Archangel's Viper

When she did finally tear away, it was to see Michaela’s throat wound close up in front of her eyes.

The archangel didn’t look weakened or as if she’d been hurt.

And Holly’s body swirled with power that threatened to burst her cells, burn out of her skin. Dear God. How did anyone survive feeding from an archangel?

“Was that enough?” Michaela’s question was gentle, her own hand rising to lie against Holly’s cheek. “I have waited for you.”

Holly’s skin cracked across her back, her chest, her soul in danger of drowning as pain ripped at her insides. Are you more yourself? she asked through the haze of it. Are you more Uram?

I need more blood. Her head turned toward Raphael. Stronger blood.

You are glutted on the blood of an archangel, and yet you seek more blood. Agony twisted at her guts as things began to crack inside her, too, her body full of too much archangelic power. You will always seek more and more and more. The craving clawed at her even as her body began to fail. You are starting to want blood with violence, aren’t you? You want to tear at Michaela’s throat like a wolf gnawing on his kill.

“No!” Holly’s body staggered back to press against the cold stone wall.

Sweat dripped down her temples.

Are you any stronger? Holly kept on pushing through the unbearable pain of a body bursting from the inside out. Even a little? The surge of archangelic blood, archangelic power, should’ve had a violent effect . . . and it had. Or are you unable to transmute that energy into a form you can use? Because you are only an echo.

Blood. A red haze. I need blood. A sudden, cunning thought. This body is weak. I need hers. The power wrenched out of her before Holly could do anything, bending her spine so far backward that she knew it was about to snap.

37

“No!” The shout left Venom’s throat as Holly’s back bowed violently, acid green light pouring out of her in a brutal surge.

Uncaring of the two—perhaps three—archangels in the room, he ran across to catch her body as it collapsed to the floor. He was too fast to allow that to happen. He caught her bloody, broken body in his arms, stopped her head from cracking onto the hard polished wood.

She weighed too little, his Holly.

And the power was still screaming out of her in a burn of acidic green.

When it did finally cut off, her head lolled to the side, blood trickling out of the corner of her mouth . . . and her face riddled with hundreds of tiny cracks. Blood filled those cracks, iron-rich wet against every part of her that he was touching. As if her entire body had fractured.

Venom’s heart was pounding too hard for him to sense her pulse.

He kept on trying.

Nothing.

No, kitty, no.

• • •

Raphael watched the energy erupt out of Holly, saw Venom catch her as she fell. And he saw unvarnished terror on Venom’s face for the first time in all the years he’d known the vampire.

But Raphael could do nothing for Venom’s love at that moment. “Michaela,” he said in warning.

She wasn’t listening, her eyes wide with hope. “My love,” she whispered . . . just as the ball of power smashed into her, covering her body in a slick of acid green fire.

Raphael could’ve stopped it. He didn’t. The instant he stepped in, he ignited a catastrophic war. The choice had to be Michaela’s.

Her eyes glowed the same distinctive acid green for a single piercing instant before she shoved the power out with a roar. “Get out!”

The green glow coalesced in the air again, crackling with veins of red. Blood red. Raphael wasn’t Michaela. He’d accepted long ago that the man he’d once called a friend no longer existed. When the malignant energy went to smash into him, he held up a hand ringed with angelfire. The energy drew back . . . and headed toward Venom. The other man moved with viper speed to evade it, Holly in his arms.

Raphael moved at the same time to put himself in front of Venom and the fallen girl he loved. This was a war between archangels. Venom and Holly had done their part. They’d done far more than could be expected of a vampire of only a few centuries and a mortal who’d been Made too young.

It was time for Raphael and Michaela to end this. “Michaela.”

Tears ran down her cheeks as she raised her own hand, her power glittering bronze around her fingertips. She couldn’t form angelfire, but the bronze lightning she could create felt stronger than it had the last time he’d been close enough to witness it.

The Cascade in effect.

Her lack of angelfire mattered little. She had other ways to kill a fellow archangel. That was one of the markers of ascension: the ability to kill your peers. “I loved him,” she whispered, the sick energy held frozen between his power and hers. “He truly saw me. The darkness, the light, the glory, the rot.”

It was the most honest appraisal he’d ever heard Michaela make about herself. “Is he who he was?” Raphael asked, because they had to be sure. “You felt him just now. Can he come back?”

“He is . . . a ghost. A fragment. Of the worst part of him.” The tears continued to fall. “We must end him, Raphael. He is worth so much more than this mad existence driven by blood.”

Raphael thought one last time of the friend who’d raced with him through the canyons of the Refuge, of the man who’d laughed as they sat around a bonfire, his wings spread out on the grass. That Uram had been lost to time and to his own arrogance well before the insanity, but he had existed. And their long relationship demanded this act, for a sane Uram would’ve never wanted to exist as this mad phantom.

“Good-bye, old friend,” he whispered. “This time, it will be forever.”

Sobbing openly, Michaela released a crackling bolt of her power. It encircled the energy, began to crush it to death. Raphael added his angelfire. The echo stood no chance. It wasn’t Uram. It wasn’t even a part of Uram. It was only a faint shadow left behind by a powerful man lost to blood.

And then it ceased to be, burned out of existence.

Michaela collapsed to her knees, her wings spread out behind her in a splendor of delicate bronze. “I wanted more, more power, more everything. And I lost him to that greed.”

Turning, Raphael focused on his own people without discounting Michaela. As she’d just admitted, even her love had a price—and she might yet blame him for Uram’s death. “Venom.”

This member of his Seven who had always been so self-contained and coolly sophisticated, his humor often so dry it was cutting, raised eyes wet with tears. “She’s dying, sire.” It was a broken statement, Holly clutched tight to his chest.

The girl’s face was a smear of blood and broken skin, her pulse near impossible to detect. Blood trickled out of her nose and pasted her black top to her body. Wiping away the blood from her nose with a gentle touch, Venom pressed a kiss to her wrecked face. “She refused to let evil win. She fought.”

Raphael held out his arms. “Entrust her to me, Venom.” He didn’t want to be here, in this place with an archangel he’d never fully trusted.

Venom’s responding glance was shattered, but he nodded; he was one of the Seven and even nearly broken, he understood the reason behind Raphael’s request. “I will meet you there.”

As soon as he had Holly in his arms, Raphael rose into the sky without saying good-bye to Michaela. Lost in her guilt and horror, she wouldn’t have noticed if he had. He’d wrapped glamour around himself and Holly while still inside the turret, ensuring no one could follow him to the cabin of Jason’s informant.

He wasn’t worried about Venom. The youngest of the Seven was resourceful; he’d make it out of Michaela’s stronghold and if he needed assistance, he’d call out to Raphael.

As it was, Venom outdid himself, arriving at the cabin only minutes after Raphael.

Sweat drenched his body.

Going to his knees beside the sofa where Raphael had placed Holly, Venom stroked back her hair, then looked at Raphael. “Can you do anything?”

Raphael already had his hand on the girl’s bloody chest, his palm glowing blue as he called on his Cascade-born ability to heal. He could feel the energy penetrating her skin, but it had no discernible effect. She was unique, this girl who had found the will power to defy the ghost of an archangel. “She has courage, your Holly.”