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A half hour, and they had bare minutes between each drop “They knoe’re here” She’d pulled on her knit cap twenty minutes earlier and stuffed her hair underneath, just in case

“Soer to his lips a fewat her to do the same

Holly went s couldn’t do Dht or to leave behind any evidence of their presence Raphael did not need a ith Michaela So neither one of the the woods unless they did it in a way that could never be linked back to Raphael

As a result, Holly stayed iuard passed within a foot of her tree She closed her eyes, in case they were glowing, and she surrendered to the thing inside her, the otherness that knew instinctively how to evade detection She’d fought that surrender for a long tiht, her resistance could get them discovered

So she gave in

And could feel herself literally fucking disappearing, her awareness overlaid with a layer of acidic green that made her stomach roil because it was a silent indication that she wasn’t in any way human She knew that Of course she knew that Butshe liked to pretend sometimes

A e in the air around her

She opened her eyes a sliver and saw that Venom had stepped out froain Relief kissed her blood He paused a second before waving her forward Shein the darkness behind him in a fashion that wasn’t like hih unfamiliar territory with silent ease She was a creature of the night, a bat with silent wings

Great, thought the part of her that was still Holly Now she was i to kick in?

An alert pinged off her consciousness Oh, no fucking way

Reaching forward, she touched her fingers to Venom’s shoulder His muscles flexed as he caainst his front and he had his ear right next to her roup up ahead Maybe five”

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Venoood, because she wasn’t ready to tell hiht be a huht She looked that way and felt no sensation of danger, of a presence “Safe”

They went right,away fro back, hopefully to co the woods It left theht shade of a thick-trunked tree whose branches rustled in the wind Holly looked up, loving the feel of the wind on her skin, loving how the canopy ht

“There”

Glancing back behind theer It took her several seconds to spot what he already had—theabout lower down the slope, stealth in the way they held their bodies Probably vampires

Holly so before they realize we slipped the net”

A dangerous grin

And they were ned for this environned for a forest No, they were the shadows that whispered behind the tiger, unseen, unnoticed The climb was hard, and Holly felt it in her calves, in the backs of her thighs—especially when the acid green that had lingered in her vision since the eerie but awesome invisible trick faded from view

Dah that she couldn’t just slither her way up a mountain with boneless ease “Do you have bones made of jelly?” she muttered to Venom when they paused to make sure there were no threats up ahead

“No Spaghetti”

Holly nearly snorted out a laugh

Hitting hihtly on the shoulder with a fisted hand, she took the bottle of water he handed her They drank fro a second bottle Then, skin flushed with heat and her blood pu, the two of them carried on across unfamiliar territory