Page 71 of Helsing: Demon Slayer
Swallowing hard, he ignored it, his attention drawn to the faint dark iridescence rising from her skin like an inverted aura, its source intricately linked to her signature and something glinting on her forearm.
The burning pain intensified as he halted within reach of his patient. It pierced his skull now. With a strange breathless horror, he reached for the bracelet whose gleaming metal links clamped onto her delicate wrist.
An engraved metal charm dangled from the sly cuff, a charm that radiated malign energy like a black hole in the firmament. Willem grasped it between finger and thumb, its icy cold freezing the marrow of his bones.
He focused his wavering vision on the hand with two short fingers splayed to reveal three longer middle fingers. And in its palm, a baleful blue eye that echoed Germaine’s.
Ryan stood, frozen, his gaze compelled to look down at the monstrous beast lying at his feet. He hadn’t quite believed the streaming video his security team had provided him when they identified this straggler among the dire wolves. But, if anything, this dead creature radiated a grotesque menace the high-def image had been unable to convey.
Dire wolves.
That’s what they’d taken to calling them over the past few weeks they’d plagued the boundaries of the Kastriotis’ land, though no one knew exactly what they were. Actual dire wolves had roamed North America during the Ice Age. They were extinct. They shouldn’t exist here, in modern Albania, even in the mountains.
Even among those peaks called Accursed.
“Reminds me of a Warg,” said Miles, coming to stand next to him. The former CIA officer and current director of the Kastriotis’ Tac Ops center, had been tapped to help lead the security forces. Ryan was grateful for the older man’s extensive SERE training in the Marines. It had come in handy when taking their quarry down.
“‘Warg’?” he said, his arms crossed as he studied the unnatural animal. “You mean the evil wolves the orcs rode inLord of the Rings?”
Miles nodded. “Same. Though I never thought I’d use a fantasy-lit reference in a real conversation before.” He toed the carcass with his combat boot. It didn’t budge. “Somehow I doubt Tolkien imagined the smell.”
Ryan said nothing, just scanned the field around them. His people stood in a perimeter around the narrow area between the slope and forest, each armed with the Disrupter combat shotgun that Miró had worked around the clock to manufacturer in enough quantities—and with enough harmonic juice—to take down a dire wolf. Or at least, to deliver a shock to the creature’s unfamiliar nervous system that would incapacitate it long enough for a conventional weapon to kill it. Their taut mouths and narrowed eyes told their own story about their unspoken thoughts, but every single one of them stood proud and kept watch.
The locals were another story, however.
The farmers and shepherds, the beekeepers and herbalists had all been terrorized for days, starting with the unprovoked killing of a farmer south of Mihàil’s estate. Most refused to be outside between dusk and dawn, and many had quietly found lodging in Fushë-Arrëz itself, even sleeping in the open along the stretch of highway running through the town, or on the excavated grounds of the future chapel.
Now they stood in tight, murmuring clumps, the whites of their eyes glistening in the clear light shed by the extensive network of drones illuminating the shadowy field north of the small Albanian town.
Despite the careful calibration of light so that no shadows lingered within eyesight, a pall hung over the edges of the gathering. Ryan, however, didn’t want to fuel their speculation by having his second-in-command escort them to a safe distance. The faint hum of the drones, programmed to send out soothing sounds for the non-combatant humans, only underscored the unnatural silence of the trees edging the rocky open area.
András and Beta arrived next, having been on scouting and overwatch duty, respectively. The bigElioudstrode toward the dire wolf, his hands steaming in the cool evening air and his eyes glowing, reminding Ryan of an ancient Viking berserker who knew no fear. A few paces behind him walked his wife, her keen gaze continuously traveling the high ground around them before scanning the forest, a sniper rifle carried across her chest.
They drew close and halted on the other side of the dire wolf, András’s fingers clenching and unclenching as his hands visibly reddened. Ryan hadn’t ever seen the actual heat theElioudconjured from their very signatures before. He stood pinned to the ground, fascinated at the power the large demi-angel wielded. All at once he understood that András intended to incinerate the foul beast—and profoundly grateful that the stink and evening chill would be driven away.
Nevertheless, he said, “Elias and his second are on their way. Maybe wait until he gets a chance to take a look at the dire wolf before you turn it to ash.”
András didn’t respond for a moment, and Ryan feared theElioudbattle commander would ignore his suggestion. Then the big male shrugged, and his hands returned to normal human flesh and the steam dissipated.
“That’s fair.”
They didn’t have to wait long. Elias arrived with his second, Antonio, and a surprising third: Willem, the somber Dutch architect who hadn’t been out in the field since the December campaign against Asmodeus and his pet dragon, Kôkabîêl. Willem had lost his fiancée Eva after she’d fallen under the harmonic control of Yeqon—the Seducer, the original Watcher who’d lured the first woman and set theElioudlegacy in motion. Willem looked ashen now, as if haunted by more than memory.
A viscous thrill of dread rolled over Ryan. He shifted his feet wider as it landed in his still-healing gut, which ached deep inside, especially in the middle of the night.
And the middle of his nightmares.
He caught Elias’s serious gaze and nodded. They’d been in the training center together multiple times over the past week, each taking the measure of the other man, his leadership, and the warriors under his command. Ryan didn’t care that the knights weren’t ‘real’ soldiers in the sense of a modern army. Elias, Antonio, and the rest? They were the real deal.
He glanced at András as the three newcomers settled on the other side of the dire-wolf carcass. The giant Hungarian dipped his chin at Ryan: it was his show.
Ryan cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders, setting his feet in a wider stance and clasping his hands at his waist. “The rest have disappeared. Apparently, they don’t give a crap about this ugly bastard here.” He nodded toward the dire wolf, ignoring its open maw and dagger-length fangs.
Elias squinted and looked back toward the woods. “Until now, they have always hunted as a pack. This one is smaller than the others, yes, but they did not try to defend him. That strikes me as suspicious.”
Beta squatted next to the animal. An instant later, a small hooked knife, her karambit, appeared in her left hand. She struck at the creature’s throat before Ryan could anticipate her moves. Thirty seconds later, she’d detached the head. She looked over her shoulder at her husband, whose dark glare sent a shiver down Ryan’s spine.
“It is a wolf. A perverted wolf, corrupted by Abaddon’s influence,” she said, standing and turning back to the group with the dripping head at her side. Beta gestured at the landscape around them as she spoke. “This pack comes from these mountains.”
