Renegade Angel

Renegade Angel
Kendra Leigh Castle

Her fallen guardian angel It’s been thousands of years since Raum’s angelic wings turned from white to black and he’s never looked back. Enemy to both heaven and hell, he works with a motley crew on a new mission: destroying demons and their half-human progeny. Raum’s latest assignment leads him to a beautiful half-demon, half-human he’ll risk everything to save.Ember stirs him as no woman ever before – and she holds the key to what Lucifer will move hell and earth to prevent: Raum’s redemption. But Ember’s secrets are as dark as Raum’s wings. And have the power to both entwine them and destroy them.

“Don’t you dare die, Ember Riddick.”

“Kay,” she murmured, feeling her world tip and begin to go black again. “Raum?”

“What?”

“Are you my guardian angel?” she asked, and smiled at his snort, which was as much of an answer as anything.

“No,” he finally said.

She dug her fingers more tightly into his shirt, and only fleetingly wondered whether her claws had retracted. Either way, he didn’t flinch, didn’t make a sound. And it no longer mattered, because she was falling, falling, like Alice down the rabbit hole, into a darkness that even she couldn’t see through.

“Save me anyway?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. Then she was gone.

About the Author

KENDRA LEIGH CASTLE was born and raised in the far and frozen reaches of Northern New York, where there was plenty of time to cultivate her love of reading thanks to the six-month-long winters. Sneaking off with selections from her mother’s vast collection of romance novels came naturally and fairly early, and a lifelong love of the Happily Ever After was born. Her continuing love of heroes who sprout fangs, fur, and/or wings, however, is something no one in her family has yet been able to explain.

After graduating from SUNY Oswego (where it also snowed a lot) with a teaching degree that she did actually plan on using at the time, Kendra ran off with a handsome young Navy fighter pilot. She’s still not exactly sure how, but they’ve managed to accumulate three children, two high-maintenance dogs, and one enormous cat during their many moves. She’s very happy to be able to work in her pajamas, curled up with her laptop and endless cups of coffee, and her enduring love of all things both spooky and steamy means she’s always got another paranormal romance in the works. Kendra currently resides wherever the Navy thinks she ought to, which is Maryland at present. She also has a home on the web at www.kendraleighcastle.com, and loves to hear from her readers. Please stop by and say hello!

Dear Reader,

Thank you for picking up Renegade Angel. I’m very excited to be sharing this, my very first Nocturne

, with you!

I’ve always loved the idea of angels, especially the ornery, sword-carrying kind. This is probably partially because I was once a Catholic schoolgirl with a very active imagination, and partially because my own life has been full of wonderful, unconventional, and yes, even ornery angels. So it’s small wonder that I’d eventually want to write a story featuring a hero with a sword, wings… and a less than angelic disposition. Raum, an ex-angel, is also on the run from Hell, making him for all intents and purposes an ex-demon as well. So where does an ornery supernatural being with wings fit in when he’s caught between angels who’ve hired him to do their dirty work and demons who’ll stop at nothing to see him reduced to soulless cinder?

You, and a woman named Ember Riddick who has quite a few problems of her own, are about to find out. I hope you enjoy watching Raum and Ember find their places in this world … and of course, in one another’s arms … as much as I enjoyed writing their journey.

Happy reading!

Kendra

Renegade

Angel

Kendra Leigh Castle

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

This one’s for my Angels of Sanity—

Marie and Cheryl, for the sisterhood

Donna, Lisa, Ana, Elizabeth, aka “Ms Moonlight”, Jessica, and Leslie, for all the support, cheerleading, and incredible humor, not to mention the fascinating things that continue to turn up in my inbox on a regular basis … couldn’t have written this one without you!

And as always, my wonderful family. Thank you for continuing to live with, and love, my own special brand of crazy

Prologue

He left at twilight, moving swift and silent beneath a deepening blood-red sky. Beyond the gleaming walls of the Infernal City, across the cracked and barren wasteland that rang day and night with the cries of the damned, the crow soared on sooty wings toward the gnarled shapes jutting into the acrid air just beyond.

The Gate of Souls. Freedom.

That was, if they managed to make it out.

Raum coasted on the hot currents of a smoke-filled breeze, trying to concentrate on the final barrier of the mountains as he was borne ever closer to his destination. Beneath him, small fires dotted the barren desert landscape. A quick glance, and Raum could see the lurching figures of the legions of lesser demons, the nefari, who had served his kind in battle since the original Fall.

Disgusting creatures, Raum thought, jerking his gaze away from the hunched and muscular beings, red-skinned with curved horns sprouting from their foreheads, gamboling around the flames. As an earl of Hell, he had twenty legions of his own to command. But even after thousands of years in the Infernal City, Raum had never really developed much of an appreciation for the ill-tempered, dimwitted foot soldiers of the damned.

If he looked hard enough, Raum knew he’d be able to make out other, smaller figures writhing in torment on the ground around the demons plying their trade out here in the wastes. Of course, that might have indicated he had an interest in the bunch of primates, thrown together with a handful of clay and some divine spit, who kept Hell in business.

And he was going to be in close contact with those useless creatures soon enough.

If only there were another way. But there wasn’t. Raum flapped his wings once, twice, picking up speed, anxious to have the final betrayal done with. When you were a fallen angel who had been marked for death by the Infernal Council, your options became very limited. He had already walked away from Heaven, anxious to help create a paradise that had nothing to do with serving the hated humans. Even after all this time, he couldn’t understand what about humanity, so inferior in every way, had merited the reward of an eternal soul. It had been the final straw, a slight he could not ignore.

But in walking away from Heaven, he’d had another option. This time, Raum still wasn’t clear on what, or where, he was running to. Only that, if he wanted to sur vive, he must help save the humans from the rapidly encroaching darkness: a darkness he had helped create, and which now threatened to swallow him whole unless he did the unthinkable.

Curse you, Mammon, he thought. Not that such thoughts had ever done him any good.

The betrayal shouldn’t have surprised him. Mammon wasn’t the Prince of Avarice for nothing. Eternally jealous, eternally greedy, Mammon had long been tired of always being in Raum’s shadow. Raum had simply found the other demon’s constant efforts to outdo him amusing, or mildly irritating, when he’d even bothered to notice. After all, his own prowess at theft, deception and destruction had made him a legend. Mammon’s singular talent for sucking up had gotten the demon lord a seat on the ruling Infernal Council and ready access to Lucifer’s ear.

To each his own, Raum had always thought, and paid little attention. Until recently, that was, when some of his brethren, tired of Mammon’s utter uselessness and lack of leadership, had begun encouraging Raum to make a challenge. And he, Raum thought darkly, fool that he was, had begun to consider emerging from centuries of relative seclusion to do it. Then the serpent king had arrived on his doorstep just a few nights past, bearing the news that he, Raum, would soon be charged and executed as a traitor, accused of willfully undermining Hell’s cause by his obvious and egregious lack of sup port.

He would have been destroyed for nothing more than his own indifference to the games of the Council and life at Court, his own solitary nature all the evidence Lucifer needed to finally succumb to the venom Mammon had spewed for years. Raum had to give Mammon some small amount of credit: though he himself had never spoken publicly of his intention to challenge for Mammon’s position on the Council, his old rival knew a threat to his position when he saw it.

So now here he was, forced to choose between the eternal darkness of a demon’s death, or living by doing things he would once have considered even worse than such a death.

The irony wasn’t lost on him.

The sky began to darken as he approached the far edge of the underworld, and Raum’s heartbeat accelerated no matter how hard he tried to force calm. Condemned or no, the finality of his decision had only just begun to penetrate.

He could sense Leviathan as he drew near the mountains, and the gate beyond. Leviathan, and the five others who would be accompanying them, now traitors below just as they had been above. Raum didn’t know all of their stories, nor did he care. All that mattered was that they were united in their refusal to die quietly. He could feel his brothers’ power drifting upward like hot sparks carried on a desert breeze, surrounding an unmistakable shard of deathly cold that cut like a knife through the heat.

Leviathan. Only a fool would have felt safe under the gaze of those unusual, oceanic eyes. Raum was no fool. He wondered if he would ever understand what had driven the serpent king to this, leading a ragtag collection of marked nobles out of Hell and into the employ of the white-winged control freaks they’d all spent so long either fighting, infuriating or avoiding. What did Leviathan care if the balance between good and evil on Earth was tipping into darkness? And even more confounding to Raum was the question of how Lucifer’s prized pet had known that the highest ranks of angels, the seraphim, would be desperate enough to want the help of a bunch of Hellish exiles in righting the Balance.

Of course, if he hadn’t been so desperate himself, he wouldn’t have touched this with a ten-foot pole, and he was in no position to be asking questions. The pay was good. The prospect of continuing to exist was even better. And dirty work was, after all, his specialty, no matter who he was doing it for. He was Raum, Destroyer of Dignities and Robber of Kings.

At least, he had been. Now, he was no longer sure what he was. But with luck, he would have more time to figure it out.

The mountains rising ahead were stunted, blackened things, the grotesque monotony of the ring they created around the kingdom broken only by the places where the five rivers sliced through on their way to the endless Stygian sea. Raum soared higher, clearing the peaks with rapid, graceful movements, and then dipped to descend into the roiling black mists that eternally blanketed the Borderlands, and the Gate of Souls.

Anticipation rushed through Raum’s blood. He was about to have a purpose again. And for the first time, it appeared that his former brethren needed him. It was incredibly satisfying … perplexing, weird and almost deviant, but satisfying.