Archangel's Viper

Closing her hand over his wrist, his skin warm under her touch and his power curling around her so tightly that she felt it as a stroke across her skin, she tugged off his grip. “I appreciate the information—and the warning.” He’d given her a tool to understand a little of the craziness around her, and she was grateful, but she couldn’t have him touching her.

Not when her entire body seemed primed to respond.

His lips curved in a smile she couldn’t read. Then, sliding the sunglasses back on, he slipped out of the shadows and up the steps of their target building. Holly followed, the two of them pausing by the front door.

Venom’s body went inhumanly motionless. “It’s too quiet.”

Looking around, Holly saw no obvious signs of trouble. “They might just be crashed out after drugging themselves with honey feeds.”

“You sound very sure.”

“When you’re in a situation like this”—she indicated the dirty, graffitied environment, a blunt illustration that these vamps weren’t exactly living the dream—“escape, even illusionary escape, has a powerful draw.”

Venom pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head, the slitted green of his eyes smashing into hers. “Have you fed from a drug addict?”

“No,” Holly said flatly, not adding that, in the darkest depths of pain and despair, she’d thought about it, about the sweet oblivion of just letting go. It was the idea of the state she’d be in afterward—weak and vulnerable and unable to protect herself—that had stopped her.

Then there was the whole sucking-blood-from-a-living-being thing, which continued to turn her stomach.

So yeah, no thanks—but not for the best reasons.

“We going in or what?” she said when Venom continued to look at her with disturbing intensity, as if he saw her most terrible secrets.

Slipping his sunglasses back down over his eyes, he put his hand on the doorknob and turned. It offered no resistance and they slipped inside, shutting the door behind themselves.

The air that hung heavy inside the hallway leading to the chipped paint of the internal staircase was foul with the smell of unwashed bodies, urine . . . and more. “Old blood,” Holly whispered in a harsh undertone, her gut twisting and lurching as images of mutilated and decapitated bodies piled in a red-streaked pyramid, while a mad archangel drank from a wineglass filled with the blood he’d drained from a living victim, shoved into her brain.

Fingers touching her neck, gripping painfully tight when she would’ve slashed out in a panic. “Focus, kitty.”

The two words acted like a bucket of cold water thrown into her face. She froze, found her center as Honor had taught her, then breathed shallowly through her mouth. “Sorry.” Heat flooded her cheeks.

Releasing her, Venom said, “The smell would turn anyone’s stomach, much less that of a woman who was found coated in her own dried blood.”

Holly scowled, though his matter-of-fact judgment made her feel a little less like a child confronted by a nightmare come to life. But, because she had reacted like that child, she moved on ahead of him.

Do not act stupid because you’re scared and want to hide it. Do that and I’ll kick your ass black and blue for a week running.

Ashwini’s voice in her head.

And if you ever act like a horror movie dumb chick, I’ll personally lobotomize you.

Holly’s lips tugged up a fraction, her hunched shoulders straightening. She made sure she was cautious and alert, and not in any way driven by fear as she moved on down the hallway. Reaching the bottom of the steps that led up to the second floor, she stopped and glanced back at Venom, fighting an inexplicable urge from within that told her to climb, go higher.

“Up or down?” His sense of smell was more acute than hers; it made sense to ask rather than relying on her own strange compulsion.

He looked up along the line of the stairs, the damp, dark strands of his hair sliding back. “The old-blood smell is strongest up there.” Scanning the lower floor and taking in the multiple doors on either side of the hallway, he said, “We clear these together.”

Holly didn’t argue. Ash and Janvier had taught her that you never left your partner alone in an unknown situation. “We should lock the front door.” It’d make it harder for anyone to sneak in behind them and launch a stealth attack.

Removing the old-fashioned key from the lock afterward, she put it in her jeans pocket just as the bare lightbulb dangling from a wire in the ceiling flickered for a second. It had been on when they entered, and while its light was anemic, it was better than the storm gray gloom.

As it settled again, throwing shadows into the corners, she watched Venom’s back while he opened the first door. No sign of life, the room beyond empty of anything but a broken-down sofa with cigarette burns on the arms, the foam stuffing visible where the dirty fabric was torn.

Holly took the next door; she was half expecting Venom to attempt to hijack the search, but he remained at her back, an alert, watchful presence while she looked inside and pronounced the room free of threats. He took the door after that, Holly the next, until they’d completed the entire first floor.

All the internal walls were painted a teal blue shade that had been discolored by time and cigarette smoke to have a sickly yellowish edge. Several boasted holes probably caused by punches, while one had a large black stain. As if someone had thrown a jar full of ink at the wall.

The majority of the rooms were furnished with either a ragged foldout couch or a dirty mattress. Clothes were scattered about on both couches and mattresses. Bedrooms of a sort, she realized. The last room proved to be a living area set up with three large couches that all sagged in the middle and faced a curved television screen that took up most of one wall.

Unlike every other item in the place, the TV was clean and cutting-edge.

A second later, she spotted the box that had held the TV. The lack of stains or cobwebs on it seemed to indicate the television was a recent purchase.

Holly gripped Venom’s arm when he would’ve stepped inside to examine the items on the glass-topped coffee table that sat between the sofas and the TV. “Needles,” she said, pointing down.

His lip curled. Taking off his sunglasses, he hooked them in the front of his shirt. “Someone’s mother didn’t teach them to keep a clean house.”

Holly blinked. Though she’d asked him about his family, she’d never really thought of Venom as a man who’d had a mother. And definitely not one who’d taught him how to maintain the cleanliness of a home.

“Just be careful.” Vampires weren’t vulnerable to disease, but being stuck was still disgusting—and ever since the Falling, no one could be certain a needle hadn’t been adulterated with some kind of virus or infection that could affect immortals.

Holly probably shouldn’t know that it was the Archangel Charisemnon who’d created the disease that had struck vampires and dropped angels from the sky, but it was hard to work in the Tower with high-level vamps and not pick up information. After what Venom had told her outside, she figured Charisemnon had gained a disease-causing gene in the Cascade.

Not a gift she’d want, but she wasn’t an archangel bent on power.

“I’m guessing there’re a lot of syringes lying around,” she said. “The vamps shoot up the junkies right before a honey feed, so that the high is stronger, lasts longer. No one’s in a state to care about the syringes afterward.”

Nodding, Venom walked to his original destination. He picked up something rectangular with squared edges, opened his hand to let it fall.

“Whoa.” Holly stared at the hundred-dollar bills floating from his hand, then took in the new TV again. “Vampires who live in this area don’t have access to that kind of cash.” Most were out of Contract and had used up the money they’d been given when that Contract was complete—but not found well-paying jobs in the aftermath.

Venom rubbed a white powder between his fingers, brought it to his lips for a small taste. “Cocaine. From the amount of dust on this table, it’s likely the source of the cash.” Dusting off his hands, he said, “Let’s go up. There’s no threat here.”