Archangel's Viper

“So what happened?”

“I was accidentally bitten by one of Neha’s pet vipers a month before my Making. My body’s reaction was to shrug off the bite—the only indication I’d been bitten was a faint soreness at the site of the bite.”

Holly’s pupils dilated in a flare of understanding. “That attracted Neha’s attention,” she said.

“No one knew why I had such a strong tolerance for snake venom—others in my family had been bitten by far less venomous snakes over the years and they’d all had a severe reaction.” Venom had been curious, too, not realizing he’d sentenced himself to a nightmare. “Neha told me she couldn’t waste me, that I contained within me something that might make it possible for her to create a vampire unlike any other.”

“That bitch,” Holly spit out. “She hurt you to satisfy her own arrogance!”

“She is a queen and an archangel.” Venom had never expected her to act human. “The end result is that my betrothed came out a normal vampire. I didn’t.” He and Aneera had deliberately been placed in different parts of the country, to ensure they didn’t breach the rules. It wasn’t until four years after being Made that they’d met again.

Venom’s eyes had only partially changed by then, but one look and Aneera had run screaming, the same horror on her face that he’d seen in the faces of his family when they’d begun to glimpse the depth of the changes in him. Fear had been acrid in their sweat, their refusal to touch him a staggering hurt, the wards against evil they’d made behind his back brutal blows.

He’d been almost glad when one of his sisters had found the courage to tell him he was no longer welcome—at least then, no one could question his honor in walking away. Because that was all he’d had left. “The marriage pledge was deemed invalid since I was no longer ‘human.’”

“Well, duh, you were a vampire.” Holly flashed her fangs. “Is she still alive, this woman who couldn’t handle it when things didn’t go exactly as planned?”

Venom shrugged. “I don’t know. I left the past behind long ago.”

“Then what’s all this baggage you’re carrying, huh?” Tightening her grip on his hips, Holly moved her hands to his hair. “Did you love her?”

“I barely met her. It was a different time.” A time when his parents and hers had made the arrangements and he and Aneera had agreed to it. “With both of us from similar family backgrounds, and all other concerns in alignment, it was considered the perfect match.”

It felt so strange to say that, to think about his parents and about a time in which he’d been the dutiful eldest son who’d seen nothing wrong with pledging to marry a woman who was a stranger to him. “If I’m being honest, I’ve never understood why her reaction hit me so hard.” As if he’d been kicked.

“I know why,” Holly said, her eyes seeing right through him. “You’d committed to her and you’re not a man who breaks his commitments. It left you totally unprepared for her defection.”

A quiet pause before she added, “Especially coming as it must’ve done on the heels of your family’s rejection. That’s what hurts, isn’t it? Not the loss of a stranger who didn’t know the incredible gift she was throwing away. That woman was just the foul icing on the really shitty cake.”

Venom wanted to bite her again for stripping him bare, punish her for making him face wounds he’d thought long-scarred and only now realized were still oozing. Most of all, he wanted to sink his fangs into her and hold her down until even an archangel’s fucking ghost couldn’t steal her life.

Pulling away from her before he gave in to his inhuman nature once again, before he betrayed far too much, he went to wash his hands. “I’ll finish making your dessert.”

33

Holly looked at Venom’s back as he began to work on the pinwheels again. She knew pushing him would gain her nothing. He wasn’t stubborn like her—but he held his ground. And whatever he’d been carrying around for three-hundred-plus years, it wasn’t something he was ready to share. Fair enough.

She hopped off the counter—and had to do it. “I have to go clean up. I’m all wet and sticky.”

His entire body froze.

Lips curving, she sauntered out of the kitchen, feeling his gaze on her every step of the way. He might be fighting it with all he was worth, but Venom—

Tushar. Say it.

Her heart stopped.

He’d given her his real name. She wasn’t sure anyone else knew or remembered that. And he’d given it to her.

Holly released a quiet breath . . . and her chest, it pulsed.

No. Just no.

Striding into the bathroom, she cleaned herself up—Venom really had done a stellar job of turning her flesh erotically wet—then lifted up her dress to look at her chest. The image of those menacing serrated wings was a faint outline that faded completely toward the edges. “Do what you will, you bastard. And so will I.” The latter words were a vow. “I don’t plan to be easy prey like poor Daisy.”

When she returned to the kitchen, it was to discover the treats already baking and Venom missing. It wasn’t hard to find him. He was standing on the back porch, staring out into the forest as sunshine brushed the treetops.

Padding past him down onto the grass, Holly spread her arms and did a little twirl that sent the skirt of her sundress flying around midthigh. “Okay, that’s enough nature,” she said afterward, the grass soft underneath her bare feet and the air so clean it nearly hurt. “When do we go back to New York?”

Venom’s face was expressionless when he said, “We don’t go back. We wait.”

“For Raphael?”

A curt nod.

Holly’s heart squeezed, the playfulness gone and her dreams of a future in which she seduced Venom into a relationship in ashes. It had all been a fantasy anyway, an illusion the two of them had created with their refusal to refer to the reckoning to come. Because Holly had known how this would end from the moment she’d seen that distorted, monstrous fleshy thing in the crib.

She was a carrier of part of Uram. And now the insane archangel was trying to what, come back to life? The only way for Raphael to make sure that didn’t happen, to absolutely ensure a powerful and insanely murderous being didn’t once more stalk the streets, was to end both her and the receptacle in the crib.

“I won’t run,” she whispered to Venom when he continued to watch her. “I saw what Uram did.” Grief was a bruise deep inside her that had never quite healed. “I watched my friends die. I heard their screams. I’d do anything to make sure he never again hurts anyone.”

• • •

Even die.

The unspoken words hung in the incongruously luminous morning air, her vow unbreakable for all that it was silent. “It won’t come to that,” Venom said, responding to the words she hadn’t spoken.

“Don’t be a liar, Viper Face.” Gentle, chiding words as she walked back up the steps toward him, a small woman in a vivid sundress, bare feet, and a fall of hair as bright as her soul. “There’s no other way.”

This time, when she put her arms around him, he crushed her close. And he knew it was far too late to try to distance himself. She’d already reached that sliver of the man he’d once been. Not only that, but she’d charmed the cobra, twined the viper around her arm. And flipped the switch.

He was hers.

They stood there in silence for untold minutes, until Holly lifted her head from his chest. “I don’t want my pinwheels to burn,” she said with a smile that couldn’t hide the sadness within.

He followed her inside, watched her take the sweets from the oven and put them on a cooling tray on the counter before picking up the small jug of glaze he’d prepared. Glaze drizzled on, she used a fingertip to touch one of the sweets, hissed out a breath. “It’s so hot . . . but I still want to stuff my face.”

Sucking on her burned finger, she shot him a look that asked him to laugh with her.

Venom had no laughter inside him.