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

the boys, his low booming voice filling the room.
    “It’s this one like ya thought it was. Told us all about it. You shoulda heard some o’ the things comin’ outta his disgusting mouth.”
    Locke turned his gaze to Loki.
    “What sorta things was ya sayin’, boy?”
    “What do you wanna know?” asked Loki. “Her lips tasted like cherry wine. And I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout her mouth.”
    In an instant, Locke was across the room and the razor was on Loki’s neck.
    “What if I cut your throat?” he threatened. “You get off on that shit? Think it’s about time someone does it to you?”
    “Is that a justice question?” said Tyr. “Yer wonderin’ about justice, Loki there ain’t really the one to talk to.”
    Locke’s head turned, “What did you ‘ave to do with it?”
    “With her specifically? Nothin’ more’n tellin’ him it was fine idea. It’s kinda what the two of us do. But to get back to your question about ain’t it time someone does it to us, I think yer onto somethin’. See after a thousand years give or take runnin’ around doin’ what we do, ya couldn’t really call it a tragedy if we found ourselves on the other end the proverbial sword. However if there was a time frame like ya said where it ought to have flipped on us, I think Loki and I have long passed it. Yer talkin’ about justice. And justice is either man-made or God-given. What my experience tells me about justice is this: man can give nothing to me but blood, and there is no god higher than I.”
    Locke looked back at Loki, who gave a cheesy smile to acknowledge his satisfaction with Tyr’s response. Bloodlust brewed behind Locke’s eyes and he gave on the idea of dragging this out further. He dug the razor into one end of Loki’s neck and dragged across to the other end. Loki winced horribly and let out a grunting scream as the thick red goo gushed out of his neck. His head slumped forward and became still.
    Locke turned his back to the boys. As he walked to the door he said, “Shoot ‘em in the head and let’s have a drink.”
    And then he was out the door.
    The boys obeyed. Pinky shot Tyr in the head and his body went limp, and then he shot Michael in the head to be sure. Gimpy drew his gun on Loki, who raised his head and glared, gritting his teeth.
    “You shoot me with that gun—” he started to threaten, but before he could finish, the firearm was unloaded and the bullet was in his head, blood spilling on the concrete floor. His chin dropped to his neck and he faced the floor again.
    Pinky was out the door and up the stairs while Gimpy was still admiring his handiwork. As he started up the steps, a sound caught Gimpy’s attention.
    It started as air escaping from a sealed container, perhaps breath in Loki’s lungs that was finding its way to the room, and then it had voice. It was a low, human groan that could have been a spasm of the body, but it also could have been that there was somehow a fragment of life left within the brutalized man.
    Gimpy took an unstable step toward Loki. The moan got louder, like a whine of someone who was inconvenienced but perhaps not even terribly hurt. Gimpy tilted his head in curiosity and continued to advance on the bound man. The moan gained life. There came brief inhales, like sobs that morphed seamlessly into a sort of eerie laughter and the dead man’s head seemed to bob gently. Gimpy stopped in his tracks raised the gun again.
    Loki’s head came up. There was a malevolent smile on his face and the wound on his head had contracted, healed so that it was barely a cut. His eyes wrinkled with disgust and he said, “When I get out of this chair, I’m gonna kill you.”
    Gimpy recoiled so forcefully he hit the floor. He struggled to move backward without taking his eyes off Loki, clawing at the floor and pushing himself along like an infant learning to move. His trousers went damp before he made it to the door and fled.
    As soon as they were alone in the room, Tyr broke