Page 32 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)
“Five klicks ahead,” said Beta, her voice steady as they neared the southern outskirts of the ancient Albanian city in the foothills of the Albanian mountains.
The flare was faint but undeniable—a pulsating burst of energy rippling across the horizon to the northwest. She narrowed her eyes, her Elioud sight, enhanced with harmonic googles, teasing out fragmented shapes: twisting shadows clashing against a cocoon of flickering light.
András, who sat in the front passenger seat next to Edvard, their driver, turned his head from scanning their eastern flank to stare into the distance in front of them.
“It’s them. I recognize Helsing’s signature.
But we’ve got to hurry. It’s so weak I fear we might lose him.
And the daemons have nearly gained control of the other signature. ”
Beta said nothing, just pressed her lips together and squinted out the front windshield, her arm clutching the Disrupter combat shotgun in its sling across her chest. Miró had released the prototype harmonic weapon to her only after he’d caught her liberating it from the armory lab where it had been stored for testing and evaluation.
Then again, she’d held his icy gaze until he’d backed down.
But Edvard, her fellow Czech, said what was better left unsaid anyway. “The other signature? That’s the zonje ’s sister, Dianne Markham, correct?”
András threw a look at his wife and then looked out again at the lightless mass of Shkoder in front of them. “Yes.”
Edvard whistled. “We’re too late then.”
“No, we are not ,” said Beta, exuding smoky-hot air that quickly filled the confines of the Defender. She leaned forward and angled her voice into his ear, barbing her words with the heat of her ire. “And if we are, it will be because you cannot drive.”
Edvard visibly shuddered. And then accelerated as if trying to outrun her approbation, the sound of the engine growling loud on the deserted highway.
András didn’t look at either of them again, just studied the eerie glow whose dancing shadows resembled a fire that didn’t burn.
“I read only half a dozen daemons .” Again, he looked at Beta.
What he didn’t say this time was for Edvard’s benefit: the daemons had a signature unlike any he’d ever seen before.
Almost all of Beta and András’s speech—or judicious lack thereof—was for Edvard’s benefit.
The Elioud couple communicated telepathically as all Elioud , descendants of the Watcher Angels who’d mated with human women in prehistory, could.
At least those with more than a drop of angel blood, and usually only those with some self-awareness.
Until five years ago, Beta, along with Olivia and Stasia, had had no idea that they owed some of their talents and skills as operatives to their angel blood.
Beta kept her thoughts about what they would find to herself.
She knew that András burned with fury at what had happened to Mihàil, who’d been like a father to him, rescuing him as an orphaned twelve-year-old from the brutal attentions of a street gang.
But beneath András’s fury laid an unsettling and unfamiliar fear.
He’d never seen Mihàil so badly wounded.
And despite facing one of the condemned Watcher Angels in the form of a seven-headed dragon last December, András feared these unknown daemons , whose manifestation had already shut down the world’s power.
Beta felt her giant husband’s unease but didn’t let it affect her.
She and the other former Wild Elioud had pretty much had a crash course in the hidden war being waged between the forces of the Dark Irim , that is, the fallen Watcher Angels, and the Angeli Fidelis under the command of the Archangel Michael.
András would adapt. And she’d be right at his side, making sure he knew that she was with him all the way.
No, she was worried about Helsing.
Strange to admit that, even if only to herself.
Helsing had stepped in to defend her a year ago, inserting himself into a situation whose complexity he couldn’t possibly grasp.
But he was not about to let a Russian thug brandishing a gun in a crowded nightclub pistol-whip a woman in front of him.
And he’d taken a bullet for his chivalry.
Even after that, the former American soldier had been game to join the Elioud in their growing engagement with the Dark forces, a fight his heart was more than large enough to handle, but to which his human nature was vulnerable.
Over the past year, he’d become the brother she’d never had.
She would not let the daemons break or take him.
Beta kept her grip steady on the Disrupter, but the flare, an echo of something wicked and corrupt, gnawed at her mind as Edvard navigated through the historic city, its streets littered with dead vehicles and, shockingly, personal items like clothing, shoes, even a doll.
To their west, the leaden mass of Lake Shkoder sucked in the illumination from the night sky like a black hole, sending a prescient shiver down Beta’s spine.
The infernal balefire hovering above Helsing's location abruptly extinguished as they left Shkoder.
“Village of Dobrac on our right,” said Edvard, glancing at the glowing map on the tablet that one of Miró’s techs had mounted onto the dash. “Target appears to be located on the north side of the roundabout for the Shkoder Bypass.”
“We’ve got some unfriendlies converging on them,” said András. His hard voice no longer carried the playful tones it had when she’d fallen in love with him. Beta regretted that above else, the curtailment of András’s fun-loving spirit during their ongoing war with the Dark forces.
“Like wolves,” she said.
Dianne and Ryan’s battle with the daemons had served as a beacon for nearby humans, the desperate as well as the opportunistic.
Both would be dangerous, but how dangerous remained to be seen.
Beta’s hand drifted from the Disrupter’s weight against her chest to the Czech handgun in its rig on her thigh.
“ETA one minute to target,” said Edvard, tension tightening his voice. His hands in their tactical gloves clutched the wheel as if he feared control of the sturdy British SUV would escape him.
Beta remembered that he hadn’t yet been in the field against daemons , just their human proxies.
“The daemons are gone, lieutenant,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically soft. “You are more than a match for any mangy curs we stumble upon.”
Edvard shot her a wide-eyed look. She nodded at him.
András glanced at their young driver, whom Beta had recruited earlier in the year. “Remember your training. The only easy day was yesterday as the Americans say.” He shifted in his seat, his large hand where it rested on the dashboard fisting, as if he reminded himself as much as Edvard.
The Defender’s headlights penetrated the inky night up ahead as they approached the roundabout. Beta caught a flicker of movement—a human-shaped silhouette darting past the edge of the high-powered beams.
Wolves, indeed.
But when they reached the Opel sedan driven by Dianne, nothing stirred in the night.
Edvard maneuvered the Defender off the highway toward the medium-sized German sedan, which had come to rest in a field to the northeast. It was pitch-dark, a troubling sign after the radiance of Ryan’s valiant effort to vanquish the daemons .
Two signatures inside the vehicle, however, showed that the human occupants lived.
One was faint, but the other held steady, if vibrating with minor chords and fraying at the edges from discord.
Beta realized in shock that the weaker signature had keyed itself to the stronger. She looked at András. You see it, too, do you not?
I do . His tone was grim.
Edvard parked the SUV twenty meters from the Opel, and the three of them dismounted, switching their helmet lights to covert redlight mode.
András gestured with sharp fingers for Edvard to take up position a few meters in front of the vehicle where the young team member set up a tactical light on a tripod.
As he did, Beta and András ran to the car’s front doors, he to the driver’s side and she to the passenger side where Helsing would be.
They waited while their young team member set the infrared sensor to detect any unfriendlies approaching.
If anyone got within fifteen meters of their position, the tac light would emit a pulsing strobe of 5,000 lumens in a three-hundred-sixty-degree perimeter as both a warning and a deterrent.
It was as much for Edvard as his role guarding their position.
The Elioud would sense attackers before the much-less-sensitive IR sensor.
“On three, illuminate,” András ordered over their comms.
“Copy that,” said Beta while Edvard responded, “Wilco, sir.”
András counted down, and then Edvard activated the spotlight on the tactical light. The Elioud couple also flared, something that occurred spontaneously and often without their control before a battle but that they also employed in certain situations to baffle or disorient.
This was one of those times.
András spoke to Beta alone. Together, Gomba?
How else, Spratek?
Since their harmonic signatures were keyed to one another, their timing naturally synced in moments such as these.
They moved toward the car as one, each pulling open a door at the same moment.
András, whose fists radiated a deadly heat, held no weapon.
Beta raised the Disrupter as soon as she swung the door wide.
Edvard brought his conventional Czech Scorpion EVO semi-automatic carbine up to his shoulder.
The response that met them shocked Beta. And she wasn’t easily shocked.