Thicker Than Water (Blood Brothers) (2 page)

“I couldn’t tell you,” said Tyr eventually. “Give a human life and he bitches that it’s too short, give him time and he wastes it on shit he hates doing, give him the world and he doesn’t leave his hometown. I’m not sure the Earth’s best human is worth more than its best intestinal parasite. Hell, at least the parasite doesn’t go to church.”

The Butcher scowled. “I don’t know whether that’s denial or naivete talking, but I’d say you’re being ignorant. Why do you give the species so little credit, Tyr? You used to be one.”

“Yeah, yeah. I was also a sperm once. Doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve got to moderate my behavior to be sure good sperm have good lives. Don’t get me wrong, what you do is admirable,—”

“Cut the shit, Tyr,” the Butcher interrupted.

His expression was suddenly sharp and cold. He narrowed his eyes at Tyr and grinned as though catching him in a lie. Tyr swallowed. Something felt very wrong.

“Who’s the girl?” the Butcher asked suddenly.

Tyr’s stomach sank.

It can’t be. He’s a servant of Ofeigr. They’ve been watching me under a microscope and they’ve sent The Butcher to do me in. The Augury. The Chosen. It’s all real.

Tyr tried his best to play it off.

“Just some Vegas showgirl. What’s the problem?”

The Butcher leaned in close, lowered his eyebrows, and tightened the corners of his mouth.

“You know goddamn well I’m not talking about the drain,” he said. “Who’s
the girl
?”

CHAPTER TWO

While speaking in terms of time the name didn’t come along until near the end, it seemed to have been there all along. When it first appeared on the cover of a tabloid in the 1990s there was no discussion among them, no moment when they excitedly claimed it as their title. It was merely who they were and always had been.

To say it came along late meant nothing to Tyr, however, as his theory was to give something credit based on its genesis in time was to stoop to mortal levels and presuppose it began at all. A thousand years of existence had convinced him nothing of value had a beginning or an end. He knew the universe to have no chronology. In his opinion only the smallest, most minute details of the world began and ended, and they weaved together to flesh out broader things—things that could not be explained or understood so much as studied or meditated on.

So it began everywhere, all at once, and throughout time; a thousand things began in a thousand places. But while the events of a single life unfolded in terms of time, the events of fate unfolded in terms of reason, often moving against one another in a way that convoluted both, like ripples bouncing off the edge of a pond.

And then there was the writer. Be it by fate or by life, cause or effect, he was the one who wrote the words in the tabloid and, young as he was, he was often the one who had the words for everything else. It was his theory—as it is the theory of many writers—that there are only a small number of stories, all told before, and an infinite number of ways in which they can be retold. Were this the case, the romantic in Tyr would have chosen to believe it began with a girl in a tavern outside Las Vegas in 1999.

He tracked her down based on her first name, which he remembered clearly, and her last name, which he had to dig up from her mother’s obituary after the robbery years ago. He had an odd impulse to seek her out, a strange curiosity as to the kind of life she was living. After all, the things she brought to the world were, by extension, things he was bringing to the world as well.

He found when she left the orphanage, she had taken up showing her body to drunks in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. It was a town he loved anyway, and he took to finding her mostly as a means to fill his time. After so many centuries worth of nights in search of beautiful women in general, it was a refreshing change of pace to search for one in particular. He found her in a run-down shithole just outside the city limits.

 
She was a smudge of expensive lipstick on a dirty mirror, sitting amidst rambunctious lowlifes slurring together the wrong lyrics to songs that weren’t playing on the jukebox in the first place. The room was a Holocaust for brain cells populated by drunkards too seasoned to mourn the vanquished. She tried to blend in, but throwing back whiskey shots with an extended pinky, she practiced the same conformity as a match struck in a darkened room.

She was Tyr’s type, and not just his blood type. He wanted her the instant his eyes rolled over her, the instant his intuition took note of her, and from that instant her fate was decided. In the moment he slid open the heavy wooden door and floated into the cigarette-smoke fog, he made her the poster child of his past regrets and he vowed she would belong to him for the night.

Nineteen years old now. She was ripe for the picking.

She tried to dress badly but the unwashed clothes still complimented her figure. Her stained green button-down shirt, likely taken from an old flame, hung loosely with rolled-up sleeves and the missing button near the top glimpsed the line of her cleavage ever so slightly. Even without lipstick or makeup, she had matured into a beautiful young woman and the wounded dove she looked like made her all the more appealing.

He knew she was the kind of woman Loki longed for every time they hunted, which was probably an influence on his subconscious. Loki would have had her in an instant. She was something typically off-limits to Tyr because of his brother’s skill at charming and hypnotizing. Loki had always been the one to walk away from every social gathering with his pick of litter while the others clamored over whatever scraps he’d left in the buffet line.

But tonight, there was no Loki. This was Tyr’s day. Happy goddamn birthday.

He made his way across the bar to her, glass and plastic crunching below his boots and carving its way into the hardwood flooring. He could smell the succulent and erotic aroma of her blood from across the room. She was in heat, and therefore the blood was at its most delicious. His breaths were thick, wet drags, sucking in the toxins that densified the musky air as he walked stride after determined stride to this night’s drain.

He brushed his fingers insignificantly along her shoulder and she looked up at him, slinking away in a gentle panic. He grasped her arm delicately and held her there, showing her some hint of a smile left mostly to the imagination as he could plainly see anything further would have only offended. She gave a sigh that begged for his consolation and turned back to her drink. He obeyed, rubbing her back gently. She raised the glass and he pushed it back down to the table before she could drink.

This was what she wanted him to do, to care for her, to express concern, to give a shit. He knew this better than she. And as she protested, the roll of her eyes in a forced expression of frustration masked her gratitude almost flawlessly. Tyr had taken her already.

She didn’t recognize him. No surprise there. She had been six years old the last time she’d laid eyes on him and he’d been wearing a bandanna and waving a twelve-gauge shotgun at everyone around her.

She gave a long, deep sigh and said, “Kill me.”

The old Tyr would have laughed. She had no idea. But he detected sincerity in her voice that drew his attention. It could have been the alcohol blending with the tears, but in this moment she truly wanted death.

“What happened?” he asked, making it too sincere and kicking himself as soon as he heard his voice. He sounded like a sixteen-year-old boy feigning consolation to get into a classmate’s pants.
I’m sorry your boyfriend cheated on you. You should get back at him by sleeping with me.
Truth be told, it wasn’t far from what he was doing, but he expected better from himself. After a thousand years, one ought to know how the hell to seduce a sad girl.

But she accepted it, having already made up her mind to give the night to him—even if it was only in a deep, buried away part of her subconscious she likely wasn’t aware of yet.

“Liver cancer,” she said. “Six months.” Then she finished the shot of whiskey.

Even less
, Tyr’s mind quipped.

Forty minutes later they were in the loft. Both bodies mostly naked with hands and mouths wandering hungrily, the girl’s heart rate accelerating, blood becoming warmer, rushing through her brittle body and building in pressure.

And there was Tyr in the midst of what mortals refer to as a midlife crisis—though Tyr’s life had no middle. Like an aging human male unable to perform, he found he could not kill. Not this one. Something about her was ripping into that place inside of him where humans kept their souls. He was feeling something he’d not felt in centuries, maybe millennia. What was it? Sorrow? Pity? Sympathy? He was losing his mind or regaining it. This long stretch of time spent away from his brethren had awakened something in his view of a human being that was unsettling him instantly.

He decided not to kill her.

He told her to put her clothes back on. She wasn’t sober. She protested and cursed at him but his linguistic prowess took hold of the situation and she found herself thanking him and kissing him on the lips when he gave her fare for the cab. She asked if she could see him again on a better night. He told her yes. She scribbled her name on a napkin and slipped it into his breast pocket.

Three days later, by dialing the number, Tyr broke a cardinal rule. She became the Juliet to his Romeo and the events of a thousand years clicked, worlds toppled, suns rose and set.

If the Blood Brothers had a beginning, it might has well have been Eva.

CHAPTER THREE

Eva.

So it was all about Eva.

Tyr stared into the Butcher’s eyes, deliberating carefully before he made another sound. If the Butcher was working for Ofeigr, this was a life or death situation. The wrong words, the wrong facial expression, the wrong vocal nuance would land him in the fabled torture chambers until he croaked from starvation sometime in the next week or two. He bit his tongue and bided his time.

In distancing himself from his brothers these last few years, Tyr had felt himself changing in a dozen ways, and there was one in particular he wished was not taking place. There was a sense of independence and self-responsibility that had never existed under Odin’s roof and certainly not under Loki’s iron fist. He was taking the wheel in a way he’d never done before and his inexperience with the new way of life disoriented him. Many nights, and especially days, he found himself distraught. The isolation had done things to his mind he had not expected or planned for. He developed a thirst for companionship, sparking a relationship with something that should have been beneath him. Like an old lonesome hag who treats her cats like children, he developed an odd affection for Eva. She was human, and well over 900 years younger than he was, but he enjoyed her company for reasons he couldn’t fully understand.

By mortal standards their relationship was not entirely unusual, a run-of-the-mill love-affair built on lies, half-truths, and secrets. Tyr’s way of life came with certain idiosyncrasies which a human female could never be made to understand. Many nights after a romantic dinner and a goodnight kiss, Tyr would drive to a seedy bar or back alley to find some other nameless female with whom to indulge in perverse sexual acts before ripping her throat out and guzzling half her blood. If Eva ever learned of this, she would break up with him and he would murder her. From what he’d observed, this was somewhat standard fare for human relationships.

But by immortal standards what they were doing was beyond taboo. It was the equivalent of an elderly human male with AIDS who pursues an interracial relationship with a six-year-old mentally-handicapped schoolboy. It was something no member of his species would defend, and if word got to the wrong people he would be killed for it. The humans populated their own species, and his kind kept out of sight except to feed. That was the rule.

“Who’s the girl?” The Butcher repeated, still perfectly patient, knowing Tyr was sweating more profusely with each passing moment. Tyr had nothing. He was surprised he wasn’t dead already.

“She’s… my concern,” he said finally. “Not yours.” It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could come up with.

The Butcher smiled, but never laughed. “Don’t worry, Tyr. I’m not going to kill her. But I’d be sure you’re ready to let her die, preferably by your own hand and soon. You’re being a little careless, I think. Maybe there’s a little of Loki rubbing off on you.”

Tyr’s insides flinched. Loki? For someone who was nearly a perfect stranger to the Brothers, this Butcher sure had his information straight.

“What do you know about us?” Tyr asked. He was still trying to mask the sick feeling in his gut but by now it was perfectly obvious.

“I know Loki’s out of his mind these last few years. He’s gonna get himself into a lot of trouble. He’s gonna be all over the news because he’s running around robbing banks and taunting the media with notes.”

Tyr was unaware of this. Loki’s ways had always been careless but taunting with notes was a stretch even for him.