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

Tough to clean the bathroom because he couldn’t figure out how to make his vamp speed work for him and his muscles were still fighting rigor mortis. Any time you slow down in the first couple days after you’re made, you have to worry about that. Mitzi claimed she met a vamp once who couldn’t move his legs because he sat in a chair for too long after his transformation, but I couldn’t say how true that was. Sometimes you had to take her with a grain of salt.

Right? Tough thought. One time she told me she’d had sex with lots of black guys because I didn’t like her hair dyed red and she wanted me to be insecure about my dick.

Then I heard water running through the pipes.

What are you doing? I asked.

Taking another shower, he said.

Praise be.

Don’t say that, okay?

It’ll get easier, I said.

Well, it’s not right now, so don’t say it, he snapped.

Not having Him anymore is part of the reason it feels so cold, I said. Once your body cools off, it’s going to be twice as bad.

Great, Tough said. Something to look forward to.

I took a deep breath through my nose. About twenty seconds left on those scones. Then a grainy video-clip of Tough’s girlfriend sucking him off flickered through my head.

Can you wait until you learn how to close the connection before you masturbate? I asked.

But it’s cool for you to think about nailing my mom?

I wasn’t—

You think I don’t know what happened? You can’t keep a lid on shit in this town. Especially not a preacher’s wife nailing a vampire.

Keep talking, kid.

What’re you going to do, stake me?

I shook my head and pulled the scones before they started drying out. Changed the oven temperature for the bread knots. Things could get out of hand between vamps fast and I wasn’t going to end Tough because of something a dumbass kid like him couldn’t even understand.

If you don’t want to know what I’m thinking, I repeated, Learn to shut the damn connection.

Can’t you shut it off? he asked.

You opened it, you have to close it.

Damn it.

I started knotting bread.

Have I been, uh, dead for very long? Tough asked.

Overnight.

What time is it?

Four fifty-one. I slid the knots in the oven and started plating the scones. Running late?

By about seven hours, he said. Hey, cool.

If I hadn’t had the vamp senses, Tough would’ve scared the hell out of me, going from my upstairs bathroom to standing beside me and pulling his ratty John Deere ball cap on his still-damp hair in almost no time. The post-death skin-tightening had given him a shadow of stubble along his jaw and grown his hair enough that it flipped out a little at the ends. He had inherited Shannon’s curls.

What you watching? he asked, leaning over my tablet.

Telling him to mind his own damn business would just fuel the fire, so I ignored the question.

“Going out?” I asked. “You know the sun comes up in about twenty-nine minutes.”

I’m just headed to the house.

“I can’t babysit today,” I said. “I’ve got a business to run.”

I’ll be fine.

He probably would. He’d eaten the equivalent of a person and a half when he woke up. Most vamps can run on a whole lot less than that.

Tough leaned over the scones and took a deep breath. His stomach growled with phantom hunger pains.

“Don’t touch,” I said.

They smell good.

“Does the term ‘violent rejection’ mean anything to you?”

He shook his head.

“It will if you swallow anything but human blood or vamp venom from here on out,” I said. I started putting the plated scones in the display case. “It’s like food poisoning for vampires, except it happens immediately and the ‘violent’ part is really an understatement. They don’t make a detergent that washes out stomach lining.”

I can’t believe you’re going to let those cool down before someone eats them. It’s like sacrilege or something.

“Big word.”

Smart girlfriend. He stared down another scone as it went into the display. How often do you slip up and eat one?

“I don’t anymore.”

But you own a bakery because you like torture?

“Weren’t you going somewhere?”

Yeah, he said, glancing up at the clock. He left the kitchen and I could hear his footsteps headed for the door. And the Tracker’s probably looking for me, so that’s a thing.

I dropped the plate I was holding and had to kick in the vamp speed to catch it and the scone before they hit the floor.

“The Tracker? Tough!” The bell over the door jingled, closing his scent off. Why is the Tracker after you? He’s going to be able to smell you all over my place.

I missed a meeting with my probation officer, he said. How did I make the speed work before?

Shove it up your—

Oh, there it goes.

I slammed the display case shut. The Tracker in my bakery. I’d have to scrub the place down with lye. Maybe I could meet him outside, tell him Tough had already left. Zombies almost never deviate from their commands, but it was worth a try.

You damn well better hope he doesn’t insist on coming into my bakery to follow your scent, I said.

Will you quit your bitching? You’re getting whatever you want out of this deal.

I looked down at the scones and tried not to think about what I wanted more than anything. On my tablet, Krycek started banging on the missile silo door and screaming for someone to let him out. I reached over the counter and shut the sound off.

Tough

 

For a second on Main Cross I thought I saw the Tracker’s big blue Dodge Ram, but it had an Iowa plate, so I let