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

that he needs to get up there and stake Tough before Tough kills him. Naturally, I couldn’t stay in the ‘Ville and get some sleep, I have to come do Jason’s heavy lifting because Tiffani the Genius—who, if you’ll remember, swore she was never going to make anybody, ever—picked the one kid who’d been kicked around the playground for too long and sent him to school with a machinegun.

I had to work not to grind my teeth. If we’re throwing blame around, how about the vamp who couldn’t just say, “I don’t love you, Tough?” You had to be a bitch about it.

I told him the truth, she said. If Tough couldn’t handle just being a sex toy, he never acted like it.

Don’t bullshit me, Mitzi, I watched. It still pissed me off to think of Tough sitting there on her bed, his cheekbones flushing dark red while he tried not to cry and Mitzi told him he could get over it and do his job or he could get out and she and Jason could find another desperate piece of trash who needed their protection.

I’m surprised you can even hear me from way up there on your high horse, Mitzi said. Saint Lover-boy would’ve jumped you in a heartbeat, but you kept stringing him along, sucking off of vamp-groupies and dreaming about Bible-thumper tattoos.

A plate snapped in my fingers. Mitzi thought that was hilarious.

Maybe you should look him up now, Tiff. After a month with Mikal, he probably knows more kinky shit than I do.

I stopped myself from yelling at her over the connection. Remembered that Mitzi looked half my age, but she was at least twice as old a vamp as me. She had enough control over her speed and strength to make me look like a newborn. Taking me out would be nothing to her and I wasn’t ready to rot in Hell yet. Not when I’d just gotten a second chance with Colt.

I fished the broken pieces of the plate out of the sink and threw them in the trash. Shutting off emotion was something I had perfected long before I got made. Over the years, only two people had gotten close enough to trip me up and Mitzi wasn’t either of them.

I could feel Mitzi rolling her eyes at me.

You’re no fun anymore, Tiffani.

I never was. I turned the water off and hung the washrag over the edge of the sink.

Damn Tough and Jax. This was what happened when kids played around with powers they didn’t understand—they stirred up crap kids shouldn’t be messing with. I dried my hands.

What time do you think you guys will get in? I asked Mitzi.

We left Nashville an hour ago. She let me look through her eyes, but all I could see was the velvet-cushioned custom interior of the trunk of Mitzi’s car. Sundown. Maybe a little later.

Let me know when you get to town, I said.

Are you going to warn my prey, Tiffani?

Probably.

Good, Mitzi said. I like a challenge.

Colt

 

Solid blackness. I couldn’t move or breathe. Screaming was coming from everywhere, a lost, raw sound. In the darkness, at the edge of the screaming, something was waiting. I felt myself start to panic. I needed Mikal. If I did or said the right thing, she would stop this. She would let me out of here.

“Really?” Ryder. “Wake your lazy ass up, Colt.”

My eyes came open and my lungs started working again. The screaming faded to a tolerable level and I realized it had been coming from the holes Mikal’s essence left in my brain.

I was laying on the floor with the .45 by my hand. No magazine.

Ryder was sitting on the coffee table, twirling the bottle of Southern Comfort around by its neck the way he always used to when he was drinking.

“Did I pass out?” I asked.

He blew out a disgusted breath.

“Figures,” he said. “I get stuck being the external hard drive for a computer that won’t even stay on.”

I pushed myself up. I wasn’t hung over. Didn’t feel like I’d been knocked out. There was a towel on the floor, so I’d taken a shower and then…then what?

“Dammit!” Ryder yelled. “We’re getting nowhere like this. You can’t even remember the last six hours? How the fuck am I supposed to work with that?”

“Bitch about it some more,” I said, standing up. “That should help.”

He snorted. “Dickwad.”

I went to the bathroom, grabbed my jeans off the back of the toilet, pulled them on, and came back. I nodded at the SoCo bottle. “So, you going to drink that whole thing yourself?”

Ryder picked it up and stared at the label for almost a full minute.

“Fuck it,” he said.

Then he tossed me the bottle.

Suddenly I was at the head of our army with Tough and Sissy, leaning on Ryder for support. Not twenty feet away the farmhouse was burning. I could hear the fire, smell wood smoke and burning plastic. Sweat soaked through my shirt, but I couldn’t feel the heat. Blood rolled down my leg from the bullet hole above the knee—the reason I had to lean on Ryder—but I didn’t feel the pain. The whole day had been too surreal to feel anything. Four years of fighting over with in less than an hour. The angels had just come in and ended it. How the hell did you even get your brain around something like that?

Movement in my peripheral forced me to look away from the fire. A foot soldier kicked Dad to his knees in front of Kathan.

Kathan was going to execute Dad, but Dad just looked relieved. Like he was going to Mom, so there wasn’t anything to worry about anymore. Not even us kids.

I could feel the black noise in my throat, swimming up