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

shit hits the fan. Kathan and I will. We want you with us. And it’s not like you’ll have to sleep with Kathan. You’d just be there for the important stuff. The sex and stuff—that’s mine.”

That’s when it finally hit me. Fallen angels tell you the truth when they want you to believe something untrue. Kathan had told Tempie that Tough was going to die. If that was true, then what was the lie he wanted us to believe? And if the last Chosen Soldier had to visit death upon his brother—

“Why did Mikal want to talk to Tough?” I asked.

Tempie looked at the wall of alcohol behind the bar as if she hadn’t heard me.

“I want a drink,” she said. “Something good.”

Dodge, Willow, and even Owen were up on stage, talking to each other and looking around the bar. Tough’s guitar was still on its stand like a neon sign screaming, You’re an Idiot, Desty. My stomach tried to claw its way up my throat.

I grabbed Tempie’s arm. “Where are they?”

“Ouch. Stop it.” She tried to knock my hand off, but I dug my fingernails in.

“What were you, like, supposed to keep me busy or something?”

“I figured a nerd like you would know that it’s called ‘running interference,’” Tempie said. “And obviously it worked.”

Tough

 

It was so hot out my beer started sweating as soon as I stepped into the alley. The fire door clicked shut, closing me off from the noise and the last breath of air conditioning.

Mikal was leaning against the brick of the old police department with Colt’s suit jacket folded over her arm. Beside her, Colt was rolling his shirtsleeves back just like Dad used to when it got too hot in the church.

“That was a rousing fight song,” Mikal said, playing with her end of the leash. “Were you hoping to start a musical revolution?”

I took a drink of my beer, shrugged, and checked the other end of the alley. Kathan was at the entrance, talking to Rowdy’s bouncer, Cris.

The metal snap of the leash sounded like somebody chambering a round.

“Colt,” Mikal said. “Kill.”

My back exploded.

I’d been shot before. I’d been stabbed. Mitzi had bitten me God knows how many times. Colt trying to put his boot through my kidney was a whole other kind of bad. It felt like I was going to piss blood. My arms folded when I tried to catch myself and my head bounced off the gravel.

Owen and I must’ve been hitting the ‘shine a little harder than I’d thought because it took until I saw the boot in front of my face for a jolt of panic to catch up with me.

“—ever fucking listen the first time? Fuck, Baby Boy, you think I’m yelling ‘cause I like to so much? When I start talking, you put that fucking guitar down and—”

I jammed my fists into my armpits to protect my fingers and tried to curl up and get small. The boot caught me right under the ear. My brain whited out.

Then Colt was pulling me up by my hair.

“So, Tough, do you have a protector yet?” Mikal asked. She didn’t give me a chance to answer, which was just as well, because the only thing I could think was the end of that joke—All in all, I prefer scotch. “I didn’t think so.”

Colt shoved me back against the wall and hit me in the stomach with a clip full of machine gun punches. The last one hit the rib Rian broke. I pitched forward and threw up beer foam.

Colt picked me up again, this time Ryder-style with his arm around my throat. I couldn’t breathe. I clawed and dug at his arm, trying to break his grip. He turned me to face Mikal.

“You’re my favorite kind of rebel, Tough,” she said. “You were too young during the war to remember why everyone was fighting. You know you should be fighting, but you don’t know what, so you fight everything and everyone around you.”

The pressure building behind my eyes was going to make them explode. My arms weighed about eight million tons. Red started closing in from the sides. He was going to choke me out.

I had just enough left in me to make a fist. I jacked my elbow backward into Colt’s solar plexus—another Ryder favorite.

Either I didn’t hit him as hard as I meant to or Colt wasn’t feeling any pain. He spun me around and kneed me in the stomach. I hacked some, but nothing came up that time. He went for my throat, but I bulldozed his bad knee with my shoulder.

We hit the ground. He rolled head over heels, then up to his hands and feet.

Shit, I forgot how fast you were. I grabbed the longneck I’d dropped earlier and pushed up.

Colt put his weight behind a punch that would’ve knocked my teeth out, but I turned with it. His fist popped my jaw. The momentum made it easy to throw him onto his back. I rolled with him. Got on his chest and pinned his arms to his sides with my knees. I cocked the beer bottle back like a night stick. I could’ve smashed his head in. I should’ve smashed his head in.

But like a pussy, I hesitated. It didn’t matter that I was right where someone should be who could save their brother from Hell—just kill him. Bring down the bottle and smash his brains out, use the broken glass to cut his throat, just get him away from being a familiar and having Mikal control him and torment him. But inside the whole time, I’d been screaming for Colt to be Colt, so when I looked into his eyes and imagined I saw him for a second, I hesitated. That was all it took.

His legs