Page 40 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)

T he dire wolves arrived in the early evening some weeks later in the valley where Fushe-Arrez sheltered among the bordering mountains.

Great beasts, they towered over their lesser relatives, the Old-World grey wolves, who at their largest and most fearsome—legendary animals from history—reached a measly one-hundred-seventy-five pounds and less than three feet tall.

And who had been hunted mercilessly since the Middle Ages until they only dared hunt among humans when their hunger drove them.

These unreal and untimely monsters stood five feet at the shoulders and two-hundred-fifty pounds.

Larger than most men. Lean and sinewy with dark, hollow gazes filled with a void-like shimmer as if something else looked through them, harmonic distortions laced their growls, making the very air itself vibrate unnaturally.

Hardened patches of chitin mottled their fur, and their limbs were slightly elongated, giving them an ungainly, insect-like gait.

As they loped through the forests and rocky slopes of the Accursed Mountains, tendrils of harmonic distortion flickered along their unstable bodies, shifting them in and out of physical form. They were a misshapen, ruined echo of what a wolf should be.

The first to see them were the villagers of Breg, south of Fushe-Arrez nearly ten kilometers and just outside the harmonic mesh system that served as both a means of public address and intrusion detection for the Kastrioti estate.

The creatures prowled back and forth along the very edge of the harmonic defenses, their growls especially grotesque as black wisps of discord rolled off of them only to be pushed away by the mesh system.

And, at first, the terrified villagers believed that the animals feared crossing the zoti ’s invisible barrier.

And they grew complacent, coming out in small groups to watch the beasts, studying them at first before daring to approach the harmonic perimeter, seeing how close they could get to the ugly animals.

The creatures neither approached nor retreated, their hollow gazes unreadable.

The villagers mistook this for indifference.

A few rowdy teen boys even darted across the Elioud boundary, staying beyond it longer and longer during the daylight hours.

The dire wolves only watched, unmoved by the boys’ antics.

Until the evening that they howled in prolonged, discordant triumph and tore through the barrier surrounding the zoti ’s demesne, bursting from a cloud of warped shadow and flickering in and out of the visible plane.

Their first casualty was a farmer tending his horses in early evening.

His wife, who’d come to their front door, wiping her hands on her apron, stood in frozen horror as she saw the monsters creep from under the trees at the forest’s edge, their approach eerily silent and focused, and her husband with his back turned to them as he rubbed his favorite horse’s muzzle, unaware of his impending doom.

The horse caught their scent first, rearing, its front legs flashing and its hooves connecting with the farmer’s face. He went down, hard, stunned. And then the dire wolves were on him, still silent, still focused. Still vicious and thorough.

In a final act of dominance, they stopped ravaging her poor dead husband to stare at her, to let her know that they chose not to maul her as well. The largest beast then growled and whipped his head around, taking off at a trot for the forest with the others at his heels.

That moment haunted her for the rest of her life. It was the moment the farmer’s wife realized that these creatures don’t just kill. They understand the spiritual loss that they inflict.

William DeVries finished his quick shower and change of clothes, the weight of his current duties pressing on him, each task layering itself over the rising discord of the world around him. His harmonic signature felt inflamed, an ache just below awareness, like a low-grade autoimmune reaction.

He stepped from the large walk-in shower, its unpolished stone tile floor warm and wet, into the damp chill of the bathroom, and shivered.

Perhaps it was autoimmune. He hadn’t entirely shed the aberrant harmonies that marked him as human.

Fallen. Incomplete.

The thought hung there, dissonant and unwelcome, as if Willem’s very being resisted the idea that his corporeal nature might still hold sway over him despite working side by side with the other Elioud and on the same redemptive mission.

Yet he felt those splintered chords and unfinished melodies in his spirit, lingering in the background, faint but persistent—like a harmony waiting for its counterpoint, unresolved.

It made him see the world differently, feel it differently.

He found himself framing reality in strange new ways: harmonics and medicine, frequencies instead of structures.

It used to be different. Architecture had been his lens, his way of imposing form on chaos. Before Mihàil had offered him a greater purpose, he’d thought in steel and stone, shape and shadow sculpted in space. Raw materials provided by man and nature, neatly arranged under his direction.

Now? Now, it was all harmonic planes intersecting the real world—music shaping matter. Frequencies piercing heart and spirit, stitching the tangible and intangible together like an unseen thread. That had become his reality ever since he’d joined the Elioud four years ago.

After he’d lost Eva.

Eva. Just the sound of her name in his thoughts resonated a world of pain and loss, though it had grown softer, more muted as he immersed himself in this new world of harmonic healing, as he worked to craft methods and instruments to care for troubled individuals, the sick of body as well as spirit.

Grabbing a heated towel from the harmonic drying rack on the wall, he raised his temperature enough to dry his skin as he drew the towel over it, capturing any stray moisture.

The plush material absorbed the droplets, its warmth radiating back into his skin like a second layer of heat.

He paused, noticing that he now rubbed his neck with heated fingertips, unconsciously sending low-level harmonies into the taut muscles, relaxing them.

He was no fool. He knew that the admonition physician heal thyself held true for him more than most. But he also knew that to do it, he needed to accomplish it through service to those more gravely in need.

Like Mihàil, who remained in the ICU in his new clinic, the one he’d prioritized over the tactical operations center and the chapel. The one who’d prepared to sacrifice himself, despite his wife and baby daughter, for his sister-in-law and her friend, both virtual strangers to him.

And like that friend, a young woman named Germaine, who lay in a special harmonically shielded suite on the top floor of the clinic, possessed by the terrifying and unheard-of daemonic influence of Abaddon, Angel of the Abyss.

Even Eva hadn’t suffered in the way that Germaine suffered.

Continued to suffer despite the best care that medicine and Elioud harmonics could provide.

Finishing his simple grooming routine with a quick shave and hair comb, Willem dressed in a black polo and tan chinos—not nearly as fashionable as he’d been as an architect at one of the most prestigious firms in Amsterdam.

But he couldn’t think of a better uniform for his new role developing and testing music therapy that sought to align the disordered harmonics those here in this world with the celestial realm.

The last item he donned was a pendant, simple in shape but intricate in meaning.

Crafted from polished metal, its center bore the image of St. Michael standing resolute against the forces of darkness, his armor gleaming in detailed relief.

Encircling the archangel was an engraving of Van Gogh’s starry night sky, each swirl and star etched with care—a quiet tribute to Eva and their shared connection to the divine.

Beneath its artistry, subtle harmonic resonances hummed, tailored to soothe and shield Willem, reminding him with every breath of his commitment to protect and heal, to honor both her memory and the Elioud mission.

When he arrived at the clinic, he nodded at the staff behind the main desk tucked in the corner of the lobby.

He allowed himself only a cursory glimpse of the spacious first-floor entrance, its walls lined with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, allowing mountain vistas to enter the sightlines of anyone working or visiting.

On the main wall, a central mosaic blended Albanian motifs of suns, stars, and eagles with Elioud harmonic designs, symbolizing the clinic’s purpose as a bridge between Heaven and Earth.

The limestone walls, marble floors, and beechwood rafters and furniture, upholstered in cream, ivory, and soft rose, lent a soothing air, their cushions embroidered in faintly shimmering thread with subtle flowing patterns that evoked the music of the spheres.

The patterns had also been etched in copper light fixtures, whose frosted glass filled the interior with a soft, diffuse light.

At the shielded suite, he paused to center himself, breathing carefully to align his own harmonics with the grounded ones here.

Beneath his feet, the stone shifted subtly as if alive, something only an Elioud would sense, accommodating and embracing his weight.

Then he touched a fingertip to the St. Michael pendant, feeling the grooves of its stars and swirls, before placing his palm on the harmonic signature scanner at the suite’s entrance.

The quiet thrum of the scanner resonated in the air, its tone a gentle invitation to step forward.