Page 29 of Helsing: Demon Slayer
“What do you want me to do?” asked Dianne behind Ryan, clearly ignoring his answer about her not doing anything. The panic in her voice had died. “I can help. I tended bar a few summers on the Cape during college.”
Ryan refrained from saying that knowing how to mix Cosmopolitans and open beer bottles had little to do with making poor-man’s grenades. Instead, he pulled bottles from the shelves and lined them on the counter behind him.
“You’re gonna need a larger supply,” she said when he didn’t answer. “And someone to hand them to you.”
“Okay,” he said without looking at her as he began ripping towels into strips for wicks. “Grab all of the alcohol there is, the higher the proof the better. After that, check and see if there’s a supply in a stockroom or pantry or we’ll only have a few bottle bombs.”
Not nearly enough to keep the meat puppets at bay. But he didn’t say that thought aloud.
“Right,” she said. She turned and left his side.
Behind him on the café floor, he heard Germaine panting and muttering. He didn’t have the time to focus on her. Through the windows and door, he could hear the multitude ofdaemoniacsoutside on the promenade and street from the pier. Despite the glass buffer muting the clamor, he estimated that the most determined individuals would be upon them in ninety seconds.
A familiar icy calm descended. TheEliouddescribed it as their battle senses engaging. Even though he didn’t have the ability to read harmonics or heat signatures, Ryan had gotten to the point where he could almost envision them.
Today his senses had heightened to an acute edge, slowing his sense of time and lending a clarity to his vision that he’d never before experienced. He knew that he would have time to prep all of the bottles. St. Benedict’s Exorcism Prayer chanted through his thoughts as he doused all of the makeshift wicks with vodka before stuffing them into open bottle necks.
Dianne dropped a crate of bottles on the counter next to Ryan’s elbow. She began twisting caps from each and sliding them in front of him. They worked in silence, quickly and efficiently assembling a stockpile of simple incendiary devices in the crate.
And then time ran out.
Ryan looked up as the first wave of the doomed swelled on the sidewalk in front of the café.
“Here,” said Dianne, handing him a couple of flaming “cocktails,” her hands steady, her eyes fierce with purpose.
He hadn’t even seen her procure a book of matches or lighter, but he didn’t question it. Grabbing each burning bundle, he strode to the door, Dianne at his heels. She unlocked the door, shot him a glance filled with confidence and terror and something else, and then pulled it wide.
Ryan yelled and lobbed the bottles at the feet of the forward attackers, one to the north and the other to the south. They crashed against the pavement, flaring up onto the clothing of the targets. Ryan didn’t stay to see any more results. He pivoted and ran back to the counter, where Dianne handed him two more bottles before restocking the crate with half a dozen more and running after him.
For the next thirty seconds, they kept up a steady bombardment. But although individuals caught fire, shrieking and stumbling into their comrades, sometimes even pulling several down as they flailed, the implacable horde kept coming.
Ryan threw the final Molotov cocktail, which hit a tall male in the head. As the target’s hair burst into flames, his murderous glare remained locked onto Ryan. He shoved his companions out of the way and rushed toward the café.
Ryan managed to slam the door in his face.
Then thedaemoniacroared and smashed the top of his head into the glass, sending a web of cracks racing from where his forehead connected.
The creature kept bashing his skull into the reinforced material, blood streaking it as flames engulfed him. Dozens of moredaemoniacslaunched themselves at the windows, their violent battering sending rivulets of breaks and blood along its once pristine surface.
It would be only moments before the glass gave way, and they exploded into the formerly cheerful café with a rank deluge of gore anddaemoniclust.
The roar of an engine and automatic gunfire cut through the bestial noise. A moment later, a Range Rover plowed through the attackers, pinning some under tires and against the glass. It screeched to a halt with the rear passenger door aligned to the café door.
An armed Kastrioti asset opened the vehicle’s door and brandished a combat shotgun, aiming it at them. Ryan pulled Dianne away, and the man blasted the weakened glass door.
“With me,” said Ryan, pulling Dianne after him before she could say anything.
She let him guide her to the other man, who pulled her into the SUV. Ryan waited until she’d been seated before pivoting to run back to get Germaine, who’d managed to sit upright, leaning on her elbows. He scooped her up and carried her back to the Range Rover as the driver and the other man shot their weapons from both sides at the undeterreddaemoniacs, who climbed over each other like rats or insects trying to get into the armor-plated vehicle.
Ryan lunged into the SUV’s rear seat, pulling the injured woman onto his lap while yelling, “Go, go, go!” even before he swung the door closed.
A moment later, a massive detonation shook the waterfront promenade thirty meters away. Its blast wave rocked the Range Rover, sending the SUV’s rear tires sliding across the pavement. All around them, the possessed citizens and tourists fell abruptly to the ground as if they were marionettes whose strings had been sliced at the same time.
The driver recovered from the fishtail and floored the gas, speeding east on the D410 highway and freedom.
Behind them in the bell tower of the Cathedral of St. Domnius, a one-eyeddaemoniacstood watching impassively as the reinforced luxury SUV gunned its engines and raced away. The vitreous gel had dried on his cheek, but he’d already forgotten the initial spurt of pain as his eye burst. The human to which the eye belonged had long succumbed to its master’s will—a master in the form of adaemonwho’d withstood the painful harmonics that had overcome his fellowdaemons.
The samedaemonwho’d engaged the paladin inside a weak female vessel, now broken and discarded like the worthless plaything she’d been.
