The Redeeming

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.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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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.