Archangel's Viper (Guild Hunter 10)

“Uram touched her,” she whispered, her mouth so dry it was dust.

“There is more.” Venom told her of how Daisy had ended up in the Hudson.

Pressing her palm on the tablet, over the image of a woman who’d never stood a chance, Holly felt a renewed burning in her eyes. “Why not me?” she whispered. “Why did I get to survive and she had to die?”

“Because you’re stronger.” Venom’s answer was so definitive that she stared at him. “It’s the only answer that makes sense. Whatever Uram hid in Daisy, it needed a host and she was starting to fail because of Kenasha’s abuse. It relocated.”

Holly tore open her shirt, uncaring that she was exposing her body to Venom—right now, she was more concerned about the strip of skin down the center of her chest. That skin was smooth and unmarked. Heart thumping, she put her hand on the part of her chest where she’d seen the thing penetrate. “I don’t feel any different. Just . . . greater.”

Oh God. Oh fuck.

Her breath punched out of her. “Like it’s bigger.” A whisper. “The otherness inside me. It’s gotten bigger.”

The serrated wings stretched wider, straining her skin, cutting her from the inside.

Curling the fingers of the hand on her chest into her palm, she gritted her teeth while fighting to hide the pain from Venom. He watched her, his eyes flicking to her tightly fisted hand. She flexed it through conscious effort of will. He can’t know that I am awake, the madness inside her whispered. He will kill us to protect Raphael.

Holly didn’t trust that insane voice but she also knew she was becoming something that shouldn’t exist, an abomination of creation. But she didn’t want to die. Not now. Not when she’d decided to live. And, she had the otherness under vicious control. She wasn’t a threat. If the madness tried to escape, she’d confess her sins, bear the punishment.

The one thing Holly would not do was repeat Uram’s murderous rampage.

“The tests on her and Kenasha’s blood,” Venom said at last, “are taking time to complete. The healers say they’ve never seen the like.”

“You need my blood, too. It has to be a new, post-incident sample.” Skin cold, Holly buttoned up her shirt, taking the opportunity to break the dangerous eye contact with a man who was as intelligent as he was lethal. “Or did you take it while I slept?”

“I don’t need to violate women, kitty. They beg me to take their blood and their bodies.”

Happy to be back on a familiar footing, Holly pretended to gag before she rose to her feet. “Let’s go donate my blood, then.” She watched him get up before a thought struck her. “Have you fed?”

“Yes.”

Holly slammed her mouth shut before she could ask the name of his donor. She didn’t care. She shouldn’t care. Yet the question was shoving so hard at her throat that it threatened to bruise. “Did you try that bottle of premium blood at Janvier and Ash’s? Ash said Ellie’s company is about to extend their flavor range.”

“To humor a good friend is one thing, but I will never voluntarily consume that mockery of blood,” he said with such an offended scowl that she had to laugh.

This, this was the man who’d once run his own kitchen.

But he wasn’t done. “Anyone who adulterates such a pure and perfectly balanced liquid should be banned from the business of blood.”

“You’re a blood snob,” she said teasingly. “Ellie knows how much I hate drinking blood, so she brings me a bottle of the expensive dark chocolate one when she visits.” Holly’s budget didn’t yet stretch to that. “I pretend it’s syrup and pour it over my ice cream.” Of course, she hadn’t consumed any blood for months before that near-bloodlust incident with Venom; it was a mistake she had no intention of repeating. “Next time, I’m going to put it into a milkshake.”

Venom shuddered. “Stop, before I throw up.” He pointed to the next level. “I have some of your things in the bathroom if you want to shower.”

“I’ll be quick.” She kept her word, though she did have a moment’s pause when she picked up her panties to slide them on. The idea of Venom handling the delicate peach satin and white lace . . .

Going downstairs afterward, dressed in tight blue jeans and a simple white shirt with the sleeves rolled up partway, canvas trainers on her feet that she’d painstakingly hand-painted with pink and orange stars, she said, “Thanks for getting a change of clothing for me. I didn’t expect the shoes.” The boots she’d placed neatly by the door definitely wouldn’t have suited this outfit.

“It wasn’t me,” he said absently, his attention on his phone. “Ashwini turned up with all of it.”

Exhaling quietly, Holly headed out. Venom came with her, and the two of them were soon in the testing area. The sweet-faced angel who drew her blood also took her blood pressure and did a couple of other tests, “since you’re here anyway.” The healers loved getting their gentle—but intensely curious—hands on her, the people she dealt with all senior Tower staff who knew her history.

“It’s like you get a hard-on when I’m around, Lucius,” she said to the angel with wings of softest yellow that children couldn’t resist. Angels generally didn’t like getting their wings touched by strangers, but many seemed to make an exception for the littlest mortals.

She’d once seen Lucius sitting quietly in a sun-drenched corner of Central Park, his wings spread out behind him, while a group of five tiny children patted his feathers with their baby-soft hands.

“We all have our vices, sweetheart.” He threw her a wink over his shoulder. Built tall and strong, with blond hair and sparkling gray eyes, he was handsome and kind and funny—but she didn’t want to jump his bones.

It wasn’t the wings; she’d gotten over her phobia of those.

Lucius was just too old, too much from another time.

Problematically, she was beginning to experience the bone-jumping urge when it came to a vampire who’d lived more than three centuries and counting. This attraction laughed in the face of her earlier justification about Lucius. But then, Venom had always been an outlier when it came to Holly—he’d made her react, made her fight, even when she’d been at her lowest.

“Timeline, Lucius?” Venom asked.

“It’s going to take a while longer. All the samples you sent us are . . . odd.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “That is not scientific and I strive to be so, but there it is. It’s all as odd as Holly’s blood, and our lovely Hollyberry has set a high bar for oddness.”

Holly threw a forgotten lab glove at his head. “I’ll see you in a month, you bloodsucker,” she said when he laughingly caught the glove out of the air. She had to turn up for a regular monthly checkup until her blood stopped being so mutable.

Who knew how long that could take?

“Highlight of my calendar, sweet girl.”

Venom spoke after they’d closed the door to Lucius’s lab behind them. “I didn’t realize you were close to Lucius.”

“He’s been my lab tech pretty much from the start.” Though it seemed strange to call Lucius that—he was so much more. Like Kenasha, Lucius had only a little innate power in angelic terms. But unlike the deadbeat angel, Lucius had spent his three thousand years of life learning endless medical techniques.

This decade, he was content practicing his skills doing bloodwork and other tests.

“What’s our next stop?” Even as she spoke, she fought the urge to rub the knuckles of her fisted hand against her chest, to quiet the pulsing that had begun within. It was very low, barely detectable, and it had the rhythm of a heartbeat.

Holly tried not to hear it, tried not to feel it . . . because that wasn’t her pulse.

21

Choking down that chilling realization because there was literally nothing she could do about it unless she wanted to confess and end up with her head on the chopping block—or her body caged in an isolation room—Holly said, “I’m wide awake and it’s only one thirty in the morning.” In immortal terms, the night was just beginning.