Archangel's Viper

Holly headed up the steps in front of him, his presence a coldly silken danger at her back. She knew he could kill her as fast as a cobra strike—Venom might wear three-piece suits and look like he’d stepped out of a high-fashion magazine shoot, but he was a predator under the skin.

Rotting blood. Old urine. Other, more noxious body fluids.

Holly pressed a hand against her stomach as she tried not to breathe in the increasingly fetid odor. “They’re up here . . . and they’re probably dead, right?” The idea made her stomach lurch, the response primal.

“Not necessarily. Our targets aren’t human.”

Exhaling, Holly nodded. Vampires could survive significantly more blood loss than humans. They could even survive multiple-limb amputation in traumatic circumstances. She’d heard the limbs would eventually grow back—but for most vampires, that would take a long, long, long time. It wasn’t as if they were angels, after all.

For vampires like Dmitri and Venom, however, she had a feeling the timeline was shorter—a lot shorter. “Have you ever lost a limb?” she asked in an effort to distract herself from the smell.

“Once,” Venom answered easily as they took in the layout of this floor. “It was in battle—my left arm.”

“How long for it to regenerate?”

“Three quarters of a year. I was a lot younger then.”

Three quarters of a year was still nothing in comparison to the vast majority of vampires. Holly knew a century-old vamp who’d lost his pinky in a bar fight when another brawler bit it off. A month after the incident and it was still a ragged stump.

“I’ll go first into these rooms,” Venom said, his eyes glinting at her.

Holly straightened her spine. “I don’t need to be protected.”

“I’m stronger. If these vampires are drug maddened, I’d rather put them down quickly than watch you flail about.”

Holly gave him the finger. Asshole.

Smile becoming deep, taking him from handsome to fucking handsome, the beautiful asshole turned and walked to the first doorway. Holly watched his back instead of giving in to her bizarre compulsion to enter that room. He didn’t say anything about the room, though he spent thirty seconds standing in the doorway.

He then quickly checked the other rooms.

“Let’s clear the third level,” he said after he was done. “Then we can deal with the mess in the first room.” He turned on a light in the hallway, as if there was no longer any reason for stealth.

The hairs rose on the back of Holly’s neck.

12

Holly had to consciously will herself away from the room on the second floor.

The third floor was heavily graffitied and littered with spent bottles of liquor and more syringes, as well as—randomly—several bottles of milk that had gone off. But it was devoid of life—or bodies. “They lived like pigs,” Holly said, walking around a pair of underpants crumpled on the floor. “Even my homeless friends live more tidily than this.”

“Some vampires find life outside a Contract challenging,” Venom said. “They’re indoctrinated to follow orders by their angels—having to make their own decisions leaves them floundering.”

Holly was startled. “You feel sorry for them?”

“No,” he said flatly. “I have no sympathy for those who’d rather be in gilded cages than scrabbling to make a living in freedom.”

“There are some who can’t,” Holly said softly, thinking of Zeph and his pockmarked face. “They’re too broken by what was done to them.”

Venom’s eyes remained unforgiving. “Unless it was a forced Making, those vampires chose to enter into a Contract in exchange for near-immortality. Choices have consequences.”

Much as Holly pitied the broken vampire, she couldn’t argue with the truth of Venom’s words. That truth was the same reason Guild Hunters could, without guilt, do their jobs in retrieving vamps fleeing their Contracts. Because every mortal in the world had witnessed over and over how cruel immortals could be. Any choice made to enter into that world as an adult with full use of your faculties was made with eyes wide open.

“At least with a proper Contract,” she muttered, “there’s an end date. My sentence is open-ended.”

“Life is what you make it, kitty.” Venom ran his fingers through and over the long tail of her hair. “Prove yourself to Dmitri and Raphael and you’ll never have to worry about your freedom.”

Holly twisted her lips as she moved away from his touch. “You really think Raphael will allow a threat to live and thrive in his territory?”

Fangs flashing as he smiled. “Do you really believe Dmitri isn’t a threat?”

“He wasn’t tainted by Uram.”

“I was Made by Neha.”

When Holly just looked at him blankly, he said, “I forget, you aren’t aware of the political currents in the archangelic world. Let’s just say that Neha and Raphael are no longer friends as they once were. If she could, Neha would separate Raphael’s head from his body and laugh while doing it.”

Yet Venom, who bore Neha’s imprint in a way no one could miss, walked by Raphael’s side.

“Come,” Venom said before she could respond, “we have business to attend to.”

Holly had to enter that room that reeked of old blood and other ugly things, had to see what lay within, but she had one more question to ask. “I know Raphael’s too powerful to worry about you being a threat to him personally, but Dmitri and the others . . . Don’t they worry that you might have a lingering loyalty to Neha?”

“You call me a viper. Some believe I am one, a snake in the nest.” Venom’s voice became flat, his eyes cold. “But Dmitri and the others in the Seven? Janvier? Trace? No. The bonds between us—and with Raphael—were forged long ago and made unbreakable by countless acts of trust and fidelity.”

“I call you a viper because of your eyes and your general snakeyness, not because I think you’re some kind of a great betrayer,” Holly said with a scowl. “Stop calling me kitty and Hollyberry and I’ll stop calling you Viper Face and Poison.”

His chuckle sent ripples down her spine, made her breath catch in a way that shocked. “But, kitty,” he said, the ice no longer in evidence, “I don’t think that’s a bargain I want to make.”

Fascinated by how his eyes sparkled when he laughed, Holly had to grit her teeth to control her inexplicable reaction. A purely sexual response, she would’ve understood: Venom was darkly handsome and had a body even she couldn’t deny was the stuff of female fantasies. But wanting to see him laugh, feeling that laugh wrap around her like a full-body kiss? It was just weird.

With a stern reminder to herself that he’d kill her should she show the least indication of being a danger to the Tower, she headed down the stairs to the second floor, and, shoulders squared, turned to the room of old blood that drew her so strongly. Venom didn’t stop her, but his prowling presence was suddenly very close. And she thought—He’ll catch me if I fall.

God, she really was losing it.

Then there she was, in the doorway. At first, she had trouble figuring out what she was seeing in the darkness created by the drawn curtains, the only illumination coming from the hallway light at her back . . . and the small light over the pool table.

The horror burned into her brain in Polaroid flashes.

An arm, attached to nothing, bloody tendons trailing from it.

Three heads lined up neatly on the pool table.

A being without a head or legs propped up on its bloody torso by the fireplace, as if just waiting to lean forward and welcome them.

Two left hands lying side by side on the dirty carpet.

“Where are the rest of the pieces?” she said through the buzzing in her skull that wiped out all else.

“Look right.”

She did, saw the pile in the shadows. Torsos. Arms. Legs. All piled up neatly, as if someone hadn’t wanted to make a mess.

Venom spoke, his voice soft. “This is your nightmare, isn’t it, Hollyberry?”

“Yes.”

Which was why she stepped inside the room of horrors and, swallowing her gorge, walked carefully to that pile. There were no hiding places in this room furnished only with old chairs and armchairs and that spotlit pool table turned into a macabre display, but she’d seen too much horror to lower her guard.