Christmas With The Brotherhood - A.J. Downey

1

December

Sage…

“Bro, what are you doing?” Connor sighed, exasperated, and sat down on the barstool beside me. The jukebox was all Christmas carols, some slow crooner singing about how Christ our savior was born.

What a crock of shit… I didn’t believe in any of that bull anymore. Never really had, to be honest. Just fuckin’ fairy tales to make us all feel better because if there was a Hell? We were fuckin’ living in it.

“Drinkin’ alone, what’s it fuckin’ look like?” I demanded. He sighed and shook his head and I side-eyed him, looking him up and down.

He looked just like Reaver. Just like his daddy. Had picked up his penchant for fuckin’ knives, too. Slice had ended up being his road name. It fit him.

“Yeah, but why here?” he demanded. “Booze not good enough back at the club?”

“No, booze is just fuckin’ fine,” I said and tossed back the rest of the whiskey in my glass.

“Then what the fuck, over?” I hitched a bit of a laugh. Slice and I had both served – the Marines – and as soon as we’d gotten home? We’d spent our time prospecting for the club and had earned our colors.

We’d been lucky in some ways. We’d seen way more shit with the club than we ever had overseas. Not sure if it was a blessing or a curse. After we’d patched in, we’d gone to work, had done fuckin’ decent for ourselves.

It didn’t mean a goddamn thing to me, though. Nothing did anymore. I was just going through the fuckin’ motions over here. I closed my eyes and tapped the bar with two fingers next to my glass.

When I opened them, the bartender was moving away and Slice had his hand over my glass.

“You’re cut off,” he said flatly, and I had to laugh at that. I really did. That was rich. Get it? Slice cutting me off?

“Come on, man. Let’s get you home,” he said, and I got up, stretching. I was fine to ride. I’d been nursing the same damn drink for like the last hour – but Slice didn’t know that.

“I’ll call you a cab or something,” he said, and I blew him off.

“Fuck that, I’m fine to ride.”

“Dice,” he admonished, and I smirked. It wasn’t my road name, that was Smoke, but it was what everyone called me because Slice was my best friend and brother. We were Slice & Dice, and it fit us, so that’s what they all called me.

“Hey!” I called up the bar length at the bartender. “How much have I had to drink?”

“Just that one,” the man called back, a slight old guy, skinny and Chinese. I was hiding in the local Chinese restaurant’s bar and lounge after all. Didn’t think anybody would think to look for me here. Leave it to Slice.

“What did you do, anyway?” I demanded. “Check every bar between here and the county line?”

“Pretty much, bro… I know how you get around Christmas.”

I blew him off and pulled some rumpled bills out of my front pocket, leaving them on the bar to pay my tab.

“Thanks, man,” I mumbled at the guy behind the bar, waving as I went by. The Golden Dynasty was a local secret. Run down, tired looking, and a hole-in-the-wall kind of place, it had the best authentic Chinese food, but the real secret was the drinks. They were strong as fuck and it didn’t matter what night of the week it was, they were usually pretty packed. Except now, this close to the holidays.

I fucking hated the holidays. Christmas was the time of year my sister, Maren, got with Nox. The time of year mine and Maren’s dad had died… it was chock full of an unpleasant mix of memories and I would have much rather preferred to not go through them every year, but I guess it was what it was. I tended to drown myself in pussy and sorrow most years, but the pussy around these parts had dried up or was on a load of meth, and no fucking thank you on that front… shit.

It was a problem, and it was becoming a big enough problem that the club was thinking about getting involved vigilante-style to fuckin’ fix it.

We tended to keep to ourselves more often than not these days, but shit was creeping into our business ventures. We’d caught a couple of girls at Sugar’s selling, and then there was the barista out of one of Everett’s Sacred Grounds coffee stands that’d been