had spread stealthily into every part of her during the run here, now felt fused into her cells. Holly might have cried at the loss of herself, but there was no time for tears, for sorrow. If this went as predicted, she’d be gone before she ever had the chance to mourn who she’d once been.
It was a good choice, she told her screaming heart; she’d go out destroying an evil that shouldn’t exist. “This,” she whispered through her focus, “what we’re doing. It’s important.”
“Yes,” said the fascinating, beautiful, aggravating man with whom she wanted to explore eternity. “It might be the most important thing either of us ever does.”
Holly nodded. She’d needed to hear that, needed to know that the pain she’d cause would be for a reason.
Mia, Wes, Alvin . . .
Holly couldn’t think about her brothers and sister without emotion overwhelming her in a crushing wave. And when it came to Venom, she simply couldn’t think about it, full stop. She’d done a terrible thing. She’d brought him out of the self-protective cocoon in which he’d existed for three hundred and fifty years only to teach him that he should’ve stayed deep within it.
The woman who came after her would have one hell of a job getting through the carapace he’d grow around himself. Because Venom’s dirty secret was that he loved too long, too hard, too much. “Promise me,” she whispered.
“What?”
“That you’ll love again.”
A deadly stillness in his muscles. “Focus on the glamour, kitty.”
Holly went to respond when a large angelic squadron flew right overhead. She froze despite herself, only continuing forward when they didn’t so much as glance in her direction. The sleek Abyssinian cats did, however, prowling up and hissing from a distance, but those cats were too far below the squadrons for the angels to hear and become suspicious.
Her arm began to tremble around Venom as they walked into the stronghold through the open front entrance, her entire body taut enough to snap and the hard-faced guards on either side blind to their passage.
His own arm came around her waist, strong and warm and unwavering.
Hold, girl.
Gritting her teeth at the aristocratic command, Holly fought not to throw up. Whatever part of Uram lived in her, it was growing stronger inside her, becoming more and more a separate personality.
The walk up the stairs to the mezzanine floor was an exercise in brazen confidence. She and Venom passed within inches of a tall vampire so powerful she made the hairs rise on the back of Holly’s neck. The well-built blonde woman frowned, stopped, and looked around, her hand on the hilt of her sword . . . before finally shaking her head and continuing on down the stairs.
Holly had been aware of Venom going dead silent beside her, even as he reached back a hand to close it over the hilt of one of the two blades he wore on his back.
Now, he relaxed his ready stance and they carried on without bloodshed.
Only to enter the mezzanine and find an angel standing directly in front of the turret door. The angel, his wings white streaked by gray, wasn’t looking at them, couldn’t see them. But Holly could feel the pulse of his power buffeting her even from halfway across the floor.
Venom spoke right against her ear. “He’s mine.”
Removing her arm with exquisite care once they were only a foot away from the suddenly tautly alert angel, Holly tapped Venom’s back once to let him know she was about to drop the glamour . . . and then she did. The angel’s hand moved with predator speed to the hilt of his sword, his body reacting even before his mind understood what it was he’d seen. Venom, however, had already mesmerized him.
It wasn’t, Holly quickly realized, in any way an easy capture.
Venom’s opponent was strong—and he was fighting the compulsion. It was there in the rigid line of his jaw, the locked fury of his muscles. A vein pulsed in Venom’s temple. She could tell he was using every ounce of his power to force the angel to move away from the door step by single excruciating step.
There. Just enough of a gap to get to the door.
Breaking the lock with a pulse of power, Holly stepped inside. Venom slipped in viper fast behind her; shutting the door, he held the broken lock in position. “I managed to cloud the guard’s mind,” he murmured to her. “He shouldn’t remember us, but he was too strong to