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

to town, Mitzi’s look-at-me-red ‘66 Ford Fairlane was sitting in the motel parking lot with the ragtop down. Mitzi was on the hood, kicked back like she was waiting for something.

I whipped the truck into the space beside her car and shut it off. Jumped out. Slammed the door so hard the truck rocked.

“Heya, Romeo,” she said.

Before she could hop off the bumper, I was on top of her. Kissing Mitzi felt like getting murdered. Like sticking your finger down your throat until you throw up. Like everybody being right about you all along.

Mitzi laughed and pulled me toward one of the motel rooms.

“Aw, I missed you, too,” she said.

Tiffani

 

Not five minutes after I finished with some skinny vamp-groupie in Lestat knockoffs, the connection with Mitzi opened. She and Tough were in Halo’s motel, having sex in the outdated shower. She gave me a quick look around. The bathroom was full of steam, but I could see that the shower curtain had been ripped down and a severed arm was leaking blood onto the tile.

Then Mitzi turned her attention back to Tough. When the scratches across his chest and stomach started healing, he pulled Mitzi’s hand back up and she dug four new gashes with her fingernails. Vamp venom welled up, congealed, scabbed off. Tough had her do it again, down his neck and across his sternum. He had his eyes closed.

The connection shut. That was all Mitzi had wanted me to see—Tough realizing he was too dead to hurt right.

I leaned against the corner of the mausoleum and listened to anorexic Lestat finish getting dressed.

It could have been territorial. Maybe Mitzi wanted me to know that I might’ve made Tough, but she’d had him first. Or it could have been her way of showing me how easy it would be for her to stake him. I could reopen the connection and try to find out, but I didn’t want her to know that she could use Tough to get under my skin.

I pulled the Marlboro hard pack out of my pocket and lit a cigarette. Took a long drag. Then I opened the connection with Tough.

Fuck off, Tiffani, he said.

Did you leave your girlfriend with Colt? I asked.

My girlfriend is probably deep-throating Kathan by now. Unless it’s her sister’s turn.

So Colt’s alone? You left a castoff by himself? What in the hell were you thinking?

A combination of shame and guilt filled the connection for a second, but Tough shook it off with pure punk-ass belligerence.

Sort of busy right now, Tiffani, so unless there’s something else you need—

Yeah. Mitzi’s going to stake you when she’s done screwing you. Better make it last.

Tough didn’t care. I could feel it. He was existing second by second, refusing to think about anything but what was happening right then. Maybe he would make it to be one of those rare long-lived male vamps, after all. That survival-at-all-costs instinct is half the battle.

I shut the connection.

The mausoleum door scraped shut and the stick figure in the Lestat knockoffs came out, holding a patch of sterile gauze to his jugular.

“Hey, uh, I’ll be in town all weekend if—”

I left.

It was strange to think that in almost five years I’d never gone out to the old Baumeyer cabin.

It hadn’t seemed strange before, though. Colt compartmentalized everything. The cabin equaled training, reading, drinking alone. Tiffani equaled the bakery, X-Files, cinnamon rolls and coffee. Hell, half the time Colt forgot to eat because food was filed away in the “indoors” compartment and he spent most of his time outside. If I hadn’t suggested he get a grill, he probably would’ve ended up as starved as that anorexic kid in the cemetery.

The cheap, curling linoleum on the kitchen floor crackled under my shoes and the heartbeat in the bedroom raced. Colt started talking under his breath, incoherent and hoarse. Fear has a distinct scent that the super-smeller never misses, but it wasn’t enough to mask the scent of a creature living outside of time. Feathers. Sex. Tar. Mikal.

The jealous bitch in me snarled. Colt should’ve been mine.

Probably what Mitzi was feeling about Tough.

“Hell,” I said.

The cabin went quiet.

“Colt?” I eased the bedroom door open. “It’s all right. It’s me.”

He was on the floor in the corner, knees up and head down. His whole body stiffened as I got closer.

“You’re not real,” he croaked.

“The hell I’m not,” I said, touching his shoulder.

He flinched and pulled away. “I can’t handle any more. There’re too many already.”

“Look at me, Colt.”

He raised his head. No sudden recognition, no shy smile or flood of endorphins, just a hollow stare.

“Tiffani,” I said. “Tiffani Cranston. The bakery. You come by a couple times a week to check up on Tough. Before Mikal, you did.”

“Mikal.” The gravelly scratch in Colt’s voice made my throat hurt. “I loved her so much, but I—” He put both fists to his eyes and started rocking back and forth. “Fuck. This isn’t enough. It’s never going to be enough without her.”

I slid down against the wall and crossed my legs. “You loved Mikal?”

“She was all I had.”

“Mikal was all you had.” Maybe my throat really did hurt. When I laughed it sure felt raw, anyway. “Your favorite food is cinnamon rolls. Your favorite drink is Southern Comfort. Your second favorite is black coffee. Your favorite show is The X-Files. Right after we watched the ‘Resist or Serve’ episode, you went out and got that tattoo on your chest. You couldn’t wait until morning to show me, so you tracked me down after dark.”

I could still picture him trying not to grin.

“What do you think?” he had asked.

“I’m not that into tattoos,” I’d said, tracing the red tenderness around the new ink, watching goose bumps