Page 38 of Helsing: Demon Slayer
Mihàil stood, undaunted, as a grotesque, glimmering black ethereal locust towered over him on hind legs thick with hooked, razorlike spurs.
“Abaddon.” Fury and disgust roughened thezoti’s refined baritone. Beneath his feet, the asphalt smoked. Faint luminous wings rose from his back. “Time to return to your abyss where you belong.”
“You are outnumbered,drangùe,” said the Dark creature in soft, clicking sibilance before jumping on Mihàil, who disappeared inside its rapacious jaws.
Dianne screamed again, but Ryan forced her inside the car and shoved her into the passenger seat before dropping into the driver’s side. He slammed the door shut, pulled the gearshift into drive, and then stomped on the accelerator. The little sedan fishtailed, burning rubber as twodaemoniacsjumped on the hood and trunk, trying to stop them. Ryan, one hand on the wheel, leaned out the window and shot the one on the trunk before grappling with the other, who was only dislodged when he hit the brakes.
Ryan swerved to miss the possessed man, who’d tumbled onto the highway, pressed the gas pedal to the floor, and sped south toward Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The last thing he saw in the rearview mirror was Willem climbing into the back of the Range Rover while Marta unloaded the Defender againstdaemoniacs.
Eleven
AsRyanhadanticipated,he and Dianne escaped the ambush on the highway while the diabolical spirits fixated on the others. He refused to think about what had happened to thezoti, one of the most powerful demi-angels walking on Earth. And there weren’t many. Not nearly enough to protect humanity from the insatiable gluttony ofdaemons.
Dianne said nothing until they’d left the scene far behind.
“Is Mihàil an angel?” she asked, wonder and uncertainty making her sound young.
Ryan dared a glance at her. She looked forward through the windshield with unfocused eyes, her arms crossed as she rubbed them. The gossamer material of her tunic no longer glowed. It seemed too fragile to protect its wearer against the vicious claws and spurs of thedaemons, who looked like nothing so much as obsidian locusts, gleaming and translucent and exuding a foul miasma of decay and death.
He shoved the memory into the back of his thoughts and looked back at the highway, which remained clear ahead of them. They hadn’t even reached Trnbusi when thedaemonsattacked. Should he still head to the extraction point? What had happened to thezoti’s helicopter, the one with the QRF team he’d personally trained?
“No, your brother-in-law isn’t an angel,” he said to Dianne as he tapped his ear to re-engage his comm, but no chirp answered him to signal an active system.
“But I saw wings. And he justappeared.”
There wasthat. In all of their training, Mihàil had only ever jumped harmonics a maximum of five klicks. The helo couldn’t be far. He looked out the windshield, scanning the eastern horizon for the telltale rotors and gleaming glass before answering Dianne.
“His ‘wings’ are vestigial, more a suggestion than a reality.” He glanced over at her again. The wound in his side hurt like a mother. But if he looked at Dianne every now and again, he could keep his vision from swimming. Maybe not remember to breathe, but that was a different issue. “Mihàil is anElioud, a demi-angel. So is your sister.”
Ryan wished he wasn’t driving. He couldn’t really evaluate Dianne’s reaction to this news.
“I see.” It was clear from her tone of voice that she didnotsee. But her next question caught him off guard. “They found us because of Germaine. She’s possessed, isn’t she?”
“Yes.” He left it at that.
Dianne fell silent for a long while, long enough for Ryan to scan his senses for any connection with his harmonic tactical gear, which had been keyed to his fundamental frequency.
Nothing. It was completely offline.
At the time Miró fitted the custom full-body system onto Ryan, he’d understood the physics well enough, but even so, it was a mystery how his brainwaves interacted with the nanomachinery or how it converted environmental heat, sound, and light into energy to defend againstdaemonicpower or communicate with the ops center.
And it was a mystery now whether the invisible network of tiny bots was temporarily drained or whether thedaemonpossessing Germaine had destroyed it.
Mihàil had called their Dark adversaryAbaddon.
The name gave Ryan the willies. There were legions ofdaemons, lesser angels who’d followed the DarkIrimin their perfidy against Heaven. So many that theElioudhadn’t bothered to name them all for Ryan and their other human assets.
But everyone had been briefed on Abaddon, the Dark Angel of the Abyss, and his army of Locustdaemons.
Dianne interrupted Ryan’s thoughts. Apparently, she’d also been thinking about the terrifying abomination that had manifested just as they left the battle behind.
“What happened to Mihàil?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
