Archangel's Viper

“Yes. Too much.” He hissed at Holly, the sound dangerous. “You made me fall in love with you. You don’t get to go now!”

Raphael had never seen Venom like this. He poured more power into Holly’s motionless body, but her faint heartbeat didn’t strengthen, her breath didn’t become less shallow. And his Cascade-born power was young yet. It flickered and died without warning, while Holly lay bloody and motionless.

“Would a mortal hospital be able to help her?” Venom asked.

Raphael shook his head. “Her wounds are immortal in nature.” Created by the remnants of archangelic force. “Do you wish to stay here?”

“No. I want Holly safe. Will you fly her home?” Torment lived in the distinctive eyes that were all many people saw of Venom. “If she dies on the journey . . . hold her safe for me.”

Raphael shook his head, for he would not steal this time from the other man. “Carry her. I’ll fly you both to the plane.” It was parked in a part of Michaela’s territory that hosted a large international airport. As of this morning, secrecy was no longer necessary—the former Queen of Constantinople knew they were here and she knew why they’d come.

Though Venom had never before accepted being carried by any angel, he scooped Holly’s small body carefully into his arms and nodded. For love, Raphael thought, a man would do anything, bear anything. Raphael would’ve made the same choice had their positions been reversed.

Holly survived the journey to the plane.

Venom placed her on the bed. “She’s still fighting.”

Raphael was far more impressed by this slip of a girl than he’d expected to be. Elena and Dmitri had updated him about her on and off through the years since Uram’s attack, but he hadn’t expected a woman with this kind of grit. “She’s survived Uram twice.” Raphael looked at the girl with new eyes. “I wouldn’t bet against her.”

• • •

An hour after Raphael had left the plane to fly home on the wing, Holly still breathed as the jet soared above the clouds, but her pulse was no stronger, her breath as shallow. Venom hissed at her again. “Wake up!” He knew he was being unreasonable and erratic, but his heart was in a vise, being crushed to nothing.

Holly remained motionless under the clean, crisp sheet he’d just pulled over her, a sheet that was already spotted with blood. She was naked beneath; he’d stripped off her bloody clothes and wiped the blood from her ravaged flesh, then left it in the hope she would heal. Maybe he should’ve left her body open to the air, but he couldn’t bear to see her so vulnerable.

Three hours later, the North Atlantic Ocean glittered below and Holly’s fractured skin was no longer bleeding. Venom tried to see that as a sign that her body was mending itself, rather than a sign that her overstretched heart was growing sluggish. Her ravaged skin was cool to his touch, her pulse still so faint that he had to press his ear to her chest to be sure she remained alive. Her breath was nearly impossible to detect. But it was present.

Venom had long ago tucked her into his chest, holding her warm against his body as they lay in the private cabin of the plane.

The pilots hadn’t interrupted after their initial greeting.

Cocooned in the silence, Venom began to talk in the language in which he’d spoken his first words. He told Holly of his childhood in that bustling inn on the Silk Road, of how he’d learned to cook at his father’s knee, and of how he’d been considered an adult at eight years or so of age. He wasn’t sure. Records hadn’t been kept so well at that time.

“I didn’t consider that strange,” he told her. “I had five brothers and sisters by then. It was normal for the eldest son to take on the mantle of protecting and providing for the family, together with his father.”

Venom’s mind drifted back to those long-ago times. “My father had a good heart. He just lost his way a little because he couldn’t say no to my mother.” His lips curved. “That is a fault that runs in my line. My brothers were the same with their wives.”

He didn’t know about their descendants. “It was hardest to put Mohan to rest. I remembered him as a baby, all swaddled up in my arms.” Eyes red hot, he swallowed. “I can’t bury someone I love again. Not ever.” He pressed his lips to hers. “Please don’t make me, Holly.”

A whisper of breath against him, fingers uncurling on his chest.

His heart thumping hard, he looked down, but Holly’s lashes still shadowed her cheeks, dark fans against the cream of her skin. She’d lost weight during the silent battle in the turret. Her cheekbones were prominent, her fingers impossibly thin. But . . . he could hear her heartbeat without having to press his ear to her chest.

And, as he watched, a fine crack across her cheekbone began to seal itself.

Venom shuddered.

He wanted to give her his blood, but Raphael had warned him that Holly was showing signs of blood toxicity. “Uram caused her to ingest too much archangelic blood. Feed her only when she is hungry. Her body needs to get rid of it. If she bleeds, let her.”

She’d sweated blood for the first two hours, her body desperately rejecting the power it had no way to handle. He’d wiped her clean, kept her warm.

Fighting his need to do more, he kept on talking.

He told her about his first days in Neha’s court, and of the time he’d spent in the tunnels below, and of how he’d come to a slow consciousness. He’d been clothed in rags and filthy with dirt the day he woke and realized he was a man, and not a viper like the ones with whom he’d bedded.

“They were draped over me, twined around my neck, my arms.” He should’ve been horrified, but he’d changed in the months after his Making, his threshold of horror a high one. “Even when I moved, they didn’t bite, just slid off.”

It had taken him another week to make his way out of the labyrinth under Archangel Fort. “Neha hadn’t given up on me,” he told Holly. “But she had lost me. It turned out I was faster than any of her trackers—and though I was a viper, I didn’t react to her connection to snakes. I never have.”

For that, he could only be grateful. “It would’ve been a leash she could tug on anytime I was in the vicinity. I like to think I made that happen with my defiance.” He released a breath. “I’ve never hated Neha, though. She was just being an archangel. It was my family who made the choice to turn their face from me.” To see only a monster and not the brother and son who’d done everything he could—given up his entire human existence—so that they’d have lives free of deprivation and shame.

“Venom.”

It was less than a whisper, but he heard.

Heart thundering, he rose to look down into Holly’s face. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes closed. “Kitty.” His voice shook.

“Umm.” It was a lazy, sleepy sound . . . right before she curled into him in a way that said she had no plans to wake.

He pressed a kiss to the rainbow shine of her hair, his entire body trembling. “Sleep. We’ll talk later.” All of what he’d said while she was asleep, he’d tell her when she was awake. She had every right to his secrets and stories. Naasir was right about having someone to share secrets with—it was a gift beyond price.

38

Holly stretched awake with the sense that she’d had the most luxuriant sleep of her li— “Fuck,” she whimpered, “that hurts.” Every muscle in her body felt as if it had been pounded with a hammer until it was pulp, then flung into a freezer to become locked into its misshapen form. “Oh, God.”

“No need to go that far, kitty. Venom or Tushar will do.”

Slitting open her eyes, Holly found herself looking into eyes of viper green that were dancing with light.

Happiness.

She’d never seen Venom this innocently happy in . . . ever. Her own lips curved. “Stop being snarky and do something.”

His smile deepened. “I’ve drawn you a hot bath with mineral salts. Will that do?”

“For starters.” She frowned as the sprawl of the room penetrated. “Where are we?”