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

and all the swelling will go down because of fluid loss, but however you die, that’s pretty much how you stay.”

I nodded. That whole voice thing was something to worry about later.

Tiffani stared at me for a long time. She took a breath and sighed.

“Change your mind, Tough,” she said. “There’s got to be a different way to save—to save them both.”

I shook my head.

She pursed her lips and headed for the stairs, then turned back when I didn’t go after her.

“Well, come on,” she said.

I waved my hand at the open space.

“Yeah, right. Making someone is a messy process. Maybe I can get this place cleaned up before I open tomorrow if I go all-out vamp speed all night, but I’ll still be able to smell it.” She pointed at the ceiling. “We’re doing it in the bathtub. End of discussion.”

I agreed to that, but I didn’t agree to do it naked, which is why we hit our second speed bump in the upstairs bathroom when she told me to get undressed.

“Do you have another pair of jeans with you?”

I shook my head. I didn’t have another pair of jeans, period, or I wouldn’t be wearing Ryder’s raggedy-ass hand-me-downs.

“Then you’re going to want your clothes off and probably far away,” she said. “Hand them here and I’ll throw them in my bedroom.”

I didn’t take anything off.

“Fine. If you’re comfortable with your body flushing twenty years’ worth of binge drinking, junky food, and generally bad decisions out of every hole you’ve got and onto your clothes, then keep them on.”

I made the gesture for her to turn around.

“That’s what I thought.” Tiffani crossed her arms and faced the door. While I was taking off my jeans, she started talking again. “You know, I’ve seen you naked before. Mitzi showed me.”

She let you listen in while we did it, so why wouldn’t she let you watch?

“And I’m going to have to have my eyes open while I make you.” Tiffani shrugged. “I just didn’t figure you for the shy type.”

Normally, I wasn’t. Even though some people thought I looked like Ryder, I was okay with my body. I wasn’t real tall and I could’ve probably stood to bulk up some, but I was solid enough. On a normal day, walking around naked wouldn’t have bothered me any, but the seriousness of this whole thing kept trying to push in through the cracks in my make-Colt-and-Desty-undead-happily-ever-after fantasy. I was getting a little freaked out.

Tiffani took my clothes and John Deere hat to her room.

I took a deep breath and blew it out. Tried to imagine Desty and me having insane, fast and hard vamp-sex. That calmed me down some.

When Tiffani came back, she was naked. She looked down at my hard-on.

I hoped my glare said, It’s not for you.

Tiffani just pointed to the bathtub, one of those old cast-iron claw foot ones retrofitted with a showerhead above it. I stepped in and she followed me.

“Okay, here’s how it’s going to go.” She grabbed my hair, tilting my head back and to the side, then touched her thumb to the vein in my neck. “I’m going to bite you here. I can’t use bite sedative while we do this, or you won’t be able to drink and I can’t force down enough venom on my own to make you. So, don’t struggle.”

I nodded.

Tiffani didn’t look convinced.

“If you struggle, it could blow the vein, and I’ll have to go to another one.” She grabbed a handful of my package, making an already awkward boner the good side of painful and the bad side of your mom’s friend just grabbed your dick. “There’s a nice, big vein here. That’s number two on my list if you blow the one in your neck struggling. It’ll hurt about ten times worse.” She squeezed tighter and I started sweating. “Blow that vein—” In any other situation I would’ve laughed until I cried. “—and there’s a good chance this is the last time you’ll be able to get it up. Are you getting an idea of the gravity here? Do. Not. Struggle.”

Whatever Tiffani saw in my face must’ve convinced her. Or maybe it was the fact that you could hear me gulp across town. As long as it did the job, I don’t care what ended up making her believe that I wouldn’t struggle. She let me go and stepped back.

“Change your mind, Tough,” she said again.

I couldn’t.

Tiffani took a really long breath so she could let out a really long sigh. Then she balled up her fist and tore through her wrist veins with one fang. Reddish-brownish vamp venom oozed up, but didn’t drip or run down her arm.

“If it starts to heal over, I’ll cut it open again as fast as I can, but it’s not that easy to pay attention while I’m drinking,” she said. “So try to make it fast and maybe we won’t have too much trouble.”

I nodded.

Tiffani bent my head to the side again. Her fangs grazed the vein under my jaw and goose bumps jumped up all over my chest and back. For a second, I remembered Mitzi running her ice-needle fangs down my neck on purpose because she thought it was funny that I could get goose bumps. Then Tiffani put her torn wrist up to my mouth and the burning-hair, rotting-blood, hot sauce smell of the vamp venom hit me in the back of the throat.

I was going to have to gag that down. Whiskey or ‘shine was one thing, but that was real-life actual poison.

I’m going to die. I’m going to drink that and die and come back full of that. I’m never going to turn twenty-two. I’m never going to get the rest of my chest hair in or get old