by Nalini Singh
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.
No more. "Who are you to hold my life in your hands?" she said to this man who'd made her feel so safe--and who might yet order her execution. "What gives you that right?" Her voice trembled from the sheer force of her determination. "Just because I don't fit your perceptions of what life should be permitted to exist?"
A slow whistle. "Looks like the kitten has grown up, Dmitri." Illium's voice.
Dmitri didn't look away from Holly. "Come here." It was an order.
She almost glanced at Venom for backup. Strange as it was, she had the feeling she might even get it . . . but this was her fight. Joining Dmitri as he stepped out from behind his desk, she didn't hesitate to follow him when he walked out to the sunlit balcony beyond. The wind was lazy today, but it was by no means dead calm, the danger of the fall beyond the railingless edge as perilous as it was on any other day.
Holly promised herself that regardless of what he said, what decision he made, the one thing she would not do was reveal how much it hurt that he continued to view her as a threat, one he was ready to eliminate at any time. Dmitri had become important to her. Not a father. She had a father whom she loved. But someone as significant.
Because she loved Dmitri, too.
"Why are you standing there?" he asked in a grim tone when she stayed safely in the middle of the balcony, while he'd stalked to nearer the edge. "I thought you enjoyed flirting with danger."
"I'm trying to be more mature and sensible."
To her shock, he laughed, throwing back his head. The indolent wind took full advantage to riffle its fingers through his hair. When he held out a hand, though anger and hurt yet choked her throat, Holly stepped forward to take it. She'd never have accepted the silent command had it been Venom who'd given it.
Her and Venom . . . they were equals. Not in power, but in other, vitally more important ways. Their relationship had never been and never would be like the one she had with Dmitri, where the power dynamic was so skewed, the imbalance was permanent. "Do you feel this way with Raphael?" she asked when she stood face-to-face with the vampire who had seen her at her pitiful lowest and darkest. "Like he's your senior."
A shake of his head, his hand protective on hers. "Raphael and I were friends when he and I were both pups in our own ways. We've grown up together."
As I'm growing up with Venom.
How strange to think that, when Venom had lived an eon in comparison to her butterfly existence, but it felt right. He'd told her she hadn't accepted the changes that marked her, but Holly didn't think he was at peace with himself, either. "So," she said, her hurt spilling over. "Do you plan to throw me over the side and rid yourself of the pesky problem of Holly once and for all?"
His face brutally hard, Dmitri dropped her hand only to grip her jaw while New York glimmered a patchwork quilt of streets far below. His eyes were chips of granite, his hold unforgiving. "If I'd wanted to rid myself of the problem of Holly," he said very, very quietly and very, very dangerously, "I'd have snapped your neck years ago."
It was a callous statement, but Holly wasn't scared. Because this was Dmitri. Who'd been harsh, but who'd always kept her safe--even from herself.
That was when she understood.
Dropping her eyes, she released a shaky breath. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I know you wouldn't put me down like a rabid dog."
"Would you want to live if you became that way? A mindless, mad creature who hungered only for blood and death?"
Holly didn't need to think of her answer. "No. I will never be Uram's legacy." Lifting her head again, she said, "You told me once that you'd end me if necessary, that I'd never see you coming. Promise me you'll do that if I become a monster."
Fingers dropping off her jaw, Dmitri turned to stare out at the water far in the distance. It glittered and sparkled, as if there was no darkness in the world. As if monsters didn't exist.
Holly turned the same way and, when vertigo threatened, she gripped the back of Dmitri's black T-shirt. "Why do I always feel like a child with you?" she muttered.
A rough chuckle before his arm came around her and he tucked her close. "Yet you're asking me to execute you. A father should ne
ver have to execute a child under his care."
Holly heard so much pain in those words, so much dark history, knew she was asking a horrible thing . . . but she couldn't ask Venom. The why of her reluctance wasn't something she was ready to face. "When did I become safe?" she whispered. "When did I cross the line from being a possible threat to a person you'd protect?"
He didn't deny that she had begun as an unknown danger it was his task to watch and perhaps eliminate. "I don't know," he said, his body strong and warm against her. "Probably at some point between wanting to strangle you and feeling pride when you successfully fought your way out of hell."
"I don't think we'll ever be friends," she said, the words solemn.
Turning to face her, he smiled again at last. "I don't think so, either."
Holly's lips curved. Because that was okay. Dmitri was something else to her.
*
Venom felt a conflagration come to life deep inside him as he watched Dmitri and Holly through the floor-to-ceiling window at the back of Dmitri's office. The conflagration was paradoxically a cold thing--emanating from the part of him that hadn't existed before a viper's bite--and a violent, heated flow of magma that altered him on a fundamental level.
Jealousy.
He blinked back to his senses the instant he identified the emotion. Because that was fucked up. Dmitri loved Honor with a passionate devotion that was a thing of chaos and beauty and legend. The leader of the Seven would destroy empires for his wife, if that was what she asked. Honor owned Dmitri heart and soul.
And she was looking out at the two on the balcony with a soft smile on her face. "I hate it when they fight," she murmured. "Everything seems out of sync."
Venom looked again at the tableau outside and called himself a fool. The way Dmitri was holding Holly protectively against his side, the way she looked up to him with such a willingness to accept his word, that wasn't a stance between lovers. There was too much inequality there.
His mind flashed to an image of her riding him, her body arched in a sensual bow.
Holly would never look at him the way she was looking at Dmitri. Not even if he put a gun to her head. Not even if he pumped her full of poison. Not even if he promised her a billion dollars and her own personal empire of fashion.
Holly Chang would never ever, ever consider Venom her superior in any shape or form.
Venom smiled, the conflagration ebbing to a flickering anticipation, as Honor went to join Dmitri and Holly. Which left Venom alone with Illium for the first time since he'd tracked the angel down on the day of Venom's return to New York. "In a better mood now, lovely Bluebell?"
A scowl from the other man. "None of your business, fledgling."
Venom hadn't been called that since about three decades after he'd come into Raphael's orbit. "I'm not the one who had fluffy baby feathers not once but twice."
"Once, only once. I'll have you know there was no fluffiness the first time around." Illium shoved his hands through his hair on that muttered comment, the blue-tipped black strands falling this way and that when he dropped his hands back to his sides. "I let Aodhan leave without saying good-bye."
Venom had never had a friendship like Illium had with Aodhan. The two had known each other from the cradle. Illium was a little older, but only by a matter of maybe ten years, which meant nothing in angelic time. Angelic children grew so slowly that both would've been babies still.
All of Venom's childhood friends were long dead.
He'd had a vampire friend who'd been Made around the same time, but they'd gone in different directions when their power diverged . . . because Venom couldn't bear having a friend who was weaker.
Weaker people died. They got broken.
He hadn't seen Sahil in a hundred and fifty years and still he thought about his friend, still he listened for news of him. So he understood what it meant for Illium to have sent Aodhan into dangerous territory without a good-bye. "What happened?"
Eyes of aged gold bearing a mix of pain, sadness, and anger, Illium spread out his wings, then snapped them back in with vicious force. "You weren't there after we found him. If you'd seen . . . And now he tells me he doesn't need my care?" His hands fisted.
Venom had already been accepted into the Seven when Aodhan was captured by a twisted angel who wanted to own Aodhan's beauty, but as the most junior member, he'd been stationed in the then-rugged wild of New York. The hunt for Aodhan had taken place far from there.
By the time Venom was fully trained and cleared for Refuge access, where Aodhan made his home, the angel was back but not whole. Fundamentally fractured. "I've never really known Aodhan as he was before," he said to Illium. "I've only known the angel who buried himself in the Refuge and who shut out nearly the entire world."
Illium looked up, frowning. "He came to New York when you first joined the Seven. We all did."
"Yes," Venom said. "But he could only stay a week. And that week was full of training sessions with all of you, with only scattered downtime." Most of which the Seven had spent together, bonding quickly into a cohesive unit.
Aodhan had been acting as Raphael's personal courier then, and, seven days after his arrival, the sire had needed him to deliver an important package; he and Venom had shaken good-bye with a smile, knowing they had centuries to forge a deeper personal friendship. "Then, he was gone." For a length of time that was difficult to think about even now. "And so the man I truly know is the one from after. I have no substantial memories of him from before."
Illium stared uncomprehendingly at him. "Venom, he was dazzling. Strong, a lightning bolt in the sky, an angel who didn't speak as often as the rest of us, but who'd back down from no challenge--and who'd be our shield in any battle. He was the best of us."
"Then why are you afraid now that he's becoming himself again?" Venom had seen the changes from a distance, witnessed it in the art Aodhan had begun to produce. The angel had always been gifted, even in his darkness, but this new art, it carried a subtle inner light missing from the work he'd produced after his rescue.
Illium stared at him for so long that Venom almost expected an archangelic glow to limn the angel's wings. "I'm not afraid," he said at long last, a hitch in his voice. "I've waited so long for him to find his wings again."
"What if it means those wings will take him far from you?" Venom said softly. "What if it means Sparkle and Bluebell will no longer be spoken of in one breath?" He could see the problem because unlike Raphael or Dmitri, he hadn't watched Illium and Aodhan grow up, wasn't locked into the perception of the two as an unbreakable unit. He saw them as the best of friends--but friendships could break.
Illium physically staggered, bracing himself against the window right before Holly and the others walked back into the room. Venom didn't say anything further. This was a conversation he and Illium had needed to have in private, and now it was done--and Venom had other priorities.
He looked at Holly. She met his eyes, came to join him . . . after a pause long enough to make it clear the decision was her own. Bright and wild and fragile. Nothing like the others in the Seven. Nothing like the people with whom Venom had surrounded himself after the last of his brothers died of old age.
And yet he didn't move from her side.
"When you feel the alien power," Honor said from where she'd taken a seat in Dmitri's executive chair, her husband leaning his folded arms on the back of the chair, "is it purely a sensation of pain, or more?"
Holly rubbed at her forehead. "It's overwhelming," she said slowly. "Pain . . . but also a pull." The last words seemed to startle her. "I didn't consciously realize it until now, but it's an insistent low-level draw that's been present since what happened with Daisy." A jagged exhale. "It's getting stronger in front of me, harder to ignore."
Venom took in the delicate lines of her face and thought of those wings with feathers sharp as blades shoving at her. "Is the pull to a person or a place?"
"I don't know. A . . . direction." Placing her hand on her
chest, fingers outspread, she took a couple of steps backward to give herself clear air, then began to turn in a slow circle. And a faint acid green glow speared through her fingers.
26
Venom heard Dmitri suck in a harsh breath, but the other man didn't ask Holly to stop. She did two full revolutions before coming to a standstill. "This way." Her voice was definitive. "And it's far, far from here."
Lifting her hand, she pointed.
"Europe," Illium said into the silence. "That way lies Europe."
Michaela.
The other archangel's name was a silent vibration in the room. "It makes sense," Dmitri said, as if they'd spoken the name aloud. "Michaela was also impacted by Uram. Holly could be drawn to her the same way she was to Daisy."
Holly nodded slowly. "When we entered the house where we eventually found Daisy, I did feel a compulsion toward the room where she was hiding, but it was like static. Cutting in and out. This is far stronger, must be linked back to whatever passed from Daisy to me." Her fist on her chest, knuckles massaging the impact spot.
"Except," Illium said, "there's a problem." He took out a slim black phone and brought up a program before asking Holly to point again and holding the phone out along the same line as her arm.
As the acidic glow reappeared, the blue-winged angel said, "If we draw a line from Holly's fingertip to Europe and keep going, we slice right through Budapest."
The heart of Michaela's territory.
"Then what's the--" Dmitri bit off his question. "Michaela's currently with the Cadre and away from home."
"Exactly," Illium murmured as Holly finally lowered her hand and, with a wince, breathed deep. The glow pulsed for another three seconds before disappearing.
Honor leaned forward on Dmitri's desk, deep green eyes tilted up at the corners troubled. "It could mean Michaela has Made someone else like Holly."
"A possibility." Venom knew too well that people were always driven to replicate the unusual and unexpected. "Holly, do you feel a draw toward Morocco?"
"Add the path to China to the mix," Dmitri said. "I planned to call you and Illium in for a meeting this morning anyway. I've had word that Elena is homeward bound and will be arriving soon, but Raphael and the rest of the Cadre have left for Lijuan's territory."