Free Thicker Than Water (Blood Brothers) by Greg Sisco Page B

Africa.”
    They both laughed. Tyr had to admit he wasn’t much of a fan himself.
    “Does it matter to you that I’m enjoying myself?” asked Thor. “I get the feeling you are, too. Why abandon a way of life that’s working out pretty well just to spend our time running and hiding? Why not push the boundaries a little bit and just see if anybody pushes back? I haven’t felt any resistance yet and I get the impression you haven’t either.”
    Tyr cursed under his breath. He didn’t like this plan. The rules of The Augury didn’t dictate a ‘three strikes’ policy. Strike one was ‘fuck you.’ If either of them were caught, he’d disappear without a trace and his Brothers would be never the wiser.
    “I never should have run out on you guys,” Tyr said. “We were dumb when we were all together, but we weren’t this dumb. We’ve all managed to really fuck things up over the last few years.”
    “Nobody told you to leave,” said Thor, standing up. “You’re the one who bailed.”
    Tyr averted his gaze from Thor’s eyes and muttered, mostly to himself, “We should have just robbed that train back in Tombstone.”

CHAPTER TEN

    The Great Train Robbery of 1986. That was what Loki called it before it took place. One might say he jinxed it.
    The brothers were taking shelter in the basement of a house, having recently murdered the family who lived there. It was a quiet home in the desert near Reno, Nevada. The basement was a wide-open area from which they had cleared out most of the furniture to create a clubhouse. There was booze, a table for cards, a box of cigars, and pin-ups of Playboy centerfolds who Loki talked of draining. Of course, being that Loki was at least marginally responsible at this point, he never acted on the impulse. It seemed overly reckless to kill humans with any level of fame. Ten years from now this never would have stopped him.
    The walls were lined with crossbows, spears, maces, muskets, and some other old weapons kept around mostly for decoration. Though Tyr and Loki each owned swords, they were never displayed in the room as they were the only weapons in their inventory that could easily kill a fellow vampire.
    Occasionally they’d take down some of the weapons and spar in the open space in the middle of the room. It was important to Loki that they be skilled in combat should they be jumped by a rival gang of vampires, or at least that was the justification he provided for his constant yearning to mutilate his Brothers. Tyr found it a silly concept as it was very rare to even see another vampire, much less fight with one. But he sometimes joined in the fighting anyway and was able to hold his own against either of the others.
    Thor had the best track record. He won a good two-thirds of the spars that he engaged in, being a particularly brutal, balls-out fighter. Loki fought much the same way, relying solely on his brute strength, and while he was by far the strongest of the three, Thor was small and much more agile. Tyr’s tactical, precise manner of fighting would have worked wonders against a band of five others but against someone like Thor who came swinging with reckless determination he was often not able to keep up.
    On this day it was Thor and Loki duking it out. Loki with a mace and Thor with a flail, they pounded at each other’s immortal flesh over and over, each pulverizing the other’s face and spilling blood on the walls and floor. Tyr sat back, drinking from a glass of apple brandy and watching the others grunt and wince and scream.
    By the end, Loki was on his knees and Thor had wrapped the silver chain of the flail around his neck, pulling it tight and pushing his head forward into the chain with his foot. While Loki’s body didn’t require him to breathe, the neck was a particularly sensitive area, especially to silver—a substance that tended to burn a little on contact as well as diminishing their strength and leaving them feeling weak and powerless. Much