Archangel's Viper

It had taken Holly a while to discover that the last order had been placed by a squadron of angelic fighters who’d had a hankering for deep-dish pizza. They’d ordered fifty . . . then fifty more after a second training session.

On the same day.

“I cooked you something.” Venom’s eyes held hers, and this close, she glimpsed the golden striations in the extraordinary viper green. In contrast, the slits of black were such a pure shade of obsidian that she could almost see her own reflection in them.

Lifting her hand without her conscious volition, she brushed the very tip of her right index finger across his eyelashes.

20

His lashes were straight and dark and uncompromising . . . but they felt like the softest of feathers, a whisper of a touch. He didn’t stop her, just watched her with that unblinking gaze he got sometimes; it tended to frighten people who didn’t know him. Those people erroneously assumed it was a threat when it was simply another part of Venom’s nature.

Holly just felt . . . at peace.

She couldn’t hurt him if she lost control. She couldn’t terrify him. She couldn’t even shock him. She could annoy him, but they both enjoyed that—a dirty little secret neither one of them would ever speak aloud. “What did you cook?” she asked in that peaceful, lethargic, oddly content state.

“Fried rice with fresh crab and scallops.”

Holly jerked upright into a seated position. “Really? Give it to me!” She loved seafood fried rice so much that she’d learned to cook it; of course, hers was never as good as her mom’s. Daphne just threw in “this and that,” mostly leftover bits and pieces, and it always turned out fantastic. “You’re competing with my mom’s top-shelf cooking, just so you know.”

“I am warned.” Flowing upright in a way that made it seem as if he had no bones in his body, Venom walked barefoot across the huge living area and up three small steps to the kitchen area. The gray of his shirt sat flawlessly on his shoulders, the fabric of his pants hugging his butt. What? She couldn’t look? She was human and Venom was built like a racehorse, sleek and muscled and fast.

When he turned to lift a lightweight and aerated cover off the wok that sat on the counter, she noticed all over again that his shirt was open at the collar, revealing a strip of golden brown skin. “It’s still hot,” he told her with a faint smile. “Perhaps the scent lured you out of sleep.”

“You think you’re joking but seafood fried rice—good seafood fried rice—is serious business.”

Holly sat cross-legged on the stone and watched as he dished out the rice onto a glass plate, her mouth watering and stomach rumbling. She was ready to chew the plate itself by the time he returned to put it into her hands, along with a fork.

“Now,” he said, “for the review from a connoisseur.”

Holly took a deep breath and scented ginger, garlic, shallots, a hint of chili. Her first bite was heavenly, the moan that rose up out of her throat pure, unadulterated pleasure. She’d never, not in a million years, tell her mom, but Venom was at least equal with her in the cooking stakes. Then she didn’t think, just ate, her starved body in ecstasy.

When Venom disappeared for a while to the kitchen and returned to place a glass beside her, she didn’t pay attention except to glance at it and make sure it wasn’t the dark red of blood. Ugh. She so didn’t need a mug of blood.

It was only halfway through the plate of food that she felt the need for liquid with which to wash it down. Taking a sip from the blood-free glass without looking, she felt her eyes widen. “Mango lassi?” It was a whisper.

Venom tilted his own glass at her from where he was once more leaning up against the sofa—but this time he was facing her, very much in the present. With her. Not in the distant past where she could never go.

She took a sip and felt her toes curl at the tangy sweetness. “How can a vampire be this good a cook?” she muttered before diving back into the fried rice with its succulent chunks of crab meat and equally juicy scallops.

The next time she came up for air, it was to find he’d brought the wok over.

Smiling at her imperious demand for more, he dished her another full plate.

She ate it. And she drank three glasses of the cold yogurt drink he’d made fresh. Stuffed, sated, she fell back on the stone with her arms out on either side of her in what her yoga teacher had called the corpse pose. Holly hadn’t lasted long in yoga. She’d felt as if she’d explode out of her skin at the slowness of it all.

“Is my belly sticking out?”

Venom chuckled. “No. Though I have to admit, I don’t know where it all went.”

“Me, either.” She just knew she’d needed fuel and the fuel he’d provided had been delicious. “You’re a vampire. You don’t eat.” Yes, he could have the odd small thing—like that glass of lassi, or a few bites of a food he particularly craved, but he couldn’t digest entire meals.

“I wasn’t always a vampire.”

She turned her head to look at him. “Don’t tell me: you were a cook in your human life.”

“Yes.”

Holly blinked. She’d been joking. The idea of Venom as a cook simply did not compute. “Really?”

An incline of his head, his hair falling farther across his forehead. “My family had an inn along a Silk Road corridor. We fed and housed hungry and thirsty merchants, couriers, travelers of all kinds.”

Fascinated, Holly turned over fully onto her side. “What was it like?”

“A good life,” he said simply. “I had the freedom to create and I created tastes so renowned that even angels stopped especially at our little inn.” No pride in his tone, just the ache of memory. “Neha wanted my skills in her kitchen—I had a standing offer to come to Archangel Fort and apply to become a vampire. She told me I’d be accepted without delay and that I’d hold a distinguished position in her kitchens.”

Which meant, Holly realized, that Neha had already managed to get hold of his blood to confirm he was compatible with the angelic toxin that turned a mortal into a vampire.

“Is that what you did for her as a young vampire? Cook?”

“No. I was too altered after my Making—she realized I’d be far more useful as a warrior. So I trained for that instead.” A faint smile. “Though, every so often, I’d break into the kitchen at night and cook a feast for my friends. Neha discovered us one day and told me she’d chop off my head if I didn’t invite her next time. She used to sit with us at the wooden slab of the kitchen table, her wings brushing the floor, and laugh, eat.”

He shook his head, the movement slow and thoughtful. “She was different then. A dangerous queen, yes, one capable of cruelty as well as mercy, but also a warrior like Raphael. Present. Real.”

Holly couldn’t wrap her mind around the scene Venom was describing. The Queen of Snakes and Poisons was stunning, deadly, and unmistakably regal. The idea of her joining an impromptu midnight feast was incongruous . . . and it made Holly piercingly aware of the divide of life and experience that separated her and Venom. “You weren’t tempted to open your own inn after you’d completed your Contract?”

“Sometimes, kitty,” Venom murmured, “you can’t go back.”

Holly thought of the fashion templates she’d thrown away, the exquisite fabrics she’d made her mother donate to a local charity shop, and felt a stabbing sense of loss. “Who says?” she said defiantly, suddenly furious at herself for giving away a piece of silk she’d adored and planned to make into a dress. “We are the ones who make the choices.” And she was going to choose to find another piece of silk for her dress.

Venom’s response was a smile that said a thousand unspoken things. “Do you intend to make the choice to get up anytime soon?”

“Nope.” Holly snuggled into the stone—that sounded so weird, but she didn’t care. “Is Daisy all right?”

Venom’s smile faded. “No, kitty. Daisy is gone.”

Holly was seated cross-legged by the time he finished telling her what had taken place after she entered the isolation room, her tears for Daisy dry tracks on her cheeks. Venom had loaded the recording from the room onto a large tablet and she watched and rewatched the slow-motion replay until it was burned into her brain.