Her rage and grief gave her strength enough to grab hold of a little more of her mind.
“You were right to wait,” the ghost of Uram was saying through Holly’s mouth. “It is time for me to be whole.” Her fingers caressing the power lattice, neutralizing its power but unable to breach the obstacle. “Undo this, my sweet.”
The words came to Holly’s ears through a thick barrier that dulled the words to a flat monotone, but she understood their meaning. She had to keep listening, had to keep learning. Because she was inside him. Or he was inside her. She didn’t know. She had to know.
Holly fought desperately for a foothold that would keep her from sinking into the darkness again, but she was battling the echo of an archangel. Even far less than whole, he was powerful. And—
Oh, that was the answer. She’d had it all along. Uram wasn’t coming back to life. He couldn’t. Raphael had destroyed all the essential parts of him. She’d watched the footage of that destruction—caught by countless amateur videographers—over and over. She’d talked to people who’d been there that day, who’d seen Raphael wipe Uram out of existence.
Nothing had remained of the Angel of Blood.
This otherness that was trying to steal her body and mind was exactly what she’d thought—an echo, a lost fragment. Glimmers of memory, flashes of thought, bursts of impulse . . . but, now that she was paying attention and looking carefully, she got no sense of an actual whole person. If he had been whole, Holly would be erased by now. An archangelic mind was simply too powerful for anyone but another archangel to resist.
Which all meant this echo could never exist as a whole being outside of Holly and that terrible thing in the crib, no matter what it thought in its ghostly madness. But it looked like Michaela was ready to believe in the same madness.
Holly could forgive her that, even understand it.
Love had a way of making you a little insane.
Viper green eyes in her vision, Venom staring at her from near Michaela. He hadn’t been standing there earlier. He must’ve moved while Uram totally controlled her vision, to put himself in her direct line of sight, exactly as she’d asked him to do.
No one had eyes like Venom.
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.