Archangel's Viper

Booths circled the dance floor. Though every single one had a ragged curtain, only a few were pulled closed. In the nearest open one, Holly glimpsed a group of young vampires crowded together, drinking blood and laughing. A simple night out.

A knife twisted inside her.

She’d done that once upon a time. Gone out for a drink with her friends. Poor Rania could never hold her drink, but she was such an adorable drunk that none of them minded. The last night they’d gone out before the torture and death, Rania had slung an arm around Holly and nuzzled into her neck, saying, “I love you lots and lots and even more than marshmallows.”

Holly’s throat threatened to close up.

Ripping away her gaze before Venom could catch her being maudlin, she looked at the next booth. This one held a sight more expected and more perverse. A bare-breasted female vampire was doing a lap dance for a heavy-lidded angel who sat with his wings draped behind him and his arms spread on the torn red leather of the booth bench.

The angel was clearly slumming. Angelkind was too powerful to be reduced to bars like this one. As for the vampires who ended up in this life, it was a combination of bad choices and fate. After serving their hundred years, all vamps were meant to be released with enough resources to start a new, independent life.

Some angels were more generous than others.

Zeph’s angel had been—but he’d also treated the sensitive vampire so viciously during his Contract that Zeph was incapable of living life without the sweet oblivion of drugs.

“Your eyes are beginning to glow.” Venom’s voice against her ear, his hand curving over her hip.

Fighting the impulse to pull away because that would betray far too much, she said, “I’ll get it under control.”

“It’s part of you. Why control it all the time?”

His response had her staring at him. “Didn’t you just rave on about control?”

“Control and asphyxia leading to weakness are two different things.” He slipped his sunglasses back on. “I am always in control—and I always have access to the full depth of my abilities.” He glanced around. “You have friends here?”

“A few.” Off-center, Holly moved forward through the crush of dancing bodies to the bar, Venom’s hand sliding off her hip in the process. Space opened up around her, in front of her, without effort. She knew better than to think she’d caused the effect. Usually, she had to push and shove—and occasionally hiss—to get through.

More than one fuckwit was of the opinion that he could get in an ass-grab just because Holly was small and female.

“Holly!” The ebony-skinned bartender leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re looking far too fine for this pit of sin, love.”

Holly laughed and patted his bearded jaw. Heavily tattooed and as heavily muscled, Magnus had been one of the first friends she’d made in this shadowy part of the city. “Looks like a busy night.”

His light brown eyes gleamed. “It also looks like you brought in a wolf with you, then.” He extended a hand across the bar. “Magnus.”

To her surprise, Venom shook the bartender’s hand with polite courtesy. “Venom.”

Holly wanted to ask him, not for the first time, if he’d had another name once, if he still remembered that name.

“That, I know,” Magnus said with a grin. “Don’t usually get one of the Seven in my humble establishment.” He pushed across a shot glass he’d just poured full of a rich amber liquid, the dragon tattoo on his forearm rippling with the movement. “On the house. After the rumor gets around that you’re visiting, my business will go through the roof.”

Venom smiled and threw back the shot before slamming the shot glass neatly back on the polished wood of the bar. “Goes down smooth.”

Magnus went to say something else when there was a sudden rush of orders. As he moved away with a hand sign that meant he’d be back, Holly hopped up on a bar stool and put her back to the bar. Venom leaned his arm on the bar behind her, his body so close that her shoulder brushed his chest. She didn’t say anything, instead crossing her legs with care and staring out into the heaving mass of bodies.

She could be staring right at people who wanted to truss her up and deliver her to a buyer. “Five million dollars is a lot to pay for a collectible.”

Venom’s answer was a single word spoken against her ear, his lips brushing the sensitive curve of it. “Uram.”

Holly’s hands clenched so hard that her nails cut into the palms of her hands. Her mind hazed. Her blood boiled. And she wanted to scream! As she’d screamed in that Brooklyn warehouse where Uram had butchered her friends and made her watch. As she’d screamed when he’d torn off her clothes and gripped her throat to force her to drink the blood pouring from his wrist.

“Do it.” Venom’s cold purr. “Scream.”

Holly tried to breathe but the scream was choking her up. Then Venom was suddenly in front of her, cupping the back of her head and pressing her face to his chest. “Scream.”

Holly opened her mouth. What came out was a sound of purest rage that went on and on and on. Venom’s chest absorbed most of the sound, the rest lost in the loud pulse of the music. Her heart pounding in the aftermath, she immediately pulled away and turned around to get the assistant bartender’s attention. She couldn’t get drunk anymore, not with the metabolism she had, but there were other uses for alcohol. “Whiskey,” she said. “Neat.”

When it came, she threw it back.

The burn was acid and it was exactly what she needed to shock her system back into the correct rhythm. “I’m the last remaining piece of him,” she said under her breath, since, obviously, Venom had very good hearing.

“You’ve always known that.”

Yes, but she tried not to think about it. It was self-delusion, she knew that full well, hadn’t needed a shrink to tell her. That shrink was a vampire who was part of the Tower medical team. A nice man, patient and kind.

Holly hated him.

Hated even more that he wanted her to face things she’d much rather bury as deep as possible.

“What’s got you drinking whiskey neat?” Magnus leaned forward on the bar after making his way back to them.

Not waiting for an answer, he lowered his voice and said, “You’re looking for info on the bounty, aren’t you, then?”

Holly had known Magnus would be aware of what was going on—he knew everything that went on in the gray shadows of the city. He didn’t always share that information, his loyalties myriad and complex, but he’d never put Holly in a position of danger. “Yes,” she said past the rawness in her throat.

“Five million,” he said, his eyes going from her to Venom and back. “You, my darling, are to be taken alive. Evidence—a photo—to be e-mailed to a throwaway e-mail address. Payment to be transferred into the kidnapper’s choice of account once the kidnapping is verified: half pre delivery, half post.”

Venom spoke even as Holly battled her renewed rage at being thought of as a commodity, a thing to be traded. “Why are people taking the bounty seriously? Anyone can put out the word like that, especially with the only contact an e-mail address.”

“I’ll be there in a minute, you arses!” Magnus yelled down the bar to an impatient group before lowering his voice to speak to them again. “Rumor is the initial word came from a man who’s known to be a fixer in this kind of thing, someone the big mercenary fish all trust when it comes to their work.”

“Who?” Holly asked.

Magnus shook his head, his tightly kinked black hair sporting a razored pattern on one side that paid homage to the striking emblem that now marked Raphael’s right temple. “No idea, love. Way above my pay grade.” A touch to her hand. “Be careful. I like you, and I’m not fool enough to defy the Tower, but even I was tempted by five million.” He left to deal with the impatient group.

Swinging off the stool, Holly began to stride out. She didn’t bother to wait for Venom, but she knew he was behind her. The damn rivers parted in front of her, people scrambling out of his way. She knew her eyes were glowing a hot green by the time they hit the cracked sidewalk. Not stopping, she strode onward to the parking lot.