Page 15 of Helsing: Demon Slayer
He grabbed the cotton swabs and hydrogen peroxide to clean the cuts on her face, upper chest, and arms.
“Saint Benedict’s Prayer for Exorcism,” he said as he doused a cotton swab.
“Seriously?” she asked.
He heard the skepticism in her voice. Ignoring it, he continued to dab the cuts on her face.
She persisted. “That seems a little superstitious for a badass ex-soldier.”
Dianne appeared more focused on their conversation than what he was doing, which was good. He was sure the lacerations stung, especially as thedaemonswould have used harmonic spurs to disrupt the cells they sliced through.
“You’d be surprised. Many of us wear medals into battle, even if we’re only battlefield believers. But since I’ve worked for your sister and her husband, I’ve learned that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your modern philosophy.”
Dianne pulled back at that. Her single eye, its blue iris flecked with slate, fixed on him. “Hamlet? You’re seriously quoting Hamlet to me?”
Now Ryan tossed the used swab onto the desk next to him with a bit more force than necessary. “What? Dumb gym bro can’t read Shakespeare?”
Dianne flinched, and Ryan regretted his fit of pique. As he turned to run his fingers through her hair, checking her scalp for unseen cuts and bruises, she said, “I’m sorry that my friends called you that. I should have said so before.”
Ryan looked at her. She looked upset even through the wild bramble of bloody cuts on her face. “Eat that chocolate,” he said gruffly, “your blood sugar is crashing.”
She blinked and reached for the chocolate bar where she’d left it on the bed next to her hip. As she moved, her breasts brushed Ryan’s chest where he leaned over her. A zing of electricity shot through him, making him want to growl. He ignored it. It had just been a long time since he’d been this close to a woman’s body. But he had a mission to do, and he’d vowed never to pursue pure, selfish pleasure again.
Dianne unwrapped the candy bar and broke off a square. “Would you like some?” she asked, holding it out to Ryan.
It would be so easy to lean in and let her feed the chocolate to him, her fingertips caressing his lips until he captured them with his teeth ….
Ryan shook his head. “I can wait until I’m done checking you. This patch on your scalp looks pretty tender. You’ll need to shower and wash it thoroughly so it doesn’t get infected. I’ll get you some antibiotic cream for afterwards.”
Dianne had popped the chocolate into her mouth. “Mmhmm,” she said.
Ryan began running his hands over her as he’d done in the corridor after the rabble ofdaemoniacshad ripped her from his hold. His heart thudded at the memory. He’d thought he’d lost her in the powerful harmonic eddies swirling around them. Their malevolent joy at gaining the object of their pursuit had damn near destroyed the structural integrity of that part of the cruise ship. Even now he could recall the spongy feeling of the steel beneath his feet.
But thedaemons’ distraction had been their undoing. As usual with the dumb mothers, driven and pulled this way and that by their irrational lusts.
That, and Ryan had nearly flared. He wasn’t even anElioud, just a former soldier wearing specially designed harmonic tactical gear. But, damn, he was glad that Miró worked for the good guys. It was his harmonic chainmail that protected Ryan. Was that the reason thedaemonhad referred to him as a ‘paladin’?
He shoved that thought to the side. He’d ask theElioudwarriors when he returned to the Kastrioti Estate. Over the past year, he’d learned to live with all the gaps in his knowledge of the angelic realm and its intersection with the human world. Beta, who’d married András in a battlefield ceremony last December, had told him not to pout about it in her typical straightforward way.
“Do you think that you are alone in a scary new world?” she’d asked. “What exactly about being in military intelligence prepared me to transform into a dragon, hm?”
“Good point,” he’d said. He didn’t have thecajónesto tell Beta she didn’t need the military or anything else to teach her how to be a dragon.
“I’ll shower when I return to my cabin,” said Dianne, bringing Ryan back to the present.
“Negative,” he said, his hand coming to her left shoulder. She winced and pulled away. He slipped his fingers inside her sleeveless blouse to feel along the top of her shoulder and around to her back. “That hurts?”
Dianne nodded. “Yes. That demented woman somehow managed to throw me against the wall. I banged my shoulder pretty hard.”
Ryan eased onto the bed and moved Dianne so that he could raise her shirt. He shone the penlight on her upper back where a massive bruise had already turned an ugly purple on her shoulder blade.
“I’ve got a cold pack and a sling. I can tape the pack to your back while you keep your arm elevated. I think it’s just bruised, but we’ll know more when we can get it x-rayed.” He pulled her blouse down and knelt on the floor again to manipulate her right knee. “This too. It’s pretty swollen, but I think it’ll be okay after I wrap it and put a cold pack on it. You’re not going anywhere for a few hours, so you might as well lie down and get some rest.”
He stood, ignoring the twinge in his upper back and the aches in his knuckles. He’d taken quite a few blows himself, but it wasn’t anything he hadn’t experienced before, sometimes on a daily basis. None of thedaemon-possessed dancers had the strength or training of any of theElioudwarriors with whom Ryan trained regularly. The pain certainly didn’t come anywhere near the gunshot wound he’d earned last June for stepping in to aid Beta against some Russian black-ops goons.
Ryan looked down at Dianne, who sipped the water he’d given her. “As for returning to your cabin, that’s not happening. As soon as we dock in Split, and they let us disembark, we’re getting off this cruise ship from hell.”
Dianne stared at Ryan’s back as he unbuttoned his tattered shirt and slipped it from his arms. Despite the blood and torn clothing, his skin remained perfect and unblemished by bruises and scratches, though she saw old scars reflected in the indirect light of the portable lamp on the desk. And when she thoughtperfect, she meant perfect. Or as close to perfection that a mortal male could achieve that it didn’t matter. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. The definition of his muscles, furthermore, seemed more due to actual physical labor than hours in a gym—despite what her friends had said. There were indecipherable letters scrawled on his upper back over a pair of wings. And on his left upper arm, a tattoo read “Helsing” in a gothic script over a wooden stake wrapped in a string of heads of garlic and dripping blood.
