Page 11 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)
R yan saw when Dianne understood the truth of his threat. She sucked in an audible breath, and her face turned pale beneath the fading bruises.
He absolutely hated doing it. But he’d run out of time, and he couldn’t risk another daemon attack, not now when his harmonically charged chainmail had already absorbed so much discordant energy.
It would, of course, recharge given enough time, but for now, he was vulnerable—and the daemons on the ship would sense that soon enough once they came looking for Dianne again.
At least she hadn’t crumpled into a sniveling ball. Beneath the fear, he read her fury. She needed to find that backbone of hers for what he suspected was going to be an arduous, dangerous journey down the Dalmatian coast and into the mountains of Albania.
Don’t go there, Helsing , he warned himself.
Instead, he said to Dianne, “I charged your phone.” He tossed it to her. “You can call Olivia once we’re in port and somewhere safe.”
If the Elioud didn’t contact Ryan first. The harmonic activity from last night wouldn’t have reached the operations center during the attack once they left the pool deck, but they would be desperate to know what had happened, especially once Ryan’s nano system reconnected and transmitted a record of the reverberations.
Defiance sparked in Dianne’s gaze. Color returned to her cheeks. “You bet I will.” Grabbing up the protective tunic that Miró had designed for her, she stormed past him and yanked the bathroom door open before catching his gaze. “I can go to the bathroom first, can’t I?”
Well, that had worked as well as he’d hoped.
“Of course,” he said, stifling the urge to pull her out of the cabin anyway.
Five minutes later—just as he was considering banging on the door—Dianne opened it.
She’d pulled the tunic on over her blouse from the previous evening.
Her hair had also been neatened and pulled into a low ponytail while her face looked damp as though she’d washed it.
Out of nowhere, the image of her waking in his bed a short while before, her hair tousled and her face blurry with sleep, struck him.
“What?” asked Dianne, touching her hair.
“Nothing,” he muttered and turned on his heel to open the cabin door. “Have your guest ID? We’re not coming back once we leave this cabin.”
Dianne, her eyes narrowed, pulled the lanyard with her ship’s ID out from where it had been tucked inside her blouse.
“Great,” said Ryan, gesturing for her to exit.
Dianne moved past him. Even after the evening she’d had, he still caught the faint scent of her perfume, something exotic like jasmine and rain.
His nostrils flared as he inhaled. It twisted around his insides, reminding him of a different time, a different world, a different Ryan who thought that someday he’d find the girl of his dreams and build a life with her.
A world before he knew that malevolent spirits lurked, plotting the destruction of humanity.
Ryan fell in behind Dianne as she headed toward the midship where two separate exits to the dock allowed passengers to disembark.
His muscles tightened as he spied passengers coming toward them from the other side of the corridor.
They seemed innocent in their white cotton blouses, cutoff shorts, and flipflops, but he’d been with the Kastriotis long enough to know that daemons delighted in taking over the defenseless.
The young women passed without morphing into monsters with claws and fangs.
When they approached the nearest disembarkation point, Ryan saw passengers waiting in a line that extended into the landing in front of the elevators.
As he and Dianne turned from the corridor, he scanned them, his total focus on potential threats.
Almost all of the passengers appeared to be retired and midlife couples beating the rush to get off the ship and into port.
They’d likely gone to bed early and missed the daemonic fun.
His chainmail remained quiescent. No daemon activity disturbed its sensitive harmonics.
Dianne moved to stand at the end of the line. Ryan stopped behind her. Even without the Elioud ability to read personal harmonics, he could see her tension.
“What’s the plan after we get off?” she asked, faking a casualness that her stiff neck belied.
“We head to a safehouse where I can pick up some gear and the keys to a vehicle. Then we drive down the coast. All goes well, we’ll be at your sister’s by nightfall.”
“I see.” She didn’t sound like she saw at all.
They’d reached the security checkpoint where an alert officer sat next to an elevated stand watching a monitor as passengers scanned their cruise IDs when someone called out behind them.
It was Dianne’s cabinmate, Germaine.
Ryan exhaled, clenching his jaw to keep from swearing. How had she found them?
The security officer’s gaze traveled toward Germaine. He dipped his chin toward the scanner. “Next,” he said to Dianne, who held up the line.
Dianne glanced at him. “Sure. Sorry.” She swiped her ID card, still in its protective plastic sleeve, over the scanner.
Ryan stepped forward, forcing Dianne to move ahead, and pressed his own card against the scanner’s glass.
“Hey!” she said, her gaze flashing. “You don’t have to be such a dick.”
Ryan ignored her to put a hand on her lower back. “We don’t have time to waste with her,” he said as he moved closer to her side.
Dianne glared as she let him guide her down the metal gangplank. “She’s my best friend. I can’t just blow her off. And she’s not going to just let you take me without asking a few questions, no matter how hot you are.”
Ryan nearly lost a step at that comment. She thought he was hot. It took him a moment to understand the implication of the rest of her words.
As they stepped onto the asphalt of the landing, he said, “You texted her.”
Dianne’s gaze flashed again as she looked over her shoulder at him. “Damn right I did! She’s got my back, just like I’ve got hers. Something a Ranger should understand.”
She stopped next to the gangplank and crossed her arms, clearly waiting for Germaine, now descending the angled metal treads, to join them.
“Call Olivia.”
“What?” asked Dianne, who’d been focused on the impending showdown with Germaine.
“Call your sister,” said Ryan, his teeth clenched.
Germaine halted across from Ryan. She glanced at him and then back to Dianne. “Are you okay?” She placed her hands on Dianne’s forearms, appeared to think better of it, and stepped back, dropping her hands at her sides. “I’ve been worried sick about you since last night.”
Ryan tilted his head, studying Dianne's best friend through narrowed eyes. Something sounded odd about Germaine's voice. Insincerity maybe? But that made no sense, unless she’d only shown up to placate Dianne …. He wished he could read harmonics to know more. “You can see that she’s fine.”
“She looks fine,” said the other woman, shifting so that she stood between Ryan and Dianne, “but she sent an SOS. Why are you taking her off the ship? Just because she spent the night with you doesn’t mean that you own her now.”
Now Germaine sounded downright hostile.
Ryan had no idea how to handle this. Despite his earlier threat about carrying Dianne off the ship, he couldn’t just grab her and carry her off.
Germaine gave off vibes of being someone who’d taken a self-defense course and would do something stupid like try to knee him in the groin.
Once she got involved, so would the handful of crew on the dock and the other passengers streaming by.
He didn’t worry that he’d be able to evade capture, but he didn’t need the local authorities notified. It would only slow them down.
Cruise passengers streamed past, some looking at the three of them in open curiosity.
Olivia’s familiar voice sounded in his ear, ending his dilemma. “Demon Slayer, we’ve registered intense daemonic activity on your personal grid. Sitrep ASAP.”
Ryan, his eyes narrowed as he watched Germaine, started to answer his superior regardless of how odd it would seem to the two women. Before he could speak, Dianne stepped around her friend. She looked embarrassed.
She cleared her throat. “You’ve got it wrong,” she said to her friend. “Nothing happened between us. He just took care of me after that insane dance party.”
“Then what’s the problem?” asked Germaine, her eyes narrowed. “Is he taking you off the ship against your will or not?”
“Helsing?” said Olivia in his ear. “How copy?”
“The sitrep can wait. Your sister can’t,” said Ryan to Olivia. “We’re in port. She needs confirmation of your orders or she’s making a big scene.”
Germaine and Dianne swiveled to look at him. Germaine’s gaze gleamed in odd avarice. Dianne’s brows had bunched in confusion, distrust visible beneath her puzzled expression.
Then her cellphone rang.
She looked at the screen, amazement now lifting her features. She glanced between Germaine and Ryan. “It’s Olivia!”
Ryan sucked in a sharp breath through his nose, his jaws again clenched.
Dianne swiped the answer button and lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello?”
Olivia heard the wonder in her younger sister’s voice. And the thread of anger. Clearly revealed over the enhanced cellphone technology that the Elioud and their retainers used.
“I guess you’ve met Ryan Helsing, my head of security,” she said, feeling her way into the conversation. She needed more intel about the situation. If Ryan’s harmonic grid had absorbed as much daemonic energy as it had recorded … well, she needed to get them out of there now .
“You can say that,” said Dianne, her words clipped. “What the hell, Livia? You sent this, this beast to grab me? How did you even know I was on a cruise?”