Archangel's Viper

  Closing her hand over his wrist, his skin warm under her touch and his power curling around her so tightly that she felt it as a stroke across her skin, she tugged off his grip. "I appreciate the information--and the warning." He'd given her a tool to understand a little of the craziness around her, and she was grateful, but she couldn't have him touching her.

  Not when her entire body seemed primed to respond.

  His lips curved in a smile she couldn't read. Then, sliding the sunglasses back on, he slipped out of the shadows and up the steps of their target building. Holly followed, the two of them pausing by the front door.

  Venom's body went inhumanly motionless. "It's too quiet."

  Looking around, Holly saw no obvious signs of trouble. "They might just be crashed out after drugging themselves with honey feeds."

  "You sound very sure."

  "When you're in a situation like this"--she indicated the dirty, graffitied environment, a blunt illustration that these vamps weren't exactly living the dream--"escape, even illusionary escape, has a powerful draw."

  Venom pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head, the slitted green of his eyes smashing into hers. "Have you fed from a drug addict?"

  "No," Holly said flatly, not adding that, in the darkest depths of pain and despair, she'd thought about it, about the sweet oblivion of just letting go. It was the idea of the state she'd be in afterward--weak and vulnerable and unable to protect herself--that had stopped her.

  Then there was the whole sucking-blood-from-a-living-being thing, which continued to turn her stomach.

  So yeah, no thanks--but not for the best reasons.

  "We going in or what?" she said when Venom continued to look at her with disturbing intensity, as if he saw her most terrible secrets.

  Slipping his sunglasses back down over his eyes, he put his hand on the doorknob and turned. It offered no resistance and they slipped inside, shutting the door behind themselves.

  The air that hung heavy inside the hallway leading to the chipped paint of the internal staircase was foul with the smell of unwashed bodies, urine . . . and more. "Old blood," Holly whispered in a harsh undertone, her gut twisting and lurching as images of mutilated and decapitated bodies piled in a red-streaked pyramid, while a mad archangel drank from a wineglass filled with the blood he'd drained from a living victim, shoved into her brain.

  Fingers touching her neck, gripping painfully tight when she would've slashed out in a panic. "Focus, kitty."

  The two words acted like a bucket of cold water thrown into her face. She froze, found her center as Honor had taught her, then breathed shallowly through her mouth. "Sorry." Heat flooded her cheeks.

  Releasing her, Venom said, "The smell would turn anyone's stomach, much less that of a woman who was found coated in her own dried blood."

  Holly scowled, though his matter-of-fact judgment made her feel a little less like a child confronted by a nightmare come to life. But, because she had reacted like that child, she moved on ahead of him.

  Do not act stupid because you're scared and want to hide it. Do that and I'll kick your ass black and blue for a week running.

  Ashwini's voice in her head.

  And if you ever act like a horror movie dumb chick, I'll personally lobotomize you.

  Holly's lips tugged up a fraction, her hunched shoulders straightening. She made sure she was cautious and alert, and not in any way driven by fear as she moved on down the hallway. Reaching the bottom of the steps that led up to the second floor, she stopped and glanced back at Venom, fighting an inexplicable urge from within that told her to climb, go higher.

  "Up or down?" His sense of smell was more acute than hers; it made sense to ask rather than relying on her own strange compulsion.

  He looked up along the line of the stairs, the damp, dark strands of his hair sliding back. "The old-blood smell is strongest up there." Scanning the lower floor and taking in the multiple doors on either side of the hallway, he said, "We clear these together."

  Holly didn't argue. Ash and Janvier had taught her that you never left your partner alone in an unknown situation. "We should lock the front door." It'd make it harder for anyone to sneak in behind them and launch a stealth attack.

  Removing the old-fashioned key from the lock afterward, she put it in her jeans pocket just as the bare lightbulb dangling from a wire in the ceiling flickered for a second. It had been on when they entered, and while its light was anemic, it was better than the storm gray gloom.

  As it settled again, throwing shadows into the corners, she watched Venom's back while he opened the first door. No sign of life, the room beyond empty of anything but a broken-down sofa with cigarette burns on the arms, the foam stuffing visible where the dirty fabric was torn.

  Holly took the next door; she was half expecting Venom to attempt to hijack the search, but he remained at her back, an alert, watchful presence while she looked inside and pronounced the room free of threats. He took the door after that, Holly the next, until they'd completed the entire first floor.

  All the internal walls were painted a teal blue shade that had been discolored by time and cigarette smoke to have a sickly yellowish edge. Several boasted holes probably caused by punches, while one had a large black stain. As if someone had thrown a jar full of ink at the wall.

  The majority of the rooms were furnished with either a ragged foldout couch or a dirty mattress. Clothes were scattered about on both couches and mattresses. Bedrooms of a sort, she realized. The last room proved to be a living area set up with three large couches that all sagged in the middle and faced a curved television screen that took up most of one wall.

  Unlike every other item in the place, the TV was clean and cutting-edge.

  A second later, she spotted the box that had held the TV. The lack of stains or cobwebs on it seemed to indicate the television was a recent purchase.

  Holly gripped Venom's arm when he would've stepped inside to examine the items on the glass-topped coffee table that sat between the sofas and the TV. "Needles," she said, pointing down.

  His lip curled. Taking off his sunglasses, he hooked them in the front of his shirt. "Someone's mother didn't teach them to keep a clean house."

  Holly blinked. Though she'd asked him about his family, she'd never really thought of Venom as a man who'd had a mother. And definitely not one who'd taught him how to maintain the cleanliness of a home.

  "Just be careful." Vampires weren't vulnerable to disease, but being stuck was still disgusting--and ever since the Falling, no one could be certain a needle hadn't been adulterated with some kind of virus or infection that could affect immortals.

  Holly probably shouldn't know that it was the Archangel Charisemnon who'd created the disease that had struck vampires and dropped angels from the sky, but it was hard to work in the Tower with high-level vamps and not pick up information. After what Venom had told her outside, she figured Charisemnon had gained a disease-causing gene in the Cascade.

  Not a gift she'd want, but she wasn't an archangel bent on power.

  "I'm guessing there're a lot of syringes lying around," she said. "The vamps shoot up the junkies right before a honey feed, so that the high is stronger, lasts longer. No one's in a state to care about the syringes afterward."

  Nodding, Venom walked to his original destination. He picked up something rectangular with squared edges, opened his hand to let it fall.

  "Whoa." Holly stared at the hundred-dollar bills floating from his hand, then took in the new TV again. "Vampires who live in this area don't have access to that kind of cash." Most were out of Contract and had used up the money they'd been given when that Contract was complete--but not found well-paying jobs in the aftermath.

  Venom rubbed a white powder between his fingers, brought it to his lips for a small taste. "Cocaine. From the amount of dust on this table, it's likely the source of the cash." Dusting off his hands, he said, "Let's go up. There's no threat here."

  Holly headed up the steps in f
ront of him, his presence a coldly silken danger at her back. She knew he could kill her as fast as a cobra strike--Venom might wear three-piece suits and look like he'd stepped out of a high-fashion magazine shoot, but he was a predator under the skin.

  Rotting blood. Old urine. Other, more noxious body fluids.

  Holly pressed a hand against her stomach as she tried not to breathe in the increasingly fetid odor. "They're up here . . . and they're probably dead, right?" The idea made her stomach lurch, the response primal.

  "Not necessarily. Our targets aren't human."

  Exhaling, Holly nodded. Vampires could survive significantly more blood loss than humans. They could even survive multiple-limb amputation in traumatic circumstances. She'd heard the limbs would eventually grow back--but for most vampires, that would take a long, long, long time. It wasn't as if they were angels, after all.

  For vampires like Dmitri and Venom, however, she had a feeling the timeline was shorter--a lot shorter. "Have you ever lost a limb?" she asked in an effort to distract herself from the smell.

  "Once," Venom answered easily as they took in the layout of this floor. "It was in battle--my left arm."

  "How long for it to regenerate?"

  "Three quarters of a year. I was a lot younger then."

  Three quarters of a year was still nothing in comparison to the vast majority of vampires. Holly knew a century-old vamp who'd lost his pinky in a bar fight when another brawler bit it off. A month after the incident and it was still a ragged stump.

  "I'll go first into these rooms," Venom said, his eyes glinting at her.

  Holly straightened her spine. "I don't need to be protected."

  "I'm stronger. If these vampires are drug maddened, I'd rather put them down quickly than watch you flail about."

  Holly gave him the finger. Asshole.

  Smile becoming deep, taking him from handsome to fucking handsome, the beautiful asshole turned and walked to the first doorway. Holly watched his back instead of giving in to her bizarre compulsion to enter that room. He didn't say anything about the room, though he spent thirty seconds standing in the doorway.

  He then quickly checked the other rooms.

  "Let's clear the third level," he said after he was done. "Then we can deal with the mess in the first room." He turned on a light in the hallway, as if there was no longer any reason for stealth.

  The hairs rose on the back of Holly's neck.

  12

  Holly had to consciously will herself away from the room on the second floor.

  The third floor was heavily graffitied and littered with spent bottles of liquor and more syringes, as well as--randomly--several bottles of milk that had gone off. But it was devoid of life--or bodies. "They lived like pigs," Holly said, walking around a pair of underpants crumpled on the floor. "Even my homeless friends live more tidily than this."

  "Some vampires find life outside a Contract challenging," Venom said. "They're indoctrinated to follow orders by their angels--having to make their own decisions leaves them floundering."

  Holly was startled. "You feel sorry for them?"

  "No," he said flatly. "I have no sympathy for those who'd rather be in gilded cages than scrabbling to make a living in freedom."

  "There are some who can't," Holly said softly, thinking of Zeph and his pockmarked face. "They're too broken by what was done to them."

  Venom's eyes remained unforgiving. "Unless it was a forced Making, those vampires chose to enter into a Contract in exchange for near-immortality. Choices have consequences."

  Much as Holly pitied the broken vampire, she couldn't argue with the truth of Venom's words. That truth was the same reason Guild Hunters could, without guilt, do their jobs in retrieving vamps fleeing their Contracts. Because every mortal in the world had witnessed over and over how cruel immortals could be. Any choice made to enter into that world as an adult with full use of your faculties was made with eyes wide open.

  "At least with a proper Contract," she muttered, "there's an end date. My sentence is open-ended."

  "Life is what you make it, kitty." Venom ran his fingers through and over the long tail of her hair. "Prove yourself to Dmitri and Raphael and you'll never have to worry about your freedom."

  Holly twisted her lips as she moved away from his touch. "You really think Raphael will allow a threat to live and thrive in his territory?"

  Fangs flashing as he smiled. "Do you really believe Dmitri isn't a threat?"

  "He wasn't tainted by Uram."

  "I was Made by Neha."

  When Holly just looked at him blankly, he said, "I forget, you aren't aware of the political currents in the archangelic world. Let's just say that Neha and Raphael are no longer friends as they once were. If she could, Neha would separate Raphael's head from his body and laugh while doing it."

  Yet Venom, who bore Neha's imprint in a way no one could miss, walked by Raphael's side.

  "Come," Venom said before she could respond, "we have business to attend to."

  Holly had to enter that room that reeked of old blood and other ugly things, had to see what lay within, but she had one more question to ask. "I know Raphael's too powerful to worry about you being a threat to him personally, but Dmitri and the others . . . Don't they worry that you might have a lingering loyalty to Neha?"

  "You call me a viper. Some believe I am one, a snake in the nest." Venom's voice became flat, his eyes cold. "But Dmitri and the others in the Seven? Janvier? Trace? No. The bonds between us--and with Raphael--were forged long ago and made unbreakable by countless acts of trust and fidelity."

  "I call you a viper because of your eyes and your general snakeyness, not because I think you're some kind of a great betrayer," Holly said with a scowl. "Stop calling me kitty and Hollyberry and I'll stop calling you Viper Face and Poison."

  His chuckle sent ripples down her spine, made her breath catch in a way that shocked. "But, kitty," he said, the ice no longer in evidence, "I don't think that's a bargain I want to make."

  Fascinated by how his eyes sparkled when he laughed, Holly had to grit her teeth to control her inexplicable reaction. A purely sexual response, she would've understood: Venom was darkly handsome and had a body even she couldn't deny was the stuff of female fantasies. But wanting to see him laugh, feeling that laugh wrap around her like a full-body kiss? It was just weird.

  With a stern reminder to herself that he'd kill her should she show the least indication of being a danger to the Tower, she headed down the stairs to the second floor, and, shoulders squared, turned to the room of old blood that drew her so strongly. Venom didn't stop her, but his prowling presence was suddenly very close. And she thought--He'll catch me if I fall.

  God, she really was losing it.

  Then there she was, in the doorway. At first, she had trouble figuring out what she was seeing in the darkness created by the drawn curtains, the only illumination coming from the hallway light at her back . . . and the small light over the pool table.

  The horror burned into her brain in Polaroid flashes.

  An arm, attached to nothing, bloody tendons trailing from it.

  Three heads lined up neatly on the pool table.

  A being without a head or legs propped up on its bloody torso by the fireplace, as if just waiting to lean forward and welcome them.

  Two left hands lying side by side on the dirty carpet.

  "Where are the rest of the pieces?" she said through the buzzing in her skull that wiped out all else.

  "Look right."

  She did, saw the pile in the shadows. Torsos. Arms. Legs. All piled up neatly, as if someone hadn't wanted to make a mess.

  Venom spoke, his voice soft. "This is your nightmare, isn't it, Hollyberry?"

  "Yes."

  Which was why she stepped inside the room of horrors and, swallowing her gorge, walked carefully to that pile. There were no hiding places in this room furnished only with old chairs and armchairs and that spotlit pool table turned into a macabre disp
lay, but she'd seen too much horror to lower her guard.

  She knew some monsters could walk right up to you and you'd never see them. Uram had been in full glamour when he'd taken Holly and her friends.

  They hadn't stood a chance.

  The only reason she didn't watch her back was that Venom was there. He'd execute her should she lose her mind to the vicious thing that lived in her, but until then, he'd protect her the same as he would any other partner.

  The closer she got to the pile of body parts, the more real it became and the more her mind wanted to scream.

  Bones poked out, shattered and gleaming white.

  A rope of intestines was looped neatly around a torso.

  Two right hands lay palm to palm, their fingers interwoven.

  "You sure Uram hasn't come back to life?" The question came out near soundless.

  "One of these heads," Venom said from where he stood by the pool table, "matches the ID photo Vivek was able to locate of the bounty hunter who sent that very well-doctored image of you. The other two match photos of known members of his crew."

  Deciding she'd faced her fear long enough, Holly stepped back from the pile of meat that had once been living beings and turned to Venom. "Cocaine, drug-dealer-type cash lying around, used syringes everywhere--it looks like the three weren't exactly upstanding citizens. All kinds of things could've come back to bite them on the ass." There was no way to know if this massacre was connected to the bounty on Holly's head. "A psychotic vamp, or even a hopped-up human junkie, could've done this if the three were blazed out of their minds on honey feeds."

  "Possible. We'll have a better idea when we track down the others who sent in false reports." Venom slipped his hands into the pockets of his suit pants. "I suppose I'd better call in a cleanup crew."

  "Tower rule is we have to call the cops unless it's an issue that requires Tower handling." Or one that dealt with angelic secrets. "I think general bad guys being chopped up is probably a cop call."

  "I'll bow to your greater knowledge on the topic," Venom said with no sign of mockery.

  It was as Holly was pulling out her phone to make the call that a faint gasp whispered into the air. Venom's eyes nictitated, his head jerking toward that pile of cold body parts. Holly's hearing wasn't sharp enough to have pinpointed the origin of the sound, but there was literally nowhere else in the entire room where someone--or something--could hide.