“Alas, I am stuck in traffic,” Janvier said. “A truck spilled chickens all over the road in front of me.”
“Ha ha. I’m hanging up now.”
“But this is no laughing matter, ’tite Hollyberry,” was the aggravating response, followed by the sound of a window being lowered. Indignant chicken squawks filled the line seconds later. “See? Janvier does not lie. I am surrounded by frustrated drivers on every side, with no way out, but you are only ten minutes away. Do the pickup.”
“Is that an order?” Janvier and Ashwini were Holly’s official bosses as of seven months ago, when the entire team in charge of her training—and sanity—had pronounced that she’d gained sufficient and stable control over the twisted, poisonous power that marked her as the Archangel Uram’s creation.
Pride curled her toes at the memory of that day—Holly tried to focus on the trust the team was showing in her, not on how she remained on a leash nonetheless. Thanks to Ash’s and Janvier’s willingness to utilize her ability to make friends with those who lived in the shadows, she was now part of the small but efficient team that kept an eye on the murky gray underground of New York, a place far from the power-drenched environs of Archangel Tower.
Before her life broke apart in a spray of blood and fear and anguish, Holly hadn’t known there was a hierarchy in the immortal world. She’d seen the angels who soared high above the skyscrapers and the vampires who stalked the streets as all the same: dangerously strong and hauntingly beautiful. These days, she knew two-hundred-year-old vamps who were homeless addicts with less to their name than Holly, and understood that when a being lived too long, he or she could forget any concept of humanity or empathy.
For many, torture and sex alone, often entwined, held any pleasure.
“Oui,” Janvier said in reply to her edgy question. “It is an order. See, I am acting bosslike.”
Holly’s lips twitched despite herself. “Fine, I’ll go pick up Poison.”
“Play nice—no putting a cunja on him.”
Holly stuck out her tongue at her phone before she hung up. A little boy wearing a tiny blue and yellow backpack saw her, stuck out his own tongue with a giggle. Holly winked. Looking over his shoulder, he waved at her.
She waved back.
That sweet kid, he didn’t know that she was the creation of a murderous psychopath, that she had horrific urges inside her that caused her to break out in a cold sweat. He saw only a small-boned Chinese American woman in skinny black jeans decorated with appliquéd black roses on the left calf and thigh, her top a floaty orange silk, and her ankle boots a shining black with small gold buckles.
That ordinary woman’s rainbow-streaked black hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail, her face framed by blunt black bangs, and her nails painted in a wild mix of colors.
The only thing that made her stand out in a city overrun with the stylistically adventurous was the acid green that had taken over the light brown of her irises. The shade had been darker before, nearer to the vivid green of the archangel who’d used her as a human toy, but the acidic lightness had come in firmly over the past year and settled.
When strangers spotted Holly’s eyes, they automatically assumed she was wearing contacts. It fit their impression of a woman who looked as if she’d been dropped in a vat of color.
Maybe a touch quirky or peculiar, but human. Normal.
Holly ached to be that normal human woman every single day. But in the four years since she’d been stripped naked and forced to watch her friends be dismembered alive, her throat torn and raw from her screams, she’d gotten over the first four stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.
Acceptance . . . well, that was going to take a hell of a lot more time, she thought as she slid into the Tower vehicle she’d been assigned. When Janvier had first told her she’d get a vehicle as part of her job as his and Ash’s apprentice, she’d glumly expected a sedate sedan, but she should’ve remembered the kind of people who worked for the Archangel Raphael.
None were the sedan type.
Holly’s car was a sleek black thing that looked like an arrow in flight. It wasn’t new by any stretch of the imagination and had more than a few dents and scratches—all the better to fit the environs she prowled