Midnight Bayou

New Orleans 1900

Julian was drunk, as he preferred to be. He had a half-naked whore in his lap, and her heavy breast cupped in his hand. The old black man played a jumpy tune on the piano, and the sound mixed nicely in his head with wild female laughter.

Cigar smoke stung the air, giving him a low-level urge for tobacco. But he couldn't quite drum up the gumption for a cigar, or to haul the whore upstairs.

The fact that he was broke-again-didn't worry him overmuch. He patronized this brothel habitually, and always, eventually, scraped together the funds to pay his bill. His credit was good here, for the moment.

He'd selected the prostitute because she was blond and lush of build, vacant of brain. He could tell himself that later, when he rode her, he wouldn't see Abigail's face staring back up at him.

Not this time.

He took another swig of bourbon, then pinched the blond's nipple. She squealed and slapped playfully at his hand. He was grinning when Lucian walked in.

"My sainted brother." Though his words slurred, they were bitter on his tongue. Julian gulped more whiskey as he watched Lucian shake his head at a redhead who sidled up to him.

He looked, Julian thought, pale and gold and perfect through the hazy smoke, against the garish colors, through the raucous noise.

And he wondered if Cain had looked at Abel and felt the same violent disgust as he himself felt now.

He waited, jiggling the blond on his knee, squeezing her breast as Lucian scanned the parlor. When their eyes met-identical eyes –there was a clash. Julian would have sworn he heard it in his head. The sound two swords make when struck in battle.

"What's this?" he said as Lucian approached. "Finally lowering yourself to the rest of us humans? My brother needs a drink, a drink and a woman for mon frhre!" he called out. "Though I doubt he knows what to do with either.”

"You embarrass yourself and your family, Julian. I'm sent to bring you home.”

"I'm not embarrassed to pay for a whore." Julian set down his glass and ran his hand up the blond's thigh. "Now if I married one, it would be a different matter. But you beat me to that, brother, as you have so many other things.”

Lucian's face whitened. "You will not speak of her in this place.”

"My brother married a slut from the swamps," he said conversationally, jerking the blond back when she tried to crawl off his lap. He could feel her heart pounding, pounding under his hand now as the heat between him and Lucian stirred fear.

And her fear excited him as none of the promises she'd whispered in his ear had done.

"Lucian, pride of the Manets, brought his tramp into our home, and now he pines and weeps because she left him for another, and saddled him with her bastard whelp."

He had to believe it. Over the winter he'd drowned in an ocean of bourbon the look of her staring eyes, the sound of her body sliding wetly into the bayou.

He had to believe it, or go mad.

"Allez," Lucian ordered the blond. "G.”

"I like her where she is." Julian clamped his hands on her arms as she struggled.

Neither of them noticed as the room fell silent, as the notes of the piano died away and the laughter trailed off. Lucian reached down, dragged the blond off Julian's lap. She bolted away like a rabbit even as Lucian yanked Julian from the chair.

"Gentlemen." The madam of the house swept forward. Behind her was an enormous man in spotless evening dress. "We want no trouble here. Monsieur Julian." Her voice cooed, her hand glided intimately over his cheek. And her eyes were frigid. "Go with your brother now, mon cher ami. This isn't the place for family squabbles.”

"Of course. My apologies." He took her hand, kissed it. Then turned and leaped on Lucian.

The table and lamp they fell on shattered. While people rushed away, women screamed, they rolled, jabbing with fists, snapping like dogs as the violence of a lifetime sprang out of both of them.

The bouncer waded in, dragged Julian up by the scruff. He quick-marched him to the door, heaved him through. Lucian had barely gained his hands and knees when he was lifted.

Curses and screams followed him out the door. And anger was smothered by mortification. Lucian shook his head clear, gained his feet.

He looked down at his brother, that reflection of self, and felt a different kind of shame. "Have we come to this?" he said wearily. "Brawling in brothels, sprawling in gutters. I want peace between us, Julian. God knows I have peace nowhere else.”

He held out a hand, an offering, to help Julian to his feet.

But Julian's shame had a different color. And it was black.

He wouldn't remember drawing the knife out of his boot. Liquor and temper and guilt blinded him. Nor would he remember surging to his feet, striking out.

He felt the blade slice through his brother's flesh with a kind of wild glee. And his lips were peeled back, his eyes mad as he scented first blood.

They struggled, Lucian through the pain and shock, Julian through the black haze, with the hilt of the knife slippery in their hands.

And the bright, bright horror paralyzed him as Julian's eyes widened when the killing point turned on him, into him.

"Mhre de Dieu," Julian murmured, and stared down at the blood on his breast. "You've killed me.”