Sadism and Sacrifice

As Aleksander drove the disguised vehicle back into the underground garage and parked it beside the elevator that led down to the living quarters where all employees of the base lived, Aiden sat up a little straighter and tilted his head, seeming to listen to something nobody else heard. Aleksander opened his mind up again, since he had closed it to interference when they left Gio’s Café. He preferred to block out humans when they were traveling, since every person who came near couldn’t help but project their thoughts at him.

      In a blaze of mental light and sound, Alex had an awareness of his younger Brother, Adrian, in a way he felt was familiar, as if he had once done it before. Adrian was somewhere in Europe and searching for a woman he believed was the key to his research into Evers, a person whose power was unbelievable. At the moment he appeared to be in Italy and was confused and amused at the same time. It made Alex want to giggle like a madman, probably an effect of the sudden contact.

      As quickly as it came, the connection was gone, vanishing faster than it had come. Alex shook his head and got out of the vehicle, telling the waiting humans where to park the Chester and what needed cleaning in it. It was almost comical watching the meter and a half tall humans trying to drive a machine built for someone as tall as himself. Of course, it helped to be short sometimes. Like when you want to kiss a pretty woman.

      Aleksander’s mind suddenly reeled from the unexpected thought, unsure where such a thing could have originated. He’d never before thought about women, or anything to do with them, except maybe how to kill one fastest. He was built to be a killing machine, every bone in his body devoted to it, his whole life spent making himself perfect for it. Hell, he made dismemberment an art, just as Aiden made eating like a pig his hobby. Women simply had no place in such a life. But there it was, he was thinking about them now.

      Now, something to remember about Alex and his brothers is that Evers grow the same as humans. Proportionally. So a two and a half meter(Roughly seven and a half foott) tall superhuman had a correspondingly proportional body in ever respect, including the one that most human men think most important. And Aleksander had no clue what women and men did together, aside from the deadly fights he had with a few female Evers. He never knew how babies were born, and was never interested in the human way because he assumed Evers either did it differently or didn’t do it at all, so why bother learning? But now he had sudden urges to find out, deep inside of his mind, forcing him to become nearly obsessed with it in an instant. He made a note to ask Adrian, since he had made the most research into Ever biology and probably knew anything anyone would ever need to know about things pertaining to them.

As Alex came back to himself, he found himself back in the elevator, riding it down. Mentally shaking himself, he moved to lean against the railing at the side, watching Aiden trying to chat up the two girls with little success.

“So where are you two from? I’m from… Well, as far as we know, it’s part of Russia now. Pretty place, but cold as fuck. Could make a polar bear want to migrate south.” Aiden said, grinning. Suddenly, still grinning, he let out a burst of perfectly pronounced and inflected Russian, speaking like it was his natural language, which it wasn’t.

The blonde girl suddenly looked at him sharply and responded with exactly the same mastery of Russian, her eyes blazing, ending her short speech with an angrily said, “And don’t ever make a remark about our bodies like that again, you filthy little bastard!”

Aiden looked slightly stunned, his eyes widened slightly as he watched the girl chew him out. After a couple of minutes stunned silence, he began to giggle quietly, staring at a spot above the doors of the elevator, obviously thinking of something else entirely.

Alex looked at him, smirking before looking at the girls and speaking quietly in German, bowing at the end of his sentence. The black-haired girl watched him with a thoughtful expression, the blonde with one of confusion, obviously not having any idea what he said. As he kissed her hand, the black-haired girl smiled and spoke in a soft, low voice, answering his German with a profound comprehension before switching back to Ever and speaking slowly, “My name is Natascha, and my angry companion is Glacia… What’s your name?”

Aleksander smiled, feeling Aiden’s burst of annoyance as he answered, “I’m Aleksander. This is my twin brother Aiden.” He straightened up slowly, holding her eyes with his own. He had the feeling that something was passing between them, but he didn’t know what it was, and didn’t care. It felt right.

As the elevator stopped, Alex broke the gaze and stepped out, beckoning the others to follow him. The four Evers traversed the hallways until they got to the Brothers’ suite, walking in without a word. Aleksander pointed to the two rooms on the far left side and looked at the girls, signaling that they could stay there.

“Those are your rooms. Do what you like with them, you won’t be bothered. Aiden and I will be dissecting one of the humans of this base in about an hour for past transgressions. You may join us if you wish, or stay in your room.” He smiled and bowed once more, walking with Aiden into their room to gather supplies for the ritual.

Over the next hour, the men set out surgical tools and other implements of pain, laying the comatose Handler from earlier in the day on an operating gurney in the middle of the room. The girls simply watched, flickers of expression crossing their faces as they watched the concentrating Brothers working.

As night fell on the surface of the world, Aleksander and Aiden stood on opposite sides of the gurney, all their tools set out and shining sinisterly in the light of the lamps in their underground home. Joining hands carefully, the brothers began to speak in low, slow voices, the Latin words rolling off their tongues as they spoke an ancient prayer for the dead, it’s elaborate syllables rolling off their tongues. The two gigantic men bowed their heads in silence as the human on the table slowly began to wake up from his nightmares, released from the wasteland that had been his world for hours. Looking upon the grim visages of the two Evers, the Handler, whose name was Robert, felt a shudder of fear strike him to the very core of his being. In that one instant, he knew that he was about to die, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

As they worked, the brothers reverently spoke prayers in languages long dead, ancient when they had come into being. They placed incense and candles around every bodily vessel, cleansing his soul as they went, never allowing him the peace of death until they removed his heart. With the loss of this most major organ, Robert passed into sweet oblivion, his mind dying as he soared into the great beyond. Walking over to the girls, each Brother had his own private conversation with one of them.

“So how did you like the show?” Aiden asked the one named Glacia, leaning against a wall and looking her in the eye.

“Well, I don’t think I quite understand why you said prayers. I mean, why not just kill him and walk away. You disgraced him by removing his organs while he was alive, why not just walk away?” Glacia said in a low voice, her tone slightly heated. It was obvious she was disgusted with him, and it amazed him how much it hurt to know that.

“Because Evers may not have souls, but he does. As far as we know at least… Just because I chose to use him to relieve my aggression doesn’t mean he is undeserving of a decent afterlife. Would you rather I just ripped out his organs?” Aiden returned in a cold, annoyed voice.

“Perhaps. But I see why you did it…” Glacia looked away as she spoke, watching the body quietly. All the fight seemed to have disappeared from her in an instant.

“Look… I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I only meant it as a joke. I wasn’t sure you’d understand me…” Aiden said quietly, watching her.

“Is that thing supposed to be eating him?” Glacia said, still watching the body.

“What?” Aiden turned to look at Robert’s corpse.

At that same moment, a couple feet away, Aleksander was having a quiet conversation with the seductive Natascha.

“So what do you think of our little ritual? It may look primitive to you, but one thing we’ve learned is to have respect for the dead. Especially human dead.” Aleksander said softly

“I thought it was beautiful. You treated him so respectfully, even though he tried to hide from you something you wanted.” Natascha said in a low voice like velvet, her eyes glinting slightly as she smiled up at Alex.

“How did you know that was why we killed him?” Alex said, slightly intrigued.

“You let down your guard while you were praying. And he never had a guard to let down. It kept repeating all through the maiming in his mind, even through all the pain. He never said what it was though, he was beyond being coherent enough.” Natscha’s eyes were suddenly caught by something behind Alex and she said in a quiet voice, “What is that?”

Both the brothers turned at once to view a monstrous horror standing on the slab, chewing on the liver of the deceased Robert as if it were a delicacy. It stood about four feet at the shoulder and it’s whole body rippled with muscles, looking almost canine in it’s obscene strength. But aside from a muzzle full of sharp teeth and four legs, the resemblance wasn’t that of a dog, but far from it. The creature had scaly skin and dark violet eyes that seemed uncannily intelligent as it watched the Evers over a mouthful of human. From about the shoulder region of its body grew two long tentacles tipped with mouth like suckers, the wicked fangs inside of them snapping hungrily at the two.

Just as Alex began to relax, confident in the knowledge that he and Aiden could easily beat one of these things, 5 more stalked out from behind the gurney.

“Uh, Aiden, let me try something. I want to see if Little Brother really gave us the boost he claims.” Aleksander said, stepping forward quickly.

With a snarl, the first beast leaped forward, mouth gaping wide and spittle gleaming on the razor-sharp teeth. With a soft exhalation, Alex crouched and brought his hands together before him in a wide clapping motion. With a short yelp of pain, the creature was flattened as if between two steel plates, mental waves projected from Aleks’ awesomely powerful consciousness, its green blood leaking towards the floor from the flattened body. Giggling with elation, Aleksander stood straight again and assumed a fighting stance, flicking his fingers in an invitation to fight as the first creature dropped like an empty sack to the floor.

One of the remaining five made a kind of barking/purring noise at the others and they all suddenly attacked at once. With a smile, Alex sprang into action.

With a roundhouse enhanced by his extreme mental presence, Alex kicked  three of the beasts into a wall, their relatively strong bones snapping like twigs under the intense force behind his leg. As his foot touched ground again, he smoothly back flipped, kicking another of the monsters in the muzzle in the process before delivering an uppercut to another’s chin, snapping it’s teeth together and gashing it’s tongue open. As he surveyed the remaining Beasts, Alex lurched forward, running and leaping into the air, slamming his feet down on the head of one of them, killing it instantly and flipping away from the pitiful thing as it struggled to stand.

As he landed, Alex quickly leaned forward and mule-kicked 5 in the face as it charged at him from behind, bringing his foot forward as the Beasts face adhered and tossing it into the air, slamming a mental wave into it that threw it into a wall and splattered it. Standing straight again, he looked over the remaining three pitiful things.

“Time to stop playing nice with you, puppies.” Alex said, hardening mental waves around each arm and sharpening them into long, invisible blades as he ran at the remaining Beasts, his arms blurring as he moved. Kicking off the ground and flipping forward, Alex slashed the first two headless and landed before the last. His arms becoming even more of a blur, Alex concentrated hard and diced 1 into multiple pieces, ripping it apart.

With a grin, Alex let the blades go and went to the door, calling for someone to clean up the mess. Walking over to Natascha, he smiled and spoke, “Shall I call this our first date, or can I take you somewhere special later?”

“I think that we should maybe have a more formal date. Maybe without green-blooded monsters?” Natascha said, smiling demurely at Aleksander. She seemed impressed by his physical display.

“Glacia, will you forgive me at least? I’d love to take you somewhere and get to know you better…” Aiden said, feeling as if he already knew the answer would be no.

“Sure. I think I’d like that.” Glacia said, smiling at the look of shock on Aiden’s face.

The Brothers looked at each other and knew what they were both thinking without needing telepathy or any special bond to tell them.

They… Had… Scored!