Archangel's Viper

  Like Naasir, he was and had always been alone among millions. Until Holly.

  "Come on, kitty." He cradled her higher against his chest. "You've said 'fuck you' to fate before. Do it again."

  But for once, Holly didn't give him lip. She was silent and unmoving in his arms as he took her upstairs to his apartment. Ignoring the comfortable bed in his bedroom, he went straight to the heated stone floor in front of the windows. Placing her on there, he went to find a blanket . . . and by the time he returned, she'd curled into a tight ball, one hand spread palm down against the stone.

  His entire chest expanded as he finally took a real breath.

  Shaking out the soft cashmere blanket over her, he made a note to thank Naasir. It was the most primal member of the Seven who'd suggested the stone floor.

  I make my lair outside the Refuge, because I like it out there. But my aerie is hot because I don't like snow. A shiver, the metallic silver of his eyes wild in a way that was nothing human. You like the city, but you need your sunstone. Make one.

  Venom had never thought of it that bluntly, but in his defense, he'd been very young and not used to the freedom to create his own home when Naasir had discovered him searching fruitlessly for the heated stone surface his body craved. His first sunstone had been just that--a large flat stone that he'd dragged over from a distant spot and kept in the wild gardens that had once surrounded the Tower.

  As the Tower morphed into its current form and the gardens disappeared to be filled with the manic, beautiful life of New York, he'd worked with the architects to create this sunstone deep inside his home. Deciding Holly needed a little extra heat, he switched on the large lamp that covered the entire ceiling above the sunstone.

  The square of ceiling blazed to glowing life.

  She sighed in her sleep.

  Crouching down, he undid her ponytail so she'd be comfortable, then removed her boots and put them aside. That done, he watched to make sure her chest was rising and falling, her pulse steady. Because Holly wasn't a vampire. Not quite. She was human enough that such things were an absolute necessity for her survival.

  When his phone buzzed in his pocket, he realized he'd become mesmerized by the rhythm of her, as if it spoke to the cobras that had been part of his Making alongside the vipers. That hadn't happened to him for a long time. Venom was very aware of his weaknesses as well as his strengths. But this was his home and it was filled with people who'd protect him to their last breath.

  They didn't--couldn't--truly understand the sinuous core of him, but they were his friends.

  His family.

  And so he'd lowered his guard enough to slip into a state that was deeply restorative.

  Rising to his feet after running his knuckles over Holly's cheek, he stepped away from her and the sunstone before answering the call. "Dmitri," he said. "Nisia called you, didn't she?"

  "Inexplicable as it is, our competent and strong Nisia is intimidated by you, when she has been known to pat me on the cheek and ruffle my hair," was the bone-dry response.

  Venom took off his sunglasses and set them aside. His eyes reflected back at him from the sleek square mirror on the wall that had been a gift from Elena. The two of them weren't exactly best friends, but the mate of his sire had owed him a forfeit after he beat her in a sparring session where they'd both had to fight using unfamiliar weapons.

  She'd paid the forfeit with this mirror. At first, he'd thought it a somewhat unimaginative, though acceptable, payment. Then he'd noticed the delicate motif carved into the left white edge of the frame--a viper hanging off a tree. It was beautifully done. Aodhan's work, he'd realized at once. Done specifically for him.

  Sometimes Elena made it very difficult to be annoyed with her for the weakness she'd created in the archangel Venom chose to serve. She was the only chink in Raphael's armor, and his Seven had come to terms with it--but that didn't mean they were all okay with it.

  "Holly isn't infectious," Venom said. "Whatever it was that came out of Daisy, it only wanted to go to Holly." He felt the truth of that in his gut. "I don't know of any disease that punches out of a person and into another."

  "I'm going to look at the footage. You want to meet me in the tech room?"

  Venom glanced over at where Holly slept so peacefully. She'd been here before, wouldn't be disoriented if she woke alone. "Yes."

  It was time to uncover the shape of the thing that had burrowed into Holly.

  The same thing that had lived inside a vampire who'd gone utterly insane in the hours before her death.

  18

  Dmitri was already in the elevator when Venom stepped into it; from the other man's tumbled hair and the faint scent of cold night air that clung to him, Venom figured he'd been up on the roof.

  The leader of the Seven shot him an assessing look. "Holly's getting under your skin."

  "She always has," Venom admitted to a friend who'd never betray him. "But she needs a little seasoning." Needed to get tougher . . . else, she'd never survive the immortal world. "You've all been protecting her under the guise of keeping an eye on her."

  Dmitri's expression was amused. "I'm not exactly known to be a soft touch."

  "Let her go, Dmitri," Venom said quietly. "We need to find out what she's capable of--but she needs to learn the truth about herself most of all." He held the other vampire's dark eyes, only then realizing he'd forgotten his sunglasses upstairs. "Release the chains."

  Dmitri didn't answer until they were outside the elevator and in the lighted corridor that led to the circular room of the Tower's tech core. Windows lined the entire hallway, would've poured the colors of New York inside had it been morning. "That could be deadly," the other man said at last. "Not just for others, but for Holly."

  "If you don't release her soon, she'll die anyway," Venom said flatly. "She's a wild thing. Not built for a cage." He ran his fingers through his hair. "Neha . . . she understood me even if she was no gentle mistress. She gave me the freedom to figure out what the fuck I'd become." For the first five years after his Making, he hadn't been "human" even in the vampiric sense.

  "There's a critical difference between you and Holly," Dmitri reminded him.

  "Uram."

  "Uram." Dmitri began walking again, the two of them going to the tech center in silence.

  Vivek was waiting for them. His breath caught when they entered, and Venom quickly realized it was the first time the other man had faced his eyes unshielded. "Do you have infrared vision?" Interest glittered on his face.

  Venom smiled, the curious reaction a far preferable one to quivering fear or horror. "You'll have to court me with roses and diamonds before asking such intimate questions."

  Vivek snorted. "It's just like working for the Guild--place is full of smartasses." He swiveled his wheelchair around. "I've already cued up the footage in the private viewing room." That room lay behind his gleaming control station, and it boasted three massive screens, each taking up most of a wall.

  The video from the isolation room was cued up on the wall directly opposite the door.

  Vivek waited for them to shut that door before he started to play the recording. "This is slowed down a hundred times," the Guild Hunter said. "That's how deep I had to go to see anything."

  Venom could see movement at far faster speeds, so the recording progressed at a glacial pace for him, but it proved useful in picking up all the details. It was a glowing red spark that had erupted from Daisy. Not even fist sized. Nowhere close. Maybe the size of a quarter. But it had slammed into Holly with phenomenal force.

  "I felt that," he said as the moment of impact played out on the screen. "It was like she'd taken a punch from a heavyweight boxer. The impact flowed through her body to mine."

  "But nothing penetrated your body?"

  Venom shook his head in response to Dmitri's question. "It was aimed only at Holly, wanted only Holly." He didn't know if he could explain it, but he tried. "It wasn't a random eruption--it waited until Holly was within r
each, so close that she couldn't avoid the impact. And Daisy spoke to Holly beforehand, said something about being together."

  "Audio caught that." Vivek rewound the tape.

  "It's calling to you. It wants to be together."

  The guttural words, Daisy's voice far deeper than it should be, were clearly directed at Holly.

  "Run it forward again." Feet set apart and arms folded, Dmitri looked at the screen with grim attention. "Zoom in on whatever it was that jumped from the vampire to Holly."

  Vivek did so in silence. The red spark was actually a very small ball with a spiked surface . . . and its heart pulsed an acidic green.

  "Fuck." Venom knew that color--it was the same shade as Holly's eyes had become. "Uram definitely touched Daisy, changed her."

  "Get Kenasha in here now," Dmitri said, his tone unbending.

  "He'll be incapacitated for a little while longer."

  "No, he won't." Ice in every word. "I'll choke him on my own blood if I have to, to fight the effect of Holly's venom, but he's going to speak to us right now."

  "My blood will work better." It'd counteract the venom faster. "Illium's in a pissy mood. I'll ask him to go out--he'll enjoy dragging in an asshole." The blue-winged angel usually had the most joie de vivre of the Seven, but when Venom had searched him out yesterday prior to heading to the sparring circle to watch Dmitri, Ash, and Janvier, he'd found the other man brooding on the roof.

  Illium was powerful, violently so, and as darkly angry as he was at the moment, he'd scare the piss out of Kenasha. That worked well with Venom's sense of justice.

  "Do it," Dmitri said.

  Leaving without further words, Venom made his way to one of the railingless Tower balconies and scanned the sky. He could talk to the sire with his mind, the gift one fostered in him by Raphael. He didn't, however, have the ability to reach out to others in the Seven on his own--not yet. But he didn't need it.

  He had a phone.

  Not spotting Illium's distinctive silver-edged blue wings in the sky and well aware the angel loved all things technologically inclined, he made the call. Illium answered in an unusually curt tone. "Yes?"

  "I need a favor. A pickup. He enslaved a woman when she was too weak to say no."

  "You always give me the best gifts. Where?"

  Venom gave him the location before adding, "Holly bit him, so he'll be a little out of it."

  Laughter down the line, Illium sounding more like himself when he said, "I've always liked your little kitty."

  Venom's hand clenched on the phone. He had to fight the urge to tell Bluebell not to call Holly that--that was a private game between him and Holly. "Thanks for the pickup."

  "No problem." Illium hung up and, less than five seconds later, Venom saw his form arrow out of the sky to skim above the tops of the brightly lit skyscrapers. He was a bullet as he crossed the Hudson, going so low there that his passage agitated the water into crashing waves.

  Yeah, the laughing angel known as Bluebell was not in a good mood.

  Sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants, Venom decided to wait for Illium to return. That he wanted to go back to his suite and check on Holly was another reason he forced himself to stay in place. The last time he'd felt even a faint glimmer of this type of protectiveness about a woman, she'd been his betrothed, and look how fucking well that had turned out.

  And while Holly had grown up, she remained a baby in comparison to him. He wasn't about to put his hands on her--well, he might throw her around to teach her to embrace the power inside her, but he wasn't about to fuck her. Not even if his body was starting to stir more and more that way each time he saw her.

  "Jesus." He shook his head as he spotted Illium over the waters of the Hudson once again; even for Bluebell, the speed of the pickup was extraordinary. The angel was holding Kenasha carelessly with one hand on the back of the other angel's neck. Kenasha's wings drooped uselessly. The wasted-away appendages had to be creating massive drag, but Illium didn't look strained in the least.

  There was a reason certain archangels had put out feelers to lure Illium to their side, to take up a position as their second. Many believed the increasingly strong angel must be starting to chafe at holding a lower position in the Tower hierarchy than Dmitri. But Illium's answer had always been a flat no.

  He'd chosen his loyalty and it wasn't only to Raphael, but to the Seven.

  "Dmitri's more experienced and he's known the sire since the sire was young enough that Raphael treats him as an equal," the angel had once said to Venom. "I, meanwhile, was once a baby angel Raphael rescued from a river after I took a dunking. The next time I fell in, it was Dmitri who plucked me out."

  He'd laughed, golden eyes dancing. "I'm not meant to be Raphael's second, or to hold a position above Dmitri. Power isn't everything--the bonds that tie us to one another, forged by emotion and battle and friendship, that's what makes us strong." A silver-edged feather of wild blue had drifted down to the ground from his wings as he resettled them. "No, I'm meant to occupy exactly the place I hold among us."

  That soul-deep bond would change one day in the distant future, Illium's destiny written in his power. But it would never break. The Seven would always have each other's--and Raphael's--back. As the Archangel Elijah would never move against the Archangel Caliane.

  He'd once been her most trusted general, carried that loyalty in his heart to this day.

  Less than half a minute later, Illium dropped Kenasha's quivering body on the balcony in front of Venom's feet. "That was quick," Venom commented.

  Landing on the balcony, Illium folded back his wings. "I was racing myself," he said, his eyes turbulent with emotions that were starkly human in a way it was rare to see in an immortal of Bluebell's age and power.

  "Who'd you fight with? Ellie?" Of all the Seven, it was Illium who was closest to Raphael's hunter consort. "No? Then it has to be Aodhan." The other angel--and fellow member of the Seven--was Illium's best friend. Two wholly different men in personality, Illium and Aodhan had known each other since childhood. Sometimes, when they sparred in the air, it was like watching two halves of a whole, their reactions were so in sync.

  Illium didn't answer, his jaw grinding. "Why do your friend's wings look like those of a half-plucked chicken?" he asked just as Dmitri exited onto the balcony. "I do like the rhythmic twitching, though."

  "That's Holly's work." It was obvious her venom was yet causing Kenasha considerable pain.

  "This makes me sad," Dmitri said without an ounce of sympathy. "Sad for all the children who might've seen this creature and thought him an example of angelkind."

  "Don't worry," Venom replied in as cold a tone. "He doesn't fly. Daisy's blood did something to him."

  Dmitri knelt beside the angel whose eyes were bulging out of his head--whether in pain or fear, Venom couldn't tell. "Hold him still."

  Lip curling at the idea of touching the other man, Venom nonetheless knelt down and did as asked so that Dmitri could use the syringes he held in his hand to take blood samples. He held out both capped syringes toward Illium. "Fly these down to the infirmary so they can start on the tests. Gentle hold. You don't want to accidentally crush one and get contaminated by the blood."

  Gingerly taking the samples, Illium said, "I have no desire to look like a plucked chicken. Been there, have no wish to repeat the experience." A pause. "Though . . . to be clear, I looked more like a fluffy duck--cute, not as if I had a molting disease." Illium was gone in a wash of wind seconds later.

  Venom had seen Illium's feathers regenerating after an accident, but he was also aware the angel had once been stripped of his feathers as punishment for the crime of speaking angelic secrets to a mortal woman he mourned to this day. The latter had been before Venom's time. "Were Illium's feathers different before he lost them the first time?" he asked Dmitri, realizing he'd just assumed they'd regenerated identical to the original.

  Dmitri gripped Kenasha's mouth, forced it open with the vise of his grip. br />
  Ready, Venom used his pocketknife to slice his own wrist open, then dripped the blood into the contemptible angel's mouth.

  "No," Dmitri said as Kenasha's throat began to move spasmodically. "Our Bluebell didn't have the silver then." A faint smile. "He was vain before. Imagine how much worse he got when glittering threads of silver began to appear in among the filaments."

  "When you're this beautiful," Illium said, coming up to hover on the other side of the balcony, "you have no choice but to be vain." He buffed his nails on his arm, then blew on them, and at that instant, he was once more the angel Venom knew: intelligent and generous and with a warm playfulness to him.

  Most immortals had lost that playfulness long ago. Even Venom.

  Kenasha choked and spluttered but Dmitri was relentless. Venom could easily donate this much blood within a short period of time, but he'd have to feed soon to make up for it. He wouldn't be weak if he didn't, but he'd be weaker, and Venom preferred to be at full strength. When his wrist began to heal, he slit it open again.

  It took a lot longer than he'd estimated for Kenasha's body to stop quivering.

  "Holly's strong," he murmured, pleased deep within.

  "Want a bite?" Illium held out his own wrist. "This is first-class blood, available only to a select few."

  Venom felt his lips kick up. "Thanks." He had no problem taking blood from his fellow members of the Seven--as he had no problem donating blood in turn. And when it came to Illium, he only had to drink a small amount.

  Bluebell packed a punch.

  Not as strong as Raphael, but more than strong enough that one day, Venom knew he'd look up into the sky and see an archangel with wings of bluebell blue glittering with silver threads.

  His heart ached when he thought of that distant moment in time.

  How much worse must it be for Dmitri, who'd watched both Illium and Aodhan grow up? Because as the moon followed the sun, when Illium ascended to become an archangel, Aodhan would go with him as his second. The angel with wings of shattered light had been the hardest of the Seven for Venom to get to know . . . and yet he'd given Venom an extraordinary gift.