Page 23 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)

D ianne gasped. “Oh, my God!”

“We may need to stop before we get to the safehouse,” said Ryan, as though bleeding from deep puncture wounds was an everyday, ordinary occurrence.

“How far is it?” she asked, trying to still the fluttering of her heart before it made her feel sicker than she already did.

He closed his eyes as if thinking took all of his concentration. “Seven hours, give or take.”

“You’ll bleed to death long before then.”

His eyes didn’t open. “No, I won’t. I trust you. You won’t let that happen.”

“What do you think I can do?”

“Give me more chocolate, for one thing.”

“Chocolate! You’ve got to be kidding me. You need a hospital, Helsing,” she said again.

This time he didn’t warn of dire consequences. Instead, he said, “I don’t exactly have access to Google maps.” He paused, as if speaking took effort. “Might waste a lot of time we don’t have trying to locate one.”

He paused again. Now he when he spoke, he sounded tired. “And the chocolate will help, just maybe not enough to heal me on its own.”

“But we have to stop the bleeding. I know that much.”

“Of course.” He paused, groaning and inhaling before asking, “Got any ideas about how to do that? And call me Ryan. Sounds better from your lips than Helsing.”

Dianne wasn’t going to honor that, not when she was so scared for him. She shot him a hard look, but he didn’t open his eyes to look at her. “Well, Helsing , I can give you this magical tunic until we can find a better option. It would at least be something.”

She paused to think, which was really hard through her fluttering heartbeat. Ryan started to say something, but she cut him off. “I know you don’t want to get off this highway, but there has to be more along the coast. Stores. Pharmacies with bandages.”

“How about a kiss?” he asked when she finally finished. “That would make me feel better.”

“Not me,” said Dianne, but she sounded unconvincing even to herself. She glanced at him. “Don’t think your girlfriend would like it, either.”

“No girlfriend. No fiancée. No wife.”

“Oh.” Dianne hoped he didn’t hear the spark of joy she couldn’t help giving off.

“Or I can do it the Ranger way: strip off my T-shirt, slap it on the wound, and hope you’re not too distracted to drive.” Now a hint of amusement colored his voice.

That pissed Dianne off. She shot him another glare. This time Ryan watched her. “Is this some kind of joke to you? Are you mocking me?”

A ghost of a smile flitted across his lips. “No. Distracting you. Did it work?”

“No.” She clutched the steering wheel and stared out at the large, four-lane highway that they’d just merged onto. But it had, damn him. Now the thought of kissing him and running her fingers over his heavily muscled chest crowded out her worry. “Crap! We’ve got to pay a toll.”

Ryan grunted as he reached into the center console. “Gotta be some change in here. Everyone leaves change in their car for just this reason.”

He searched around and brought out some and handed it to her. “There. That should cover it.”

She took it. “What about a passport for me? Got one of those in there, too?”

“We’ll figure something out by the time we get to border control. That’s not for another hour.”

“Hm-mh.” Dianne let him hear the skepticism in her voice.

They made it through the toll, where a bored-looking worker barely noticed their passing. Something about the mundane interaction made Dianne want to scream. Hadn’t this woman heard about the violence in Split at least? Or was it just too far away to matter?

Not to her . She’d had the unsettling feeling that someone watched her ever since they’d driven from the ambush. Well, who wouldn’t be a little paranoid? What was the saying? You’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you .

Sighing, she punched the gas pedal until the car jumped forward and began racing down the highway.

She wouldn’t feel safe until they’d put several hundred miles between them and the port.

Maybe not until they’d arrived at her sister’s house, which now that she thought about it, had looked like a modern fortress surrounded by mountains.

“That was easy. Now let’s look for a rest stop or a place with a parking lot.”

Ryan didn’t respond, not even a groan or a ridiculous question about taking off his T-shirt.

Dianne looked over at him. He’d slumped against the car door, completely unconscious.

What should she do?

Not panic for starters said a voice in her mind that sounded like her, but a much more confident version. A guy his size has a lot of blood. He hasn’t lost enough yet to die .

I hope said the other, smaller, terrified part of her cowering in a corner of her mind.

She had to get off the tollway and find aid somewhere.

Ten minutes passed without an exit, and Dianne’s palms began to sweat.

Steady, steady said the confident voice, urging her to stay calm. You know panic never solves anything. It only makes it worse. Ryan’s counting on you .

Up ahead, a large green sign signaled an exit.

?estanovac.

Please let there be help there said the smaller, normal Dianne voice as she took the off-ramp.

The highway curved all the way around and through a toll station before heading toward a traffic circle.

She took the exit across from where she’d entered the circle.

After a short distance, the road intersected another, tree-lined street.

Although she could see nothing helpful in any direction, her gut told her that taking the right would prove more fruitful.

Her gut was right. Three minutes down the road she saw a small pharmacy. Ryan hadn’t moved or made any sounds since losing consciousness, but he still breathed when she checked.

“Be right back,” she said as confidently as she could in case he could hear her.

She grabbed his travel wallet with the credit card and cash, which included some euros.

Once inside the small, immaculate store, she purchased antiseptic spray, antibiotic cream, cotton swabs and pads, and a plethora of gauze pads and medical tape along with the strongest pain reliever that the pharmacist recommended.

Unlike American pharmacies, which had become convenience stores crossed with department stores, the Croatian pharmacy didn’t offer any clothing or Dianne would have grabbed some underwear or socks or white T-shirts to stanch the bleeding.

No cheap mobile phones with cards, either.

Back outside, she knelt in the driver’s seat and pulled Ryan’s wet T-shirt from his side. What she saw stopped her cold and made her stomach wrench.

Five deep puncture wounds oozed blood and fluid with every breath Ryan took.

Swallowing against queasiness, Dianne forced herself to open the cotton pads before spraying the antiseptic spray over the taut skin of his stomach.

She cleaned around the wounds, worried that she would hurt Ryan with her ministrations.

But if she hurt him, he didn’t show it. Worse, no matter how much she pressed gauze pads against the holes, they continued to bleed.

Dianne didn’t know as much about emergency medical treatment as Olivia, who’d trained as an EMT during college. But even she knew that if Ryan continued to bleed, he’d go into shock long before they reached the border. In fact, he could be in shock right now.

She needed something to coagulate the blood. When she’d had her wisdom teeth out as a teen, the dentist had told her mom to give her cool, moistened black teabags because the tea’s tannins would help the extraction site to clot.

The pharmacy had a tea section.

Dianne ran back into the pharmacy and grabbed several boxes of black teabags and a few bottles of different juices. Ryan was going to be weak. He’d had nothing to eat except a square of chocolate in the past twelve hours. Juice would be a quick way to get him some sugar.

Dianne had turned and almost left the store when she realized that she could ask an employee the location of the nearest hospital.

A young clerk confirmed that it was fifteen minutes away on their route.

She took the items and raced back to Ryan.

She had no idea what the hospital would think of her improvised first aid, but she had to do everything she could think of to stop the hemorrhaging.

Back at the car, Dianne ripped open a box of black teabags and coated them with antiseptic spray before pressing them into each puncture hole.

Injuries delivered by her best friend.

That’s when, she admitted to herself now, she’d known that Germaine was possessed. How else to explain the ability of a hundred-and-twenty-five-pound woman to punch her fingers into a muscular male abdomen?

Not sure she was doing the right thing but reckoning that it wasn’t too different from the way the oral surgeon had packed the extraction site of her molars, Dianne pressed another teabag on top of each wound, taping them down with medical tape.

When she’d finished, she covered the whole group with a large gauze pad and taped that down, too.

The last thing that occurred to her was to pull the seatbelt across his waist to keep pressure on the bandage.

That turned out to be a fiasco, clever though it was.

She had to lean across Ryan’s lap and dig around for the buckle, which meant pressing herself into his broad chest. Despite the inappropriate timing for noticing how hard and defined it was, she found her nipples tingling, and as soon as she noticed, she remembered his teasing about removing his shirt.

She also had to feel his manhood under her hip, which wasn’t something she wanted to be reminded about right now.

If he came around with her practically grinding on him, it would be more than a little awkward.

However, while she worked, Ryan didn’t flinch or move. This terrified Dianne. She hadn’t met a man yet who wouldn’t respond to breasts rubbing up against him.