Archangel's Viper

16

Holly’s mouth dried up, her tongue feeling too big for it.

Gulping more of the energy drink in sheer desperation, she said, “You’re not messing with me, are you?”

“No. She signed the contract as Daisy Scaldini.” Having already removed his sunglasses as per their agreement, he glanced at her out of eyes unique and stunning. “Did you meet her at some stage?”

“Not that I remember,” Holly said, “but what other explanation is—” Mouth bone-dry again, she saw what he undoubtedly already had. “Do you think she was in that warehouse with me and my friends? That Uram did to her what he did to me?” And some part of Holly had remembered her, enough to pluck her name out of thin air.

“It’s possible. Her fangs are smaller than is usual, but she doesn’t have eyes like yours and she can’t have the speed, or she’d have torn Kenasha to pieces by now.”

“Not if he made her weak from the start.” Holly’s nails cut into her palms as the rain thundered down again. “It sounds like he abused her from the get-go—she probably never had the chance to grow into her strength.”

Venom pulled onto the bridge. “Yes, and then there’s the fact her blood caused Kenasha’s feathers to rot. That’s in no way a normal reaction.”

“Jesus.” Holly shuddered in her seat. “That could have been me,” she said, horrified. “If it was a deviant like Kenasha who found me and not Elena and Raphael.”

“You gave me trouble from the first, kitty.” Venom’s power twined around her in a silken twist as he spoke. “Your relentless will is your greatest strength.”

The sinuous kiss of his power sliding across her, around her, it didn’t make her shiver. It felt normal; this was who Venom was, the increase in strength a part of his natural growth. As for the rest . . . “I just wish Daisy had had the same chance,” she said, her gut full of lead. “I wish I hadn’t forgotten her.”

“No one can fight an archangel determined to erase their memories,” Venom said with a cool pragmatism that was weirdly comforting. “If Daisy was there, he made you forget her for a reason.”

Mind clearing, Holly frowned. “Yes, why wipe her from my mind?” After all, he hadn’t touched the ugly memories of her friends’ torture and deaths.

“Right now, we can’t be certain she is connected to Uram. I’m going to tell the Tower to run her blood against yours, see what comes up.” After making the call, he said, “There’s no point in speculating until we get the results.”

Holly rubbed her face with one hand, then, gripping the energy drink bottle between her thighs, reached back to tighten her ponytail. “Damn it, if I have to say ‘you’re right’ again, the earth will crack open and spew forth banjo-playing three-headed demons.”

Venom’s laugh was open and startled and deeply masculine. The sound washed across her senses, sank into her skin, going deep, so deep. Breath a little shallow, she forced herself to take another gulp of the drink in an effort to find a distraction. “Marlin,” she said on a burst of inspiration. “Let’s go talk to Marlin and see if his attempt to hook a big fish got a response.”

Alas, for pudgy and bald Marlin, it appeared the fish had taken the bait. And gotten hungry when Marlin couldn’t produce the payoff. “Okay,” Holly said, staring down at the bloody, hacked-apart pieces of the vampire con artist and all-around slimy individual, “whoever is after me isn’t only serious, they’re deadly serious.”

Having crouched down to examine the butchered remains placed in a neat pile in the middle of Marlin’s living area, atop an unexpectedly tasteful Persian rug, Venom nodded. When strands of his hair slid forward, he pushed them back with an absent hand, his forearms flexing with casual power. She could see those forearms because he’d folded up his shirtsleeves to reveal skin she’d seen more than once already.

Today, however, the sight of that skin was doing strange things to her stomach.

“There’s little doubt now that the killings are connected.” He got up. “There hardly seems a point in checking the address of the third individual who tried to fool the buyer, but we should be thorough.”

He called a Tower cleanup and forensics team first, however, the two of them not leaving until the team had taken charge of the scene. As for Janvier and Ash’s snitches, they knew to scatter quick smart when someone of Venom’s lethal power came in the vicinity. Payment for their work would come directly from Ash or Janvier.

The third address was in a slightly nicer part of town—the graffiti was classier and there were even potted plants in a few windows, but the scene inside their target apartment was a repeat of Marlin’s. The only difference was that this time, the killer had piled the butchered pieces on top of the coffee table, the wooden floor below a mess of rust red streaks alongside larger coagulated pools of darker red.

This scene was also the oldest, the smell so putrid that even Venom stepped outside into the shared hallway to wait for the Tower team. “This isn’t anger—the cuts are too precise, the way the body parts are piled up too theatrical,” he said. “This is a message.”

“Try to swindle me and you’ll pay the price.” Folding her arms, Holly tried to stand a little closer to Venom so she could draw the scent of him into her nostrils—she needed it to wipe out the noxious stink from inside the apartment. “Someone doesn’t like having their time wasted.”

“And is strong enough to have killed the vampire inside—unlike Marlin Tucker, this vamp was big, muscled. I also saw no signs of drug use that would’ve slowed his responses.”

Holly scuffed her shoe on the floor. “I know I should focus on this psycho who’s put a bounty on me, but I can’t stop thinking about Daisy.” About what the other woman had suffered, the horror followed by abuse and cruelty. “Don’t let me near Kenasha unless you want him dead.”

Uram was out of her reach, but Kenasha was very much within it.

Venom ran her ponytail through his fingers. “For a woman with unicorn hair, you’re very bloodthirsty. I approve.”

Holly smiled grimly; she had the feeling he, too, was considering the value of Kenasha’s continued existence.

Dmitri looked them both up and down, a dark glint in his eyes that matched the night that had draped the city in black while they discovered two dead bodies, examined the locations, then waited for the Tower teams to arrive. The lights of Manhattan sparkled beyond the glass wall at Dmitri’s back, the city finally free of rain, though black clouds continued to obscure the stars.

It looked more like midnight than six in the evening.

Dmitri stood with his hands braced on top of his desk, his arm muscles bunched tight. “I put you in charge so you’d control her,” the leader of the Seven said to Venom.

Words shoved at Holly’s throat, but she bit her lip. Venom didn’t need her to fight his battles. As he proved right then.

“So you’d have patted Kenasha on the head and walked away after the piece of shit admitted to enslaving a half-drowned woman who didn’t have the strength to stop him?” A raised eyebrow.

Dmitri’s jaw clenched as he rose to his full height and folded his arms. “Keep the bastard out of my sight.” It was a dangerously quiet statement. “I’d be tempted to tear off his head and then Raphael will have to deal with angels who think I’m too powerful.”

“You are too powerful.” Venom smiled. “That’s why they’re all so scared of you.”

Dmitri’s responding smile was of a kind he never gave Holly—it was between friends, between equals. Yet she didn’t feel left out. Because her relationship with Dmitri was different. When he held out an arm, she went around and tucked herself under it. “I want to be in charge of finding out more about Daisy and what happened to her.”

Dmitri hugged her a little closer to the hard strength of his body. “You can’t lead yet, Holly. You haven’t earned the right.”

Again, because it was Dmitri who’d said those words, Holly could accept their truth. “Then give it to Venom and me together,” she said, her eyes connecting with those of viper green.

Dmitri looked at Venom. “You’re fine with handling this alongside the ongoing bounty situation?”

“Yes. Do you need me on security?”

His question reminded Holly that with Raphael gone, New York was vulnerable to an assault by another archangel.

It’s all about politics, Honor had told Holly. Successfully sacking the city that Raphael calls home and taking his Tower, his center of command, will have far more impact than an invasion of another part of the territory.

“Is there a risk that Charisemnon or another archangel will attack?” she asked, her mind overflowing with images of blood and death from the last battle, a battle that had forced a mass evacuation of Manhattan.

It was Dmitri who answered. “No. They’re all at the same meeting.”

“Wow.” Holly couldn’t imagine the entire Cadre in one place. “Even Lijuan? I read online that no one’s seen her for two years.”

“Zhou Lijuan is AWOL,” Dmitri confirmed.

That, Holly realized, was why the city was on high alert, why all the warrior angels and vampires had an edginess about them that wasn’t normal. If the Archangel of China wanted to take New York, now was the best possible time. Its citizens, mortal and immortal, would all fight to the very end, but Zhou Lijuan was one of the Cadre—and only an archangel could kill or defeat another archangel.

“Clear up this situation with Holly as fast as you can,” Dmitri told Venom. “We don’t need groups of bounty hunters thinking they can come after a woman under the Tower’s protection.”

He pressed a kiss to the top of Holly’s hair before releasing her. “As for Kenasha—he’s always been a lazy waste of space, but your report on the condition of his wings concerns me. We need to make sure the vampire you rescued isn’t a carrier of disease.”

“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Venom promised. “Let’s go, kitty.”

“I’d be delighted, Viper Face.”

Lips curving slightly, he slipped on his sunglasses as they left Dmitri’s office. “Daisy’s our first stop.”

“Why are you wearing your sunglasses in the Tower?”

“Because we’re going to the infirmary level and the junior healers there don’t often come into contact with me.” His fingers brushed her lower back. “I try not to scare baby healers.”

Her hand still itched to rip them off his face. “Do you think the healers will have a result on Daisy’s bloodwork by now?”

“They haven’t messaged me to say so, but that might be because they know I’m in the Tower and are expecting me to drop by.”

The two of them stepped into the elevator side by side, rode down in silence. Every hair on Holly’s body prickled, her skin suddenly acutely sensitive to Venom’s presence. His face was pristine in profile, his skin glowing with health even under the artificial light. She wanted to touch it, rub her cheek against his like the kitten he called her.

Viper Face, Viper Face, Viper Face, she repeated mentally to snap herself out of the startling desire. Yes, he’s pretty. But he’s also lethal, and I might yet become his prey if he discovers the mad, whispering voice inside me.

Thank God the elevator doors were opening. Because the cold reminder to her psyche wasn’t exactly working to calm the electric response of her body. Stepping out in front of him, she began to stride her way to the end of the corridor.

“Hollyberry, where are you going?”

She threw him a frowning look over her shoulder. “Daisy’s in the isolation ward at the end.” The Tower had built that ward after the Falling.

“How do you know?” Venom angled his head to the side in a way that wasn’t human.

Holly parted her lips to reply . . . and had no answer. “Where else would they put her?” she said through a suddenly parched throat, her heart pounding.

“But you’re not guessing, are you? You know.”

“I can feel her,” Holly admitted, realizing it was pointless to try to hide her reaction if she wanted to get to the bottom of the connection between her and the emaciated vampire.

“Smell? Sound? How?”

Shaking her head, Holly lifted a hand to a point between her heart and her stomach. Fisting it, she bumped that spot. “Here. I feel her here—like she’s calling to me.”

“I go first.” Venom’s face was hard. “If there is something wrong with her, you’re the more vulnerable.”

Holly didn’t even think about what she was doing—it wasn’t a conscious decision at all. It was driven by the thing inside her. She pivoted on her foot and she ran. She had to get to Daisy first. Had to—

A strong arm around her waist, lifting her off her feet. Then Venom threw her harder than Ashwini or Janvier or Dmitri ever would. Hard enough that she flew back down the corridor . . . and connected with a wall in a liquid slide. None of her bones broke, nothing bruised, her body ending up in a crouch on the carpet in a way that had her blinking as she snapped back into control.

“What just happened?” she whispered half to herself, half to the man who was watching her from the other end of the corridor.

His fangs flashed. “Don’t try that again or I’ll really throw you.”

Holly rose to her feet, and it felt as if she was melting her bones back into place. “This is seriously weird. Why am I not in pieces?” She moved gingerly toward Venom, afraid she’d imagined the whole thing.

“You trusted your instincts.” Turning his back to her, Venom began to stride toward the isolation chamber.

Deep as Holly’s confusion was about what had just occurred—both her mad flight in Daisy’s direction and her subsequent liquid fall—she ran to catch up. But this time, she stopped a footstep to Venom’s left. She had no desire to be thrown again when she didn’t know how she’d saved herself the first time.

Not sure the thing inside her would behave, however, she took Venom’s hand.

He didn’t question why she was reaching out to him voluntarily, just wrapped his fingers firmly around hers. Warm and strong, his hand held a power that told her she wouldn’t be breaking free; for once, Holly was glad of a leash. Losing her mind and acting erratically because of the whispering otherness inside her wasn’t exactly high on her to-do list. “How did you know I’d make it?”

A shrug. “I didn’t. But you wouldn’t have died.”

Holly punched him on the arm. “Asshole.” But she was more astonished than angry—because Venom, of all people, was the only individual who never treated her as broken. He expected her to take care of herself.

Showing no reaction to her hit, his body undoubtedly sleekly muscled, Venom squeezed her hand. And because he’d thrown her down the hallway, expecting her to survive it—because he believed she had the capability to do so—she didn’t fight the connection. The palm-to-palm touch felt peculiarly intimate, the essence of him pulsing through his veins and speaking to a craving inside her.

It wasn’t vampiric hunger. Deeper than that.

Then he was opening the door to the outer unit of the isolation chamber by punching in a code on the electronic keypad and they were walking through.