her just then—he played games, but not like that. Not in ways where they weren’t on equal ground. She was sensing his power so vividly either because her own sensitivity had increased as a result of the ongoing changes in her body—or because Venom had grown stronger in the two years since she’d last seen him in person.
Or both.
“Your blood is valuable currency,” he added.
“Unfortunately.” Holly didn’t carry the deadly toxin that had resulted in Uram’s murderous insanity, but she carried something that wasn’t standard issue in either the mortal or immortal world.
No one had quite figured out what yet. They just knew Holly was a “strangeness unseen in nature”—words spoken by a healer working on her case.
“There’s another possibility,” Venom said. “You’re unique and such things rarely come along in an immortal life. As Zhou Lijuan collects the most extraordinary wings in angelkind, so another collector may seek to acquire you.”
Holly shivered inwardly at the mention of the seriously creepy Archangel of China. “How can she collect angelic wings? Does she cut them off?” she asked, horrified.
Venom’s answer was chilling. “No, she prefers the whole body. Like pinning a dead butterfly to a wall.”
“Fuck, immortals are twisted.” And theirs was her world now. “Did they react to you that way? Like a curiosity or a collector’s item?”
“I wasn’t as much of a shock. Not given the identity of my Maker.”
The Archangel Neha, the Queen of Snakes, of Poisons.
“But,” he continued, his voice a little distant, as if he was looking hundreds of years back, “I’m the only vampire she has ever Made who inherited so much of what makes her who she is. There were many who tried to lure me from her court at the conclusion of my Contract.”
Holly was intrigued despite herself. “Was Raphael one of those people?”
His laughter was incongruously warm for a man with the eyes of a viper. “The sire has never had to lure anyone, kitty.”
Hissing at him before she could stop herself, she braked to a hard stop in front of the gleaming spike that was the cloud-piercing form of Manhattan’s Archangel Tower. “You can slither away now,” she said when he didn’t move.
“You’ll be coming with me.” His tone was unbending. “Dmitri will want to know about the kidnapping attempt.”
Holly’s gut tensed. She’d been afraid of that. And while she cheerfully defied Venom for no reason except that he was aggravating, defying Dmitri was a whole another matter. It wasn’t that she was scared of him—though Dmitri could be terrifying. It was that she didn’t want to disappoint him.
Spinning the car left and down into the underground Tower garage, she parked in silence and got out. Venom grabbed his hold-all from the trunk, then prowled beside her with a liquid smoothness she’d thought an affectation until she’d seen him fight and realized his eyes didn’t lie—Venom had been changed down to his very cells during his conversion to vampirism.
She wondered why he’d made the choice and if it had been worth it to lose not just his freedom for a hundred years in payment, but also his humanity in ways even most vampires didn’t have to consider.
Stepping into the elevator, she kept her curiosity under wraps and her eyes resolutely trained frontward even as the sinuous slide of his power filled the small space. But she was conscious of him taking off his sunglasses and hooking them into the neck of his shirt. He rarely did that except with Raphael and others of the Seven.
The elevator doors opened smoothly on the floor of the Tower that held Dmitri’s office. Holly hadn’t been up there for a while, though Honor had told her about the renovation. The walls were a smooth gray, the carpet a richer shade of the same elegant color.
It had all been black beforehand, pure Dmitri.
Now, it reflected both the most powerful vampire in the city—and his hunter wife.
“What are those dents?” Honor had to be dismayed at the damage to her newly painted walls. At least the pretty artwork she’d picked out appeared to have survived unscathed.
“Looks like knives punching into the walls,” Venom said after a quick glance, his lips curved in what looked like genuine amusement. “My guess is Elena and Dmitri.”
Then there was no more time to prepare for what was to come; they’d reached Dmitri’s office. Raphael’s deadly second wasn’t standing behind his desk—Holly had never seen him actually sitting in his office chair—but was out on the railingless balcony beyond. He didn’t look