The Bourbon Thief(97)

Levi was smart. She did love that about him. That she could say one thing and he could, with one step, transverse a dozen deductions and get straight to the end where the truth lived.

“What did he do to you?” Levi asked, narrowing his eyes at her.

“The night of the flood... Momma didn’t beat me. That was a lie. She slapped me, but she didn’t beat me. But the bruises I told you about were true. Granddaddy gave them to me.”

“He beat you?”

“No,” she said and shook her head. “He wanted a son, a real Maddox son.”

“Tamara—”

“He wanted one with me. He wanted a son he could pass off as legitimate. A Maddox son. My son. His son.”

“A white son.”

“Royal blood,” she said. “Gods and mortals don’t mix.”

Levi rubbed his face. His blue eyes were rimmed in red.

“Fuck...”

“He dragged me to the bed. My bed. My stupid pink bed. But before he could do it, the river came in the room to save me. The house was flooding. I had a second, and I took it.” Levi lifted his head and she looked him in the eyes. “I killed him.”

Levi said nothing. Tamara smiled.

“I smote him,” she said and giggled drunkenly.

Can gods kill other gods?

“I was so sure Momma had sold me to him like Jacob Maddox’s wife had sold Veritas down the river that I stopped talking to her. And she thought I’d killed Granddaddy because we’d fought over you and my inheritance. He’d been threatening to leave everything to you unless she and I did what he wanted. She fired you because she knew you were his son and she’d seen us kissing. She wanted to keep us apart. But I don’t blame her for hating you or me or anybody. Granddaddy made her earn her keep, too.”

“You never told me this,” Levi said. “Why?”

“Because I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me. And if you didn’t believe me, I couldn’t love you, and I wanted to love you. I needed to love you.”

Levi looked up to the ceiling. She wondered if he was praying. Did gods pray to other gods?

“They sold a girl to start Red Thread. Raped her and sold her and bought a still. You can’t sell people,” Tamara said.

“No. No, you can’t.”

“This distillery was everything to him,” Tamara said. “Red Thread was everything. If he ever had a soul, he sold it for this place. He knew I was his daughter. He knew it all the time. That didn’t matter. Only this mattered...” She pointed at the barrels, the thousands of barrels that might as well have been filled with liquid gold. “He tried to take you away from me. All that I had. So I’m taking all he had away from him. I took his life first. And now I’m taking his soul.”

It took all she had left to get up off the floor. Her hand left a bloodred print on the wall behind her as she fought her way to her feet. A wave of dizziness hit her as she bent to pick up the ax.

“Sit down, Tamara,” Levi ordered. He did that sometimes, gave her orders. And she loved it. He was her teacher and her lord. It pleased her to obey him, but only after she put up her fight so he would have to fight back and subdue her.

“I can’t. I have to finish this.”

“Rotten, sit your ass down on the floor right now.”

Her body obeyed even as her spirit rebelled. Gently he took the ax from her hands.

Levi walked a few feet, dragging the ax behind him. He stopped. He turned.

Then he slammed the ax into the nearest barrel so hard the staves exploded.

Then Levi smashed the next barrel open like he’d been born for the job. And maybe he had. Just the way she’d been born to bring down Red Thread for Veritas. Finally. At last.

Down the line he walked, smashing barrels as he went. One. Two. Twelve. Bourbon was everywhere, all over the floor. A flood of it sweet and ripe with scents of sugar and apples and licorice, spiked and potent enough to make throats burn and eyes water. Thousands of dollars of bourbon. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of bourbon. Five-year aged bourbon. Ten-year aged bourbon. Twenty-year aged bourbon. The stuff that sold for a hundred pounds a bottle to English dukes.

It was an orgy of bourbon and destruction. Alcohol erupted from the holes in the casks, broke like ocean waves onto the ground. Wood shattered. Barrels ruptured. And Tamara sat on the floor and laughed and laughed.

Finally Levi came for her and carried her down the stairs to the main floor. There he did the most damage and it delighted her to see it. Sweat soaked his T-shirt and she could see the muscles rising and straining underneath the wet fabric. Did gods sweat? She could believe it. It made him look more powerful. He was strength and beauty incarnate, and she desired him. Her lover, her brother, her husband, her god. When this was all over, they would go somewhere and take a long hot bath together. He would make love to her after they were clean or maybe before. He always made love to her. They would talk about the baby, what to name it if it was a boy or a girl. They were gods now and gods must make other gods. They wouldn’t have a family. They would have a pantheon.

Tonight Levi became a god of destruction. There must be a god for that, mustn’t there? Destruction and vengeance and justice. And yet it was a mercy that he did this for her. She couldn’t finish what she’d started. Only he could finish it for her. He worked in a fury. Hate had walled them both up in this prison. Levi would cut their way out.