Excerpt from "BLOOD & THUNDER: Jacyn's Journey - Book Two"

          “Should we say anything about the ‘dearly-departed’ before we light everything up?” Lochlan asked me as we stood in the middle of the road between the bonfires-to-be. “Perhaps offer a prayer for their souls?”

          “Sure,” I replied, nodding and clearing my throat. “Dear Lord, we ask that you reject these two bastards and hand them to Satan straight-away. For in their forsaking of their appointed duties and betrayal of public trust, these fuckers have tussled with the wrong people tonight, and as black-hearted angels of your vengeance, we have delivered upon them justice, and banish them to the fires of hell now, as they shall be eternally. Amen.”

          “Hmm … well, that’s not quite what I meant, Jacyn,” Lochlan offered, looking to me quizzically. “Are we so perfect to sit in judgment over these men?”

          “Yes,” I answered without thought. “That’s all the penance I’m offering these fuckers. We are perfect enough to judge them and sentence them. After all, it was us they betrayed. It was us they offended. I don’t have time to wait for them to turn to pillars of salt, Loch. Tonight, for these men, I am God, and I have seen their wickedness, and I have judged them.”

          “What about our wickedness, Jacyn?” Lochlan asked, drawing a book of matches from his pocket.

          “Our wickedness is different,” I said plainly. “I’ve done the just things in the past and been punished and left for dead for it. I’ve been abandoned by my wife and had my child aborted for it. That’s what I got for serving a power higher than myself. I learned that from Vince. I’m going to live forever, so therefore I have no real need to worry about what happens after this world. This life is either my ‘Heaven,’ or it is my ‘Hell.’ I’d much prefer it be my ‘Heaven,’ and I will do whatever I must to keep it that way.”

          Lochlan was, for a moment, speechless while he tried to absorb what I had just said. We had spoken at length before about how we had to view the world, but when it came to the actual execution of those views, Lochlan was still a little naïve. We knew we were different, and that we had to live differently. We still existed as part of society, but we lived outside of society’s standards and rules. We simply had to.

          “Vince’s advice, eh?” Lochlan finally spoke up. “If I understand it right, then Vince tried to have you killed for trying to disrupt his ‘Heaven,’ didn’t he? Then he tried to kill you himself for disrupting his ‘Heaven,’ right? And then you killed him.”

          “That’s right,” I agreed as I took the matchbook from my brother. I walked a few paces toward the officer I killed and, after plucking a match from the small cardboard booklet; I struck it alight and threw it on the policeman’s body. The flames rose up instantly and bright, almost blinding in the darkness of the remote road, and spread quickly from the corpse, following a deliberate trail of poured gasoline from the dead policeman’s body to his patrol car, which suddenly became a raging inferno.

          “You’d better get that one lit,” I said as I returned to Lochlan, tossing him the matchbook. “It won’t take too long for someone to notice this and call for the fire department.”

          “So this is what happens when someone disrupts your ‘Heaven,’ is it?” Lochlan asked as he too pulled a match from the book and lit it. He turned and walked away from me, moving closer to the other car and the officer he had slain, and threw the match at his body, quickly looking away as the fire swiftly took and engulfed both the cruiser and it’s operator.

          “Yes!” I asserted firmly, grabbing the front of Lochlan’s shirt as he turned away from the fire, not realizing that I had trailed him in his paces. “This is your ‘Heaven’ as well, Lochlan. Don’t you forget that. Had we not been vampires and some policeman tried to have his way with Shayne, what would ya have done then? Nothing? I don’t think so, Loch. You’d have wanted blood, just as ya took it. And what of Keelin then? Would ya have stood idly by and let these men set to having their way with her? Not a chance of it, and you know it. So don’t go thinking that because we’re vampires and so different as we are that we’ve some moral obligation to be more humane than humans are. It was these bastards that lost their humanity, and it was us that punished them for it. They fucked with our ‘Heaven,’ Loch. Yours and mine. They paid for it, as they should. Don’t get so damn philosophical on me that you forget your love and your family.”

          “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith Jacyn the Lord,” Lochlan uttered bravely; though he immediately wished he hadn’t and flinched in anticipation of being somehow punished for his words.

          I simply released him from my grasp and grinned a little.

          “Now you’re getting it,” I said, maintaining a slight, dry grin. “I seem to quite vividly remember you thanking me for avenging the injuries upon Keelin. I also recall that you said you wished you could’ve helped. Well, little brother, you just did.”

          “That doesn’t make feel any less nauseous about it, Jacyn,” he replied, straightening his shirt. “We need to get out of here before hell findeth us.”

          “Hell doesn’t find us, Loch,” I said as we both started walking toward our respective vehicles. “People don’t even find us. We find them, and then we show them hell.”

          “And who shows us hell?” he asked back as he opened the door of the SUV.

          “No one,” I replied casually, pulling the driver’s door of the Camaro open. “We know hell already, Loch. We just call it something else.”