Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) by eden Hudson (ebook reader with highlight function .TXT) 📗

Selective memory, Mikal said. Remember what it was like after everybody left you all alone. Just you and the black noise.

For once, Mikal’s tar-covered wings receded completely and the light and sound and color outside my brain overpowered everything inside. A grid of glowing red lines stretched out from Mikal and filled the room. Thick, red drops hung from the places where the lines connected, like arterial spray on a spider web.

I could feel my body shaking, cold sweat, an adrenaline high. I squeezed my eyes shut tight. Not real. The lines weren’t real. Only crazy people thought that things no one else could see were real.

“Not there. They’re not there. They’re not—”

But I was too focused on fighting the lines to hold the black noise off. It rolled up my spine and into my brain. It had been waiting for an opening. It was always waiting. It spread out through my head, a nightmare asylum of lunatics filling every windowless, padded cell with the wrong kind of laughter. Oh, shit, that was me laughing—sick, wrecked shrieks no sane person could make.

“Focus on me, Colt.” Mikal’s voice was almost lost in the racket. “Who made the black noise go away?”

“You did.”

“Beg me and I’ll make it go away again.”

I couldn’t get a full breath, couldn’t move no matter how hard I fought. Trying to think through the black noise was impossible. The only thing I knew for sure was that I’d brought this on myself. Mikal had told me that if I was bad she would put me back in the lunatic’s cell. I must’ve wanted to be punished. I must’ve been dying for it to be such a smartass when I’d known—

No, it wasn’t real. It was in my head. It was the black noise.

“Please, God, don’t let it be real. I can’t do it again. I can’t take it.”

“Beg me, Colter, not Him. Only I can make the black noise go away.”

Something tried to tell me to resist or serve, but I couldn’t. There wasn’t anyone to save me—no one but Mikal. If she cast me off, everyone would know about the black noise. They’d lock me away in a mental hospital, keep me tied up in a straightjacket, electrocute me and drug me until I was too brain-dead to be crazy. Mikal had done it because it scared me enough to make me obey, but when I stopped being able to fight her outside, she had taken the straightjacket off. She had promised we wouldn’t have to go back if I was good.

My mind latched onto that—if I was good, Mikal wouldn’t make me go back.

“I can save you, Colter,” she said. “Beg me and I’ll save you.”

“Please—” —please, Mikal.

She hugged me to her chest. Her wings wrapped around us. Inside, her burning-tar essence closed around my brain again, forcing the black noise out. The sound of screaming overwhelmed the psychotic laughing, then both faded.

That drowning sensation was gratitude.

Tough

Desty didn’t say anything until we were almost back to town.

“Sorry to make you lie for me. I just kind of panicked. Like Tempie would insist I stay there if I didn’t already have— Here, you can drop me off at the bar.”

I shot her a look and tapped the radio clock. Rowdy’s had been closed for an hour and a half.

“I know, but my backpack’s behind the dumpster.”

I tried to think of a way to tell Desty she really could stay with me. Then she wouldn’t have been lying in case Kathan sent someone to check up on her. The idea of the Tracker creeping up on Desty while she was sleeping in the park or an alley really freaked me out. Being homeless sucks. I had tried it once for about a week before I moved in with Harper and Jax. You’d think it would’ve been the cold that got me since it was January, but it was the lost sleep. There was a lot of NP crap you had to put up with during the night if you were homeless around Halo.

Desty sighed and rubbed her face with both hands. If anybody could use a good night’s sleep, it was her.

The security light over Rowdy’s back door came on when we pulled up. Even with the windows up and the air on, the hot garbage smell leaked into the truck. It got stronger when Desty opened the door and hopped out. I had a quick fight with myself about pissing off broken ribs versus sitting in the air conditioning, but I ended up getting out, too.

When I got around the truck, Desty had one hand on the wall and she was bent over, reaching behind the dumpster. I know she wasn’t trying to look hot, but with legs and a butt like that, even the bar-trash smell and the pain in my side faded. Sometimes a month really could feel like forever.

Most of my brain was busy memorizing the arch of her back and the curve of her butt for use later, but some instinct I’m really glad I have reminded me to adjust my tent pole before she stood up and turned back around.

“What?” she asked, slinging her backpack over her shoulder.

I shook my head, but the top part of my cheeks started burning.

She gave me a tired smile. “I hope you don’t play poker, Tough.”

I made a sarcastic-laugh face. Poker? I barely know her. Then I took her backpack.

“What—”

I opened the passenger door up and held out my hand to help her in. She really must’ve been exhausted, because it took a minute before she got the message.

“You don’t have to,” she said. “I just couldn’t think of anything else to tell Tempie.”

I tossed her backpack up into