Blood Brothers: A Short Story Exclusive (3 page)

The next day, Christian was gone.

“You should have seen that guy’s eyes,” Wayne continued. “Scared the hell out of me, I have to say. Never met a priest like that. What do you think he really wanted?”

“I have no idea.”

After that call, Arthur sat in his tiny rented room, studying pictures and news clippings taped to the walls. Like Christian, all the victims were men in their twenties. They were dark-haired and handsome.

Arthur stared at a publicity photo of Jackie Jake. The folksinger’s black hair flopped over his eyes, reminding Arthur acutely of Christian. Jake even had the same bright green eyes.

It was at that moment that Arthur realized he didn’t have a single picture of his brother. After their quarrel, in a fit of pique, Arthur had destroyed them all. In many ways, he was as volatile and temperamental as his mother—and in the end, just as judgmental.

Arthur had been a fool back then. He knew it now. He wanted only to find Christian and apologize, but he worried that he might never get that chance. He could never make it right.

Over the following three days, he buried himself in the case, sensing Christian was linked to the murders. But how? Was he a victim, or somehow involved? The latter seemed impossible. Still, he remembered the madman at the memorial service. Could Christian have been drugged, maybe brainwashed by some murderous cult, and turned into a monster?

Needing answers, Arthur started his investigation with the orchids, but too many of the city’s flower shops sold them. He showed around the picture of Christian from Wayne’s flyer, but none of the shopkeepers remembered any particular customers buying those orchids around the times of the murders. It was no surprise. It was summer, and orchids were in demand for the dances of the upper class, those lofty creatures of wealth far removed from the men who lived on the streets or in squat houses or died holding one in their hands.

He touched base with Officer Miller every day, hoping for any news. All the while, the city held its breath for the next murder. Arthur learned from Miller that the latest victim, like the others, had also received his orchid on the morning of his death. It had been delivered to Louis May’s stoop, and twelve hours later the young man was dead.

With morning coffee in hand, Arthur contemplated this cruelty, this promise of death delivered to a doorstep. He climbed to his rented room and returned to his cluttered workspace.

There, resting on the keys of his typewriter, was a single white bloom.

A
Brassocattleya
orchid.

“
L
OOK,
M
R.
C
R
ANE,”
Officer Miller said. “I can imagine you’re spooked, but folks around here think this might be as a publicity stunt. To sell more papers.”

Arthur stared dumbfounded across Miller’s desk into the crowded squad room. He had come straight here after finding the orchid. Right now it lay on the battered metal desk in front of him. “You can’t think—”

Miller held up a beefy hand. “I don’t. I trust you plenty, but I can’t help you. My hands are tied.”

Arthur’s stomach sank. He’d been fighting the police for hours, hoping for some kind of protection, but no one took him seriously. “How about I just sit in the police station then? Just for twenty-four hours?”

“I can’t allow you to do that.” Miller’s freckled face looked concerned, but his chin was firm. He wouldn’t give in.

“Then arrest me.”

Officer Miller laughed at him. “On what charge?”

Arthur punched him right in his freckled face.

I
T TOOK THREE
days for the
Times
to bail Arthur out. In the interim, a fourth victim had received an orchid and had been murdered. The new death further convinced the police that Arthur either had been lying about the orchid or someone had played a cruel prank on the British reporter.

Arthur knew better.

Still, what did it mean? Had the killer passed him by? Or was he just biding his time to make the kill?

Not knowing for sure, Arthur spent his first night of freedom in Sparky’s twenty-four-hour diner, afraid to go home. He brought a giant pile of notes and used the time to outline a book, a treatise about the murders. Truman Capote’s
In Cold Blood
had come out two years ago, and the narrative of those killers had mesmerized him. He wanted to do something similar, to find some way of making sense of these deaths, to nail them down between the cold, dispassionate pages of a book.

Seated at a corner table of the diner, with a clear view to all the exits, he nibbled on his third piece of apple pie and downed his umpteenth cup of coffee. All night long, he had refused to give up his table, despite the jaundiced glances from the waitress.

But now the sky had pearled to a pale gray, and he knew it was time to move on. He could not live inside the diner forever. So he packed up his things, left a generous tip for the waitress, and trudged toward his apartment. As he walked, he rubbed the grit from his exhausted eyes. He squinted at the sun breaking over a boarded-up and abandoned storefront ahead. The five-story building had become the home of squatters. It was regularly raided, emptied, only to fill again.

As he crossed along it, he hefted his satchel of notes. He knew he could get a book out of these murders, something dark and fascinating and significant, the kind of thing that could make his career.

A few meters away, a figure stepped out of the door of the dilapidated store, sticking to the shadows. Even though he was barely visible in the gloom, Arthur recognized him and stopped, stunned and incredulous.

“Christian . . . ?”

Before he could react, his brother was upon him, pulling him tightly in an embrace that was both intimate and frightening. Fingers dug into his shoulders, his elbow, hard enough to find bone.

Arthur gasped, tried to pull away, but it was like trying to unbend iron. Pain weakened him further, forcing him to drop his bag.

Lips moved to ear. “Come with me.”

The breath was icy, smelling of sour meat and rot. The tone was not one of invitation but of demand. Arthur was lifted off his feet and dragged away, as easily as a mother with an errant child.

In a moment, they were through the doorway and up a flight of rickety stairs to an upper room. Refuse littered the floor. Old ratty blankets bunched along the walls, abandoned by their former dwellers. The only place of order was a thick oak table in the center, its surface polished to a high sheen, so out of place here.

As was the smell.

Past the reek of sweat, waste, and urine came the wafting sweetness of honeysuckle and gardenia. The scent rose from a spray of white orchids, all
Brassocattleya
.

If Arthur had any doubts as to the role Christian played in the recent murders, they were dispelled at this sight. The table looked like a shrine or an altar to some dark god.

Arthur tried to struggle out of that iron grip, but he could not escape the hand clamped to this forearm. For his efforts, he was slammed against a wall, hard enough to bruise his shoulder, and pinned there. Fearing for his life, he searched for his only weapon, the same weapon that once drove the two brothers apart in the past.

His words.

But what could he say?

Arthur looked at his attacker, dismayed by what he found there. Christian looked exactly the same—yet completely changed. His face and bearing were as they always had been, but now he moved with a speed and strength that defied reason. Worst of all, his gentle expression had turned hard and angry. Malice shone in eyes that were once bright and full of joy.

Arthur knew this dreadful condition must be secondary to some kind of drug. He remembered the madman in the church, recalled the horror stories he had read of addicts on a new pharmaceutical called PCP. The drug had arrived in the Haight-Ashbury district just last year.

Was that the explanation here?

“You can stop this,” Arthur tried. “I can get you help. Get you clean.”

“Clean?” Christian pushed his lips up into a ghastly grimace and laughed, a mocking rendition of his usual playful mirth.

Changing tactics, Arthur tried reaching him through their shared past, to draw him out, to make him remember who he once was.
“Brassocattleya,”
he said, nodding to the table. “Like Mother grew and loved.”

“They were for you,” Christian said.

“The orchids?”

“The murders.” Christian faced him, showing too many teeth. “The orchids were merely to lure you here. I knew you were at the
Times
and hoped word of the orchids would draw you here. That’s why I took that singer first, the one from London.”

Arthur went cold, picturing Jackie Jake’s face. He had contributed to the poor man’s death.

“You came sooner than I expected,” his brother said. “I had hoped to leave a longer trail of invitation before entertaining you here.”

“I’m here now.” Arthur’s shoulder throbbed, aching even his teeth. “Whatever is wrong between us, we can fix it together.”

Christian exposed his arm, turning it to reveal the pale scar on his wrist. Arthur had a matching scar.

“That’s right,” Arthur said. “We’re blood brothers.”

“Forever . . .” Christian sounded momentarily lost.

Arthur hoped this was a sign of him finally coming out of his dark, drug-fueled fugue. “We can be brothers again.”

“But only in blood.” Christian faced him, his eyes hard and cold. “Isn’t that right?”

Before Arthur could answer, Christian threw him to the floor, riding his body down and straddling atop him. His brother’s white face hovered inches above his, those eyes reading his features like a book.

Arthur tried to throw him off, but his brother was too strong.

Christian leaned closer, as if to kiss him. Cold breath brushed against Arthur’s cheeks. His brother used a thumb to turn Arthur’s chin, to expose his neck.

Arthur pictured the morgue photos of Christian’s victims, their throats ripped out.

No . . .

He struggled anew, bucking under Christian, but there was no escaping his brother. Impossibly sharp teeth tore into the soft skin of his throat.

Blood drowned Arthur’s scream.

He wrestled against his death, struggled, cried, but in a matter of moments, the fight bled out of him. He lay there now as waves of pain and impossible bliss throbbed through his wounded body, borne aloft by each fading heartbeat. His arms and legs grew heavy, and his eyes drifted closed. He was weakening, maybe dying, but he didn’t care.

In this bloody moment, he discovered the connection people sought through love, drugs, religion. He had it now.

With Christian . . .

It was right.

Suddenly, that moment was severed, coldly interrupted.

Arthur opened his eyes to find Christian staring down at him, blood dripping from his brother’s chin.

In Christian’s eyes, Arthur read horror—and sorrow—as if the blood had succeeded where Arthur’s words had failed. Christian put an ice-cold hand against the wound on Arthur’s throat, as if he could stop the warm blood flowing out of it.

“Too late . . .” Arthur said hoarsely.

Christian pressed harder, tears welling. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

His brother stared down, clearly struggling to hold in check the evil inside him, to hold on to himself. Arthur saw his nostrils flare, likely scenting the spilled blood. Christian moaned with the need of it, but Arthur heard an undertone of defiance.

Arthur wished he could help, to take away that pain, that struggle.

He let that desire show in his face, that love of brother for brother.

A tear rolled down Christian’s cheek. “I can’t . . . not you . . .”

With both arms, he picked up Arthur, crossed to a window, and threw his body out into the sunlight. As he flew amid a cascade of broken glass, he stared back, seeing Christian withdraw from the sun, back into shadows, forever lost.

Then Arthur crashed to the street.

Still, darkness found him in that sunlight, swallowing him away. But not before he saw an orchid land on the pavement near his head, floating in a pool of his blood. The sweet scent of it filled his nostrils. He knew it would be the last thing he ever smelled.

His mother would have been happy about that.

A
N UNKNOWN NUMBER
of days later, Arthur woke to pain. He lay in a bed—a hospital bed. It took him several breaths to work out that his legs were suspended in front of him, encased in plaster. Turning his head took all his effort. Through his window, he saw weak afternoon sunlight.

“I see that you’re awake,” said a familiar voice.

Officer Miller was seated on his other side. The police officer reached to a table, retrieved a water glass with a straw, and offered it. Arthur allowed the man to slip the straw between his lips. He drank the lukewarm water until it was all gone.

Once done, Arthur leaned back. Even the short drink had left him exhausted. Still, he noted the purplish bruises ringing Miller’s eyes, courtesy of Arthur’s earlier sucker punch.

Miller fingered the same. “Sorry we didn’t take you more seriously, Mr. Crane.”

“Me, too,” he croaked out.

“I have to ask . . . did you recognize the man who attacked you?”

Arthur closed his eyes. In truth, he didn’t recognize the creature who had attacked him, but he did recognize the man who had flung him into the sunlight, away from the monster trying to claw back into control. In the end, Arthur knew Christian had saved his life. Could he condemn him now?

“Mr. Crane?”

Behind Arthur’s eyelids, he saw the face of Jackie Jake and the broken body of the man on the sidewalk. Even if he could forgive Christian’s attack on himself, he could not let that monster inside him continue to kill.

Arthur opened his eyes and talked until he drifted off to sleep.

When he awoke, it was night. He was terribly thirsty, and his legs still hung in front of him like a bizarre sculpture. A quiet murmuring off to the left must be the nurses’ station. He reached for the bell to summon—