Kendra Castle - Renegade Angel

“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.

KENDRA LEIGH CASTLEwas 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

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

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.