Holly narrowed her eyes at him. She’d chosen skinny black jeans today, paired them with a three-quarter-sleeved and fitted black shirt that she’d tucked into the jeans; the outfit was completed by boots that laced up to midcalf. Not spike boots. Work boots. “I haven’t seen Dmitri wear daisies anytime lately.” Those daisies decorated her boots.
Venom’s grin was a wicked, wild thing. Real. “Definitely not Sorrow anymore.”
Holly wasn’t so sure. She’d changed her name back to Holly because of the sadness on her family’s faces each time they called her Sorrow, but the girl she’d once been was gone forever . . . and deep in the night, when she was alone and the world was distant and no one could see her vulnerability, Holly mourned for her. For that hopeful, color-drenched girl who’d loved fashion and who’d had a crush on one of her lecturers.
With his sandy blond hair, a smile that creased his cheeks, light blue eyes, and a habit of wearing cardigans over his shirts, he’d made her heart flutter. Shelley and Maxie had dared Holly to make a move on him after they graduated and she’d laughingly taken the bet. Because back then, her life had been like that. A bubble of joy and possibility. A weightless, gossamer thing.
“Do you ever miss who you were?” The words were out of her mouth before she could think about what they might betray.
Venom didn’t ask her what she was talking about. “It was a long time ago,” he said. “Another few decades and it will be four centuries since I was Made.”
“Janvier isn’t that much younger than you and he still talks about his sisters, still goes to see their descendants.” He and Ashwini had ridden to New Orleans a month earlier for a fais do-do, which Holly had worked out meant a party; the two had come back with joy written on their skin and colorful beads hanging off the handlebars of Janvier’s motorcycle.
“People make different choices.” Venom’s voice was cold in a way she’d never heard from him—he might have the eyes of a viper, but for the most part, Venom was mockingly amused at the world. “What do you plan to do? Stay in touch with the next generation and the next, or fade away?”
Holly frowned and looked out at the gathering darkness, the clouds so heavy at this point that the world looked closer to six P.M. than just after one. This wasn’t about her. But an inherent sense of fairness made her answer his question because she’d pushed him to answer hers. “I lost my family once,” she said. “I’m never going to do it again.” Turning back to face him, she saw the tightness in his jaw.
Venom never acted like this. This mattered. It wasn’t to be taken lightly.
“I want to be like Janvier,” she said. “I want to have those ties, have that sense of being rooted in humanity. He’s the most . . . human vampire I know aside from Honor and Ash—and they just got Made, so it doesn’t count. I think it’s because he’s maintained strong ties to his family through the centuries.” A year ago, his great-great-multiplied-by-who-knows-how-many-greats-grandnephew had stayed with him and Ashwini for six months while the boy attended a theater workshop in Manhattan.
Venom shot her a look made unreadable by the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses. “Fighting the inevitable, kitty?” It was a murmur, the last word almost affectionate.
Her eyes burned, her throat suddenly thick. Turning to stare out the window again, she watched the passing traffic. Streetlights began to flicker on, their systems triggered by the lack of light. “I know I’m not human,” she said when she could speak again, her voice caustic because otherwise, she might cry. “Bit hard to miss with the glowing green eyes and the ability to break people’s bones without touching them.”
“What?” Venom’s tone was hard.
“It’s a new development,” Holly said, her voice as colorless as the landscape around them. “I was sparring with Janvier and he was showing me how to move and I was thinking that if I could get the angle exactly right, I’d probably break his forearm.”
Bile burned her throat. “I wasn’t planning to do that—I was just thinking of how it might be helpful in a real fight if I could take my attacker out of commission.” She swallowed, the sickening sound of the bone cracking loud in her head. “And then his arm was broken.”
“He’d have healed quickly,” Venom said. “He’s old and strong enough.”
That didn’t change that Holly had harmed someone who’d only ever been good to her. Janvier had even invited her along on the most recent visit to his family. She’d said no only because she’d wanted to spend the time with Mia before her sister’s move to Boston.
Venom’s power slid around her, a sinuously graceful thing. “Did he ask you to do it again?”
11
“How did you guess?” An edge of surprise in Holly’s question.
“Because that’s his job.” Venom turned down a dingy street with several broken-out streetlights just as the rain thundered down in truth, but though he saw everything despite the acutely low visibility, the alertness part of his nature, his mind was on Holly’s revelation. “That ability isn’t vampiric.”
“No. It’s closer to angelic.”
“No, kitty. You know as well as I do that it’s closer to archangelic.” The idea of that much power in her fragile body . . . “How are you still alive?” It was a serious question. Archangels were built to handle the violence of the power that lived in them. Even Illium, the strongest angel among the Seven, had nearly died when the Cascade forced extraordinary power into his flesh.
Holly continued to stare out the window. “It’s only a droplet of power,” she said in an eerily toneless voice. “It builds, then releases in sudden violence or . . .”
“Or?” Venom should’ve already had a briefing about her, but other events had overtaken the normal order of things when one of the Seven returned to the city after a long absence.
“Want to see a cool trick?”
Venom glanced over to see Holly holding out a hand . . . before it faded out of view only to flicker back in. He sucked in a breath as he turned his attention forward again. Glamour, the ability to walk unseen among the populace, was a strictly archangelic ability. “How long can you be unseen?”
Holly laughed as the rain transitioned from downpour to steady drizzle. “You mean how long can my hand be unseen? Because that’s the only body part with which I can do my parlor trick.”
A droplet of power.
Suddenly her words made more sense. “But you can summon the power on cue?”
“Depends on the day of the week. It comes and goes.” She shifted slightly forward, pointing to their left. “That’s the address of the idiots who think I’d cower. That three-story building with the graffiti of a flying dinosaur. Creative.”