Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1)

by eden Hudson

  “Seductive,” she said.

  I gave her a look like What the hell? and pointed at us laying on the bed together.

  “Just because I felt bad for spying on you,” she said.

  My ass. I leaned forward until I was almost touching her lips and I could feel her breath on my face. She smelled like blueberry pancakes and girl sweat. Her muddy hazel eyes kept looking back and forth between mine and she was barely breathing. I licked my lips, brushed her hair away from her ear—

  Then I put the earbud in and laughed at her.

  Desty slapped my arm.

  “Jerk.” But she was trying not to smile. She took a deep breath through her nose. “You smell like toothpaste and showers.”

  I must’ve made a face.

  “Not like that’s a bad thing,” she said. “Just weird.”

  In the middle of the day it was weird, she meant. Not much I could do about it, though—I hadn’t felt like seeing her with trick on my breath.

  “Really,” Desty said. “I like the shower smell.”

  Beats NP bitch any day, I thought.

  I hit play and the music started up again. Desty adjusted her earbud and laid her head down on the pillow. For a while, she listened to the rest of “Harper’s Song” with me.

  Then she said, “You weren’t listening to this before.”

  I nodded.

  “This isn’t funny. It’s—” She looked up at me. “It hurts to listen to.”

  I shrugged. I guess you had to be there.

  Desty closed her eyes and listened to the next few songs. I put my pick between my teeth and laid my head down, too, kind of getting off on watching her reactions. She knew when I was joking and you could tell she really felt the heavy stuff. I think “Losing Blood” was the one that gave it away because it’s about Mom and Dad, but Desty let the playlist get all the way to “The Hell Alone” before she said anything.

  In the pause between songs, she opened her eyes.

  “This is you.”

  With my tongue, I switched my pick to the other side of my mouth and nodded.

  “Jax said you were good, but…” Desty looked down at my mouth, and for a second, the bottom dropped out of my stomach thinking somehow she might know about the Matchmaker—you can’t keep a lid on shit in this town—but she just asked, “Do you chew?”

  I was too relieved to do anything but shake my head no.

  “What’s this about?” She touched Ryder’s Copenhagen-can-ring on my back pocket.

  I wanted to touch, too, so I reached down and traced the outline of a cellphone on her empty front pocket.

  “These aren’t my shorts,” she said. “Or shirt. Or boots.”

  I shook my head and tugged at the waistband of Ryder’s left-behind jeans. Mine either.

  “What’s in your mouth, then?”

  I stuck the pick out like a tongue. Desty smiled and touched it with the tip of her tongue.

  “I like you, Tough,” she said. “I just had to make sure you didn’t chew, or I couldn’t like you.”

  Hot damn. Just in case she couldn’t tell I liked her, too, I kissed her. She laughed when I slipped the pick between her lips and she pulled it away from me. Her laying there with that pick between her teeth, the point making a little indentation in her bottom lip was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life. All I could do was stare.

  Then Desty took the pick out and held it in front of her face to study it. I always have three or four picks floating around my pockets, but that one is agate and shark-finned, with Tough on it in silver letters. Colt got it for my thirteenth birthday, so I don’t take it anywhere but in and out of the case in my room.

  “Last night a foot soldier told me you tried to kill a guy in Nashville,” Desty said, turning the pick over so that the lettering faced her. “Do you wish you would’ve done it?”

  That depended. If Mitzi hadn’t walked in ten minutes into what should’ve been a two-hour beating and I couldn’t have made Jason give my voice back, I probably wouldn’t have stopped until I had stomped his heart out.

  “My mom isn’t right anymore,” Desty said, making a motion toward her head. “She just spiraled when my dad left her. But I’m not sorry I left her to come after Tempie. I had to try. Even if I can’t get either of them back, I won’t be sorry.”

  That made me smile because she was lying. I could see it in her eyes. She was one of those girls who wanted to fix everything and it would probably kill her if she couldn’t.

  “You’re not sorry, either, are you?” she asked. “About anything.”

  I shook my head.

  “And screw them if they think they can make you sorry,” she said.

  I think I love you. I wished I could say it out loud because I knew Desty would get it.

  I kissed her again and that turned into making out. It was kind of awkward—I think because we were on our sides and she was trying to keep her boots off the bed—and it was too hot and sticky to be touching anyone, but it felt too good to stop. After a while I remembered the earbuds. We took them out and sat the mp3 player on the nightstand so we could get closer.

  Neither one of us noticed it getting dark until the screen door banged downstairs.

  “Logan gave me the night off. We’re going to the bar.” Harper’s voice was loud because of how quiet it had been in the house.

  “I have one objective left.” Jax’s voice was loud because he was pissed.

  “Well, if you want to finish it, you better do it in the next forty-five minutes because we’re leaving here at nine.” Harper’s sandals flip-flopped up the stairs to the bathroom. “I am not missing Tough play two nights in a row.”

  “One objective!”

  “Forty-five minutes!”

  The bathroom door slammed and the shower started.

  Desty laughed in a little puff of breath against my face.

  “We just made out for three hours,” she whispered.

  I need to get ready, I thought, but I didn’t move. My lips felt chapped and they stung from sweat. Even as dark as it was getting, I could see a red spot on Desty’s neck that would probably turn into a hickey. I liked that. It was like she had Tough written on her, like my agate pick.

  “I guess you need to go, huh?” She sounded disappointed.

  I nodded. I didn’t want to go, though. I had a weird feeling that if I got up, I’d never get to do this with Desty again. Like when you’re flipping through radio stations and you hear a song you don’t know, but you can tell right away it’s good. Even if the song’s almost over, you don’t want to change the channel in case they never play it again.

  ***

  The dance floor stayed packed until the first set was over, then filled back up again as soon as we started the second. Even though Desty wasn’t dancing, I could see that she wanted to. Every time I looked over at her, she was keeping time and moving in her seat. She probably would’ve been burning up the floor like Harper and Scout if she’d had someone to dance with. I wished Jax would take her out there, at least for one song, but the only dance Jax had ever done in his life was when he beat the Legendary setting on this medieval game he had.

  Sometime during the second set, I started daydreaming about dancing with Desty. I could hook the speakers up to my mp3 player and we could push the bed over and dance in my room. And since the bed would already be in the room anyhow…

  “Free Bird” has always been pretty high on my list of songs to have sex to, and Dodge and Owen both knew it. When I played the intro, Dodge looked over at Owen and shook his fist back and forth in the international sign for jacking off. I took my middle finger off my pick and gave them the international sign for “Mind your own damn business and play what I tell you to.”

  Dodge was still laughing when he had to start singing. It didn’t sound right with the tone of the song, but that turned out not to matter because in the middle of “tomorrow” Dodge stopped singing like someone had cut his throat. Owen and Willow dropped off, too. I p
almed my strings and looked up.

  Kathan had come in first with Desty’s sister hanging on his arm in this short blue dress that showed off tits and ass to spare. Mikal was right behind them, wearing a shimmery red dress and strappy hooker heels. The light from the stage sparkled off of her dress and onto the leash.

  Shit.

  Colt. Dressed in some fancy suit, acting like it wasn’t no thang to be on a fucking leash where everybody could see that he was Mikal’s first-prize coon dog.

  I swallowed. I felt sick. I wished I didn’t know him or that everybody in this bar didn’t know he was my brother or that— Dammit, the least he could do was look bad, tore up and starving, like he was fighting for his life, not going out with his dominatrix girlfriend. I knew Colt didn’t get a choice. I knew that, but seeing him… It was like the night the Tracker brought me back from Nashville. I knew Mikal was doing it, but I blamed Colt.

  Someone was talking. I could hear the voice buzzing around. Then Dodge bumped my arm and I snapped out of it.

  “I was just saying, Tough, that we didn’t want to interrupt anything,” Kathan said. “We heard you were back at Rowdy’s and we wanted to catch a show.” He looked around at the crowd. “For those of you visiting Halo, Tough Whitney is our local star. You’ve probably already been enjoying his music this evening. He used to sing, too, but from what I understand, his wild youth came back to bite him. Now he just plays.”

  Mikal smiled at me and made a big show out of scratching behind Colt’s ear.

  “Colt’s especially been looking forward to hearing you,” she said.

  “Yeah, Tough,” the thing that used to be Colt said. “Play something.”

  I tried not to look at the collar. Colt had Whitney eyes—all us kids did—kind of blue-green, but Colt’s were always the darkest ones, like Dad’s.

  Dad had never liked Southern rock or country, so he probably wouldn’t have cared for my stuff. Other than Christian, Dad didn’t really like any music but Mom’s, even though when the Lost Derringers, her band, were popular they were playing some pretty dark songs. Christian rock and Mom’s hardcore battle-punk. Kind of a weird combination, but I knew Colt—the real Colt, not Mikal’s dog—would recognize it because it came from back before he got so obsessed with Soldier of Heaven crap that he forgot about things like music and movies and non-tactical books.

  While I was standing there wishing music was actually powerful enough to reach down into someone’s brain and dig out anything that was left of them, my favorite Derringers song came back to me and I started playing.

  The guitar part to “Out of Spite” walks the line between pissed and laughing. When I was little, I thought Mom was the only person in the world who could make a guitar sound like that, but this time I hit the tone dead-on. Getting it right really pumped me up, so I kicked my distortion pedal until the amps were buzzing like metal bees, screaming,

  Now you can all talk about

  How close you were to taking me out.

  Just wanted to let you know

  Cyanide never tasted so sweet,

  Suicide never tasted so sweet,

  As it does with your name in my mouth.

  I think maybe “talk” was really supposed to be “bitch,” but Mom always edited out the cuss words when she sang to us.

  All around the stage, people were going crazy, dancing like they did on the videos of Mom’s concerts, jumping and waving their arms and yelling. I used to dream about people doing that for me, but now that it was happening, fuck ‘em. I couldn’t see past Colt, anyway. I don’t know what I was looking for—some kind of sign, maybe. Something that said Colt was still the OCD hard-ass who would make you run a drill until you got every step better than right, perfect. The guy who barely cracked a smile when he made a joke and who used to spend eighteen hours a day training, running the arsenal, and designing attack plans so twisted they’d make you dizzy.

  But that thing in the suit with its hand on Mikal’s back didn’t give me any kind of sign.

  The last words to “Out of Spite” are “so sweet, so sweet, so sweet…” When I played that last little riff, Mikal yelled and clapped louder than anyone else in the bar. She even stuck her fingers between her lips and whistled.

  “Okay,” Dodge said, his hand over his mic. “You think you can be serious now?”

  I nodded, kicked the distortion back down, and started playing “Tulsa Time”—because while I was at it, fuck Jason and Mitzi, too. Dodge shook his head, but he sang it.

  People started honkytonk dancing again. Behind the bar, Rowdy nodded at me like he was excusing the slip into hardcore. Kathan, Tempie, Mikal, and Colt sat down at a table like it wasn’t any big deal for them to be at the human bar, not Seventh Circle, at the other edge of town.

  Jax was on the floor, pushing through the crowd trying to catch up with Harper, who was crying and headed for the bathrooms.

  Every now and then it would hit me why the teenage me should be glad I didn’t end up with Harper. She was hot and she had the attitude, but if someone hurt her—really took her out—she wouldn’t know how to get back up and keep going.

  Desty was sitting at their table by herself, looking at me like I’d just killed a dragon or something. Desty got it, even if no one else did. Fuck anybody who thought they could make you sorry.

  Desty

  When the band took their second break of the night, Tough brought a couple of beers back to the table.

  “That song you played—” I wanted to tell him how incredible it was. I’d heard Jason Gudehaus’s songs on the radio while I was hitchhiking, but after listening to Tough’s recordings, I could tell Jason was playing an instrument he didn’t know how to use. Tough knew how to make people feel anything he wanted them to feel. That song he’d played when Mikal taunted him had given me this rush of everyone’s-going-to-get-what-they-deserve.

  I wanted to put all that into words, but before I could make any sense, Tempie pushed between us.

  “Tough, right?” she said. She nodded toward a red Emergency Exit sign. “Mikal said she wants to talk to you outside.”

  Tough looked over his shoulder at the empty table where Tempie and the fallen angels had been sitting, then tugged on the bill of his John Deere hat as if he was straightening it. He looked from me to Tempie and back.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “I’m her sister,” Tempie said. “She’s safer with me than she is with some redneck loser. And, by the way, Kathan told me what you used to do—or, who you used to do. Gives new meaning to the phrase ‘Screwing the boss’s wife,’ huh?”

  Tough was blushing, the top part of his cheeks turning that too-red color. I tried to say something—anything to get Tempie to shut up—but it’s hard to stop her when she’s on a roll.

  “Desty’s too pretty to pay for sex,” she said. “And even if she was an ugly skank, I wouldn’t let my sister bang someone who’d give her post-mortem syphilis.”

  Tough sucked his teeth, then put his hands up in front of his chest and nodded at the way Tempie’s dress was pushing her boobs up.

  Nice rack, he mouthed.

  Tempie flipped him off, but he was already headed for the exit.

  “You’re such a jerk, Tempie,” I said.

  “I’m just looking out for you.” She sat in the chair beside me and pulled down on the sides of her dress so it would cover her butt.

  “Tough’s not Dad,” I said.

  She took a drink of my beer. “And I’m not a psychology book.”

  “Touché.” I watched the door close behind Tough. My foot started jiggling under the table. “So…”

  “Don’t be weird, nerd.” But it was like Tempie didn’t know what to say, either. She started picking at the corner of my beer’s label with her fingernail. “Did you read up on the joint-familiar thing?”

  I shook my head. “My friend Jax is giving me all the info the Witches’ Council has, but that’s not much.”

  “Why don’t you just ask
Kathan your questions?” she asked.

  “I need to know more before I even know the right questions to ask,” I said.

  Tempie’s always been really good at that cruel laugh that makes people feel stupid.

  “You’re cool jumping into bed with that durr-Chevy-kid necrophiliac, but you won’t even consider something I already know everything about?”

  “I didn’t jump into bed with Tough,” I said.

  She pointed at my throat with my confiscated beer.

  “Move your hand over about an inch and try saying that with a straight face,” she said. “Yeah, that’s right, Tempie saw the hickey. Where’s his? Downstairs?”

  “We didn’t—” Then either Tough’s song or the one sip of beer I’d had before Tempie took it kicked in. I sat up a little straighter. “You know what? That’s none of your business.”

  “I’m your freaking twin,” she said. “I tell you everything.”

  “Tell me why Kathan wants us,” I said. “Really. What does he need to command legions of fallen angels for?”

  “All that crap you read and you don’t even know yet that the last battle’s coming?”

  I just stared at her.

  “You seriously don’t! I can’t believe this, Desty. I know more than you—me. Temperance Joanne McCormick knows more than the Great Nerd of Hannibal.” She basked in the superiority for a few seconds, then got serious. “Everybody’s got to choose a side. That loser—he’s on the wrong side. He can’t protect you. With me and Kathan, you’ll have the power to protect yourself.”

  “Leave Tough out of this. You don’t know him.”

  “I know he’s a man-whore. Did he tell you that?”

  “He can’t talk,” I said.

  “Yeah, convenient,” Tempie said.

  “Whatever.” I took my beer away from her.

  I leaned back in my seat and pretended to be looking around the room so I didn’t have to look at Tempie. Willow was over by the bar with Dodge. She waved at me. I tried to smile back, but it felt like more of a contortion than my face could handle at the moment.