Immortals: The Redeeming by Jennifer Ashley

The Immortals are five brothers, all sons of the Goddess Cerridewen, who walk amongst the other races that inhabit the world: Humans Sidhe, Werewolves, Vampires, Demons. To save their world, they had to take down the Demon Lord Kekhsut. He had imprisoned the Immortal named Tain for hundreds of years: screwing him, torturing him, and allowing him to hope before cruelly ripping hope away from him over and over and over again. By the time his brothers and their witch wives found him, Tain had gone insane and was only barely human.

But the defeat of Kehksut was accomplished, and Tain was freed of his madness by his conversation with Samantha, a human cop who later found out that she wasn't human... well, not completely. Her father, who she'd long thought dead or gone, was a demon, of the clan known as the Lamiah, and she only found out about her heritage when her father came back into her life. She tried to deal with the knowledge, because she saw how happy he made her mother.

Now, five months later, Sam is staking out a demon club owned by a man called Merrick. Merrick is thought to be dealing a drug called "Moonglow" out of his club, and Sam wants to bust him. Before she can, however, there is an altercation at the club, and who should come striding in but Tain. He protects her, but acts as though he doesn't know her at all.

Later, though, he appears at her apartment to talk with her. Tain finds himself attracted to Samantha, and he knows she is half-demon and Lamiah in the bargain. He all but accuses her of using her demonic charisma on him and tells her that she has all the powers of a demon, including the need to feed from those around her from time to time. Sam is stunned by this accusation, and tells him that she is only a normal human, but when she goes to talk about it with her mother, she realizes that it is true, and that when she wasn't feeding from her mother, she has unwittingly been draining her partner.

In addition to the Moonglow case, Tain tells her that someone has been abducting demon women, and killing them, all for some unknown purpose. As Sam works both cases, she finds that the head of the Lamiah clan, the clan matriarch, may be behind the smuggling and distribution of Moonglow.

But there are other things happening as well. Humans are worried by the demon attacks and have formed a group to kill the demons. Although the methods of killing the demons are not well-known, someone seems to be informing the group of just how to do so. And the leader can identify demons, even half-demons like Samantha.

Samantha goes to meet the matriarch of the Lamiah clan, and the matriarch is impressed with her. So impressed that she wants Sam to be her heir for position of the matriarch. But when she is killed, the clan is thrown into disarray. Sam's father convinces her to put in her cap for the matriarch, ahead of the woman put forward by her cousin, Terry. But after an attack on the family by another group of demons, Samantha becomes the Matriarch... and Tain becomes her lover.

Tain continues to track down the people killing the demon prostitutes, but it seems that the human group of demon killers is behind the assaults. Who could have ordered such a thing is discovered when Samantha is kidnapped, and the Demon Lord Bahkat makes his play to have Tain return to his status as "Demon Playtoy", only under his command. Can Tain and Samantha beat the Demon Lord at his own game and take him out before Tain is returned to his former insanity and becomes the plaything of another Demon? Tain is pure white healing magic, and thus inimical to most demons. But Sam has now been his lover. Can he and she team up to destroy a demon lord, with Tain being a lone immortal, and she only a young half-demon? Or will Tain bring about the end of the world?

This was an interesting book. I had read one of the other books in the series last year, and was rather disappointed to miss the intervening books. But this book more than made up for it. At the beginning of the book, Tain may have been rescued from insanity, but you certainly wouldn't know it from the way he acts! Or thinks, for that matter. He can't trust anyone, saving perhaps his brothers, and is afraid of intimacy with a woman because of what Kehksut put him through. But over the course of the story, he manages to find intimacy with Samantha, and even love with the woman who brought him out of insanity.

Sam is the other side of the coin, someone who thinks she is just a normal human, but learns differently from Tain. This is quite a shock to her, as she has never been told that she is a demon, either by her mother, or anyone else. And yet, faced with a truth she finds extremely unpalatable, she manages to find a way to accept and live with the knowledge. Not only that, but she becomes head of a demon clan that she didn't even want to belong to, accepting the responsibility of the position as well as the power that comes with it.

Of course, it helps that they have each other, and even before they become lovers, they both cannot help but think of, and remember, each other. But for every obstacle they overcome, more arise, such as Tain being told by his mother that his fate was foretold from since before he was even concieved. Naturally, he is hurt by the revelation. He would rather, we later find out, have chosen such a fate himself, which he would have done to spare his brothers.

Despite the obstacles in the story, both Tain and Samantha have our admiration for the way they meet their problems head-on, without flinching or whining. That, and their obvious love and affection for each other, is what makes this book such a wonderful read. I enjoyed it a lot, and it made me want to read the books in the series that I missed.