Every vampire knew the sharp metallic tang of blood.

The energy inside her was literally tearing her apart in its frantic efforts to get to the energy . . . receptacle in the bronze lattice cage. Venom made a split-second decision. He gripped Holly’s throat in a single powerful hand and squeezed hard, cutting off her blood flow. Her body spasmed in his grip for nearly a minute before going limp.

A human would be dead.

He was counting on the fact that Holly wasn’t human. Because if he’d killed . . . Pain such as he’d never again expected to feel tore through him as he scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the far side of the room. Placing her on a window seat, he checked her pulse.

Relief was a cold punch in his gut.

She was alive, and the glow had stopped. It made him believe that the thing inside her needed her to be conscious to do what it had been doing. Which meant its own consciousness wasn’t whole, couldn’t exist without being a parasite. As with the pulsing horror in the crib, it was twisted and created of pieces. It needed to use Holly as a host. However, like an insect that erupted out of its host’s body after consuming that body from the inside out, it’d kill her in an effort to get out.

Leaving Holly on the seat, Venom went to look through the lattice again; he needed to give the sire every detail he could. His gut told him that thing shouldn’t exist and wasn’t alive in any known sense, the rise and fall under its skin having only a superficial resemblance to breathing. As he watched, that rise and fall pulsed and faded in random jaggedness, pulsed and faded. Flickered.

And he caught a hint of putrid green below the surface: decay.

All details stored in his mind, Venom moved to the next thing on his list and touched the bronze lattice directly. It threw him back against the wall, but he’d prepared for that outcome and rolled with viper fluidity. He’d been with Raphael long enough to identify the power that had repelled him as archangelic.

He wouldn’t be getting through it.

Which left him with only one choice: he had to get Holly out of here before she regained consciousness and the malignant energy inside her began to once again attempt to reconnect with this other piece of itself. He also had to keep her away from it until he could talk to Raphael and figure out a solution that didn’t end with Holly’s death.

Because Venom wasn’t okay with that.

Keeping an ear open for any sign that Holly was regaining consciousness, he went to the windows around the turret to see if he could open one. The answer wasn’t good: as he’d thought earlier, the windows were welded shut. They were also designed so that smashing the glass would have no real impact—the panes were too small for anything bigger than a bird to get through, while the window frame itself was formed of thick metal.

Michaela clearly understood that this unbeing could not be permitted to escape. Why, then, did she allow it to exist? For power? Or had she loved Uram enough to hold out hope for his return?

None of that was important in this time and place.

Only Holly mattered.

Venom would have to take her out the same way they’d come in.

He’d always liked a challenge, he thought grimly.

Going back over the room, he made sure they’d left behind no trace of their presence. It was evident that Michaela wasn’t mentally connected to the power lattice, else the room would’ve been swarming with guards a minute after their entry. After he’d confirmed that no drops of Holly’s blood lay on the floor to betray her, he picked up her body and exited the room, then placed her on the ground and carefully relocked the padlock in the same position in which he’d found it.

Getting Holly back into her jacket and zipping it up proved easy enough; he made a note to needle her by calling her a doll. She’d glare daggers at him before replying with some equally needling riposte. Her pack was a problem. However, she didn’t have much more than food and a change of clothes in it now that her jacket was out. So he emptied everything into his own larger pack, then managed to squash her empty pack in there as well. Slinging it on, he picked her up again and tried not to look at the purpling bruise around her neck.

He’d done that.

He, a man who’d been very careful through time to never become without conscience, to never treat women as disposable commodities. His sisters might have forsaken him, but that didn’t change that he was a man who’d grown up knowing it was his duty to care for, not harm them. “I’m sorry, kitty,” he murmured, rubbing his cheek against her hair before he started down the stairs.

Getting to the bottom wasn’t a problem—Holly didn’t weigh all that much. She was pretty small, even though she seemed such a huge presence when she was awake and snapping back at him. Placing her on the ground again once they’d navigated the stairs, her back to a wall, he risked cracking open the door the tiniest fraction.

Two angels stood not fifty feet in the distance.

Venom decided to wait. From what he’d seen so far, this turret was off-limits to any and all. The angels’ job was to ensure that no one breached the house and got to the crib above. Michaela had also left a huge warning sign with that bronze lattice. Given her reputation for creative and cruel punishments, he didn’t think her people would be disregarding her orders.

Not so long as Venom didn’t give them a reason to check the turret.

The problem was keeping Holly unconscious long enough to distance her from the unbeing in the crib. Venom hadn’t forgotten the wings that blazed in her chest in Central Park, but that had been fleeting. The power hadn’t attempted a total takeover until it was within touching distance of the receptacle. And it was only inside the stronghold that the memories had begun to merge with Holly’s own mind.

An hour of screaming patience later, her eyes began to flutter open.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again, and choked her out of consciousness.

Tears clogged his throat, threatened to roll down his cheeks for the first time in over three centuries.

30

A minute afterward, bile yet burning his throat, he looked out into the hallway. The two sentries had disappeared. He dared stick out his head to check that the entire mezzanine was clear. Yes. He realized the angels must’ve decided to stretch their wings by flying down.

But they’d be back soon.

He threw Holly over his shoulder, wincing at the damage he was doing to her already wounded abdomen, and pulled the door shut behind himself. He’d used the wait to fix it from the inside so that it would lock behind him, but he checked to make sure. Then he made his way in quick silence to where they’d entered the stronghold.

The area was still empty and the window was still open.

After placing Holly against a wall, he slid off his pack, removed his hook and rope, then anchored the hook as strongly as possible. They’d already left a few marks. Others were unavoidable, but hopefully, no one looked too carefully at this window ledge at the end of a distant hallway.

Climbing down with Holly wasn’t going to be easy, but he finally decided on moving his pack to the front and tying her to his back with an extra rope. It wouldn’t be the most comfortable position for her and she’d probably wake with one hell of a backache, but she’d be alive. Pack and Holly in position, he waited for a time when there were no wings in the sky close enough to spot him.

Ten excruciating minutes passed before the sky was clear.

Venom swung out the window.

With the weight on him, the rope tore at his palms. He barely felt it. His Making had hardened him to many other types of pain. When you were tied down, then had angry vipers and cobras thrown onto your body, their fangs sinking poison into your unguarded flesh over and over again until agony and horror were all you knew . . . Well, there weren’t many nightmares that could terrify Venom and little pain that even came close to destabilizing.

He moved with preternatural speed.

His feet landed on the grass without an alarm being shouted. Untying Holly and placing her on the grass, he swung his backpack into the correct position before flicking the rope in a hard ripple designed to dislodge the hook.

It held.

He tried again, the motion one he’d practiced and practiced and practiced again over the centuries. The stupid thing didn’t budge.