Archangel's Viper

“Vain much?”

“I’ll get you a matching one that says KITTY.”

She knew he was baiting her but had to fight not to react nonetheless. Thankfully, keeping her heels from catching on the gravel of the parking lot provided a good distraction. They were on the cracked sidewalk within half a minute. She strode confidently down the street, Venom prowling beside her. “How can you see out of those glasses?”

“Good night vision.”

As she watched, he took off his sunglasses and folded them away into the top pocket of his suit jacket. And his eyes, they reflected the paltry light on this street in a way that was probably eerie, but that riveted Holly.

It irritated her to admit it, but Venom was as handsome as sin; the eyes were just the icing on the cake. “Do Neha’s eyes nictitate?” On the surface, the Archangel of India had normal brown eyes, but since she’d Made Venom, there had to be more beneath the surface.

“Yes,” Venom said, surprising her with the straight answer. “It’s difficult to catch and it happens very rarely, but yes.”

“Why aren’t her eyes like yours?”

A slow smile. “They are—but only for milliseconds at a time. Most people have never caught the transition.”

Holly tried to imagine Venom’s eyes in Neha’s regal face, couldn’t. “What about other vampires in her court? Are many like you?”

“None. Though she has been trying to Make another me for centuries.” Especially after he’d left her court at the end of his Contract: to serve the angels for a hundred years in return for the gift of near-immortality.

Neha had been more generous with her post-Contract settlement than mandated by their unusual agreement, and he’d had the money to travel, decide who he wanted to be. For the first time in a hundred years, he’d been free to live where he chose, serve who he chose, though he hadn’t been certain he wanted to be part of any court.

Then had come Raphael.

Venom had slotted into the sire’s tightly knit team as if he were a missing puzzle piece. Jason had even said as much at the time. “Finally, we are complete. We are the Seven.”

Neha and Raphael had been friendly back then, so Neha hadn’t fought his defection. She’d seen it as him being drawn to Raphael’s youth. “Wild to wild,” she’d said with an indulgent smile when Venom returned to her court to tell her of his plans. “Well, Venom, if I had to lose you to anyone, it would be Raphael.”

Venom hadn’t needed her permission. He’d served his hundred years with utmost fidelity, had earned his freedom. But archangels and queens like Neha weren’t always rational—and this archangel had kept her promises to him. His visit had been a gesture of respect and honor.

“Has Neha ever tried to lure you back?”

Venom sent Holly another slow smile, wondering exactly how much she’d picked up of the current state of archangelic politics. It was probable that she had no idea Neha now considered Raphael an enemy, though Venom had the feeling Neha’s hostility was intermingled with a deep sense of loss. When beings lived that long, their emotions tended to be complex, layered things where contrary feelings could exist side by side.

Venom wasn’t that old. His emotions were less knotty—and his pleasures simpler. Annoying Holly ranked at the top. “Everyone wants me.”

She snorted. “Doesn’t being that delusional make it hard to function?”

He felt his lips tug up . . . right as Holly stumbled on a crack in the sidewalk. He’d snapped out an arm and curved it around her waist before she did more than sway a little. She’d reacted quickly, too—just not as quickly as him. The side of her body slammed into the front of his, his hand fitting into the curve of her waist.

She was gone as fast, jerking out of his hold with the inhuman speed that made her so much fun as a sparring partner. “If I wanted to be pawed,” she said, brushing her arm as if brushing off his germs, “I’d go to a furry convention.”

“If you thought that was pawing, kitty,” he said with deliberate sophistication in his tone, “your education has been sadly lacking.”

She forgot her coolly elegant persona and made a face at him. He’d reached out a finger and flicked her nose before he thought about what he was doing. Eyes narrowing, she hissed at him, flashing those tiny fangs he still couldn’t believe were functional. “Next time you touch me, I’m going for blood.”

“It’s been said that once you go Venom, you never go back.”

“Argh!” Holly fought the urge to take off one of her high heels and throw it at his smug head. But she’d spent good money on those heels, she reminded herself. Money she’d earned in the work she did with Ashwini and Janvier—work that meant she had far better contacts in this part of town than Smugface Venomous.

Taking a deep breath in an effort to control her racing heart as the otherness that lived in her stretched inside her skin, she turned her attention to the club that had appeared out of the darkness. The neon was pink and blazing and the outside walls matte black covered in creative white graffiti.

Used needles lying carelessly against one wall glinted in the neon glow.

“They like pretty boys here,” she said to the deadly vampire who was very much a man. “You shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

His hand was suddenly against her lower back.

Holly went to kick back her heel when he said, “Don’t.”

It wasn’t the word that got her to pause, it was the tone. It was the same calm, dangerous tone he’d used just before they’d fought off the goons who’d tried to kidnap her. Scanning the area in the way Ash had taught her, she caught the furtive movement on the left, deep in the shadows to one side of the club.

Her chest eased. “I know them.” She stepped away from Venom’s coiled body. “Don’t follow me.”

He just looked at her.

Rolling her eyes, she patted the taut muscle of his biceps. “It’s okay, Sir Venomous, Knight of the Tower. You can move fast enough to rescue the damsel in distress if she squeals for help.” She turned and walked away before he could respond.

She could feel his eyes on her, but he stayed in position. Thank God. If he hadn’t, the two skinny vampires loitering in the shadows would’ve been ghosts in one second flat. “Zeph, Arabella.”

“Hol, hey.” The pockmarked male vampire smiled at her, his face so badly damaged that she’d believed for the longest time that he’d been Made while in that state and that vampirism hadn’t healed him though it healed most imperfections.

Then one night, she’d spent ten minutes with him; he’d only lasted three before starting to pick at his face with his ragged and dirty nails. His vampirism couldn’t keep up with the constant wounds, especially since Zeph didn’t exactly subsist on the best blood. Holly had tried to pay him for his information in good bottles of blood, but he preferred money—which he spent on honey feeds, where human junkies got high, then allowed vampires to drink from them.

As far as Holly knew, it was the only reliable way a vampire could get high.

Arabella, the equally skinny blonde vampire who was Zeph’s shadow, was no junkie, but she couldn’t deny Zeph, so it ended up the same. “Hi, Holly,” the female vampire said with a natural sweetness that always struck Holly, her fingers twisting her limp dreads in her hands. “You sure look nice.”

“So do you,” Holly replied in a gentle tone, seeing in Arabella what could’ve happened to her if the Tower had abandoned her—or if she’d abandoned herself. Which, frankly, she’d been inches away from doing. She’d never judge Arabella for the choices she’d made or for her strange loyalty to Zeph. “Were you guys looking for me?”

Arabella darted a quick glance behind Holly. “What’s he doing down here?” Her lush Southern vowels contracted, her fear a living being between them.

“He’s with me,” Holly said simply.

Arabella’s eyes widened, the harsh edge of fear transmuting into an openly female admiration. “Wow, Holly. That’s Venom. You did good.”