Page 54 of Helsing: Demon Slayer (The Dragon’s Paladins #1)

The horses stamped the ground and moved restlessly, but they didn’t bolt—a testament to their familiarity with gunfire and their training.

The men looked toward where the shot had traveled, but the leader didn’t flinch. Instead, his eyes narrowed, and his fingers tightened on the reins in front of him.

“Message received,” he said. “But have you considered that we may be friends and not enemies? Or would you rather eat only half-ripe Trebbianera grapes under the July sun—” he gestured back toward the grapevines where she’d been stuffing the sweet-tart globes into her mouth as fast as she plucked them— “and pay for it later with stomach cramps and diarrhea when you could have real food and wine in comfort and safety inside?”

Almost as soon as the handsome stranger asked this question, Xiù’s gut gurgled a warning, and nausea made her mouth water. She said nothing, however.

The leader must have taken that as a sign to continue. “You won’t do well, Signora, without friends. If we’d wanted to harm you, Matteo could have killed you from a thousand meters away. And the rest of my men have established a perimeter at a hundred meters around your position.”

Xiù heard the truth in his voice. And reason—buttressed by the presence of the Beretta ARX160—confirmed that he was telling the truth.

The leader raised his voice, projecting it with the practiced ease of a commander. The hair stood on the back of Xiù’s neck. “Alessio, show yourselves.” Then he waited for Xiù to see that she was surrounded.

She focused her gaze beyond the five men in front of her, sweeping it in a broad arc along the rows of vine-covered trellises and dusty paths beaten between them toward the embankment on the north.

Male heads peered around and above the rustic lattices—some shaded by unadorned straw hats, others bare, sweat gleaming on sun-darkened foreheads.

None of them moved fast or showed any revealing expression.

They simply made themselves known: deliberate, quiet, unthreatening in posture but unmistakably there.

To anyone else, they might have seemed like field workers pausing in their toil.

But to Xiù—hollow with hunger, coiled with tension, Beretta in hand—they were undeniable evidence.

This wasn’t a bluff . These men had training, discipline, and a clear command structure.

Whatever they wanted from her, they’d come prepared.

“So, you see, Signora, you can’t possibly kill all of these men, even if you shoot like a sharpshooter, before we overtake your position.”

He fell silent. None of the men, either at his side or along the perimeter, moved. Xiù found herself grateful that he respected her ability to reason through her situation without impatience or posturing.

This man was a true leader: formidable, sure of himself, and capable of immense brutality and destruction, yet all the more restrained for it.

“Perhaps I will kill as many of you as I can before that time, Signor,” she said at last, pitching her voice to reach him. “One shot, one kill as the Americans say. Do you wish to test the number of bullets I have?”

She saw his eyes widen in surprise, not solely at the British-accented Italian she used. Another one of her peculiar gifts, this ability to send her voice, whether soft or ringing, wherever she wished.

She continued when he said nothing. “And you will die first, Signor.” She paused. “Recall those men advancing on the back of this building.”

The leader’s brow furrowed as he took in her words before he clipped out a command.

He handed his Benelli M4 to the man on his right.

The men on either side of him wheeled their horses around and trotted back toward the perimeter.

Then he looked toward Xiù’s hiding place, gesturing sharply with his two fingers in a familiar military sign.

She heard the scrabble of feet outside followed by the receding thud of steps.

The leader, who’d kept his predatory gaze on the doorway, spoke once silence descended as his men settled into their positions.

“We are at a standoff, Signora.” He spoke conversationally, pausing to give his words their desired effect.

“I’ve no doubt you are an excellent shot with that Beretta 92x, but you and I know that its range is limited to fifty meters.

I, however, have a sniper qualified at a thousand meters. ”

After a long moment in which the only sounds were the soft whickering of his chestnut and the buzzing of winged insects among the clustered fruit, the leader dismounted.

Then he unsnapped the cover of his holster and pulled out his weapon with two fingers, exaggerating each movement.

He bent, his gaze still on the doorway around which she peered, and laid the weapon at his feet before kicking it beyond easy reach.

“You’re an intelligent woman, Signora. I very much want to help you, though I will also be honest with you: I think you can help us as much as we can help you.”

Xiù waited, letting the silence stretch taut.

It was merely to underscore her self-determination.

She would not be compelled into action, regardless of her choices.

In the time that she took, she studied her interlocutor.

Besides being muscular without an ounce of fat on his frame, he wore his medium-brown hair long.

His faded clothing had a lived-in appearance that stemmed from more than the past ten days.

Not in current military service then .

Yet he stood with the precise bearing of one who’d carried himself that way for years.

A former military officer now farming or making wine who’d taken up arms and organized a militia after the power and local authorities failed.

She assessed how quickly someone so disciplined and fit could dive into the dust for his discarded handgun. Fast enough.

She didn’t want to die today. Her aching stomach, cramping around unripe grapes, attested to that. She was dehydrated, dirty, and sweaty. She needed someplace safe to recover, get food and supplies, assess her situation.

She needed to get to Albania and Olivia Kastrioti.

For that, she’d need to leave this suffocating stone house and let this man and his men take her. She had to trust that he wanted her alive.

Alive was all that mattered.

He would not find her an easy captive, if that’s what his ulterior motive was.

After another moment, she stepped into the shadowed doorway, allowing her eyesight to adjust to the daylight before coming outside. She halted half a meter in front of the opening, both hands on the Beretta, which she kept trained on the Italian.

“I keep my weapon,” she said.

He stood, blinking and nonplussed. Then he said, “You’re not Italian.”

Xiù tilted her head, the weight of her long, black hair swaying across her upper back. Suddenly she was aware of how dirty it was. “Your sniper must have lost his scope.”

He held her gaze a moment longer before he smiled, a wide, lazy grin. “He never had glass on you. If he had, he would have told me how beautiful you are.”

Admiration threaded his voice, but Xiù ignored it. It sounded sincere, not suggestive.

She shrugged a shoulder. “You didn’t consider me a threat.”

“My mistake.” He paused, watching her. “I won’t make it again. But, Signora, I promise you that I—we—are here to keep the wolves at bay, not join them.”

Xiù kept her gaze on him. “What do you propose?”

He seemed to sense her acceptance. “First, I am Lorenzo DeNova. And this is my vineyard.” As he said this, he gave a little flourish to include the land around them.

“Well, one of them. We can escort you to Bagnacavallo”—here he gestured east toward the town— “where you will find food, shelter, and likeminded people.”

Xiù lowered the Beretta. “I will go with you,” she said. She didn’t tell him her name, however.

Lorenzo assessed her. “Can you ride?” He didn’t ask her for her gun or for her to holster it.

“I’ve never ridden a horse before.”

“Then you’ll ride behind me.” He whistled and the chestnut walked forward, its front hooves stepping gracefully and its proud dark eyes watching Xiù as if it too assessed her.

Lorenzo turned without waiting for her answer and without fear and thrust his boot into the stallion’s stirrup before vaulting into the saddle. Then he held out his hand to Xiù.

“Wait.” She returned to gather her rucksack from the cottage. She levered it onto her back and cinched the top and bottom straps before slipping the Beretta into a side pocket of her cargo pants where its outline was visible.

Lorenzo gripped Xiù’s hand, easily hauling her up and behind him as she sprang from the ground to a seat behind his saddle.

He never said a word, but the four men who’d accompanied him earlier joined them as they crossed their defensive perimeter.

Xiù, holding herself upright though it was impossible not to press her breasts against Lorenzo’s broad back, noted when the other men in his contingent fell in behind them.

By her count, there were thirty of them.

Impressive, given that they were only ten days from a massive geomagnetic flare that had extinguished all known electrical systems—and disrupted the civilized world.

Now was the moment for people to become unhinged.

Unless she was wrong about the magnitude of the disaster …

The horses’ hooves clattered against the worn stones of Bagnacavallo’s narrow medieval streets, the sound swallowed by the thick summer air.

As they turned onto Via Cadorna, the Convent of San Francesco rose before them—its ochre walls sun-bleached and weathered, the arched portico casting long shadows across the courtyard.

A Renaissance cloister peeked through the open gate, its columns cool and pale beneath the midday heat.

Xiù caught the scent of rosemary and incense as they rode toward the entrance, where time seemed to fold in on itself.

As they neared the gate, a faint shimmer caught the sun. Xiù’s gaze swept upward. A figure lay motionless along the roofline, half-shadowed by the terracotta tiles. Not a twitch, not a blink. She didn’t need to see the rifle aimed at her to know it was there.

Two armed men stood inside the gate in the shadow of the arch, one straight-backed, the other leaning against a column.

Both alert, however, eyes scanning with practiced detachment, fingers brushing the stocks of their rifles.

Behind them, a substantial stone planter, its vibrant geraniums incongruous with the stark presence of weapons, provided a natural barrier for the courtyard beyond.

Lorenzo rode past the two guards, who saluted. He nodded once in crisp acknowledgement. The other riders followed them into the courtyard, where a woman stood wiping her hands on a towel lying on her shoulder, her eyes narrowed as she took in Xiù.

She whirled to look up at Lorenzo. Gesturing with a stiff hand chopping the air at face level, her eyes flashing and her voice rising, she said, “Lorenzo, you magnificent idiot! Did you rescue her or recruit her for bottling?”

That’s when Xiù realized that her lips and cheeks were stained as black as her fingers. As scalding mortification seeped up her face and down her neck, the woman turned back to her, the exasperation on her features softening.

“You poor thing! You’ve been out there this whole time, haven’t you?” She shook her head, tutting softly. “You’re safe now, even if my brother—Our Lady’s Gift to Bagnacavallo—let you poison yourself on grapes not yet fit for eating.”

She glared at Lorenzo, who only chuckled and dismounted. He put his hands on Xiù’s waist and lifted her off his horse as if she weighed nothing.

Lorenzo looked at Xiù. With a mock sigh, he said, “This, this is my sharp-tongued sister Beatrice, who always smells of tomatoes and who makes the best cappalletti in brodo in all of Emilia-Romagna.”

His sister stepped closer, inserting herself between Xiù and Lorenzo. She slipped her arm inside Xiù’s and ignored her brother. “Come, I’ll feed you. While you eat some lentil soup, I’ll put my surprise-bringing brother and his always-hungry men to good use.”

She looked at Lorenzo. “Since you’ve brought me another mouth to feed, you can make yourselves useful. Go see if that old tractor outside Lugo is hiding any gifts. And the residents need help with the laundry.”

Beatrice pulled Xiù along at her side, hastening into the building. Xiù, dazed at how quickly everything had happened, looked back at Lorenzo, already deep in conversation with a small group of armed men.

He looked at her, flashing a brief smile punctuated by a nod before he returned to the men.

Xiù let herself be led into the cool hush of the ancient convent, the scent of broth and stone wrapping around her like a promise she wasn’t yet ready to believe.