Thicker Than Water (Blood Brothers) (13 page)

“Oh my God,” said Eva, standing up to hug the big man. “I’m sorry. To be honest I didn’t even realize Tyr had a brother.”

“Yeah, we haven’t talked in a while, but we’re all patched up now. I’m Jack. But people call me Loki.”

“So it’s really nice to meet you, by the way,” Eva said when they were in the car together. “Tyr can be so mysterious. It’s nice to know he came from somewhere.”

“Oh yeah,” said Loki. “He definitely came from somewhere. Tyr’s life is a really interesting story. He’s just not real open about it with anybody.”

“Right.”

Loki drove with a simpleminded smile on his face.

“I don’t really remember how to get to his place. You might have to direct me.”

“Oh, sure. You want to get on the highway right here.”

“Thanks,” Loki said with a grin. “So you look a lot healthier than I was expecting. You’re a really pretty girl.”

“Oh, thank you. They say the most important thing when you’re fighting something like this is to have something to fight for, and I’ve got Tyr.”

“Couldn’t ask for anything better than that. He’s a good man.”

“He is.”

“He’s a much better man than me,” Loki said with a laugh. “We always fought a lot growing up, because he’s so caring and I can be a bit insensitive.”

Eva smiled. “I’m sure you’re a nice guy. Anybody would feel insensitive if they had to grow up with Tyr.”

“Oh, he’s got his flaws too. You don’t know him like I do. I could tell you some Tyr stories that’d make you cringe. I won’t, but I could.”

They both laughed.

“Oh God. Older brothers are all the same.”

Loki laughed. “So how far along are you?” he asked cheerfully.

Eva looked confused.

“The cancer,” he clarified.

The smile disappeared from her face.

“Oh. Um… I don’t know. They caught it a few months ago, but it’s been there for a long time.”

“Well, I’m glad the doctors are doing a good job.”

Eva looked out the window, suddenly feeling very sad.

“They haven’t been helping. They keep telling me I’m going to die any day now. I keep telling them I’m going to keep living into next year.”

“Well, I hope the gods allow that to be,” said Loki with a consoling smile.

“No offense, but fuck the gods,” said Eva, turning to look at Loki. “I’m going to do it, and they can’t stop me.”

Loki forced back a grin, instead nodding his head understandingly.

“Have you ever died before?” he asked.

Half of Eva’s face contorted in a puzzled expression. She wondered if he was joking and prepared herself to be very offended if he was.

“What do you mean?”

“A near-life experience, some people call it. You know. When you’re heart stops beating and your eyes roll back in your head and you’re technically dead. I mean, you’re dead. No technicality. You’re dead. Have you ever been there?”

“No,” Eva said, a little shocked. “Have you?”

“Yeah. I’ve been dead. I’ve been lying on a slab of concrete without a pulse or a thought in my head. It’s been a long time since, but I’ve been there.”

“Oh my God,” said Eva, turning back to the window. She had to force herself to ask the next question. “What’s it like?”

“Dying?” asked Loki.

“Being dead. What’s being dead like?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

His eyes jerked open. He was coming to from a nightmare but without the transition into reality that usually followed. No comfort settled in to present the feeling of familiarity and it wasn’t so much a dream or any past circumstance that frightened him. It was this moment. The present. Some part of his brain meant to trigger upon his return to consciousness was failing and he now existed without grasping what existence was. There was no past and no future. He was no one. Just an entity in a cold room.

He tried to move his hands but they were stuck behind his back, tethered somehow. The room presented no familiarity, but this was unsurprising as his own body presented little familiarity and none of the smells, nor sounds, nor flavors of the air rang true of anything he’d smelled or heard or tasted before. Whatever and whoever he had once been, he was something else now.

To his right there was a vaguely familiar man, strapped to a chair like he was and staring at him wide-eyed. Perhaps he was not familiar at all. Perhaps they’d never seen one another before, but the man’s face triggered emotion. A strong dislike seemed to boil up from nowhere.

There was a tearing pain in his chest and he looked down to see a knife buried there. A sense of terror leapt up in his stomach as it occurred to him maybe this was death.

But wait. Death. Death was familiar.

The blade was jerked out of him and he watched his blood spill onto his clothing. As he observed the wound and felt the blood pouring out of him he realized he had no pulse. Instead he felt a flow, an unfamiliar and constant flow of blood through his body. He followed the knife up with his eyes and looked into the face of a large man standing in front of him.

But it wasn’t a man. Not in the sense the injured animal in the chair next to his was a man. This tall figure was something else. A god? A colleague? There was a certain familiarity in his face, unlike the one he felt for the thing in the chair. His memory wasn’t working but instinct told him he had met the large man before.

“Thor?” said the large man.

What did this word mean? He was unsure whether he’d ever heard it before. Was the large man talking to him? He brought up words of his own that came out naturally, perhaps having been used so many times before that they were triggered habitually without memory.

“What the fuck is going on?”

“I’m Loki,” the large man told him. “That’s Tyr.” He indicated a tall, slender creature of the same godly stature standing in the corner of the room and grasping tightly to a voluptuous maiden. “You’re Thor. You’re one of us.”

One of them. What were they?

“Try to breathe,” said Tyr from where he was standing. “We don’t have to breathe but it’s important to keep up the illusion. It should be easy for you now. If you stop it will become hard to do it on command.”

Thor focused on his breathing. Why didn’t he have to breathe? What did it mean?

“Why am I trapped?” he asked, beaten down hard enough by his confusion to be in control of his distress.

“The dog next to you tied you there and killed you.”

Thor turned his head to the tethered beast. A
dog
? Is that what you called that thing? It didn’t sound right.

“I can untie you,” Loki told him, “or you can break the rope behind you. If you focus it will be easy. But do not panic when you are free.”

Thor took a moment to digest this. Panic? He wasn’t sure what panic was and certainly didn’t know how to go about doing it. He hoped he wouldn’t accidentally engage in this ‘panic’ activity as he took Loki’s advice about the rope. He tugged at it for a minute.

“Don’t pull upward,” Loki said. “Don’t try to slip your hands out. Just pull them outward, apart. The rope will give way and tear.”

Thor pulled his hands apart. Sure enough, the rope ripped to pieces like bread and before he knew it he was standing next to Loki, still dazed.

The dog in the other chair had taken to barking. He seemed fearful of his owner and he spouted curse words and screams at them. Thor slapped him on the head as it seemed the right thing to do. Tyr and Loki laughed at this.

“Drain him,” Tyr commanded, but Thor did not know the meaning of this. “Your instinct will take over and you’ll begin to understand.”

Thor stared blankly at Tyr.
Drain
? What did it mean to drain a dog?

“I don’t know how,” he said.

Loki held out his hand to Tyr, who pushed the maiden to him. She was dressed in a white nightshirt, clinging loosely to her body. Thor had the distinct impression she had something he wanted but he couldn’t be sure what it was.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Loki asked, holding the teary-eyed maiden in front of him.

Thor nodded his head yes. If the other thing was a dog, this one must have been a cat. A kitten even. She was shy and small in the hands of her owners. Loki ran his hand up and down the curves of her body, pressing her back against his front and tasting and smelling the sweat of her neck.

“Touch her,” he told Thor.

Thor reached out and put a hand on her cheek. She tried to turn but her master held her there. The dog to Thor’s left continued to bark and Thor would have struck him again were he not so immersed in the kitten. Her skin was so soft! He rubbed his thumb back and forth on her face and moved his hand down her neck to her shoulder.

“What is she?” he asked Loki, then he reached into the nightshirt and gently caressed the skin underneath it.

Tyr and Loki laughed again and looked at each other. Thor was lost but his actions seemed right. Even so, he took his hand away in a fit of embarrassment.

What animal was he? Tyr and Loki were watching him like he was behind a window at the zoo.

Suddenly Tyr remembered his own rebirth and the church in England centuries ago, and for just an instant, he thought of the black roses and touched the tattoo on his shoulder.

“She is a drain,” Loki said. “She is a gift to us.”

Thor cocked his head. That word again,
drain
.

“What is a drain?”

Loki smiled an ‘I thought you’d never ask’ smile. He didn’t answer with words. He twirled his drain like a dancer and caught her in his arm. As her head leaned back, he lowered his lips to her neck and bit into her throat.

Her body tensed and she gripped the back of his head and pulled his hair. At first it seemed he was hurting the poor drain. She tried to push him away but her arms became weak and her screams quieted to moans that sounded of pleasure. Thor couldn’t say whether Loki was pleasing or torturing the beauty as her body went limp and struck the floor, but it didn’t matter. She was his.

The dog was Thor’s. Somehow this was clear. His barking had been replaced by cautious yelps and he seemed to try vainly to keep his distance. Thor cocked his head and studied the dog once again.

“Drain him,” Tyr repeated. “Drain him and it will all make sense.”

Thor took a step forward. The room fell silent except for the hysteric dog.

He bent down carefully toward the pooch’s neck, but it snapped and spat at him as he tried to get in close. The dog didn’t want to be drained. Tyr and Loki continued to laugh, making him all the more uncomfortable. He didn’t want to be a laughing stock.

The dog jabbed at him with its head and tried to back him away but Loki seemed to urge him on. He pushed back on the dog’s head and tried to shush him, putting his lips on its neck. The dog tugged and struggled as Thor attempted to bite into the flesh, being careful not to do that ‘panic’ thing.

A thin wound opened and the slightest drop of blood was on Thor’s tongue. It tantalized him. He held the dog tighter and brought his teeth down with a bit more force, still chewing more than biting as the skin began to tear open.

What poured out of the dog’s neck was wine. Ancient wine. Delicious and aged to perfection. It was a taste unlike anything Thor had tasted before and yet it was powerfully familiar at the same time. And then, as Loki said would happen, instinct took over.

The drain’s actions ceased to exist and there was no Loki and no Tyr, no frail kitten and no room. It was only the feast. Thor knew what he needed now and he pressed his fangs down harder, sucking back the nectar from inside the dying dog.

“Breathe,” something was saying from somewhere else. Thor tried to obey. He breathed through his nose and held the back of the dog’s neck, pressing it into his mouth and licking and slurping, trying to swallow everything he could squeeze out.

For a moment the memory of sex—no, the instinct of sex—came back to him. This was the instinct he let control the moment. He went with the flow now, climbing onto the chair with the dog, placing his knees on either side of its lap. He struggled to keep his lungs working as he forced the canine body into his.

His breaths continued and so did the dog’s, gasping in his ear in a way that aroused him even further. He dug his hands into the dog’s back and arched and tensed, his whole body tightening and contracting until his first drain gave a deep exhale and slumped in the chair and the blood stopped coming.