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

Someone knocked on the door. It opened and a cart was wheeled into the room, then the door closed again.

“Modesty, please, eat something,” Kathan said. “Whoever traded for your blood obviously took too much. You need to refuel.”

On the cart in front of me was a glass, a pitcher of orange juice, and a plate of chocolate chip cookies. Add a blood vault and a few security guards armed with stakes and crosses and it could’ve been an after-donation table at a Red Cross instead of a midnight snack in a fallen angel’s lair. My stomach growled. That cheese sandwich and pickles from this afternoon felt a million years away.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Kathan said. “They’re not drugged, magically or chemically.”

I didn’t know what else to do, so I ate one. It melted on my tongue, fresh out of the oven. Why did everything fallen angels had have to be so darn good?

“I’m sorry that I didn’t say anything yesterday, Modesty,” Kathan said. Hearing my full name so often was weirdly formal. I felt like I should be sipping my orange juice with my pinkie out. “To be honest, I was surprised to see you with the tour group. I didn’t expect you to just turn up, literally at my door. I actually had a few soldiers in Hannibal looking for you.”

I sat up straight and looked at them lounging on the sectional together. Kathan’s glittering black wings hung over the arm. Tempie had one hand on his six-pack, her face resting against his jaw.

“Why were you looking for me?” I asked.

“Are you angry with me for making your sister my familiar?” Kathan asked.

“No.” Right then I wasn’t feeling much besides failure and the throbbing under my eye. “But I did come to take her home. Will you release her?”

Tempie lunged for me, fists balled, but Kathan caught her arm. With her hair and peignoir caught up in the forward inertia, she looked like one of those dogs that had run to the end of its chain and gotten yanked backward.

“Temperance, if you want to go with your sister, you may,” Kathan said.

Her face crumpled up and tears glossed over her eyes. She fell on her knees in front of him and grabbed a fistful of his pajama pants.

“You promised, Kathan!” She sounded betrayed. Part of me—maybe the part slowly coming out of shock—thought she deserved a taste of how it felt. “You swore!”

“Sit down and stop that,” he ordered.

Tempie did. Without even saying that she was doing it because she wanted to sit down, not because he’d told her to.

Kathan’s black eyes met mine. “I’m sorry, Modesty. She doesn’t want to go home with you. From what she’s told me, there isn’t much left for either of you there.”

There would be if Tempie came back.

“I know you’re disappointed,” Kathan said. “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to find your sister and you feel as if she’s stabbed you in the back, choosing to stay with me. She hasn’t. In fact, Temperance is looking out for both of your best interests.”

“That’d be a first,” I said.

He didn’t get upset at the insult. I wondered whether Tempie could see that her fanatical devotion was all one-sided.

“Modesty, I hope you’ll listen before you judge what your sister has chosen to do with her life,” Kathan said. His wings unfolded to allow him to lean forward on the sectional and rest his elbows on his knees. Even half-naked, he looked like he was making a business proposition and all of Hell was standing behind him. “I’d like you to become my familiar. I told Temperance that if you agreed to it—”

“If I agreed to it, you’d let her go?”

He shook his head.

“I should’ve explained better,” he said. “And I would have if you hadn’t interrupted. I’d like for you to become my familiar—jointly—with Temperance.”

“Isn’t that impossible?” I asked.

“For all enforcers and for almost all alphas, it is.” Kathan’s wings puffed up. “But under the right circumstances, I have the ability to impose my essence on two people at the same time.”

“What are the right circumstances?”

He smiled and I felt him pulling away from the conversation. “I don’t want to bore you with the details, but the most basic requirement is that both familiars be genetically identical—‘bred in the bone the same, borne in the flesh the same.’ Identical twins born to an identical twin.”

“Like us to Mom and Aunt Arie,” Tempie said.

“Thanks for spelling it out,” I said. “I’m too stupid to get it otherwise.”

“You’re awfully bitchy tonight, nerd. If I—”

“I don’t want to leave you in the dark about my motivations, Modesty,” Kathan cut in. “The end result of enthralling the two of you is that I will be elevated for a period of time to the level of commander—a leader of legions.”

“I’ve never read about commanders,” I said.

“Would it be prejudiced for me to assume the only books you’ve read were written by humans?” Kathan asked.

I looked down at the half-eaten cookie I was holding. The chocolate chips were oozing onto my fingers.

“I’m not asking you to decide tonight,” Kathan said. “That wouldn’t be fair with all you’ve been through, and from what Temperance tells me, you’ll want to do as much research as possible before—”

Another knock interrupted him. A muscle in Kathan’s jaw jumped and he glared at the door. It swung open. Fatigues was back.

“Sorry for the disturbance, Mayor Dark. Tough Whitney is in the parlor. Mikal’s on her way to take care of it, but she said you’d want to know.”

“I wasn’t informed that the Tracker was going after him,” Kathan said.

Fatigues shook his head. “Didn’t have to. The kid drove