The Wages of Sin (Blood Brothers Vampire Series Book Two) (11 page)

“Jonathan Price,” he read aloud. “Heimdall.”

He tore into the remainder of the book. With a
combination of memory, reading comprehension, and deductive
reasoning, he pieced together most of the past. He’d been a writer.
He’d been kidnapped. He’d been asked to ghostwrite the first draft
of an autobiography.

His fangs protruded from his gums and then
retracted. He ran his tongue over them.

A vampire. So Jonathan was the man and Heimdall was
the vampire.

Aside from the first few pages dealing with life
before the kidnapping, there was little mention of this Jewel
character, the significant other who had come with Jonathan to this
new city. Heimdall didn’t know it, but Jonathan had avoided writing
about her out of a paranoid fear that Loki would discover her. He’d
hardly been able to write her name on the page.

There was, however, a single sheet of computer paper
folded up and tucked into the back of the diary, which Heimdall
took out and read.

It was a letter from Jewel. It was saying
goodbye.

All at once he remembered the last of the details.
The two beautiful years of which she spoke, their meeting in a
purgatorial thumb-twiddling station called Idaho. Her diabetes. The
way she twitched her feet when she slept, and yelped like a dog.
Her smell.

He remembered Jewel. And suddenly Loki terrified
him.

“What exactly are you fellas looking for?” asked
Thor. “Bullet holes or shell casings or something?” He laughed
faintly.

The furniture and the picture frames on the walls
had been rearranged to cover the bullet holes. The shell casings
had been stashed in a hidden safe.

“Anything that shouldn’t be here,” said Halleron. In
police code, this meant they didn’t expect to find anything having
to do with the alleged shooting but they were on the lookout for
drugs or weapons, anything they could jack the boys up about.

“Where was this taken?” asked one of the officers.
He was looking at a picture hung on a wall with three bullet holes
behind it.

Tyr joined him. “That is… Hong Kong.”

“Oh wow. Other side of the world.”

“Yeah it’s a bit of a trip.”

“Bright city. I didn’t know there were cities with
more lights than Vegas.”

“Oh yeah. You should get out more. See the
world.”

“I should. So what were you doing in—” the cop went
to tap the picture and the frame slipped off the wall and fell.
This was not an uncommon phenomenon for law enforcement officials.
Breaking people’s shit is something of a pastime.

As any magician in the Las Vegas area could explain,
a movement such as a picture falling from a wall draws one’s eye to
the picture, not the wall. As the picture fell and the bullet holes
behind it were exposed, the eyes of all three police were stuck on
the falling picture. It had only fallen about twelve inches when
Tyr caught it and and deliberately fumbled with it to give himself
an excuse to step in front of the bullet holes while everyone’s
eyes were on the picture. Then he caught it.

“Wow,” said Halleron. “Good reflexes.”

“Yeah, well… Asia, you know? Kung fu and shit.”

All three policemen laughed.

“Can we look around upstairs?”

“That’s where the sick people are,” said Loki. “Do
you really need to?” He knew the answer but it seemed in character
to protest.

“I’d like to make a proper search of the area if you
don’t mind. That way we won’t have to come back.”

The Brothers escorted the cops upstairs.

In Eva’s case they had to hope there weren’t too
many questions, that her cancer was never mentioned, and—shit!—Tyr
hadn’t thought to hide the medication, the prescription painkillers
in the name of an eighty-year-old woman who had been murdered on
the back porch of her summer home last week. They had to hope those
were overlooked as well.

And in Heimdall’s case, they just had to hope.

“What’s in here?” asked Halleron.

“My room, with my girlfriend.”

“Open it, please.”

Tyr sighed and opened the door. Halleron walked in
with him.

Eva sat up a little. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, sweetheart. Go back to sleep.”

“Just having a quick look around, Miss. Routine
stuff.”

Eva shut her jaundiced eyes, probably for the
best.

“This medication is yours?” Halleron asked Tyr.

“Hers.”

“Ingrid Hoffman?” he read the name from the
bottle.

Tyr nodded.

“All right.”

He continued to mosey around the room.

When Loki stepped into Heimdall’s room to warn him
about the upcoming search, he found him sitting on the bed with his
face buried in a small book.

“What’s that?” asked Loki.

Heimdall shut it instantly. “Nothing.” He backed
away, displaying discomfort toward Loki that hadn’t been there when
they’d last interacted.

Loki pulled the book away and opened it. “A journal?
First e-mails and then… Goddamnit, are you reading this?”

“I just found it.”

“Don’t read this.”

Loki put the journal in his pocket. He was unaware
of it, but Heimdall had taken out the letter from Jewel and slipped
it into his own pocket before Loki had entered.

“What did you find out?”

“What do you mean?”

“You forget about anything you read in that book.
Every piece of information is bad for you, understand?”

“Okay.”

“Forget all of it.”

“Okay.”

“Now, there are cops coming in here. You just sit
here and talk as little as possible. Don’t touch them. Don’t do
anything. Just follow my lead. Got it?”

“Okay.”

Halleron entered the room then, right on cue. He’d
managed to go through Eva’s room without realizing she was dying of
cancer, without realizing there was self-prescribed medical
marijuana in one of the dresser drawers, without realizing she was
in possession of the medication of murder victims, and without
realizing that some of the walls still bore scratches from the
fingernails of hysterical women who had been trapped in the room at
some time or another. There wasn’t much left for him to overlook
before he could go.

“How you doing?” Halleron asked Heimdall.

“This is Jon,” said Loki, and Heimdall nodded a
little.

“Sorry to wake you up,” said Halleron. “We’ll be out
of your hair in just a few minutes.”

Heimdall was seated comfortably on one edge of the
bed as Halleron rummaged around his room and the other cops chatted
with Tyr and Thor in the hall. All the while Loki stood by, his
eyes fixed on Heimdall, and Heimdall wasn’t sure if he was sizing
him up to figure out how much he’d read of the diary or if he was
expecting him to make some kind of stupid move with the cop.

Halleron picked up the unfinished manuscript for
Loki’s autobiography and thumbed through it.

“Novel?”

“Memoir, or something.”

“Ah. Never was much of a writer myself.” He went to
turn a page and sliced himself with the paper. He put the papers
back on the desk and squeezed his thumb with his other hand. “Damn.
Paper cut.”

Heimdall’s eyes lit up at the sight of the blood. It
taunted him, tantalized him. He couldn’t explain his reaction, but
he needed it.

Loki’s hand tightened around Heimdall’s shoulder and
held him in place.

“Anything else we can do for you, officer?” asked
Loki.

A steady flow of blood ran from Halleron’s thumb
down the index finger of his opposite hand and a red speck dropped
off his fingertip and hit the floor. Heimdall tried to sit up and
run to the blood, to bite into Halleron and guzzle it down, but
Loki’s hand was still clamped around his shoulder and pressing him
down onto the bed.

“Jeez. That’s bleeding pretty bad. Don’t suppose
you’ve got a bandaid around here somewhere?”

“Bandaid? Sure. Doug, will you get the officer a
bandaid? I want to ask Jon about something.”

“You all right there, bud?” Halleron asked Heimdall.
He stood in front of the young vampire with blood dripping down at
their feet. “You look a little shaken.”

Loki’s hand squeezed Heimdall’s shoulder
tighter.

“I’m fine,” said Heimdall.

“He’s just a little tense around the sight of
blood,” said Loki.

“Oh, oh, I’m sorry,” said Halleron, and he was out
of the room instantly.

“It’s almost day now,” Loki said to Heimdall after
the door closed. “When night falls, we’ll go out and find you a
drain. But you stay the hell away from cops. You forget anything
you saw in that journal and if you find anything else like it in
this room you show it to me before it gets us all killed. Tonight
your new life starts.”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, thanks for your cooperation. I don’t think
anybody got murdered here,” said Halleron with a laugh as Tyr and
Thor led him and the other cops out of the house.

“No, just drug dealers in this house,” Tyr said
jokingly and the cops seemed to chuckle at it. Normal humans with
nothing to hide made this kind of lame joke often.

“Sorry if I got any blood on your floor.”

“It’s no problem.”

“And hey, get that window fixed. It’s gonna run you
up a fortune in air conditioning.” Cops liked to tell civilians to
do things, even when it was none of their business.

“Yeah, definitely. Thanks officers.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

Tyr shut the door and he and Thor groaned to each
other and shook their heads, glad to finally be rid of the bastards
with no violence and ten minutes or so to spare before sunrise.
They were tempted to high five and hug as people usually do when
police leave their houses.

“Are they gone?” Loki asked, coming down the
stairs.

“Yeah, just left,” said Tyr.

“All right, good,” said Loki. “Tyr, we gotta talk.
It’s time you and I straightened some shit out.”

“This whole thing has gone on too long,” said Loki.
He and Tyr had let Heimdall out of his bourgeois prison cell and
now the two were there together where they could speak in
private.

“What whole thing?”

“Eva. We’re all sick of her and what she does to
you. The rest of us go out to the club for opening night to have a
good time, you run home and cuddle up next to cancer bitch. The
rest of us are out here dancing and getting with a couple good
looking drains, you’re up here with Eva doing nothing. Somebody
breaks in and damn near stabs Thor to death and all hell breaks
loose, you’re no help to anybody because you’re up here with a
fucking human. She’s a human, Tyr. That’s all. No more, no
less.”

“I don’t know that you want me to say, Loki. I’m
sorry shit went down and it’s been a crazy night, but none of it’s
her fault and none of it’s my fault either. As soon as I came down
I helped you resolve the situation. I wasn’t distracted or fucking
around, was I?”

“No, no. Not when you were down there. You were
distracted and fucking around the whole time the rest of us were
getting stabbed and shot at, but when it came time to deal with
cops, you did just fine.”

“You’re getting sarcastic and ugly Loki. I’m telling
you she and I had nothing to do with it. It was a freak occurrence.
Somebody broke in; he had a silver knife. But Eva didn’t ask him to
break in. It just happened. Jonathan freaked out a little bit and
shot you. Fine. But Eva didn’t shoot you. You’re looking for
somewhere to place the blame but it’s not something that happened
because of any of us, least of all Eva.”

“
See, this is
what I’m talking about. ‘
Least of
all Eva.’
This attitude you have toward
her. It’s disgusting. It’s embarrassing. It was funny at first,
maybe even a little rebellious, like you didn’t give a damn about
the Augury and all that, but it’s getting so all you give a fuck
about is this woman and it’s… it just isn’t right. It isn’t the Tyr
I knew.”

“Well, get over it. She’s only got another week or
so and then it’s over with anyway.”

“
No,
you
get over it. Finish her off. Thor and I are sick of her and
sick of you acting like a child. Be a goddamn vampire and kill the
bitch.”

“I’m not going to do that, Loki. Not until after the
new year, at least. She swore to herself she’d survive into the new
millennium and I’m going to let her do that.”

“Aw, fuck off with your sappy shit, you sound like
an Anne Rice character.”

“Loki, you and I have different priorities. You’ve
got the club. I’ve got Eva. Neither one is a permanent fixture but
they’re our connections to the human world for the time being.”

“Yeah, but my club isn’t turning me into a little
bitch and fucking us all up the ass.”

“So you say, but the fact that all this happened on
the night of your grand opening suggests otherwise.” It was the
wrong thing to say, but it felt worth saying.

“This conversation is over. You kill Eva. You do it
now. We move on. That’s final.”

“I’m not going to kill her.”

“You’ve got twenty-four hours to drain her or I do
it myself.”

Loki ripped the door open and stormed out.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

Heimdall’s first kill was a clusterfuck. He had been
a vampire for sixteen hours and he had yet to drink blood. It was
dangerous to go that long. It was also dangerous to read diaries of
one’s past self and develop a connection to mankind and to the man
one used to be, but the Brothers weren’t great at avoiding trouble
anymore.

When the sun had gone down and it was time to make
his first kill, their hunt took them to a club called The Library.
Somebody had given a bar this name because he owned a bar and was
an idiot.

It would have been nice to find Jewel, as it was in
their best interest for her to be dead and it was in Heimdall’s
best interest—at least in the opinion of Loki—to be the one to kill
her. Loki would have argued this by saying such actions familiarize
one with the life that a vampire must live, but it likely had more
to do with Loki’s own predilection for cruelty.