Page 23 of Helsing: Demon Slayer
Ryan narrowed his eyes as he followed behind the women. Was it just a snarky throwaway comment based on his supercilious manner? Or did she know more than she ought about his military service?
Up ahead, Diocletian’s Palace loomed over the harbor. The seventeen-hundred-year-old imperial sea fortress built by the Roman emperor after whom it was named, now a UNESCO site, spanned more than thirty-thousand square meters and housed shops, cafés, restaurants, and apartments.
Ryan strode behind Dianne, swiveling every ten meters to survey the action behind them. His chainmail would alert him if anydaemoniacsapproached, but old habits die hard. He wanted to see the enemy coming.
That’s how he caught sight of the mob that formed just after they’d passed the second of three piers on the route to the city center. There appeared to be a leader in the midst of the ragtag group. He pointed at their trio. Thedaemonicplaythings swiveled and burst across the asphalt as one, humming and clicking like a swarm of yellow jackets. The air around them wavered.
“Run!” shouted Ryan, grabbing Dianne’s hand to lead her toward a bus station on their right. “Go, go, go! We’ve gotta find shelter.”
Mercifully, Dianne responded to his urging and began running. Despite this, Ryan had to modulate his stride so that he didn’t cause her to fall. He couldn’t afford to carry her.
Germaine trailed behind, terror twisting her features. She kept throwing glances over her shoulder at the speeding horde, which was unnaturally advancing on them.
Daemonsdid that. They rode their possessions hard.
“Harlequin, this is Demon Slayer,” said Ryan into his comm as he ran, aware in the back of his mind of the irony of that call sign. “I’m gonna need a little help. We’re about to be overrun by these zombie bastards. They’re literally out for blood.”
“I see them, Demon Slayer,” said Olivia, her cool tone suggesting that everything was copacetic. It was one of the things Ryan liked most about his boss. “On the other side of the bus station is a parking lot. Acquire a vehicle. Exfil team is still five minutes out.”
“Copy that,” he said. He tugged Dianne toward one of the coach buses, which idled. He briefly considered stealing it.
“Germaine!” said Dianne, managing to push her friend’s name out through her damaged vocal cords.
“I got her.”
Ryan burst into the open around the end of the bus in time to see Germaine trip and tumble to the pavement. She looked back, her hands propping her upright. Thedaemoniacswere only a few hundred feet away, rushing like a human river along the unobstructed street. He realized that his dash to recover Germaine had meant ceding the approach to the parking lot from this end of the bus station. They would have to go through it, a choice he didn’t want to have to make.
Ryan didn’t bother yelling at Dianne’s friend to get up. That only worked with soldiers.
Germaine surprised him by rising to her feet as he reached her. She took his hand. Ryan ran, not holding back. Somehow Germaine kept pace.
They made it around the bus where Dianne waited. Ryan grabbed her hand as they passed, tugging her along. His urgency must have communicated itself to his harmonic tactical system because he felt a tingle as his fingers wrapped around hers. A responding zing from her tunic skimmed his skin like a lover’s touch.
Germaine and Dianne had maneuvered between the bus and the station when Ryan spotted the leadingdaemoniacsstreaming into the spaces between buses from the street. Several broke off and headed around the end of their bus, clearly intending to cut them off on the other side.
They needed tomoveor they’d be trapped.
“Pick up the pace!” he yelled at Germaine, whose long strides carried her to the lead.
She looked over her shoulder at the onrush of the possessed, flinching and missing a step before catching herself. Then she raced across the gap toward a glass door into the station. Dianne followed, but by the time Ryan cleared the end of the bus the first attackers arrived. Ahead, he saw what had been a middle-aged woman—probably a wife and mother—reach for Dianne even as fingers clawed at his shoulder, his side, his upper back.
Fury ignited inside Ryan. He wasnotgoing to fail this mission. He was going to bring his principal, safe and sound, to Fushë-Arrëz.
Energy rolled up his arms as he blocked the nearest creature. As soon as he plowed into one, a tremendous harmonic wave exploded from him. It was like nothing that Ryan had experienced so far with the weapon that Miró had been developing for non-Elioud.
It launched the man he grabbed as well as half a dozendaemoniacsbehind him into the next bus and scattered others approaching that way.
Ryan kept running until he got close enough to pull Dianne’s attacker away and fling her into the bus behind them. Germaine had been blocked by severaldaemoniacsfrom entering the station but managed to break free and run ahead to the next entrance, trailing several of the creatures.
Ryan couldn’t take the time to make sure Dianne hadn’t been hurt again.
Scowling, he placed his palm on her upper back and said, “Get your ass moving, Markham.”
As he spoke to her, he felt harmonic energy transfer from him to her, crackling the air between them. An ethereal blue light flared along the fine woven mesh of the tunic.
Picking up her pace, Dianne hunched her shoulders and hustled past the bus. Ryan engaged several smaller possessed people, faster than their compatriots but less able to stop a trained fighter used to sparring formidableElioudwarriors.
Up ahead, Germaine tugged on a door, but it had been locked. Whirling, she began fighting off a group of women and feral children, their eyes glittering and teeth snapping.
