The Redeeming

by Shiloh Walker

  Not if it helped keep Lyssa safe.

  Safe…and maybe even happy.

  Happy—something he hadn’t ever hoped for, but for a while he found it, too. With Eden. The boss’s kid sister.

  Eden McGregor hadn’t been lying when she said she lived there. Her brother was the head of the gang Adamm had been hearing about, in whispered tones, for months. She was one of the few people there who didn’t seem to embrace the life they were living. She went to school religiously, went to church, despite the laughter and catcalls it seemed to evoke among the rest of them, teasing that got louder and more cruel when her brother wasn’t around.

  But she didn’t care. Eden wasn’t going to stay there—it was written all over her face. And she was the one person there that Lyssa connected with. That wasn’t too bad. She was going to school, clean and on time.

  The boss had done the unexpected. Jack McGregor had worked a miracle. No school officials were calling. The heat was off them.

  After a few weeks, Jack started expecting payment. Real witches in his gang were a rarity. Jack was one. Eden was one, but she refused to use her gifts to help them. She would heal, but nothing else. A fucking waste, because her power was astounding. Besides her, there were a few others, but most were just psychic, or just gifted enough to make them exceptional thieves.

  Jack wanted some stuff done only a real witch could. And two could do it even better.

  ***

  Looking back, Adamm had to wonder if maybe he couldn’t have fought it harder. Had to wonder if maybe it wouldn’t have been better for Lyssa if he had just let the state place them both in foster care. Maybe then she wouldn’t have ended up hating him.

  He watched the movie montage made up of his life and felt the ugly, bitter taste of regret. There had been other choices, but once he started up with Jack, those choices became fewer, farther in between. Once he’d started up with Jack, there hadn’t been an easy way out. But he hadn’t realized just how deep he was until it was too late.

  Most of it started out simple enough, just a bare step up from the stealing he’d been doing as long as he could remember.

  But then the jobs got bigger and before he knew it, he was lost inside the gang, so lost he couldn’t have gotten out with GPS, a road map and an entire truckload of bread crumbs.

  You didn’t fight it much, did you?

  Adamm jerked, flinching as the words reminding him that he wasn’t exactly alone. Turning his head, he stared at the man beside him. “I made a choice. I took care of my sister,” he said as a knot settled in his throat.

  There were other choices…like this time.

  And he was shoved back in time. Again.

  Age Twenty

  They were cold and wet, standing there in the rainy woods. But Jack deserved a decent burial. Part of him was ashamed. Jack had tried, had cared for them in his own way. The man deserved a real burial, some place where they could see him without skulking in the shadows.

  Eden hadn’t wanted this. She wanted her brother laid to rest the way anybody should be…a visitation, a suit, some place where she could go and place flowers when she visited him.

  As Eden stood there, rain running down her face, mingling with the tears, he wished he could think of another way. A way to give Eden what she had wanted for her brother—the right way to say goodbye.

  But it couldn’t happen. It just couldn’t. Jack had been murdered in his sleep, by pure magic. And the results had been ugly. There would have been an investigation, one that came with questions none of them were equipped to handle.

  Eden was hurting so bad—and Adamm knew not all of it was from her brother’s death. She wanted more, for Adamm, for herself…for all of them.

  She wanted to stop hiding in the shadows. Wanted to stop living there. She wanted to leave behind the darkness of her past. Wanted him to do the same. Wanted the same for Jack, but now it wasn’t a choice that Jack would ever have.

  As two of the men shoveled dirt over Jack’s still, disfigured corpse, Eden looked up and met his eyes.

  “Now what do we do?” she asked quietly.

  Adamm didn’t have any answers for her.

  One of the others said softly, “We go our separate ways now. Hope the bastard that killed Jack doesn’t come after us.”

  Lyssa wrapped an arm around Eden’s waist. Voices murmured, and Adamm sensed their thoughts. Some agreed—split up, get away, very far away. Some were almost relieved…others were scared.

  No. They weren’t doing that…Jack had kept them together and alive for years. His death shouldn’t be enough to split up a band of brothers and sisters. It should make them more determined to stay together, to keep doing what Jack had started.

  What is so great about what Jack started? We steal, we lie, we use people. Adamm tried to silence the voice, and the knowledge that some of them had made different choices. Eden had. So had Lyssa.

  But they were together. All of them. They should stay that way.

  “We don’t split up,” he said, his voice sharp in the darkness. “We’re more vulnerable that way. If we want to survive, we stay together.”

  “We could leave,” Eden said, an undercurrent of steel in her voice.

  “Leave,” he echoed. Then he shook his head. “Hell, no. This is our territory, Eden. It’s the territory your brother fought for. Are you going to let it go that easily?”

  “It’s the territory my brother died for,” she countered. “Yes. Yes, if it means living, if it means having a life, I’d let it go in a heartbeat. I don’t want this, Adamm.” She turned her head, looked at the men and women, barely more than kids, that stood with them. “Do you want this? Is this how you want to end your life? Is this what you want for yourselves?”

  Some of them looked her in the eye.

  But most of them moved to quietly stand behind Adamm. They wanted to live. They didn’t care how they did it.

  She shook her head and turned away. Lyssa caught her hand and the two young women stared at each other, a silent conversation taking place. Eden broke contact first, giving Lyssa a sad smile and then tugging away. Adamm caught up with her and followed along as they left the others behind. Catching her arm, he turned her around, crowding her up against a tree. “Tell me you’re not leaving,” he said quietly.

  She wouldn’t look at him. “I’m so tired of hiding in the dark, Adamm.”

  “People like us don’t have a choice,” he said, pushing her wet curls back from her face. He brushed his lips against her cheek, breathing in her scent. She smelled like rain and vanilla.

  “We have choices.” Her voice was grim. She slid away from him and turned to face him, wrapping her arms around her middle. “We’ve got plenty of choices. You don’t have to steal to live. You don’t have use your magic to bully others into paying you for protection.”

  She spat the word out like it left an ugly taste in her mouth, and he suspected it did. This was an old argument, one she’d had with her brother. One she’d had with him, too. Adamm shook his head. “I’m a dropout, Eden. The only option I’ve got is finding a job at a fast-food joint, flipping burgers. Anything else, they want training and they’ll run a bunch of background checks. I’m not real big on the idea of going to jail.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t have broken the law,” she said, her voice wooden. She shook her head when he would have spoken. “I have to get away from here…I can’t breathe.”

  He went to grab her arm and she evaded. “Where are you going?”

  “I just need to walk.” She shot him a baleful look and added, “But don’t worry. I’m not leaving. At least not right now.”

  She wanted to. It was in her eyes. It was a knowledge that haunted Adamm as he let her walk away from him, one that lingered with him later that night as he sat at a bar, drinking Jack Daniels straight from the bottle. It burned a fiery trail down his throat, warmed his belly, but didn’t do a damn thing to ease the pain inside.

  “I heard about Jack.”

&n
bsp; It was an unwelcome voice. Sliding his gaze to the left, he met Dominiqua’s coal-black eyes and then looked away. Dominiqua was one of Jack’s “friendly” rivals—friendly as in they’d decided they’d kill each other if they ever fought, so they had an unspoken truce.

  Except that unspoken truce was over now and if Adamm knew anything about the woman, she was going to size him up, decide if she wanted to take him down or just take him over. Adamm wasn’t interested in either.

  The only thing he wanted was oblivion. An escape from the pain over losing a friend, an escape from the pain he’d seen in Eden’s eyes.

  Dominiqua laid a hand on his thigh and leaned in. “That bottle isn’t going to make it any better.”

  He closed his eyes as his body responded. She slipped that hand higher, and higher, until she could trace the outline of his cock with her fingertips. “I can make it better…if you’ll let me.”

  He tossed back another gulp of whiskey and then glanced at her. “Get the fuck away from me.”

  “Hmmm. Poor baby.” She wiggled and shimmied around until she had draped herself across his lap. Nobody in the bar so much as looked their way. She could strip naked, go down on him or jump up and dance on the bar and unless she invited the attention of others, nobody would dare look directly at them.

  He jerked his head back as she tried to kiss him, used the whiskey to wash away her taste. “Leave me alone,” he snarled, reaching down and closing a hand around her wrist. He squeezed until her bones ground together.

  Dominiqua whimpered, but not with pain. Under her lashes, she stared at him, her gaze hot with arousal. She touched him again, and this time she didn’t just use her hands.

  She used her magic and it burned along his skin. His power responded, leaping to vibrant life. Power rose, mingled, swelled…he should have shoved it down and blocked it off.

  Instead, he drew it in. What little control he had shattered under the intoxicating bite of magic. Drunk on the whiskey, drunk on the magic and blinded by grief, when Dominiqua touched him again, he didn’t try to push her away.

  ***

  Adamm turned away, the hot burn of shame crawling under his skin. Feeling like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he averted his gaze as Sansan said, It didn’t help the pain, did it?

  “I never thought it would,” he snapped, his voice sharp. He hadn’t thought at all. That was the bottom line. And that was exactly what he’d told Eden the next morning.

  She’d known. Without him saying anything, she had known. It was the first time he’d broken her heart, and if he’d been a better man, it would have been the last time. He would have let her walk away, just like she wanted.

  But he hadn’t been able to do it.

  No…he hadn’t wanted to do it.

  Swallowing, he made himself meet Sansan’s eyes. “I thought I was doing what was best, keeping us all together.”

  You were wrong.

  “We stayed alive. That’s what counts.” Adamm scowled and looked away, but he ended up looking back at Sansan anyway. The other man—angel—whatever—was a better sight than reliving his life in full, living color.

  The scenes replaying now were two-fold. The morning after, when he faced Eden and realized she’d known about Dominiqua…and the very moment he’d woken up in the bed next to the other witch and realized what in the hell he’d done.

  “We stayed alive,” he repeated. It sounded hollow, even to him.

  There is so much more to it than that. How much did your life mean, the way you lived it? What do you think you’d find on your tombstone, Adamm? We stayed alive. There should be so much more than that. There should be love. There should be happiness. All you have is emptiness.

  Age Twenty-Three

  He rolled over, cuddling Eden’s soft body close, his chest heaving as he fought to catch his breath. Her snug pussy still gripped him convulsively and under him, her body shuddered.

  She had been trying to walk away again.

  He wasn’t letting her go. Bad enough he had lost his sister—Lyssa had joined the military the day she turned eighteen, and she had run away from this life. He hadn’t seen her in three years, and he suspected he wouldn’t ever see her again.

  He wasn’t going to lose Eden, too.

  “You feel so good,” he whispered, kissing her sweat-dampened curls, running his hand up and down her side.

  She was silent. There had been a time when she would have murmured something back to him. But the past month, things had been different between them.

  A month ago, he’d been forced to kill another witch, and it had been somebody that Eden had known. A friend, in a way. A boy she’d been trying to help.

  Eden hadn’t talked to him for weeks after. Three days after the boy had died, she’d tried to leave Adamm for the first time. He had felt it, the silence of the house as he walked in, a silence caused by her absence. With a few furious words, he’d turned her mirror into his own personal tracking device and he had seen her, walking to the train station, a pack flung over her shoulder, her head down, a hand reaching up to wipe away the tears rolling down her face.

  “The hell I’m letting you walk away,” he had sworn. He’d caught up with her just before she would have boarded the train that took her away from him.

  A voice had whispered to him, the same one that asked him, always…if he was doing the right thing. Or simply what was easier. This time the voice had said, Let her go. She doesn’t want this life.

  But he had wanted her. So he had guilted her into coming back. He played on her emotions, played on the grief she still felt for Jack, even though the other man had been gone for three years. She’d given in and since then, Adamm had kept her close. Tried to find some tenderness, give her some romance, the softer, kinder things she’d deserved. Hoping to hear her say once more, “I love you, Adamm.”

  But she never said it to him again.

  Sighing, he tucked her closer and rolled to his side. “I love you,” he said, forcing the words past his tight throat.

  It wasn’t easy for him to say, even though he did love her. But she didn’t say it back. All she did was lay there, rigid and quiet, until eventually, she fell asleep in his arms.

  Adamm brushed his fingers through her hair and kissed her forehead. Sooner or later, things would get better…they’d be the way they were. Eden would be as she used to be.

  He had to believe that. Had to.

  But as he drifted off to sleep, he wondered if maybe he was fooling himself. And this time, the voice wasn’t quite so easily ignored.

  Days passed.

  Things didn’t get better.

  Eden rarely spoke to him at all, and when she did, it was to tell him to let her go. He let her, because he knew that even if she tried to leave, she couldn’t get far. She couldn’t really leave him, because she didn’t really want to.

  Until finally one day, she did just that.

  That morning started out pretty much like any other. He left the big house that served as both home and his “base”, so to speak. Eden was sitting in the living room, watching TV and acting like she was completely unaware of him. That was the last time he saw her. Staring glassy-eyed at the TV, not so much as blinking when he bent to kiss her.

  When he came back, she was gone. He knew it the second he crossed through the door, felt it, like a shiver running down his spine. She was gone. Tearing down the hall to her room, he tried to do the same thing he’d done months earlier.

  But when he laid a hand on her mirror and tried to track her, there was nothing.

  “What the…”

  Fury tore into him.

  Pain gnawed at him.

  Wild magic, just barely contained, snapped in his hands and it took every last shred of control he had to keep it trapped inside him. Eden was gone. Dazed, half-dumb, he turned in a slow circle, staring at her bed…a bed he rarely let her sleep in. He stared at the narrow closet and the ruthlessly organized clothes. His gaze fell on her dresser last and
that was where he saw it.

  A note.

  And the remnants of something that turned his heart to ashes.

  Angelica and mullein. She’d gone and made a charm, one that would keep him from tracking her. Numb, he reached for the note and read it.

  I can’t live this life anymore. I need more. I want more for myself than this…and for you. But you won’t take it. I’ll have to find it myself.

  I loved you, Adamm.

  Eden.

  Feeling half-dead inside, he dropped down onto her bed and sat there. For hours he sat there, with the ghost of her voice taunting him.

  I loved you, Adamm.

  I loved you, Adamm.

  I loved you, Adamm.

  ***

  She really did love you, Sansan said, his voice gentle.

  “I know.” Adamm closed his eyes, blocking out the image of Eden’s face. It had been years since he’d let himself think about her. Losing her had torn a hole in his heart, a wound that never truly healed.

  Adamm had never saw Eden again, never heard from her again. He’d searched for her…for a while. But then he’d simply stopped trying. Over time, he’d forgotten about Eden, or at least, he convinced himself he had.

  But Sansan wasn’t going to buy that self-delusional argument.

  Losing her hurt you, didn’t it? He narrowed shrewd, dark eyes and watched Adamm as though he knew every last thought inside the man’s head.

  Adamm clenched his jaw, remaining silent. He didn’t let himself think of Eden very often. He couldn’t. It hurt too much, that ragged, still-bleeding wound that would never heal.

  She hurt like that, every day…until she finally walked away from you.

  Sansan’s eyes were guileless as Adamm lifted his head and glared at him. “You have to rub that in, buddy?”

  I’m not your buddy—I am your guide.

  “If you’re my fucking guide, then you did a shitty job. Shouldn’t a guide have led me somewhere else?” Adamm growled.

  Sansan laughed sadly. Boy, I tried. Every time you heard a little voice, asking if that was really the best road…who do you think that was? Your conscience? That’s a good one. You don’t have one. You destroyed it, purposely, willfully. Sansan’s eyes turned back to the endless film that showed yet more of Adamm’s life.