by Lisa Medley
He’s a reaper who has given up on saving souls. Will a dying woman be his salvation?
After a century of enslavement to pure evil, Kylen Larson is finally free. But he’s long past caring. The only woman he ever loved is dead, and he’s tormented by memories of the horrors his demon parasite forced him to commit. Now he lives for nothing more than hunting down the infernal creatures invading Meridian, Arkansas, and destroying them.
Olivia Evans is in the final stages of cancer when Kylen accidentally saves her from demonic possession. When he rescues this innocent soul, Kylen rediscovers his mission—and his heart. All he wants is to help Olivia stay alive. He’ll just have to fight off an invasion from Hell first….
Reap & Redeem
Lisa Medley
To my first readers, Dawn Cosby and Allison Merritt. You two girls make me better.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter One
Kylen kicked the head across the floor of the dark shed with his steel-toed boot. Blood dripped into a pool on the floor from his scythe, which he still gripped tightly with one hand. He straightened to his full height and tilted his neck from side to side, listening to his spine crack and pop. Another demon down.
“You don’t have to keep killing them yourself, you know,” Deacon said, grimacing at the black ooze spilling out of the severed neck.
“Yeah, I do.” Kylen turned and walked to the door, taking a quick survey of the cemetery. A dark, sticky trail marked his course.
“You have to admit, he’s efficient.” Nate picked up the head by the hair and dropped it into a black garbage bag.
“That’s one way to look at it.” Deacon pressed his hand, which was glowing with Reiki energy, to the center of the dead male’s chest, directly over his heart chakra.
Kylen watched as light radiated from Deacon, encasing him and the body in a soft glow. The demon boiled forth from the dead human host in a thick black torrent of sulfurous haze. Spreading his arms wide, Deacon summoned the stream, which penetrated through his sternum. His body shuddered and the light around him sparked and cracked like the arc of a welder. The glow intensified to supernova status before winking out. Several smaller streams of gray light flowed forth from the ruined body, too, entering through Deacon’s mouth.
“Well? Did you retrieve all the souls?” Nate lifted the feet and legs of the body onto the tarp he’d set beside it.
Deacon frowned. “Yes.”
“How many?”
“Three.” Deacon rose and grasped the body by the shoulders, helping Nate maneuver it. “And the demon.”
“I really hate this shit.” Nate said, pulling a spool of duct tape from his backpack.
They rolled the man tightly in the tarp, taping both ends so that none of the bodily fluids would discharge in transit.
“How many more demons do you think there are?” Nate wrapped the head in a plastic bag and walked toward the door.
“Grim thinks there are at least two dozen more,” Deacon reminded him.
“Great. Slow and steady wins the race, yeah?”
“I’m not sure we have the luxury of slow and steady anymore. At this rate, we’re never going to find them all. There’s already way too much collateral damage. This many missing humans in town won’t go unnoticed much longer. We need to find their exit portals and shut down the rest of the demons. Sooner would be better than later.”
Kylen waited in the doorway, dividing his attention between the business in the shed and the cemetery grounds. Deacon was right of course. They needed to close the portals. Permanently. As it was, they were playing a game of supernatural Whac-A-Mole. Close one portal and another popped up. New entrance portals continued to open each week, which then had to be closed by Grim and Deacon. And while one batch of demons gathered their fill of souls before sliding down the small one-way shoots to Hell—the exit portals, the next batch waited for their chance. It had become a never-ending battle and the reapers needed to press on.
They didn’t bother cleaning up the black ooze or the blood trail. The only way to make sure the scene was completely clean was fire, but arson would be sure to draw more attention to the mower garage by the edge of the cemetery than a few stains that could easily be oil or fuel. None of them were concerned about the law. There were far worse things for them to worry about.
They’d burn the body at home, and then bury the ashes and bits of bone. Just as they’d dealt with the other eleven. This host’s disappearance would never be explained. Good thing, since the guy’s head was detached.
* * *
Nate continued to insist they could at least try to save the hosts, but Kylen was adamant that it was in no one’s best interest. After all, the hosts were only human. A demon’s essence burned through a human body like dry tinder. If a host did manage to somehow survive the first twenty-four hours, their delicate psyche would be so damaged that there wouldn’t be anything left to save. Without the demon to animate them, they would be nothing but a babbling husk.
Kylen knew a thing or two about possession.
He’d spent the past hundred years with a demon riding his body. Being a reaper had its perks as well as its challenges. One perk was that it was damn difficult to die. As long as a reaper fueled enough and kept his head, he was immortal, so Kylen’s body could have withstood the demon’s toxic venom indefinitely. The downside was that it was damn near impossible for a reaper to kill himself. The demon had always kept Kylen’s body nourished enough to maintain the necessary energy flow, and though Kylen had occasionally been able to break through and wrest control from the demon, it had never been for long enough.…
Kylen had possessed the will.
Just not the means.
Then he had finally been freed, and somehow he had survived both the possession and the freeing.
Physically.
Most days, he wished he hadn’t.
“Let’s get out of here.” Deacon hoisted the wrapped-up body over his shoulder and left the building, crossing the invisible barrier onto the consecrated soil of the dark cemetery. “Ready to go home, Kylen?” He placed his palm on the nearest headstone, and Nate followed suit.
“I can’t wait.” Kylen placed his hand on the stone as well, and the three men began to shimmer as they were drawn into the consecrated subway.
* * *
Ruth Scott sat drumming her fingers on top of her kitchen table, impatient for the men t
o return. Dinner had been ready for an hour. Stew simmered on the stove, and she fidgeted with the place settings for the ten thousandth time, rearranging glasses and realigning utensils. It was a useless task. One for which she was way overqualified.
Why they let Nate go on the hunts and not her was a real point of contention. He had way less experience than she did, and she’d proved herself plenty.
After all, she’d helped save both Deacon and Kylen. How quickly they had forgotten. Just because she was a newbie reaper didn’t mean she couldn’t do what needed to be done. Sure, she’d almost died a couple of times while coming to terms with her new reaper powers, but now they’d had plenty of time to work out the kinks.
Deacon was way too protective. Ever since the demons had been released in the early summer, he’d been on a mission to destroy them. As in a mission from God. She got that. For one thing, it was his job. For another, it was bad for any demons to be let loose on the world, let alone the three dozen that had been hunting the streets of Meridian. Very bad. But how was she ever going to be tough enough to face the danger that lurked at every corner unless she had more experience?
She wasn’t afraid. She’d spent most of her life being afraid that people would discover her ability to see auras and use it against her. Back then she’d had no idea why she could do what she could do and what it all meant. Because of that fear, she hadn’t really lived her life at all.
Until Deacon. Over the past few months, Deacon had trained her how to be a reaper. With a renewed sense of purpose and the encouragement of one fine man, she’d stopped thinking of her ability as a handicap and started appreciating it for the gift that it was.
But now she was sitting in her tiny rock-sided house, keeping the home fires burning while the men were off fighting the big bad demons. Well, that was going to end. Tonight. They were going to have to cowboy up and get over their ridiculous worries. She would be a prisoner in her own home no longer.
Besides, Nate couldn’t even see auras, souls or demons for God’s sake. Since returning from Hell, he could see the Reiki energy when one of them—or he himself—manifested it. Otherwise, he was useless as a reaper. Of course, he did have a nifty way of using his magic to trap the evil bastards from time to time. The demon trap burned into her living room floor was evidence of that. Also, he and Deacon were the only ones who could travel through the invisible reaper freeway without the aid of consecrated ground and he was an EMT, which had already come in handy way too many times for comfort. None of them were invincible. At least not completely.
She grumbled to herself over the injustice of it all as she pushed her dinner around her plate, and she was still fuming when they landed in the middle of the living room. With another body.
Perfect.
Chapter Two
Kylen scowled as he landed in Ruth’s living room. Home his ass. This was not his home. Not really. He knew he should feel all thankful and shit for what these people had done for him. For Ruth’s sake, he dug deep and tried to keep his inner demons leashed—at least in her presence. After all, she’d done what his friend couldn’t.…
She had freed him.
And for that he owed her his gratitude. Even if it was impossible to muster at times.
“Finally!” Ruth jumped up from the table and rushed over to kiss Deacon on the cheek.
“Happy to see you too, babe,” Deacon said, hoisting the body higher onto his shoulder. “We got another host.”
“I can see that. Same drill as the other two?” Ruth frowned.
“Yes.” Nate leveled a hard glare at Kylen. “Someone is a little too quick with the scythe. I’ll take it from here.” Retrieving the body from Deacon, he headed to the basement without another word.
Kylen stalked, without comment, toward the back door to clean his weapon at the outside spigot. He felt no regret. The hosts could not be saved. Deacon knew it as well as Kylen did. Every reaper who’d ever killed a demon knew it. It was just one more example of Nate’s naive humanity.
Kylen had been naive once. He had believed Deacon would fulfill his half of the pact that they’d made more than a century ago. The agreement had been crystal clear—neither would allow the other to continue to live in case of possession. What part of that had Deacon forgotten? Sure, he probably hadn’t expected that his friend would choose to be possessed, but grief can make a guy reconsider his options. Kylen had counted on Deacon to end him when he’d opened himself to the demon. His act of submission had been more a matter of assisted suicide. Without Kara, he hadn’t wanted to go on, anyway.
Deacon hadn’t given him that choice.
And now? The one reason he was still here was that he had nowhere else to go. He’d spent the past hundred years at the mercy of a demon, and the home he’d once had was long gone. His one wish was to be reunited with Kara. Because of his history, there was zero chance of him ascending—the reaper equivalent of heavenly retirement—to do that. And Deacon had refused to return her to him. Instead, he was stuck here, in his own personal Hell on Earth. If it weren’t for Ruth’s hundred kindnesses toward him and his immense hatred for the demons that had been unleashed upon Meridian, he would already have checked out. Fallen out of sight and let himself flame out.
But Meridian had been ground zero for a demon invasion. The demons had entered through the now-closed release portal at St. Agnes Cathedral, and with each passing day, they grew more difficult to track, collecting soul after innocent soul before taking them straight to Hell. Even Deacon’s new super-reaper abilities as a Powers hadn’t developed enough to lead him to the few they’d already dispatched. Kylen had done that. His previous possession was the one advantage they had in this whole messy situation. He was still tuned in to the demon radio even though his channels were sometimes scrambled, and he was drawn to demons like a moth to flame—kin to kin. He’d tracked down the dozen they’d killed over the past four months of nightly hunts. Still, their progress was too slow. The city was big and Kylen hadn’t fully recovered from his ordeal. Tonight had been the best night of hunting in weeks.
Even though his mission was to cut down every demon he could, Kylen’s soul was black with the stain of his demon’s sins, which he felt as keenly as if they were his own. The darkness sat in his chest like a gangrenous lump. No amount of Reiki reaper energy was going to cure that. Hell, Rashnu, the soul sorter of Purgatory, didn’t even trust him to carry souls anymore. Kylen didn’t blame him. He didn’t trust himself. His proclivities and thoughts ran a little too dark even for Purgatory these days.
What fueled him through each torturous day was vengeance, pure and simple. Deacon might be a Powers, the newest guardian of the realms of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, but Kylen was Heaven’s self-proclaimed executioner.
He squatted in the darkness by the outdoor spigot on the side of the house, letting the water run over his hand and his blade. Pulling a soft cloth from his back pocket, he dipped it into the stream of water before turning off the spigot. He caressed it across the blade, removing the last traces of blood from his scythe, polishing it until the moonlight glinted off its deadly surface.
Satisfied, he crossed to the detached garage and pulled the whetstone down from the tool pegboard. He dragged a bucket outside the garage, overturned it and sat facing the woods. Reaching out with his senses, past the magical circle of protection that was vigilantly defended by Nate, he watched and listened.
There were things out there in the woods. Things that were drawn to him still; things that awaited his command.
He drew the whetstone across the curved blade of his scythe with a slow, easy pressure, stroking its length. He rocked his body forward and back with each rasp of the steel, enjoying the hypnotic rhythm of the work. Honing the scythe to perfection was a comforting task. Turning the blade, he sharpened the other side, careful to return its lethal edge. It was a supernatural weapon, given to each reaper upon his or her first reaping, so the task was unnecessary. Still, it was a ritual he’d performed for years,
and it gave him peace in the darkness. A man needed to respect his weapon.
When he was finished, Kylen slashed it into the waist-high weeds before him, watching as they fell to the ground with a whisper. He stared off into the darkness again, resting the blade across his thighs. The night was soothing to him. At night he wasn’t reminded that he could no longer see in color.…
Ever since the demon had been torn from him, he saw the world in shades of gray, and he could no longer make out people’s auras. He could see the light but only its intensity. The color had been stripped from him, which was handicapping him as a reaper. Every reaper worth his or her salt knew that the color gray represented dark thoughts and unclear intentions. Well, that pretty much summed up his inner world these days.
He hadn’t bothered to mention this disturbing fact to any of his roommates.
He had thought it would be a temporary affliction. But now, months later, his color vision still hadn’t returned. It was one more thing that had been stolen from him.
Damaged was an understatement…and he wanted revenge. If he had to, he would find each and every demon himself, making sure Deacon had ample opportunity to send them to their final deaths. Then he would find his own…death, that is.
He was more than ready for it.
* * *
Nate tossed the bag containing the head down the stairs in front of him so he could maneuver the body through the narrow passage to the root cellar. It landed on the dirt floor with a wet thud before rolling to a stop. A large wood-burning furnace sat on concrete blocks against the east wall. They’d had to reroute the ductwork so that the heat and smoke diverted outside…the sickening smell had almost suffocated them when they burned the first body.
He was thankful they lived in a remote enough area that the smell and smoke could dissipate outside without raising any alarms. Nate had moved into the house after it became clear that hanging out with reapers was potentially detrimental to his neighbors. No one wanted a herd of imps following him home. At least here, with a thousand square miles of National Forest patchworked around them, they were safe.
Getting rid of the hosts’ bodies was a disgusting operation, and it didn’t help that the heat was still a cloying thing in late September. Nate was in the business of saving lives and patching up bodies. In the past few months, this was the twelfth body he’d personally disposed of. It was a messed up deal all around. Nate continued to insist that they should at least try to save the hosts, but Kylen wouldn’t have any of it. In an effort to contribute to the cause, Nate had volunteered for disposal duty. He was useless in tracking the demons. This he could do. Still, he was starting to regret his offer.
