Page 45 of Helsing: Demon Slayer
“Say something else. Anything. Just keep speaking. How long have I been out?”
“Not long,” she said. “Just a few minutes, if that’s what you’re worried about. Long enough for me to buy some supplies and bandage you.”
Yup. Her voice sent a little jolt through him, and it wasn’t entirely due to their sexual chemistry. That was just physical. This was on the harmonic plane.
Sighing, he shifted in his seat and felt at his side while he answered her. “To answer your questions: I’ve been equipped withElioudtech that allows ordinary humans to use harmonics—sound and light waves, heat, motion, basically any physical properties that underpin Creation. It’s what gives angels their unique powers.”
“Okay,” said Dianne, clearly trying to understand. “That’s what lets you talk to Olivia without a cellphone?”
“Yes, and it’s what protects you in that tunic. And gives the chocolate its healing powers.” His fingers felt a bulky padded outline beneath a damp section of his T-shirt. “Good work, Markham. You’d make a fine medic.”
“Thanks.” She didn’t sound grateful for the recognition, however. “The rest of the chocolate bar is in the center console along with some juice.”
“Copy that.”
As Ryan reached for both items, Dianne went on. “You said your system is offline. Does that mean that it’s fried like your cellphone?”
Ryan took a large bite of the chocolate before answering. “I thought so, but I’ve started to get some minor feedback. Normally it’s self-charging, but it got so depleted it just didn’t have a chance to recharge.”
Ryan didn’t want to tell her that he thought his system had somehow managed to draw a charge from her tunic. That would be a little too complicated to try to explain, especially as he didn’t know why that would be himself, though he suspected it had to do with the nanotracker he’d put on her back on the ship. It might be acting as an amplifier for another harmonic source, namely Dianne. They should have both been overwhelmed in the last attack, but maybe she had a little angel blood like her sister.
He took another bite of the savory-sweet paprika-infused dark cocoa, letting it melt on his tongue and fill his nostrils. It really was deeply, deeply invigorating beyond the expected effects. And it crowded out any lingering desire for Dianne.
“So we just need to keep driving until you can contact Olivia?” said Dianne, interrupting his thoughts. “What happens if we get to the border first?”
“We do what your parents told you.” Ryan shoved the remainder of the chocolate into his mouth, feeling energy surging through him as he chewed and swallowed.
“What?” she asked, sounding startled. She looked at him, those mesmerizing eyes of hers making him lose his train of thought for a moment. “Don’t accept candy from strangers?”
Reluctantly, Ryan pulled his gaze to the highway visible through the windshield and nodded at the vehicle in front of them. “Look for the helpers, Markham. Look for the helpers.”
Dianne hadn’t expected the ‘helpers’ that Ryan mentioned to be a tour bus. She did as Ryan instructed and kept the bus in sight, although it chapped her ass to drive past the exit leading to the hospital. Then again, Ryan seemed better after the chocolate and juice, at least as far as she could tell because he’d apparently used all of his conversation reserve and quit talking to stare, narrow-eyed and clenched jaw, around them.
After half an hour, the tour bus left the highway unaware of its tail and headed toward the small town of Vrgorac. Dianne, who’d stewed in curiosity the entire drive, wondered why Ryan thought that the coach bus would be of any use to them, especially when it turned into a parking lot behind a picturesque white-stone church dominated by a belltower. Another tour bus already sat in the lot, and dozens of people milled around. She parked next to a small gray car filled with four middle-aged women.
“‘Meduhgorge’?” she asked, struggling to pronounce the wordMedugorjewritten in black letters on the bus’s side.
“Medyougoria,” he said, correcting her. “It’s a pilgrimage site in Bosnia-Hercegovina where the Virgin Mary appeared a few decades ago." He gestured toward the buses. “These faithful tourists are our ticket across the border.”
Before Dianne could question him, Ryan opened his door and got out. After grabbing his backpack from the backseat, he bent over with a wince and said, “You coming, Markham?”
Markham. He wanted her to call him Ryan, but he kept calling her by her last name. She wasn’t one of his damn soldiers. She wanted something more.
She got out of the car and followed him as he joined a knot of tourists chatting next to a coach bus. By the sounds of their accents, they were American.
Well, that was a good sign. But Dianne still didn’t understand how they would infiltrate this group, especially when a tall, middle-aged man approached. But he seemed to think that they were a couple he had on his list and greeted them warmly. Dianne said nothing as Ryan drew her into his injured side, presumably to hide it, and spoke to the guide. Despite her tension, the warmth and strength of his arm around her made her feel safe. Cherished even.
She never wanted that feeling to end.
Twenty minutes later, they boarded the second coach bus with the others and found a seat in the back where they listened to the tour guide describe how the Virgin Mary originally appeared in these mountains to six young believers in 1981. It was only after they’d crossed the border into Bosnia-Herzegovina that Dianne remembered the two men near the church in Trnbusi. Making it past the border without incident sure counted as a blessing in her book.
“Here,” said Ryan, who sat next to the aisle. He held out a wrapped bar. “I can hear your stomach. It’s been a while since you had anything to eat.”
Dianne realized she was hungry as he said this. When had she eaten anything? Right. The mall outside of Split. She accepted the candy, suddenly heartily sick of sweetened cocoa. What she wouldn’t give for a hamburger. Maybe once they’d found another car, they could stop somewhere and eat.
Acutely aware of Ryan’s thigh pressed against hers, she watched the scenery outside her window as the bus, now in a long line of buses, climbed the mountains to Medugorje.
In the small Balkan city, buses lined the traffic circle next to St. James Church, where countless pilgrims streamed toward an outside space capable of seating five thousand faithful during worship services. Today, the exterior overflowed, even in the sweltering heat of midsummer. More people appeared in the distance like ants, climbing the site of the first Marian visions, known as Apparition Hill, as well as a nearby hill known as Cross Hill.
