Page 38 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)
She stared at him for a long moment. Then she asked in a mild voice, “Would you sit down?”
Ryan hesitated, then did. Not because he wanted to, but because something in her tone told him this conversation wasn’t just procedural.
“You knew the risks,” said Olivia quietly. “But that’s not what this is about, is it?”
Ryan let out a slow breath. She was right. He had known the risks of the mission to bring Dianne to Fushe-Arrez even without knowing the fine details of tactical gear. The risks were the same that they’d always been: protect the principal with your life.
And then Olivia addressed the elephant in the room: the revelation from Willem just this morning that Ryan’s chainmail and Dianne’s tunic were tethered with the unique harmonic signature of the zonje .
That after what they’d experienced in the field, it went beyond the tactical gear to their individual harmonic signatures.
They were indelibly—and perhaps permanently—linked on a spiritual level.
That was the real reason he was angry. This particular mission risk had been life altering in a way he couldn’t possibly begin to comprehend, not life ending.
That outcome he understood well enough. He’d accepted it when he entered the Rangers and doubled down on it when he witnessed his first friend and comrade-in-arms die in Afghanistan.
“I didn’t tell you about the harmonic tether between your gear and hers.” Olivia’s voice was even, but something flickered in her expression. Guilt, maybe. A recognition too late to fix anything. “Just like you didn’t tell Dianne about the nanotracker. It wasn’t necessary.”
He felt his jaw tighten and his fingers clench on his thighs. “You didn’t think I needed to know?”
“No. I thought I was just being overly paranoid about my little sister. I wanted a failsafe in case the nanotracker died. I was the one who didn’t know the risks, not fully.
” Her hands curled slightly on the gleaming black walnut of her desk, knuckles pale.
“You have every right to be angry.” She inhaled deeply, and then, holding his gaze with her open, luminous one, said, “I am sorry. Sorrier than you will ever know.”
Suddenly Ryan understood the guilt shadowing the zonje ’s features. Keeping this tactical decision from her chief of security paled against keeping the whole mission from her husband, now unconscious in their barely functional ICU.
Olivia hadn’t said it, but Ryan knew that they’d both accepted the unknown unknowns in this unpredictable and dangerous Elioud world in which they operated. Laying the blame on his commanding officer for using the harmonic tether was stupid and arrogant.
Ryan slumped against his chair. He wasn’t angry anymore. He was exhausted. And maybe somewhere deep inside, he was grateful, because if he hadn’t gone, Dianne wouldn’t be alive. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to name the feeling, let alone face what it meant.
But this wasn’t just about surviving.
“I need to know how deep this goes,” he said at last. “How much that tether affected her. And me. If it’s permanent and what that means.”
Olivia nodded. “Miró can help you find the answers.” She hesitated. “Ryan … just be careful. There’s something we still don’t understand about your tether with Dianne. Abaddon has touched it. And what the Angel of the Abyss touches doesn’t just fade away.”
He pushed to his feet. “I never expected it to.” He left it unsaid that he’d seen the black threads in his harmonic signature. And in Dianne’s.
But he had no intention of sitting still while it coiled deeper into his skin—and hers.
As he turned to leave, Olivia halted him.
“Ryan, something else is at play.” She sighed.
“We don’t understand the timing or magnitude of the solar flare.
Or if it was a coincidence or caused by Abaddon’s appearance.
He’s not prophesied to appear above ground before the Apocalypse.
” She stopped before stating what everyone in Fushe-Arrez already whispered: that Creation had indeed been thrust into the End Times, and the forces of Hell now ruled.
Ryan squared his shoulders and met her gaze. He couldn’t carry her burden, but he could damn well do the job.
“You can count on me, ma’am.”
The confrontation with Olivia left Ryan feeling as weak as he had in Shkoder before Beta had stabilized and recharged his harmonics.
Once outside the operations center, he stopped and breathed deeply, feeling the soreness deep in his side.
He noticed some trainees on the quad outside the building looking at him and realized that he’d placed his hand against his abdomen.
He dropped it. He’d have to be more disciplined from now on.
He couldn’t let anyone else see how his wound still troubled him.
Not if he was going to resume his leadership role as head of security for the Kastriotis.
Pulling himself to his full height, he glared at the trio of young men and one woman.
“Haven’t you got someplace to be right now?
” He made a show of looking at his watch, which ran better than he did on the Elioud recharge.
“According to the schedule I set, all recruits have shooting practice at 1100.”
Their eyes widened, but only one had the presence of mind to nod and respond with a loud “Sir, yes, sir” before hitting his nearest friend on the back of the head.
The group pivoted and ran toward the indoor range, the woman trailing as she glanced over her shoulder at Ryan.
He didn’t know where they’d come from, but it didn’t matter: young people were the same all over the world.
Ryan stood upright, his eyes narrowed as he followed their progress, until the four had disappeared inside the shoot house.
Then he relaxed, dizziness sweeping over him.
A hard thrumming juddered him, making his knees buckle.
He maintained his standing position by some miracle of will.
And then the quaking subsided, gentle vibrations soothing his body as his harmonic signature calmed.
He recognized the feeling, and his gaze scanned the quad.
There. Across from him, coming on a paved path through some trees.
Dianne and Beta, deep in conversation. He faded behind a nearby tree not a moment too soon because Dianne looked at the spot where he’d stood only a minute before.
Ryan drank in the sight of her, sunlight turning her blond hair into a physical halo around her skin with its undertones of roses and cream.
He should have told Willem or Olivia that he could read Dianne’s harmonic signature.
It had started after Me?ugorje, after the geomagnetic flare and that soul-searing kiss.
He hadn’t wanted to say anything until he understood how he felt about it, this surprising Elioud ability that he’d never thought to have.
He realized part of him had wanted it to mean something—like a signal from Heaven that he and Dianne were meant for each other.
Now his hopes seemed ill-founded at best, dangerous at worst.
But what if the flare had powered their bond? A bond that had been primed by the simple harmonic tether that Olivia had created? It had certainly recharged his harmonic chainmail system. What else had the flare ignited in them? If the flare had sparked changes, were they permanent?
A gift—or a curse?
Ryan had already feared that his bond with Dianne was permanent by the time the Dutch Elioud suggested the possibility with a somber sympathy that had sent Ryan’s hackles quivering.
The man had loved his fiancée and lost her to the Dark Irim Yeqon, the original Seducer.
Long before Ryan could read harmonic signatures, he’d sensed the pain shadowing Willem’s spirit.
In fact, Ryan could see a lot more than that: he could see Beta’s harmonics, and a slight, wavery sheen on the world around him. It was both disconcerting and awe-inducing.
Dianne’s harmonic signature was a royal purple and gold, and a soft golden aura limned her form. Yet there was something malign corrupting its purity. Something that Ryan very much feared he’d gifted her on their escape from Split.
Dianne’s glance lingered for a moment as she and Beta continued walking, their trajectory taking them to the outdoor shooting range. And then both women disappeared around the corner of a building on the north side of the quad.
After a long moment, Ryan shook himself from his involuntary reverie and continued on to the research and development complex beyond the quad in a quiet recess enlarged from a natural cavity in the base of the bordering mountain.
He needed to give Miró the small charm that he’d recovered in Split after battling the one-eyed daemoniac .
What if whatever was between them was an illusion activated by that evil charm?
He found the intense Elioud scientist in a lab at the back of the main R&D building, the room lined on three sides with workbenches where tools and raw materials lay in neat groupings.
Though the bare walls were pristine white, the large windows and skylights filled the space with natural light, softening its sterility.
After Miró surprised him with a warm handshake and slap on the shoulder, Ryan drew the metallic hand from his pocket—the one with its disturbing blue-white-and-black crystal–and passed it over.
He knew something was wrong even before Miró examined it.
Not just when he picked it up, but in the way it resonated near Dianne.
Miró turned the charm in his palm, studying it with Elioud precision. The lab was silent except for the low hum of harmonic instruments, casting gentle light across the tablet he was already pulling data from.
“This is not simply a token,” said Miró. “It is an Eye of Hamsa. More than that, it is a lure and a tether.”
Ryan frowned. “What do you mean?”