She had the feeling he was talking as much to the thing inside her as explaining what they were about to do. But the otherness didn’t want to listen. It shoved so hard at her skin that she thought it was going to explode out of her like the ball of deadly energy that had erupted out of Daisy.
No. This is for both of us. Daisy, who never had a chance. And Holly, who came back from the dead.
She was a person.
Not a suitcase taking this . . . echo of Uram from one place to another.
“Go,” she said to Venom through gritted teeth, conscious that her control over the entity within wasn’t absolute.
Viper green eyes connected with hers before he moved silently down the hall, his hand linked warm and strong with hers. He broke contact only when they reached a corner and had to hug the wall before it to check if the way forward was clear. Venom looked very carefully around before jerking back his head.
He held up two fingers, then formed the shape of wings with his hands.
Holly pointed to her eyes and made a questioning face. Her mesmerism didn’t work on angels—Izak, the youngest angel in the Tower, if you didn’t count Ellie, had allowed her to try to capture him, the experiment supervised by Ash and Dmitri. It had proved a total failure.
Venom, however, was older and stronger. Now, he made a motion with his hand that she read as there being a fifty-fifty chance of success. Given his strength, it meant the two angels up ahead were old, possibly even people he recognized.
The wings inside her shoved.
Deadly cold flowed over her, her hands tingling and flexing without her conscious volition. I can kill those angels. The thought was as clear as if someone had spoken in her ear—and the voice wasn’t hers.
Fuck.
Holly wasn’t about to become a goddamn zombie. She lifted Venom’s wrist to her mouth and bit down without warning. Blood potent with power . . . blood that was deeply familiar hit her bloodstream, thrusting out the acid green mist crawling through her veins. Flicking her tongue over the wound to help close it, she released the strong weight of his wrist. Thank you, she said with her eyes when she met those of a far wilder green.
He ran his knuckles over her cheek, then took out a small mirror from his pocket. As she watched, curious, he held that mirror low by his leg and angled it—Oh. It allowed him to see around the corner without having to stick out his head.
Clever.
It was two minutes later that he said, “Now.”
Holly moved, Venom at her back. The upper arches of the wings of the angels who’d stepped off the railingless mezzanine were still visible, the central core of this part of the stronghold a vast empty space that soared to the ceiling far above. If the angels looked up, Holly and Venom were screwed, but the two men appeared to be focused on landing on the polished wood of the floor below. Holly ran with all her inhuman speed, but the passage was long and the angels landed before she reached the other end.
Falling to the carpet as close to the wall as possible, she began to crawl.
Voices drifted up from the ground floor, but the words were difficult to understand. She didn’t try, just focused on her destination and kept going. Now that she was going in the right direction, the serrated wings inside her chest had stopped trying to breach her flesh, but she could still feel them, lying just beneath her skin.
The distinctive susurration of wings, as if one of the angels was rising back up.
The end of this part of the mezzanine was too far for her to win a race against a being with wings. Holly rolled left and into an open doorway. Venom rolled in a heartbeat later and they moved behind the door to flatten themselves against the wall. Holly’s heart thudded hard, but below that was another pull far more visceral. Whatever it was that drew her, it was now so close that it was a hand around her throat that attempted to override her free will and haul her closer.
Holly thought of Mia, of their mom and dad and brothers, of Ash and Janvier, even Arabella and Zeph.
All people who saw her. Knew her.
No one more so than the vampire who closed his hand over hers and gripped hard. She wove her fingers through his and she stayed determinedly Holly.
She and Venom were in a darkened bedroom. Not Michaela’s, that much was clear now that her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The furniture was lovely, the bed made with flowing white sheets, the bed itself edged by four exquisitely carved posts. A chair with curved legs as elegant sat by the antique white vanity, and it looked like the light in the center of the room might be a small chandelier.
It was very pretty, but without personality. The kind of room where no one lived on a permanent basis. A guest room then, a nice one. It looked like it might even have a private balcony beyond the lacy curtains that hung on the other side of the room. The view—
She elbowed Venom . . . only to glance over and see him staring at those same balcony curtains. He lifted a finger to his lips, then began to slide along the walls in that direction, motioning for her to stay and keep an ear on the external hallway. He was halfway to his destination when the angels’ conversation became suddenly more audible. They’d moved to right outside the door.
Holly couldn’t understand a word of what the two were saying. They weren’t speaking English.
Of course they weren’t. She was in freaking Hungary.
She had a smattering of high school French and German, but the language was neither of those. Hungarian made sense. And maybe she was pulling a language out of her ass because she had no idea. What she did have was an app on her phone that Illium had told her to download. As Venom whispered closer to the curtains, she slipped the phone carefully out of her pocket but didn’t press the button to bring up the home screen.
First, she unzipped her jacket slightly—and silently—and tucked the phone up near her chin so the glow from the screen would be contained. It wasn’t the best way to see the screen, but she could just do it if she tucked her chin into her chest.
Bringing up the home screen, she swiped into the translation app. She’d already put the phone on silent, so the app wouldn’t speak. However, words began to crawl across the screen, with gaps where the app couldn’t pick up the sound. According to the screen, the language being spoken was Hungarian . . . right before it became ancient Greek.
Two angels, two preferred languages, but it was obvious they understood one another.
A cheery note popped up over the text, stating that the app’s ancient Greek module had been verified by a vampire professor who was an actual ancient Greek. It also helpfully noted that this was no longer a dominant dialect, but still popular among a “statistically significant percentage of immortals.”
Holly quickly got rid of it, far more interested in the conversation outside.
“. . . restless.”
“What . . . sentries . . . ?”
“Nothing, but I’m . . . alert.”
“. . . a good position . . . make it into the house, but we should be vigilant.”
“Agreed. No one can get past us.”
Holly winced as the sound of wings opening then closing came from almost directly outside. Well, that made that decision clear. Sliding away her phone, she did what Venom had and made her way silently to the balcony doors he’d parted the curtains very slightly to expose. He shot her a speaking look.
Shaking her head, Holly risked taking out the phone to show him the transcript of the discussion.
His jaw firmed before he returned his attention to the locked door. When he gestured at her hair, she frowned, having no idea what he wanted. He made pointy motions. What? Oh. Holly had braided her hair tightly for this operation and had no hairpins to give him. Making a “wait” motion, she reached carefully into her pack to triumphantly reveal a penknife. It was pink, with golden stars on it.
Venom rolled his eyes at the petite thing.
Making a face at him, she pulled out the metal toothpick tucked into the top of one side of the casing. She’d never understood why the otherwise girly penknife, given to her as a gift by Rania—yeah, it still hurt to remember her friend was gone—and filled with things like nail files and a tiny, slender mirror, had a disgusting, meant to be reused, toothpick. Needless to say, Holly had never put it anywhere near her mouth. It had, however, come in handy when she wanted to dig out the last of her lipstick from a tube.