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

“How am I supposed to do that?” I asked. “I don’t even remember what the first plan was.”

“Boo-fucking-hoo,” Ryder said. “Think. Real hard. Why ain’t you hitting the bottle right now? That’d be the easiest thing to do—get drunk.”

“That’d be what you would do,” I said.

“No, what I would do is get you drunk. You’re a cunt when you’re sober.” Then Ryder laughed. “You remember that time we got drunk off our asses and snuck over to the edge of the farm?”

I remembered standing at the tree line in the back pasture, howling at the Dark Mansion like a couple of moon-crazy werewolves and firing off a 12-gauge until we heard a four-wheeler coming. Then we took off back to where we’d stashed the truck.

“We parked out on that little dirt road that connects to Old 63,” I said because it seemed like an important detail. “Why doesn’t Kathan keep a guard on that road?” Anybody with a dozen people could come in and surround the Dark Mansion. That was how the angels had ambushed our camp and ended the war in the first place.

Ryder shrugged. “Nobody takes Old 63 anymore. Bet you fifty bucks most people around here forgot that dirt road even exists. Why waste the manpower?”

I shook my head. That train of thought wasn’t taking me anywhere. I couldn’t think like this, holding still.

“Want to practice?” I asked.

Ryder grinned.

“Here I thought you’d never ask.” He tossed his spit bottle.

Before the bottle hit the ground, Ryder had a shortsword in one hand and a poleax in the other. I just barely blocked the ax from hacking open my face. He went for my ribs with the sword, but I caught his wrist before he did any damage.

Fighting another physical body felt so good. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it. Stretching out, getting into the rhythm, even the little scratches and bangs that wouldn’t make any difference in the long run—it was like Heaven getting all that back. But training by myself for so long had gotten me used to acting instead of reacting and a month stuck inside my own head had thrown off my reflexes. Ryder chopped and sliced and shoved me across the shed.

My left side smashed into the rack of automatic rifles. Metal thudded into wood and I almost tripped myself trying to take a step. He’d pinned my pants leg to a stud with his shortsword.

“Dammit, Ryder, these’re my only fucking jeans!”

Ryder swung the ax at me. I blocked, but just barely. I was at a bad angle and I couldn’t turn right to throw him off or I’d rip the hole in my jeans bigger.

“Aw, prissy baby don’t want to get his clothes dirty?” Ryder laughed that high-pitched laugh and leaned harder on the ax. My arms started shaking. “Somebody been too busy fucking the enemy to practice.”

“You think I wanted to be her bitch?”

Ryder started jolting the ax. “I think you wanted her attention pretty bad to be sniping her familiars with no suppressor and no cover.”

My jeans tore free from the wall as I threw him off.

It was a trap. Ryder let the ax go flying and punched me in the throat with his off-fist. I tried to cough my trachea back into shape.

He grabbed my wrists and tried to wrench the broadsword away. When that didn’t work, he went for the head-butt. I brought my jaw up at the last second so that he hit my teeth. It hurt like hell, but Ryder came out of it with a bloody cut across the bridge of his nose and forehead. He stumbled back a step. I dropped the broadsword and tackled him.

We rolled across the floor and hit the Semtex locker in the opposite corner.

“Colt?” That was a girl’s voice.

Ryder kicked me off and stood up.

The shed door opened and Grace came in as I was getting to my feet.

“Are you all right?” she asked, her eyes jumping all over my face. “What the heck happened?”

“I’m fine. I—” I looked behind me at Ryder. He was sitting on the Semtex locker, holding his spit bottle. No blood, no cuts, no sweat. Not even out of breath.

Grace took a step closer to me. “You didn’t come in last night, did you?”

“Last night?” I said. Her hair was wet as if she’d just taken a shower and the sky showing through the door was starting to turn predawn gray. “What time is it?”

“Around five-thirty,” she said. “Maybe you should come inside.”

I stared down Ryder. He shook his head like he was disgusted with me. I flipped him off before I remembered that Grace was watching.

If she was something I had made up, shouldn’t she be able to see Ryder? And if she couldn’t see Ryder and she was real, what would be the least crazy way to explain that I was flipping off my dead brother who I didn’t always remember was dead and who might actually just be brain damage?

“Colt?” Grace asked.

I licked my lips and got a mouthful of blood that tasted real.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I just…fell or something.”

“Come on,” she said, nodding toward the cabin. “You should at least get something to drink. It’s already pretty hot out for being so early and dehydration sucks.”

I hung the broadsword on its rack and picked up Ryder’s ax. The shortsword was still stuck in the stud next to the automatic rifles. A piece of my jeans was pinned under it. So either my mental construct could kick my ass or I could kick my own ass and tell myself it was him.

“Shit.”

“Yeah, shit,” Ryder said.

I dropped his ax onto its hooks and headed for the shed door.

Grace followed