The Redeeming

by Jennifer Ashley

  The demons at the gate had obviously heard about or sensed Tain’s show of magic in the matriarch’s room, because the guards regarded him uneasily and dealt with them as quickly as they could. They returned Samantha’s pistol and Tain’s swords, the guard who held Tain’s swords handling them gingerly, as though the pieces of metal might explode.

  The big iron gate rolled closed behind Tain and Samantha as they walked out, the guards visibly relaxing as the two moved a little way down the street.

  “The matriarch owes me cab fare,” Samantha growled.

  “She likes to manipulate,” Tain said. “It’s part of her power.”

  “I didn’t notice you saying much in there.” Samantha folded her arms over her shining blue gown. “I rented this damned dress for nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t say for nothing.”

  Tain raked his gaze down her body, and Samantha’s skin heated. His look could be as warm as a touch.

  “Why do you think she brought us here then?” she asked.

  Tain shrugged, muscles working under his coat. “To learn about you. And me. I let her learn what she already thought, nothing more.”

  Samantha raised her brows. “Keeping yourself to yourself, were you?”

  “To her. For now.”

  “Not only to her,” Samantha said.

  His eyes were deep blue in the glare of the floodlights, and fixed on her. The black coat emphasized his broad shoulders and hard body, the straps that held his sheathed swords in place crisscrossed over his chest.

  With the swords and his kilt, Tain looked like a Scottish warrior of old, one every maiden would want fighting for her. The goddesses had certainly done good work with him.

  “Better that I keep myself to myself,” Tain said in a quiet voice.

  “Better for who?”

  “The gods only know what I will do if I lose control again. Better to hold myself away, don’t you think?”

  He spoke in his usual musical-sounding voice, but something flashed in his eyes, a loneliness so deep and wrenching that Samantha’s heart tore.

  Tain had been alone for seven hundred years, ripped from everything he knew and loved, imprisoned at first by chains, then by his own mind. Now that he was free, Samantha realized, Tain didn’t know how to find his life again, how to return to day-to-day existence. Everything had changed since his capture; everything he’d ever known was gone.

  Samantha hurt for him, and hurt even more to know he didn’t want her sympathy. “What about that Ravenscroft place?” she asked in a light voice. “Isn’t that supposed to be some kind of Valhalla, where nothing can hurt you?”

  Tain gave her a nod. “I was there for a time. It helped a little.” Samantha saw more despair, the knowledge that even his haven hadn’t wiped out his years of fear and pain. “But I can’t hide forever, can I? Licking my wounds and whining about it?”

  “I suppose that’s a point.”

  “Would you hide from yourself?” Tain touched her cheek, fingers like fire. “I think you wouldn’t.”

  Samantha tried not to lean into his caress. “I want to help you.”

  “You are demon.” Tain’s finger and his gaze drifted to her lips. “You call to me. I should back away from you most of all. You and your seductive glamour.”

  “I told you, I don’t cast a glam.” Samantha could barely stop her voice from shaking. “Half demons don’t—why don’t you know that?”

  Another caress, this one across the sensitive skin beneath her lower lip. “I didn’t know any half demons in my old life. Half demons were killed at birth.”

  “Oh, that’s pleasant.”

  “The world is different now.”

  Samantha took a step back, making herself break his touch. “Thank the goddesses for that. I can’t glam. I don’t have a tenth of the magic the matriarch in there has, or even some of what my own father has.”

  Tain let his hand drift back to his side, his eyes dark in the ambient glare from the floodlights behind the wall. “Doesn’t matter. You’re twisting me around inside so much that all I dream of at night is you.”

  Samantha’s heart squeezed so hard her breath threatened to desert her. She was sure every woman in the world would want a man like Tain, with his blue eyes and looking that good in his kilt, to tell her he dreamed about her. She swallowed. “You do?”

  “I fall asleep, and you’re next to me.”

  “Looking like the demon I am?”

  “Looking as you do now, with your eyes drawing me in, your hair like silk on my shoulder.”

  His voice went soft, his lilt pronounced as he leaned to her. Samantha didn’t back away this time, and his hot breath brushed her cheek.

  She gave him a nervous smile. “In your dreams, I’m not wearing this awful dress, I take it?”

  “You’re bare for me. And I want you. I want you so much it burns me from the inside out.”

  Samantha wet her lips. “I hope this dream has a happy ending.”

  “I take you. And I take you again. I take you all night, coming alive inside you, in a way I haven’t been alive in centuries.” Tain’s eyes were fixed on her, his entire focus for Samantha and Samantha alone. No distractions, only his amazing eyes and the heat of his magic wrapping around her.

  Samantha couldn’t breathe. Her skin was on fire, the space between her legs needy. She thought of his kiss, the smooth seduction of his lips. She wanted that again, though she knew she’d burn up and melt if his mouth touched hers.

  “But then I wake up and you’re gone,” Tain said, his voice going bleak. “You were never there.”

  The emptiness in his words made Samantha’s heart ache. She said softly, “I made a fool out of myself the other night, asking you to stay.”

  Tain’s eyes went hard again. “If I’d have stayed that night I wouldn’t have gone slowly. I might have hurt you. In the dream I can do whatever I want to you, but in reality . . .”

  Samantha’s throat was tight. “I’m no delicate flower. I went through some pretty tough training to become a cop and then extra because I’m in paranormal division. Arresting a vampire in a blood frenzy isn’t exactly the same as bringing in a jaywalker—unless it’s a jaywalking vampire in a blood frenzy. I survived.”

  “You would never survive me.”

  “I have already. In Seattle, remember?”

  Tain’s white-hot magic flickered through his eyes. “In Seattle I decided to let you go. You’ve never fought me in truth.”

  Samantha took a hesitant step closer to him. He stood his ground, a muscle twitching in his face, as though he expected a blow.

  She touched his chest. His skin was hotter than any human’s, and his heart beat swiftly under her fingertips. “If I asked you to stay the night again, what would you say?”

  His voice remained harsh. “I should say no.”

  Samantha slid her fingers to the side of his neck. “Please say yes.”

  Tain looked down at with his fathomless deep eyes, and she saw the spark of pain and darkness deep within them. She knew he would never kiss her, especially not here on the sidewalk outside the demon matriarch’s mansion. He’d never let go of the tight hold on himself to do it. So Samantha rose on her tiptoes and kissed him instead.

  Tain didn’t move. Samantha lightly kissed his lips, brushing the smooth warmth of them, feeling the amazing life essence of Tain. He stood rigidly as she kissed his lips again and again, then he made a low noise in his throat and scooped her up to him. He slanted his mouth over hers, furrowing her hair with hard fingers, opening her lips with a bruising, punishing kiss.

  He tasted like fire, and Samantha was happy to burn. She touched the back of his neck, loving the strength she found in him, and smoothed her hand to the short silk of his hair.

  Her body squeezed, imagining him inside her, his thick cock parting her and taking what he wanted. She would readily let him, because she wanted it too.

  Samantha stepped daringly close to him, indulging in the feel of his b
ody through the thin gown, the rough of the kilt pressing her skirt. Stupid dress had to be good for something.

  Headlights swept over them, probably the taxi arriving. Damn the driver’s great timing.

  The guards at the gate shouted something. The headlights swerved sharply, and Tain wrenched away from Samantha as a large pickup truck slammed itself into the gates.

  The iron structure was sturdy enough to take the force, and it held. Without waiting for the guards to react, two demons leapt out of the truck and started running at Tain and Samantha.

  Tain shoved Samantha behind him, hands going for his swords, but the demons parted around them, sprinting up the street away from the mansion.

  Samantha yanked her badge out of her evening bag. A perfect ending to a perfect day. “Hey! Stop, I’m a police officer—”

  Tain grabbed Samantha with rough hands, and her words cut off into a surprised breath. He threw her around the corner of the high block wall just as white-hot fire lit up the night, and the roar of exploding truck at the gates rang to the stars.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tain got to his feet, putting himself protectively in front of Samantha. In the red, hot light from the burning truck, he saw the iron gate twisted off its hinges and lying in a mangled heap inside the wall. The gatehouse was in ruins, and the surviving guards were sprinting for the house.

  Three dark vans screeched up to the now-open gate. Demons leapt out of the vehicles and ran past the burning truck into the complex. They ignored Samantha and Tain in the shadows, their intentions fixed on the Lamiah compound.

  Samantha struggled to her feet, her blue dress torn and mud-stained, fury in her eyes. She tore her cell phone out of her purse and punched with her thumb.

  “Lieutenant,” she yelled into the phone. “We have a situation.”

  More demons ran through the gates as Samantha finished and dropped the phone back into her purse. She drew out her pistol and started for the gates, but Tain grabbed her arm, dragging her back. Samantha flashed a glare at him and tried to wrench herself away, but Tain clamped down, letting his full strength come to the surface.

  “Let me go!” Samantha said, struggling. “My father is in there.”

  “He’s demon,” Tain said in a hard voice. “He knows how to fight. If he’s with the matriarch, he’s more protected than we are.”

  Samantha’s eyes were anguished, but she finally subsided. “What do you expect us to do then? Watch them start a war?”

  “No.”

  Tain drew one of his swords and pulled Samantha behind him as he made his way around the burning truck and into the compound.

  Demons were everywhere, the ones in human form in combat gear, others in their muscular, mottled-skin forms. The demons didn’t all look the same—some were large and fearsome, some were smaller and had wings, and others looked nearly human except for demonic faces and horns.

  Tain wasn’t expert enough to tell the Lamiah clan defenders from whatever clan was attacking. He knew the difference between Old Ones and lesser demons, but after that nothing was clear. While Tain had been in captivity, lesser demons had politicized themselves into complex clans with complex loyalties, and the world was no longer simple.

  He knew he could kill all the demons—he had that power. The matriarch had known it as well and had indicated, by the little test in her lair, that she was trusting him not to. She had metaphorically stretched out her neck and waited to see if Tain would chop off her head. Tain had showed the matriarch, in return, that he hadn’t returned to the world to practice the indiscriminate slaughter of demons.

  The problem was, Tain didn’t know whether he could stick to that resolve. The temptation to raise his hand and obliterate every demon in the place right now, which would include Samantha’s father, was strong. He gulped breaths of night air, fighting the impulse.

  “Well?” Samantha asked, watching the demons, pistol tight in her grip. “What do we do? Backup is coming, but these guys can do a lot of damage before then.”

  Tain drew his second sword. Fighting down another wave of need to simply kill everything in sight, he brought the blades together and pointed them toward the house.

  Life magic flowed from the sword tips across the lawn and to the house, the magic spreading outward as it touched the mansion to cover it in a gleaming net. Tain willed his magic to change from destructive to protective, and a glow of flickering blue encased the house, throwing back the attackers who’d reached it. They yelled and snarled, picking themselves up to regroup.

  The defenders inside didn’t much like it either. Tain heard screams, shouts, and curses from those within. He turned away without sympathy. Better the demons suffer a little nausea from a dose of life magic than Samantha’s people be chopped into pieces.

  Samantha stared in awe, her face grimy in the glow of the compound’s lights and the still-burning truck. “Gee, wish I could do that.”

  She smiled at him, the warm smile that reminded Tain how good she’d tasted when he’d kissed her. He wanted to draw her up to him, lean down, and kiss those smiling lips, savoring every bit of her. He could take what he wanted from her, act out his dreams—he was strong enough—but he knew exactly the worth of something extracted by force. Something given freely was a much sweeter gift.

  The attacking demons looked around for the source of the magic and didn’t take long to focus on Tain and Samantha. A demon in human form, his face fined-boned and almost delicate over his combat gear, pointed an automatic rifle at them.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “I protect them,” Tain answered calmly.

  “This is our fight, mage. Get out of it.”

  Tain lowered his swords in silence, but the blue light remained intact around the house. It would stay until he decided to remove it.

  The demon snarled in fury, brought his rifle up, and opened fire at Tain. Samantha yelled and dove for the ground, but Tain held up one hand. The barrage of bullets parted around Tain and Samantha, and then dissolved from existence with little pops of light.

  The demon stared, his dirty face pale. “What the fuck kind of thing are you?”

  “A protector,” Tain said.

  The demon spun away and shouted at his followers to surround Tain and Samantha.

  You could so easily kill them all, the voice inside Tain whispered.

  He knew exactly how. He could lift his hand and send a wave of pure death to surround and suffocate the demons. They’d drop to the ground, lifeless, and all would be silence.

  But then Samantha would look at him with horror in her coffee-brown eyes. He’d lose everything she’d given him so far, every smile, every tiny bit of trust, every moment of their budding friendship. All would be for nothing.

  The darkness in Tain’s mind kept screaming at him, willing him to forget Samantha, a half demon, and sweep out with his magic. These are demon-kind, and they should die.

  Samantha struggled to her feet. “You’re a great diplomat,” she growled at him. “Now what?”

  Tain hooked his arm around Samantha’s waist and pulled her up beside him. He shoved the whispering voice into a corner of his mind and concentrated on Samantha’s scent and the sensation of her against him. “You could always arrest them,” he said, straight-faced.

  “Very funny. How are you going to get us out of here?”

  Tain turned to the delicate-faced male demon. “What is your quarrel with the Lamiah clan?”

  “What do you mean, what is my quarrel? My quarrel is that Lamiah trash stole my daughter and sent back her corpse! They’ll die for that.”

  Samantha’s eyes widened. “What? What happened? Why didn’t you report it?”

  “I did report it.” The demon’s eyes were filled with fury but also bleak pain. “I reported it to my warriors, and we’re here to take our vengeance.”

  “I’m sorry,” Samantha said quickly. “Trust me, I am. But no one in Lamiah clan touched her.”

  The demon pointed his weapon
at her. “Of course they did. This had Lamiah clan all over it, along with those damned letters.”

  “Printed in cutouts?” Samantha asked.

  “That’s them. Did you send those?”

  “Lamiah clan has been getting them as well,” Samantha said. “And they’ve been losing daughters too.”

  “They’d kill their own kind to cover up a murder. Take the magic off the house and let us in there. I’m cutting out the heart of your matriarch bitch.”

  A demon next to him, this one in monster form, jerked his chin at Tain. “He’s the one who wrecked Kemmerer’s.”

  The delicate-faced demon’s attention snapped back to Tain.

  “He was there, yes,” Samantha said swiftly. “Talking to the Djowlan demon who sold two Lamiah clan women to captors—likely the same captors who killed your daughter.”

  The second demon growled. “This bitch was there too. Half-breed. Demon tainted with human blood. The one in the kilt killed our boys at Merrick’s.”

  Demons closed behind them, all furious.

  “Tain,” Samantha said nervously.

  “Last chance,” the lead demon said. “Stop defending Lamiah, and we might let you live.”

  “No,” Tain answered.

  The lead demon snarled in fury and shouted a command. Those around Tain and Samantha attacked.

  Samantha swung around to be back-to-back with Tain, her pistol out, telling Tain at the top of her voice what she thought of his powers of persuasion. Tain sent streams of white magic from his swords to hold the demons back, but he was running out of options. He was powerful, but he had to keep the magic over the house, beat back the demons without harming them, and keep them from hurting Samantha.

  Killing them all would be so much easier, the voice reminded him.

  At one time Tain would have agreed. Kehksut had killed and tortured arbitrarily to prove that his power was great.

  But Tain knew, had always known, that having power didn’t mean only wielding death. Kehksut had never been able to take that understanding away from him, which was one reason Tain was now free. The woman fighting like mad at Tain’s back was the other reason.