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

one that got crushed,” he said. “You’ve got an unopened box of condoms, a rotten supper for one, and nobody, nowhere gave a damn when Kathan handed you over to Mikal.”

That feeling—I remembered it. Before Mikal, I used to train so I didn’t have to think about it. Some days I got in upwards of twelve hours. Near the end it had been sword drills mostly, because… I couldn’t remember why and I didn’t really care. The point was I’d been a sorry fucking loser trying to pretend like it was okay that all I’d ever done in twenty-four years was fight fallen angels or prepare to fight fallen angels or get my ass handed to me by fallen angels. Everyone in my family was either dead or hated me enough not to talk to me, I didn’t have a girlfriend or any friends, and everybody in Halo thought I was a homicidal psycho who got what he deserved. Mikal had at least wanted me. She loved me.

I pushed past Grace out of the room. Left the cabin door hanging open.

But when I got onto the porch, the lines were back, just like in the truck. Different colors of light stretching across the sky like strings. Some of them moved. The one that freaked me out the most was a yellow-orange one arching down through the woods and into the cabin.

I dropped onto the top step and leaned against a post. Tried to keep breathing and hoped the lines would disappear again.

After a while Ryder came out, leaned against the other post, and looked up at the lines with me.

“I hate this fucking town,” I said.

“I always did, too,” he said.

“Tough’s right. There ain’t any such thing as ghosts.”

Ryder shook his head like he was disgusted with me. “Come on, Colt, you ought to be able to recognize your own mental construct when you see it.”

Con-struct. The same way Ryder—the real Ryder—used to say gui-tar and con-cert. Dad’s old-Missouri drawl that Ryder always used to put on because he thought it made him sound badass.

“Tough did what he had to do to survive and so did you,” Ryder said.

I thought it over. “I made up my older brother to tell me what to do because I knew Mikal was going to wear me down until I couldn’t eat or piss or think without her permission?”

Ryder spit into his bottle and scraped his lip on the rim.

“I like to think you made me up to kick your ass if you tried to go back to her,” he said. “Thought I was going to have to for a second there.”

I looked back up at the lines in the sky, then had to look away when a green one followed something or someone through the woods too close for comfort.

“I was hoping those were yours,” I said.

“SOL,” Ryder said. He snorted. “Sunshine’s outta luck.”

I shouldn’t just sit there. Holding still, not doing anything—that was when everything piled up. I needed to be training, working on a new strategy, something. I needed a plan. That had always helped before Mikal. With Mikal… She hadn’t given anything the chance to pile up. Between the torture and the headfucks and the literal fucking, I’d barely had time to think.

My face burned. I scrubbed my hands across my cheeks like that would stop them from turning Whitney-red. I missed that sadistic bitch so bad my stomach hurt.

“I fucking love her. What the hell is wrong with me?”

“You want the short list?” Ryder asked. “Pretty much everything.”

I nodded. Tried to think. If there’d been a plan before, there wasn’t much chance it had included an “in case of survival” contingency.

“So, what now?” I asked.

“Exactly,” Ryder said.

Tough

 

Rian wasn’t still dicking around the west side of Halo—which was probably for the best or I might’ve ended up a really short-lived vamp—so I rolled on into town with the radio blasting. Rowdy’s was filling up, but I didn’t even slow down when I passed. I should’ve wanted to go in, but I had this feeling creeping up on me like I couldn’t face more than Harper and Jax right then.

Suddenly the radio was up too loud. The music hammered on my skull. My hands started shaking to where I almost couldn’t hold the wheel. It didn’t feel like a rigor mortis thing and it wasn’t from the cold. My heart pumped and that shocked me into breathing. Then it did again, hard enough that I felt it bang against the wall of my chest. I wasn’t seeing right anymore. I had to pull over.

What the hell? When I panicked, the connection with Tiffani opened. Please. Help.

Cold sweat dripped into my eye and more ran down my back. I couldn’t get goose bumps anymore, but I started shivering.

Where are you? Tiffani asked.

I don’t— I’m going to throw up.

I opened the door and fell out of the cab. A car hit its brakes. I tried to drag myself out of the road, but nothing would move. I was gagging and trying to breathe at the same time. Dying. This is what it felt like to die for real, forever dead. Hell dead.

“Tough?” It wasn’t Tiffani’s voice, but I knew it. “What’re you doing? Are you okay?”

A girl’s hand touched my face. Then she grabbed under my armpit and the back of my neck and pulled until we both fell onto the sidewalk. The heat of her body soaked into my skin and I hugged her against me.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Do you need to drink? Here.”

She pushed on my jaw until my mouth was at her throat and I bit into the glowing vein there. I think I sighed. Her blood burned in my chest and the warm buzz filled my brain almost