Page 50 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)
Ryan shoved those questions aside. “Copy that,” he said, scanning the monitor for tactical data on the Kastrioti estate.
What he saw sent him back in time to a moment in Afghanistan where his squad was trapped on a mountain ridge, taking fire from the Taliban on all sides.
He gritted his teeth, the phantom wind of that Afghan ridge whispering at the edge of his mind.
He shoved it into the lightless hole where it belonged.
“Prepare for Aegis Pulse in 30 seconds.”
“Copy that, Aerie Actual.”
Ryan nodded at Greta to initiate the weapon after the defenders synchronized for the short-range harmonic burst targeting the Kastrioti estate grounds. He watched the daemoniacs scatter like roaches under a spotlight, giving his fighters time to regroup.
The reprieve ended too quickly.
The Pulse rippled over the possessed. Even before the energy dissipated, Ryan saw it.
The biggest roaches barely flinched. Instead, they shook off the powerful jolt of electromagnetic energy as dogs shake off water.
Then they were on the defenders with renewed violence.
He clenched his fists against the almost-undeniable urge to grab weapons and a vehicle and haul ass to engage the enemy from behind.
Before Ryan could direct Greta to send another localized Aegis Pulse with a higher frequency, harsh warning sounds blared throughout the TOC.
“Sir, the clinic is under assault,” said Greta, terror turning her voice into a thready whisper.
Ryan stood, transfixed for a horrible moment as crazed humans mercilessly whipped by a towering obsidian Battlebug threw themselves at the entrance door.
His breath stuck in his chest as he observed them slamming against the security grille, each impact draining the system’s charge.
As bodies fell, newcomers clambered over them.
Behind the attackers, more humans lifted a battering ram and maneuvered their way up the terraced slope like some Hell-spawned millipede.
A wide chasm opened in front of the clinic, issuing endless numbers of Locusts from its black depth who swarmed the entrance, crawled up the walls, and smashed now barrier-free windows.
At this rate, they’d be conquered before sunrise.
Movement in a lower monitor panel caught his gaze: mounted donats , led by Elias’s second-in-command, Antonio, rode toward the clinic.
As their resonant and commanding chant swelled up the mountain slope ahead of their charge, an iridescent rainbow of divine music lit up the night.
One group flicked their harmonic ribbons at the daemoniacs , slicing through them.
Meanwhile, a handful of knights, flanked by the other donats, synchronized harmonic bursts from their chant gauntlets in layered waves of energy against the six-legged freaks.
Thank God . Elias had read the battlefield the same way Ryan had—Abaddon hadn’t sent his troops against them in a frenetic solo attack.
He’d sent them in a coordinated, multi-pronged assault that would make any Army general green with envy.
The Dark Angel of the Abyss clearly sought the Kastriotis in their fortified bunker.
The bad news? The clinic wasn’t designed for a focused, protracted siege.
Ryan was at the nexus of their defense, but he didn’t know how to counter something like this. He belonged on the battlefield. He belonged out there, face-to-face with the enemy. Not relegated to a control room, watching the battle unfold from behind glass and circuitry.
He belonged with Dianne. Not here, not trapped in this room, but with her.
At the thought of her, he closed his eyes for a moment so that he could focus on picking out Dianne’s unique signature in the maelstrom of music and cacophony within the Aerie.
There! She’d taken up a position on a sniper’s tower behind the training center.
Even inside the TOC, Ryan could feel her resonance with his own heart, could hear her unique melody—a sweet, high sound reminiscent of the Bosnian mountains where he’d fallen in love with her.
Their individual signatures had melded into a new, richer harmony, knit together with the strength of her faith and underscored by his pain and loss, threading through him like a wordless song he could never forget.
Turning from the valiant young officer, Ryan paced away before activating Dianne’s private comm channel. “Beauty Queen, this is Beast. Sitrep.”
He felt her respond before he heard her in his ear—a tightening along their braided harmonic tether that echoed in his heartrate. He took an involuntary step toward her.
“Beast, this is Beauty Queen,” she said, her voice husky as if she too felt him across the distance.
He detected anxiety and fear as well as determination in her harmonics.
“Bullets don’t work on the Locusts. I’m focusing on the assholes at Mihàil and Olivia’s house and grounds. Bullets do work on them.”
“Copy that,” said Ryan, letting his pride in her strengthen his voice and flow along their spiritual bond.
Before she spoke again, the tether between them burned—fury sizzled along the threads. “Those friggin’ daemon dogs are sneaking along the slopes next to the Aerie.”
Ryan stiffened. He could feel her swinging her sniper rifle around, locking onto the monsters. “Stay on overwatch,” he said, tension crackling in his command. “Don’t call attention to your location.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, her voice lowering to that of the focused sharpshooter, “they won’t know what hit them.”
A moment later, the recoil from her shot rippled through space, its impact true.
She’d hit one of the dire wolves.
“Whoo-hoo!” said Dianne in a low whisper, putting glass onto another target.
Ryan turned back to the tactical feed on Greta’s monitor. He frowned as he scanned it, then his breath stalled. A single marker blinked on the grid, well outside the Aerie compound’s secured perimeter.
An instant later, Dianne’s sharp hiss confirmed it. “Oh, crap! That’s Michael. What the hell is he doing outside the quad?”
At the sight of the dire wolves surrounding her brother, mounted on a horse and flinging a glowing harmonic ribbon to keep them at bay, Dianne’s numb fingers slipped from the sniper rifle. For a moment, she lost all thought, staring until her dry eyes burned.
And then she gripped the rifle again, sighted through the scope, and squeezed the trigger on a controlled exhale. A dire wolf’s head exploded a few seconds later, but by then she’d moved the sight onto another target.
And for a minute—no more—she actually entertained the idea that together she and her brother could annihilate these foul Hellpuppies.
Until the alpha dire wolf sprang onto the rear of Michael’s mount. The horse screamed and reared, its front hooves flailing as two more dire wolves came in low for its exposed belly.
It was enough to dislodge an experienced horseman. For Michael, who’d only learned to ride a few weeks ago, it was more than enough to throw him to the ground.
Two of the remaining dire wolves were on him before Dianne could re-center her scope. One clamped onto a leg while the other did something far more disturbing: he placed two meaty paws on Michael’s shoulders and lowered his bloody muzzle to within inches of her brother’s face.
The world dimmed for a fraction of a second. Then, as if torn from thin air, the mercenary commander from the ambush at the bus station in Split appeared next to Michael and his monstrous attackers. The one whose men had battered and brutalized Ryan.
Something about his corrupt body scared her in a way that seeing daemons didn’t.
Fear corroded Dianne’s stomach. For the first time, a splinter of doubt cracked through her fear. Was it just her and Germaine that Abaddon wanted? Or …
Then the mercenary’s cruel voice reached her, resonating everywhere all at once—honeyed, mocking, insidious. “Come to me, Dianne Markham, and I will release him. Wait, and you will hear his screams and taste his fear.”
As if on cue, Michael’s faint, strangled cry echoed around the mountainside, weirdly resonant in the predawn air.
“Let’s end this tug-of-war over Dianne, Your Lowly Abysshole. You want a fight? Leave the boy and face someone who knows how to finish one.”
Dianne barely registered Ryan’s voice—until she realized she was already crawling toward the hatch, her body moving on instinct. She had to get down there, had to do something to keep Abaddon from taking Michael. From hurting the man she loved, who’d come out to save them.
Dianne started to protest, to pull at the hatch, when Beta’s warm hand dropped onto her shoulder, grounding her. Startled, she looked up at the Elioud female to see her finger on her lips. Beta gestured back toward the edge of the nest. Together, they crawled to the lookout point.
Beta pointed toward the quad and the buildings surrounding it where an immense rhythmic glow swallowed the inky night like the first breath of dawn.
András and Elias come . Her crisp voice resounded in Dianne’s thoughts, leaving no room for doubt.
But that promised rescue was moot. They wouldn’t get here in time to save Ryan.
Because the Angel of the Abyss stepped toward the man she loved, who stood tall and erect on the Aerie’s perimeter.
As the Dark Angel came closer, overhead drones illuminated the field of combat, capturing the surreal moment that reality twisted and buckled around Abaddon—as if the battlefield itself shrank before him, bending to his presence.
He grinned, the evil expression underscored by his empty eye socket. “I only delayed the inevitable, Paladin, but now you will bow before your lord.”
Then Dianne watched in utter horror as Ryan, instead of pulling out his combat knife, simply nodded. “Ryan, don’t—” But the words choked in her throat.
He stepped forward. He knelt.
Something rippled in the warp and weft of the world around them, as if the very fabric of existence shuddered at the significance.
When Ryan spoke, the overhead drones amplified his voice so that all present heard his surrender. “You win. I have nothing left to give.”