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.
17
The door closed automatically behind them, leaving them in front of a large window that provided a view into the isolation area beyond: Daisy lay strapped down in a white hospital bed. She'd been given a bath, her hair appearing clean and dry, but she was clearly not doing well.
As Holly watched, the other woman wrenched up off the bed and twisted hard enough that she'd have broken bones if she hadn't been strapped down. Holly continued to feel a tearing sympathy for the abused vampire, but even she could tell that the twisting wasn't simply the scrabbling panic of a woman who'd been made helpless in a strange place.
Her teeth were bared to reveal small fangs just a little bigger than Holly's, inhuman growls and grunts erupting from her throat and filling the observation chamber when Venom pushed a button to the side of the window.
"It's like she's possessed." Nausea churning inside her, Holly stepped closer to the window. "She doesn't look like the scared but sane woman we saved." Daisy's face was viciously contorted, her eyes swirls of rampant madness.
Was this what lay in Holly's future?
A healer entered the observation chamber even as the chilling thought iced Holly's blood. "She has no indications of disease," he said in that gentle healer way, the wings that arced behind his shoulders to nearly touch the floor a rich cream interspersed with feathers of sparrow brown. "We're keeping her inside because it's the easiest way to control her--and keep her safe--if she finds the strength to break those straps. The entire floor can be locked down with the flick of a switch."
"Is that a possibility?" Venom asked as Holly pressed her hand to the glass in a vain effort to calm Daisy.
The healer sighed. "She's emaciated and even the blood you fed her shouldn't have done much more than ease her hunger. It shouldn't have given her any kind of strength. But as you can see . . ." A wave toward the wrenching, twisting woman on the bed. "Yet her madness doesn't feel like bloodlust to healer senses. We'll need to monitor her longer to have any hope of working out the demons that hold her captive."
Holly's fingers clenched around Venom's palm. "I need to go in there," she said, the healer's words just a background buzz by the end.
Venom didn't stop her when she released his hand and walked to open the inner door, but she was aware of his prowling presence at her back, ready to intercede should Daisy break her bonds. Her heart pounded, her skin hot, the mad whisper silent in her head. She turned the knob, stepped inside.
Daisy stopped twisting. Her head snapped toward Holly.
And the thing inside Holly, it spread its jagged wings with so much force that she slammed back into Venom, her hands reaching back to claw into his thighs. Panic gripped her throat in a brutal hold, cutting off her air as the otherness tried to shove out through her skin. In the hospital bed, Daisy fought her straps to strain toward Holly, her eyes pleading and red-rimmed with insanity at the same time.
Venom's arms came around Holly, bands of heated metal that shoved her back into herself, crushing the strange, serrated wings that scraped at her insides. One of his hands closed over her shoulder, his arm across her body, and then his lips were at her ear. "Fight." It was an order.
Holly wanted to tell him she wasn't exactly hula dancing right now, but she was trying too hard not to come apart at the seams. When her head dipped, when her fangs shoved against her lips, water lining her tongue, she didn't even think about it. She sank her teeth into Venom's upper forearm.
It wasn't a good place for blood, but the taste was enough.
Power punched through her, a power so deadly and arrogant that it immediately cleared her head.
Releasing him, she breathed harsh, deep breaths, her eyes locked with Daisy's. The other woman's cracked lips parted, the whites of her irises suddenly awash in crimson. "It's calling to you," she said in a guttural tone. "It wants to be together." Her back arched in a spinal curve so brutal that Holly reached out a hand, wanting to push her down before she broke her back.
And a . . . what-the-fuck exploded out of Daisy, moving so fast that not even Venom's speed could save Holly. It slammed straight into her chest and burrowed in.
*
Venom swore as Holly crumpled in his arms, her body suddenly dead weight. Scooping her up, he backed out while yelling for the healer. The wide-eyed angel was beside them in a heartbeat. The man put his fingers to Holly's throat, checked her pulse, listened to her breathing. "She's alive," he said definitively.
Venom went to tear open Holly's black shirt to expose the wound . . . but there wasn't a mark on her clothing. No burn. No tear. No bloodstain. He unbuttoned her shirt regardless, but there wasn't a mark on the smooth cream of her skin, either. But he hadn't imagined it. A substance or an entity had come out of the vampire on the bed and punched itself into Holly.
Yet Holly's skin was warm and smooth under his fingers, her chest rising and falling in a shallow rhythm. "Explain this."
The healer shook his head, his thin woven braids falling around his face as he examined Holly. "I can't."
Laying Holly on the carpeted floor of the observation chamber with conscious gentleness, Venom walked back into the much more medically spartan isolation room and toward the motionless body of the vampire they'd rescued.
Daisy wasn't moving, wasn't breathing, her head having flopped to one side. Dark strands of hair obscured her face. When he got close enough to move that hair aside with care to ensure she didn't sink her fangs into his wrist, he spotted a trickle of blood coming out of her nose. More blood dripped out of the corner of her mouth.
The scarlet stain on the white sheet below her was already significant.
It was often difficult to tell if a vampire was dead. They were almost-immortals, after all. Usually, the only way to be sure was to cut off a vampire's head or take out the heart. Though Venom could easily survive heart loss, as could the other vampires in the Seven. He was also near-certain that Dmitri was strong enough now that separating his head from his body would take the strength of an archangel.
As Venom had told Holly, Dmitri had been a warrior through time--add his potent raw power to that, and the structural foundations of his body might as well be formed of iron at this point.
"Venom." A senior healer's voice. "Let me through."
Venom stepped aside for the diminutive angel with wings of dark gray spotted with white. "Check her heart."
The healer--Nisia--already had her small, narrow hands on Daisy's chest. "The heart's gone, exploded inside her chest cavity from what I can tell." She frowned, as if peering deep within the sickly thin vampire's body. "Her other organs are also liquid." She indicated the slight swelling of Daisy's belly as fluid built insid
e the body cavity. "The poor tormented child is dead."
"She won't heal?"
"No. She was too weak to ride out the damage--especially with the loss of her heart."
Venom glanced back to make sure Holly wasn't alone. Seeing that the other healer was still kneeling beside her, his hands gentle on her as he continued to check her for injuries, Venom focused his attention on Daisy. "Something came out of her and went into Holly."
"I cannot sense an answer," Nisia said. "But Illium suggested we monitor this room in new ways." She waved vaguely toward the corners of the room.
Venom looked up.
Cameras.
"Do an autopsy," he ordered, making an effort to keep his tone respectful. Nisia was a trusted member of the Tower team and one who'd earned Venom's respect in the brutal aftermath of the Falling. "Don't remove her from isolation. We'll destroy her body here if need be."
The healer's soft brown gaze went to Holly. "That child should be in isolation, too."
Venom thought of how Holly had known where Daisy was being kept, of how she'd felt the compulsion to go inside the isolation chamber, and shook his head. "It's done now. Holly's not going to infect anyone." She'd been the target.
And he'd allowed her to walk in, believing he could protect her from all possible threats. Cold fury in his blood, directed at his own arrogance.
"No," Nisia murmured, her eyes still on Holly. "Whatever this is, it is not, I think, about anything as simple as disease."
Stepping out into the observation chamber to find that the healer had buttoned Holly's shirt back up, Venom bent down to scoop her up into his arms. She was so small. Sometimes, he forgot that. He'd forgotten it when he threw her down the hall--when she was awake and aware, all he saw was the wild, inhuman energy of her. An energy that was the closest to his own that he'd ever glimpsed.
There is no one like me. But Andi sees inside me, and knows me, and we have secrets together. And one day, we'll have cubs who'll be half like me.
Naasir's joy at his mating had made absolute sense to Venom, though he wasn't sure his friend and fellow member of the Seven had understood how deeply the words resonated. To the world, Venom was a vampire. And there were millions of vampires. But he was the only one with the eyes of a viper and the deeper, less visible changes that shoved him far outside that well-defined box.