Page 15 of Bourbon & Blood

It took her a while, but eventually, she emerged and the anxiousness that’d been building in her absence faded back into the background again.

She waved at the other dude that’d been behind the bar, and I gritted my teeth, unhappy with him as they parted ways.

She went up the street, striding as though she was on a mission, and I detached myself from the post and kept pace with her from across the way.

CHAPTERSEVEN

Alina…

It happened in a flash. I didn’t see him, but with speed that was near blinding, a hand was over my mouth and I was off my feet, hurtling sideways into the mouth of an alley.

I tried to scream, but his hand was over my nose and mouth and the back of my skull was smacking painfully into the brick wall, my back fetching up hard against it as my assailant spun me and shoved me into it.

He kept his hand over my mouth. His other hand he cupped between my legs over my jeans.

“You be nice and quiet now, y’hear?” he demanded, and I blinked, trying to see but there was light behind him, casting his face in shadow. He rubbed me suggestively through my jeans and said, “Aw, yeah… now that’s nice. That’s real nice.”

I whimpered behind his hand and struggled, both of my hands wrapping around the wrist of the hand that covered my mouth like a band of iron.

The light behind him winked out for a second and he made a strangled noise. Something warm, wet, and smelling of copper pennies hit my face and chest, splashing over my hands.

He slipped to the ground choking, both his hands to his throat.

He was lanky, white, balding, and covered in jailhouse tattoos, and he was bleeding profusely from between his fingers around his own throat.

I felt nauseous, the world swimming, streaks of flashing black in front of my eyes. I gasped, and the taste of his blood flooded my mouth and I gagged, staggering. I couldn’t get enough air. Try as I might, no matter how much I tried dragging any breath in through my nose, it was like soup.

“Easy,” a low and deep voice rumbled from nearby me.

I choked, gagging, and a hand clamped down on my shoulder. I dragged in a breath to scream but all I could see, feel, and smell was my assailant’s blood. There was so much blood! I staggered under that grip and there was a rushing in my ears. I grabbed onto something slick and in places rough, digging my fingers in as my vision went and the world narrowed down to a long, dark, black tunnel as I fell.

CHAPTEREIGHT

La Croix…

He was so fixated on her, he never even noticed I was coming. I got up behind him, knife at the ready, and I grabbed him, forcing his head forward and his chin to his chest. At the same time, I drew the razor edge of my Balisong blade across his throat.

Most people would have grabbed him by his bald fuckin’ head and ratcheted his head all the way back – but I knew better. That wasn’t any way to cut a man’s throat unless you wanted him to live.

No, if you wanted to perform maximum damage? You wanted the best chance at making that fucker bleed out fast? You pushed his head forward. It brought all the blood vessels and veins to the edge of the blade, let that steel kiss his throat like a lover, muscle and sinew parting in a liquid rush.

I dropped his ass to the dirty-ass alley floor and smirked as he choked on his own blood, thinking to myself –That’s what you get for touching what’s mine.

Alina staggered on her feet, making a strangled noise before it terminated in an awful retching noise.

“Easy.” I tried to steady her on her feet, but she staggered, her freckled face pale in the light from over my shoulder, from the mouth of the alley.

She grabbed onto my cut, her clear gray eyes stark and terrified as she looked up at me, but I knew she didn’t see me. Lightning quick, I folded the Balisong and shoved it into my pocket.

“I’ve got you,” I murmured, but she was already sagging in my grip. I dipped, grunting as I came up with her in my arms.

I kicked out at the man wheezing at our feet and waited for a spate of passerby to go by on the sidewalk outside the alleyway.

I stopped at the mouth of the alley and stepped out into a lull between throngs of tourists and strode up the sidewalk… just taking my drunk girlfriend back to her place.

It’s what I projected with every stride – that this was normal. All of this was perfectly normal, even as the thrill of the kill was overtaken by a total rush of another sort. The rush of having my little Alina in my arms.

I made it to her apartment building and hit random buzzers until someone buzzed back. I lucked out, but at the same time made a note of the apartment – because they buzzed open the front door to the lobby without even coming over the intercom to find out who it was entering. So, in effect, I was lucky for the purpose I needed but at the same time, I didn’t like the fact that my woman could so easily be gotten to. Something about that would have to change.

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