Page 1 of Bourbon & Blood

PROLOGUE

La Croix…

I sat on the picnic table, scuffed boots, leather eaten and some of the shine of the steel toe on the left one shining through under the strings of bare lightbulbs. They were strung up around the inside of the slatted fence of the club’s front courtyard. It was hot – a sweaty, muggy, NOLA night – and the boys were partying hard inside.

I wasn’t interested. The mood felt forced and wasn’t all good – but things had been declining for a while like that.

I took a sip outta my flask, the rich, smoky, good, bourbon a rolling fire against my tongue and all the way down. I didn’t want no part of the festivities no more. I found myself out here more often than not… but then again, I had a good reason.

I squinted up past the glare of the streetlight at the window on the third floor of the old building across the way, at the woman between the curtains and the fall of her red hair over her creamy shoulders, hiding her pale back under a straight shining copper fall that was damn near to her waist. She wore a green tank top, the kind that clung tight to her and cut a straight line across, just above where the band of her bra should be. The bra was a neutral beige. I could see the straps around the thin ones of the tank.

Soundlessly, her voice encased by the window glass and insulated from my ears by the brick walls of the old place, she laughed as a boy picked her up and she hung over his shoulder, beating her fists against his back ineffectually. She had the most perfect heart-shaped ass under her beige panties, a match for the bra. Cotton, though. Nothing fancy or satin…

Still, the underwear matched. She planned to fuck him.

I grunted and put the freshly rolled spliff between my lips, fishing my lighter out of my pocket and swiping it twice, once down and once up, against the rough denim of my jeans at my thigh.

“Figured I’d find you out here,” Hex called out from behind me as I sucked in a lungful of green.

I grunted in acknowledgment of his presence, didn’t need much beyond that.

He sighed and dropped onto the bench by my booted feet and leaned back, with an “ahhh.”

I knew that sound, and without a word, I passed him my flask.

“Thank you kindly,” he muttered and took a healthy swig.

I stared at him, waiting him out, waiting to hear how bad it was.

He glanced up at me, handed me back my flask, and wordlessly held out his hand for the joint in my other hand. I passed it silently and felt myself frown.

He took a puff off it and handed it back.

Through his held breath, he said, “It’s bad, brother. I think we’re past a no-confidence vote. Ruth is off his fuckin’ rocker and the boys are gettin’ restless.”

He didn’t sound happy about it. Hell, I wasn’t happy about it, either. Still, I had to say, “Don’t sound like no confidence in there to me—”

“Yeah, well, still gotta let off steam where you can, but the vibe in there ain’t great. I imagine that’s why you’re out here – no?”

I glanced back up to the pixie-like woman through her window. I liked to watch her. She was all that was sweet and good in this world and easy on my eyes. I didn’t know her. Like, I didn’t know her name – at least not really. Just what was on the label next to her apartment number on the buzzer. At least what I thought was her apartment number. I’d never been inside the building to look, but if I had to reckon, she was in apartment 3A and the name on 3A was A. Bouchard.

“Boy, you even listening to me?” Hex rapped his knuckles on the toe of my boot like he was knocking on a door.

I swung my gaze down from the girl’s now-empty window and fixed my gaze on Hex who leaned back and said, “Alright, damn. Y’ ain’t gotta turn that creepy stare on me, brother.”

I blinked and frowned. I hadn’t realized I’d looked at him any type of way, but with the inked sclera of my eyes, hell – probably any look was scary as fuck, which was sorta the whole point.

I took another hit off the joint and grunted again, and he sighed.

“Isaid,I don’t know how much longer this is gonna roll until the goddamn wheels come off.”

I nodded. I knew Ruth wasn’t in his right head and I also knew we were past it. That he was too far gone on that shit he’d been breathin’ and poisonin’ himself with.

“What d’ you want me t’ do?” I asked and I turned and looked at Hex again. He looked troubled.

He sighed finally and shook his head, dropping it so he could look at his own booted feet.

“I don’t rightly know,” he confessed. “All Idoknow, is that whatever it is, the time come, it ain’t gon’ be pretty.”

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