Archangel's Viper (Guild Hunter 10)

Me, too, jie jie.

Sliding away her phone after that affectionate exchange, big sister to little sister, she decided to message her two brothers, then call her parents, too—and that was when she realized what she was doing: saying her good-byes. Because Holly would fight to the death to live . . . but not if it meant freeing the monstrous and bloodthirsty thing inside her.

“I hear you’re hissing at handsome young men,” was her mother’s opening statement. “I was going to call you but since you were out so late with that handsome young man, I thought I’d wait. Well?”

“He’s not a young man. He’s one of the most powerful vampires in the city.”

“You should bring him to dinner.”

Holly was momentarily diverted by the idea of Venom at her mother’s dinner table; his wicked smile would surely charm Daphne. Shaking off the strangely compelling image, she managed to nudge the conversation along to other matters, then spoke to her father after her mother had to hang up to deal with a customer.

“Are you all right, Holly?” Allan Chang asked in his gentle way.

“Yes, Daddy.” Holly hadn’t called him that in years, but today, she felt like a little girl who needed her father’s embrace.

One last time.

Ending the conversation a far too short time later, her appointment with Dmitri looming on the horizon, she pulled on the black boots she’d spent two weekends painting so that they sparkled in the light, but not too much. They also had enough of a heel that she didn’t feel Lilliputian next to all the tall people who occupied the Tower. It was like there was a height requirement or something.

“Good things come in small packages,” she reminded herself as she pulled on a thick black watch on her left wrist, then added a bunch of colorful bracelets she’d picked up from a shop in Jackson Heights.

The eyes that stared back at her remained too stark, too scared.

Bringing out the cosmetics her sister had taught her to use when they were teenagers, she focused on those eyes, coloring her eyelids in a pink and orange pattern of sweeps that was probably over the top, but who cared when she was going insane anyway. Her lashes she mascaraed in thick black, after using a glittering silver pencil to line her lower lid.

Ready as she’d ever be, she stepped out of her room and began the walk to the elevators. Her heart was a cold drumbeat, her skin icy. When the elevator doors opened to reveal Venom, however, she didn’t hesitate, just walked straight in. Because from the day she’d first heard a psychotic whisper in a voice not her own, she’d known this was coming.

He punched the button for Dmitri’s floor and her eyes caught on his hand, on the fingers that had caressed her body, clenched in her hair.

Not ready to think about how he’d made her feel viscerally alive, she said, “Did you tell Dmitri already?”

“No. You can tell him.”

Holly folded her arms across her chest. “It’s never been like that before. I was glowing, wasn’t I?” She’d just barely caught the glare of it before agony arched her spine—a futile attempt at escape.

“Wings,” Venom said with a glance at her she wasn’t ready to meet. “Unnatural, serrated wings, glowing in your chest.”

Holly nodded, as if she understood the insanity of it all. When Venom’s hand came to her upper abdomen and he picked up the delicate set of pendants on her long silver chain, she didn’t stop him.

“A gift from my sister,” she said, refusing to acknowledge the curls of desire aroused by his mere proximity, his scent clean and fresh and undeniably masculine. “The scissors because I used to make clothes for her even in high school.” Tops that flattered Mia’s lush figure while not scandalizing their conservative parents. “The high heel because I love shoes.” She pointed down to her boots. “And the pixie dust because . . .”

Venom didn’t step out of the elevator when the doors opened, his unshielded eyes on her fading smile. “Because you’re a dreamer.”

“Once.” Holly tugged away the necklace and stepped out to face what might be her final hour of life.

25

I’ll fight it. I’ll run.

The defiant thoughts were hers and they came from deep within.

Fuck the world if it thought it could crush her. She hadn’t asked to be changed and made into this nightmare. She had a right to exist, a right not to be prejudged, a right to be given the chance to fight the monsters within. If she failed, that was a different matter. She’d put her own damn neck on the chopping block then. No one had the right to steal the battle from her, steal her chance at life.

Driven by fury, she strode into Dmitri’s office . . . and came to a sudden halt. The leader of the Seven wasn’t alone. Illium stood staring out through the wall of glass that faced the balcony, while Honor stood on this side of the desk, frowning, the deep green of her eyes on the blue-winged angel’s back.

Dmitri’s gaze was on his hunter wife.

“I’m sorry,” Holly said, having the feeling she’d interrupted something.

Dmitri’s dark eyes landed on her. “No, come in.”

“I asked that Honor and Illium be here.” Venom touched his hand to her lower back.

Holly looked up at him. What was he doing, aligning himself so openly with her? Didn’t he know she was toxic? A creature who fit nowhere. But he didn’t break contact. “The change in Holly,” he said, “it’s escalating.”

Then, though he’d told her she’d be the one who’d have to explain, he laid out the bare facts to set the stage. It gave her enough time to find her balance so she could tell her side of the story. “There’s been . . . an alien thing inside me since the attack.” It took furious effort to keep her voice flat instead of giving in to the screaming terror of the memories that haunted her.

“I always thought you were having trouble accepting the changes inside you when you spoke of them as if they were other,” Honor murmured, propping her hip against Dmitri’s desk, her soft ebony hair woven in a braid and her body clad casually in a fitted T-shirt and well-worn jeans that hugged her perfectly. “But I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, and no.” Anger simmered in her yet, but the pause earlier had given her room to breathe; she knew she’d achieve far more if she put her points forward in a rational manner.

And Honor . . . Holly couldn’t yell at Honor. Ever. Her heart wouldn’t permit it; she wanted never to cause the hunter any hurt. Honor had conquered her demons, but as far as Holly was concerned, the woman who’d taught her that she could trounce grown men if she used her body right had already suffered more than her quota of pain.

“Uram,” she began, “changed me in a way that goes bone-deep.” It was no use fighting that truth. “But there’s a part that’s foreign, and always will be.”

The whispering madness had never integrated with her psyche.

Holly had worried it was a sign of severe mental illness, a total breakdown of her sense of self, but mental illness didn’t make serrated wings blaze on a woman’s chest that other people could see. “It feels too big for this body, too powerful.”

“Did the changes accelerate only after Daisy?” Dmitri asked, while Illium put his back to the glass wall and just listened, the extraordinary beauty of his wings shot through with the cutting sunlight of a New York that had shrugged off yesterday’s rain with the nonchalance of a catwalk model switching outfits.

“No. The . . . intruder inside me has been increasing in strength for a while,” she admitted, her feet set apart and her arms folded. “I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to be put down like a rabid dog.”

Dmitri’s dark eyes glittered with anger. “I see.”

But Holly wasn’t backing down. Not this time. Tears threatened to burn her eyes, but she refused to be that broken girl anymore. “I have no place,” she bit out. “I have no stability. My right to exist is conditional.” She wanted to throw something, to scream and shout, but that was partly why no one took her seriously. Because she was young and scared and sometimes, she panicked.