Page 49 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)
R yan clenched his jaw against the need to keep checking on Dianne, who sat next to him in the backseat of the Land Cruiser, looking for the world like one of his team members.
Despite wet hair clinging to her face and soaking clothes, her alert posture and keen gaze took in the night outside her window.
In her hand, she held the Glock in a practiced, comfortable grip.
Something told him that she intended to fight.
He wanted her safe, secure—in a bunker somewhere far from Abaddon and his insect-like goons.
But he also wanted her at his side where he could protect her, with ammo and with harmonics. He wasn’t sure that he’d get either.
“You need a Disrupter,” he said, his voice gruff. “Or better yet, a long gun. I’d prefer to have you on overwatch because it sounds like the dire wolves brought friends.”
She looked at him, blue eyes gleaming in the SUV’s dim interior. Her expression gave nothing away. “Happy to oblige, though Draka didn’t spend a lot of time teaching me more than the basics.”
Beta glanced back at Ryan. “ My basics” was all she said before turning back to the front.
Ryan made a decision. “You’re with Draka then. She’s your team leader for the time being.” He kept his gaze on Dianne, but he saw Beta’s nod from his peripheral vision. He released a breath he didn’t know he held. He hadn’t been sure the Elioud warrior would accept his command.
They rode on in silence, the dire wolves’ howls having faded away after they passed through the gate to the Aerie compound, where overhead drones illuminated coordinated movement as Stasio Kos’s mellifluous voice resonated through the space, guiding them.
Besides the Kastrioti security personnel, most of Fushe-Arrez’s inhabitants sought shelter within the compound’s defenses.
The few that didn’t had already sought shelter at the Kastrioti estate, also fortified.
Ryan didn’t wait for András to bring the SUV to a full stop before he opened his door to jump out and sprint toward the ops center, resisting the almost-overwhelming urge to abandon his command—to make sure Dianne was safe himself .
Beta had charge of her now, and she would do a far better job of keeping Dianne out of harm’s way than he could afford to.
The last view he had of Dianne before he entered the ops center was of her walking at the taller Beta’s side, the two women deep in discussion.
As far as he could tell, Dianne respected Beta, but she didn’t fear her.
That was something both unexpected and encouraging.
Beta scared many of the recruits with her intensity and ferocity.
“That’s one brave woman,” said András, holding the door to the ops center open for Ryan. The Elioud had shifted his harmonics, easily beating Ryan to the entrance. “She’s terrified, but she trusts you implicitly.”
Ryan didn’t want to talk about Dianne. Now was neither the time, nor the place. And he had a job to do. But András gripped his shoulder before he could move past the other man and into the building. Ryan halted and aimed a flinty stare at András.
András lifted his hand, palm up. “Hear me out, Helsing. This isn’t just about her.
It’s about you, too.” His tone was quiet, measured—but the weight behind it pressed like iron.
“You didn’t just claim her. You threw down a gauntlet to one of the most powerful Dark angels in creation.
Your integrated harmonic signature may have fooled our sensors, but you won’t fool him.
Now he has an added target: you .” András exhaled, steam curling into the chill night air.
“If you fall, she falls with you. If he takes you, he takes her. This isn’t just love. It’s daemonic war.”
Terror gripped Ryan’s heart in its stony fist. He could accept laying down his life for Dianne—but not losing her in the process.
“What are my options?” he asked, the strain evident in his voice. “Because I wouldn’t break our bond if I could.”
“Understood, brother,” said András, as serious as Ryan had ever seen the giant Elioud . “Stay off the battlefield. Keep her inside the harmonic defenses.”
Just then commotion drew their gazes to the broad, tree-lined quadrangle in the center of the compound. Elias and a contingent of donats rode on horseback toward Ryan and András, Michael Markham, garbed in black Order tactical attire, among them.
Before Ryan could react, battle klaxons reverberated around the expansive quad, jarring the already discordant atmosphere.
His Harmonic Tactical Synchronization system pulsed with incoming data—infrared heat signatures, directional resonance shifts, and angelic sonar echoes mapping enemy movement in spectral outlines.
But layered beneath the tactical readout, something else stirred—an instinctive recognition of the harmonics threading through the space. He no longer simply received battlefield data; he sensed it, the resonance patterns a silent rhythm threading through the clamor.
At the same time, a flood of additional tactical data from the ops center streamed into his system—unit positions, drone feeds, security-perimeter analytics.
He scanned for Miles’s comm ID, expecting the steady presence of Aerie Actual, but the line was blank.
He swore, low and virulently, recalibrating his priorities with brutal efficiency.
András, who had no need of the HTS that translated sensor data in Ryan’s tactical gear, vibrated on the edge of flaring, an instinctual Elioud reaction to a threat.
“Go!” he said through clenched teeth, heat shimmering around him.
He didn’t wait for Ryan’s response. Instead, he pivoted and ran toward the next building where lurid green and black light pulsed above the roofline before a mass of Locusts surged over the edge.
With a great leap, he collided with the foul beings, his angelic light exploding outward, illuminating the entire quad.
Beneath him, the donats began chanting, their harmonious voices a solemn bulwark against the cacophony of war.
The Gregorian tones, rich and unwavering, carved through the night like sacred thunder, threading through the tumult with an authority beyond the physical.
The resonance did not merely fill the fortified quadrangle—it altered it, weaving a harmonic barrier that pulsed against the dissonance, anchoring those who fought within its grasp.
Where shrieks and howls threatened to consume, the ancient cadence held firm, steady as a heartbeat in the storm.
Ryan wrenched around and ran through the spacious lobby of the ops center, cursing himself for ever seeing it as well-designed, and headed toward the corridor that took him to the main control room.
A young lieutenant, who sat at the closest workstation, raised her gaze as he came to stand near her.
“Where’s Baxter?” he asked, ashamed at the hint of accusation in his voice.
“The zonje sent him on a mission,” she said, her own voice remarkably calm, though Ryan’s growing sensitivity to harmonics revealed agitation in hers. “She wouldn’t do that unless it was for him to get help, right?”
Ryan almost barked at her, but his new insight told him that she was barely holding on.
“Yes,” he said in answer to her question, though he had no idea what Olivia’s reasons were.
“More knights and other Elioud travel here from Eastern and Southern Europe. Likely the zonje sent Baxter to tell them we need reinforcements now.”
She nodded and turned back to the composite data feed on her monitor.
Ryan leaned over her shoulder, staring at a pane in the upper right that tracked the surges of dissonant energy from the Locusts, who swarmed over all of the buildings in the Aerie.
The wolves had broken off circling their defensive perimeter and had melted into the wooded slopes around the compound.
Ryan’s battlefield instincts screamed at him.
He didn’t doubt that the death-class canines were searching for another vulnerability while the defendants of the Aerie had their hands full.
And their hands were full.
András commanded the Kastrioti forces, directing them to hold specific zones against the Locusts.
The donats fought in two groups, one under the command of Elias and the other under an unfamiliar knight, who acted as harmonic pincers to contain and neutralize Abaddon's Swarmtroopers.
Despite this, the defenders faltered as the Black Swarm pushed past the perimeter in a matter of minutes.
The commanders rallied them, but their efforts barely held the line as men and women fell under the onslaught.
Ryan’s nerves tightened. What looked like mad chaos had a method to it—a method unlike the wild abandon typical of daemons and the possessed.
Anticipating a feint by a trio of Battlebugs, he was just getting ready to direct András to the indoor shooting range when a panicked voice broke in over the system-wide All-Call.
“Aerie Actual, this is Eaglet 1. We’re being assaulted by hundreds of daemoniacs , some of them armed.
They keep pushing past our perimeter from the northeast quadrant.
Dozens of winged beings dropped from the sky not long afterwards.
Now strong winds send rain and hail against our sensors, making it impossible to see. ”
Those dark-winged spirits from the clinic earlier? What the hell were they doing there? Did Mihàil have anything to do with their appearance? Or were they simply attracted to the tumult? Were they friend or foe?