Page 27 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)

T hey crawled toward the border with Montenegro.

What should have taken a couple of hours on a normal Saturday morning in July took closer to four.

Not only was the Bosnian highway not well maintained, a myriad of stopped vehicles blocked its twisting lanes through the mountains.

Even if Ryan had stolen an old Jeep or whatever passed for a sport-utility vehicle in this part of the world, it wouldn’t have helped.

At least the vehicles had all died at different points along the way.

Dianne pretended as Ryan maneuvered the Opel between them that they played a giant game of Tetris.

She was so busy worrying that the few flushed people trudging along the side of the road among the dense vegetation would become aggressive that at first she didn’t notice anything unusual in Ryan’s demeanor.

It was only as they drifted toward the end of a long line of vehicles signaling the upcoming border crossing that she recognized the white knuckles and in-drawn breath for what they were, pain and not the tension of the trip.

Her glance darted to Ryan’s set jaw where a pulse flickered before glancing back to his midsection.

It was hard to tell given that the black T-shirt he wore didn’t show blood as readily as other colors would have.

She couldn’t be certain, but she thought that it looked darker and wetter than it had a couple of hours before.

Pressing her lips together, she closed her eyes briefly and prayed for patience. And divine help. Because she had a feeling that things were about to heat up again.

“There’s a good chance the crossing isn’t staffed,” said Ryan without looking at her.

“Are you going to run it?” she asked.

He glanced at her and back out the windshield as he answered.

“Yes. I need you to keep your head on a swivel. These people have been out here more than two hours. Those who could walk home already have. Anyone left is hot, thirsty, and ready to jack a moving car.” He lifted his chin.

“Those two guys outside the blue car up there? They’re about to pull us out of ours. We’re not gonna let them.”

“Copy that,” she said, no longer earnest or joking. It just seemed the appropriate response to the man whose leadership was going to keep them alive.

No sooner had she responded than Ryan revved the little European sedan and swerved off the passing lane into the empty northbound lane.

Almost at the same time the two men Ryan had identified turned and sprinted for them, their hands clenched and wild expressions on their faces.

The man on the passenger side reached the Opel first.

Dianne’s heart lurched, but she remembered at the last moment to flip the door lock even as he grabbed the handle.

There was something feral in his eyes as he locked his gaze on her.

He actually snarled as the car sped up, forcing him to let the handle go.

A moment later, he’d stumbled and fallen, rolling hard on the asphalt.

Ryan, however, hadn’t locked his door. The other man managed to get the driver’s door open and intermittently hung by its handle, his feet flying over the pavement, and clung to the doorframe as they raced toward the first empty border-control booth.

As they passed the small structure, Ryan opened the driver’s door wide, smashing the would-be carjacker into it.

Dianne winced at the heavy thunk and pained yell that followed. Twisting in her seat, she looked back behind them as the Opel ate up the open highway, free of the line of cars forever waiting in a queue. People streamed across the highway, watching them.

“What will happen to them?” she asked as Ryan swerved the car back into the southbound lane, now clear for the foreseeable distance.

“Some will give up waiting for the power and the police to return and set off on foot for the nearest village or city,” he said, looking into the rearview mirror as he spoke.

“The rest will realize that something big is happening. Your guess is as good as mine what anyone would do in this situation. If it were me? I’d head to the nearest store, grab some staples, then head into the wilderness to take my chances.

I can survive a lot of time hunting and fishing.

Long enough to build a secure shelter from which I can reconnoiter the cities and wait for order to be restored. ”

Dianne settled back into the passenger seat. “You’d do that now except for me,” she said, feeling a bit sick at the thought. And scared, for him. She was the one keeping him in danger.

She was also terrified that he’d leave her. She swallowed and gazed out the side window.

“Hey,” he said, shooting her a hard glance, “look at me.” When she did, he said, “I will never leave you, Dianne. Never. We’re in this together.

I’m gonna get you to Fushe-Arrez. Your sister and Mihàil have their own little secure compound with its own renewable power supply and food stores.

We can survive a years’ long siege or geomagnetic disruption without much hardship. ”

Dianne, her throat too thick to let words out, nodded.

Had she really been sailing the Adriatic only twenty-four hours ago, drinking cocktails while worried about friendship drama and pining for love?

It was so surreal.

Even more surreal? Finding the man she wanted more than anything at the heart of this mind-blowing situation.

Somehow, everything was larger-than-life, including her growing feelings for this remarkable warrior.

Feelings that might be a product of proximity.

Wasn’t it a common trope? A shallow romance that couldn’t go the distance growing in the heat of a crisis?

She didn’t think she could settle for that.

It would be worse than any one-night stand, which never promised her heart so much.

In fact, they’d never promised her anything.

She glanced at Ryan from the corner of her eye, afraid to look too long and reveal how she felt.

How did he feel? If that kiss was anything to go by, he was feeling the same adrenaline-laden desire she was. But did it mean anything to him? What about the model-pretty woman in the worn photo he carried?

They drove in silence for another hour. Apparently, the highway into Montenegro was little traveled, despite the long queue at the border crossing.

Long stretches of empty asphalt opened up before them as the highway snaked through the mountains.

Even when they came across cars, by now abandoned, Ryan easily bypassed them.

Sometimes they passed individuals and small groups of people walking along the highway.

Many waved and shouted, but Ryan drove a wide berth around them, his jaw clenched.

Dianne reached over and squeezed his forearm but said nothing.

She knew that they couldn’t stop to help anyone.

Even so, seeing a mother holding a toddler with a slightly older boy clutching at her bag shook Dianne’s resolve.

Nothing impeded their progress, not even when the deserted vehicles blocked both lanes. No one seemed inclined to violence, and the daemons had receded into the stuff of urban legend and half-remembered nightmare.

Until the highway intersected a larger road at an angle.

Up ahead, several cars blocked the intersection, which didn’t have lights or signs, just multiple lanes for merging.

Two cars, in the left and right lanes turning onto this new route, had stopped a few dozen feet from the intersection.

The car in the right lane had its hood up, obscuring the view of the highway in front of it.

In the other lane coming north toward them sat a box truck.

It would be difficult, but not impossible, for Ryan to navigate between these three vehicles given the spacing of the merging lanes, but he would have to slow down. Dianne, even without any battlefield experience, could see that they could be attacked from all sides.

Ryan braked a few feet behind the vehicles on the right. His hand strayed to the Glock where it rested in his lap.

“The roadblock is a trap,” said Dianne.

Ryan squinted as he studied the silent scene.

“Someone’s watched a few too many military thrillers,” he said, “either that, or we’ve stumbled across a former soldier.

I’m betting that there are at least a handful of people in that box truck waiting to jump anyone lucky enough to drive through here.

And there are probably people in front of the other two vehicles where we can’t see them from here.

They may all be armed in one way or another. ”

“What do we do?”

“Your door still locked?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ryan reached down and locked his.

“We run the gauntlet, Beauty Queen.”

Dianne pressed her lips together and said nothing to the nickname as Ryan backed the Opel to the edge of the thick stand of trees on their right, a few hundred feet if she had to guess.

“Ready?”

She nodded.

He stomped on the gas. The little sedan fishtailed before pushing off and accelerating toward the open space between the truck and the lefthand car.

They’d reached the trunk of the car when two men stepped out of the box truck in front of them, one wielding a crowbar, the other a wrench.

Ryan raised his Glock with his left hand and began shooting without slowing.

The man with the wrench dove for the side, hitting the car next to them and rolling over its hood.

At the same time, the man with the crowbar swung it at the Opel’s windshield, stepping sideways to avoid being run over. The windshield cracked but held.