Page 40 of Helsing: Demon Slayer
Where was Mihàil’s helicopter? His wings might not work, but he hadn’t arrived in a helicopter either.
She frowned. Ryan had said that they’d meet Mihàil and his team along this highway forty klicks from the mall. A place called Trnbusi. How far was a klick? Surely not too far. And they’d already gone some distance since the plan was made. Maybe the helicopter waited for them a short distance ahead.
Dianne glanced at Ryan. He hadn’t answered her question about how he stayed in touch with Olivia. Maybe he wore an invisible earbud tethered to a cellphone in his backpack or pants. She had to find it, but searching his pants’ pockets would have to wait.
Kneeling, she reached into the backseat and pulled Ryan’s backpack into her lap to search for a phone. Besides half a dozen chocolate bars, a wicked black knife that she almost cut herself on when she unknowingly engaged its release, and a large stainless-steel water bottle heavy with water, the bag held only flat, black cartridges filled with bullets.
In the front pocket, she found a leather travel wallet. Inside, besides an American passport, a credit card, and some cash, there was a worn photo of a beautiful woman with long light-brown hair and the head tilt of someone used to taking selfies. She wore a bikini and shiny lip gloss over a wide smile of bright teeth.
A surge of jealousy clutched Dianne’s chest. Who was she? Ryan’s girlfriend?
Just then Ryan muttered. Dianne shot a look at him. She needed to get her head in the game,now. Shoving the photo back into his wallet, she slid it into the backpack. There was no cellphone or anything that looked like a communication device in the pocket. She’d just have to get Ryan into the passenger seat somehow and drive farther on the highway, hoping that she’d stumble on Mihàil’s helicopter or at least find a place to stop and get help. She had to trust that thedaemonshad targeted Germaine and that she and Ryan had been collateral damage.
Dianne got out and ran around the front of the car. She tugged and shoved at the unconscious Ryan for a good ten minutes before two preternaturally handsome men in T-shirts and jeans coming from the direction of the church approached their borrowed Volkswagen. Dianne didn’t know whether to be thankful or terrified. She decided to be thankful when they asked her something in what she took to be Croatian, motioning to Ryan.
She tried to tell them what she needed in English in case they understood her. Miraculously, they did. They smiled and motioned to Ryan, signaling that they would move him. Dianne shot a nervous glance around the highway but saw no other cars or any sign in the clear-blue sky that a legion ofdaemonsamassed above. She nodded and watched as the two men, one on each side of the Volkswagen, moved Ryan into the passenger seat. Dianne, who’d stood with her arms crossed scanning the environment for danger, realized with shock that it hadn’t taken them more than a few seconds.
When they’d finished, she asked them about Trnbusi, though she wasn’t sure what answer she expected to hear if they didn’t speak English. To her surprise, one of the men smiled and gestured back toward the church. Was that Trnbusi? Relief flooded her.
She tried to warn her saviors not to head north, sure that the scene of the earlier attack would still be a mess, but they only smiled again.
One said, “We go to battle evil.” And then the other said in a voice that Dianne felt inside her chest, “Dianne, May God bless you many times today.”
Dianne’s jaw dropped. How did he know her name? She wanted to ask, but her throat closed against the question.
The men smiled again, waved, got into their car and headed north against Dianne's advice.
In the time it took her to get into the driver’s seat and look in the rearview mirror, the car carrying the two men had vanished. That’s when she noticed that the tunic that Ryan had insisted that she wear glowed softly. Premonition moved through her, but of what, she couldn’t say.
Closing her eyes, she inhaled and said aloud, “Please God, help me. I can’t do this alone.”
She didn’t know what else to say or ask, so she put the car in drive, checked over her shoulder, and then backed up until she could pull out onto the highway.
Trnbusi turned out to be a small collection of white-stone houses with red-brick roofs two minutes’ drive south of the church. Even though Dianne drove slowly through the village, she saw no helicopter. She had no idea where one would put down anyway.
Ryan did, however, stir enough to groan and open his eyes halfway as they drove through a deserted intersection. Dianne glanced at him, fear spiking at how pale he looked. He’d seemed so strong, so vital on the ship and later during their running battle againstdaemons. Now he seemed smaller and less intimidating somehow, even though the seat barely contained his massive bulk. She wanted more than anything to take care of him, to make sure he was safe and could heal.
“Hey,” she said. “How’re you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been hit by a truck. A tractor-trailer,” he said, the humor in his voice undercut by its weakness.
He lifted his head to look around. She could see the strain it caused him to do that, something so simple as hold his head upright. He let it relax after only a few seconds and closed his eyes. “Where are we?”
“Trnbusi, but I don’t see a helicopter anywhere.”
“Guess we’ll have to keep going then. How are you to drive? I need a little more time.”
“I can drive,” she said, studying him. “For as long as necessary. But we have to stop somewhere. You need medical attention, and I don’t think it can wait until we get to Fushë-Arrëz. I doubt there’s a hospital there anyway.”
“Negative. We can’t draw attention to ourselves. Thedaemonstargeted Germaine and Mihàil, but they would have taken us if they could have. They just didn’t have enough human foot soldiers there to throw at us.” He paused, inhaling and holding his breath as if he held pain back with it. “You’d be surprised at the state-of-the-art private clinic your sister and brother-in-law funded.”
“Do you have a cellphone to call my sister?” she asked, looking back at the empty road, her terror for Ryan warring with her terror about thedaemonshunting them. “I looked in your backpack but didn’t see one.”
“In my pants’ pocket.” His voice sounded weaker. “Just get me some chocolate. I’ll contact Olivia once I’ve eaten it. If we have to drive all the way, we can stop at the Shkodër safehouse for medical supplies. How do you feel about learning how to suture a wound?”
His question ended on a groan.
Panic gripped Dianne. She squelched it. She’d left the chocolate she’d tried to feed him in the center console. Even if it had made her feel better after being battered by viciousdaemoniacs, she doubted it would dull the pain she’d cause by her clumsy stitching of his torn flesh. But it would certainly calmhernerves to give it to him.
