Deliverance from Sin: A Demonic Paranormal Romance (Sinners & Saints Book 5) Read online

  Deliverance from Sin

  Sinners & Saints Book V

  Rosalie Stanton

  Copyright © 2018 by Rosalie Stanton

  Edited by Brittany Hutzel

  Cover art by Shannon Perryman

  Special thanks to Sarah Smeaton

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  “No matter where you go, no matter where you’ve been, just remember one thing… Cubs win. Cubs win.”

  I miss you, Dad.

  Contents

  About Deliverance from Sin

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Rosalie Stanton

  Preview: Sinners & Saints, Book 6

  Preview: Hellion

  About Deliverance from Sin

  If she learns the truth about what he is, there’ll be Hell to pay.

  Demonic trouble always finds Varina, no matter how far she runs. When she learns her late father left her something at their ancestral home, Varina is drawn back to a place she never thought she’d see again.

  Ever since the world almost ended, Campbell, Sin of Pride, has been nursing scars both inside and out. Ashamed, he’s determined to keep his head down until he’s back to his old self. Yet when he learns that Legion, the biblically notorious demon, has escaped, Campbell has a choice—capture it, or advertise how low Pride has fallen.

  Varina has been chased by too many demons to believe Campbell is a normal man. Yet she sees herself in his haunted eyes, and realizes he’s like her—a demonic-possession survivor. Despite reservations, Varina lets her walls down, and slowly accepts the possibility that she might not have to go through life alone.

  Though deception is part of the job, lying to Varina is the hardest thing Campbell has ever done. But as they get closer, and Legion gains strength, the truth is bound to come out. He just doesn’t know what it will cost him.

  Prologue

  There was no night or day. No concept of time at all. There was only a never-ending landscape of unchanging nothingness. A lesser being, she was certain, would have embraced madness by now, but Lilith was by no means a lesser being. Isolation was not a punishment as far as she was concerned, and even if it were, it wasn’t like she was truly alone.

  No, she had the baby to think about.

  A small smirk flirted with her lips as she ran her flat palm over her not-so-flat belly. The bump was incidental, but growing—it seemed—by the day. Soon it would be large enough to notice.

  If there were anyone around to notice, that was. Purgatory had no beginning or end, no boundaries or spaces, no occupants of any kind. Her punishment for trying to end the world amounted to a cosmic timeout.

  But Lilith was nothing if not patient. She had waited centuries for the moment to trigger the apocalypse, and she could wait centuries more. Time mattered not, and this personal hiccup could only last so long.

  Lucifer didn’t have the stomach to kill her and he also lacked the strength to ignore her.

  He’d come. And when he did…

  The smirk on Lilith’s face stretched wider as she dug her nails into the soft skin protecting the bastard growing inside her. A sharp thrill of pain radiated outward, and it felt so good she dug deeper. The female body was truly a wondrous thing, and hers kept revealing heretofore undiscovered secrets, providing tools when she was stripped of resources.

  Tools like the babe.

  But that did not mean she had to suffer pregnancy with a smile. After all, the little leech was using her body to strengthen its own, and her body was the most prized weapon in her arsenal.

  Though the parasite could not be killed—a lesson learned after those initial attempts to snuff it out—it could feel pain. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. Mother’s instinct, perhaps. Whenever she dug in, she would almost swear she could feel it squirming.

  So she dug. A little every now and then, sometimes more when she remembered the sensation of that angel of Jehovah’s—the whiny, weak little thing—shoving his holy cock into her body, of his throaty grunts and sweaty skin. Like all who had come before him, he had been easy to manipulate—filled with righteous fury but still oh so willing, if not eager, to prove himself a man where it counted.

  It had been satisfactory, only in confirming that Jehovah could create no creature worthy of any world. The angel had gotten what he wanted—sex in exchange for defying his master. Lilith had gotten what she wanted…momentarily.

  It was an eternal, annoying pattern.

  Lilith dug her nails in deeper and, for the first time, sliced through her skin. It surprised her—not the wound itself, but the response. Her hand flew from her belly of its own volition, as though propelled, and for the briefest instant, the beige landscape of her prison flickered.

  She tilted her head. For a long moment, she stood, surveying the bland nothing that surrounded her.

  Then she dug in again. Again, she drew blood. Again, her hand was shoved away. Again, the world around her blinked.

  Lilith stood very still for a moment. Then she smiled.

  Now this was interesting.

  1

  A demon had just walked into the bar. His bar.

  Fuck.

  With any luck, it was one of the rarer breeds that knew what was good for it.

  Campbell clenched his jaw and sucked in a breath as the signature’s owner approached. By the time the asshole was close enough to smell, he’d nearly convinced himself to find a dark corner and do his disappearing act.

  But dammit, Rat Trap was his haven. It was perfect, obscure, and planted some twelve miles from the nearest interstate in a remote area that was one death away from being a ghost town. There was a cemetery, a gas station, and a gun shop within walking distance, but more substantial signs of civilization required wheels. Campbell loved it here. No one knew his name, and thank fuck for that.

  The last thing he needed was some goddamned demon fucking things up.

  Demons, however, were not the obliging sort. This one released a small sigh and drew up on the barstool beside him. Of course it did. Campbell held his breath and braced himself.

  Fine. Fucking fine.

  “Look,” he began, turning to stare the asshole in the eye. “I’m really—”

  The words died the second their gazes clashed. For an asshole demon, she sure had pretty eyes.

  Pretty…confused eyes.

  “Huh?” The owner of the eyes—which were pale green—wrinkled her nose and furrowed her brow. “Were you talking to me?”r />
  For the first time in as long as he could remember, Campbell felt a stab of something beyond self-loathing. If he didn’t know better, he’d call it embarrassment. “Ahh, sorry,” he said. “I thought you were someone else.”

  The girl didn’t look convinced. She looked…well, Campbell couldn’t really say how she looked, but it wasn’t as he would have expected. As though she were trying to locate a memory, which led to a dejected frown whenever she found it. Every part of her seemed to deflate, resigned and beaten. She tugged on a loose tendril of her rust-colored hair, then tossed it behind her shoulder. He thought she might say something more—something about pitying whoever he’d mistaken her for, that he needed to get a grip, that he was fucking jumpy—but instead, she deflected and turned to the bartender, who Campbell realized had been watching the scene with a sort of dull interest.

  “Rum and coke, Carl,” the girl said.

  Carl nodded and went about filling the order.

  Again, Campbell waited. The hum of the girl’s energy signature had yet to fizzle, but the more he analyzed it, the less convinced he became that she had any demon in her. It was too faint—a tug to let him know there was a story behind it, but nothing substantial enough to warrant an investigation.

  By the time Carl had placed the rum and coke before her, Campbell had it figured.

  The girl wasn’t a demon, but at one point had been possessed by one.

  It had been a while since a genuine possession had crossed his path, but there was no mistaking that sensation. Now that Campbell felt it, he couldn’t unfeel it.

  “Just so you know, I’m not in the mood.”

  The words were spoken so softly, it didn’t register at first that he was their intended recipient. Campbell blinked and dragged his gaze from the countertop and back to his neighbor’s moss-colored eyes.

  Which were now slanted in a glare.

  Campbell blinked. “What?”

  “I’m achy, I’m tired, I’ve had a fucking awful week and next week doesn’t look to be any better.”

  There wasn’t any menace behind the words—not to match her expression, anyway—rather the tired honesty of the truly defeated.

  And perhaps it was out of kinship or his tendency to get in his own way, but the part of him that had been dieting quite happily on a general attitude of fuck off deferred to curiosity.

  “Funny,” he drawled. “I don’t recall asking.”

  “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?”

  “Notice what?”

  “What you are.”

  He blinked. “Confused?”

  The redhead stared at him for a moment, this time with more than just defeat. It wasn’t something one could miss, the spark that lit up her face, so he knew the moment he saw it that it hadn’t been there before. Campbell’s lips twitched and he did his best to hide a smirk. After the endless gray that had been his world since Rome, any diversion was worth chasing.

  She leaned in, her lips pulled tight. “I’m just saying,” she bit out between clenched teeth, “you cause shit, and we’re going to have a problem.”

  Campbell killed the smirk, though it went down with a struggle. He also leaned in, so close now her scent—a woodsy, fresh fragrance that made his stomach somersault—flooded his nostrils. His gaze fixed on her skin, which, he noticed, looked butter-soft. She had a light dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose and on her cheeks.

  She was…well, cute.

  And he would leave her alone, if he knew what was good for him.

  Still, he was surprised at finding anyone cute right now, much less a woman whose face was contorted into a scowl so severe it looked damn near painful. His cock hadn’t shown interest in anyone since the world hadn’t ended. No part of him had shown any interest in anything, truth be told, except the alliance his tongue and liver had sworn to the god of alcohol.

  For whatever reason, his cock decided now was the perfect time to get back in the game, and telegraphed the message to both his eyes and his mouth. It was the only way he could explain how he ended up staring at her lips. “And I’m just saying,” he replied at last, “that it’s adorable you think you could cause me problems.”

  The words had their intended effect. She looked seconds away from detonation. Zero to off the charts. At least he hadn’t lost his touch.

  “Haven’t met a demon I couldn’t handle yet,” she snapped. “All I’m asking for is a little distance.”

  “Could have sworn I was just minding my own business. Plenty of other seats around.”

  “I know your kind,” she replied. “Just figured I’d be upfront before I got comfortable and you got any ideas.”

  A rush of annoyance, coupled with challenge, charged up his spine. He’d known, of course, that she thought he was a demon. Sins were much higher on the energy signature Richter scale than the average beast from Hell, and since she was transmitting a signature of her own, she’d know what one felt like.

  Still, them’s fighting words.

  “I am not,” Campbell said hotly, “a fucking demon. Insult me like that again, and I’m not gonna be so nice, you hear?”

  “You really think I don’t know one when I feel one?” she retorted, flushed. “This ain’t my first rodeo. And judging by the waves you’re giving off, you’re high on the paygrade. I know how to make the big ones fall, asshole. Don’t even fucking try me.”

  Campbell wasn’t sure what was worse—losing control of the conversation, losing anonymity in his favorite bar, or the fact that he was still turned on.

  He didn’t have a chance to decide. Carl the bartender inserted his face between them.

  “We got one rule here,” Carl said, his words wound thick around a heavy Louisiana accent. “I don’t give no crap how good a customer either of you is. If you’re gonna fight, take it outside.” Then he leveled a mean look at Campbell. “Anyone throws a punch an’ it’s a lifetime ban, ya hear?”

  Campbell brought his hands up. “I was just sitting here and the lady—”

  “Shove it,” the redhead spat.

  “Outside.” Carl tossed a dishrag over his shoulder and pointed one beefy fist at the exit.

  The redhead shot Campbell a look he could only assume others saw before she kicked their ass, but didn’t argue. Instead, she slid off the barstool and strode toward the door that led to the makeshift parking lot. Makeshift because it didn’t have much in the way of pavement—just some loose gravel and no fast rules on the way patrons decided to leave their vehicles.

  Campbell watched her go, then turned back to his drink. “You saw that, didn’t you?” he asked Carl. “She came up to me and started running her mouth about—”

  “Shut up. I don’t know an’ I don’t care. Just go have it out.”

  “I’m a good customer.”

  Carl nodded. “And so is she. Older blood than you, too.”

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “Vee comes from a good family. She might not be round too much, but her folk own most of this area. Play nice, or you’re out a bar.”

  And there it was. The downside to the nice, anonymous country bar. Blood ran deep down in the Old South, and the right name in a lot of places went a lot further than the good ole American dollar.

  But dammit, he liked Rat Trap. It was the only place he felt anything close to peace these days. So, if he had to kiss and make up with the hot would-be demon hunter to stay, he supposed he owed it to himself to at least try.

  Besides, he had somewhat egged her on.

  He stepped outside and into air so thick it practically qualified as clothing, because sometimes the Deep South could give Hell a run for its money. Hell was hot, sure, but it wasn’t humid. Not like this.

  Not even the icy glare of a certain redhead could cool him off.

  As he had inside, Campbell raised his hands in surrender and tried for a placating tone. It was hard because he wasn’t one to placate, especially when he’d done nothing wrong. But he really didn’t wa
nt to have to find another place to hang out, and he knew, most of the time, how to pick his battles.

  “Look,” Campbell said, “I think we got off on the wrong foot. But to be fair, you really shouldn’t go around accusing people of being demons.”

  The redhead—Vee, or whatever Carl had called her—crossed her arms. “You’re not people. People don’t give off vibes.”

  “People also don’t run their mouths about being demons.” Campbell waited until she frowned at him before gesturing back to the bar. “You came in, sat next to me, and started in on this demon bullshit. If you don’t wanna be bothered, the best way to accomplish that is to avoid picking unnecessary fights.”

  He watched her wrestle with that for a moment, and felt a vague surge of victory when her expression softened.

  Then he saw something he wished he hadn’t. The foundation of her façade cracked, and he caught a glimmer of pain. It was there for less than a heartbeat before she tucked it away again, but the damage had been done. Campbell knew that look—the one that conveyed loss and confusion, combined with just enough anger to give the sober the rationale of the perpetually drunk. He’d been a walking embodiment of that look for weeks. Straddling two realities, caught in a loop where all he could see was a fury of motion, a sea of snarls, and the winking lights of consciousness against a too-black sky.

  They had torn his insides out, or tried to. That night at the Colosseum. The night he’d nearly closed his eyes forever.