Page 13 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)
P ain exploded in Ryan’s head as the daemoniac ’s skull crashed into his, sending him reeling.
The creature on his back had sunk talonlike fingers into his shoulders and gnawed on his neck with the singular focus of a wild animal.
Even though the weakened harmonic chainmail prevented his attacker from piercing Ryan’s skin, it still hurt like hell.
For an instant, he lost awareness of everything except the sheer need to survive as he went down on one knee, his hand on the pavement catching him out of simple instinct.
Dianne’s bloodcurdling scream cleared Ryan’s mind.
His gaze came up, the scene around him crystal clear and its action slowed to a fraction of its normal human speed. He didn’t question this uncanny focus.
He simply recognized Dianne’s imminent bodily harm. And his duty to stop it, without regard for himself.
Roaring, Ryan came to his feet, throwing the possessed man off his back. He barely registered when this attacker crashed to the ground, rolling and coming to its haunches.
He ignored the swarming daemoniacs from the ship.
He ignored the panicked people who clogged the pier in a desperate rush to escape.
Instead, he sprinted faster than he’d ever run to reach his principle, who’d just screamed his name.
The male who’d pivoted from Germaine tugged on Dianne’s protective tunic while the male who’d smashed his head into Ryan’s sat on her thighs, giggling. Germaine swatted both men about the head, crying and screaming, and about as effectual as a gnat.
Ryan wrenched the first attacker from Dianne’s legs. He felt the power leave his replenished chainmail and heard an unnatural grunt from the daemoniac . The man landed, hard, on the asphalt.
Ryan kicked him in the head before turning back to the second attacker, who gleefully twisted Dianne’s tunic around her neck, choking the life from her.
A bolt of fury raced through Ryan. He grabbed the daemoniac , whose high-pitched scream stopped all activity on the crowded pier.
The daemoniac stiffened, its eyes going wide, and then slumped in Ryan’s grip.
Ryan shoved the limp body to the side and away from Dianne as Germaine, sobbing, untwisted the tunic and began to pull it over her friend’s head.
“No,” said Ryan, putting a hand on Germaine’s wrist. When she looked at him, wide eyed and panting, he shook his head. “That stays on her.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the renewed tumult around them. For now, no daemoniacs targeted them. For the moment, the malicious creatures had switched their sights to the easier prey around them.
“Is she able to stand?” He nodded to Dianne, who sat up with Germaine’s help and sucked in broken breaths. He didn’t have time to check her over.
“Demon Slayer, I registered several harmonic discharges,” said Olivia in his ear. She paused. “At higher output than designed.” Concern threaded her voice.
“I don’t know my own power, Harlequin,” he said, reaching down to pull Dianne to her feet. He glanced at the motionless daemoniac lying next to her. “I think I lost one.”
“Copy that,” she said. “Transpo is still fifteen minutes out. You need to get to the Old Town and find someplace secure to wait for the exfil team.”
“Roger that,” he said.
Dianne looked around. She didn’t seem to register the tumult. “I-I”—the hoarse words stuck in her injured throat. She coughed. “—lost my phone.”
Ryan ignored her to address Germaine. “I’ll get you as far as the palace over there”—he lifted his chin toward the obvious Roman ruins overlooking the harbor—“but then you’re on your own. My advice? Stay off that ship.”
Germaine blanched, looking over her shoulder. “What about the others?”
Just then, a piercing scream rent the air before cutting off abruptly. Visceral sounds of grunting and snarling thickened as possessed people streamed toward a growing clump of bodies. Ryan saw blood and gore on the jaws of several. It looked like a scene out of a zombie movie.
His stomach twisted. He looked away for a moment, leaving his answer to Germaine’s question unsaid. Instead, he asked Dianne, “Can you walk?”
She bit her lip and nodded, her fingers drifting to her neck, now swollen and red. Ryan clenched his jaw and flexed his useless fingers.
So much for the protective tunic. It didn’t defend against actual physical attack.
He gestured to Germaine. “You take point. Dianne, you follow. I’ll take the rear.”
The women nodded and turned to head toward the palm-lined Riva Promenade along the waterfront. It was deserted. Even the street next to the pier had emptied of all traffic. In the distance, strident sirens competed with the disturbing discord around them.
He grabbed Germaine’s arm before she took a step. “Be ready to run on my order.”
Germaine’s gaze darted behind him. Ryan saw something slither across it, something that he doubted he’d seen correctly in the early morning glare. He could have sworn that avarice mixed with the regret …
Germaine looked at him, and he saw that she realized he’d been watching her.
“Don’t worry about me, soldier boy,” she said, dismissing the frenzy of violence on the pier behind them and heading toward the waterfront boulevard.
Ryan narrowed his eyes as he followed behind the women. Was it just a snarky throwaway comment based on his supercilious manner? Or did she know more than she ought about his military service?
Up ahead, Diocletian’s Palace loomed over the harbor. The seventeen-hundred-year-old imperial sea fortress built by the Roman emperor after whom it was named, now a UNESCO site, spanned more than thirty-thousand square meters and housed shops, cafés, restaurants, and apartments.
Ryan strode behind Dianne, swiveling every ten meters to survey the action behind them. His chainmail would alert him if any daemoniacs approached, but old habits die hard. He wanted to see the enemy coming.
That’s how he caught sight of the mob that formed just after they’d passed the second of three piers on the route to the city center.
There appeared to be a leader in the midst of the ragtag group.
He pointed at their trio. The daemonic playthings swiveled and burst across the asphalt as one, humming and clicking like a swarm of yellow jackets. The air around them wavered.
“Run!” shouted Ryan, grabbing Dianne’s hand to lead her toward a bus station on their right. “Go, go, go! We’ve gotta find shelter.”
Mercifully, Dianne responded to his urging and began running. Despite this, Ryan had to modulate his stride so that he didn’t cause her to fall. He couldn’t afford to carry her.
Germaine trailed behind, terror twisting her features. She kept throwing glances over her shoulder at the speeding horde, which was unnaturally advancing on them.
Daemons did that. They rode their possessions hard.
“Harlequin, this is Demon Slayer,” said Ryan into his comm as he ran, aware in the back of his mind of the irony of that call sign. “I’m gonna need a little help. We’re about to be overrun by these zombie bastards. They’re literally out for blood.”
“I see them, Demon Slayer,” said Olivia, her cool tone suggesting that everything was copacetic. It was one of the things Ryan liked most about his boss. “On the other side of the bus station is a parking lot. Acquire a vehicle. Exfil team is still five minutes out.”
“Copy that,” he said. He tugged Dianne toward one of the coach buses, which idled. He briefly considered stealing it.
“Germaine!” said Dianne, managing to push her friend’s name out through her damaged vocal cords.
“I got her.”
Ryan burst into the open around the end of the bus in time to see Germaine trip and tumble to the pavement.
She looked back, her hands propping her upright.
The daemoniacs were only a few hundred feet away, rushing like a human river along the unobstructed street.
He realized that his dash to recover Germaine had meant ceding the approach to the parking lot from this end of the bus station.
They would have to go through it, a choice he didn’t want to have to make.
Ryan didn’t bother yelling at Dianne’s friend to get up. That only worked with soldiers.
Germaine surprised him by rising to her feet as he reached her. She took his hand. Ryan ran, not holding back. Somehow Germaine kept pace.
They made it around the bus where Dianne waited.
Ryan grabbed her hand as they passed, tugging her along.
His urgency must have communicated itself to his harmonic tactical system because he felt a tingle as his fingers wrapped around hers.
A responding zing from her tunic skimmed his skin like a lover’s touch.
Germaine and Dianne had maneuvered between the bus and the station when Ryan spotted the leading daemoniacs streaming into the spaces between buses from the street. Several broke off and headed around the end of their bus, clearly intending to cut them off on the other side.
They needed to move or they’d be trapped.
“Pick up the pace!” he yelled at Germaine, whose long strides carried her to the lead.
She looked over her shoulder at the onrush of the possessed, flinching and missing a step before catching herself.
Then she raced across the gap toward a glass door into the station.
Dianne followed, but by the time Ryan cleared the end of the bus the first attackers arrived.
Ahead, he saw what had been a middle-aged woman—probably a wife and mother—reach for Dianne even as fingers clawed at his shoulder, his side, his upper back.
Fury ignited inside Ryan. He was not going to fail this mission. He was going to bring his principal, safe and sound, to Fushe-Arrez.
Energy rolled up his arms as he blocked the nearest creature. As soon as he plowed into one, a tremendous harmonic wave exploded from him. It was like nothing that Ryan had experienced so far with the weapon that Miró had been developing for non- Elioud .