Page 51 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)
T hrough the disorienting acoustics of the battlefield, Ryan heard Dianne’s anguished cry as he nodded acquiescence to his fate. “Ryan, don’t—”
He shoved it away, deliberately rejecting their bond, though the pain and loss fileted him to the bone.
He would deny it, when it came down to it—deny it to save Dianne.
If one of them must fall to the Angel of the Abyss, let it be him.
He would fight and die to distract Abaddon until András, leading the Kastrioti security forces and flanked by the Order of Malta knights, arrived to rescue her and Michael.
As he vowed this to himself, he rubbed the tiny silver key set into the ring that Dianne had given him before they’d arrived in Fushe-Arrez—the ring that he’d carried with him for weeks.
It was the last and most important decision he would make as commander of the forces of Light.
As his knees hit the cold earth before the one-eyed mercenary, the air split apart.
Something powerful detonated on the harmonic plane, exploding away from the two of them in an immense, world-shaking tsunami.
The overhead mesh of lights provided by the nanodrones, swept away on the airburst, winked out, leaving a starless, moonless black void.
Abaddon laughed, a horrific grating sound that seemed to come from the depths of the Abyss, which had, in fact, opened up around them. He raised his hand, twisting the fingers as if twisting a knob.
Or Ryan’s gut, which began to buckle and burn where Germaine had gouged him weeks ago.
Germaine, who’d been Abaddon’s vessel.
Ryan groaned and gritted his teeth, one hand pressing against his side as if he could stop the soul-crushing pain. Stop his insides from being torn apart. His vision wavered on the verge of blacking out.
Above him, he heard Dianne’s sharp gasp, carried to him on air currents manipulated by the Dark angel before him.
Abaddon laughed again.
“Submission is the first step. Soon, your will won’t matter at all.” The one-eyed mercenary stepped closer to Ryan, an unholy gleam lighting his avid features. “I will shed this puny vessel for your body. And then I will possess your woman, body and soul.”
Fury like magma erupted inside Ryan’s core.
Above him, Dianne’s husky alto began singing, sweet and low, and shaking. “ Crux sacra sit mihi lux . Non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro Satana .” The words illuminated a golden dome above her, faint at first but growing more forceful as she continued, drawing all eyes to her.
An answering glow sprang from the St. Benedict’s medal on Ryan’s chest, pushing the suffocating black shadows around him and his enemy back.
He pulled his combat knife from his boot and rose from his knees in one swift motion as Abaddon turned to scowl at Dianne’s exposed position. The daemon lord jerked his head toward waiting daemoniacs , who took off at a run toward the sniper tower.
Then several things happened at once.
Voices joined Dianne’s—the knights of the Order of Malta strengthening and bolstering her solo with their rich, confident chant, the Kastrioti security forces, the Elioud , including Miró and Willem.
And filling out the female parts? The zana , whose voices added a thrilling majesty to the chant.
The chorus drove the enveloping darkness before it as the sun banishes the depths of night at the breaking of dawn.
The sniper rifle sounded twice in quick succession as Beta took out the two dire wolves guarding Michael Markham, who rolled away and sprang to his feet, before running toward his companions-in-arms, who threw him a harmonic shield and mace.
And Ryan rammed his combat knife with all his strength and willpower into the gut of the human vessel of the Angel of the Abyss, whose shocked look would have been comical if Ryan had any humor in him.
He did not.
Instead, he pulled the shorter man towards him. With one hand clamping his enemy’s shoulder, he jerked the blade from side to side as he glared at the other man. “You will take nothing. Not my body, not my soul, and sure as hell not her.”
Then he shoved the dying man into the rapidly disappearing chasm while all around him, the Elioud and the donats made swift work of the dire wolves and daemoniacs .
Only the Locusts hung on until the last possible moment before being dragged into the depths of the Abyss, screeching and pulling dead daemoniacs with them.
As for the zana , they disappeared with the last of the Locusts, their radiant forms fading into the last of the night like dew.
Ryan, his Harmonic Tac Sync abuzz with data from all of the sensors and people reporting on their engagement with the forces of the Abyss, recognized the harmonic signatures of the zana near the Kastrioti estate where the dark-winged figures of chaos and storm had contributed to the confusion at the peak of the attack.
The zana had subsumed the frequencies of the other beings, quelling their turbulence.
Ryan didn’t know what that meant, but he hoped it was a good sign. Either way, the primeval Albanian spirits no longer appeared in system logs.
He’d finished reviewing all of the relevant statuses with as much patience as he could muster when András sauntered up to his side.
The big Hungarian stood, drenched, the rising sun outlining his wavy hair and broad shoulders.
He pulled out a canteen, drank deeply, and then handed it to Ryan, who accepted it without a word.
After Ryan had his share of water, András took the nearly empty canteen back and poured the remnants over his head, before shaking it vigorously.
He grinned at Ryan, who wiped away the water that landed on his cheeks with a thumb.
Ryan smiled back. His muscles ached; his senses had overloaded.
Relief threatened to take the form of collapse, but the weight of Dianne’s gaze in the pale dawn kept him standing.
András clipped the canteen to his utility belt. “You have put to bed any question about your call sign,” he said. “You’re absolutely a Demon Slayer. A ballsy one at that. Abaddon will think twice before he shows his head above that glorified crack in the ground he calls home again.”
“No, he’s The Beast,” said Dianne as she walked up with Beta, whose lively dark eyes shared a private joke with her husband. Dianne came to a halt in front of Ryan, where she looked up at him with open adoration. “ My Beast.”
Ryan looked down at her with a corresponding expression of love. “My Beauty Queen,” he said, lifting her hand and kissing the palm.
At her intake of breath, he grabbed her and tugged her against his chest. Dianne threw her arms around his neck and wriggled until his arms tightened, keeping her secure in his embrace. She grabbed his jaw and pulled his face down, meeting his mouth with her own.
András whooped. Ryan sensed Beta punching her husband on the shoulder, only to be grabbed by the big man and pulled into his arms. She struggled for a moment before settling against him. And then, they too shared a kiss.
Then Dianne slipped from Ryan. He frowned, but she put a finger over his mouth to stop his complaint. “I need to get rid of this,” she said, holding up the charm bracelet that Germaine had given her a lifetime ago.
Dianne ran to the last visible crevice of the vast chasm that the daemon lord had opened up as he faced Ryan and dropped the bracelet into it.
The earth immediately swallowed it up, closing over it as though healing from the unnatural rupture by sending the offensive item to its bowels.
Then she ran back to Ryan and kissed him again.
The joy and celebration died down a moment later as the four of them turned to face the remnants of battle.
The rising sun threw the dead and dying into stark relief.
Dr. Armand moved among them, along with Willem, who applied a Vitae Seal, a palm-sized graphene patch which he keyed to the individual’s fundamental frequency, to those hanging on by a thread.
For those less injured, Willem stabilized them with an Aurora Pulse Beacon, with precise bursts of energy before Dr. Armand and his medical staff reached them for triage.
Dianne put her fingers over her mouth as she surveyed the lower slope of the bordering mountain and the rocky ground before it that led to the Aerie.
It was her first battlefield, and it was a devastating sight.
Ryan knew that she’d spent much of the summer running obstacle courses and tactical drills over its uneven surface.
More advanced team members had used the rough ground for reconnaissance and stealth training.
Ryan had even begun training an alpha team composed of infantry and cavalry knights in guerrilla combat.
He’d believed all of that unnecessary, lessons to sharpen unneeded skills.
Lessons that had turned out to be decisive against the daemoniacs , many of whom appeared to have military training, all of whom had a level of mental discipline not usually found in the possessed. Even the dire wolves found the defenders to be hard targets.
Despite this, Kastrioti defenders and donats numbered among the dead and injured. Noble, magnificent horses and twisted, ugly dire wolves lay among them.
András’s visage resembled a thundercloud while Beta scowled, her karambit now in her hand as she manipulated the folding mechanism of the Indonesian fighting knife with one hand.
Ryan knew from experience that the former Czech Army officer used the activity as a kind of pressure valve for her temper.
He smelled smoke anyway. The acrid scent curled at the edges of the breeze, mixing with blood, earth, and the lingering charge of harmonics.
A harmonic bell sounded above them.