Bred for destruction but longing for redemption, this second chance is all they have.
Faced with the choice of torment or redemption, Jonah accepts the bargain laid out by his guardian angel as he lies dying in the street alone. Change…or die. Not a hard choice, it seems. But then he meets Lily and has to wonder just what he’s agreed to by accepting this new life.
Even the angels call Lily unique—and she is. Born of a demon, but longing to be more, her one wish is granted—temporarily. But now her time is running out and she has an impossible task set before her. It doesn’t help that she can’t stop thinking of Jonah…or the very real demons that will come hunting her once they realize where she is.
With demons and angels tracking their every move, Jonah and Lily have a life to save before they can save themselves.
This book was previously published.
Warning: This title contains some hot loving, a desperate struggle between wrong and right, some angels, some demons and a race against time.
Copyright
© 2017 Shiloh Walker, Inc
Cover Design © Shiloh Walker
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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The Redeeming
Shiloh Walker
Dedication
For my husband and my kids…always.
Chapter One
Her body was pleasantly sated. That should have been enough for Lilan. Really…it seemed to suit her sisters and her mother quite well.
But as she pulled away from the body she had just fucked into sweet oblivion, her heart ached.
No doubt, her sisters would have taken it even further, maybe until the man died from the pleasure of it, instead of just passing out.
Her heart was breaking inside her as she turned away from the man on the bed, aware of the baby down the hall. Crying.
Take the babe… Now… It was an insidious whisper, one she had heard all through her long life. One she would continue to hear—for eternity. She clenched her jaw, ignoring the sweet, seductive voice of her mother. Lilan had no desire to kidnap a human child.
Instinctively, she knew it was a boy child—an even finer prize in the eyes of her relatives. But with every desperate cry, Lilan’s heart ached just a bit more. Unconsciously, the muscles in her back and shoulders began to shift and as she started down the hall, the black leathery wings brushed against the wall. She snapped them closed and folded them around her body as she followed the plaintive sound of the baby’s sobs.
Her heart clenched as she stared at the baby, his eyes big and tear filled. Such a sweet little thing, so warm and soft…very little in her life was warm and soft.
Damn you, Lilan, her mother ordered. Take the damned baby! The voice was louder now, a malicious hiss instead of a seductive murmur. Power slammed into her mind and she shuddered under the impact. Her skin began to crawl as she felt the full extent of her mother’s demand.
“Take the boy.”
Lifting her head, she searched the room until she found it—a mirror. Just as she’d expected. Gazing into the smooth surface, she saw not her own image, but her mother’s. The other female’s mouth curled in a disgusted sneer. “Damn it, Lilan, why do you wait? Take him.”
“No.”
Lifting her hand, she breathed into her palm and watched as the smoke cleared and left in its place a medallion cast in silver. Hanging it over the child’s bed, she ignored her mother’s shriek and lifted the child, cuddling him to her and smiling tearfully as the baby snuffled and started to coo, stopping his crying in mid-sob.
“This won’t hurt a bit,” she whispered, her throat tight. “I promise.”
At least it wouldn’t hurt the babe. Lilan, however, would pay dearly for protecting yet another mortal child from her mother and her sisters. Always…always…her mother hoped fervently that Lilan would see her true nature, and become more like her and her sisters.
But Lilan knew her true nature. Already. She was evil, was created evil…would be evil even when she was destroyed. She didn’t need to cause any more misery than she already did to know her true nature.
She stroked her hand down the babe’s back—three times—one for each mark that would appear on the babe’s back, the images of the angels that would protect him from her sisters and her mother.
The three angels who had gone to kill her mother, once…long ago.
The third faint mark appeared on the babe’s back, a winged shape. Lilan closed her eyes and whispered to the three angels.
“You should have killed Lilith, men of God,” she whispered, her heart breaking as the babe settled into sleep on her shoulder. “And spared me this pain.”
***
“The girl hurts,” one of the three said, the foreign burn of tears in his silvery eyes.
The second one turned away. “She is evil…one of Lilith’s spawn.” He shrugged dismissively. “You know evil of her like cannot truly feel.”
The first studied his brother with a benign smile. “Truly, can you look at her and tell me that she doesn’t feel? That she is of the same ilk as her mother? Her sisters?”
The three of them understood evil. They had been guarding those innocent that she left with their mark for decades. Perhaps centuries. When one had lived since the beginning of time, it was hard to tell one day from the next, one year, one decade…century…millennia. But they had seen the world reshape itself a dozen times over since Lilan had first begun her rather personal little crusade. True evil cared nothing for innocence destroyed, innocence lost.
Well, no. That was inaccurate. True evil craved innocence lost, destroyed.
Making a quiet sound under his breath, the second turned away, unable to gaze upon the girl. There was guilt in his heart. And the echo of her pain only added to that weight. But with the guilt, there was doubt. There was fear. They had made a mistake with her kind before, and he had yet to forget it. Yet to forgive himself.
“She’ll be punished yet again for this transgression,” the third said. He was the youngest. But to ageless creatures like themselves, it mattered little. He eyed his brothers grimly. “The last time she did this, the torture she endured, it haunts me still.”
It haunted all of three of them.
But what were they to do?
“Why did we allow Lilith to live?” the second said, bitterness in his voice.
“Because we are fools,” the first one said. “We could have saved that child all her pain—saved so many children. So many men. So many women. So much pain could have been spared.”
The third one sighed, resting his chin on his hand as he stared down at her. “If He wanted her dead, Lilith would have died, and none of her begging and pleading would have saved her.”
This woman, born of Lilith…she was heartbroken. Empty. Aching. Who said she had to be evil? Just because a human baby was born to evil parents, that didn’t mean the child was evil. Indeed, some of the most pure creatures he had ever known had been born to men
and women with no hearts.
“She isn’t evil,” the third one said. “Her heart is…sweet. Evil doesn’t understand sweetness.”
He closed his eyes…and he prayed. There was an answer, one he heard in the stillness of his own heart.
“She isn’t evil.”
A sigh whispered through the air and the clouds around them swirled, tighter and tighter, darkening. And then they cleared.
The woman was there between them. Bound to a wall as another woman, similar enough to be her twin, struck her back with a leaded whip, the balls cutting into her flesh, flesh that healed before the lashes had a chance to strike her again.
“Enough,” the angels whispered, but their voices echoed like the pounding of drums.
The lilum wielding the whip screamed, a hideous shrieking sound that had the woman chained to the wall flinching. “Get out!” the lilum shrieked. “You cannot be here!”
The bound woman turned her head, staring at them with tear-filled eyes of the deepest blue. She gasped and lowered them quickly. But she whispered, “They may go wherever He chooses them to go, Lira. You know that.”
“Be silent!” the demon called Lira shrieked. “Silence, you fool bitch. This is our land, our world. They cannot come here.”
The first angel looked at her, and with a blink of his eyes, she collapsed—silently—to the ground, her skin turning an ashen gray before it collapsed in on itself.
“Does it bother you, the death of your sister?” the second one asked.
Lilan nodded. “Part of me has always loved my sisters, even as I struggle not to be like them, to dislike them even,” she said, her husky voice hesitant and weak, filled with pain.
“Would they grieve to hear of your death?” he asked softly, cocking his head as he studied her.
A tortured filled sob fell from her lips and she keened, low and rough, in her throat before she whispered, “They would rejoice.”
The third of them snapped his fingers and the chains fell, freeing her. The first one clapped his hands and the mists formed back around them, tightening around them even as the mother of all demons came winging in, her eyes glowing and wild with fury. In the distance, they could hear her screams as she drew closer.
“Who has harmed my Lira…?” she snarled, furious. Her eyes landed on the angels and her other child. Her eyes widened with pure fear as she stared at them. “Lilan! What have you done?” she shrieked.
Lilan lifted her head, terror flooding her. Mutely, she shook her head, her eyes locked on her mother as her knees gave out from under her and she fell to the floor.
The third one, the bravest and the kindest, moved to stand before her. “She…has done nothing but be who she is…and she deserves more than anything you could ever give her.”
Lilith screeched at him. “I could give her all!”
Lilan sobbed, huddling in on herself. The third turned and walked over to her, kneeling beside her shivering form. “Hush, child,” he whispered, stroking her arm gently. His eyes, dark and penetrating, lifted and met Lilith’s. “She can never hurt you again, regardless of what happens from here on out.”
“You cannot grasp just how very wrong you are,” Lilith growled. “My child—my offspring—I shall do whatever I wish to her.”
“Be silent…before I beg my Lord to let me do what we should have done millennia ago,” he said, his eyes flashing with fire.
The only reaction was a flicker of her obsidian, soulless eyes.
Baring his teeth in a smile, he said, “My brother and I, we hate to have unfinished business, Lilith. You should know that by now.”
Lilan lifted her gaze, staring at the men around her. She knew them. She had left their images on thousands and thousands of mortal children. The angels that had gone to kill Lilith. Lilith had pleaded and begged for her life.
For some reason, the angels had taken pity on her. Instead of killing her, they’d shown mercy. In return, Lilith had “offered” a token of her gratitude—she had sworn that any child with their image would be spared.
Thus, Lilan had refined the magic that would allow her to leave their image. It was a gift that had come upon her so long ago, she had forgotten when and where. She hadn’t ever understood where it had come from. Not until that moment.
He had given it to her. Not the angels…Him.
“Don’t you wish to know what is going on, Lilan?” the first of them asked. He was the one who had faced down her mother, showing a bravery no other had ever shown, a complete lack of fear.
“Bravery isn’t the lack of fear, child,” another said. Until that moment, he had been silent, watching Lilith with bitter anger in his eyes. But now he studied Lilan with kind, wise eyes. “We have no reason to fear her. She cannot harm us. She has harmed you, though…and child, you are true bravery. You continued to defy her, even though you knew she could—and would—punish you.” He sighed and looked at his brothers.
You were right about her, he said to his brothers.
The first one smiled, a sad smile. Then he crouched beside her, wrapping a blanket around her shivering, cold body. “You’ve been heard, child. Now the question is…do you really understand why you were heard? Do you even understand what you want?”
Her eyes flickered away from the floor and she licked her lips, fear radiating from her. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “What you want with me, that is, radiant one. But I know what I want.”
The firmness in her voice startled them and the third one applauded, pleased. “You do, do you?”
Lilan rose, letting the blanket fall to her waist as she turned around, baring her wings to them. “I want not to be this,” she rasped passionately. “I want to be free of her, of this…of what my very nature demands of me.”
He arched his brows, nodding. She did indeed know. “Then you have the chance, Lilan. Become what you wish…now. You no longer are bound to her. She cannot harm you, not her, and not her children. Only the world around you can cause you harm—for a time. You have two months.”
“Two months?” she whispered.
The lilum were ancient creatures. They had seen millennia pass, civilizations rise and fall. Two months was nothing. He could see the fear in her dark, fathomless eyes as she asked, “And when the two months is over? What becomes of me then?”
“That is up to you. Find whoever it is you wish to be. You spoke of your own nature—for the next two months, this demonic nature, the need for flesh, the urges you inherited from your mother will not control you, cannot even tempt you…unless you wish them to. Live as you choose. For two months.”
“But what then?” she persisted. “Am I returned to her? Will I be as I am now?”
“No. If you’ve found whatever life you would have sought had your mother not controlled you, then you may have it.” He fell silent, watching her with grim eyes.
The second one spoke up. “Unless of course that life revolves around the urges you claim to revile. Can you control your nature, Lilan?”
“Because if you cannot, at the end of the two months, you will go to your master,” the third one finished, his voice harsh and heavy with warning.
She flinched, her eyes darkening. “Back to my mother.”
“No. Not your mother. The Dark Master. The one who rules even over her.”
Hell.
The word was unspoken, but all heard it.
And then Lilan was falling.
Chapter Two
The choices he had made in his life had led him here. Adamm knew that. He had always believed in accepting responsibility for his own actions, and expected others to do the same.
But he hadn’t really expected to lie dying of a gunshot wound to the throat, his lifeblood spilling from him, pumping from him in hot waves. It hadn’t really come down to this, had it?
Year after year, he’d been the meanest son of a bitch. A fighter, a thief, a witch—so fucking tough, nobody had messed with him. He’d spent his life sneering at the rules, taking what he wanted,
when he wanted.
In general, his life had been about being one evil mother fucker.
He had started out with good intentions—he could always tell himself that, trying to take care of his sister, and then the gang. It wasn’t easy, keeping a group of near-desperate witches and other paranormal freaks in line. They had to stay under the radar, because if they didn’t, they’d end up getting hunted down and people would have died.
At least now, it was just him.
Nobody from the gang…and not his sister, either. She was gone, years gone. Hell, he hadn’t seen Lyssa in years, not since she tearfully begged him to walk away from this life.
Walk away from this life…a fairy tale. It wasn’t an option, not for him. How could he leave behind the people who counted on him? How could he walk away from them? Some of them were little more than kids. He couldn’t walk away from them—so he told himself.
Adamm knew, though, he just hadn’t wanted to try.
He felt the pulse of blood flowing from him with every second, but those seconds seemed to slow to a crawl. They crept by as he tried to breathe through the blood clogging his throat. Everything around him started to dim. The blackness closed in around him, as in the distance, sirens started to wail.
They wouldn’t get here in time, even if they were coming for him.
Not much time left. Even he couldn’t heal a wound like this. Nobody could.
Nobody, Adamm?
Adamm suspected his mind was playing tricks on him now. The dark fog had suddenly brightened, painfully bright, a light streaming down from above, making his eyes water. And who in the hell had just spoken?
I did.
Turning his head, he blinked at the apparition that appeared before him. Damnation. Who in the hell—
Not hell, Adamm. Not heaven either. We’re in between.
He wanted to laugh, but was afraid to do so. That would make the wound bleed worse, if he didn’t choke on his blood again. And wasn’t this taking an awful long time…dying?
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