Archangel's Viper by Nalini Singh
She listened.
And stopped Venom as he was about to go around a corner. Instead, the two of them pressed their backs against the same foliage fence and blended into the night. The guard passed by within a few feet. There was no way he wasn't going to see them when he turned left to continue his sentry duties.
Shit, shit, shit.
The guard turned.
Holly didn't realize she'd thrown out her hand until it slammed quietly against Venom's chest, halting his nascent movement to take care of the threat. His muscles quivered under her touch, his body held at taut readiness.
The guard looked straight at them.
His mouth began to open, but it was too late. Holly had caught his eyes. Caught him. He was an old vampire, but she was something other. And she was far, far stronger than she'd been before Daisy's energy joined her own.
"We're not here," she whispered. "You thought you spotted something, but it was only an animal." The latter was a deliberate choice of word. She didn't know if Michaela kept cats or dogs or peacocks for that matter. The guard's mind would fill in the blanks with the most appropriate image. "You're on high alert, miss nothing, but there's nothing here to see."
The guard yawned before absently scratching his shoulder. She thought for a moment that she'd failed, but then he muttered, "Damn cats," and moved on.
Holly sagged.
Venom tugged her around the corner before the guard got too far away. He knew as well as she did that the mesmerism had limits. The guard would remember exactly what she'd told him to remember--but once he was far enough away, he might decide to turn, double check.
"That was clever, kitty."
"Why didn't you think of it?" He was stronger than her, could control people far longer. "You were going to get physical." She'd felt it in the violent tension of his body.
"I'm not used to not needing to leave a trace. It's usually Jason or Naasir or Janvier who do any necessary sneaking around."
They went silent again, crouch-walking for a distance that was long enough to make Holly's back ache like she'd been twisting herself into a pretzel. Michaela's stronghold might be an astonishingly beautiful edifice, but it was also fricking huge. They didn't hit the turn for the very back of the property until what felt like an hour later.
Thankfully, it was worth the pretzel torture.
Trees filled the backyard--though those trees were controlled and noticeably shorter than the ones on the mountainside. Peaches and apricots hung from the branches of the ones nearest Holly and Venom. "An orchard."
The night air was a crisp bite as they crept under the trees, sneaking their way to the back of the stronghold itself. The wings inside Holly's chest, they pulsed, the sharp edges shoving brutally hard against her skin.
Holly had touched angelic wings--Elena's mostly.
The Guild Hunter had offered the contact so that Holly could overcome her traumatic fear of wings. It was probably only Elena who could've helped her conquer her throat-choking fear--because it was Elena who'd found her, rescued her. Holly's brain was imprinted with that knowledge. As a result of her deliberate tactile experience, she knew that while angelic wings were powerful, they weren't sharp. Ellie's feathers had been silky soft under Holly's fingertips.
Whatever it was that lived in Holly, it wasn't natural.
Something brushed her leg.
She couldn't help her jump.
Yowling, the black cat ran off.
"Damn it." Hoping the sentries were accustomed to the feline sounds and wouldn't pay them much mind, she carried on, Venom a dark silhouette in front of her. He took them not to the center of the back of the house, but to the right side. She saw why once they got closer--the back door was heavily guarded, but there were high windows on the side.
Not all of those windows were closed.
The structure of the stronghold also meant the guards on the door couldn't see the windows from their position. It was only the angels doing security sweeps in the sky that could prove tricky.
She and Venom made it to the wall without problems. Holly crouched down beside him, their bodies brushing. Heat emanated from him, his flesh very much warm-blooded despite the mark of the viper that defined him. "How are we going to reach the window?" she whispered, as the first accessible one was at least two floors above ground level. "Unless . . . I heard you can slither up walls."
His grin told her he'd caught her own and knew she'd meant no insult. His snakelike tendencies were a part of him and Holly had no intention of ignoring them--that would be like accepting one aspect of his nature and not the rest. And Holly was fascinated and compelled by the whole.
"Depends on the wall." He ran his hand over it. "This one is extremely smooth from age. Even the seams in the stone have been worn away, leaving nothing in terms of a gripping surface. If we were at home, I'd try it, but as we're not . . ." Opening his pack, he took out a coil of rope with a four-pronged hook on one end. "Here's where we need some luck, kitty."
Acid green filmed her vision as Holly listened to the night. "Wait." His arm was rigid muscle under her touch, his skin warm. "Now," she said the instant the wings in the air were at an optimum distance.
He threw.
The hook caught on the ledge of the open window, and when he tugged, it held. "Go."
Grabbing the rope, Holly tried to remember the lessons she'd had. She was no expert, but one of the hunters who was friends with Ashwini liked climbing and Holly went with him sometimes. He didn't know what she was, of course, just thought she was a badly Made vampire, but that didn't matter. Demarco was fun and uncomplicated, their relationship centered on climbing.
The problem was, with this wall being so slippery, she had to rely on her upper-body strength and her thighs to get herself up. She could do it--thanks to her training schedule over the past four years--but she felt like she'd gone through the wars by the time she managed to crawl over the window ledge and into a well-lit passageway.
Pressing her back to the wall the instant she was inside, to avoid being silhouetted against the light, she made sure the hooks were holding tight. The rope went taut a second later. Venom made it up at ruthless speed and was rolling up the rope and putting it back into his pack before her heartbeat eased from its frantic tattoo.
Agony speared Holly's chest without warning.
She could see that this place was as beautiful as she'd imagined--a chandelier up ahead fractured light into raindrops that cascaded over the deep blue carpet patterned in cream and jewel red. But the beauty was lost on her, her mind a clawing obsession painted in acid green.
She couldn't stop her head from snapping to the left. "That way."
28
Holly's body wanted to go through the wall that stood between her and her destiny.
Taking her hand, Venom squeezed. "Stealth, kitty." A murmur against her ear. "We have to go down the hall and find a way to get to that wing of the house. We can't afford to crash about and get caught--the angels and vampires on guard within will be dangerous powers."
She had the feeling he was talking as much to the thing inside her as explaining what they were about to do. But the otherness didn't want to listen. It shoved so hard at her skin that she thought it was going to explode out of her like the ball of deadly energy that had erupted out of Daisy.
No. This is for both of us. Daisy, who never had a chance. And Holly, who came back from the dead.
She was a person.
Not a suitcase taking this . . . echo of Uram from one place to another.
"Go," she said to Venom through gritted teeth, conscious that her control over the entity within wasn't absolute.
Viper green eyes connected with hers before he moved silently down the hall, his hand linked warm and strong with hers. He broke contact only when they reached a corner and had to hug the wall before it to check if the way forward was clear. Venom looked very carefully around before jerking back his head.
He held up two fingers, then formed the shape
Holly pointed to her eyes and made a questioning face. Her mesmerism didn't work on angels--Izak, the youngest angel in the Tower, if you didn't count Ellie, had allowed her to try to capture him, the experiment supervised by Ash and Dmitri. It had proved a total failure.
Venom, however, was older and stronger. Now, he made a motion with his hand that she read as there being a fifty-fifty chance of success. Given his strength, it meant the two angels up ahead were old, possibly even people he recognized.
The wings inside her shoved.
Deadly cold flowed over her, her hands tingling and flexing without her conscious volition. I can kill those angels. The thought was as clear as if someone had spoken in her ear--and the voice wasn't hers.
Fuck.
Holly wasn't about to become a goddamn zombie. She lifted Venom's wrist to her mouth and bit down without warning. Blood potent with power . . . blood that was deeply familiar hit her bloodstream, thrusting out the acid green mist crawling through her veins. Flicking her tongue over the wound to help close it, she released the strong weight of his wrist. Thank you, she said with her eyes when she met those of a far wilder green.
He ran his knuckles over her cheek, then took out a small mirror from his pocket. As she watched, curious, he held that mirror low by his leg and angled it--Oh. It allowed him to see around the corner without having to stick out his head.
Clever.
It was two minutes later that he said, "Now."
Holly moved, Venom at her back. The upper arches of the wings of the angels who'd stepped off the railingless mezzanine were still visible, the central core of this part of the stronghold a vast empty space that soared to the ceiling far above. If the angels looked up, Holly and Venom were screwed, but the two men appeared to be focused on landing on the polished wood of the floor below. Holly ran with all her inhuman speed, but the passage was long and the angels landed before she reached the other end.
Falling to the carpet as close to the wall as possible, she began to crawl.
Voices drifted up from the ground floor, but the words were difficult to understand. She didn't try, just focused on her destination and kept going. Now that she was going in the right direction, the serrated wings inside her chest had stopped trying to breach her flesh, but she could still feel them, lying just beneath her skin.
The distinctive susurration of wings, as if one of the angels was rising back up.
The end of this part of the mezzanine was too far for her to win a race against a being with wings. Holly rolled left and into an open doorway. Venom rolled in a heartbeat later and they moved behind the door to flatten themselves against the wall. Holly's heart thudded hard, but below that was another pull far more visceral. Whatever it was that drew her, it was now so close that it was a hand around her throat that attempted to override her free will and haul her closer.
Holly thought of Mia, of their mom and dad and brothers, of Ash and Janvier, even Arabella and Zeph.
All people who saw her. Knew her.
No one more so than the vampire who closed his hand over hers and gripped hard. She wove her fingers through his and she stayed determinedly Holly.
She and Venom were in a darkened bedroom. Not Michaela's, that much was clear now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The furniture was lovely, the bed made with flowing white sheets, the bed itself edged by four exquisitely carved posts. A chair with curved legs as elegant sat by the antique white vanity, and it looked like the light in the center of the room might be a small chandelier.
It was very pretty, but without personality. The kind of room where no one lived on a permanent basis. A guest room then, a nice one. It looked like it might even have a private balcony beyond the lacy curtains that hung on the other side of the room. The view--
She elbowed Venom . . . only to glance over and see him staring at those same balcony curtains. He lifted a finger to his lips, then began to slide along the walls in that direction, motioning for her to stay and keep an ear on the external hallway. He was halfway to his destination when the angels' conversation became suddenly more audible. They'd moved to right outside the door.
Holly couldn't understand a word of what the two were saying. They weren't speaking English.
Of course they weren't. She was in freaking Hungary.
She had a smattering of high school French and German, but the language was neither of those. Hungarian made sense. And maybe she was pulling a language out of her ass because she had no idea. What she did have was an app on her phone that Illium had told her to download. As Venom whispered closer to the curtains, she slipped the phone carefully out of her pocket but didn't press the button to bring up the home screen.
First, she unzipped her jacket slightly--and silently--and tucked the phone up near her chin so the glow from the screen would be contained. It wasn't the best way to see the screen, but she could just do it if she tucked her chin into her chest.
Bringing up the home screen, she swiped into the translation app. She'd already put the phone on silent, so the app wouldn't speak. However, words began to crawl across the screen, with gaps where the app couldn't pick up the sound. According to the screen, the language being spoken was Hungarian . . . right before it became ancient Greek.
Two angels, two preferred languages, but it was obvious they understood one another.
A cheery note popped up over the text, stating that the app's ancient Greek module had been verified by a vampire professor who was an actual ancient Greek. It also helpfully noted that this was no longer a dominant dialect, but still popular among a "statistically significant percentage of immortals."
Holly quickly got rid of it, far more interested in the conversation outside.
". . . restless."
"What . . . sentries . . . ?"
"Nothing, but I'm . . . alert."
". . . a good position . . . make it into the house, but we should be vigilant."
"Agreed. No one can get past us."
Holly winced as the sound of wings opening then closing came from almost directly outside. Well, that made that decision clear. Sliding away her phone, she did what Venom had and made her way silently to the balcony doors he'd parted the curtains very slightly to expose. He shot her a speaking look.
Shaking her head, Holly risked taking out the phone to show him the transcript of the discussion.
His jaw firmed before he returned his attention to the locked door. When he gestured at her hair, she frowned, having no idea what he wanted. He made pointy motions. What? Oh. Holly had braided her hair tightly for this operation and had no hairpins to give him. Making a "wait" motion, she reached carefully into her pack to triumphantly reveal a penknife. It was pink, with golden stars on it.
Venom rolled his eyes at the petite thing.
Making a face at him, she pulled out the metal toothpick tucked into the top of one side of the casing. She'd never understood why the otherwise girly penknife, given to her as a gift by Rania--yeah, it still hurt to remember her friend was gone--and filled with things like nail files and a tiny, slender mirror, had a disgusting, meant to be reused, toothpick. Needless to say, Holly had never put it anywhere near her mouth. It had, however, come in handy when she wanted to dig out the last of her lipstick from a tube.
The other side of the casing featured a much more sensible pair of tweezers.
Venom's eyes widened when she produced the toothpick. Grinning, he surprised her with a quick hard kiss before he began to fiddle with the lock again using the spike of metal. Holly's lips felt swollen, sensitive, her mouth curved into a smile. They both froze when the shadow of angelic wings flowed into the room via the open wedge of the door, only relaxing when it became clear one of the angelic sentries in the hall had just moved to stand with his back to this room.
Venom's muscles quivered, his body held in an awkward position.
It took Holly a second to realize he'd picked the lock, but that the last move would make a no
Wind rustled through the trees. Not a gale by any means, but enough to slam the main door to this room closed should they open the door to the balcony. Again, they had to wait. And wait. Holly's muscles threatened to cramp, the unnatural wings in her chest shoving and shoving, but she held it together.
The one good thing about being stuck here was that they could time the sweeps of the angel who was on security in the skies directly above and was most likely to spot them. It looked like they'd have approximately two minutes of clear air if they timed it right. Holly made sure her hood was secure, checked that Venom's knit cap showed no signs of slipping.
And waited.
Venom squeezed her calf.
The wind had paused. And the angel had just passed.
One hundred twenty seconds before he'd turn and see them.
Opening the door, Venom waited for Holly to slip out before coming out himself and pulling the door shut with utmost quietness. Then he crouched down and relocked it using her toothpick. After which, he handed her the toothpick and she put it neatly away into the penknife, that knife going into her pocket.
All the while, she fought the compulsion that sought to turn her into a zombie.
The view from the balcony was magnificent, looking out over an intricate garden maze, and beyond that, the other mountains that formed this range. Stars glittered in the night sky, the beauty of it turning the agony within into a piercing ache of memory. So many times, she'd flown through those night skies. So many times, she'd landed on the flat roof high above that was hidden within the spires. So many times, she'd twined wings with her beloved underneath those stars.
Holly felt her throat lock. "I only ever thought of him as a monster," she whispered to Venom. "I never even considered that he'd had a life before he became a monster. That he loved a woman and flew across a starlit sky with anticipation in his blood."
Venom's hand closed over hers. "He and Raphael were friends once."