Archangel's Viper

“Thanks,” he said, lifting his head from Illium’s wrist after about ten seconds. “Janvier told me Elena’s company is doing flavored premium blood now.” It always struck him as hysterical that the Guild Hunter had fallen into a business that catered to a strictly vampiric clientele.

“It’s one of the hot new businesses in Manhattan, according to Immortal Insider magazine.” Illium ran his fingers through his hair, the blue-tipped black strands falling back in place around his face afterward. “You should go visit one of their blood cafés,” he said with a straight face belied by the amusement in his eyes. “It’ll give the business a big publicity boost among the fashionable crowd.”

Venom snorted, not about to become a poster boy for flavored blood. What the fuck?

“I think our guest is fully compos mentis.” Dmitri rose to his feet.

So did Venom, while Illium continued to hover just off the edge in a casual display of brutal strength. They gave Kenasha the courtesy of allowing him to get to his feet, though it was a dubious courtesy at best, since the angel looked scared stiff of the precipitous drop mere feet away. And that was beyond pitiful. As an angel, the other man should’ve been far more comfortable here than either Venom or Dmitri.

Then again, his wings appeared even more useless now that he was standing. The muscles and tendons drooped, like those of a marionette with its strings cut. “Are you sure you’re not sick?” Venom asked, concerned for Illium and the other Tower angels.

“If I am, it’s because of Daisy’s blood,” Kenasha whined. “She did something to me.”

“Are any of your angelic friends displaying similarly wasted wings?”

Kenasha paled under the midnight cold of Dmitri’s voice, a trembling figure framed by the lights of a city that didn’t know the meaning of sleep. “No. I didn’t tell any of them about her blood. I’m the only one who drank from her.” He ran shaky hands down his front in a futile effort to smooth the wrinkles in the bruise-colored velvet of his ornate topcoat. It was embellished with two strips of yellow brocade and frog closures.

Venom wondered what Holly would think of Kenasha’s sartorial choice.

Dmitri made fleeting eye contact with Venom, passing the baton, since Venom knew more about the situation. The problem was that Kenasha couldn’t meet Venom’s eyes—his terror of Venom’s gaze was worse than the general fear that clung to him and stunk up the air. No matter. It wasn’t like the angel could lie his way out of this, not with Venom, Dmitri, and Illium all focused on his quivering face.

“Tell us exactly how you found Daisy.”

19

Kenasha repeated the story of rescuing Daisy from the Hudson. “After I realized she wasn’t a corpse, I thought I’d be a hero,” he whispered. “Like the other people who helped during the Falling. I thought if she was important, I’d be able to tell everyone I’d rescued her.”

Venom wanted to slap the self-obsessed prick. “What did she tell you about how she ended up in the river?”

Kenasha shifted his feet. And Dmitri spoke with silken menace. “It seems you’d prefer to have this conversation with the sire.”

The angel looked so horrified at the idea that it was comical. Venom could actually feel Dmitri’s grim amusement. There weren’t many people who wanted to come face to face with the Archangel of New York. Venom had never understood that—he knew Raphael burned with power, but he wasn’t capricious or cruel without reason.

Yes, he ruled with a steel hand. However, that hand didn’t get involved in the petty business of people’s lives.

“No, no.” Kenasha tugged at the white ruffles poking out of the top of his coat; it was a miracle he didn’t choke in the froth. “Daisy said she was attacked by an angel who picked her up and flew her across the city to a warehouse. She escaped from him when he was glutted on blood, somehow ending up in the river—she couldn’t remember the details of how. I think she was probably hallucinating and disoriented because of the drugs. We all know angels don’t get blood-glutted.”

Illium, Dmitri, and Venom had all gone predator-still halfway through Kenasha’s monologue.

“When?” Venom asked softly.

Face stark white, the other man didn’t try to prevaricate. “Not long before Raphael fought Uram in the sky.”

His ignorance of how the two events were connected wasn’t a surprise. The Tower had managed to keep the details of Uram’s unprecedented descent into insanity and murder limited to a tight group of people. The world did not need to know that the vastly powerful beings who ruled them could fall prey to ravening madness.

“What else did she say about the attack on her?” Venom pressed.

Kenasha frowned, and Venom could almost hear the gears in his brain grinding as he thought back. That, at least, wasn’t an affectation. The old immortals weren’t always good at keeping track of their memories—or even storing them in a linear fashion. They’d lived so long that their memories were tangled skeins it took time to unravel.

“She said he plucked her up from the street while she was walking to work.” Kenasha’s frown grew deeper. “I knew she must’ve been on drugs when she told me that no one could see her, even though she struggled to free herself.”

Glamour.

Not every archangel possessed it, but the ones who did could also disappear objects and people held close to their body, the field of glamour not limited to their own flesh.

“Then she said the angel fed on her blood and put himself in her.” Kenasha shrugged. “She was quite pretty before so I can understand why the angel wanted to use her in such a way.”

Venom felt ice crawl through his veins. “Those were her exact words? That the angel ‘put himself in her’?”

Kenasha nodded. “I remember because . . .” Going red, he clammed up.

Illium chose that second to buffet his wings, creating a churning eddy of wind that nearly sucked the other angel off the edge.

Squeals leaving his mouth, Kenasha scrabbled for purchase.

“Talk,” Dmitri said without mercy.

Chest heaving where he’d collapsed on the floor, Kenasha blubbered. “I remember because I was thinking how delicious it would be to take a woman who’d already been claimed by a much more powerful angel—he had to be powerful, didn’t he? I mean, he’d flown her all the way across Manhattan.”

Illium just shook his head. Venom knew that carrying a single human or vampire didn’t make most angels break a sweat—Elena was an exception, her immortal strength yet growing in her bones, and still, she could already carry children. When it came to the angel-born, even the youngest Tower angel, Izak, could pull off carrying an adult any day of the week with one arm tied behind his back.

Illium, in contrast, could stop helicopters and planes.

He’d infamously turned a chopper upside down in midair after the paparazzi began to pursue Elena as if she was a mortal they could hound at will. Needless to say, the consort had never again had to deal with such dangerous tactics from the press.

Kenasha, Venom thought, was—what was the word Holly had used?—yes, a deadbeat. The angelic equivalent of the work-shy mortal slob who sat on his parents’ couch, sucked up all their energy and money, and came to eventually resemble a tub of lard.

No strength, no muscle. No backbone.

“What else?” Venom asked this particular tub of lard.

A blank look. “That was it. I never did take her. I tasted her blood, you see,” he whispered on a disgusting shiver of pleasure, “and afterward, it was all I wanted from her.”

Venom prowled closer, causing Kenasha to scramble back until he was a hairsbreadth from the edge and a fall that shouldn’t be deadly to an angel of his age—except that Kenasha had made himself so weak that it was highly probable he’d turn to red paste intermingled with rivers of fat when he hit the ground.

It was an amusing visual Venom would have to share with Holly. “When you say it was before Raphael’s fight with Uram,” he said, “exactly how much time are we talking?”

Gulping, Kenasha tugged at his frothy collar again. “Um, the day before? Yes, I think so. The day before.”