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

telling question,” the tour guide said. “There are several theories about why certain people can or can’t see the scenes depicted in the Hell Windows. The one that the fallen angels substantiate is that the windows show their images only to those souls bound for Hell.”

That got everyone looking around at each other. For a few seconds anyway, because then the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen came striding into the entrance hall like he owned the place.

He didn’t have a shirt on, just a pair of black silk pajama pants, and his chocolate-brown hair was the epitome of sex-swept disarray. Muscles rippled under his caramel skin, and massive black wings glittering like liquid obsidian folded gracefully behind his back.

The woman standing beside me made a strangled sound in her throat.

“The nine-forty-five tour group,” the fallen angel said. He smiled at me and I swear my knees almost gave out. “Right on time, as always, but I’m afraid you’ve caught me unprepared. Come in, please, and continue your tour. I’ll meet you back here when you’re finished.”

The tour guide grinned at him like she was in love. And how could you not be?

“Thank you, Mayor Dark,” she squeaked.

Mayor Dark. The Mayor Dark? I’d seen him on the news before, but in real life—and half-naked—wow. Just wow.

He left the way he’d come and as soon as he was out of sight, people started whispering to their travel buddies about how gorgeous he was, how he’d probably just climbed out of bed with his human lover.

“The feathers on his wings…they were covered in that black stuff…I expected black feathers, but there was that…”

Everyone was staring at me.

Oh, please, somebody kill me. That last isn’t-he-dreamy voice had been mine.

To make sure I knew how stupid I should feel, the know-it-all from the bus turned to his travel buddy and whispered at the top of his lungs, “You hear that high school dropout over there? Everybody knows the tar covered their wings to mark their sins.”

My fingernails dug into my palms. I wasn’t a dropout—I had been our class’s freaking valedictorian. I had acceptance letters from Harvard, Oxford, and Arrowood gathering dust in my bedroom back home. I knew more about fallen angels than Know-It-All knew about being a superior jerk.

I’d just never been in the same room with one before.

If Tempie had been there, she would’ve said something to Know-It-All that would destroy him emotionally. She was so good at being a bitch. All I did was look like an idiot and wish it was possible to kick a guy in the crotch with your mind.

“Follow me, everyone,” the tour guide said, backing through a set of double doors into a sort of throne-room with a dais at the front. “This is the parlor. Because Halo doesn’t have a regular city hall, town council meetings and circuit court are held here every third Monday evening and every first Saturday. During the rest of the month, this is where the fallen angels entertain, hold various charity functions, and especially lavish parties.”

“I’ll bet that throne up front is the mayor’s,” Know-It-All told his buddy.

I wished Tempie was there so I could whisper “You think?” to her loudly enough that Know-It-All would hear.

The tour guide led us through the dining room, a common room, some halls, then into the visitor’s wing, pointing out items of interest along the way. After a while my embarrassment started to wear off and it occurred to me that if not for all the soaring colonnades, stained glass Hell Windows, and straight-up unashamed excess of the furnishings, you might start to freak out that you hadn’t run into a single other being yet in all that space.

“You all are a very lucky group to have come while the guest wing wasn’t completely full,” the tour guide said, sweeping her arm around the visitor’s breakfast nook. “In today’s globalized world, political leaders, corporate representatives, and influential dignitaries both human and non-person visit on a regular basis. And of course, this wing will be full by the weekend with the Armistice Celebration coming.”

“I’d ask why not put them up at a hotel,” the old, aw-shucks guy said. He touched the velvet wallpaper. “But this’d sure put any five star I ever seen to shame.”

The tour guide laughed and started to reply, but a voice from behind us cut her off.

“It’s true, we love to share our sensual pleasures, but the function of the visitor’s wing is two-fold.”

We all turned at the same time to face the new speaker. She was just as stunning as Mayor Dark had been, with her sparkling, wet-black wings and caramel skin. If they hadn’t looked so good on her, the scarlet cocktail dress and dominatrix heels might’ve seemed like overkill.

“It allows us to show hospitality to our guests,” the fallen angel said, “And it puts them at ease, knowing we have nothing to hide.”

She stepped into the room with us and you could feel the temperature crank up ten degrees. Men stood up straighter, women fussed with their necklaces and hair. When I realized I was winding the excess cord from my backpack straps around my fingers, I shoved my hands into my pockets.

The fallen angel looked at the door as if she was waiting for something.

A second later, a man naked except for one of those spiked pit bull collars came into the room and dropped to his knees at her feet. The kind of sexy, hard-bodied guy I used to fantasize about dating when I got to college. The bad boy nonconformist who, dressed, would work on his motorcycle while debating the fundamental differences between Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. The words “Resist or Serve” were tattooed across his chest and a cross surrounded by text wrapped around his left bicep.

He’s her familiar. The thought snapped me