He didn’t offer Holly any; she’d had more than enough to last her through today. Especially since she’d drunk from Venom. Sipping at the glass, he walked over toward her. She frowned and scrambled up onto her feet. Her hair fell around her, Holly having taken off her hair tie at some point. The strands were a slick waterfall of color-streaked black that reached past her waist.
Shoving them back, she glared at him. “What did you drug me with?”
“Your own spirit,” he said with an amused smile.
“Yeah, right.” She seemed to realize she was still holding on to the blanket, dropped it like it was a burning hot brand. “I slept on the floor. A stone floor.”
“A heated stone floor,” Venom supplied. “You’re the only other person who’s enjoyed it.” Curious about his tendency to sleep on the stone, the others of the Seven had all tried it at one point or another. None had lasted more than a few minutes. Not even Naasir. The most feral of the Seven had enjoyed the heat, but couldn’t understand Venom’s liking for the hard surface.
Scowling, Holly stepped forward and past him. “I’m going to my apartment.”
He didn’t stop her. Finishing off his lunch, he made his way to Dmitri’s office, the landscape beyond the Tower windows rain-washed dark gray. The other man wasn’t there, so Venom left him a note stating what he and Holly had discovered the previous night. His next stop was the technical core of the Tower. The man who was now the heartbeat of that core was someone Venom had only met in person yesterday, but he was very aware of Vivek Kapur’s skills.
All of the Seven had been briefed on the Guild Hunter turned Tower vampire.
It was relatively quiet when he walked in after a retinal scan to verify his identity, but the computers were humming and data scrolled through various screens. Strolling through the climate-controlled space, his sunglasses back on, Venom made his way to the very center—and the large circular control station that was Vivek Kapur’s personal subdomain. It had been custom-built to his specifications, and gave him access to multiple screens, several of which hung down from the ceiling on electronically controlled arms.
“Vivek.”
The other man swiveled around in a wheelchair that, Venom had been told, was as much a part of him as any of his limbs. Thin, with brown skin close to Venom’s shade, the hunter-born male had lost all feeling below the shoulders as a result of catastrophic damage to his spine while he’d still only been a child.
But today, he lifted a hand. “Venom.” A grin that was brilliant with life, his features handsome despite the lack of enough flesh on his bones. “Nice to meet you again.”
“Likewise.” Venom didn’t offer to shake the other man’s hand—vampirism had begun to have an impact on Vivek’s injuries far faster than anyone had expected, but the changes were unpredictable; the hunter had gained movement in both arms and his torso soon after his transition, but there’d been no further change in the months following.
That wasn’t why Venom didn’t touch the other man.
After a lifetime of not being able to feel anything below the shoulders, Vivek had become excruciatingly sensitive in the same newly awake region. Literally. His skin was a carpet of pain that could be triggered by the merest touch. The healers were of the opinion that it was simply an outcome of his nerves being shocked awake after years of somnolence—he’d just have to grit his teeth and bear it.
The only mercy was that it was solely touch from another living being that triggered the pain; Vivek could sit and sleep comfortably, work his instruments without problem. Venom wasn’t sure that was such a mercy, however: what must it be like to be deprived of the sensation of another’s hand on your body for most of your life, only for that touch to become a punishment?
“Quite an empire you’ve got.” He nodded at the work area, he and Vivek not having had much of a chance to talk yesterday when he dropped off the confiscated cell phone.
“I still miss my Guild station,” Vivek admitted. “I pretty much built that from the ground up, ordered every single piece myself, customized the software.”
“I built a house once,” Venom found himself saying. “I’m a bad carpenter, but I built that house. And I still miss it.” Mostly because of the people who’d lived in it, laughed in it, shared their bounty of rice and wild greens, lentils and handmade sweets.
Vivek nodded, the movement jerky, as if his body wasn’t quite used to its new range of motion. “Things we build ourselves, they matter.” He touched a screen, at the same time clicking the sensor that protruded beside his cheek, his wheelchair also designed to his specifications. “Sorry,” he said afterward. “I spotted a piece of information Jason might be interested in.”
Venom noted the glow in the other man’s eyes, had to hide a chuckle. According to Dmitri, Vivek Kapur had a crush on Raphael’s spymaster. Not a sexual crush. The crush of a man who loved having his fingers in every possible information pie—and Jason was the best at that there was. “Did you have a chance to dig into the e-mail address associated with the bounty?”
“Only for the past half hour—healers forced me offline for the rest of yesterday afternoon, and this morning, and I didn’t want to delegate since you asked me to take care of it personally.” A sour face as he began to work again. “They call it physical therapy and muscle recovery. I call it sadism.”
Venom could imagine the pain Vivek had to bear every session. “Does it make a difference if the therapists wear gloves?” He assumed there’d need to be physical contact during the sessions.
“We tried,” the other man responded with a scowl, “but then they can’t feel the movement of my muscles as they need to. So instead I swear like a hunter, and the therapists wear earplugs.” The last words were absent, Vivek’s focus on his work.
Venom prepared to leave. “Send me a message as soon as you have anything.”
“No. Wait.” The hunter’s eyes moved with rapid speed and Venom realized the other man was using software that read his eye movements, at the same time that he typed. “I’ve hacked the e-mail account. It’s received four e-mails in total, not counting the one you sent using the confiscated phone. One is from Mike, whose skull you rearranged. He e-mailed to say he and his guys were taking the job.”
“Professional of him.”
“He’s a regular CEO.” Vivek’s tone was bone-dry. “The other three e-mails are from different parties who purport to have successfully snatched Holly.”
He pulled up those three e-mails on the large screen in front of him. “Photos are doctored.”
Two were bad, but the third . . . “That one would fool me if I didn’t know her,” Venom said, pointing to the picture of a terrified woman hog-tied on a concrete floor. Holly’s eyes stared out of the screen.