a cab over a limousine, Thor had always had a taste for how the poorer side lived, even though he more than happily accepted that he did not belong to this class. The dirt and muck that caked the indigent American’s life took him back to Tombstone. The real Tombstone, not it’s casket, as he thought of it today. The name Tombstone had become a sick irony for him.

He paid the cabbie and entered the club, unaware of the man in the car behind him who was watching him carefully, working up the courage to speak to him after all these years.

Liquid Skin was a trendy hangout for delinquent lowlifes with pincushion faces dressed in too much always-black clothing lined with unsightly chains weighing down their wardrobe while serving no decipherable function. Jackoffs such as these would get tarted up in black eyeliner and lipstick and do their hair in embarrassing prongs to come to places such as this and compare notes on desolation and the futility of existence.

Thor’s reason for dropping in now and again—aside from the heartwarming feeling he got when killing someone who didn’t appreciate life—was that it was a popular hangout for members of
Vampire: The Masquerade
, a pretty funny game some humans liked to play. In short, they would dress up much like these contemptible schmucks, place fake canines in their mouths—completely unaware a real vampire retracts his fangs except in the instant before feeding—and tell others plainly that they were children of the night—an act which would banish any true vampire to Ofeigr’s torture chambers until he rotted away and died. All of this is not to mention half of the players were female and if they were telling the truth, they and the vampires who turned them would certainly be put to death.

Loki would never come to a place like this as he hated to see the portrayal of the vampire as “a forlorn manic-depressive cocksucker who bathes in his own shit and wonders why he can’t stand the smell” as he had once described Louis of
Interview with the Vampire
. To Thor it was amusing. Maybe a small part of Loki had grown a little lonely and bitter and he did better at swallowing it when he didn’t have to think of it. Maybe it was true he didn’t like seeing a species that was beneath him mock him by depicting his kind with silly mortal problems. Thor couldn’t say for sure, but he knew Loki and Tyr had always been good company to him and—having a total lack of memory as to what it had felt like to be mortal—he knew he had personally never felt any such insufferable despair.

By the time Tyr stepped into the club, Thor had already taken a seat with a couple of cute girls named Kortney and Sioux, who were, needless to say, conformists trying to appear as individuals—just like every other Skot and Mikel and Cera in this fucking place.

Tyr surprised Thor when he put his hand on his back and took a seat. For all the problems between Tyr and Loki, there had never been an issue between Tyr and Thor. Thor was always a third party and easy to get along with for everyone.

Upon seeing him, Thor stood up and hugged him excitedly with a strength that might have broken mortal bones. Sioux gave Kortney a look that said, ‘Score!’

“Ladies,” said Thor, “this is the most brilliant motherfucker walking the Earth today.”

In the manner he'd picked up in medieval England, Tyr reached out and very formally kissed each of the girls on the hand. It was greatly out of place in a Goth club but it was fun to make self-proclaimed rebels feel out of place in front of their clique.

Thor introduced them, “This is Courtney, but she spells her name with a K and no U. And this is Sue, but she spells it like the Indian tribe with the chicks you used to dig.” The girls laughed harder than Tyr, who wished he’d never told Thor that story.

“Hi girls, I’m Tyr. I spell it like the Norse god of heroic glory.”

Thor was a little shocked to hear Tyr throw out his true name so quickly. The girls gave confused laughter and faked an understanding, having no idea how to spell Tyr’s name. Tyr decided to go for broke.

“I was born in the year 1000 give or take a few decades. That was in England, I believe. I was made a vampire somewhere around age… twenty-five or however old you figure I look now. I’ve been a vampire ever since and I kill somebody at least every week. Usually a lot more, just for shits.” He said all this in a casual, matter of fact voice that left both girls in stitches.

“Oh!” he added. “And I turned Thor here into a vampire about a hundred years ago.”

“Thor?” said Kortney, playfully squinting her eyes in skepticism. “I thought his name was Doug.”

Thor figured as long as they were being so open, he might as well join the fun, “I use fake names when I’m with mortals. We pick up new aliases every few years.”

No going back now. These were tonight’s drains. Tyr and Thor both bore their fangs and gave smiles. Kortney and Sioux reacted with oohs and ahs.

“So do you have to get back to your coffin when the sun comes up?” asked Kortney.

Tyr laughed, “That’s a stupid myth. Do you know how pissed I’d be if I had to lock myself up like that every day? I’ll just go to my house where I’ve got big fuckin’ curtains.”

“Hey, that’s no fair,” said Kortney, “If you’re gonna be a vampire, you can’t just make up your own rules. What about garlic and crosses and holy water?”

Thor took a turn, “Bullshit, bullshit, quasi-bullshit.”

“Quasi-bullshit?” Kortney laughed, “What hell is quasi-bullshit?”

“Long story,” said Tyr. “Not worth telling. It’s basically bullshit. Ninety percent of what you’ve heard is probably bullshit.”

Sioux gave a puppy-dog sad face and flirted, “Even the stuff about female slaves?”

“Woah.” Thor jumped in, making a big show of nudging Tyr with his elbow. “Look at Tyr landing his teeth already. She wants you, man!”

Sioux smiled and faked a blush, “Even if I did, I’d be S.O.L. In case you haven’t heard, vampires can’t have sex.”

Tyr and Thor chuckled. “Yeah, so we’re told,” said Thor. “And secondhand smoke causes cancer and a cell phone can blow up a gas station. You wanna get fucked by a vampire right now?”

Tyr and Thor piled into a limousine with Kortney and Sioux in their respective laps. Kortney and Sioux were drunk, and Tyr and Thor—having had sixty or seventy shots each—were a little buzzed as well, but their blood flowed differently than mortal blood and they never reached the level the girls were at.

Tyr was having genuine fun, and it had been a long time since he’d really felt that. Thor had always brought it out in him. He’d had a good relationship with Thor even before the kid was a vampire. Even when they were dressed in leather chaps and carrying six-shooters with old man Locke just aching to have them shot.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“It was them damned travelers from south of here went off with ‘em,” Al said, scrambling around his brothel in the morning in search of the missing whores, “They was all over ‘em last night while you was tossin’ yer money at ‘em, and now they done taked off with Mindy and Mitsey and God knows where all of ‘em’s ended up. Elopin’ or some vile such thing”

“Nah, Pops. I don’t figure ‘em for the type,” Michael lied, not knowing at all what manner of men these were but defending them out of an odd respect for Loki he couldn’t really justify. “They’s the type for sure that’d drag ‘em off and lay ‘em somewhere, sure, but they ain’t gonna wanna be dragged down by ‘em afterwards. Trust me. They’d be through with ‘em soon as they came.”