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

place. I’d had to gather up what was left of him by myself because Tough had disappeared as soon as he heard. I buried Ryder by Sissy. That was when I drank SoCo Hundred Proof until I couldn’t move, so I stayed the night out by Ryder and Sissy and prayed God would get Tough lost or killed somewhere far away from Halo. It had been right after that that I started having trouble sleeping in the cabin’s bedroom. Every time I’d tried to lay down, the bed felt like a grave.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” I told Ryder.

“Yeah,” he said. “Awful lot of that going around.”

The bedroom door opened. Tough. It took a second before I realized he was at least five years older than that last memory. And he had a set of fangs.

—is he talking to? Tough’s voice. Hearing it echo in my head locked down walls and slammed cell doors.

No, no, no, no, no… I hugged my arms around my stomach, trying not to feel the straightjacket. The lunatic’s cell. The electroshock was bad enough, but it was just for obedience training. The lunatic’s cell—I was being punished. I’m sorry, Mikal. I’ll be good, I swear. Tell me what I did wrong. I’ll never do it again. I swear to God I’ll be good, just please let me out.

She didn’t answer.

“Mikal?” Nothing. Not even the whisper and burn of her tar-covered wings or that wrecked laughing. Maybe I’d already been in here too long. Maybe there wasn’t enough of me left inside my head to punish. “Mikal, please!”

What the hell? Tough’s voice again. I tried to shake it out of my brain.

“Don’t engage. Not real. He’s not talking to me. He’s not real.”

Colt, did you just hear me? Can you hear me right now?

I dug my fingers into my sides and pulled my knees up. It wasn’t real. None of this was real, but the sounds kept battering their way into my head—a radio, a dog barking, a fan, a car driving by—and I couldn’t try to cover my ears or the straightjacket would jerk tight on my arms and I’d start panicking and not be able to stop.

Something touched my shoulder and I lost it. Fought and kicked and hit a solid body. Freezing hands clamped down on my wrists.

Stop it, man, stop! It’s me. It’s Tough. Ouch—ow! If you can hear me, stop kicking me!

“Tough—he’s not—Mikal, don’t—”

She’s gone, Colt. I got you away from her.

The laugh came up slow and sick like vomit. Tough had taken me away from Mikal. Sure, why not? And Ryder was back from the dead. Tough put all Ryder’s pieces back together again, like that egg guy. Maybe later we could go rehydrate Sissy’s charbroiled skeleton.

“So that’s what a mental breakdown looks like,” Ryder said. I heard him spit into his soda bottle. “Quit being such a prissy little Sunshine daisy and get your shit together.”

“Fuck you,” I told him.

Fuck yourself, Tough said.

“Nice comeback, Baby Boy,” Ryder said.

Don’t call me that!

I rubbed my temples, trying to get the pain in my head to ease up, but they kept bitching at each other.

“—see you try to stop me, Baby Boy—”

—ain’t changed at all. You’re still the biggest dickhole—

“Are you guys serious right now?” I said.

Fighting while I was losing it—big surprise. Except Ryder and Tough shouldn’t be able to fight with each other anymore. I knew there was a reason they shouldn’t…

“Dammit, it’s gone,” I said.

What is? Tough asked.

I opened my eyes. I was on the floor in a bedroom I didn’t recognize. Tough was in front of me, sitting back on his heels.

“You have fangs,” I said. “Did Mitzi make you?”

Nah, Mitzi’s long gone, he said. Her and Jason took off for Nashville with my voice.

I knew that. I think. They stole his voice because Jason was a greedy asshole and Mitzi was a bitch queen. Tough had probably said something about her hair that pissed her off.

“How’re you talking to me?” I asked him.

What’s the last thing you remember?

Now there was a question. I just shook my head.

Well, I killed you, Tough said. I wanted to get you away from Mikal. Aching holes screamed in my brain where she used to be, but I guess Tough couldn’t hear them. He kept on talking. I tried to make you, but I didn’t have enough time.

“You killed me?” I asked.

I did what I had to, Tough said. I’m not sorry.

Ryder laughed. “You wouldn’t be.”

Tough smiled, flashing those teardrop-shaped fangs again. Other than those, him and Ryder could’ve almost been twins, down to the splits across their left eyebrows and the three-day growth of stubble. I touched my jaw. Clean-shaven, just like Mikal liked it.

Except Tough had taken me away from her. That hollow shrieking inside my head got louder. Mikal was gone. My burning angel was gone.

Anyway, I guess some of the venom must’ve worked, Tough said. Since you can hear me.

Just barely.

“Hold on,” I said. “Didn’t you say you killed me? Shouldn’t I be—”

Miracle. Tough tried to hold the smile, but it turned into more of a snarl, especially with the fangs. You got brought back from the dead.

“You’d think a man would remember something like that,” Ryder drawled.

“No kidding,” I said.

Tough laughed. Or he made the facial expression of a person laughing, but there wasn’t any sound besides the air in his lungs.

Oh, right—Jason and Mitzi.

That dumbass sorry excuse for a receiver. How low could you get—stealing from somebody you were supposed to be protecting? Mom used to say Tough’s voice sounded like Hank Sr. had had a baby with a fallen angel.

No, that couldn’t have been right. Tough’s voice hadn’t even changed before Mom died. And