Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) eden Hudson (best book club books txt) 📖

that was one in favor of the vamp-groupies. Faded t-shirt with an old hipster-looking band on it. Shorty-shorts that stopped about an inch down her thighs. I got stuck there for a while. Even if they make a girl a little taller than me, long legs really put the wood in my stake.

Speaking of Spike… I stood up. I was running out of room to store my tequila and I needed to figure out a way to get to the bathroom that didn’t end with me facedown on the floor.

Scout grabbed my hand. “Ready to get out of here?”

I pulled away from her and looked around.

“Are you looking for Harper?” Scout yelled over the music. “Her vamp Logan came and picked her up, remember? She said something about him getting too lazy to hunt? None of this is ringing a bell?”

Did I black out? I reached up to take off my hat so I could run my hand through my hair, but I grabbed an empty space.

Scout held out my John Deere hat.

“I didn’t want you to forget it,” she said. “I know how special it is to you, with Sissy giving it to you and all.”

That wasn’t right. I would never take it off and set it down in the bar. Even seriously wasted, I always went out with my hat on, like a cowboy and his boots.

I took my hat and jerked it on tight.

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Scout said, cocking her hip at me, offended. “I guess you’re not going to walk me home, either?”

That definitely didn’t sound like me. But Harper was gone and I couldn’t let Scout try it on her own. She was almost at the end of the grace period underage kids got in Halo, but NPs who didn’t care about the rules and just plain dickheads might go after her, especially the way she was dressed.

Scout latched onto my hand again.

“Take me home and tuck me in, Tough,” she said.

I made sure she stayed an arm’s length from me the whole way to her trailer.

Colt

 

Mikal’s forked tongue slid into my mouth and her legs tightened around my hips. Her body was scorching—all those years before the fall that she spent singing glory to God around His throne were still burning deep in her bones. Her tar-covered wings stretched out to full span and rocked with her.

I tried to remember what it was like to feel guilt or disgust, but they were gone. Just not there anymore. I wished I was numb. Without the constant, boiling anger just under my skin, I would’ve been. But if I was numb, I wouldn’t be able to fight her. I had to keep fighting because… Shit. There was a reason. I knew there was.

Difficulty recalling information, Mikal said. That’s new.

Ignore her. Start at the beginning. The reasons that came easy from repetition. I had to keep fighting because Mikal started the war the day she killed Mom. That was right. And because God chose us to be His soldiers. That was right, too.

I always said your father was a smart man to indoctrinate you kids so young, Mikal said.

Fuck you. She was trying to mess me up, twist everything so I would doubt the stuff I used to believe and have to trust her.

There’s no reason you shouldn’t trust me, she said, tracing my jaw with her fingers. I’ve never lied to you.

Dad never lied to me, I said.

He never had to, because you kept secrets. If he had known about the black noise—

He helped Mom, I said. He would’ve helped me.

You can’t believe that or you would have told him, Mikal said.

No. Remember the times Mom had locked herself in the bathroom. Sang to herself, stadium-volume and smashed stuff to drown out the black noise. Sissy or Ryder would call Dad and no matter where he was—on duty as the hospital chaplain over in North Fork, in his office at the church, visiting the shut-ins around Halo—he would come home. He would’ve helped me. He had always helped Mom.

How? Mikal asked. What did he do to make the black noise go away?

I didn’t know. It had been my job to keep Tough outside, take him down to the creek or out to the barn to shoot hoops until it was safe to come back in.

So, you don’t know if your father was shoving anti-psychotics down your mother’s throat or beating the black noise out of her, Mikal said.

Something exploded inside my brain and shrapnel went everywhere.

Dad would never hurt her! He loved her more than anything!

Outside, I felt Mikal detonate, too, getting off on the force of my reaction. I’d walked into a trap, engaging instead of just saying “fuck you.” Now I was pinned down in her warzone on her terms and I couldn’t get out without her blowing everything to pieces.

Focus. Think. Dad had always protected Mom. He wouldn’t have hurt her. He would’ve protected me, too, if—

—if he could have, Mikal said, picking off the thought. Even coming down from the orgasm she was a crack shot. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? A congregation to lead, four children to care for, and a wife he had to constantly pull back from the edge. Danny might’ve been a man of God, but he was only human. He did everything he could, but when it got to be too much, he suggested getting help, didn’t he, Colt?

This was the part where I was supposed to bleed and hurt, to remember hearing Mom tell Dad that getting professional help was one step away from the nuthouse, and to admit that I didn’t tell Dad because I was scared he couldn’t handle two crazy people at the same time.

You were right not to tell him, Mikal said.