The Redeeming Read online

  But what they’d experienced taking Tain’s pain into themselves had been the merest fraction of what Tain had endured. Tain had deliberately latched on to the crack of light his brothers had made for him and kicked his way out of Kehksut’s power. It had been his choice.

  “I know you hurt yourselves to get me free,” Tain said. “I’ll always be grateful—you know that.”

  “It’s not about gratitude. I can’t stand to see you blank out like that. Like my baby brother is still lost, and I can’t help anymore.”

  Tain shook his head. “Believe me, anything I suffer now is only a millionth of what I went through before. Trust me on this. I’ll get over it.”

  Hunter shot him a skeptical look, but he’d learned when to drop the subject. “We’d better get inside. Leda will come looking for us if we don’t get our butts in there.”

  “Why are you having dinner now?” Tain asked as they walked back into the warm, light house. The living room was gigantic, covering one entire wing of the house, with the large dining room and kitchen filling one corner of the floor. “It’s after midnight.”

  “Because Leda decided to fix it now. Don’t even think about refusing.”

  Leda swung around from the kitchen, cuddling Ryan. “That’s right,” she said. “Septimus will join us and then give you a ride home.”

  Septimus looked pained. “I don’t need food.”

  “You drink wine—I’ve seen you.” Leda gave him a cheerful smile. “You can always wait in the limo if it upsets you that much.”

  Amusement trickled through Tain’s darkness as Septimus, the supreme vampire lord of one of the largest cities in the world, deflated before Leda’s insistent look, and obeyed.

  Tain learned the reason for Leda’s insistence that he stay when he volunteered to help her with the dishes. He chose to wash dishes mostly to get away from the uneasy looks Hunter kept slanting him. Septimus too watched him closely, in a way Tain didn’t like.

  “So,” Leda began brightly. “You’ve talked to Samantha. How is she?”

  Tain studied the water slicking his scarred hands as he held one of Leda’s good plates. Throughout the meal Tain had tried unsuccessfully to shut Samantha out of his mind, and now the sensation of kissing her earlier tonight rose up and slammed him in the gut.

  Samantha had tasted too good, her hands strong as she’d laced them around his neck. He’d thought even a half demon would taste like death, but Samantha’s spice had been heady.

  “She’s in good health,” he managed to say, relying on a polite phrase from the dim and distant past.

  Leda handed him a scrub brush. “No, I mean how is she?”

  Beautiful. Dangerous.

  Tain knew that Samantha wasn’t Kehksut, the demon who’d flayed him then turned into a beautiful, seductive woman and forced him into sex. Kehksut was dead, the ancient being’s evil magic gone. Kehksut had been death magic incarnate—Samantha was alive, warm, generous, sensual.

  Tain knew he’d made a mistake avoiding sex in the last year. Kehksut had so warped sex for him Tain feared he wouldn’t be able to stand the touch of a woman. He had no way of knowing what he would do if he tried to take a woman to bed—would he go insane and hurt her, maybe kill her?

  But maybe he should have eased back into it, found a woman so far the opposite of Kehksut that he could remind himself how gentle and pleasurable sex could be.

  But he hadn’t, and now he came to Samantha like a starving man. If Tain made love to her, he wouldn’t be able to hold back. He was drawn to Samantha and her dark beauty, something in him crying out for her.

  Hunter came to the kitchen and leaned his elbows on the breakfast bar. “Give in, brother. Leda’s not going to be happy until she’s got you paired off.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass,” Leda said, but with affection in her voice. “I think Tain and Sam were made for each other. I always have.”

  Because Leda was happy, she wanted everyone in her world to be happy. Tain recognized that. Leda and Hunter were to have gone to Ravenscroft right after Ryan was born, but Leda had put it off, saying she wanted to wait until Ryan was a little older.

  Tain knew the true reason was that Leda didn’t want to leave while Tain was in Los Angeles. He could be rude and tell her he didn’t need a babysitter, but he kept his silence. Hunter and Leda were trying to be good to him, and the least he could do was let them.

  Leda persisted for a while, but after a few more evasive answers from Tain, she let the topic drop.

  Tain rode back downtown in the smoked-glass windowed limousine with Septimus, each of them watching the other. Septimus didn’t even bother trying to make small talk. Tain’s skin crawled with Septimus’s death magic, but he liked knowing that his life magic made Septimus uneasy in return.

  Septimus insisted on dropping Tain off at his apartment building, the limousine crouching on the street until Tain went all the way inside. Tain knew Septimus waited partly to satisfy Leda that Tain had arrived home safely. Septimus’s other motive was to discover where Tain lived, especially because the converted motel that housed Tain’s apartment was in Septimus’s territory.

  The quiet of Tain’s one-bedroom apartment welcomed him, the darkness soothing. Tain liked the dark—this century’s artificial lights grated on his nerves.

  He’d bought candles, cheap votives and tea lights, and strewn them about the room. He drew the shade against the streetlights outside, lit the candles, then stripped off his clothes and sat in the middle of the floor to begin his nightly meditation.

  As he feared, the mind-quieting of the meditation didn’t come easily. Instead his brain only conjured the image of Samantha, the scent of her, her lips red with his kisses, her dark eyes betraying hurt when Tain told her no and walked away.

  “I know it’s not easy for you,” Logan said to the demon girl Nadia. “But we need to go over it again. I want to find something to help us figure out who did this to you and your sister. And possibly other girls out there too.”

  Nadia reclined in a bed at the clinic, sheets pulled over her hospital gown. A nurse had trimmed away the hanks of her shorn hair to even it up, but the young woman’s scalp still contained a few bald patches. Burns decorated her arms and cheeks.

  Nadia was twenty-three, the file in Logan’s lap told him. No parents. Nadia had left her clan two years ago to work in a club in Santa Monica with her sister. Tiring of answering to the stringent demands of the club owner, the two of them had taken to the streets to sell the pleasure that came with letting a demon sup on life essences.

  Logan usually left dealing with demons to Samantha, the wolf in him hating all death-magic creatures. Yet he’d grown enraged when he’d looked over Samantha’s notes this morning, and he decided he wanted to find the person—demon, human, vampire, or otherwise—who had done this to Nadia.

  Nadia’s eyes were pools of darkness in her white face, but she was pretty—probably demon glam, Logan reasoned. Right now, though, she looked pathetic and exhausted.

  “I told you,” Nadia said, making her voice hard. “I barely saw them. Mostly I was tied up in a closet.”

  “An ordinary closet? Not a cell?”

  “There were brooms and mops, pipes in the walls. Like something in a maintenance room. I tried to use a broom handle to break open the door, but it didn’t work. Hard to do with my hands and feet tied.”

  Logan closed the file. He’d been told he’d grow hardened to the plights of victims, especially in Los Angeles, a city that drew those who wanted to prey on others—though Logan had seen nothing so far that compared to what werewolves could do when the pack turned against one of their own. Logan hadn’t grown calloused in the last year, however, so he spent a lot of time aching in compassion for people like Nadia, even if they didn’t appreciate it.

  “I want to get these bastards, Nadia.”

  Her dark eyes widened. “You’re life magic. Why would you want to help a demon? And why did that other guy—the red-haired one—want to he
lp me? Who the hell was he, by the way? He was definitely full of life magic.”

  “I’m not sure myself about him,” Logan had to answer.

  “So why do you care so much?”

  Logan stretched out his long legs and folded his arms. “This is my town,” he said, drawling like an Old West sheriff. “I want to keep it clean.”

  “Bullshit, werewolf.”

  The wolf in Logan started to growl, but that was only his life magic with its hackles up. “I want to find out who did this to you and your sister,” Logan said. “There’s a difference between a good fight with a death-magic creature and . . . this.”

  Nadia deflated, her eyes moistening. “I’m going to get them for what they did to Bev.”

  Logan nodded, telling the beast in him to shut up and sit down. “I don’t blame you. But let me get them, all right?”

  Nadia sank back to her pillows, her face fine-boned and vulnerable. “I can’t help you—that’s what I can’t stand. They gave me something that took away my strength. When I was in the closet, I couldn’t change into my demon form. Then, later, they wanted me to change, because they wanted to kill a demon, not something that looked human.”

  “Which means they weren’t after you in particular, but demons in general.”

  “Yes, but it was my sister in particular who was killed.”

  Nadia’s face crumpled, and she looked like nothing more than a young woman who’d stumbled into tragedy. Logan couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to brush back the shorn ends of her hair. Nadia gave him a startled look from her streaming eyes, but she didn’t shrink away.

  Logan was glad now that Samantha had roped him into this case. He decided then and there that he’d do anything—anything—to get the bastards that caused this helpless young woman grief.

  Chapter Seven

  Tain lay full length on the living-room floor, his eyes open, having long since given up on his meditation. Any peace of mind eluded him tonight.

  Dawn seeped through the window, silence descended, and time slowed. The presence of a goddess began to fill every space of the apartment, like a perfume permeating a close room.

  Tain.

  Though Cerridwen only manifested as a white light above him, Tain felt her love and warmth flow around him, her healing magic seeking out his hurts.

  Cerridwen had helped Tain heal little by little over the past year, boosting his Immortal life magic to complete the healing of his flesh. Sometimes, like tonight, Tain shied away from further healing. Somehow, he needed to hurt. He didn’t always want comfort.

  “Why did you let it happen?” he asked the light. “My brothers didn’t come for me until the end, but at least they tried. You stood by and did nothing.”

  The light retreated the slightest bit, and Cerridwen remained silent, as usual. Tain hadn’t really expected an answer. He’d asked the question many times since his escape from Kehksut, but had never received a response.

  Cerridwen’s sorrow heightened until Tain could barely stand the crush of it, and to his surprise, she spoke.

  I let it happen so you would be strong enough to defeat the ancient one. Your imprisonment and pain gave you strength. Now you are greater than all your brothers put together. It had to be thus.

  She spoke an ancient Celtic language—her voice musical and flowing, but Tain couldn’t feel the peace of it.

  He answered in the same language. “Are you saying you let me be tortured on purpose?”

  It had to be, or your brothers could not have come together to save you, and the world would have been lost. One of you had to have the strength to kill the Old One—even all of you together wouldn’t have been able to defeat him, the most ancient and powerful of his kind.

  “One of us? Why was I chosen? What the hell made me so special?”

  Tain had always known that Adrian and Kalen were far more powerful than he was. Tain, Hunter, and Darius had been closer in strength. The three had often fought death-magic creatures together, and had time and again awakened after a long, post-battle revelry with little memory of the party they’d so enjoyed.

  Tain had only ever thought of himself as a warrior with a magical talent for healing. However, because he couldn’t heal Immortals, he, Hunter, and Darius had always had to suffer through the hangovers.

  We drew lots, Cerridwen said. It was to my great sorrow that I won.

  Tain sat up. “You drew lots?”

  It was the only way, the goddesses and I, to decide which of you would gain the strength. We didn’t have the fortitude to make such a decision, so we left it to Fate.

  Tain got to his feet, power crackling from him in rage. “Do you mean I suffered for seven hundred years because you drew the short straw?”

  Yes.

  Tain roared in anger, light exploding from him. He wouldn’t have wished what he’d suffered on his brothers, but the full betrayal of it struck him. He and his brothers, the indestructible warriors, had been pawns in a game of the goddesses.

  “You should have asked us,” he snarled. “You should have let us decide who would go.”

  We couldn’t bear to stand by and watch you choose who would make the sacrifice. The decision of who would go to Kehksut was made before any of you were even born.

  If Cerridwen spoke the truth, that meant everything Tain and his brothers had ever done, had ever endured, from their birth to the time of Kehksut’s death, had been part of a long, elaborate scheme. Tain had suffered torture, Hunter had lost his wife and children, Kalen had endured a terrible punishment. Darius had been kept a prisoner by the goddess Sekhmet, and Adrian still blamed himself for Tain’s capture and imprisonment. But all along it had been the goddesses who’d planned every move and watched their sons suffer one by one.

  “Do my brothers know?” Tain asked.

  No. Please, never tell them.

  Another wave of power boomed from Tain. “Get out of my head. Get out of my house!”

  My son . . .

  “I said get out!”

  Tain slapped his magic at her, a whiplike tendril that wrapped the white light that was Cerridwen and shoved her away. Cerridwen stilled in shock, her grief pressing at Tain like a dark wave. Then she dissipated and was gone.

  Tain rose from the ground and whirled through his apartment, blasting pieces out of the brick walls with white-hot magic. He stopped and thumped back to his feet, shaking in rage, then he pulled on his clothes and slammed out the front door.

  His neighbor, a lanky man with a long dark ponytail, poked his head out of the next apartment, eyes round. “Hey, man, you all right?”

  “Fine,” Tain snarled. He snaked a gentle tendril of healing magic at his neighbor. “Sleep and forget.”

  The man started to yawn and said, “Take it easy,” before he went back inside.

  Tain walked out into the dawn, creatures both mortal and magical melting from his path.

  “Good morning,” Logan said cheerfully as Samantha hopped into the police car Logan had halted outside her apartment complex gate. “Glad to see you this bright and early. Me, I never got to bed.”

  Samantha pushed her damp hair out of her eyes as Logan slid into Los Angeles traffic. Logan had called her as she was getting out of bed to tell her they’d been summoned to a disturbance near Union Station and that he’d pick her up on his way in.

  “Why do they need detectives?” she asked, grabbing the coffee Logan had stuck into the cup holder for her. She sipped the dark brew, wincing at its bitterness. “Uniforms are supposed to handle stuff like this. What’s different about this one?”

  “Because this one involves your friend Tain.”

  Samantha came all the way awake. “Tain? Shit, what’s he done?”

  “Remember those demons that attacked Merrick’s place? Turns out they were from the Djowlan clan—I think I’m saying that right. Tain walked into one of their clubs a few hours ago, kicked out all the human customers, and is holding the demons hostage, including the one who ordered the r
aid on Merrick’s.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “He says he’s not letting them go until one of them tells him what happened to Nadia. And that he’s only thinking about letting them go. There’s been fighting, but he’s got them cornered and scared shitless.”

  Samantha rubbed her forehead as though that would clear the fog from her brain. “But Tain said he thought demon hunters did it, not demons.”

  “Guess he changed his mind.”

  “Crap. And McKay wants me to . . . what? Talk him out of there?”

  “That’s her idea.”

  “What makes her think he’ll listen to me?”

  Logan gave her a sympathetic grin. “Lieutenant McKay says you have to make him listen, and that everyone’s counting on you.”

  “Gee, thanks,” she said.

  Logan chuckled, but without much humor. “I’ll be right here with you, partner.”

  Samantha’s gut ached as they dodged through traffic. The coffee swam in her stomach like sludge, and she thrust the cup back into the holder.

  Samantha reasoned she could always call Hunter, but then, Hunter was no friend to demons and might see nothing wrong with Tain taking his revenge. Hunter’s first wife and kids had been slain by demons, and his reaction upon seeing them was to kill without asking questions. When Hunter had first met Samantha, he’d stuck the point of his sword against her chest—Leda had talked for a long time before Hunter had conceded to let Samantha live. Hunter might decide to join Tain for some demon bashing, and then Samantha would have two Immortal problems.

  The club Logan pulled up to was typical of the downtown demon clubs—very businesslike and modest on the outside with only a small logo above the door to say what lay inside. Samantha recognized the place as one run by a demon called Kemmerer from the Djowlan clan. Kemmerer had kept things fairly quiet and clean in the last year, not because he was a moral citizen, but because he couldn’t afford to have the paranormal police shutting him down.