Archangel's Viper

Venom took off his sunglasses and set them aside. His eyes reflected back at him from the sleek square mirror on the wall that had been a gift from Elena. The two of them weren’t exactly best friends, but the mate of his sire had owed him a forfeit after he beat her in a sparring session where they’d both had to fight using unfamiliar weapons.

She’d paid the forfeit with this mirror. At first, he’d thought it a somewhat unimaginative, though acceptable, payment. Then he’d noticed the delicate motif carved into the left white edge of the frame—a viper hanging off a tree. It was beautifully done. Aodhan’s work, he’d realized at once. Done specifically for him.

Sometimes Elena made it very difficult to be annoyed with her for the weakness she’d created in the archangel Venom chose to serve. She was the only chink in Raphael’s armor, and his Seven had come to terms with it—but that didn’t mean they were all okay with it.

“Holly isn’t infectious,” Venom said. “Whatever it was that came out of Daisy, it only wanted to go to Holly.” He felt the truth of that in his gut. “I don’t know of any disease that punches out of a person and into another.”

“I’m going to look at the footage. You want to meet me in the tech room?”

Venom glanced over at where Holly slept so peacefully. She’d been here before, wouldn’t be disoriented if she woke alone. “Yes.”

It was time to uncover the shape of the thing that had burrowed into Holly.

The same thing that had lived inside a vampire who’d gone utterly insane in the hours before her death.

18

Dmitri was already in the elevator when Venom stepped into it; from the other man’s tumbled hair and the faint scent of cold night air that clung to him, Venom figured he’d been up on the roof.

The leader of the Seven shot him an assessing look. “Holly’s getting under your skin.”

“She always has,” Venom admitted to a friend who’d never betray him. “But she needs a little seasoning.” Needed to get tougher . . . else, she’d never survive the immortal world. “You’ve all been protecting her under the guise of keeping an eye on her.”

Dmitri’s expression was amused. “I’m not exactly known to be a soft touch.”

“Let her go, Dmitri,” Venom said quietly. “We need to find out what she’s capable of—but she needs to learn the truth about herself most of all.” He held the other vampire’s dark eyes, only then realizing he’d forgotten his sunglasses upstairs. “Release the chains.”

Dmitri didn’t answer until they were outside the elevator and in the lighted corridor that led to the circular room of the Tower’s tech core. Windows lined the entire hallway, would’ve poured the colors of New York inside had it been morning. “That could be deadly,” the other man said at last. “Not just for others, but for Holly.”

“If you don’t release her soon, she’ll die anyway,” Venom said flatly. “She’s a wild thing. Not built for a cage.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Neha . . . she understood me even if she was no gentle mistress. She gave me the freedom to figure out what the fuck I’d become.” For the first five years after his Making, he hadn’t been “human” even in the vampiric sense.

“There’s a critical difference between you and Holly,” Dmitri reminded him.

“Uram.”

“Uram.” Dmitri began walking again, the two of them going to the tech center in silence.

Vivek was waiting for them. His breath caught when they entered, and Venom quickly realized it was the first time the other man had faced his eyes unshielded. “Do you have infrared vision?” Interest glittered on his face.

Venom smiled, the curious reaction a far preferable one to quivering fear or horror. “You’ll have to court me with roses and diamonds before asking such intimate questions.”

Vivek snorted. “It’s just like working for the Guild—place is full of smartasses.” He swiveled his wheelchair around. “I’ve already cued up the footage in the private viewing room.” That room lay behind his gleaming control station, and it boasted three massive screens, each taking up most of a wall.

The video from the isolation room was cued up on the wall directly opposite the door.

Vivek waited for them to shut that door before he started to play the recording. “This is slowed down a hundred times,” the Guild Hunter said. “That’s how deep I had to go to see anything.”

Venom could see movement at far faster speeds, so the recording progressed at a glacial pace for him, but it proved useful in picking up all the details. It was a glowing red spark that had erupted from Daisy. Not even fist sized. Nowhere close. Maybe the size of a quarter. But it had slammed into Holly with phenomenal force.

“I felt that,” he said as the moment of impact played out on the screen. “It was like she’d taken a punch from a heavyweight boxer. The impact flowed through her body to mine.”

“But nothing penetrated your body?”

Venom shook his head in response to Dmitri’s question. “It was aimed only at Holly, wanted only Holly.” He didn’t know if he could explain it, but he tried. “It wasn’t a random eruption—it waited until Holly was within reach, so close that she couldn’t avoid the impact. And Daisy spoke to Holly beforehand, said something about being together.”

“Audio caught that.” Vivek rewound the tape.

“It’s calling to you. It wants to be together.”

The guttural words, Daisy’s voice far deeper than it should be, were clearly directed at Holly.

“Run it forward again.” Feet set apart and arms folded, Dmitri looked at the screen with grim attention. “Zoom in on whatever it was that jumped from the vampire to Holly.”

Vivek did so in silence. The red spark was actually a very small ball with a spiked surface . . . and its heart pulsed an acidic green.

“Fuck.” Venom knew that color—it was the same shade as Holly’s eyes had become. “Uram definitely touched Daisy, changed her.”

“Get Kenasha in here now,” Dmitri said, his tone unbending.

“He’ll be incapacitated for a little while longer.”

“No, he won’t.” Ice in every word. “I’ll choke him on my own blood if I have to, to fight the effect of Holly’s venom, but he’s going to speak to us right now.”

“My blood will work better.” It’d counteract the venom faster. “Illium’s in a pissy mood. I’ll ask him to go out—he’ll enjoy dragging in an asshole.” The blue-winged angel usually had the most joie de vivre of the Seven, but when Venom had searched him out yesterday prior to heading to the sparring circle to watch Dmitri, Ash, and Janvier, he’d found the other man brooding on the roof.

Illium was powerful, violently so, and as darkly angry as he was at the moment, he’d scare the piss out of Kenasha. That worked well with Venom’s sense of justice.

“Do it,” Dmitri said.

Leaving without further words, Venom made his way to one of the railingless Tower balconies and scanned the sky. He could talk to the sire with his mind, the gift one fostered in him by Raphael. He didn’t, however, have the ability to reach out to others in the Seven on his own—not yet. But he didn’t need it.

He had a phone.

Not spotting Illium’s distinctive silver-edged blue wings in the sky and well aware the angel loved all things technologically inclined, he made the call. Illium answered in an unusually curt tone. “Yes?”

“I need a favor. A pickup. He enslaved a woman when she was too weak to say no.”

“You always give me the best gifts. Where?”

Venom gave him the location before adding, “Holly bit him, so he’ll be a little out of it.”

Laughter down the line, Illium sounding more like himself when he said, “I’ve always liked your little kitty.”

Venom’s hand clenched on the phone. He had to fight the urge to tell Bluebell not to call Holly that—that was a private game between him and Holly. “Thanks for the pickup.”