The Wages of Sin (Blood Brothers Vampire Series Book Two) by Greg Sisco Read Free Book Online

or
I, and it would be a grave mistake for you not to follow Him.”
    “What does He ask of us?”
    “Only that we follow some simple provisions.”
    “And what might those provisions be?”
    “Take the book. Your life in death will be far
easier if you read it. Through how many human generations have you
lived?”
    “Not one. I was given life after death by a
fledgling vampire who taught me little and left shortly. I turned
my sons when they were killed by Vikings. The three of us have
lived not more than thirty years in death.”
    “This vampire who turned you, he needs Ofeigr’s word
as well. What was his name?”
    “He did not have one.”
     
    The Augury, the book was called. It dealt in
parables and riddles often, same as any religious text, but the
words rang true for the Brothers, perhaps more so even than the
Bible. The text spoke to them in much the same way, excited them
about life in death even while it frightened them of their own
species and their own desires.
    “You can no longer speak with that young woman in
Yorkshire,” said Odin to Tyr. They were sitting at a table in the
catacombs with the Augury between them.
    “I must,” said Tyr. “In all these years a problem
has never arisen. We do not copulate. She doesn’t know what I
am.”
    “The book makes it clear. Nothing more than passing
relationships with humankind. Not even a single lengthy
conversation with anyone but a drain.”
    “What if none of it is true?” asked Loki, always the
first to suggest a possibility that benefited him.
    “It is not our place to ask such questions. We are
children, all of us. This is the wisdom of vampires older and wiser
than we.”
    “You mean to alter our lives based on the writings
in a book handed to you by a stranger?”
    “Do you disagree? Are your eyes not opened as are
mine?”
    “I only know what I’ve experienced. As long as I’ve
lived, I’ve lived as I do now, and no Chosen vampire nor an Ofeigr
nor anything else has expressed disapproval. If this Ofeigr were so
powerful, why are we hearing about Him from some polite missionary
and not being scolded by His minions.”
    “Harold, do you agree with John?” said Odin to Tyr.
“Do you find these texts preposterous?”
    “I do not, though neither do I see the harm in
polite discourse if it is done under the guise of a human. As long
as she does not see me for what I am—”
    “You cannot choose the passages in which you see
truth. Either it is the code by which members of our species must
live, or it is a book and nothing more. You cannot see it as both.
Would you agree it was written by greater vampires?”
    Tyr and Loki begrudgingly replied in the
affirmative.
    “Then from this night forth we will minimize our
interaction with mankind. The three of us shall live according to
this book.”
     
    Tyr and Eleanor never spoke again, though one month
a year he watched her in the night. He listened in on her activity
in the bedroom, read her diary while she slept, sat outside her
window if she ate a late supper with her family and imagined
himself at the table with them, enjoying their company and
participating in conversation.
    A few times, Odin followed Tyr to make sure the
trips were as innocent as Tyr claimed them to be, and he became
satisfied that they were. Gradually it came to be that Odin and Tyr
would visit Eleanor together, and on a few occasions Loki even
joined.
    They never said goodbye to one another, and she even
wrote in her diary from time to time wondering what had become of
him. It took strain not to have one last conversation, to give her
closure, to let her know he wouldn’t be coming back, but he never
succumbed to the temptation. Eleanor was Tyr’s introduction to
solitude, to viewing the world of humanity from outside. As she
grew old and her children married and had children of their own, he
stood outside her window and watched.
    She lived an emotional life, ignorant of almost
anything beyond her village. Tyr’s