"You're not exactly my first choice, kitty." A leisurely scan down her body. "I prefer to spend my off time with women."
Holly didn't rise to the bait. "I'm sure Ashwini won't mind if I hang with her." If she had to have a bodyguard, either Ash or Honor or Janvier would be her choice. Since Honor was teaching a class at Guild Academy this semester, and Janvier had extra duties while Raphael and Elena were away, that left Ashwini.
"Ashwini is in advanced combat training, as is Janvier," Dmitri told her. "They also have a heavy schedule of duties." He looked over at Venom. "I was planning to ask you to take over some of their tasks while Illium teaches them what they need to know."
"Isn't Galen involved?"
"What do you think?" Dmitri's smile was sharper now. "I think they're both already ruing the day they agreed to be in Elena's Guard." A glance at Holly, his amusement fading before he shifted his attention back to Venom. "This situation needs to be brought quickly to heel. It's your priority--keep an eye on Holly and find out who's after her. I'll split the other duties between the stronger vampires like Trace until you're done."
Holly folded her arms. "Sorry to break into your cozy little chat," she said, struggling past her desire to obey Dmitri, "but I'm a grown adult. Don't make decisions for me like I'm not here."
"You sure you're full grown?"
"Venom." Dmitri's cool voice cut Venom off before he could needle her any further. "Talk to Vivek, then get some rest. Holly can shadow me for the rest of the day."
She managed to keep her mouth shut until after Venom had left. "Dmitri, I won't fight a bodyguard"--no matter how much the extra leash chafed--"but don't stick me with him."
"No one will dare touch you with Venom nearby. He's one of the Tower's strongest--and he's light-years ahead of you in utilizing his abilities."
"He's also an asshole."
"So, according to many people, am I," Dmitri said, clearly not bothered by that. "It's either Venom, or I confine you to the Tower."
Her hands fisted, her heartbeat accelerating. The world began to gain a hard clarity washed in acid green. In front of her, Dmitri watched her with no indication of fear or worry. "Holly, shut it down." The words were mild.
She screamed instead, the frustration inside her snapping out into a loud sound. "I've earned my freedom, Dmitri! I've done everything the Tower has asked, everything!"
Walking around his desk, he leaned back against it, his arms folded across his wide chest. "And you'll keep doing it," he said in a tone that demanded obedience. "Four years is nothing in an immortal existence, less than a heartbeat, less than a child's first breaths. You have no idea how dangerous you might be."
"So you plan to watch me forever?" He'd put her officially under Contract, but unlike normal vampires, she wouldn't automatically walk free after a hundred years of service in return for the "gift" of vampirism--the Tower would decide if she was ever safe enough to be freed.
"If that's what it takes." His words were pitiless. "But I have a feeling that once you have total control of your abilities and over your urges, you'll take the choice out of my hands."
The acid green continued to pulse in her vision. "Are you immune to my poison?" she asked, so angry it was a hum in her blood.
"No, but it won't kill me. I'm also fast enough to snap your neck before your fangs ever get close."
Holly blinked. The green faded.
Suddenly, her body wanted to sag. She was so tired of this. Of fighting a world that viewed her as an unknown threat. Of fighting the cancer inside her that wouldn't let her be normal. Of fighting to stay alive, stay sane. "Venom and I think they might've wanted my blood," she said, forcing her tired brain to think. "Or maybe just to collect me."
"Possible. It's also possible they want to re-create the effect that Made you." Cupping her face in his hands, Dmitri spoke in a voice midnight with age. "Hate me if you want, Holly, but remember this: you're one of the Tower's now. You're one of mine now. That might mean chains, but it also means you have hundreds of vampires and angels at your back."
Emotion was a hot burn at the back of her eyelids. "All for a weird Chinese girl who had the bad luck to survive a massacre?"
A deep smile that reached the hard intensity of his eyes. "Let's go, my little weirdling. I'm Ash and Janvier's teacher for the next hour. You can watch."
Her sudden tiredness faded. Dmitri was lethal in combat, and neither of her two bosses was exactly a slouch. However, as she watched the session that hour, she realized she'd never before seen Dmitri at full speed. "That's insane," she muttered to herself where she sat at the very top of the bleachers that ringed the internal sparring area.
"Even many older immortals have trouble tracking him with the eye."
"Drat. I was hoping if I ignored the crawling sensation up my arms, you'd poof back to the hole you slithered out of."
Venom sat down on the top bleacher beside her, the freshness of his just-showered scent washing over her. He'd changed into black pants and a long-sleeved black shirt with the sleeves rolled up. For him that was casual attire. "Kitty's in a bad mood. Missing me again?"
Her skin felt his heat across the bare inches between them, absorbed it. "Like I miss the giant blister I had on my foot in tenth grade." Again, she didn't manage to spot what Dmitri had done that left Janvier groaning on the floor.
The chestnut-haired vampire called out something in Cajun French that made his wife laugh and Dmitri grin. Then he accepted Dmitri's help to haul him upright and swapped positions with Ashwini. Oddly, the hunter proved to be better at sparring with Dmitri than her older and more experienced husband. Ash was a vampire, too, but she hadn't even crossed the three-year mark since being Made.
"She's predicting his moves," Holly whispered, leaning forward, her eyes wide. "I didn't know she could do that." Ashwini had precognitive abilities; anyone who was around her long enough figured that out. But this . . .
"No," Venom murmured, "neither did I--it looks like she's glimpsing his move half a second before he makes it. In combat, that can change everything."
For the next ten minutes, they sat in complete harmony, watching Ashwini and Dmitri dance like demons. It was incredible how long-legged and lithe Ash was keeping up with a vampire who was over a thousand years old and who'd spent nearly all of that time as a warrior in one way or another. The hunter compensated for not being as fast or as strong by making idiosyncratic moves that had Dmitri grinning.
Her large hoop earrings swung with each move, light sparking off the gold.
Dmitri still got her pinned, but he was sweating by then. And when he hauled her back up, he said, "You just volunteered to be my sparring partner while Raphael is away."
Sauntering over to lean one bent arm on her husband's shoulder, Janvier's glowing pride unhidden, Ashwini said, "I'll think about it."
Holly felt her eyes widen even further.
"Still in awe of Dmitri, I see."
"I don't see you arguing with him." She turned to face the vampire whose presence was a prickling across her senses. "Venom," she said, mimicking how Dmitri had said his name in the office. "And off you ran like a good little vampire."
"Oh, how you have wounded me, kitty." Cool amusement in every word.
Probably because, unlike her, he was totally confident of his place in the Tower and in his skin. He wasn't some weird hybrid creation no one knew quite what to do with.
"To be wounded," she said, "you'd have to have a semblance of humanity." She shook her head, her face pitying. "Too bad you sold your soul to the devil centuries ago."
A nictitating moment, his expression icing over in a way that had her going motionless. Holly wasn't afraid--she had a predator inside her, too, and it was poised to strike. But then Venom smiled and it was the charming smile he kept for women he was trying to get into bed. Not that he had to try very hard: viper eyes or not, once he focused his attention and languorous charm on a woman, she tended to melt.
Holly felt like kicking thos
e women's backsides and telling them to have a little respect for themselves, and to stop giving him further encouragement to be an asshole who thought he was God's gift to women. "Not even if the Hudson freezes over and turns into a candy-colored snow cone."
"Alas, kitty," Venom said from his lounging position, "you're too bite-sized for me. But I thought you might be starved for male attention, being that your prickles scare them away."
"Oh, you're so kind, so generous." She clasped her hands in front of her chest and beamed before dropping the act with a roll of her eyes that made him throw back his head and laugh.
It erased the lingering edges of ice, and of that charm she saw as a mask.
Refusing to let the warm sound wrap around her--or to consider how handsome he was with smile lines cutting into his cheeks--she returned her attention to the sparring circle. Dmitri was leading Ash and Janvier through a series of moves that appeared easy enough--except that both were sweating. "What am I not seeing?"
"It's the muscle tension," Venom said with deceptive laziness. "It's the lack of speed that's the killer. Try to do this." He showed her a single arm move. "And hold."
Holly copied him because, his aggravating tendencies aside, Venom was highly trained. At first, it was fine. And then . . . Teeth gritted, she rode past the pain, past the haze of red that started to flicker in her brain.
Venom snapped out an arm toward her, so fast that she had to move or take a punch in the face. "Into beating up women now?" she snarled, careful to keep her voice low so Dmitri wouldn't hear.
Eyes glittering, the slitted black center onyx against the brilliant green, Venom leaned in close. "I thought you had your masochistic tendencies under control?"
Holly flushed. "I don't enjoy pain."
"No?" Venom's power slid over and around her, slow and sensuous and deadly. "Then why were you trying to snap a tendon by holding a pose that's not meant to be held beyond the pain threshold--at least not until you're an expert?"
Massaging her abused arm, Holly looked away. Venom was the last person to whom she'd admit that she'd rather feel pain than the viciously inhuman urges that had begun to rise up inside her more and more often. I'm not insane, she told herself even as fear gnawed at her insides. I'm not a monster.
"Some of us," she said aloud through a forcefully relaxed jaw, "like to push ourselves."
Venom didn't reply, but she could feel him staring at her with those astonishing eyes that had fascinated her from the first. It didn't matter. Venom had no right to her secrets. Mia alone suspected something was wrong beyond Holly's continued fight to create a new life for herself, but Holly's sister was a mortal who had no knowledge of immortal horrors. She'd never guess that it wasn't just a terrible echo of trauma.
"Venom, mon ami!" Janvier called up at one point. "Come over tonight for dinner."
"I'll be there."
"You, too, Holly," Ashwini said before Holly could sidle away. "Let's dress up."
Caught, she nodded. It wasn't that she didn't love spending time with the couple--they'd become two of her favorite people--but being forced to make nice with Poison was not her idea of a good time. "Don't you have to go rest?" she said to him. "It must've been a long trip from . . . Where were you again?"
"Nice try, kitty, but knowledge of certain places in this world is earned." Rising to his feet with a muscular grace she grudgingly admired, he said, "I do need to check on a few matters. I'll pick you up at six for the drive to Janvier and Ash's."
Holly didn't say anything--but neither did she agree to meet him for the drive. Walking down the bleachers to the training area once the session was over, she shadowed Dmitri as he'd ordered. He went up to his and Honor's apartment to grab a shower first, leaving her to work on her laptop in a spare office on the same floor as his own office.
Holly had stopped her studies for two and a half years after the attack. When she'd picked them back up, her former major of fashion studies had seemed like the daydream of a silly girl. A girl who'd been offered an exciting position at a fashion house and who'd planned to finish up her degree part time.
Holly missed that girl sometimes.
After her return to school, she'd wandered through the curriculum aimlessly for two months before she'd found herself sneaking into psychology lectures--and staying for hours. Not hard to figure out why she was drawn to the study of the mind. Jeez, she was a textbook case of "physician, heal thyself," but that awareness of her own messed-up psyche hadn't stopped her from switching majors and starting from scratch since cross-credits weren't about to happen.
No one at the Tower monitored her schoolwork--that was her parents' job.
Daphne and Allan Chang insisted on paying as they had before: "This is our responsibility!" they'd said when she'd talked about taking out a loan. "Do you think we saved for your education so you could get a loan?"
Of course, that meant the two kept an eagle eye on her grades. They were also pushing her to go all the way and get a doctorate. Apparently, one doctor in the family wasn't enough. The old Holly would've been frustrated by their desire to be so involved in her life, but the Holly who'd died and lived again just smiled and sent her mom and dad copies of her exam results and graded essays.
Because her future . . . it was a total unknown. While the healers thought she'd have a vampiric life span, it was also possible she'd drop dead in ten years without warning--or go frothing-at-the-mouth mad and have to be put down.
Uram's bloodborn taint was a gift that never stopped giving.
Was it any wonder she was half crazy?
5
Venom wasn't the least surprised when Holly wasn't waiting for him at the front of the Tower for the six P.M. pickup. Since he knew she wasn't in any way stupid, he was very sure she hadn't headed out to Ash and Janvier's on her own. So he tracked her.
And found her at the very top of the Tower, her eyes on the glowing red golds of the Hudson under a startling sunset. Venom had called this land home for nearly two hundred years, but he still appreciated the magnificence of it. As he appreciated the wild nature and unbreakable spirit of the fine-boned woman who stood staring at the setting sun.
After what she'd undergone, Holly Chang should've been a candidate for what mortals had once called insane asylums. She'd teetered on that edge for a while, but she'd never fallen. Today, she stood dressed in a sleek black cheongsam that celebrated her femininity. Hitting her midcalf, it was printed with tiny flowers in indigo blue. She'd pulled that silky hair full of color up into a high and equally sleek ponytail.
In her hands, she held a clutch.
And on her feet were four-inch black stilettos that brought her closer to his height.
When he reached her position and she deigned to glance at him, he saw that her makeup was both subtle and masterful. She'd loved fashion once, he remembered. As he'd once loved working with the textures and flavors of food.
"I see you did grow up a little in my absence, kitty." He'd witnessed her increased control over her abilities from a distance--but seeing her like this, so totally a woman who had now lived twenty-seven years on this earth, he realized she'd changed in deeper ways than he'd understood.
"Why do you think I care about your opinion?" she asked in a politely reasonable tone that held just the right amount of perplexed bemusement.
Venom laughed, delighted with her--though he'd never allow her to guess that. Holly had always challenged him in a way that ignited his instincts, and she did it with a cutting intelligence that spoke to his own. It appeared her increased control over her temper had only honed the razor edge of her wit. "Let's go have dinner."
She didn't take his offered arm, instead giving his hand-tailored suit of darkest brown and crisp white shirt a slow and critical once-over. On his way up to the roof, he'd been subtly invited to bed sport by four vampires and two angels, one of whom had run her hand down the lapel of his impeccably fitted jacket and murmured that he looked "good enough to eat."
Holly sighed
. "I see the shares in Cheap Suits Co. are paying off."
"It did seem a wise investment."
Her eyes sparked laughing green fire at him before she spun on her heel and strode to the elevator, the back of her dress hugging the tight curves of her body. "Keep up, old man."
Venom felt the urge to bite her. Of course, she'd probably bite back harder. Walking into the elevator by her side, he rode down with her in silence. It was prickly, of course. It always was--as if the strangeness that lived in them both was irritated by the proximity. Just to see if contact would further the prickles, he touched the curve of her lower back as they stepped out of the elevator.
"Do you want me to break your wrist?" she asked with acerbic politeness.
"You're being very reasonable today." He did drop his hand, but only because he had to slide on his sunglasses. After three hundred and fifty years, Venom was well accustomed to using his looks to distract or to cause fear or to charm.
It turned out women liked the eyes if he gave them a certain look.
However, he didn't particularly enjoy dealing with horrified gapes. It reminded him too much of the most painful day of his existence, when he'd seen the same expression on the faces of those who meant more to him than his own life. Oddly, Holly had never given him that gape. Instead, she'd told him that if he left his fancy contacts in too long, his eyes would rot and fall out. Venom had known from that instant that the girl everyone thought broken would survive.
"I'm hoping it'll rub off," she said after they exited the Tower. "That you'll learn a few manners."
Venom had come from Neha's court, had been one of her favorites because of his smooth manners and charm. With Holly, however, he reacted from a more primal place. "Here," he said, opening the passenger door of his low-slung car. "A lady should go first."
"Oh, sir, how gallant of you." With that breathy statement worthy of an ingenue, Holly got in and crossed her legs, her purse in her lap.
Lips curved, Venom shut the door and got into the driver's seat. "Put on your seat belt." Vampires were near-immortal, but losing the head would finish them both off. And Holly wasn't quite a vampire. Like another one of the Seven, Naasir, Holly was unique. Neither one thing or the other. But while Naasir was at peace with his dual nature, Holly either ignored it or fought it.