A slow smile. “Did our friends turn cryptic on you?”
“I asked a question.” She just barely stopped herself from tearing off the sunglasses and stomping on them.
“No one speaks Legion except the Legion,” Venom said, his dark hair glittering with tiny jewel-like drops of rain. “The sire and Elena are still attempting to work out the meaning of something the Legion said to them when the Legion first landed in New York.”
Holly looked over her shoulder, where the plastic flaps disturbed by her passage had already gone still. “Do you think they get off on messing with people’s heads?”
“No.” A pause. “The Legion aren’t anything human or understandable. Try to imagine having an eon of knowledge inside you, of knowing so much that explanations are redundant. I think, in their own minds, they’re being perfectly clear.”
You are an echo who is not an echo.
Holly didn’t want to think about that word: echo. She was scared she knew exactly what it meant. “Are you stalking me?”
“No need. I just followed the blinding glare of your hair.”
“A man who wears the same outfit over and over has no room to criticize my fashion choices.” Never would she tell him that he looked beautifully dangerous in the gray suit and white shirt that had survived the rain unscathed but for the odd droplet here and there.
Protected by the partial overhang above this railingless landing area, he’d soon dry off. Holly had done so inside the warmth of the Legion building.
“Look at this,” Venom said now that the exchange of insults was over. “It’s a faked photo of you.”
She frowned, took his phone. It was a shock to see herself looking so beaten. “I’d never look like that,” she said, ice crackling her words. “Even if they beat me to a pulp.”
“The individuals behind it clearly didn’t research their target.” Venom took the phone back. “This one’s the best manipulated image but there were two others. Vivek was able to track down physical addresses for all the fraudsters—I thought we should pay them a visit, see if any of them got a bite back via a channel we can’t monitor.”
“Let’s go.” Holly felt like kicking some ass.
Not waiting for Venom, she began to make her way down the vine. She heard him laugh, and then he was moving beside her. They landed at the same time, tiny droplets of rain glittering on their skin and clothing. “You don’t climb like me,” she said, curious despite herself. He was fluid like her, but his bones didn’t move in the same way.
“We can compare techniques later.” Striding across to where he’d parked his distinctive Bugatti, he got in, waited for her to take her seat. “I’ve sent you the files on the ones who said they’d caught you. See if you recognize any names. All are vampires.”
Holly took out her phone, brought up the list he’d sent her. She didn’t really expect to see any names she knew, but— “Son of a bitch. That asshole.”
“Which one?” He turned away from the Tower, the world beyond washed in gray.
“Marlin Tucker. Low-level scumbag who deals in information when he can’t deal in honey feeds. Vampire. Hundred and seventy years old.”
“Perhaps your relationship will make him cooperative.”
“We don’t have a relationship. He’s one of Ash’s contacts—she thinks he’s an asshole, too, but he’s an asshole who belongs in the gray and people talk to him.” She went through the other names. “I don’t know anyone else and these addresses aren’t likely to be real if they’re the official ones on their driver’s licenses or whatever.”
“Vivek dug deeper.” A sideways glance out of eyes she couldn’t see. “Nice outfit. Taking fashion advice from Dmitri?”
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.”