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

out of my idiotic high school fantasies. I was standing there staring at a fallen angel’s honest-to-God familiar. What if somebody was trying to find him, too? A younger sister or maybe a girlfriend.

I tried to catch Resist-or-Serve’s eye, but his gaze was locked onto the floor. He couldn’t be much older than me, somewhere in his early twenties. Did that make him another empty-headed angel-groupie, or had things gotten so bad at his house that being a fallen angel’s slave had seemed like a decent alternative?

“It’s been ten years since the Armistice was signed,” the fallen angel said, stroking her fingers through Resist-or-Serve’s black hair like a cat she barely noticed anymore, “But in our view of time, a decade is just a drop in the bucket. As you can imagine, a world that only recently accepted the fact of our existence and even more lately came to peace with us is still a little gun-shy of our motives.”

Out of nowhere, the fallen angel laughed.

“Forgive me, Alice, I seem to have disrupted your tour,” she said.

“That’s really no problem, Mikal,” the tour guide gushed. “I’m sure no one here has any objections. Please, continue if you’d like.”

“Well, unless I’m mistaken, this is the last stop inside the house, isn’t it? From here you’ll go back to meet with Kathan, then out to tour the barracks?”

“We actually had to stop giving that portion of the tour.”

Mikal’s laugh turned into a purr in her throat. “I suppose we should have seen that coming. Humans just aren’t used to seeing so many of us in one place. And I’m sure the soldiers didn’t try to tone it down any.”

An army of fallen angel foot soldiers promising sexual bliss with smoldering glances? Sounded like the comments section on Tempie’s blog. Or like a dream I’d had once in junior high that made me orgasm in my sleep.

“Well, how about we open the tour up to questions?” Mikal shrugged and her black wings mimicked the motion. “Anyone have something you’ve been dying to ask a fallen angel?”

“You’re the enforcer, aren’t you?” Know-It-All asked. “I read that fallen angels move in packs, like wolves, with an alpha, an enforcer, and foot soldiers.”

“I am. Kathan makes the rules and I ensure that they’re followed. Kind of like the government, isn’t it?” Mikal said. She seemed to find that funny, too. “You’d all better watch your step.”

A couple people laughed, but a couple people probably wet their pants, too.

Know-It-All piped up again. Obviously he was the only one without the sense to be too scared and aroused to do anything but stare.

“He’s your familiar, isn’t he?” Know-It-All asked, pointing as if Resist-or-Serve wasn’t in the room. And the way Resist-or-Serve was staring down at the floor, maybe he wasn’t. “How do you choose someone to enthrall?”

“It used to be that we found someone who struck our fancy at random,” Mikal said. “Most of us still follow our preferences just like humans do for blondes or brunettes, muscles or sexy smiles, but the non-person rules these days are very clear on who we can make familiars. Colter here lost his heart to me.”

She touched her familiar’s cheek. The way he looked up at her made me feel like I was watching them have sex.

“Tell them what you call me, love,” she said.

A second passed. Red bloomed across the top of Resist-or-Serve’s cheekbones as if someone was airbrushing the blush onto a doll’s cheeks.

“My burning angel,” he said.

“Isn’t that beautiful?” Mikal said. She bent down and kissed his forehead. “When I heard that, I knew I had to keep him. Hell, I’m just as susceptible to sweet talk and a pretty face as the next girl.”

The frizzy-haired woman in front of me looked down at Resist-or-Serve, not even making an effort to keep her eyes off the goods.

“What’s it like to be a familiar?” she asked.

I don’t know if anyone else saw the way Mikal glared at Frizzy before putting on a big smile. For that split-second, ice chips lodged in my spine.

“You can address all questions to me,” Mikal told her. “Colt’s not allowed to speak right now.” She must’ve seen the little looks passing between travel buddies because she explained, “My man gets off on submission. He can only talk when I tell him to.”

“Is that why you—” Frizzy changed her question and looked up at Mikal. “Is that why he chose to be your familiar? Because it’s like being the slave or the sub in a dominant-submissive relationship, isn’t it?”

“Not at all,” Mikal said.

Then she turned on her spikey heel and started to lead us out of the visitor’s wing. Resist-or-Serve sprang up to follow. Maybe “sprang” was poor word choice, but considering the very naked circumstances it was hard to think of any others. Maybe “jumped.” He jumped up to follow.

Good grief. Just keep your eyes off his package.

I tried to focus on his tattoos as he passed me, but I didn’t have time to read the text on his arm. His back was covered, too—a Bible passage that I remembered from Sunday school. Everything from “Put on the whole armor of God” to “for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I might declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.”

Maybe he was a disgruntled Jesus freak.

I wondered whether I could get a second to ask Resist-or-Serve if he had seen a girl who looked like me in the Dark Mansion. Probably not, but if I could just get him to look at me, maybe I could gauge his reaction.

When we stopped in the entrance hall, I edged closer to where he was kneeling, and flipped my bangs out of my face, just in case they actually were obscuring anything.

Mikal’s black eyes locked on mine and I felt my