“I waited until the vampires left,” he said without a smile. “What did they say?”
“Take off those ridiculous sunglasses first.” Holly hated not being able to see his eyes.
Slipping them off, he smiled at her and it held no mockery or amusement. “Happy?”
Her stomach did a strange flip. “I just want to see your snakeyness in the unlikely event that I begin to think of you as human.”
His smile didn’t fade. “The information, Hollyberry.”
Holly wanted to refuse to share it. As soon as she told him, she’d put herself in an even tighter cage of supervision. Protective it might be, but it also suffocated.
Venom slid his hands into the pockets of his suit pants, as dangerous and urbane as Zeph had been shaky and broken. “Or would you rather I get the information from your friends?”
“You keep your hands off them.” Neither Zeph nor Arabella had the physical or mental strength to deal with Venom.
He just waited with the predatory stillness she’d never mastered.
Fingers tightening on her clutch, she said, “The bounty—they heard about the rumored payoff.”
“How much?”
“Five million dollars.”
Venom didn’t so much as blink. “That’s a big enough number for certain immortals to risk Raphael’s fury.” His power slid sinuously around her. “It’s also a big enough number that it’ll draw reckless but nonetheless experienced bounty hunters from outside the territory.”
“The goons in the SUV,” Holly said, standing her ground against the intensity of his strength. “Has Vivek confirmed their identities?”
“It wasn’t difficult.” He turned to walk beside her when she swiveled on her heel to head toward the club, a silkily prowling presence. “We’ll deal with them.”
The hairs rose on the back of her neck. “What will you do to them?”
“Dmitri is in charge,” was the simple answer.
And Dmitri did not take any attack against the Tower lightly—because at present, Holly was Tower property. “Didn’t it frustrate you?” she found herself asking. “Spending a hundred years under someone else’s control?” All vampires signed a Contract to serve the angels for the privilege of being Made near-immortal.
Venom’s face gave nothing away. “I made a choice as an adult in full control of my faculties,” he said in a cool tone. “Only the stupid regret choices. The smart learn to adapt.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Venom looked over at her, his lips curving. “‘Frustration’ isn’t the word I’d use, kitty.”
They’d reached the door to the club. The big and musclebound vampire bouncer had become increasingly more pale the closer Venom got. Now he opened the door with a trembling hand. “Welcome,” he croaked out.
Venom didn’t respond, his hand once more on Holly’s lower back as he ushered her in. She scowled up at him once they were inside the thundering noise of the club. “What? You couldn’t be polite to a lowly bouncer?”
Leaning down to her ear, he said, “That lowly bouncer is maybe two decades into his Contract.” His breath was warm against her ear, his body a tensile wall. “A vampire that young needs to be scared of me. Fear will keep him from running, and that means the Guild Hunters won’t have to track him and haul him back. At which point, his punishment would be a violently painful affair.”
His fingers moved in a slow circle on her lower back, his eyes shimmering in the pulsating darkness. “Fear,” he said, “also fosters control. That’s why the hundred years of service is necessary—so that the world isn’t overrun by blood-maddened vampires, feeding and feeding and feeding.”
Holly shivered.
Running his hand up then down her back, Venom held her gaze. “That’s also why you need to be kept under watch. No one knows what lies inside you, what deadly urges you must be taught to throttle.”
Holly wanted to refute his words, but damn it, he was right. There was a horrible something inside her, a monstrous creature that hungered. “Let’s go,” she said, jerking forward into the chaotic darkness of a club lit only by moody dark blue bulbs and glowing jewelry hung around necks or worn around wrists.
Booths circled the dance floor. Though every single one had a ragged curtain, only a few were pulled closed. In the nearest open one, Holly glimpsed a group of young vampires crowded together, drinking blood and laughing. A simple night out.
A knife twisted inside her.
She’d done that once upon a time. Gone out for a drink with her friends. Poor Rania could never hold her drink, but she was such an adorable drunk that none of them minded. The last night they’d gone out before the torture and death, Rania had slung an arm around Holly and nuzzled into her neck, saying, “I love you lots and lots and even more than marshmallows.”
Holly’s throat threatened to close up.
Ripping away her gaze before Venom could catch her being maudlin, she looked at the next booth. This one held a sight more expected and more perverse. A bare-breasted female vampire was doing a lap dance for a heavy-lidded angel who sat with his wings draped behind him and his arms spread on the torn red leather of the booth bench.
The angel was clearly slumming. Angelkind was too powerful to be reduced to bars like this one. As for the vampires who ended up in this life, it was a combination of bad choices and fate. After serving their hundred years, all vamps were meant to be released with enough resources to start a new, independent life.
Some angels were more generous than others.
Zeph’s angel had been—but he’d also treated the sensitive vampire so viciously during his Contract that Zeph was incapable of living life without the sweet oblivion of drugs.
“Your eyes are beginning to glow.” Venom’s voice against her ear, his hand curving over her hip.
Fighting the impulse to pull away because that would betray far too much, she said, “I’ll get it under control.”
“It’s part of you. Why control it all the time?”
His response had her staring at him. “Didn’t you just rave on about control?”
“Control and asphyxia leading to weakness are two different things.” He slipped his sunglasses back on. “I am always in control—and I always have access to the full depth of my abilities.” He glanced around. “You have friends here?”
“A few.” Off-center, Holly moved forward through the crush of dancing bodies to the bar, Venom’s hand sliding off her hip in the process. Space opened up around her, in front of her, without effort. She knew better than to think she’d caused the effect. Usually, she had to push and shove—and occasionally hiss—to get through.