Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) by eden Hudson (best book series to read TXT) 📕

I picked up another notebook, hoping it would shed some light on the first. More columns—names, monetary amounts, shopping list quantities of guns, swords, axes, and ammo.

I know Colt had told me they’d sold some of their arsenal, but I’d been thinking too small-scale for the Whitneys. “Growing boys need to eat,” not “growing boys can run their own black-market weapons trade.” Their own really successful black-market weapons trade, according to this notebook.

In the bathroom, the faucet creaked and the shower shut off.

I threw the notebook down. Then hoped Colt hadn’t heard its pages flutter and smack on the coffee table.

“Somebody out there?” Colt yelled from the bathroom.

I lunged for the coffee table to flip shut the notebook’s cover.

Behind me, the bathroom door opened. Hoping I didn’t look as guilty as I felt, I stood up and spun around.

Colt was pointing a gun at me.

I slapped both hands over my mouth just in time to cut off the shriek.

“Dammit, Grace,” Colt barked, lowering the weapon. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I was—I was—” I took a breath. Tried to stop shaking and make myself look away from the black metal almost glowing against Colt’s faded blue towel. Another breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. This was not as big a deal as I was making it. In fact, I should’ve seen the gun coming. Colt sold weapons—and he was essentially a rebel soldier living inside enemy lines—of course he’d keep a gun close by, just in case. But I’d almost ended up another GSW, like the familiars in Colt’s notebook.

My hand went back to my mouth. I scrubbed my fingers across my lips and tried to swallow the sudden urge to vomit. I’d just about gotten shot like the familiars in Colt’s notebook. Kathan had let Mikal enthrall Colt because he’d been killing her familiars. Carefully, clinically observing and then shooting her familiars. I’d almost gotten shot by a man who’d already shot five people in cold blood.

Colt ran his non-gun-hand through his wet hair.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you, Grace,” he said. He didn’t sound like a serial killer. He sounded like a big brother trying not to be mad at his slow younger sister. “But you can’t just not answer if I—”

“You shot Mikal’s familiars,” I said.

“Tac-Ops Tango-51, no suppressor, no cover,” he said, nodding as if it was just now coming back to him. “Clear shot six hundred fifty yards from the fence to the parlor Hell Window. She always enthralls them in the parlor.”

“People, Colt. You killed five people.”

“Almost six,” he said. “But Mikal was waiting for me when I went for the last one.”

“You stalked them and shot them. You wrote it down.” My voice was high-pitched and bordering on hysteric, but he was acting so calm. Like it was no big deal. “You’re psychotic.”

Colt was across the floor before I could move. I tried to back over the coffee table, but he grabbed my throat with one hand and pinned me to the tabletop like a bug. Droplets of water shook out of his hair and fell on my face.

“You want me to be sorry?” he growled. “She takes away everything but the worst things you’ve ever done and the sickest things you’ve ever thought. There’s nothing good left. And she’s creative enough that the pain never stops—you get desensitized to one kind of torture and she already has another one ready to go. You can actually feel your mind breaking down. After a while, you start to think you’d give anything to make her stop—anything but that. Now guess what she wants.”

I choked. All that would come out of my mouth was a whimpering sound.

“But you can’t just give it to her. She won’t take it. You have to beg her to make it go away.” Colt jammed the gun into my cheek. “Beg, Grace!”

Time stopped. Part of my brain stepped back and logged the throbbing cheek. Stinging eyes. Screaming lungs. It noted the weakness in the pit of my stomach and made me squeeze my legs together before I wet my pants. Coward, it said.

“Beg,” Colt yelled.

“P-please, Colt—”

“Beg her. She’s the only one who will save you.”

“Colt—” My voice broke. “Mikal, please!”

He shook his head and dug the gun harder into my cheek.

“After the first familiar, I threw up. Another time I was shaking so bad I screwed up the shot, got him in the throat. I was glad she stopped me before I killed the sixth guy. She locked me in the lunatic’s cell with nothing but pitch blackness and the guilt while she wore out that last familiar. I thought it was going to suffocate me.” Colt laughed and the sound raked down the back of my neck. “I was sorry. Now? If I’d known a year ago who she was going to enthrall, I would’ve shot them in their houses, in front of their families, while they rocked newborn babies—anything to keep them from going through that.”

Colt pulled the gun away from the burning, throbbing spot in my cheek.

“There’s only one way to get away from her, Grace.” It was like a switch had flipped. He was that big brother again, pleading with me to understand. “Once she’s in, there’s no other way to be free.”

That’s when I started crying—when Colt put the gun to his head.

“I have to get away,” he said. “I can’t do this anymore.”

His finger tightened on the trigger.

I flinched and squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself for the shot and spray of blood, the sudden weight of a dead body falling on me.

“What the fuck, Sunshine? What’re you doing?”

My eyes snapped open.

Colt stumbled backward off the coffee table and away from me.

“Shit!” His hands were shaking so