Archangel's Viper

by Nalini Singh

  But it had turned out it could also be used in combat situations with other angels and vampires in the Tower. She just had to slow things down so they could see the movements. The speed he'd taught her was so, should the two of them be in a hostile situation, they could talk without anyone being the wiser.

  The move he'd just made, it meant: Ball's in your court.

  Holly shuddered deep within. He was telling her that Raphael and Michaela wouldn't interfere. If the horror was to end here, she had to be the one to end it. Only she knew what was at stake. Only she understood that this echo of energy was created of the most horrific part of Uram, the part that had existed right before his death. When the archangel had been a being driven by madness and blood-hungry for the pain of others.

  Shelley. Maxie. Cara. Rania. Ping. Kimiya. Nataja. Daisy.

  Her friends' names, and those of three other women who'd never stood a chance, they were a silent mantra in a hidden part of her consciousness as she spoke again to the echo. Thank you, she said, as if he'd answered her question when he'd done no such thing. I hope my body serves you well.

  A pause. You have served me well. Swirled in the madness was a regal graciousness. Now it is time for you to cease to exist.

  He pulled energy from the lump of flesh in the crib. It ran up Holly's arm in an acid-green electrical storm that threatened to melt her brain and explode her heart. She gritted her teeth . . . or tried to. The echo had control of her body and it wouldn't let her take that instinctive action. When the energy threatened to erase her brain, her memories, she hunkered down and fought back using the very power he'd given her.

  Because she still had access to part of that power. It had become fused into her cells and this body was yet hers, each and every part of it imprinted with the force of her life. If he truly had been an archangel, she couldn't have regained any access to the strength forged of his energy and her determination. But he was only a faded echo. Powerful, but not a power. Not like Raphael or Michaela or the Uram he'd once been.

  Steeling her mind, Holly refused to be crushed, but she made no move to betray herself . . . not until the echo ripped her hand off the now-lifeless lump in the crib. As she watched, the fleshy host quickly turned a putrid green at the edges, the rot snaking so swiftly through the rest of it that it was clear it had been rotting for a long time, the putrefaction held back only by Michaela's blood. A foul smell began to emanate from it.

  Flicking out a hand, Michaela incinerated the thing she'd birthed.

  Ashes lay in the crib.

  And Holly's skin glowed with an acid green power this body wasn't built to contain. With the extra power came a stronger echo. More knowledge. A vague, vague hint of sanity. Holly had been winging this, and the best plan she'd come up with, given her limited control, had been to force one of the archangels to kill her--kill them both--by inciting the echo into an act of total insanity.

  Such as attempting to tear off Michaela's wings.

  But now, she paused, thought. Do you see what you've become? She made her voice non-confrontational, never forgetting that she was talking to an immortal who was used to having people bow and scrape to him. That wasn't always the way--from what she'd seen of Raphael's rule, he preferred strength around him. Venom didn't bow and scrape to anyone, and Raphael's hunter consort was a warrior through and through, one who held her ground.

  Uram had been different. From an older time. She knew because she'd researched him obsessively. You were considered an archangel among archangels. Neha admired you, called you the most handsome man she had ever met aside from Eris--and you forgave her bias there, I think. Even Lijuan respected you and she respects very few people.

  The echo rumbled inside her. I will have all their respect once more.

  Will you? Holly fought his hold on her mind to bring up the images she'd tried to bury for four long years. Of nightmare and horror and Uram sitting on a thronelike chair, his mouth rimmed with blood while a severed arm lay in his lap.

  A roar erupted from her mouth. "Lies!"

  She glimpsed confusion in Michaela's eyes, battle-ready tension in Raphael. Only Venom watched in motionless, expressionless silence. He understood what was going on. He knew Holly wasn't dead.

  Ask your fellow archangels, she whispered. Ask them what you became. That nightmare is the only part of you that remains. Not the archangel who was considered the fastest among the archangels. Not the archangel who ruled with an iron fist but had the respect of his generals. Not the archangel who had the most beautiful woman in the world as his lover. Just that ravenous monster who thirsts endlessly for blood.

  Her pulse leaped at the thought, her mouth watering.

  Nauseated, she forced herself to continue. You feel it. You feel the urge to drink. You're looking at Michaela's throat. You want to rip it out.

  Another roar of sound, her hands fisting without her conscious volition.

  "Uram." Michaela circling the crib to come cautiously closer. "It's all right, my love. This body will frustrate you until you can reshape and regrow it to your requirements, but that will not take you long."

  A memory flash that wasn't her own: Michaela flat on the ground with her wings outspread and her chest ripped open, a glowing red fireball in place of her heart. The female archangel's body jerked, blood streaking the smooth brown of her skin.

  The terror in her expression shocked Holly into silence.

  Archangels didn't get terrified. Archangels were the terror.

  Holly's hand rose, her fingers brushing the taller woman's cheek. "My sweet."

  No terror today. Michaela's eyes shimmered, the bright green dazzling beyond the wash of water. "You are the only one who ever understood me."

  Holly's fingers played along the swanlike length of Michaela's throat, stopping for a heartbeat at her pulse, before running down between the archangel's breasts to eventually spread over her heart. It beat rapidly under her palm. "I tore this open," came from her mouth. "I put myself inside you."

  Michaela's hand closed over hers and the punch of archangelic power rocked Holly's entire body. Michaela was glowing and when an archangel glowed, people usually died. However, this archangel wasn't in a murderous mood--and didn't believe she was dealing with a mortal. "It is no matter," she said with a soft smile. "I didn't understand then. I didn't know you were asking me to keep you safe until you could return."

  Why am I so weak?

  It took Holly a second to realize the question was for her. Because you are only a faded echo of a great archangel. You are a ghost.

  I will grow strong again.

  Do you truly believe so? Holly asked seriously. Can you draw power from the world around you?

  Her eyes went unerringly to Michaela's neck, and to the pulse that beat there. Her fingers curved slightly over Michaela's heart. Blood will feed me. Blood will make me grow.

  The madness is returning, Holly said before the shred of sanity slipped away forever. You will once more become enslaved to blood. A monster who will be feared but never respected. Even then, you will never be what you once were.

  Rage in her veins. "I need your blood, my love," her mouth said to Michaela. "Just enough to give me a little more strength."

  Michaela angled her neck in a trust that shook Holly. She'd always thought of the Archangel of Budapest as arrogant and beautiful and manipulative. That was how Michaela came across in the media that so loved her. And, blinded by the differences in their power and age, Holly had never once thought about how Michaela was a woman, too, one who'd loved a man who had died.

  Holly ran her fingers over the line of Michaela's throat before rising on tiptoe to bend her mouth to that pulsing spot. Blood spurted onto her tongue, hot and fresh and so powerful that it made her physically stagger. But still she drank and drank, until she could literally drink no more.

  When she did finally tear away, it was to see Michaela's throat wound close up in front of her eyes.

  The archangel didn't look weakened or as if
she'd been hurt.

  And Holly's body swirled with power that threatened to burst her cells, burn out of her skin. Dear God. How did anyone survive feeding from an archangel?

  "Was that enough?" Michaela's question was gentle, her own hand rising to lie against Holly's cheek. "I have waited for you."

  Holly's skin cracked across her back, her chest, her soul in danger of drowning as pain ripped at her insides. Are you more yourself? she asked through the haze of it. Are you more Uram?

  I need more blood. Her head turned toward Raphael. Stronger blood.

  You are glutted on the blood of an archangel, and yet you seek more blood. Agony twisted at her guts as things began to crack inside her, too, her body full of too much archangelic power. You will always seek more and more and more. The craving clawed at her even as her body began to fail. You are starting to want blood with violence, aren't you? You want to tear at Michaela's throat like a wolf gnawing on his kill.

  "No!" Holly's body staggered back to press against the cold stone wall.

  Sweat dripped down her temples.

  Are you any stronger? Holly kept on pushing through the unbearable pain of a body bursting from the inside out. Even a little? The surge of archangelic blood, archangelic power, should've had a violent effect . . . and it had. Or are you unable to transmute that energy into a form you can use? Because you are only an echo.

  Blood. A red haze. I need blood. A sudden, cunning thought. This body is weak. I need hers. The power wrenched out of her before Holly could do anything, bending her spine so far backward that she knew it was about to snap.

  37

  "No!" The shout left Venom's throat as Holly's back bowed violently, acid green light pouring out of her in a brutal surge.

  Uncaring of the two--perhaps three--archangels in the room, he ran across to catch her body as it collapsed to the floor. He was too fast to allow that to happen. He caught her bloody, broken body in his arms, stopped her head from cracking onto the hard polished wood.

  She weighed too little, his Holly.

  And the power was still screaming out of her in a burn of acidic green.

  When it did finally cut off, her head lolled to the side, blood trickling out of the corner of her mouth . . . and her face riddled with hundreds of tiny cracks. Blood filled those cracks, iron-rich wet against every part of her that he was touching. As if her entire body had fractured.

  Venom's heart was pounding too hard for him to sense her pulse.

  He kept on trying.

  Nothing.

  No, kitty, no.

  *

  Raphael watched the energy erupt out of Holly, saw Venom catch her as she fell. And he saw unvarnished terror on Venom's face for the first time in all the years he'd known the vampire.

  But Raphael could do nothing for Venom's love at that moment. "Michaela," he said in warning.

  She wasn't listening, her eyes wide with hope. "My love," she whispered . . . just as the ball of power smashed into her, covering her body in a slick of acid green fire.

  Raphael could've stopped it. He didn't. The instant he stepped in, he ignited a catastrophic war. The choice had to be Michaela's.

  Her eyes glowed the same distinctive acid green for a single piercing instant before she shoved the power out with a roar. "Get out!"

  The green glow coalesced in the air again, crackling with veins of red. Blood red. Raphael wasn't Michaela. He'd accepted long ago that the man he'd once called a friend no longer existed. When the malignant energy went to smash into him, he held up a hand ringed with angelfire. The energy drew back . . . and headed toward Venom. The other man moved with viper speed to evade it, Holly in his arms.

  Raphael moved at the same time to put himself in front of Venom and the fallen girl he loved. This was a war between archangels. Venom and Holly had done their part. They'd done far more than could be expected of a vampire of only a few centuries and a mortal who'd been Made too young.

  It was time for Raphael and Michaela to end this. "Michaela."

  Tears ran down her cheeks as she raised her own hand, her power glittering bronze around her fingertips. She couldn't form angelfire, but the bronze lightning she could create felt stronger than it had the last time he'd been close enough to witness it.

  The Cascade in effect.

  Her lack of angelfire mattered little. She had other ways to kill a fellow archangel. That was one of the markers of ascension: the ability to kill your peers. "I loved him," she whispered, the sick energy held frozen between his power and hers. "He truly saw me. The darkness, the light, the glory, the rot."

  It was the most honest appraisal he'd ever heard Michaela make about herself. "Is he who he was?" Raphael asked, because they had to be sure. "You felt him just now. Can he come back?"

  "He is . . . a ghost. A fragment. Of the worst part of him." The tears continued to fall. "We must end him, Raphael. He is worth so much more than this mad existence driven by blood."

  Raphael thought one last time of the friend who'd raced with him through the canyons of the Refuge, of the man who'd laughed as they sat around a bonfire, his wings spread out on the grass. That Uram had been lost to time and to his own arrogance well before the insanity, but he had existed. And their long relationship demanded this act, for a sane Uram would've never wanted to exist as this mad phantom.

  "Good-bye, old friend," he whispered. "This time, it will be forever."

  Sobbing openly, Michaela released a crackling bolt of her power. It encircled the energy, began to crush it to death. Raphael added his angelfire. The echo stood no chance. It wasn't Uram. It wasn't even a part of Uram. It was only a faint shadow left behind by a powerful man lost to blood.

  And then it ceased to be, burned out of existence.

  Michaela collapsed to her knees, her wings spread out behind her in a splendor of delicate bronze. "I wanted more, more power, more everything. And I lost him to that greed."

  Turning, Raphael focused on his own people without discounting Michaela. As she'd just admitted, even her love had a price--and she might yet blame him for Uram's death. "Venom."

  This member of his Seven who had always been so self-contained and coolly sophisticated, his humor often so dry it was cutting, raised eyes wet with tears. "She's dying, sire." It was a broken statement, Holly clutched tight to his chest.

  The girl's face was a smear of blood and broken skin, her pulse near impossible to detect. Blood trickled out of her nose and pasted her black top to her body. Wiping away the blood from her nose with a gentle touch, Venom pressed a kiss to her wrecked face. "She refused to let evil win. She fought."

  Raphael held out his arms. "Entrust her to me, Venom." He didn't want to be here, in this place with an archangel he'd never fully trusted.

  Venom's responding glance was shattered, but he nodded; he was one of the Seven and even nearly broken, he understood the reason behind Raphael's request. "I will meet you there."

  As soon as he had Holly in his arms, Raphael rose into the sky without saying good-bye to Michaela. Lost in her guilt and horror, she wouldn't have noticed if he had. He'd wrapped glamour around himself and Holly while still inside the turret, ensuring no one could follow him to the cabin of Jason's informant.

  He wasn't worried about Venom. The youngest of the Seven was resourceful; he'd make it out of Michaela's stronghold and if he needed assistance, he'd call out to Raphael.

  As it was, Venom outdid himself, arriving at the cabin only minutes after Raphael.

  Sweat drenched his body.

  Going to his knees beside the sofa where Raphael had placed Holly, Venom stroked back her hair, then looked at Raphael. "Can you do anything?"

  Raphael already had his hand on the girl's bloody chest, his palm glowing blue as he called on his Cascade-born ability to heal. He could feel the energy penetrating her skin, but it had no discernible effect. She was unique, this girl who had found the will power to defy the ghost of an archangel. "She has courage, your Holly."

  "
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.