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

wall. Plaster and laths broke off around me and stuck in my back. Mikal screamed again and the room echoed that feedback sound. The vamp reaction was to hiss at her. Colt’s blood sprayed through my teeth onto her cheek.

And that’s when the vamp speed crapped out on me.

Mikal let me go, grabbed the TV stand, and snapped the other legs off. She was back before I could move. She shoved the sharp end of the first stake through my stomach and pinned me to the wall. I heard the point break through the wood siding outside. I screamed, even though no sound came out.

“You were fun, Tough,” Mikal said, stabbing another stake through my dick and pelvis and out my back. That one dug into a stud. “But Colter is mine.”

We both looked over at him then, twisting and turning and gagging on the floor. Red-brown bubbles were foaming from his mouth and nose. He was trying to scrape the venom off, get it out, do anything to make it stop hurting. When Tiffani had made me, I remember thinking that the venom was burning me alive and wishing I would die faster so it would stop. With all that going on, I bet Colt couldn’t feel his lungs fighting and his heart seizing up.

It seemed like forever before he slowed down, then, finally, stopped moving. His arms and legs relaxed. His eyes half-closed. He shivered and then his body shut off. I felt it.

I killed him. He’s dead.  I saved Colt.

The third TV stand leg cut through my Adam’s apple and hit a stud, too. It’s hard to believe how much that one hurt, even compared to the dick-stake.

Mikal grabbed Colt’s stake from where he’d dropped it earlier and aimed for my heart. I jerked and twisted and fought, but I couldn’t get off those fucking stakes. I was going to die and burn in Hell for the rest of forever and all my stupid brain did was start looping this song Ryder had made up about Mikal.

One up, one down, and she don’t mess around—fuck!

Two up, two down, and she don’t mess around—shit!

Three up, three—

“Wait,” Jax half-yelled, half-rasped. He jumped up from where Mikal had dropped him. “Tough’s not under your jurisdiction! He’s not a human living in Halo anymore—which means he’s not responsible for finding a protector—and since he’s an NP now, you have to follow the NP laws and take up any grievances in a court with Kathan!”

Mikal’s head snaked all the way around on her neck so that she could glare at Jax.

Jax made a strangled sound in his throat. His voice was a few notes higher when he started talking again. “They’re your rules. All non-people are required to follow the laws set forth by Kathan for the NP community at the creation of the Armistice or be brought up on formal charges before the sitting NP circuit judge—who is also Kathan.”

Mikal didn’t move.

“And even if you weren’t bound by those laws,” Jax said, “You know that Desty will never agree to become Kathan’s joint-familiar if you stake Tough. It has to be a willing agreement on her part for Kathan to rise to commander. Stake him and you’re throwing away any chance your army has of winning the last battle.”

No one breathed. I could hear Jax’s heart pounding, Harper shaking. A glob of vamp venom and spit dripped from the corner of Colt’s mouth into the pool of blood on the floor. The Tracker’s eyes made a scratching noise in his sockets every time he looked from Mikal to Jax, then back.

Mikal laughed. “You’re such a good friend, Ajax. So loyal.”

I didn’t get why she thought that was funny. Right then, I could’ve French-kissed the guy.

Mikal’s head twisted back around until she was facing me. She touched the tip of the last TV stand leg to my chest and put just enough pressure on it to snap the bone without shoving it through my heart. Pain shot out in every direction, but I was too scared to squirm.

“So, Ajax,” Mikal said, “Can you tell me why I haven’t staked this pathetic little redneck cockroach yet? Without the legalism. You know I would get away with it. What’s the real reason I don’t just waste him?” She waited. “Nobody? Then let me enlighten you—Tough here turned his back on God.”

Mikal looked over at Colt’s body again, then back at me. “You are a disease, Tough. You ruin everything you touch—you always have. Your Creator was the only one who could’ve loved a piece of shit like you, but you turned your back on Him. Now, your sorry ass belongs to me.”

The black in her eyes was so deep that it felt like they were trying to suck me in.

“I’m going to get my money’s worth out of you,” Mikal said. “You will be the reason we win the last battle. You will be the Whitney who lives to watch everything you love crack under my boot—just like your mama’s skull.”

I tried to hock something up to spit in her face, but I gagged on the Adam’s apple stake.

“Then, when it’s all over, I’m going to send your ass first-class to Hell.” Mikal’s smile was so wide that I could see all of her teeth. “Want to know what it smells like when a soul burns for all eternity?”

She yanked my arm into the sunlight coming through the screen door.

Fire popped like someone had sprayed me down with lighter fluid and flicked a match at me. I could smell the meat cooking on my bones and hear the crackling. I couldn’t fight my way off the stakes, but I kept trying, even with the pain shredding my throat and stomach and dick. Compared to that scared-shitless screaming in my head, the stakes barely registered.

Mikal’s voice