Page 14 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)

It launched the man he grabbed as well as half a dozen daemoniacs behind him into the next bus and scattered others approaching that way.

Ryan kept running until he got close enough to pull Dianne’s attacker away and fling her into the bus behind them. Germaine had been blocked by several daemoniacs from entering the station but managed to break free and run ahead to the next entrance, trailing several of the creatures.

Ryan couldn’t take the time to make sure Dianne hadn’t been hurt again.

Scowling, he placed his palm on her upper back and said, “Get your ass moving, Markham.”

As he spoke to her, he felt harmonic energy transfer from him to her, crackling the air between them. An ethereal blue light flared along the fine woven mesh of the tunic.

Picking up her pace, Dianne hunched her shoulders and hustled past the bus. Ryan engaged several smaller possessed people, faster than their compatriots but less able to stop a trained fighter used to sparring formidable Elioud warriors.

Up ahead, Germaine tugged on a door, but it had been locked. Whirling, she began fighting off a group of women and feral children, their eyes glittering and teeth snapping.

Ryan couldn’t worry about whether any of the possessed would overwhelm her. His sole focus had to be on Dianne.

Somehow Germaine broke free of the creatures and raced down the sidewalk in front of the station.

Dianne followed in her wake, Ryan a few meters behind.

They passed the next three buses with daemoniacs of all ages chasing them.

Most ended up turning on one another, snapping and growling like a pack of wild dogs, but a dozen with a little more innate intelligence still driving their actions kept pace with them, looking for any opening to swoop in.

It came at the last bus in the line. Germaine halted as a team of three large males cut off her escape on the other side of the bus.

Dianne, caught unaware, ran into her friend.

Ryan stopped five meters back from the women, his gaze scanning the area as the remaining males, their daemon hosts clearly restrained, took care of the wilder ones blocking their approach.

They twisted necks in a trained, disciplined manner.

A medium-height male with fathomless brown eyes gestured to the others using quick, crisp movements. The rest of the men fanned out around him in a two-tier perimeter, blocking access to the street, their hard gazes fixed on Ryan.

Ryan recognized fellow soldiers.

His palms grew slick with sweat. His harmonic system had been seriously depleted after the numerous high-energy discharges.

The unexpected transfer of power to Dianne’s protective tunic moments before would have left him only minimal juice for critical functions like autonomous vitals tracking or beacon pings.

Police sirens blared as multiple cars passed them on the nearby D410, heading south toward the pier with their cruise ship and the scene of the first attacks.

“Harlequin, can you send a little law enforcement help our way?” he asked.

“Copy, Demon Slayer.” She paused. “Don’t make me assign you a new call sign, Helsing.”

“No, ma’am,” he said, bracing as the daemoniac in charge flicked two fingers, and two of his men moved forward as a coordinated unit.

A moment later, one of the daemoniacs on the other side of the bus grabbed Germaine, who shrieked as he pulled her toward him, struggling.

Ryan flicked his wrist, opening the custom carbon-steel knife that he’d secreted in a pants pocket. Miró had encased the folding knife inside a harmonic damper that kept the ship’s metal detectors from recognizing it. He’d rather have a combat rifle, but in close quarters, it would do.

And Ryan had mastered the art of knife fighting as a Ranger, then taken that skill to another level with tips from Beta Nagy.

One of the approaching pair nodded at the other, who abruptly rushed Ryan.

Followed half a second later by the other man.

Ryan held steady until the last second, swiveling to shove the attacker’s head into the bus next to him with his free hand before pivoting toward the second man with the knife.

He plunged the blade into this attacker’s thigh before the first attacker, shaking his head and blinking his eyes, rushed back at him. Ryan took multiple blows to his ribs and back as both daemoniacs pummeled him despite his repeated vicious strikes with the knife.

Sweat sheeted into his eyes, and his fist gripping the combat knife grew slippery with blood.

Behind him, he heard Germaine fight with one of the three males, who seemed to be playing with her as a cat plays with mice.

He broke free of his attackers long enough to see that Dianne stood, motionless and alone, her eyes wide in her bloodless face as she watched her friend’s torment.

Please, St. Michael, let me get to Dianne , thought Ryan.

Almost as soon as he thought this, two squad cars screeched to a halt in the street beyond. Officers jumped out a moment later, shouting and pulling handguns. One officer, who’d remained on the driver’s side of his vehicle, aimed his weapon over its hood.

The men attacking Ryan paid no attention. They just kept coming, trading blows for wounds.

As he shoved one of the attackers from the embedded blade of his knife, Ryan caught sight of the daemoniac leader glancing over his shoulder before nodding to his men, who peeled off in hunting teams of two.

One team for each of the three police officers facing them.

The officers began yelling, and then one after another began firing their guns as the daemoniacs ignored their commands to halt.

The next moment, Dianne screamed, a ragged sound that drew Ryan’s gaze like a lodestone.

To his shock, she rushed toward the tall male who’d grabbed Germaine and dragged her backwards with an arm across her throat. Ryan glimpsed the male’s head snapping back, followed by his aiming a cruel grin at Dianne, now struggling against the grip of another male.

Then the daemoniac Ryan had stabbed in the chest grappled him in a bear hug while the other began jabbing him in the lower back with sharp knuckle punches. Ryan’s knees began to sag under the relentless onslaught.

Until the air vibrated around him, supporting his weight.

Ryan’s flagging spirit rebounded.

Harmonics .

It took several seconds before the daemoniac squad attacking them registered the new presence. They paused, grimaces twisting their features.

The humming increased in pitch and intensity, calling forth a response in Ryan’s personal harmonic system and swelling in volume around the combatants.

The male punching Ryan gasped and clutched his head while the one gripping him broke off with a shriek.

The acrid scent of smoldering flesh assailed Ryan’s nostrils an instant before both creatures combusted.

The other daemoniacs threw their heads back, their hands over their ears, and howled.

Around Ryan and Dianne, the daemoniacs likewise exploded in a spontaneous eruption of ash and blue-white flame, suspended in the air before cascading to the pavement in a rush. The acrid scent of charred flesh hung heavy in the abrupt silence.

All except the leader, that is. Instead, his eyes narrowed to slits as he clenched his fists and grimaced, straining against the disruptive force of the nanodrones that Olivia had sent as Ryan’s backup.

Ryan’s personal harmonics system has acted as a tuner and amplifier, recalibrating the harmonics of the human vessels to an angelic key.

After a long struggle, one of the leader’s eyes popped with a hiss. Vitreous gel oozed down his drooping cheek. The hum of the nanodrones dissipated.

Ryan shook his head, exhaled a sharp breath, and then squared his shoulders.

Then he stepped forward, the knife held in a backhanded grip, ready to engage this final enemy. An enemy no longer strengthened by the horde.

Without a word, the daemoniac spun and loped away, its lopsided gait testament to the energetic battle it had just fought on a cellular level—fought and barely won.

Ryan let it go. He sensed that this wave of the battle had ended. They needed to get out of here before the evil spirits had time to regroup and possess more human vessels, willing or unwilling, for their foot soldiers.

As he turned to leave, an object laying on the pavement next to where the leader had stood caught his attention.

Ryan stepped forward and picked it up. It was a small, ornate metal charm that resembled a hand with two short outer fingers and three extended fingers.

A blue-white-and-black crystal that reminded him of the ubiquitous Eye of Athena found at tourist shops around the Adriatic dominated the tiny metallic palm.

What an irony. The ancient design purported to protect the holder against the malign influence of the Evil Eye.

He pocketed the peculiar charm as he strode back toward Dianne, refusing to contemplate what he’d find.

Behind him, three of the police officers remained lying on the pavement where the daemoniac hunters had brought them down, one still and two moaning.

Ryan ignored the rapid, urgent speech the officer shouted at him.

It was obvious the man ordered him to stop, but that just wasn’t in Ryan’s game plan, not even when the cop started shooting.

Ryan made it unharmed to where Dianne knelt over Germaine, sobbing.

Thank God she was alive.

“We must go before more of them find us,” he said, peering over his shoulder toward the street. His neck itched. It wouldn’t be long.

Dianne turned a red, wet face to him. It hit him like an unexpected gut punch.

“She’s hurt,” she said in a broken, raspy voice.

Ryan clamped his jaw and said only, “Let me see.”

He moved beside Dianne, kneeling on one knee next to her best friend to assess her injuries.

Germaine’s ravaged face and torso resembled raw meat.

Her right leg had been fractured, and her femur poked through the skin of her thigh.

He touched her neck and found her pulse surprisingly strong. She’d need immediate medical care.

All the more reason to get a move on.

He looked at Dianne. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head. “No. Every time one of those—those—” She floundered for something to call the human shells inhabited by some of the nastiest daemons Ryan had ever encountered “—tried to grab me, they acted like they’d gotten shocked by a downed powerline.”

“That’s a pretty apt description, though I don’t know how that tunic got so supercharged.” He glanced at her, relief washing over him that she was unhurt. “We have to go. Now. I’ll carry her.”

Unfortunately, it meant stowing the knife …

Dianne nodded. Again, Ryan’s relief caught him by surprise. He put it away along with the knife. There was no time for anything but the mission, even if that had grown to include Dianne’s friend.

“Harlequin, this is Demon Slayer,” he said as he lifted Germaine in his arms. “Thanks for the assist. Package is safe, but her friend needs medical attention yesterday. How far out is that transpo?”

“Well, Demon Slayer, given that you’re taking your sweet time, transpo will meet you in the bus parking lot in ninety seconds. Do you think you can manage that?” His boss’s dry tone reassured him.

“Wilco,” he said.

Then, nodding at Dianne to lead, he stepped away from the bus station and headed for the parking lot behind the building.

Olivia let out a deep breath and leaned into her hands.

The calm hum of the TOC contrasted with the tension she’d felt as she’d watched the discordant energy swarming after Ryan and Dianne.

For a brief instance, she’d even imagined that she’d connected to Dianne using angelic sonar as she’d done when the Dark Irim Asmodeus had held Mihàil in frozen storage in a meat-processing plant years ago, before they’d been married.

Her sister’s terror had been Olivia’s terror …

“What exactly is going on here, zonja ime ?” asked her husband, the zoti . The lord.

It was never a good sign when he addressed her as ‘my lady’ in the tone of voice he reserved for command operations.

Olivia dropped her hands to her lap and swiveled the desk chair around to face Mihàil’s thunderous blue gaze.

“Or do you intend to keep me in the dark about the legions of daemons rampaging in Split? The ones you sent Helsing—a mortal human—to face alone?”