Read The Wages of Sin (Blood Brothers Vampire Series Book Two) for Free Online Page B

is longer and more meaningful than
any of which I could dream. There is no shame in a subtle life. My
name is Harold.”
    “Eleanor.”
    Tyr bowed and Eleanor curtsied.
    “Shall we walk?” asked Tyr. And they did.
    Over two short hours, Tyr gave an honest
representation of the last year of his life—though he omitted many
murders and the fact that sunlight would kill him—and Eleanor
talked of the joys and difficulties of a life spent toiling in the
fields. Neither party had to feign interest or wished to prove
anything, and so the conversation went as ideal conversation goes,
with each person more interested in knowing more about the other
than telling about themselves. A two-hour conversation meeting
these criterion is all it takes for a bond to form, and after this
brief period spent feeding each other’s interests and emotions, Tyr
and Eleanor parted ways as great friends and with a spark of
romantic love between them.
    When the first traces of the light of morning inched
toward the horizon, they quickly said goodbye as Eleanor was eager
to reach home before her family awakened and Tyr was eager not to
be burned to death by the sun.
    A week later, Tyr and his Brothers left Yorkshire,
and though Tyr and Eleanor had only seen one another on the one
night, he thought of her often. She became his picture of the
common people and the life of which she told him became the life he
imagined for all humans—one of hard work and harsh times, of grief
and loss and pain, made worthwhile by love and companionship, by
the joy brought on by other people.
    In their travels, the Brothers arrived in Yorkshire
every year, and each time they found themselves in town Tyr would
take one night to wander the village and find her. For years he
came to her house and rapped on her bedroom window and they walked
the streets together in the moonlight and related their adventures
to one another.
    When he returned to visit her at age eighteen, she
had been recently married and she spoke of her husband with a
casual indifference not uncommon for the age. A year later when he
found she’d given birth to her first child, Clara, she had the love
in her eyes one might have wanted to see after her marriage.
    The relationship between Tyr and Eleanor developed
one night a year for most of Eleanor’s life. As her family grew, as
she gained and lost children, as her husband died of leprosy, Tyr
and Eleanor always looked forward to the one night a year they
would spend catching up with each other, when Eleanor would bear
her soul and Tyr would practice his charm and his half-truths,
though his interest in her life was always genuine.
    The meetings were not a secret Tyr kept from his
Brothers. They never came with him to visit Eleanor, but he
informed them of his visits beforehand and they politely asked
about her afterward. There was a level of innocence present in all
of them in those days, and there was no worry over the dangers of
their friendship. There was the small concern that Eleanor might
piece together that disappearances in her village took place
anytime Tyr came to visit, but if problems of this nature were to
one day arise, the situation would be easily rectified by leaving
Yorkshire and never returning.
     
    One night near the land of Ipswich, while venturing
alone, Odin met another vampire, a missionary, and was told of the
ways of their species.
    “Have you not heard the word of the great Ofeigr?”
the missionary asked.
    “I don’t believe I have.”
    “You must.” The missionary reached into a tote bag
and came up with a leather bound book, the edges of its pages
tinted gold. “Your masters have done you a disservice. You know not
of the Augury?”
    “I do not. But my family and I are Episcopalian and
we’ve no interest in your strange gods.”
    “Not gods; vampires. I am not here whoring religious
faith. The Augury concerns itself only with the physical world.
Ofeigr is very much alive, a being who walks and talks like you