“Run it forward again.” Feet set apart and arms folded, Dmitri looked at the screen with grim attention. “Zoom in on whatever it was that jumped from the vampire to Holly.”
Vivek did so in silence. The red spark was actually a very small ball with a spiked surface . . . and its heart pulsed an acidic green.
“Fuck.” Venom knew that color—it was the same shade as Holly’s eyes had become. “Uram definitely touched Daisy, changed her.”
“Get Kenasha in here now,” Dmitri said, his tone unbending.
“He’ll be incapacitated for a little while longer.”
“No, he won’t.” Ice in every word. “I’ll choke him on my own blood if I have to, to fight the effect of Holly’s venom, but he’s going to speak to us right now.”
“My blood will work better.” It’d counteract the venom faster. “Illium’s in a pissy mood. I’ll ask him to go out—he’ll enjoy dragging in an asshole.” The blue-winged angel usually had the most joie de vivre of the Seven, but when Venom had searched him out yesterday prior to heading to the sparring circle to watch Dmitri, Ash, and Janvier, he’d found the other man brooding on the roof.
Illium was powerful, violently so, and as darkly angry as he was at the moment, he’d scare the piss out of Kenasha. That worked well with Venom’s sense of justice.
“Do it,” Dmitri said.
Leaving without further words, Venom made his way to one of the railingless Tower balconies and scanned the sky. He could talk to the sire with his mind, the gift one fostered in him by Raphael. He didn’t, however, have the ability to reach out to others in the Seven on his own—not yet. But he didn’t need it.
He had a phone.
Not spotting Illium’s distinctive silver-edged blue wings in the sky and well aware the angel loved all things technologically inclined, he made the call. Illium answered in an unusually curt tone. “Yes?”
“I need a favor. A pickup. He enslaved a woman when she was too weak to say no.”
“You always give me the best gifts. Where?”
Venom gave him the location before adding, “Holly bit him, so he’ll be a little out of it.”
Laughter down the line, Illium sounding more like himself when he said, “I’ve always liked your little kitty.”
Venom’s hand clenched on the phone. He had to fight the urge to tell Bluebell not to call Holly that—that was a private game between him and Holly. “Thanks for the pickup.”
“No problem.” Illium hung up and, less than five seconds later, Venom saw his form arrow out of the sky to skim above the tops of the brightly lit skyscrapers. He was a bullet as he crossed the Hudson, going so low there that his passage agitated the water into crashing waves.
Yeah, the laughing angel known as Bluebell was not in a good mood.
Sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants, Venom decided to wait for Illium to return. That he wanted to go back to his suite and check on Holly was another reason he forced himself to stay in place. The last time he’d felt even a faint glimmer of this type of protectiveness about a woman, she’d been his betrothed, and look how fucking well that had turned out.
And while Holly had grown up, she remained a baby in comparison to him. He wasn’t about to put his hands on her—well, he might throw her around to teach her to embrace the power inside her, but he wasn’t about to fuck her. Not even if his body was starting to stir more and more that way each time he saw her.
“Jesus.” He shook his head as he spotted Illium over the waters of the Hudson once again; even for Bluebell, the speed of the pickup was extraordinary. The angel was holding Kenasha carelessly with one hand on the back of the other angel’s neck. Kenasha’s wings drooped uselessly. The wasted-away appendages had to be creating massive drag, but Illium didn’t look strained in the least.
There was a reason certain archangels had put out feelers to lure Illium to their side, to take up a position as their second. Many believed the increasingly strong angel must be starting to chafe at holding a lower position in the Tower hierarchy than Dmitri. But Illium’s answer had always been a flat no.
He’d chosen his loyalty and it wasn’t only to Raphael, but to the Seven.
“Dmitri’s more experienced and he’s known the sire since the sire was young enough that Raphael treats him as an equal,” the angel had once said to Venom. “I, meanwhile, was once a baby angel Raphael rescued from a river after I took a dunking. The next time I fell in, it was Dmitri who plucked me out.”
He’d laughed, golden eyes dancing. “I’m not meant to be Raphael’s second, or to hold a position above Dmitri. Power isn’t everything—the bonds that tie us to one another, forged by emotion and battle and friendship, that’s what makes us strong.” A silver-edged feather of wild blue had drifted down to the ground from his wings as he resettled them. “No, I’m meant to occupy exactly the place I hold among us.”
That soul-deep bond would change one day in the distant future, Illium’s destiny written in his power. But it would never break. The Seven would always have each other’s—and Raphael’s—back. As the Archangel Elijah would never move against the Archangel Caliane.
He’d once been her most trusted general, carried that loyalty in his heart to this day.
Less than half a minute later, Illium dropped Kenasha’s quivering body on the balcony in front of Venom’s feet. “That was quick,” Venom commented.
Landing on the balcony, Illium folded back his wings. “I was racing myself,” he said, his eyes turbulent with emotions that were starkly human in a way it was rare to see in an immortal of Bluebell’s age and power.
“Who’d you fight with? Ellie?” Of all the Seven, it was Illium who was closest to Raphael’s hunter consort. “No? Then it has to be Aodhan.” The other angel—and fellow member of the Seven—was Illium’s best friend. Two wholly different men in personality, Illium and Aodhan had known each other since childhood. Sometimes, when they sparred in the air, it was like watching two halves of a whole, their reactions were so in sync.
Illium didn’t answer, his jaw grinding. “Why do your friend’s wings look like those of a half-plucked chicken?” he asked just as Dmitri exited onto the balcony. “I do like the rhythmic twitching, though.”
“That’s Holly’s work.” It was obvious her venom was yet causing Kenasha considerable pain.
“This makes me sad,” Dmitri said without an ounce of sympathy. “Sad for all the children who might’ve seen this creature and thought him an example of angelkind.”
“Don’t worry,” Venom replied in as cold a tone. “He doesn’t fly. Daisy’s blood did something to him.”