Archangel's Viper

“Janvier isn’t that much younger than you and he still talks about his sisters, still goes to see their descendants.” He and Ashwini had ridden to New Orleans a month earlier for a fais do-do, which Holly had worked out meant a party; the two had come back with joy written on their skin and colorful beads hanging off the handlebars of Janvier’s motorcycle.

“People make different choices.” Venom’s voice was cold in a way she’d never heard from him—he might have the eyes of a viper, but for the most part, Venom was mockingly amused at the world. “What do you plan to do? Stay in touch with the next generation and the next, or fade away?”

Holly frowned and looked out at the gathering darkness, the clouds so heavy at this point that the world looked closer to six P.M. than just after one. This wasn’t about her. But an inherent sense of fairness made her answer his question because she’d pushed him to answer hers. “I lost my family once,” she said. “I’m never going to do it again.” Turning back to face him, she saw the tightness in his jaw.

Venom never acted like this. This mattered. It wasn’t to be taken lightly.

“I want to be like Janvier,” she said. “I want to have those ties, have that sense of being rooted in humanity. He’s the most . . . human vampire I know aside from Honor and Ash—and they just got Made, so it doesn’t count. I think it’s because he’s maintained strong ties to his family through the centuries.” A year ago, his great-great-multiplied-by-who-knows-how-many-greats-grandnephew had stayed with him and Ashwini for six months while the boy attended a theater workshop in Manhattan.

Venom shot her a look made unreadable by the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses. “Fighting the inevitable, kitty?” It was a murmur, the last word almost affectionate.

Her eyes burned, her throat suddenly thick. Turning to stare out the window again, she watched the passing traffic. Streetlights began to flicker on, their systems triggered by the lack of light. “I know I’m not human,” she said when she could speak again, her voice caustic because otherwise, she might cry. “Bit hard to miss with the glowing green eyes and the ability to break people’s bones without touching them.”

“What?” Venom’s tone was hard.

“It’s a new development,” Holly said, her voice as colorless as the landscape around them. “I was sparring with Janvier and he was showing me how to move and I was thinking that if I could get the angle exactly right, I’d probably break his forearm.”

Bile burned her throat. “I wasn’t planning to do that—I was just thinking of how it might be helpful in a real fight if I could take my attacker out of commission.” She swallowed, the sickening sound of the bone cracking loud in her head. “And then his arm was broken.”

“He’d have healed quickly,” Venom said. “He’s old and strong enough.”

That didn’t change that Holly had harmed someone who’d only ever been good to her. Janvier had even invited her along on the most recent visit to his family. She’d said no only because she’d wanted to spend the time with Mia before her sister’s move to Boston.

Venom’s power slid around her, a sinuously graceful thing. “Did he ask you to do it again?”

11

“How did you guess?” An edge of surprise in Holly’s question.

“Because that’s his job.” Venom turned down a dingy street with several broken-out streetlights just as the rain thundered down in truth, but though he saw everything despite the acutely low visibility, the alertness part of his nature, his mind was on Holly’s revelation. “That ability isn’t vampiric.”

“No. It’s closer to angelic.”

“No, kitty. You know as well as I do that it’s closer to archangelic.” The idea of that much power in her fragile body . . . “How are you still alive?” It was a serious question. Archangels were built to handle the violence of the power that lived in them. Even Illium, the strongest angel among the Seven, had nearly died when the Cascade forced extraordinary power into his flesh.

Holly continued to stare out the window. “It’s only a droplet of power,” she said in an eerily toneless voice. “It builds, then releases in sudden violence or . . .”

“Or?” Venom should’ve already had a briefing about her, but other events had overtaken the normal order of things when one of the Seven returned to the city after a long absence.

“Want to see a cool trick?”

Venom glanced over to see Holly holding out a hand . . . before it faded out of view only to flicker back in. He sucked in a breath as he turned his attention forward again. Glamour, the ability to walk unseen among the populace, was a strictly archangelic ability. “How long can you be unseen?”

Holly laughed as the rain transitioned from downpour to steady drizzle. “You mean how long can my hand be unseen? Because that’s the only body part with which I can do my parlor trick.”

A droplet of power.

Suddenly her words made more sense. “But you can summon the power on cue?”

“Depends on the day of the week. It comes and goes.” She shifted slightly forward, pointing to their left. “That’s the address of the idiots who think I’d cower. That three-story building with the graffiti of a flying dinosaur. Creative.”

Venom double-parked his vehicle knowing no one would touch it. If they did—well, they might just get stung by a viper’s bite. Getting out into the damp dark, he looked up at skies of heavy gray. “Have you been told of the Cascade?” Rain kissed his cheekbones.

• • •

“No. What is it?” Holly asked, trying not to watch the rain whisper across Venom’s skin. “I won’t share the information. I know not to talk out of turn about Tower business.” That way lay certain death—after hideous torture.

She’d already had her fill of both.

Venom didn’t answer until they’d crossed the street, his body moving with liquid grace. Holly couldn’t help it; she watched him. There was something deadly about Venom. Not just power, but him. She wondered if he’d been like this as a human, too, dangerous and beautiful.

She blinked, shook her head. Obviously, if she was starting to think Venom beautiful, it was time to break her self-imposed celibacy and go get laid. She had the primal rage inside her under control now, wouldn’t terrify the poor men she picked up in the bars.

Her mind flashed to that . . . thing with Venom last night, when she’d gone full weirdo crazy on him—and he’d laughed. Because he was nuts, too.

“The Cascade,” he said, once they stood in the rain-protected shadow of the building next to their target location, “is a once-in-an-eon event that causes massive power fluctuations and other changes among those who are Cadre.”

Holly’s fingers rose to her right temple. “Raphael’s mark?”

“Yes, that’s part of it. As are your new friends in the Legion.” Venom scanned the otherwise empty street with lethal focus. “The Cascade also has unknown effects on the weather. Today’s rain darkness could be a natural phenomenon, or it could be Cascade-linked.”

Holly had the sense of glimpsing a vast world of earth-shattering power far beyond her understanding—and perhaps that was as it should be. For an immortal, she was still only an infant. She wasn’t meant to consort with archangels . . . or with vampires as deadly as Venom. “Why are you telling me this?”

Taking off his sunglasses, he gripped her chin, held her gaze. “Because the Cascade most strongly impacts those with archangelic blood.”

And Holly had been force-fed so much archangelic blood that it had changed her on a cellular level. “My parlor trick with the hand, breaking Janvier’s arm,” she said without severing the eye contact, “they might be connected to this Cascade?”

A nod. “No way to know for certain, but it would explain why you’re developing abilities no one outside the Cadre should possess.” He ran his thumb over her chin, slow and deliberate. “Be careful who you trust, kitty. Many would pay far more than five million for a woman who possesses even a single droplet of archangelic power.”