She wondered why he’d made the choice and if it had been worth it to lose not just his freedom for a hundred years in payment, but also his humanity in ways even most vampires didn’t have to consider.
Stepping into the elevator, she kept her curiosity under wraps and her eyes resolutely trained frontward even as the sinuous slide of his power filled the small space. But she was conscious of him taking off his sunglasses and hooking them into the neck of his shirt. He rarely did that except with Raphael and others of the Seven.
The elevator doors opened smoothly on the floor of the Tower that held Dmitri’s office. Holly hadn’t been up there for a while, though Honor had told her about the renovation. The walls were a smooth gray, the carpet a richer shade of the same elegant color.
It had all been black beforehand, pure Dmitri.
Now, it reflected both the most powerful vampire in the city—and his hunter wife.
“What are those dents?” Honor had to be dismayed at the damage to her newly painted walls. At least the pretty artwork she’d picked out appeared to have survived unscathed.
“Looks like knives punching into the walls,” Venom said after a quick glance, his lips curved in what looked like genuine amusement. “My guess is Elena and Dmitri.”
Then there was no more time to prepare for what was to come; they’d reached Dmitri’s office. Raphael’s deadly second wasn’t standing behind his desk—Holly had never seen him actually sitting in his office chair—but was out on the railingless balcony beyond. He didn’t look a thousand years old, maybe in his early thirties at most. A dangerous man with black hair and dark brown eyes and sun-bronzed skin who “exuded sex,” according to the media.
Dropping his hold-all in a corner, Venom strode straight out.
Holly followed with more care—she’d been warned over and over that while she was like a vampire, she wasn’t quite one. And even a vampire would die if he fell from this height and his head separated from his body. That Dmitri and Venom were so cavalier about it spoke to the amount of power that ran in their veins.
Dmitri had been on the phone but hung up the instant he spotted Venom.
A smile breaking out over his face, he hugged the other man in a way that said they were friends rather than simply compatriots or brother warriors. More than six hundred and fifty years separated Dmitri and Venom, the oldest and the youngest in the Seven, but there was no distance in that moment.
As she watched, Dmitri slapped Venom on the back before the two men stepped apart.
“Holly.”
Holly walked to meet Dmitri halfway and, when he drew her into the warm strength of his arms, she didn’t resist. Where other women looked at him and saw a hard-bodied vampire who oozed sex appeal, Holly saw the man who’d found her at her lowest, full of self-loathing and guilt that she’d survived when her friends were all dead. He’d been so angry that awful night, had told her brutal truths about what would happen to her if she continued on her self-destructive path, but he hadn’t abandoned her when she admitted her fear of what she was becoming.
He’d stroked her hair as they sat on a cliff with a glittering view of Manhattan, and he’d let her cry until she had no more tears left in her. Until she was ready to claw out some kind of a life for herself from the ashes of who she’d once been. In the time since, he’d watched over her development and made sure she didn’t drown under the black waves of her nightmares.
Running his palm over her ponytail before he released her, he shifted so that he had his back to the precipitous drop behind him, while she and Venom stood in front of him. The wind whipped at his black T-shirt, the color the same as his jeans and his boots.
“Can we go inside?” Holly blurted out. She was loath to betray any weakness in front of Venom, but she hated seeing Dmitri so close to the edge.
To her surprise, Venom didn’t comment at all as they slipped inside Dmitri’s office. At which point he told Dmitri what had happened. Dmitri’s dark eyes sharpened, the lethal predator in him suddenly evident—this was the man spoken of as being merciless, Raphael’s “Blade” who made bloody mincemeat of his enemies.
“The bounty hunters specifically wanted Holly?”
“No doubts.” Venom pulled out the phone they’d confiscated. “I’ll have Vivek see what he can do with the e-mail address.”
Dmitri nodded before turning to Holly, the violence of his power making her teeth ache. “Were you hurt?”
“No.” She pointed at the torn shoulder of her top. “My father gave me this top just last week. The stupid goons ripped it.”
Dmitri’s smile was lethal. “If there’s a significant enough bounty, this will only be the first attempt.” He folded his arms. “The bigger threats will be the old ones so bored with life that risking death by attacking one of the Tower’s people will be a dangerous thrill. They won’t be as incompetent as this trio.”
Holly got a prickling at the back of her neck. “I can take care of myself,” she reminded him. “You made sure of that.” He was the one who’d thrown her into training designed to increase her control over her abilities.
Pinning her to the spot with the darkness of his gaze, Dmitri raised an eyebrow. “Could you have taken all three vampires today?”
Holly opened her mouth . . . and couldn’t lie. Not to Dmitri. “No,” she finally grated out. Mike and his fellow idiot goons had been big bastards, and while Holly could fight, she wasn’t an experienced hunter or warrior.
“You don’t go anywhere alone until we figure out who it is that wants you and why.” The words were an order. “I’ll speak to Janvier and Ashwini, see who best to assign you.”
“I can babysit,” said the aggravating vampire beside her, the one whose power kept sliding around her, the feel of it warm, living snakeskin across her body.
4
“Thank you for your generosity,” Holly said in her politest “nice young lady” voice, her smile wide enough to cut into her cheeks, “but I’d rather shack up with a flea-infested rabid dog.”
Venom’s eyes did that fascinating thing they did sometimes—they nictitated. The flash of the membrane coming horizontally across his irises was so fast that no one else believed her when she told them what she’d seen. It was like they couldn’t see it, the speed was so rapid. Instead of being creeped out by the act, she wanted to lean in close, see if she could track the movement.
She also wanted him to do it slower so she could fully appreciate the beauty of it: the membrane that came across his eye wasn’t totally transparent or milky white like she’d seen in images of birds when she’d looked up the topic online. The translucent membrane was cracked through with white, creating a fine net through which the green of his eyes could shine. The effect was incredible.
And only visible for a millisecond at most.
“You’re not exactly my first choice, kitty.” A leisurely scan down her body. “I prefer to spend my off time with women.”
Holly didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m sure Ashwini won’t mind if I hang with her.” If she had to have a bodyguard, either Ash or Honor or Janvier would be her choice. Since Honor was teaching a class at Guild Academy this semester, and Janvier had extra duties while Raphael and Elena were away, that left Ashwini.
“Ashwini is in advanced combat training, as is Janvier,” Dmitri told her. “They also have a heavy schedule of duties.” He looked over at Venom. “I was planning to ask you to take over some of their tasks while Illium teaches them what they need to know.”