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Venom took a deep breath, reached for the ice coldness of the creatures who’d ain

The rope slithered down, the hook falling

Catching it, he wound up the rope and hooked it onto his backpack, careful to do so in a way that wouldn’t hurt Holly when he threw her over his shoulder Which he did the next h the orchard but he didn’t stop And when he ran into a guard, hethe uard: You saw nothing but a cat There were no intruders

He was gone a heartbeat later, lost in the darkness Hehis bursts ofoverhead He didn’t stop even once under the tree canopy Though he usually only used his speed in sporadic bursts, tonight he ran full tilt for as long as his body could bear it

It wasn’t an endless period He was only three hundred and fifty or so years old and yet growing into his power When he finally cahold, but it was a toy castle now, the distance he’d put between the unbeing in the crib and Holly a significant one

“Venom”

Releasing Holly froish sound, he sat her doith her back to a tree and cupped her face in his hands “Talk to me, kitty” It came out a plea

She lifted her hand to weakly close over his wrist “Where” Her voice was a rasp

“Wait” Shrugging off his pack, he took out a bottle of water, helped her wet her throat “Is that better?”

A faint nod, her head turning in the direction of the stronghold “I can still feel it” Her chest glowed

“Can you fight?”

A taut moment before she nodded “Yes He’s not in h, not quite right, the dae to her throat obvious

Cold deep inside in a way that had nothing to do with his Making, Venom stroked tendrils of hair off her face “We need to check your chest and sto her over his shoulder, but it had been the only way to get her to safety

Holly didn’t fight hiently pulled up the black top she wore underneath The onlythe fabric off her He didn’t need a flashlight to see the da her skin

Cracks spread out across that skin

Her heart was the epicenter of the bloody quake

Venoainst his lower lip, not because of the scent of her blood—though Holly did s her hurt, in pain, it did things to hiile, Holly

Venoile people

He lifted his wrist to her mouth “Drink”

Her eyes“I’ve taken blood from you ain “You can’t be weak if we’re going to survive”

Venohtly “It’d take more than a couple of bites from you to weaken me”

When she continued to hesitate, the stubborn line to her jaw one hich he was intimately familiar, he reached into his pack and pulled out a bottle of blood in an insulated carrier “Courtesy of Ashwini She said I ht need it” Elena’s hunter friend—and Janvier’s wife—had what Venom’s ht the extra weight created by the two insulated bottles

“Drink it first,” Holly ordered, her breathing uneven “I’d ratherI don’t like drinking like that”