No one was Venom.
And Venom was hers.
The reminder she’d spoken over and over through the night, the mental foothold she’d created using her emotional response to him—always, she’d responded to Venom—gave her a touch more strength.
Light flashed, a glittering bronze shower that was astonishing in its beauty. Wonder tried to catch Holly in its shimmering grasp. Michaela really had struck the jackpot when it came to the beauty stakes. Horror soon curdled the wonder. Because the lattice was down and she could feel acid-green energy gathering inside her, as the echo of Uram prepared to leave Holly to merge with the part inside the fleshy receptacle in the crib.
Should that happen, Holly would die just like Daisy had died. Uram would steal all her energy, all her life force to make himself stronger. Holly thought furiously as Michaela turned to Raphael, slamming out a palm laced with power. “Do not interfere here, Raphael. If he’s powerful enough to have survived angelfire, then he’s powerful enough to fully regenerate from a stump of flesh.”
You’re wrong, Holly wanted to say. This echo would never be anything but a madness stuck in a moment of time. It didn’t even know why it wasn’t whole. It didn’t remember dying. Because that death had taken place after Uram transferred—whether purposefully or by accident—fragments of his energy into Holly and Michaela and Daisy. It did remember loving Michaela because Uram had loved her as he went into his insanity, the emotion imprinted into every fragment of him. And it slyly remembered the craving for blood, for violence, for torture.
Whatever grew out of that thing in the crib would be nothing but a horror.
She was conscious of Raphael replying to Michaela, but she wasn’t listening to the archangelic conversation any longer. She had to have a critical discussion of her own.
Is that what you want to be? she whispered from deep inside herself, as Uram’s echo had whispered to her. That twisted piece of flesh that has no life to it? Inside Uram, she understood that it was literally just meat. Created of Michaela’s cells and Uram’s tainted energy, it was an external host meant to act as the core for Uram’s resurrection. It hadn’t rotted away only because . . .
My sweet dripped her blood over that which will become my flesh.
Which Michaela hadn’t been able to do while at the Cadre meeting, explaining the putrefaction Holly had glimpsed during her first visit. A few more days and there’d have been maggots crawling in that crib.
Holly’s stomach lurched, but she didn’t lose the precious control she’d regained. You will be totally dependent on Michaela.
Her body moved closer to the crib, looked down. “I will soon grow strong,” the Uram echo said aloud, capturing the attention of everyone in the room.
Are you sure? Holly whispered. Do you have enough power? Or will you be trapped in that hunk of toxic meat forever?
Rage in her muscles, a burning pain her body wasn’t designed to handle for long. “I am an archangel.”
Tell me when you and Michaela first met, Holly said through the agony.
“Silence!” The voice that wasn’t her voice boomed into the air.
36
Raphael, Michaela, Venom, they all watched without interrupting, as if aware something was taking place that they couldn’t perceive. Luckily for Holly, she didn’t have to be silent. The echo of Uram could do nothing more to her.
You don’t remember, do you? she murmured. Do you remember coming to New York?
A deadly silence.
You are not an archangel. You are an echo, a mad ghost created of fragments of energy left behind before your death. Holly felt an unexpected sadness spear her heart. You must’ve been an incredible power to do that, to leave behind energy that survived for so long.
“I am an archangel!” It was a roar that shuddered against the walls of the turret that Michaela had turned into a nursery and a prison both. “I am Uram!”
“My love.” Michaela reached out a hand across the crib, her face a thing of power softened by grief. “Become whole.”
The power inside Holly coalesced into a tense knot, ready for the transfer.
If you go into that flesh, Holly said in a voice she forced to be calm, you will be sightless and without hearing, without voice, the entire time it’ll take you to recover. You’ll be helpless in Michaela’s hands, a child she has to raise. She stopped herself from saying anything more, from pointing out that Michaela could use any such opportunity to shape Uram as she saw fit.
The truth, of course, was that Uram would never be a child. Would never grow. There wasn’t enough of him left. Even now, his few memories were less sharp than they’d been before, as if having degraded once brought out into the light. If he went into that lump of flesh, however, then Michaela would fight for him to be allowed to exist. And, given Michaela’s love for Uram and for the meat host in the crib, sooner, or later . . . Oh, that wasn’t it at all.
The knowledge was a faint whisper at the back of her mind, but it came from the echo that was part of her. And it told her the echo would try to take over Michaela the instant it had bathed in enough of her blood.
Would it succeed?
Holly didn’t think so, but the risk was too horrific to chance. For if the echo did succeed in maddening Michaela, Uram’s blood reign would begin all over again.
Take this body, she whispered. At least until you are strong enough to create a full adult body in which to transfer yourself.
This time, the answer was internal . . . and thoughtful. I will have to leave a splinter of energy in the other to make sure it grows.
You know you need all of you to return to greatness.
A long pause before Holly’s hand reached into the crib and spread over the lump of flesh below. A single touch and she knew it was wrong. There was no warmth to that flesh. It was cold. Dead. Animated only because Uram’s energy, fed by Michaela’s blood, ran in its veins.
• • •
Venom watched Holly’s hand spread on the lump that was the unbeing, acid green wings continuing to glow behind her. He wanted to tear that acid green from her, set her free. But to do that would be to kill her.
He refused to believe she was already gone, that this was now a matter between archangels. When the Holly/Uram hybrid looked up without warning and said, “I will keep this body,” Venom knew he was right. Holly had done something, changed the script.
Sire. Venom didn’t look at Raphael as he spoke. I think we should let this, too, run its course.
There’s little choice. Raphael’s voice was a storm of power in Venom’s head, so much of it that Venom sometimes wondered how the sire could bear it. If there is even the slightest chance that Uram can come back, I cannot strike without it being an act of war. To attack an archangel rising from a long Sleep is to breach all the rules that keep the Cadre from destroying one another and the world. We have already had one such incident; I will not be responsible for a second.
Venom stared directly at Holly, willing her to look at him. Just one second, that was all he needed. A heartbeat.
• • •
Holly’s eyes scanned the room. “Do not interfere,” her mouth said before she frowned and shook her head. “I do not remember how I came to this place, but this is my resurrection.”
• • •
Even as Holly’s mouth moved, her eyes were processing what she’d seen in the echo’s scan. Venom’s hand had moved so quickly that most people wouldn’t have caught it. She did, because she was a little like him. And— Why am I like Venom? she asked the echo inside her. Did you have an affinity for snakes? Except . . . I’m not all like him.
A buildup of pressure. Quiet, mortal!
Holly forced herself to sound subservient. Please. I’ll be gone once you come to power. Answer this one question before you take my flesh for your own. Did you have an affinity to snakes? Like Neha.
Holly’s head fell back, laughter pouring out of her mouth. When the echo stopped laughing, it said, I am not Neha with her poisons. I am Uram.
And she realized the echo didn’t know. The echo didn’t remember what powers it’d had that had fed into Holly. It couldn’t tell her the “why” of her, couldn’t explain if she was the way she was because the toxin that had fueled his madness, had twisted the abilities he’d had as an archangel. She’d have to do her own research . . . if she survived this. Yes, you are an archangel, she said, setting her endgame in motion. Because she’d recognized that move of Venom’s hand.