by Nalini Singh
Then one night, she'd spent ten minutes with him; he'd only lasted three before starting to pick at his face with his ragged and dirty nails. His vampirism couldn't keep up with the constant wounds, especially since Zeph didn't exactly subsist on the best blood. Holly had tried to pay him for his information in good bottles of blood, but he preferred money--which he spent on honey feeds, where human junkies got high, then allowed vampires to drink from them.
As far as Holly knew, it was the only reliable way a vampire could get high.
Arabella, the equally skinny blonde vampire who was Zeph's shadow, was no junkie, but she couldn't deny Zeph, so it ended up the same. "Hi, Holly," the female vampire said with a natural sweetness that always struck Holly, her fingers twisting her limp dreads in her hands. "You sure look nice."
"So do you," Holly replied in a gentle tone, seeing in Arabella what could've happened to her if the Tower had abandoned her--or if she'd abandoned herself. Which, frankly, she'd been inches away from doing. She'd never judge Arabella for the choices she'd made or for her strange loyalty to Zeph. "Were you guys looking for me?"
Arabella darted a quick glance behind Holly. "What's he doing down here?" Her lush Southern vowels contracted, her fear a living being between them.
"He's with me," Holly said simply.
Arabella's eyes widened, the harsh edge of fear transmuting into an openly female admiration. "Wow, Holly. That's Venom. You did good."
Holly bit her tongue rather than crush Arabella's illusions. "Did you two want to tell me anything?" Every so often, the pair found her when they didn't have any information to trade but were really hungry. Then she gave them blood vouchers that couldn't be exchanged for money and were personalized to Zeph and Arabella so Zeph couldn't try to barter them.
Just because a person was broken didn't mean they had no value, no right to live.
"Um, yeah." Zeph went to pick at a scab, stopped himself. He was like that, tried to be "normal" as long as he could. "We heard some guys were going after you."
"They already tried," Holly began.
"No." Arabella tugged at Holly's arm before snatching away her hand so quickly it was as if she was afraid someone would hurt her for daring.
Holly glanced over her shoulder and gave Venom the hard eye. He'd gotten closer, those irises of his penetrating the shadows as if she, Zeph, and Arabella were bathed in bright sunlight. Go. Away, she mouthed.
He slipped on his sunglasses instead.
Shifting her attention back to Arabella, she took the trembling woman's hand. "He won't hurt you." She'd kick his ass if he tried. "What did you want to tell me?"
"There's more guys," Arabella whispered. "Someone put a big . . . Zeph, what's the word?"
"Bounty." Zeph scratched furtively at a scab. "Like if we kidnap you and give you to this person, we get a lot of money."
Even though Holly already had that information, she let the two think it was new. Pride was as important as food when it came to survival. "How much?" she asked, not expecting a firm answer.
Arabella frowned. "I think we heard five million?"
Shoving his hands into the pockets of his dirty jeans, bony shoulders poking out through his holey black sweater, Zeph nodded. "Yeah, it was five mil. I thought I was zoned out and hearing things, but I never had a honey feed last night. For sure, it was five mil."
Five million?
Even in her wildest dreams, Holly wouldn't value herself at that extravagant amount. "Thank you for telling me instead of attempting to kidnap me."
"Aw, Hol, you're our friend." Zeph pulled off his ubiquitous knit cap to reveal hair of an astonishingly beautiful auburn that surprised Holly each time she saw it. "We don't got nothing else," he added. "Just the rumor. Some of the other vamps were talking about maybe trying to get you, so we heard."
"But most won't try," Arabella said with a reassuring pat of Holly's arm. "Folks know you're with the Tower and it'd just be stupid to get on the Tower's wrong side."
Unfortunately, if people were strung out or otherwise desperate, that wouldn't matter. "Here." She slipped them personalized blood vouchers as well as money; she'd put both in her evening clutch just in case. "Go get the good blood first, okay? I don't want anything to happen to you." It took a lot to kill a vampire, but if Zeph or Arabella got any weaker, another vampire might rip out their hearts or tear off their heads to get at their meager belongings.
"Thanks, Holly." Arabella touched her arm again and Holly noticed that the other woman's ragged military-surplus jacket had become even more so.
"Arabella, you need a new coat." It got cold at night, especially for a woman with no roof over her head.
"Not yet," Arabella said before Holly could offer to replace it. "If I have anything new, the others will take it. Maybe after it's a little colder?" A hopeful smile that was shaky at the edges. "I know a charity shop that has stuff."
"Just find me when you're ready." Waiting until they'd melted safely back into the shadows, Holly turned to walk back to Venom.
And nearly slammed into his chest.
7
Managing to maintain her balance, she scowled up at him. "You can't even follow simple instructions?"
"I waited until the vampires left," he said without a smile. "What did they say?"
"Take off those ridiculous sunglasses first." Holly hated not being able to see his eyes.
Slipping them off, he smiled at her and it held no mockery or amusement. "Happy?"
Her stomach did a strange flip. "I just want to see your snakeyness in the unlikely event that I begin to think of you as human."
His smile didn't fade. "The information, Hollyberry."
Holly wanted to refuse to share it. As soon as she told him, she'd put herself in an even tighter cage of supervision. Protective it might be, but it also suffocated.
Venom slid his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, as dangerous and urbane as Zeph had been shaky and broken. "Or would you rather I get the information from your friends?"
"You keep your hands off them." Neither Zeph nor Arabella had the physical or mental strength to deal with Venom.
He just waited with the predatory stillness she'd never mastered.
Fingers tightening on her clutch, she said, "The bounty--they heard about the rumored payoff."
"How much?"
"Five million dollars."
Venom didn't so much as blink. "That's a big enough number for certain immortals to risk Raphael's fury." His power slid sinuously around her. "It's also a big enough number that it'll draw reckless but nonetheless experienced bounty hunters from outside the territory."
"The goons in the SUV," Holly said, standing her ground against the intensity of his strength. "Has Vivek confirmed their identities?"
"It wasn't difficult." He turned to walk beside her when she swiveled on her heel to head toward the club, a silkily prowling presence. "We'll deal with them."
The hairs rose on the back of her neck. "What will you do to them?"
"Dmitri is in charge," was the simple answer.
And Dmitri did not take any attack against the Tower lightly--because at present, Holly was Tower property. "Didn't it frustrate you?" she found herself asking. "Spending a hundred years under someone else's control?" All vampires signed a Contract to serve the angels for the privilege of being Made near-immortal.
Venom's face gave nothing away. "I made a choice as an adult in full control of my faculties," he said in a cool tone. "Only the stupid regret choices. The smart learn to adapt."
"You didn't answer my question."
Venom looked over at her, his lips curving. "'Frustration' isn't the word I'd use, kitty."
They'd reached the door to the club. The big and musclebound vampire bouncer had become increasingly more pale the closer Venom got. Now he opened the door with a trembling hand. "Welcome," he croaked out.
Venom didn't respond, his hand once more on Holly's lower back as he ushered her in. She scowled up at him once t
hey were inside the thundering noise of the club. "What? You couldn't be polite to a lowly bouncer?"
Leaning down to her ear, he said, "That lowly bouncer is maybe two decades into his Contract." His breath was warm against her ear, his body a tensile wall. "A vampire that young needs to be scared of me. Fear will keep him from running, and that means the Guild Hunters won't have to track him and haul him back. At which point, his punishment would be a violently painful affair."
His fingers moved in a slow circle on her lower back, his eyes shimmering in the pulsating darkness. "Fear," he said, "also fosters control. That's why the hundred years of service is necessary--so that the world isn't overrun by blood-maddened vampires, feeding and feeding and feeding."
Holly shivered.
Running his hand up then down her back, Venom held her gaze. "That's also why you need to be kept under watch. No one knows what lies inside you, what deadly urges you must be taught to throttle."
Holly wanted to refute his words, but damn it, he was right. There was a horrible something inside her, a monstrous creature that hungered. "Let's go," she said, jerking forward into the chaotic darkness of a club lit only by moody dark blue bulbs and glowing jewelry hung around necks or worn around wrists.
Booths circled the dance floor. Though every single one had a ragged curtain, only a few were pulled closed. In the nearest open one, Holly glimpsed a group of young vampires crowded together, drinking blood and laughing. A simple night out.
A knife twisted inside her.
She'd done that once upon a time. Gone out for a drink with her friends. Poor Rania could never hold her drink, but she was such an adorable drunk that none of them minded. The last night they'd gone out before the torture and death, Rania had slung an arm around Holly and nuzzled into her neck, saying, "I love you lots and lots and even more than marshmallows."
Holly's throat threatened to close up.
Ripping away her gaze before Venom could catch her being maudlin, she looked at the next booth. This one held a sight more expected and more perverse. A bare-breasted female vampire was doing a lap dance for a heavy-lidded angel who sat with his wings draped behind him and his arms spread on the torn red leather of the booth bench.
The angel was clearly slumming. Angelkind was too powerful to be reduced to bars like this one. As for the vampires who ended up in this life, it was a combination of bad choices and fate. After serving their hundred years, all vamps were meant to be released with enough resources to start a new, independent life.
Some angels were more generous than others.
Zeph's angel had been--but he'd also treated the sensitive vampire so viciously during his Contract that Zeph was incapable of living life without the sweet oblivion of drugs.
"Your eyes are beginning to glow." Venom's voice against her ear, his hand curving over her hip.
Fighting the impulse to pull away because that would betray far too much, she said, "I'll get it under control."
"It's part of you. Why control it all the time?"
His response had her staring at him. "Didn't you just rave on about control?"
"Control and asphyxia leading to weakness are two different things." He slipped his sunglasses back on. "I am always in control--and I always have access to the full depth of my abilities." He glanced around. "You have friends here?"
"A few." Off-center, Holly moved forward through the crush of dancing bodies to the bar, Venom's hand sliding off her hip in the process. Space opened up around her, in front of her, without effort. She knew better than to think she'd caused the effect. Usually, she had to push and shove--and occasionally hiss--to get through.
More than one fuckwit was of the opinion that he could get in an ass-grab just because Holly was small and female.
"Holly!" The ebony-skinned bartender leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. "You're looking far too fine for this pit of sin, love."
Holly laughed and patted his bearded jaw. Heavily tattooed and as heavily muscled, Magnus had been one of the first friends she'd made in this shadowy part of the city. "Looks like a busy night."
His light brown eyes gleamed. "It also looks like you brought in a wolf with you, then." He extended a hand across the bar. "Magnus."
To her surprise, Venom shook the bartender's hand with polite courtesy. "Venom."
Holly wanted to ask him, not for the first time, if he'd had another name once, if he still remembered that name.
"That, I know," Magnus said with a grin. "Don't usually get one of the Seven in my humble establishment." He pushed across a shot glass he'd just poured full of a rich amber liquid, the dragon tattoo on his forearm rippling with the movement. "On the house. After the rumor gets around that you're visiting, my business will go through the roof."
Venom smiled and threw back the shot before slamming the shot glass neatly back on the polished wood of the bar. "Goes down smooth."
Magnus went to say something else when there was a sudden rush of orders. As he moved away with a hand sign that meant he'd be back, Holly hopped up on a bar stool and put her back to the bar. Venom leaned his arm on the bar behind her, his body so close that her shoulder brushed his chest. She didn't say anything, instead crossing her legs with care and staring out into the heaving mass of bodies.
She could be staring right at people who wanted to truss her up and deliver her to a buyer. "Five million dollars is a lot to pay for a collectible."
Venom's answer was a single word spoken against her ear, his lips brushing the sensitive curve of it. "Uram."
Holly's hands clenched so hard that her nails cut into the palms of her hands. Her mind hazed. Her blood boiled. And she wanted to scream! As she'd screamed in that Brooklyn warehouse where Uram had butchered her friends and made her watch. As she'd screamed when he'd torn off her clothes and gripped her throat to force her to drink the blood pouring from his wrist.
"Do it." Venom's cold purr. "Scream."
Holly tried to breathe but the scream was choking her up. Then Venom was suddenly in front of her, cupping the back of her head and pressing her face to his chest. "Scream."
Holly opened her mouth. What came out was a sound of purest rage that went on and on and on. Venom's chest absorbed most of the sound, the rest lost in the loud pulse of the music. Her heart pounding in the aftermath, she immediately pulled away and turned around to get the assistant bartender's attention. She couldn't get drunk anymore, not with the metabolism she had, but there were other uses for alcohol. "Whiskey," she said. "Neat."
When it came, she threw it back.
The burn was acid and it was exactly what she needed to shock her system back into the correct rhythm. "I'm the last remaining piece of him," she said under her breath, since, obviously, Venom had very good hearing.
"You've always known that."
Yes, but she tried not to think about it. It was self-delusion, she knew that full well, hadn't needed a shrink to tell her. That shrink was a vampire who was part of the Tower medical team. A nice man, patient and kind.
Holly hated him.
Hated even more that he wanted her to face things she'd much rather bury as deep as possible.
"What's got you drinking whiskey neat?" Magnus leaned forward on the bar after making his way back to them.
Not waiting for an answer, he lowered his voice and said, "You're looking for info on the bounty, aren't you, then?"
Holly had known Magnus would be aware of what was going on--he knew everything that went on in the gray shadows of the city. He didn't always share that information, his loyalties myriad and complex, but he'd never put Holly in a position of danger. "Yes," she said past the rawness in her throat.
"Five million," he said, his eyes going from her to Venom and back. "You, my darling, are to be taken alive. Evidence--a photo--to be e-mailed to a throwaway e-mail address. Payment to be transferred into the kidnapper's choice of account once the kidnapping is verified: half pre delivery, half post."
Venom spoke even as Holly bat
tled her renewed rage at being thought of as a commodity, a thing to be traded. "Why are people taking the bounty seriously? Anyone can put out the word like that, especially with the only contact an e-mail address."
"I'll be there in a minute, you arses!" Magnus yelled down the bar to an impatient group before lowering his voice to speak to them again. "Rumor is the initial word came from a man who's known to be a fixer in this kind of thing, someone the big mercenary fish all trust when it comes to their work."
"Who?" Holly asked.
Magnus shook his head, his tightly kinked black hair sporting a razored pattern on one side that paid homage to the striking emblem that now marked Raphael's right temple. "No idea, love. Way above my pay grade." A touch to her hand. "Be careful. I like you, and I'm not fool enough to defy the Tower, but even I was tempted by five million." He left to deal with the impatient group.
Swinging off the stool, Holly began to stride out. She didn't bother to wait for Venom, but she knew he was behind her. The damn rivers parted in front of her, people scrambling out of his way. She knew her eyes were glowing a hot green by the time they hit the cracked sidewalk. Not stopping, she strode onward to the parking lot.
They got into the car in silence. Then Venom drove. Hard and fast and edgy.
He took them through city streets where prostitutes lingered and junkies slept, past high-class establishments that were all about pain and blood, along a respectable row of clubs where suburban moms and dads came to party and pretend they were walking on the wild side. They took in a closed stadium, drove through streets with gracious mansions so ornate and covered with ivy that it was as if they'd been frozen in time.
Those houses screamed immortal money.
Behind them rose skyscrapers that glittered with light. But the tallest building of all was the Tower, a soaring spear of light that pierced the starlit night sky and made her breath catch. Angels flew in and out, their wings silhouetted against the night, their beauty extraordinary. "Have you ever fantasized about plucking off an angel's feathers?" It was the first time she'd spoken in the past sixty minutes as Venom drove them in and around and through their city.
"Illium's sometimes, when he gets too maddening," Venom said lightly. "Do you have anti-angel fantasies?"