In the few seconds between tune and voice, Billy remembered, not in a linear progression of events in a long-won-war – events weren’t neat on the front – or even exploded fragments of image and taste and touch and smell, but in the body. Old aches and injuries hummed the melody from the tune loud enough to make him grit his teeth in a half-way feral grin that became all the way feral at Dom’s greeting. For a minute, Billy’s hand tightened around the bar stool he’d just set on the counter top; white knuckles twisted around a leg but reality set in sharp enough to make him let go. No way in a cold frozen hell could he swing it fast enough or hard enough to do a damn bit a good.
Which was a pity, really, because that tune had settled deep in Billy’s bones and never mind that he’d stopped dancing to it long ago, there were some things that a body remembered. And he could do with a bit of blood to bleed off the day far better than the neat and orderly house cleaning tasks of his new life. The one he’d built ‘cause he was sick to death of always getting other people’s blood on him – friends, enemies, brother’s.
“Only two of us here, so not as many as you’d like.” Billy crossed his arms over his chest and slouched against the bar, keeping Dom in view. “What’d you want, bastard?” If given three guesses, Billy’d guess all the same – and probably be right, like asking the Grim Reaper what he was wanted while swinging from a rope. But still, it was what he did, ask the question and grin like his blood wasn’t pounding in his ears like goddamned canon fire.