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

I’d just come from the tattoo parlor. The skin was red and hot and her fingertips burned like dry ice.

“I’m not that into tattoos,” she lied. “Sort of old-fashioned that way.”

Mikal’s laughter dragged me back into the basement.

My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my temples. Mikal was going to take it away. That memory was the one bright spot in a lifetime of fighting and death and failure and she was going to take it away.

This is why I love you, Colter, Mikal said, Even when you disobey me. The way you lock things into their own little boxes. You had me convinced it was survival instinct—hide the black noise away and maybe no one will find out—but you did it on purpose with her memory. You were hiding her from me.

I shut my eyes tight, but I heard the drawer open. Without looking, I knew what Mikal had gotten out of it.

Open your eyes, Colter, she said.

Mikal held the syringe up to the light and flicked the barrel to get the bubbles out.

I lost it, fought the restraints. She didn’t stop me. It was part of the punishment—no protection from reality.

Please, God, don’t let this happen, I prayed. Let my heart explode, let me suffocate, give me an aneurism, let her turn the machine up too high and electrocute me—anything—just please don’t let her take this.

The needle slid into my throat. White-hot nitro shot up my neck and down my shoulder. Everything burned, too clear, too intense. Just the air on my skin was driving me half-crazy. Every heartbeat detonated inside my chest and shattered my skull. Breathing sounded like screaming. My bones shook—they wouldn’t hold still.

Mikal licked the needle and smiled down at me.

We can fix this together, Colt. You think you love that vampire, that you love Tough—that you can protect them—but you’re too young to understand what real love is. I know everything about you—every awful, locked-away secret you tried to hide—and I still love you. If they knew you half as well as I do, they wouldn’t be able to look at you again without being sick.

Conviction flooded the broken places inside of me, the way it used to when one of Dad’s sermons laid me open down to my soul.

I know you want to be good, Colt. Mikal stroked the sweat-soaked hair off my forehead. I can help you. Let me help you be good.

The buzz and tick of the electroshock machine, my choked crying, the wet whisper of her tar-stained feathers. I felt so close to understanding something, but I couldn’t keep ahold of the thought. The tears were coming harder because of the exhaustion and the drugs and the certainty that Mikal was right.

It sounded like a spine snapping when I swallowed.

Fuck you, bitch.

Pain. Mind-obliterating, soul-breaking pain.

Tough

 

I woke up in my bed back at the house. The fan was blowing the hot air around. Out the window the moon was shining. Somewhere, a coyote howled. A three-shot burst from an AR-15 hollered back.

Welcome to Halo. I snorted. It hurt my chest and stomach and nose—a little bit of everything—but it brought back something. Me laughing in the alley outside Rowdy’s.

“Tough?” Desty was sitting on the floor with her arms folded on the bed. She had sleep lines on her cheek from the back of her hand. She smiled when I looked into her eyes. “Hey.”

She pushed up onto her knees and leaned over the bed far enough that I could see down her shirt. Her fingertips touched the split in my eyebrow, a spot on my cheek, and my jaw, like she was making sure they were all still there.

“I was going to wake you up in a little while to make sure you weren’t seeing double or anything,” she said. She rubbed her eyes and yawned. “How’re you feeling?”

Horny. Pissed-off. Tired. Like someone kicked my ass. Thirsty.

“Nauseous?” she asked.

I shook my head, once, then stopped so my skull would quit stabbing my brain.

“I’m going to go get you some ice for your—” Desty looked at my face and swallowed whatever she’d been about to say. “Lots of ice. Do you want some water or something?”

I grabbed an empty beer can off the nightstand. My hands were kind of shaky.

“Okay, I’ll be right back.” She started to leave, then came back and kissed me, really softly on the lips.

I closed my eyes and listened to Desty go downstairs.

“Know when you’re beat, Baby Boy.”

Colt had been trying to talk to me, maybe tell me it wasn’t him kicking my ass. I should’ve had the balls to kill him when I had the chance. Maybe that was why I thought I saw him for a couple seconds. Because through whatever Mikal was doing to him, he saw me and recognized I could save him.

No human in town would have a gun I could borrow. When you signed the armistice, you swore on your life never to carry a weapon again. But I could talk to some of the crows. They always kept something good on hand in case the coyotes tried to move in on their territory. AR-15s like the one I’d heard earlier were bottom of the barrel to them. And the crow who owned the tattoo parlor, Lonely Pershing, was probably losing money with his best customer enthralled. If that fell through, I could drive out to the cabin and see whether anything was left of the arsenal.

Thinking through my options eased up some of the pain in my chest. One way or another I’d get a gun. When Mikal brought Colt around for another ass-whooping, I’d set him free from her.

Desty came back with a freezer bag full of carrots and one of Jax’s Red Hots.

“There wasn’t