Archangel's Viper

9

She was moving a little but was still on the floor. Her eyes half opened at sensing him. A big yawn before she snuggled back down, her body soon going motionless in a way that told him she’d fallen back into deepest sleep.

He went and got dressed in a dark gray suit paired with a white shirt, then spent a couple of hours on the sofa in the living area going through security reports and other Tower data that Dmitri had forwarded him to bring him up to speed with current events. Regardless of any other calls on his time and attention, he was one of the Seven and he’d taken a blood vow to protect Raphael and his territory.

That vow was a thing of honor, not compulsion. Venom could walk away at any time. He chose not to do so, chose to lend his strength to the reign of an archangel he respected with every fiber of his being. As he respected Dmitri and the others in the Seven. He’d already updated himself on most of this data on the flight from the Refuge, but he wanted to ensure he’d absorbed every detail.

He also didn’t want to continue the search for those who were hunting Holly while she was asleep and unable to assist. Venom understood what it was to fight your demons—he wouldn’t steal her chance to conquer hers. His position on the sofa allowed him to keep an eye on her as she slept on.

He’d woken at nine in the morning. She was still fast asleep when he rose at noon to head back into his bedroom to grab his sunglasses. As he hooked them into the front vee of the shirt, he thought of how Holly had snatched them off his face. Most people were either fascinated by his eyes or repelled. Holly . . . the fascination was there, but there was also a sharp annoyance when he covered his eyes.

He was still thinking about that when he went back to the living area to see Holly sitting up with the blanket pooled around her. She looked a little confused in that soft “just woken” kind of way. Going to the bar to one side, he poured himself a glass of blood from the bottle in the underbar fridge. It wasn’t his favorite way to intake it—fresh from the vein was always better, but this was convenient.

He didn’t offer Holly any; she’d had more than enough to last her through today. Especially since she’d drunk from Venom. Sipping at the glass, he walked over toward her. She frowned and scrambled up onto her feet. Her hair fell around her, Holly having taken off her hair tie at some point. The strands were a slick waterfall of color-streaked black that reached past her waist.

Shoving them back, she glared at him. “What did you drug me with?”

“Your own spirit,” he said with an amused smile.

“Yeah, right.” She seemed to realize she was still holding on to the blanket, dropped it like it was a burning hot brand. “I slept on the floor. A stone floor.”

“A heated stone floor,” Venom supplied. “You’re the only other person who’s enjoyed it.” Curious about his tendency to sleep on the stone, the others of the Seven had all tried it at one point or another. None had lasted more than a few minutes. Not even Naasir. The most feral of the Seven had enjoyed the heat, but couldn’t understand Venom’s liking for the hard surface.

Scowling, Holly stepped forward and past him. “I’m going to my apartment.”

He didn’t stop her. Finishing off his lunch, he made his way to Dmitri’s office, the landscape beyond the Tower windows rain-washed dark gray. The other man wasn’t there, so Venom left him a note stating what he and Holly had discovered the previous night. His next stop was the technical core of the Tower. The man who was now the heartbeat of that core was someone Venom had only met in person yesterday, but he was very aware of Vivek Kapur’s skills.

All of the Seven had been briefed on the Guild Hunter turned Tower vampire.

It was relatively quiet when he walked in after a retinal scan to verify his identity, but the computers were humming and data scrolled through various screens. Strolling through the climate-controlled space, his sunglasses back on, Venom made his way to the very center—and the large circular control station that was Vivek Kapur’s personal subdomain. It had been custom-built to his specifications, and gave him access to multiple screens, several of which hung down from the ceiling on electronically controlled arms.

“Vivek.”

The other man swiveled around in a wheelchair that, Venom had been told, was as much a part of him as any of his limbs. Thin, with brown skin close to Venom’s shade, the hunter-born male had lost all feeling below the shoulders as a result of catastrophic damage to his spine while he’d still only been a child.

But today, he lifted a hand. “Venom.” A grin that was brilliant with life, his features handsome despite the lack of enough flesh on his bones. “Nice to meet you again.”

“Likewise.” Venom didn’t offer to shake the other man’s hand—vampirism had begun to have an impact on Vivek’s injuries far faster than anyone had expected, but the changes were unpredictable; the hunter had gained movement in both arms and his torso soon after his transition, but there’d been no further change in the months following.

That wasn’t why Venom didn’t touch the other man.

After a lifetime of not being able to feel anything below the shoulders, Vivek had become excruciatingly sensitive in the same newly awake region. Literally. His skin was a carpet of pain that could be triggered by the merest touch. The healers were of the opinion that it was simply an outcome of his nerves being shocked awake after years of somnolence—he’d just have to grit his teeth and bear it.

The only mercy was that it was solely touch from another living being that triggered the pain; Vivek could sit and sleep comfortably, work his instruments without problem. Venom wasn’t sure that was such a mercy, however: what must it be like to be deprived of the sensation of another’s hand on your body for most of your life, only for that touch to become a punishment?

“Quite an empire you’ve got.” He nodded at the work area, he and Vivek not having had much of a chance to talk yesterday when he dropped off the confiscated cell phone.

“I still miss my Guild station,” Vivek admitted. “I pretty much built that from the ground up, ordered every single piece myself, customized the software.”

“I built a house once,” Venom found himself saying. “I’m a bad carpenter, but I built that house. And I still miss it.” Mostly because of the people who’d lived in it, laughed in it, shared their bounty of rice and wild greens, lentils and handmade sweets.

Vivek nodded, the movement jerky, as if his body wasn’t quite used to its new range of motion. “Things we build ourselves, they matter.” He touched a screen, at the same time clicking the sensor that protruded beside his cheek, his wheelchair also designed to his specifications. “Sorry,” he said afterward. “I spotted a piece of information Jason might be interested in.”

Venom noted the glow in the other man’s eyes, had to hide a chuckle. According to Dmitri, Vivek Kapur had a crush on Raphael’s spymaster. Not a sexual crush. The crush of a man who loved having his fingers in every possible information pie—and Jason was the best at that there was. “Did you have a chance to dig into the e-mail address associated with the bounty?”

“Only for the past half hour—healers forced me offline for the rest of yesterday afternoon, and this morning, and I didn’t want to delegate since you asked me to take care of it personally.” A sour face as he began to work again. “They call it physical therapy and muscle recovery. I call it sadism.”

Venom could imagine the pain Vivek had to bear every session. “Does it make a difference if the therapists wear gloves?” He assumed there’d need to be physical contact during the sessions.

“We tried,” the other man responded with a scowl, “but then they can’t feel the movement of my muscles as they need to. So instead I swear like a hunter, and the therapists wear earplugs.” The last words were absent, Vivek’s focus on his work.

Venom prepared to leave. “Send me a message as soon as you have anything.”

“No. Wait.” The hunter’s eyes moved with rapid speed and Venom realized the other man was using software that read his eye movements, at the same time that he typed. “I’ve hacked the e-mail account. It’s received four e-mails in total, not counting the one you sent using the confiscated phone. One is from Mike, whose skull you rearranged. He e-mailed to say he and his guys were taking the job.”

“Professional of him.”

“He’s a regular CEO.” Vivek’s tone was bone-dry. “The other three e-mails are from different parties who purport to have successfully snatched Holly.”

He pulled up those three e-mails on the large screen in front of him. “Photos are doctored.”

Two were bad, but the third . . . “That one would fool me if I didn’t know her,” Venom said, pointing to the picture of a terrified woman hog-tied on a concrete floor. Holly’s eyes stared out of the screen.

Something dark and angry uncurled inside him.

“It’s a very clever piece of photo manipulation.” Vivek continued to work. “That’s all there is right now. No money transfers to follow because, I assume, the buyer either knows these are forgeries—or doesn’t know which e-mail to believe.”

He used a second screen to bring up the photo Venom had taken, of Holly slumped in the backseat of the SUV. “That might be why you didn’t get a response to your message, though I’m more inclined to believe your surveillance theory. Mike and his men aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, but they’ve got a better track record than any of these others—reason enough for the buyer to keep a hopeful eye on them.”

Venom saw that the last forged photo, the one that looked genuine, had only been sent fifteen hours earlier. After Mike and his crew struck out—and after Venom’s message. “You’re monitoring the bank accounts associated with the bounty hunter who sent that final e-mail?”

Nodding, Vivek said, “No movement at all.” A single account appeared on the screen that had originally held Venom’s photograph of Holly. “I’ll keep digging, in case he’s smart enough to have hidden accounts.”

“If this is what you can dig up in a half hour,” Venom said dryly, “I’m guessing you’ll have his entire life in sixty minutes.”

A sharp grin from the other man. “It’s a busy day, so maybe sixty-five would be a better estimate.”

“Forward me the details of everyone who e-mailed.” It’d give him and Holly a place to start interrogations as they attempted to track down the origin of the bounty. “And continue to monitor the e-mail address.”

“Done.”

Holly showered with a frown on her face. What the hell had happened to her last night? And why wasn’t she more mad about it? Probably because her body felt good. It was like she’d slept in the lushest, most comfortable bed on the planet rather than on a stone floor. And it wasn’t as if she was living in a hovel. This was the Tower. She only had a small room, not a sprawling suite like Venom, but most of the space she did have was taken up by a freaking huge bed.

That bed, an ornate extravaganza the size of a small continent, was courtesy of her parents. They’d wanted to give her a “moving in” present and what could she do but say yes? Mia had laughed her ass off over it until Holly had pointed out that a similar bed probably lay in her future, too.

The memory of her sister’s aghast expression made her grin.

Leaving the shower after a long, hot time, she dried off, then stepped out and stared at the bed that had put that look on her sister’s face. It was a white four-poster with a thick mattress and curtains tied to the posts. The posts were carved with love hearts, the headboard with a plump cherub pulling back his bow as he prepared to shoot an arrow at a whole bunch of hearts across from him.

“I have a giant princess bed drowning in hearts,” Holly said to herself, not for the first time.

Then she smiled, because her parents had been delighted when Holly accepted the gift. Daphne and Allan Chang had even bought Holly a set of ridiculously expensive Egyptian cotton sheets and an equally expensive goose down comforter. The bed was cozy and soft and warm . . . and the stupid stone floor had still been nicer.

“Argh!”

Making her way around the bed, she opened the walk-in closet and stepped inside to dress. She really liked that she could do that; it meant she didn’t have to pull down the blinds on the floor-to-ceiling window on one side of her room. There wasn’t much of a view, not this low down in the Tower, but on a sunny day, the light was beautiful.

Today, it was a moody, water-washed gray.

Dressed, Holly sat on her bed, shadows streaking across her skin as she pulled on her boots. The rain wasn’t heavy, more a constant mist, so she could still see beyond her window. In her direct line of sight was the building occupied by the Legion, the strange beings who’d descended on the city during Raphael’s battle with Lijuan.

Pale-eyed and pale-skinned, with wings like a bat’s, the Legion were the definition of eerie. Of course, who was she to judge? She wasn’t exactly Ms. Normal. And she loved what they’d done with their building, turning it into a living creation swathed in lush green.

Holly had thought more than once about walking over and asking if she could look inside. She’d never done so because the Legion were so other, and so clearly powerful as to be beyond her reach, but today, boots on and hair scraped into a ponytail, she felt the devil take her. Or maybe it was that she wasn’t quite ready to face what Venom had brought out of her the previous night.

Since the area between the Tower and the Legion building was archangelic territory no stranger could infiltrate, she didn’t bother to alert Venom as she exited the Tower.

She did however send him a message: Don’t go hunting without me. Fear of herself or not, she wasn’t about to be sidelined. She just needed a few extra minutes to find her balance.

Despite the constant misty rain that felt like a cool kiss on her skin, New York carried on unabated. Steam escaped from a grate, suited office workers heading out to lunch flowed toward the subway entrance in the distance, and the warm, yeasty scent emanating from a nearby pretzel cart drifted over to tantalize Holly’s taste buds.

The recently emancipated vampire with quick dark eyes and dark hair had been cheeky in setting up shop so near Raphael’s stronghold, but he’d quickly created a number of high-powered fans. She’d seen angels swooping down to grab a pretzel before flying back up.

Today, she diverted from her course to grab one for herself. No bounty hunter was going to try to kidnap her with an entire angelic squadron within earshot of a scream; hair damp and expressions committed, they were seated on railingless balconies relatively low down on the Tower. A blue-winged angel with eyes of extraordinary gold and black hair tipped in blue—Illium—hovered in front of them.

Post-combat-training discussion, Holly thought, having seen the same sight multiple times since she’d moved into the Tower. The latter fact made her parents so proud they dropped it “casually” into any conversation with even a faint bearing on the matter.

Oh, our Mia? She’s a doctor now. And our Holly works for the Tower. She took her brothers to visit her apartment—she has an apartment right in the Tower, did I forget to mention that?—and well, the two couldn’t stop talking about it.

“My first customer of the day!” The pretzel seller beamed at Holly when she stopped in front of his cart. “Had to start late today—trouble with my cart, wouldn’t you know it, but here you are before I even finish my setup.” His hands moved quickly to half wrap the pretzel in greaseproof paper. “You get a free pretzel for being a good omen.”

Holly accepted the gift with a grin, reminded of her dad. Allan Chang had been known to give his first customer of the day a fifty percent discount. “Ready for the post-training rush?” That entire angelic squadron would soon descend on him.

“It never ends, cutie.” A wink. “It never ends.”

Holly bit into the soft, chewy pretzel as she waved good-bye and continued on toward the Legion building. Stopping halfway, she gave her dad a call to touch base, exchanged comments with her gorgeous little brothers—who, at five foot eight and five foot nine, weren’t actually so little anymore—over their favorite social media platforms, then messaged her mom. Daphne Chang loved the text app on her phone.

Is your hair still a rainbow? was the reply.

Yes, Mom.

You have such lovely black hair, Holly. I just don’t understand you girls.

I love you, too.

Her mom sent back five rows of heart emojis.

Laughing, Holly pocketed her phone. She’d talk to Mia later in the day, as her sister had done a night shift for her first day on the job and was probably asleep right now.

She made it to the Legion building without being stopped, though she had no doubts the Legion were watching. They sat like gargoyles on buildings a lot of the time, silent and unmoving. People often forgot they were there until they opened their batlike wings and flew off.

“Hmm.” She stared at the bottom of the building. If it had once had doors, those doors had long ago been sealed up. The bottom three floors had no exits or entrances that she could see, and were covered in green from the plants crawling up and down and growing outward from the wall itself, as if the walls had somehow been turned into vertical patches of soil.

She took another bite of the pretzel as she considered her options. Before she could put her plan into action, however, her skin prickled. But when she looked around, no one was there.

So she looked up.