Page 41 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)
He stepped into the outer room, designed to look like a small apartment with a round chestnut dining table positioned in the far corner with a sitting area next to it.
There, a loveseat and two comfortable easy chairs, all upholstered in brocaded sage, silver, and cream sigils infused with healing harmonics, a low coffee table in the same rich color between them, beckoned with access to bookshelves, art on the walls, and reading lamp.
Behind him was a small kitchenette, ideal for one.
Floor-to-ceiling windows—glass so clear as to be invisible—opened up the entire wall between dining area and kitchen, making the tiny space feel larger and welcoming.
Not like the prison it was.
Well, perhaps prison was too strong a word.
Asylum . Sanctuary . Refuge . Those terms better suited the genteel restraint intended for the person lying inside the inner room, the one whose physical body now acted as a vessel to one of the most powerful daemons known to Elioud and humanity alike.
Or more precisely, it waited to act as a vessel.
A shell, a pale shadow of its former animated personality.
A slow shudder coursed down Willem’s spine. For a moment, he couldn’t move. He almost didn’t breathe.
He pictured the once-vital young woman inside, her fine, light-brown curls now lank and plastered to her cheeks, red scratches and cuts vivid against their wan skin, her body wracked with fever that he struggled to keep down with a constant flow of harmonically cooled air.
And then he squared his shoulders, pressed his lips together, inhaled the harmony programmed into the very materials of the carefully constructed apartment, and stepped forward to the panel hidden in the wall next to the dining table.
When he pressed his hand against it, it came alive under his palm like liquid silver, steadying his own sudden, discordant nerves.
It also illuminated the mirror-like sheen of the framed panel next to the table, revealing a two-way mirror into the bedroom where Germaine Grimes, a 29-year-old research scientist from the U.S.
, lay writhing continuously on her bed, held in place by invisible and silent harmonic bonds to keep her—and the rest of the world—safe.
For a moment, Willem stared at his reflection in the panel, his features ghosted over hers. He erased the image with a blink and shifted focus, scanning the diagnostics that translated her fractured spiritual state into an intricate tapestry of frequencies and metrics.
After he studied the patient’s baseline harmonic signature, he didn’t trust himself to listen to its corrupted melody unaided. Instead, he cleaned up the distortion with controlled swipes over the sound-engineering submenu, aligning it with the angelic frequencies known to the Elioud .
He wasn’t prepared for the result.
A pure, sweet sound washed over him like fresh rain in April, lifting his spirit. He briefly closed his eyes and let it fill him like a depleted reservoir.
When he opened them, he was shocked to see Germaine awake, her pale blue eyes gleaming intensely at him from her ravaged face as if she could see him through the opaque harmonic panel separating them.
Willem sucked in a breath, his own heartbeat erratic against its hard bone cage, pinned and displayed like a butterfly against dark-blue velvet.
He placed a fingertip on his St. Michael pendant. His harmonics steadied, and his breathing eased. He buttressed them from the well of higher frequencies stored in the suite’s reserve, itself grounded in the very bedrock of the mountain from which the clinic emerged.
Then opened the door to the inner room and stepped through the metaphoric looking glass to approach the beautiful young woman for the first time since snatching her from the clutches of the Angel of the Abyss.
Germaine no longer nailed him with a preternatural gaze. Instead, she shifted on the double bed, her movements increasingly energetic and exaggerated. As Willem approached, she growled and barked as she thrashed, her head rolling against the gel-cooled pillows in rapid denial of his presence.
Pain lanced Willem through the pendant on his chest like a bolt of lightning.
Swallowing hard, he ignored it, his attention drawn to the faint dark iridescence rising from her skin like an inverted aura, its source intricately linked to her signature and something glinting on her forearm.
The burning pain intensified as he halted within reach of his patient. It pierced his skull now. With a strange breathless horror, he reached for the bracelet whose gleaming metal links clamped onto her delicate wrist.
An engraved metal charm dangled from the sly cuff, a charm that radiated malign energy like a black hole in the firmament. Willem grasped it between finger and thumb, its icy cold freezing the marrow of his bones.
He focused his wavering vision on the hand with two short fingers splayed to reveal three longer middle fingers. And in its palm, a baleful blue eye that echoed Germaine’s.
Ryan stood, frozen, his gaze compelled to look down at the monstrous beast lying at his feet.
He hadn’t quite believed the streaming video his security team had provided him when they identified this straggler among the dire wolves.
But, if anything, this dead creature radiated a grotesque menace the high-def image had been unable to convey.
Dire wolves.
That’s what they’d taken to calling them over the past few weeks they’d plagued the boundaries of the Kastriotis’ land, though no one knew exactly what they were.
Actual dire wolves had roamed North America during the Ice Age.
They were extinct. They shouldn’t exist here, in modern Albania, even in the mountains.
Even among those peaks called Accursed.
“Reminds me of a Warg,” said Miles, coming to stand next to him.
The former CIA officer and current director of the Kastriotis’ Tac Ops center, had been tapped to help lead the security forces.
Ryan was grateful for the older man’s extensive SERE training in the Marines.
It had come in handy when taking their quarry down.
“‘Warg’?” he said, his arms crossed as he studied the unnatural animal. “You mean the evil wolves the orcs rode in Lord of the Rings ?”
Miles nodded. “Same. Though I never thought I’d use a fantasy-lit reference in a real conversation before.” He toed the carcass with his combat boot. It didn’t budge. “Somehow I doubt Tolkien imagined the smell.”
Ryan said nothing, just scanned the field around them.
His people stood in a perimeter around the narrow area between the slope and forest, each armed with the Disrupter combat shotgun that Miró had worked around the clock to manufacturer in enough quantities—and with enough harmonic juice—to take down a dire wolf.
Or at least, to deliver a shock to the creature’s unfamiliar nervous system that would incapacitate it long enough for a conventional weapon to kill it.
Their taut mouths and narrowed eyes told their own story about their unspoken thoughts, but every single one of them stood proud and kept watch.
The locals were another story, however.
The farmers and shepherds, the beekeepers and herbalists had all been terrorized for days, starting with the unprovoked killing of a farmer south of Mihàil’s estate.
Most refused to be outside between dusk and dawn, and many had quietly found lodging in Fushe-Arrez itself, even sleeping in the open along the stretch of highway running through the town, or on the excavated grounds of the future chapel.
Now they stood in tight, murmuring clumps, the whites of their eyes glistening in the clear light shed by the extensive network of drones illuminating the shadowy field north of the small Albanian town.
Despite the careful calibration of light so that no shadows lingered within eyesight, a pall hung over the edges of the gathering.
Ryan, however, didn’t want to fuel their speculation by having his second-in-command escort them to a safe distance.
The faint hum of the drones, programmed to send out soothing sounds for the non-combatant humans, only underscored the unnatural silence of the trees edging the rocky open area.
András and Beta arrived next, having been on scouting and overwatch duty, respectively.
The big Elioud strode toward the dire wolf, his hands steaming in the cool evening air and his eyes glowing, reminding Ryan of an ancient Viking berserker who knew no fear.
A few paces behind him walked his wife, her keen gaze continuously traveling the high ground around them before scanning the forest, a sniper rifle carried across her chest.
They drew close and halted on the other side of the dire wolf, András’s fingers clenching and unclenching as his hands visibly reddened.
Ryan hadn’t ever seen the actual heat the Elioud conjured from their very signatures before.
He stood pinned to the ground, fascinated at the power the large demi-angel wielded.
All at once he understood that András intended to incinerate the foul beast—and profoundly grateful that the stink and evening chill would be driven away.
Nevertheless, he said, “Elias and his second are on their way. Maybe wait until he gets a chance to take a look at the dire wolf before you turn it to ash.”
András didn’t respond for a moment, and Ryan feared the Elioud battle commander would ignore his suggestion. Then the big male shrugged, and his hands returned to normal human flesh and the steam dissipated.
“That’s fair.”