Lost Paladin: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 2)

by eden Hudson

  I might be handing over the world, but wouldn’t it be worth it? For once in my life I could actually do something—save my sister, protect the guy I somehow still loved from getting hurt any worse—and it wouldn’t be an empty gesture like following Tempie when she ran away or telling Tough everything was going to be all right. This time I could really help.

  Anyway, it wasn’t like God was doing a lot of awesome stuff with Earth right now. Not from what I’d seen of the place.

  I shut off the shower and got out. My knuckles throbbed and my stomach bled as I dried off. Good thing the towels were black. I held one against my bellybutton until the bleeding stopped, then I got dressed.

  Possible Fatigues was at his post in the hall when I came out.

  He smirked at me. “What’s the matter, doll face? Did you have a nightmare about black-winged creatures pulling out your toenails one at a time?”

  “I want to talk to Kathan,” I said.

  Tiffani

  I tied off the last stitch and snipped it. Colt’s soft snoring stopped for a second, then went on. He’d been fighting sleep the whole time I was sewing him up. Finally dropped off when I’d gone back to the bathroom for more gauze. I’d tried waking him back up so I could warn him I was about to start stitching again, but all I’d gotten out of him were a few muffled groans. The needle, the suture, the rubbing alcohol—none of it had fazed him. His eyelids had barely twitched.

  The couple of times Colt had dozed off in the bakery before, the sleep had been short and restless. Tonight as I watched the slow rise and fall of his chest, I could smell the serotonin and other rest-chemicals flushing his system. This was deep. I hoped it was peaceful.

  I wrapped the suturing needle in its sterile plastic packaging and dropped it into the trashcan I’d brought in from the bathroom. Cut a bandage and taped it over the stitches in Colt’s side. With any luck, he wouldn’t rip them out anytime soon.

  I almost laughed. With any real luck, Colt would give up the fight against Kathan, move to another continent, this end-time battle would blow over, and he would live happily ever after.

  It’s awful loving someone who’s willing to die for what he believes in.

  For a minute longer, I stood there watching him. His hair was almost shaggy. Usually he asked me to cut it before it got this long. A five o’clock shadow was coming in at his jaw. When he woke up, I should say something to him about growing a beard and turning into one of them damn hippies. He would think that was funny.

  If he remembered me.

  What if his memories of me were gone again when he woke up? What if sleep was just a reset button?

  “Hell.” If he woke up and didn’t remember me, I would go back in and do it all over again like I’d told him I would.

  I gathered up the pieces of bloody gauze, shut off the bedroom light, and headed downstairs. Dug the lye and some gloves out of the broom closet, then hooked up the hose to the sink.

  Depending on who you listened to nowadays, there were supposed to be a lot of complicated ways to obscure a zombie’s ability to track you. Eggs and tiny white rocks and other secret cures that would cost you a few hundred bucks and a little of your blood or semen. Maybe those craft tricks did work. All I knew was the one method I’d seen throw a zombie off every time was good old-fashioned lye and elbow grease. It’s hard to beat the classics.

  Outside, I sniffed the air. Fresh spray paint, unpopped popcorn, unspun sugar, and unwashed carnies. Colt’s blood. But no Tracker. If the zombie had been within a mile, I would have smelled his rotting carcass. Colt must’ve taken a route that couldn’t be driven. The Tracker might get around fast in his big blue truck, but he was slower than Christmas on foot. It was going to be a long night for the fallen angels following him.

  I found Colt’s scent trail and started scrubbing. With the vamp speed, it only took me about thirty minutes to erase his tracks to the edge of town. Then I pulled the bloody gauze out of my pocket and made a new trail across town. It would be fainter than the real thing, but because it would be the Tracker’s only lead, he would follow it.

  I ended the blood trail in the alley behind Rowdy’s, dropped the gauze in the dumpster, then headed back to the bakery.

  Colt was still asleep when I made it upstairs. I climbed in and curled against his unhurt side. He started, but he didn’t wake up. After a few seconds, he put his arm around me.

  I laid my head on his shoulder. His body was so hot. The warmth soaked into my skin. I hoped his scent would, too. Sweat, gun oil, tattoo ink, sunlight, and heat. I closed my eyes and breathed it in.

  For the first time in years, I fell asleep.

  Tough

  I must’ve gotten dressed to leave. Anyway, I had my jeans and boots on when Scout pushed me down onto the couch.

  “Just stay,” she said. “Listen for a little bit. You’ll see that we’re serious. You’ll…”

  She kept talking, but I checked out for a while. If I nodded every now and then, I guess it looked like I was paying attention. The high was still holding strong. I rubbed the back of my head against the couch, felt my hair bristle across the worn-out pattern of the fabric.

  At some point, that crow boy, Cash Pershing, Lonely’s little cousin, showed up, all decked out with shiny hunks of metal hooked through his face like he’d fallen headfirst into a tackle box.

  For a little while him and Scout went into the kitchen—I assume so they could talk about something I wasn’t allowed to hear because screw me. I probably could’ve picked it up with the vamp hearing, but I didn’t try. Because screw them.

  Then they were back in the living room and a couple of girls and another guy were there, too. I was pretty sure they were all from Scout’s class.

  “Well, Emma’s in the class below ours,” Scout said. So I must’ve asked.

  Wait. What the hell? I couldn’t ask. I couldn’t talk at all anymore because of Jason. So… Seriously, what the hell?

  Scout was still talking. Maybe this was important. “And there are a few more in the senior class, but most…”

  I nodded. The hairs on the back of my head slid over the rough fabric of the couch. My fingertips were touching the fabric, too, next to my legs. Pushing on the cushion, then letting go. Little bouncing people, jumping in a bounce house.

  I hadn’t imagined something like that since I was a little kid. Really little. Like, Mom-still-alive little.

  “…but you know how cowards are. As soon as they see our signs around town and the sedition we’ve been spreading…”

  I ground my teeth, but managed not to groan this time. That would’ve been awkward, groaning like I was rubbing one out in front of all these high school kids.

  Who were apparently still talking to me. Scout was even gesturing.

  “…with the age limits and grace period…”

  Legal shit. NPs and their fucking rules. Where was Jax when you needed him?

  I snorted. Jax was dead and gone.

  Gone, gone, gone, gone. The tune bounced around inside my head—manic candy-pop with a suicidal edge. High as hell and twice as screwed. I wished I had my guitar so I could try to play it. It’d be almost impossible to get that tone right. The singer would make it or break it.

  “…others, but they can’t do what we can. Without openly breaking his own rules, Kathan can’t retaliate…”

  Of course that singer was never going to be me. Jax had said you couldn’t change a corpse once it’s dead, not even with magic. So my voice was gone, gone, gone forever. Like Desty. Well, like any shot I’d had with her. Like any shot I’d had at Heaven. Gone, gone, gone, gone.

  Like I should’ve been.

  I stood up. I wanted my guitar. I wanted this out of my head. Gone, gone, gone, gone.

  “Tough?” Scout grabbed my elbow.

  Everyone in the living room was staring at me—which was a hell of a lot more people than I remembered being there just a minute ago. Not just high school kids anymore. Drake and Jim had been in my class in
school. And Tawny Hicks, Beth Ann’s little sister, had graduated the year before we did.

  I gave Scout a look. Just how damn many people did she have in her army?

  “I told you, it’s growing,” she said. “Just tonight, we recruited thirty-odd people. By the time everyone else hears that the inmates are taking over this prison, they’ll be begging to join the uprising. And we’ll be ready.”

  For some reason, that was funnier than anything else I’d heard so far. I laughed. I jerked my arm away from her, then headed for the door.

  “Tough?” Scout said.

  “You’re wasting your breath,” somebody told her. It sounded like Drake. “That dickhole’s good for two things—and stand up and fight ain’t either one of ‘em.”

  I laughed again, a lot harder.

  The dented metal screen door slammed behind me. I got in the truck and fired it up. I was still laughing. And singing that song. What am I going to do when this buzz is gone, gone, gone, gone?

  Scout

  I sat down on the top step and watched Tough drive away.

  When his truck’s taillights disappeared, I leaned my head against the stairs’ bent metal railing and squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t start crying like some bitch-ass punk now, not with my whole army gathered in the living room. That would be so lame of me.

  The trailer door opened.

  “He just has to go somewhere for a little while,” I said. “He’ll be back. He’ll think it over and—”

  “Hey, shiny girl.” Cash dropped onto the step beside me. “Don’t waste those diamonds on him.”

  I laughed and swiped at my eyes. “You’re so weird.”

  “And you’re so blind,” he said. “But you shine like tinfoil in the sun, so I won’t hold it against you.”

  I stood up and checked my watch. T-minus two hours and nineteen minutes. Leaders don’t get time to mope. They have shit to do.

  “I’ll talk to him again,” I said. “I’ll do a better job of explaining.”

  “In the meantime, what will your army do?” Cash gave a jerky crow-nod at the trailer. “The inmates are getting restless.”

  “I know,” I said. Then I realized what he’d said. “Wait. Were you there when I did my speech?”

  “In the redbud tree.” He licked his lip between the double spider-bites. “You were born to be a dictator.”

  “That’s what I keep telling people.”

  He gave a crawking laugh, then held out his hand. “Help me up. I’m supposed to be meeting some four-legged hide-sacks at the territorial border.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “In an hour.”

  “Pays to be early when you’re dealing with your enemies.”

  “You promised, Cash. No traps, no ambushes, no tricks. We need them.”

  “I did promise,” he said.

  “If you think I won’t murder you for fucking me over—”

  “Oh, I know you will.” He grinned. “Ruthless as the sun. It’s the mark of a good dictator. Now, if you don’t mind…” He stretched his hand out to me again.

  As if a crow needed help standing. I rolled my eyes, but I pulled him to his feet anyway, leaning back so I could get some leverage.

  Still holding onto my hand, Cash shifted form and let the momentum pull him into the air. His glossy black feathers brushed across my fingertips as he flew away.

  Colt

  When I woke up, it felt like something was missing. In a good way. Like when you’ve had an ache for so long that you get used to it, then one day it stops hurting, and pinpointing what has changed takes a minute. I didn’t want to move until I figured it out.

  No screaming. My brain was quiet. I felt around for the black noise. It had backed off. It was giving me space, but I couldn’t figure out why.

  “Didn’t sleep long,” Tiffani said. Her voice was gravelly, as if she’d just woken up.

  I felt myself smile. Yeah, right. The insomniac vamp had curled up and slept beside me like a kitten. I turned over to face her.

  Tiffani was laying on her side, head propped up on her hand. In the bluish light from the window, her brass-colored eyes looked gunmetal gray.

  “How long was I out?” I asked.

  She looked over at the old clock radio on her nightstand. “Only about an hour. By the time I finished sewing up your side, you were gone.”

  I nodded. I remembered coming upstairs. Then she had said something about sutures and me laying down. After that, everything got hazy.

  “I thought you would sleep longer,” she said. “You need it.”

  “I don’t feel tired,” I said.

  “Colt…” She shifted, then sat up. “What do you remember?”

  My stomach twisted and my face burned. I looked down at the knees of her khakis.

  “Everything. All of it.”

  Tiffani took a breath and I recognized her expression before she started talking. She was going to ask me something she didn’t want to know the answer to.

  The knot in my gut doubled up and pulled tight. There were so many things I didn’t want to talk about right now. Or ever.

  “Do you remember me?” she asked. “Really remember?”

  I was so relieved I almost laughed. All the tension drained out of my neck and shoulders. I dropped my head back on the pillow.

  “I told you that you were addicted to smoking,” I said.

  She stared at me.

  “You said you just did it because of the mouth boredom.” I rolled up onto my elbow. “But you couldn’t go five seconds without a cigarette?”

  The little crease between her eyebrows appeared. “Screw you. I cut myself in half and crawled across a sea of broken glass.”

  “Not in the real world,” I said. “Just in some guy’s fucked-up brain.”

  She pressed her lips together and exhaled through her nose.

  “It felt real,” she said. Her voice was softer than I’d ever heard it. Almost fragile.

  Kiss her. Hold her. Touch her. Do something. Make her feel better. I wanted to, worse than anything. But I couldn’t. If I tried to touch her… I couldn’t. She knew everything. It was a miracle she could stand to be in the same room with me.

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could say.

  “How much of it came from Mikal?” she asked.

  My face got so hot that my eyes watered. I shut them tight. Clenched my fists. Anything but this. Please, let us talk about anything but this.

  “Colt?”

  I was breathing too slow, trying to keep it even like everything was normal, but I couldn’t. I wanted to hit something. I wanted to be somewhere else. I actually wanted to open my eyes and realize I was back with Mikal and this whole conversation—this whole night—was just her messing with my head. That I could take. I’d been humiliated and tortured and dehumanized and insane. Talking to Tiffani about this, though, trying to explain, seeing the look on her face when she realized how screwed up I was—that would be so much worse.

  Icy fingers touched my cheek. I flinched.

  “Stop,” Tiffani said. “That sounds awful. Stop grinding your teeth. Your enamel doesn’t grow back.”

  “Probably all gone by now anyway.”

  She didn’t even crack a smile.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you, Tiff. Really sorry.”

  “Was any of it—the wire, the glass, the mines—was any of that what she did to you?”

  “No.”

  “The fire—”

  “You did that.” That came out harsher than I meant for it to. “You picked the RPG-7 with the warhead even though I said not to. You did it to yourself.”

  Tiffani’s back straightened. “I wanted something that would get the job done.”

  “Well, great job! It’s done. She’s gone. And you know what it’s like to have your skull crack and your brain run out through your mouth. Mission accomplished.”

  “I couldn’t know what it was like unless you knew what it was like,” Tiff said.

  If she knew the things
I know about you, Colter, she could never look at you again without being sick.

  I couldn’t breathe. I could feel straps cutting into my wrists, pressure on my chest, and this sick anticipation. I was ready for it. I wanted it. I had brought it on myself.

  “Colt, what did Mikal—”

  I rolled over and got out of bed. The stitches in my side pulled as I stood up, but there weren’t any straps. No restraints. No straightjacket. No Mikal.

  “Why are we talking about this?” I yelled. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. She’s gone. She’s in Hell and she’s out of my brain, so why are we still talking about her?”

  Tiffani appeared in front of me. “I have to know.”

  “Why? So you can get off on it the next time you’re with a groupie? What part works best for you, Tiff? You already know about fire. Do you want to hear about having bugs burrowing around inside your skin? How about her electroshock machine?” I could feel the black noise building, creeping toward my brain. I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t have Mikal to hold it back anymore. “Want to know what it’s like to spend a week in a pitch black padded cell in a straightjacket so tight you’re always a deep breath away from suffocating? Want to know how long it takes to start hallucinating? How long before you’re begging her to let you out, promising you’ll do anything she wants?”

  “Colt—”

  “Or is it the sex you’re interested in?” I took a step closer to her. “You want to know how Mikal was, don’t you? She’s immortal. She’s had forever to practice. Making me scream and cry and come all at the same time wasn’t really that big a deal to her.”

  “Dammit, Colt, stop!”

  I got up in her face. “No, tell me what part you have to know.”

  “Stop it!” Tiffani had her eyes shut and her fists over her ears, like I’d been beating on her and she’d just been taking it.

  Shit. I stepped back.

  Tiffani took a long, slow breath, and opened her eyes. Her fists eased down to her sides.