Page 33 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)

Helsing’s body sagged like a marionette with its strings cut, his breath ragged and shallow as the seatbelt held him roughly upright and inside the small car .

Across from him, the blonde rose up with a hoarse cry, lifting a handgun in both hands and aiming at first Beta and then András.

She kept the gun trained on András while looking back and forth between the two stunned Elioud warfighters.

“Stay back or I’ll shoot!” Her eyes burned with a raw, unyielding determination, whether from rage or survival instinct, Beta couldn’t tell.

Given that her hands didn’t shake, Beta suspected that this woman—Olivia’s younger sister—had lost any nerves at the prospect of firing the weapon somewhere along the journey here.

Either that or defending Ryan meant more to her than her own preservation.

That is very interesting , Beta thought to herself.

“I guess we should have gone to comms to alert them we’d arrived,” said András aloud, letting his hands cool as they drifted to his side. His flare retreated until it only limned him.

“Where would the fun be in that?” asked Beta, lowering her Disrupter in its sling on her chest and dimming her own internal light.

Ignoring Dianne, who’d shifted at the move, she reached out to touch Helsing’s shoulder.

“Wake up, Demon Slayer,” she said softly, running gentle harmonics over him before slipping them into a support mesh around him.

His tactical gear responded with a faint glow.

“What–What are you doing to him?” asked Dianne, a desperate thread now making her voice tremble.

Her own gossamer robe also began to glow, further confirming the fact that she and Ryan were tethered harmonically.

While Dianne’s garment had been keyed for defense against daemonic attack, they’d already been surprised by her ability to communicate with the ops center.

This—this was something much different, but now wasn’t the time to untangle it.

Beta didn’t respond. Instead, she focused on Ryan, feeding him some of her energy.

She ran hot, like a banked harmonic furnace.

Normally, her tactical gear just siphoned off her fiery energy and saved it in power banks, but now she willingly gave a massive boost to the unconscious former Ranger.

It wasn’t the same as medical intervention, but it would sustain him for the long road ahead.

“How did you hold off the daemons ?” she asked as András came around to help her free Ryan from the seatbelt and pull him from the car.

When Dianne, who’d dropped the Glock she held down to her waist and watched, her mouth opening and closing, didn’t respond, Beta looked at her.

“It is clear that Ryan did not have the strength to do it.”

Dianne looked between Beta and András before settling on Beta, who held her gaze while András took over checking Ryan, now sitting disoriented and blinking under András’s careful probing, on the ground next to the Opel.

Dianne inhaled, squared her shoulders, and lifted her trembling chin.

“I kept saying the exorcism prayer along with Aerie Actual. It made them very, very angry. I thought I was going to be suffocated. But I just kept thinking it over and over. And then they were gone. You showed up not long afterwards.”

Beta, eyes narrowing, nodded. Dianne reminded her so much of Olivia, the operative who’d been instrumental in leading her out of the shadows and into the light with her strong moral compass and compassion.

Because of Olivia, she’d eventually confronted her own personal daemons and conquered them, leading to love, the kind that only Elohim could bestow.

Beta considered Olivia more than a friend. She was a sister of the heart.

“Can you walk or would you prefer that Giant carry you?” she asked Dianne, lifting her chin toward her husband, who now pulled Ryan to his feet. She let her enhanced vision scan the pitch-black around them. Something waited just beyond IR range. “We must get moving ASAP.”

Dianne shot a wide-eyed glance at András. “No, I can walk.” A minute later she was following them back to the Defender, Beta walking behind her. Edvard remained on watch, constantly surveying the limited area revealed by his helmet light.

As they reached the Defender, the air shifted—stale, sour, heavy with intent. Beta’s skin prickled as a faint rustle broke the silence, coming closer. Too close.

That’s when the now-feral humans attacked.

The tac light’s strobe popped up and begin pulsing 5000 lumens in a defensive circle around their perimeter, fifteen meters out. Beta’s battle senses clarified, slowing down the sensory input until she’d counted the numbers of attackers.

Fifteen, all males. Two or three hesitated, but the rest seemed undeterred by the bright light.

“Incoming!” yelled Edvard, who to his credit didn’t lose his focus at this encounter with desperate people maddened by the loss of light in their world.

As Beta ran to join him, leaving Dianne to mount the step into the SUV alone, the young lieutenant squared his stance toward the closest oncoming attackers and depressed the button on his tactical vest that activated the blinding mode on the tac light.

Erratic bursts of 10,000-lumen light arced into their eyes, causing the men directly in front of him to stumble and fall, stunned.

Beta fully flared, her own radiance more diffuse but equally intense.

She raised the Disrupter, set on the lowest setting ideal for convulsing the human nervous system, and tagged five more attackers in quick succession.

A moment later, András joined the melee, having secured Ryan in the Defender’s backseat with a med kit filled with bandages and morphine.

It was a short, fierce fight, but the humans never stood a chance.

They were also armed only with fists, pipes, and crowbars.

While Beta and Edvard engaged three of the remaining seven between them, András handled the final four, his massive hands steaming in the cool night air as he threw his opponents ten meters in every direction.

The air reeked of sweat and desperation, mingling with the tang of ozone from the harmonic bolts.

Shadows moved erratically within the strobe’s pulsing light, their lunges wild and primal.

One of the men managed to launch himself onto Edvard’s back as the young warfighter traded punches with a second man, having dropped the carbine in favor of hand-to-hand combat.

The final attacker closed on Beta before she could aim the Disrupter.

Instead, she smacked the stock into his jaw, drawing him up short.

A moment later, she’d brought him to the ground, choking him out from the rear with the Disrupter’s stock.

Then she went to Edvard’s aid, blasting the man from his back with a well-aimed harmonic bolt.

The whole event lasted less than three minutes.

“Time to bug out,” said András, his face shiny within the reduced glow of his harmonics. His shoulders moved as he breathed in, but he was far from panting.

Edvard recovered the tac light and its tripod, which had been knocked over in the chaos while András kept watch for any further incursions.

Beta jogged back to the Defender and got in only to see Dianne watching her, the whites of her eyes prominent in her pale face.

Sixty seconds later, the male warriors had joined them in the vehicle, and then Edvard had them back on the highway heading south through Shkoder.

“Next time, give me a weapon,” said Ryan. His voice sounded hoarse with pain. Beta felt it buzz through his signature like a frayed wire—sharp, stinging, and unstable. “If I’m conscious, I can shoot.”

Dianne turned to him. “Like hell you can. You’re as weak as a kitten. Stop trying to be a damn hero—no one’s impressed when a corpse saves the day.”

He looked at Olivia’s sister, his principal, with a flat stare that belied his physical condition, which was stable but dire.

Then he looked at Beta without responding to the other woman.

“I’m good to go, Draka. Give me a carbine like Edvard’s.

” He paused, coughed, then added, “And some water. I inhaled some gasoline in Podgorica. It’s making me dizzy. ”

Beta wondered at this human’s willpower. Even now, when his body radiated pain like a dying star, his resolve refused to crumble. She could see it in his eyes, the set of his shoulders—the stubborn defiance of an ass of a man who didn’t know when to quit.

She slid a glance at Dianne but nodded. She felt Dianne’s glare as she handed a water bottle back to Ryan, followed by Edvard’s carbine, which András passed her with the mental comment, This should be a fun ride back.

Between the daemons , roving marauders, and these two clueless lovebirds, we won’t lack for distraction .

She has a point, Spratek .

Then let her keep the Glock .

I planned on it .

After passing Dianne a water bottle, she opened an insulated container on the seat next to her containing handheld food, in this case something Olivia referred to as a hot pocket filled with spiced ground meat and cheese, and gave the couple each one.

Then Beta held out an extra clip for the Glock and a spare thigh rig to Dianne.

“To defend the kitten,” she said. Ignoring Ryan’s scoffing noise, she went on, “You have earned that right.”

They drove in silence for twenty minutes before Beta asked András the question that had bothered her ever since she saw the faint flare with its flickering shadows.

How did the daemons breach the border of Albania?

I don’t know, Gomba , said András, his voice somber in her thoughts.

I have never seen it done. I didn’t think that it could be done.

But perhaps Mihàil’s injury has something to do with it.

He paused, his fist clenching on the dashboard in front of him as he looked out into the night, scanning for threats, before adding, But there is something following us.

Something malevolent and tenebrous … no, like the absence of all light.

I sense it, too . Beta gripped the Disrupter on her chest. It suddenly seemed much too puny and weak for whatever it was that stalked them.

As if sensing the tension, Ryan leaned forward. He seemed more himself, and if his harmonics were anything to go by, the morphine and food had done their job.

“They’ve followed us into Albania, haven’t they?” he asked in a low voice.

Beta glanced at him. “Yes.”

Ryan’s gaze went to Dianne, who slouched in the seat next to him, as if to a lodestone.

Beta could see the taut harmonic chord between them, its purple, green, and gold threads alive with both raw emotion and something deeper, something that vibrated against the edges of Beta’s understanding and added to the mystery of their tethering.

Twisting inside of that nascent bond? Black, vitriolic threads of discord, mistrust, and anger.

Those were familiar to Beta. Would the other couple wrestle with their daemons and win? Would they get that chance?

She pressed her lips together, her eyes narrowed. They would if she had anything to say about it.

The Defender’s frame seemed to groan under an invisible weight, the very air pressing against Beta’s skin like a cold, suffocating blanket. Overhead, the stars disappeared. Ominous silence squeezed at Beta’s chest, blotting out the familiar comforting hum of creation.

“Sir,” said Edvard glancing at András. “I’ve lost comms with Aerie. The harmonics nav keeps cutting out, and our sensor sweep just blacked out for no reason.”

Edvard was adapting, faster than Beta had expected, his movements crisp and deliberate despite the chaos. He’d gained the confidence of another battle won.

He was going to need it.

András didn’t look at the young warfighter, but her husband’s worry clouded the harmonic plane around him like invisible steel wool. “I’m aware.” He paused. “I’m more concerned with the Defender’s electrical system.”

Behind her, Beta read a spike of fear in Dianne and grim determination in Ryan, whose gut wound throbbed and radiated heat. The core of his infrared signature showed a sickly, green-tinged black that seeped into the rest of him as the daemonic energy engulfed them.

And Dianne’s signature thrummed with stygian power.