Was this what lay in Holly’s future?
A healer entered the observation chamber even as the chilling thought iced Holly’s blood. “She has no indications of disease,” he said in that gentle healer way, the wings that arced behind his shoulders to nearly touch the floor a rich cream interspersed with feathers of sparrow brown. “We’re keeping her inside because it’s the easiest way to control her—and keep her safe—if she finds the strength to break those straps. The entire floor can be locked down with the flick of a switch.”
“Is that a possibility?” Venom asked as Holly pressed her hand to the glass in a vain effort to calm Daisy.
The healer sighed. “She’s emaciated and even the blood you fed her shouldn’t have done much more than ease her hunger. It shouldn’t have given her any kind of strength. But as you can see . . .” A wave toward the wrenching, twisting woman on the bed. “Yet her madness doesn’t feel like bloodlust to healer senses. We’ll need to monitor her longer to have any hope of working out the demons that hold her captive.”
Holly’s fingers clenched around Venom’s palm. “I need to go in there,” she said, the healer’s words just a background buzz by the end.
Venom didn’t stop her when she released his hand and walked to open the inner door, but she was aware of his prowling presence at her back, ready to intercede should Daisy break her bonds. Her heart pounded, her skin hot, the mad whisper silent in her head. She turned the knob, stepped inside.
Daisy stopped twisting. Her head snapped toward Holly.
And the thing inside Holly, it spread its jagged wings with so much force that she slammed back into Venom, her hands reaching back to claw into his thighs. Panic gripped her throat in a brutal hold, cutting off her air as the otherness tried to shove out through her skin. In the hospital bed, Daisy fought her straps to strain toward Holly, her eyes pleading and red-rimmed with insanity at the same time.
Venom’s arms came around Holly, bands of heated metal that shoved her back into herself, crushing the strange, serrated wings that scraped at her insides. One of his hands closed over her shoulder, his arm across her body, and then his lips were at her ear. “Fight.” It was an order.
Holly wanted to tell him she wasn’t exactly hula dancing right now, but she was trying too hard not to come apart at the seams. When her head dipped, when her fangs shoved against her lips, water lining her tongue, she didn’t even think about it. She sank her teeth into Venom’s upper forearm.
It wasn’t a good place for blood, but the taste was enough.
Power punched through her, a power so deadly and arrogant that it immediately cleared her head.
Releasing him, she breathed harsh, deep breaths, her eyes locked with Daisy’s. The other woman’s cracked lips parted, the whites of her irises suddenly awash in crimson. “It’s calling to you,” she said in a guttural tone. “It wants to be together.” Her back arched in a spinal curve so brutal that Holly reached out a hand, wanting to push her down before she broke her back.
And a . . . what-the-fuck exploded out of Daisy, moving so fast that not even Venom’s speed could save Holly. It slammed straight into her chest and burrowed in.
Venom swore as Holly crumpled in his arms, her body suddenly dead weight. Scooping her up, he backed out while yelling for the healer. The wide-eyed angel was beside them in a heartbeat. The man put his fingers to Holly’s throat, checked her pulse, listened to her breathing. “She’s alive,” he said definitively.
Venom went to tear open Holly’s black shirt to expose the wound . . . but there wasn’t a mark on her clothing. No burn. No tear. No bloodstain. He unbuttoned her shirt regardless, but there wasn’t a mark on the smooth cream of her skin, either. But he hadn’t imagined it. A substance or an entity had come out of the vampire on the bed and punched itself into Holly.
Yet Holly’s skin was warm and smooth under his fingers, her chest rising and falling in a shallow rhythm. “Explain this.”
The healer shook his head, his thin woven braids falling around his face as he examined Holly. “I can’t.”
Laying Holly on the carpeted floor of the observation chamber with conscious gentleness, Venom walked back into the much more medically spartan isolation room and toward the motionless body of the vampire they’d rescued.
Daisy wasn’t moving, wasn’t breathing, her head having flopped to one side. Dark strands of hair obscured her face. When he got close enough to move that hair aside with care to ensure she didn’t sink her fangs into his wrist, he spotted a trickle of blood coming out of her nose. More blood dripped out of the corner of her mouth.
The scarlet stain on the white sheet below her was already significant.
It was often difficult to tell if a vampire was dead. They were almost-immortals, after all. Usually, the only way to be sure was to cut off a vampire’s head or take out the heart. Though Venom could easily survive heart loss, as could the other vampires in the Seven. He was also near-certain that Dmitri was strong enough now that separating his head from his body would take the strength of an archangel.
As Venom had told Holly, Dmitri had been a warrior through time—add his potent raw power to that, and the structural foundations of his body might as well be formed of iron at this point.
“Venom.” A senior healer’s voice. “Let me through.”
Venom stepped aside for the diminutive angel with wings of dark gray spotted with white. “Check her heart.”
The healer—Nisia—already had her small, narrow hands on Daisy’s chest. “The heart’s gone, exploded inside her chest cavity from what I can tell.” She frowned, as if peering deep within the sickly thin vampire’s body. “Her other organs are also liquid.” She indicated the slight swelling of Daisy’s belly as fluid built inside the body cavity. “The poor tormented child is dead.”
“She won’t heal?”
“No. She was too weak to ride out the damage—especially with the loss of her heart.”
Venom glanced back to make sure Holly wasn’t alone. Seeing that the other healer was still kneeling beside her, his hands gentle on her as he continued to check her for injuries, Venom focused his attention on Daisy. “Something came out of her and went into Holly.”
“I cannot sense an answer,” Nisia said. “But Illium suggested we monitor this room in new ways.” She waved vaguely toward the corners of the room.
Venom looked up.
Cameras.
“Do an autopsy,” he ordered, making an effort to keep his tone respectful. Nisia was a trusted member of the Tower team and one who’d earned Venom’s respect in the brutal aftermath of the Falling. “Don’t remove her from isolation. We’ll destroy her body here if need be.”
The healer’s soft brown gaze went to Holly. “That child should be in isolation, too.”
Venom thought of how Holly had known where Daisy was being kept, of how she’d felt the compulsion to go inside the isolation chamber, and shook his head. “It’s done now. Holly’s not going to infect anyone.” She’d been the target.
And he’d allowed her to walk in, believing he could protect her from all possible threats. Cold fury in his blood, directed at his own arrogance.
“No,” Nisia murmured, her eyes still on Holly. “Whatever this is, it is not, I think, about anything as simple as disease.”
Stepping out into the observation chamber to find that the healer had buttoned Holly’s shirt back up, Venom bent down to scoop her up into his arms. She was so small. Sometimes, he forgot that. He’d forgotten it when he threw her down the hall—when she was awake and aware, all he saw was the wild, inhuman energy of her. An energy that was the closest to his own that he’d ever glimpsed.