Page 12 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)

Olivia sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

She really didn’t have time for this. Her feet ached.

So did her upper back. Mihàil, who’d read the tension in her sore muscles, had offered to rub her shoulders for her, but he’d looked half dead himself, though that shouldn’t have been possible given how much angel blood flowed through his veins.

But their daughter, only seven months old, had been up teething all night.

It was the reason Olivia hadn’t checked the system logs until the cruise ship had docked in Split.

She hadn’t wanted to drag Miles into the ops center to monitor this side job.

He was already covering for Ryan’s absence.

And Miró needed to stay close to Stasia, who expected their first child in a matter of weeks, not lose sleep because Olivia had a foreboding about her wayward little sister partying on a Mediterranean cruise.

Olivia injected patience into her voice when she answered her sister. “Mom told me about the cruise. I’ll explain what’s going on when you get here, but Di, you know I wouldn’t have sent someone to ‘grab’ you.”

Dianne sighed. When she spoke next, she sounded a little less irate. “No, I know that. Ryan told me you sent him to protect me. Now he wants to take me to Fushe-Arrez. Like right now. We just got off the ship, and he’s planning to pick up a car and drive me into Albania today .”

“That’s right. ” Closing her eyes, Olivia paused and gripped her courage.

It was always hard to convince civilians about imminent threats, but coming from an older sister, it was almost impossible.

“And if he’s telling you that you need to leave now, you need to trust him.

It’s literally his job, and he’s one of the best at what he does. ”

Olivia watched the nanotracker that Ryan had slipped onto her sister. She’d moved about ten meters away from him. Olivia imagined her chief of security glowering, his keen gaze searching, searching for the next threat.

Dianne continued arguing.

“But it’s over the top, don’t you think?

Maybe he’s been out of civilian life too long.

He’s a little uptight. I mean, yeah, the dance party looked more like a rave.

I won’t lie. It got a little scary there.

” Dianne laughed. Olivia heard the nerves her sister didn’t intend to show.

“But in the bright light of morning, everything seems fine. I’m fine. ”

“Dianne.” Olivia let her authority as the zonje , the wife of a zoti , swell her voice. It was just short of compulsion, which none of Archangel Michael’s warriors would ever use, not that she wasn’t tempted.

Only Dark Irim compelled humans against their will.

Olivia heard her sister gulp.

“What?” asked Dianne in a low voice.

“You have to trust me. Trust Ryan.”

“Actually, I do trust Ryan.” Olivia heard reluctance before Dianne hurried on. “But I don’t know why we have to leave the ship right now. All my stuff’s still in my cabin, including my passport.” She paused. “I can’t just leave everyone before the end of the cruise, Livia.”

Olivia exhaled and stood, pacing around the TOC, where the two young staff members that Miles had recruited to monitor their security systems had just started the day shift.

They glanced at her, but being well trained, returned to their tasks.

It was a good thing that Olivia had sandboxed Ryan’s personal harmonic system.

She didn’t need Mihàil to see the danger. He had enough on his plate right now.

The sense of foreboding filled her again, sharper and more urgent. She tamped it down.

Now she exuded casualness. “Don’t worry about your stuff or your passport. They can be recovered later.” She paused. “Mom and Dad are here. And Michael’s flying in tomorrow.”

“Really? Wow.” Dianne sounded stunned. “How did you get him to leave his burgeoning career as a tech-finance bro? He keeps insisting AI’s going to change the world in five years.” Her tone sharpened. “This from the guy who once tried to mine crypto from a Nest thermostat.”

Olivia mentally rolled her eyes but only said, “I offered to fly him in for an extensive look at our business analytics. Maybe we’re not a high-profile client like he normally handles at Fortress Financial, but there he’s a low-level data analyst. I’ll get him on some higher-level financial strategy.

” She paused. “Plus, Mihàil has a chef who makes pa?ticada with gnocchi and a well-stocked wine cellar.”

Dianne huffed.

And then Ryan’s voice broke in over the harmonic communication network.

“Incoming,” he said, urgency sharpening his voice as a monstrous daemonic presence spiked his proximity sensors.

“Stay with me,” said Olivia, going back to the workstation that she’d been using and sitting in front of it, her body aches forgotten. “I’ll give you tactical support. ”

“Copy that,” said Ryan, his voice in battle mode now. His tracker moved closer to Dianne’s.

“Hey! What the hell, Ryan!” shouted Dianne. Then she yelled, “Holy shit! What’s wrong with those people?”

Olivia winced. Her baby sister was caught in an oncoming rush of daemoniacs .…

She acknowledged that and then checked it. She couldn’t be a big sister right now. She had to be operations control for her security chief, alone and facing a horde of the possessed in a city where they had few assets.

With a defense system already drained from an overnight Dark attack of unheralded proportions.

“Go with Helsing,” she said, slipping into her command voice again.

“Copy that!” said Dianne, echoing Ryan. She sounded breathless already. And scared.

Olivia noted that both Ryan and Dianne moved away from the ship at a clip that meant they ran. Almost at the same time, she opened a desktop window using a program that Miró had developed specifically for the Elioud to access their assets.

“Head north toward the Old Town,” said Olivia as she connected to their safehouse in Split.

She’d be able to mobilize a local team to aid Ryan but not before he engaged the daemoniacs .

“Almost a klick to Diocletian’s Palace. You should have a visual of it.

” She paused, then added, “Weapons hot on your judgment.”

Please, St. Michael, Commander of all that’s holy, let Miró’s harmonic rounds be effective .

She hated to think what would happen if the possessed couldn’t be stopped. But they’d never deployed this particular ammo outside of live testing at their development site. There might be permanent harmonic disruption of the individuals the daemons had coopted.

They might even die.

“Roger wilco.”

Olivia fitted an earbud into her ear and tapped it. Speaking into the mic, she ordered the voice system to call the Split housekeeper.

For the next few tense moments—probably no more than thirty seconds but it felt like hours—Olivia had no idea what was happening on the ground in Split.

“Germaine!” screamed Dianne, breaking the suspense.

Olivia narrowed her eyes at the harmonics-tracking application running in an open window on her workstation monitor. There was an odd clump in the dissonance closing on Ryan and Dianne. “Demon Slayer, do you have eyes on Germaine Grimes?”

“She followed us off the ship, Harlequin.” Ryan sounded grim. “She’s being swarmed by three large males.”

“Help her!” cried her sister, her panic setting Olivia’s nerves into overdrive. “They’re going to tear her apart!”

Olivia watched the screen, her eyes wide with horror. Every instinct screamed at her to order Ryan to bug out with her sister and leave the other woman behind.

Instead, she leaned forward and said, “Engage enemy, Demon Slayer.”

Dianne thought she’d lost her mind.

One moment she’d been standing on the dock whining like a teenager about leaving all of her friends behind and the next Ryan had grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away from the ship.

“What the hell, Ryan!” she said.

And then her gaze snagged on passengers flooding through the security checkpoint and rushing down the gangplank, their expressions rabid and fixated on them.

Actually, it felt like they’d fixed on her .

She said something in her panic, to which Olivia responded again using that implacable tone of command that Dianne had never heard from her older sister before. It focused Dianne like nothing else could.

“Go with Helsing.”

Dianne found herself saying “copy that” as if she’d become a soldier. And then she let her hand slip into Ryan’s.

They sprinted toward the end of the pier, rushing through thick groups of unwary cruise passengers and local citizens offering walking tours of Split’s historic city center. Distantly, Dianne heard complaints that turned into shocked babble. People began to scatter.

Ryan’s gaze had trained ahead of them. Dianne heard him say, “Roger wilco.”

She scarcely had time to wonder how he communicated with Olivia. She’d glanced back toward the ship when she caught sight of Germaine, surrounded by three large men.

“Germaine!” she yelled without thinking, coming to a halt.

Ryan said something, but Dianne couldn’t understand anything. Her best friend stood, terror twisting her features, as rough hands tugged on her arms, her clothing, her hair.

“Help her!” screamed Dianne, trying to tug her hand from Ryan’s iron grip and move toward Germaine. “They’re going to tear her apart!”

An instant later, The Beast emerged. He pulled her on the other side of a black van waiting for a group of tourists.

“Don’t move,” ordered The Beast, glaring at her long enough to catch her gaze.

Dianne nodded, struck dumb now by the surreal tableau under the clear morning sky.

Then he pivoted and ran back toward the group, which had collected more stark-raving-mad passengers like moths drawn to a flame.

Dianne’s jaw fell as Ryan plowed into the tallest male, who’d gripped the neck of Germaine’s blouse and ripped it open to her waist. The male exploded away from Germaine as if hit by a massive shockwave. He landed on his back, motionless.

The second male didn’t go as easily.

Snarling, he turned and grabbed Ryan by the neck while the third male began dragging Germaine by the hair as she flailed, trying to hit and kick him.

Dianne’s hand flew to her throat and her breath whooshed out of her lungs, but then she sucked in a lungful of air before taking a step toward the mob.

“Stay put,” said Olivia.

Dianne looked down. Her phone was still in her hand, the line to Olivia still open.

When Dianne brought her gaze back to the unreal melee, it had only gone from terrifying to hopeless.

Ryan now battled two frothing lunatics, one hanging from Ryan’s back where he appeared to be gnawing on Ryan’s neck, while the second grappled with Olivia’s chief of security in a fury of arms and clawed fingers. More lunatics swarmed toward him.

He’d be overwhelmed at any moment.

Germaine had managed to trip the large male dragging her, sending him to his knees.

As Germaine kicked at his head, trying to dislodge his hold on her, he pivoted toward Dianne, who’d ignored Olivia’s last command to run toward her friend.

At the same time, the man clinching Ryan in a bear hug halted, raised his head, and fixed his doleful gaze on her.

Then he howled and headbutted Ryan, who staggered backwards under the weight of the male clinging to his back. An instant later, the head-butter and Germaine’s attacker together broke into a run toward Dianne.