Archangel's Viper

  Two angels stood not fifty feet in the distance.

  Venom decided to wait. From what he'd seen so far, this turret was off-limits to any and all. The angels' job was to ensure that no one breached the house and got to the crib above. Michaela had also left a huge warning sign with that bronze lattice. Given her reputation for creative and cruel punishments, he didn't think her people would be disregarding her orders.

  Not so long as Venom didn't give them a reason to check the turret.

  The problem was keeping Holly unconscious long enough to distance her from the unbeing in the crib. Venom hadn't forgotten the wings that blazed in her chest in Central Park, but that had been fleeting. The power hadn't attempted a total takeover until it was within touching distance of the receptacle. And it was only inside the stronghold that the memories had begun to merge with Holly's own mind.

  An hour of screaming patience later, her eyes began to flutter open.

  "I'm sorry," he whispered again, and choked her out of consciousness.

  Tears clogged his throat, threatened to roll down his cheeks for the first time in over three centuries.

  30

  A minute afterward, bile yet burning his throat, he looked out into the hallway. The two sentries had disappeared. He dared stick out his head to check that the entire mezzanine was clear. Yes. He realized the angels must've decided to stretch their wings by flying down.

  But they'd be back soon.

  He threw Holly over his shoulder, wincing at the damage he was doing to her already wounded abdomen, and pulled the door shut behind himself. He'd used the wait to fix it from the inside so that it would lock behind him, but he checked to make sure. Then he made his way in quick silence to where they'd entered the stronghold.

  The area was still empty and the window was still open.

  After placing Holly against a wall, he slid off his pack, removed his hook and rope, then anchored the hook as strongly as possible. They'd already left a few marks. Others were unavoidable, but hopefully, no one looked too carefully at this window ledge at the end of a distant hallway.

  Climbing down with Holly wasn't going to be easy, but he finally decided on moving his pack to the front and tying her to his back with an extra rope. It wouldn't be the most comfortable position for her and she'd probably wake with one hell of a backache, but she'd be alive. Pack and Holly in position, he waited for a time when there were no wings in the sky close enough to spot him.

  Ten excruciating minutes passed before the sky was clear.

  Venom swung out the window.

  With the weight on him, the rope tore at his palms. He barely felt it. His Making had hardened him to many other types of pain. When you were tied down, then had angry vipers and cobras thrown onto your body, their fangs sinking poison into your unguarded flesh over and over again until agony and horror were all you knew . . . Well, there weren't many nightmares that could terrify Venom and little pain that even came close to destabilizing.

  He moved with preternatural speed.

  His feet landed on the grass without an alarm being shouted. Untying Holly and placing her on the grass, he swung his backpack into the correct position before flicking the rope in a hard ripple designed to dislodge the hook.

  It held.

  He tried again, the motion one he'd practiced and practiced and practiced again over the centuries. The stupid thing didn't budge.

  Venom took a deep breath, reached for the ice coldness of the creatures who'd marked him, and flicked again.

  The rope slithered down, the hook falling.

  Catching it, he wound up the rope and hooked it onto his backpack, careful to do so in a way that wouldn't hurt Holly when he threw her over his shoulder. Which he did the next minute. She groaned partway through his run through the orchard but he didn't stop. And when he ran into a guard, he mesmerized the vampire without thought, giving the male much the same instruction Holly had the other guard: You saw nothing but a cat. There were no intruders.

  He was gone a heartbeat later, lost in the darkness. He made it to the treeline using viper speed, timing his bursts of movement to avoid sweeps by the angels flying overhead. He didn't stop even once under the tree canopy. Though he usually only used his speed in sporadic bursts, tonight he ran full tilt for as long as his body could bear it.

  It wasn't an endless period. He was only three hundred and fifty or so years old and yet growing into his power. When he finally came to a standstill and looked back, he could see the stronghold, but it was a toy castle now, the distance he'd put between the unbeing in the crib and Holly a significant one.

  "Venom."

  Releasing Holly from over his shoulder at that sluggish sound, he sat her down with her back to a tree and cupped her face in his hands. "Talk to me, kitty." It came out a plea.

  She lifted her hand to weakly close over his wrist. "Where . . ." Her voice was a rasp.

  "Wait." Shrugging off his pack, he took out a bottle of water, helped her wet her throat. "Is that better?"

  A faint nod, her head turning in the direction of the stronghold. "I can still feel it." Her chest glowed.

  "Can you fight?"

  A taut moment before she nodded. "Yes. He's not in my head as much." Another breath that sounded too rough, not quite right, the damage to her throat obvious.

  Cold deep inside in a way that had nothing to do with his Making, Venom stroked tendrils of hair off her face. "We need to check your chest and stomach." He'd known he was hurting her further by carrying her over his shoulder, but it had been the only way to get her to safety.

  Holly didn't fight him when he unzipped her jacket and gently pulled up the black top she wore underneath. The only mercy was that the blood hadn't dried, so he wasn't ripping the fabric off her. He didn't need a flashlight to see the damage--her chest glowed acid green, illuminating her skin.

  Cracks spread out across that skin.

  Her heart was the epicenter of the bloody quake.

  Venom's fangs shoved against his lower lip, not because of the scent of her blood--though Holly did smell very good--but because seeing her hurt, in pain, it did things to him he hadn't permitted anyone to do for centuries. She was fragile, Holly.

  Venom didn't hang around fragile people.

  He lifted his wrist to her mouth. "Drink."

  Her eyes met his, the pain in them searing. "I've taken blood from you more than once already." A scowl that made her seem herself again. "You can't be weak if we're going to survive."

  Venom chuckled, the knots of his muscles easing slightly. "It'd take more than a couple of bites from you to weaken me."

  When she continued to hesitate, the stubborn line to her jaw one with which he was intimately familiar, he reached into his pack and pulled out a bottle of blood in an insulated carrier. "Courtesy of Ashwini. She said I might need it." Elena's hunter friend--and Janvier's wife--had what Venom's mother would've called "the third eye," so Venom hadn't fought the extra weight created by the two insulated bottles.

  "Drink it first," Holly ordered, her breathing uneven. "I'd rather . . . I don't like drinking like that."

  Not about to waste time arguing when she was hurting, Venom screwed the top off the bottle and began to gulp it down . . . only to rip it from his mouth with a curl of his lip. "It's flavored."

  Holly's lips curved, a spark in her eyes. "What flavor?"

  He brought the hideous thing back to his lips, took a sip. "Spiced." And, he grudgingly accepted, the taste wasn't so bad. He drank more. And thought of home. Of the warmth of the inn's large kitchen as his mother threw cinnamon and cloves and cardamom into the pot during Diwali. The Festival of Lights, full of color and joy and the sweetest of scents, had always been his favorite time of the year.

  Holly reached out to clasp her hand over his, her grip weak but steadfast. "What is it?"

  Venom didn't talk about his past. It was long buried and turned to dust. But at that moment, with the spices lingering on his tongue and the memories uncurlin
g with warm stealth inside him, he couldn't stay silent. "Home," he whispered. "This blood reminds me of home." His smile was a thing formed of equal parts sadness and happiness. "Long ago."

  "Let me taste."

  He didn't give her the bottle. Leaning forward, he pressed his lips to hers. Her free hand coming up to lie against his cheek, she accepted his gentle kiss and when they drew apart, her eyes were wet. "You miss it."

  "Yes. Sometimes." New York was his home now. It was where his family lived--the Seven, Raphael, Janvier, even a few of the younger idiots, but part of him would always be that boy who'd come to adulthood in an inn on the Silk Road. The hot air, the sound of voices raised in conversation in a thousand distinct dialects and languages, the color and chaotic wildness of it, the piercing starlight so far out from the smoke and dust of a large city, the memories would live in him forever.

  "Can you go back?"

  Holly had no idea what she was asking. He shook his head. "Not home. I can't go home."

  Her fingers tightened on his.

  "But I can go to India," he said, brushing back her hair again. "Neha likes me. She calls me and Janvier her Charm and Guile. We have never figured out which one of us is which."

  "I've always wanted to go to India," Holly said on another shaky breath. "And to China. My great-grandparents came from a place called Xi'an."

  "We'll go." With that promise, Venom brushed his fingers down her bruised throat. "I'm sorry."

  Catching his hand, she pressed a kiss of unexpected sweetness to his palm. "I'm not. Thank you for helping me stay Holly. Now drink."

  Venom finished off the bottle of blood that held some magic that had made him speak of the past--and thought deliberately of the future he wanted, the future he'd fight to the death to win. "On our trip to India," he said, "we'll ride a motorcycle through the streets of Delhi, dodging bullocks pulling carts, and spindly rickshaws, and pretentious vampires in town cars, and we'll surprise Neha with you. We'll just have to be careful she doesn't try to keep you."

  Holly's fangs sank into his wrist when he held it up. She cradled that wrist as if it was a precious thing that could be hurt. So strange, was Holly. She made his heart hurt in ways that he'd have thought were impossible. But as she drank, he saw the cracks in her body begin to heal inch by inch.

  She drank more than she normally would, and when she flicked her tongue over the wound to help it heal, she did so with utmost gentleness. He smiled. "Careful, kitty. You start being nice to me and I'll begin to think you like me."

  "I'll consider it, Viper Face."

  Grinning, because she was back, he rose and held out a hand. "Can you move?"

  She accepted his help and slowly got up, then flexed as slowly. "Yes," she said at last. "I feel bruised and the flesh on my chest and abdomen is new and fragile, but I'm not weak. I'll just have to be careful not to tear open the wounds."

  He'd been going through the pack as she spoke. "Here," he said, having found the long-sleeved black T-shirt she'd brought along as a change. "We need to clean the blood off you, too."

  Taking off her jacket, she stripped off her bloody top. Then she used water from a nearly empty bottle to sponge off the dried blood. "Am I clean?"

  Venom looked at her small, sleek, perfect form. And wanted to bite her in ways that had nothing to do with survival. "Turn around."

  When she did, he nodded. "Blood's gone." Droplets would've sunk into the waistband of her jeans, but that wasn't something they could deal with right now.

  "How much got onto your jacket?" he asked after she'd pulled on the clean tee.

  It turned out that the inner lining of her jacket was waterproof, and they were able to wipe it clean using the already damp top. Close as they were, the scent of her curled around him like the kitten he called her. He wanted to tumble her into his arms and explore her, find out if the passionate, fascinated, protective pull he felt toward her had become that most precious of things: home.

  But first, he had to get her to safety.

  Taking the bloody top they'd used as a rag, he said, "I'll be back in five. Anything dangerous appears, poison it with those baby fangs."

  The sound of her snarl stayed with him as he faded into the trees, his destination the waterway he'd glimpsed not long before he'd stopped. There. A small stream tumbling over rocks. The large gray wolf standing on the other side was no surprise, not in this region. Its eyes gleamed at Venom as Venom washed out the top; it'd get rid of the concentrated smell of wet iron. Vampires had good noses, but they weren't bloodhounds. This should keep a vampire from using their scent trail to mount a pursuit.

  It'd have been a different case if Michaela had one of the hunter-born in her employ, but the former Queen of Constantinople and current Archangel of Budapest had a strange blind spot when it came to hunters. She used the services of the Guild and, according to the hunters Venom knew, she treated the hunters in her territory with courtesy. However, she didn't have any deeper connection with the Guild.

  Then again, neither had the Tower until Raphael fell in love with a mortal hunter and the world turned upside down. Most mortals, even the strongest, stayed away from immortals. It was good for their health.

  "Good hunting, my friend," Venom said to the wolf across the way, the one who'd stayed in place but had made no aggressive moves--like recognized like, and the wolf knew Venom wasn't prey.

  He was on his way back to Holly seconds later. He found her sitting with the backpack, her jacket on but open; the green glow continued to pulse. She hadn't taken out her pack from inside his, probably well aware she'd need all her strength just to move, but she appeared to be repacking. "I organized it so the stuff we might need first is at the top," she said without looking up.

  Venom knew he was silent when he moved. "How did you know I was here?"

  A shrug. "I could feel you."

  Unconcerned about that when he'd normally be otherwise, he walked over and hunkered down to look into the pack. "Why did you put that bottle of blood near the top?" It was the unopened one. "I already drank one."

  "I don't think it'll stay cold and good for longer than maybe till morning, so you should have it then." A wicked smile up at him. "Wonder what flavor it is?"

  "I'm never accepting gifts from Ashwini again," Venom muttered, but of course it was a lie. He'd take anything the seer gave him. No one called her that, but they all knew it was what she was. Ash saw things that hadn't yet happened, and if she liked you enough to offer you a helping hand, you'd be an imbecile not to take it.

  Of course, Ashwini's motives weren't always linear. "Has she ever told you anything?" he asked Holly as he put her damp--but clean of blood--top into a plastic bag that he then stuffed into a front pocket of the pack.

  A long pause before Holly nodded. "You sure you want to know? It might make you question the nature of fate and destiny and free will."

  Venom was immediately intrigued. "Tell me."

  31

  "One day," Holly began, "after we'd sparred on the lawn at her and Janvier's place, and I was sitting on the grass, looking down at the Hudson and feeling sad for the life I'd never have, Ashwini sat down next to me and said, 'Holly.'"

  Wild green eyes met his. "I was still Sorrow then, but that day, she called me Holly very specifically. I didn't correct her because she had this tone in her voice that told me to be quiet and listen. And she said . . ."

  "I've already strangled you twice," Venom murmured with lethal silkiness, though he still wasn't all right with what he'd done to save her from the entity inside her. "They say the third time is the charm."

  Her laughter was reckless and fearless and he wanted to drink her in until that laughter was his own. "I was focused so hard on her," she said with a smile lingering on her lips. "My body was almost quivering to hear what she had to tell me--my future? My death? What? At last, Ash opened her mouth and said, 'Don't forget to learn Hindi.'"

  Venom blinked. "What?"

  "Uh-huh." Her shoulders shook. "I
'd have thought her completely mad, except that I'd been around Ash long enough to realize that when she says one of her weird things, you should listen. So I joined an online class." The last sentence was spoken in the language of Venom's homeland.

  Something huge spread out inside him, a wild joyful thing without a name. "Your accent could use a little work," he said in the same language.

  "And you can't speak Mandarin, so shut up."

  He replied in that language, saw her eyes widen. "I grew up on the Silk Road," he reminded her. "I also spent over a hundred years in Neha's court, and she has many courtiers who come from across the border." Not all spoke the same dialect as Holly; he'd had to learn multiple variations--as he'd had to learn the languages favored in other parts of India. "Naasir always says he doesn't like not knowing what secrets people are talking about. Neither do I."

  Holly's smile was a wide-open thing of utmost delight. "My grandma made me attend Mandarin school all through my childhood. I used to get so mad because I had to spend my Saturday mornings there instead of watching cartoons." She spoke the words in a melange of the three languages they shared. "But as I grew older, I was glad. I can speak to her in the language she used with her own mother. And it's something special, you know?"

  Venom understood. "Janvier speaks Hindi, as does Ashwini," he told her. "Most of the Seven have an excellent grasp of it, too. Part of it is they're just old enough to have had the time to learn multiple languages . . ."

  "But the rest is because they're your family," Holly said, raising her hand to brush her fingers over his cheek. "So, jaanuu, is it time to go? Also, did you know there's a wolf behind you?"

  "He's just curious about the other predators in his territory. Don't challenge him with eye contact, but also don't appear weak." Venom looked back to let the wolf know they were aware of it. "He wants to make sure we're only passing through."

  Venom pulled on the pack and got up.

  Accepting the hand he held out, Holly used it to haul herself up. "Is our safe house within a distance we can travel on foot?"

  "Yes. But we might not make it before dawn." Holly was weaker than she should be, even with his blood twining with her own. "We'll have to camp in the forest if there's any chance we might get caught out in the open."