Page 47 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)
M iles watched the monitor in front of Greta, activated from its recessed cabinet in the mahogany table in the conference room, its screen flickering with an array of live data feeds.
They’d both set up office here hours ago, ever since Helsing and the Elioud had taken down the dire wolf, when it became clear that their usual workstations wouldn’t be enough to manage the chaos.
It was easier here—easier to track multiple data streams, monitor tactical deployments, and keep a direct line open to Olivia and Mihàil.
Now, every display hummed with real-time updates—bio-signatures, drone formations, harmonic-grid fluctuations—and Miles could feel the weight of it all pressing against his ribs.
It had been years since he’d been deployed as a Marine, first to Iraq and then to Afghanistan, but no soldier ever forgot the anxiety and adrenaline rush of battle.
He’d had more than one firefight where he and his fellow warfighters were surrounded and outnumbered.
But never surrounded by a vast army that had far more firepower than they could bring to bear, and only once without hope of support or rescue. As then, the only way forward was through. And to never lose hope. They were, after all, the Archangel Michael’s favored troops.
Are you? asked a skeptical mental voice that sounded a lot like his last CIA case officer, the one who’d loved to test Miles’s ingenuity at retrieving targets more than she cared about planning and preparing for complex operations.
It might have made him legendary among Special Operations Group operators, but it almost cost him his life more than once.
It certainly drove him to the edge of despair, at least until Olivia gave him a way out.
She was the one who was favored—her, and the other Elioud . Would the Commander of the Heavenly Host or his sidekick, the quirky cherub Zophiel, deem Miles and the other humans worth rescuing?
“Sir,” said Greta, bringing Miles back to the conference room in the TOC, “I’m getting a harmonic anomaly on the pilgrim’s path from the clinic.
Surveillance drones register a modulation we’ve never encountered before.
” She paused and looked at him, her eyes wide.
“Sir, Dianne Markham’s harmonic signature has been overwritten, not just suppressed or corrupted.
She has the signature of a powerful daemon . ”
Miles leaned closer to study the graph depicting the harmonic signatures in that sector. Historical data showed that Helsing and Dianne Markham as well as Olivia and a team of four had been at the top of the mountain near the clinic only ten minutes before.
And then, Dianne’s signature had disappeared, only to be replaced by a chaotic, almost formless, frequency that reminded him of K?kab?êl, the Star of God, imprisoned in the Accursed Mountains as a seven-headed dragon and freed by the Dark Irim Asmodeus.
The dragon who’d rampaged in this very valley, nearly killing them all until Zophiel lopped off its final head with an angelic broadsword called Caelistra.
Zophiel and her sword were nowhere around.
Miles’s pulse hammered him behind his left eye, presaging a killer headache.
What did this mean? Had a daemon taken on Dianne’s avatar in order to infiltrate the Kastrioti stronghold? Miles was a little shaky on his daemon lore.
“Replay video at timestamp 20:38,” he said, reassured that his voice sounded unmoved.
Greta nodded. Miles saw her fingers tremble as she typed.
In a large pane on the young specialist’s monitor, Ryan and Dianne stopped on a terraced step where they appeared to argue as rain soaked them. What little protection their harmonic gear had offered against the elements had been depleted.
Dianne moved to go around Ryan, who reached for her.
Only to reel backwards, one arm hanging awkwardly. His system diagnostics showed that severe dissonance had reverberated through his hand and up his arm, temporarily limiting the big soldier’s motor control in both.
“Zoom in on Dianne Markham’s wrist,” he ordered, though he already knew what they’d see.
“What is that, sir?” asked Greta, her voice barely above a whisper as the video image enlarged on an intricately engraved metal artifact that radiated a malign energy.
“A tether to Abaddon,” he said. “The zonje ’s sister has been claimed by the Angel of the Abyss. Open a line to the secure bunker.” When Greta just stared at him open mouthed, he said, “Now, lieutenant.”
Miles watched as the surveillance drones assessed the disharmony originating from Dianne Markham. He read Helsing’s command logs, saw when the former Army Ranger tried to disarm the priority defense-directive that he’d ordered when the dire wolves had reached the clinic.
Tried, but the daemonic noise had blocked the command.
Miles didn’t wait to speak to Olivia. Even as he bent to type in a system override for Helsing’s directive, the livestream showed in color-coded visuals the powerful electromagnetic pulses that the drone swarm concentrated on their target, now moving as Ryan ran with Dianne in a fireman’s carry.
Dumb grunt must have it bad , thought Miles, both amused and slightly horrified that his friend took a bolt of electricity that would have stunned a bear or disrupted a daemon ’s fundamental frequency, scattering the fractured daemonic energy far and wide.
Fortunately for Helsing, his clothing and boots had enough grounding to protect against a lightning strike, so the current drained into the churning mud of the unfinished terrace path.
That didn’t stop the big man from pitching forward, unable to break his fall with either his disabled hand or the other one he used to keep Dianne from flying from him on the disintegrating slope.
“Go for Harlequin” came Olivia’s matter-of-fact answer to Greta’s comms request.
“Harlequin, this is Aerie Actual,” said Miles, who clung to protocol now to keep his cool.
He gripped the back of Greta’s chair until his knuckles whitened as he went on.
“We have a situation with Demon Slayer and Dianne. You might want to take a look at the live feed that Greta has shared with you.”
“Reviewing now,” she said, stress evident in her voice. “You overrode the priority protocol?”
“Yes, ma’am. But, ma’am, it appears that Demon Slayer’s signature has stabilized Dianne’s.
In fact, their fundamental frequencies overlap in the system, almost as if they’re co-dependent.
As long as that holds, sensors won’t flag Dianne as an enemy target.
What does that mean given that she wears Abaddon’s charm? ”
Olivia ignored his question. “Draka and Giant are en route to you. Divert them to the pass-through to pick up Demon Slayer and Dianne. Once they arrive at the Aerie, Helsing will take command of our forces, such as they are. What to do about Dianne will be his decision.”
Miles’s frustration grew. He shoved it aside. “Yes, ma’am.”
Olivia sighed. Miles could almost see her run her fingers through her fine blond hair as she paced in the small tactical operations center in the bunker built deep inside the mountain behind the clinic. “Miles, I need you to focus on what I’m asking you to do now.”
Miles, hearing the gravity in her tone, turned and walked away from Greta so the young officer wouldn’t overhear. “Asking?” he said. “Not ordering?”
Olivia laughed. There was a slight catch in the sound.
“You and I both know that we pretend to have a command hierarchy here because it suits us. But I rely on your experience and good judgment more than you know.” She inhaled loudly enough that he heard it over the comms. “I count you as a friend. What I’m about to ask you is something I won’t order you to do. ”
Miles stilled. He’d never heard Olivia so uncertain before. “Anything,” he said without hearing her request.
“I won’t hold you to that,” she said before adding, “but I will ask. I need you to make your way to Trieste and recover an MSS operative named Liú Xiù. She saved my life more than a decade ago. Now I need you to save hers.”
Dianne’s arm burned and ached to the bone, making it nearly impossible for her to think about anything except for the warm muscle and hard shoulder under her abdomen as Ryan carried her down the mountain.
Darkness ate at her vision like acid. Low voices muttered and shrieked inside her head while invisible insects crawled on her skin, stinging and biting.
She felt simultaneously feverish and chilled as the rain continued, waves of pain wracking her until she realized that the vibration originated somewhere in the air above her.
It became stronger and stronger, threatening to split her head like a ripe cantaloupe.
Then lightning struck. Or that’s what it felt like.
Electricity connected to the bracelet, coursing along her arm in a mad race for her heart.
She was falling through the void, breathless. Yet still connected to that warm mass …
… that gripped her and rolled a moment before they hit the ground with a jarring thud and grunt, Ryan’s body shielding her from the impact. Somehow, she’d managed to keep her Glock in her hand without shooting him.
For a stunned moment, they lay there, entwined as the rain soaked them, Ryan’s chest heaving and her heart racing.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Just a little kiss from our surveillance drones. They seem to think you’re owned by a daemon. But they’re wrong.”
Dianne swallowed. “Are they coming back?”
“No.” He shook his head, his gaze never leaving her face. “Baxter overrode the protocol. Besides, your harmonic signature no longer reads as daemonic .”
“Why is that?” she asked, just wanting to keep him talking as long as she could, even if their surreal conversation took place amidst pouring rain, mud, and a looming daemonic invasion.