Page 77 of Helsing: Demon Slayer
Relief flooded him. He hadn’t known for sure that the microreactor would actually work if their harmonic-energy grid went offline. He’d been at the meetings where Miró introduced the design and operational specifications for this cutting-edge technology.
Small nuclear reactors weren’t a new thing; the U.S. Navy powered their submarines with them. Yet they still weren’t used widely on land as alternate energy sources, although they were safe, low-carbon options, because of public fear about failures at prominent nuclear power stations: Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.
But Mihàil had been prescient about the need for the reliable and secure energy afforded by nuclear power. Long before the escalation between theElioudand the Dark angelic forces, thezotihad sought infrastructure and industrial development in his home country. In 2015, shortly after Mihàil and Olivia had married, Kastrioti Industries contracted with a private energy company to fabricate and deliver a microreactor as a test implementation in the Albanian mountains before scaling up in various industrial locations.
The terminal engagement against Asmodeus and thekulshedërthat destroyed the Kastrioti estate six months ago made Mihàil, Olivia, and theirElioudbrethren rethink everything, including their energy resilience. Installing the microreactor became an immediate priority rather than an abstract business goal.
Miró’s R&D team, made up of some of the most advanced minds that he’d cultivated among human researchers, had supercharged the development of the microreactor, making it both more advanced and ready for installation sooner. In fact, it had only been hooked up to their harmonic grid a week before the geomagnetic flare.
There hadn’t been enough time to harden its operation.
He could feel Dianne behind him. Close, steady. And that should have been enough. But it wasn’t, not anymore. Not after the way his world had shifted the second she was in danger. Not after what he’d risked to get her back. Nothing else mattered. Dianne was his mission now. And Olivia had accepted his choice. He’d seen it in thezonjë’s eyes, heard it in her voice, in what she didn’t say.
The tether Olivia had rigged between his and Dianne’s harmonic gear didn’t explain this, not entirely. The tunic she’d worn during their escape from Split had been gone for weeks, its resonance long faded. And yet, he still felt her.
More than that, heknewher presence, as if something had anchored them together beneath the surface, deeper than harmonic frequency. A memory stirred—barely conscious, but now undeniable—of that moment near the bus station in the port of Split, when he’d fired a bolt of energy into her tunic to protect her.
He hadn’t known what he was doing then, only that he’d needed to keep her safe. Now he saw it for what it was: the first expression of something older than the tether Olivia had laid between them. The tether hadn’t created their bond. It had only amplified what was already forming, into something unspoken, unplanned—yet unmistakably real, even if only one of them had dared to want it.
Now he just had to ensure that they got back to the Aerie before the Locusts and dire wolves attacked. Before Abaddon tried to claim Dianne.
Overhead, nanodrones thrummed in heightened surveillance. He felt the warm vibration as they passed the hidden sensors on the path, the ones that checked his signature and identified him as a friendly. Nevertheless, after what had transpired here earlier, he gripped his Disrupter shotgun tighter, scanning the environment around them for any signs of the dire wolves or the ominous beings that had seemed to materialize from volcanic lightning and pregnant thundercloud.
“Are you even going to look at me after that kiss?” Dianne asked, startling him.
“What?” he snapped, turning on her. It came out harsher than he meant—but she’d caught him raw, wide open. Ryan whirled to face her, furious. “What? What do you want, Dianne? A declaration of love?” Dianne blanched at his forceful tone, her gaze widening as she took in his face.
Now that he’d started, Ryan couldn’t stop. “You’ve got it: I love you. Now. Is. Not. The. Time. Did you not hear Olivia? We’re surrounded by thousands of possessed tools of Abaddon. The most powerfulElioudalive almost died facing the Angel of the Abyss. We’ve been fighting a running retreat ever since we left Split, and we don’t have any place left to go. I’ve got to get you to the Aerie for us to make a stand.”
Dianne’s face took on a mutinous look. She halted and crossed her arms. “Then no time like the present to clear the air, Helsing,” she said crisply, channeling her sister. Ryan continued to scowl, but secretly he exulted in her courage in confronting him. Not many Rangers would have. “Good to know the sitrep about us,” she continued, clearly having picked up more operational lingo while at the Aerie training like a recruit. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
She started to step around him. But Ryan was having none of it. She’d forced the issue—made him say the thing he hadn’t been brave enough to say—and now, with the world crumbling, he couldn’t face dying without knowing where she stood. If she wanted honesty, she was going to give it, too. Turnabout was fair play.
“Wait, soldier,” he said, reaching out to grasp her wrist.
Dianne gasped in pain as his fingers wrapped around something hot and metallic—only to be repelled an instant later as if his fingers had the same polarity as the object. The force echoed up his arm, leaving his fingers numb to the bone and the rest of his arm aching. He took a reluctant step backward, a sharp twinge of answering pain in his side, and gripped the Disrupter one-handed to his chest.
“Ryan!” Fear sharpened Dianne’s voice. She started to reach for him and stopped. In the dimness from the emergency lighting, a black iridescence sinuated around her wrist like a living snake. From its midst, a glowing blue eye winked in and out, its baleful stare holding Ryan’s. Sizzling and popping sounded as cold rain hit the heated bracelet.
Dianne’s gaze dropped to the object. Whatever it was, she’d seen it before. So had Ryan. In the silence broken only by faint hissing, Ryan studied the woman he loved. Black filaments writhed in an unstable penumbra around her form, leaking from her like shadowed harmonics unraveling at the edges.
He’d been so sure, just moments ago, that Dianne was his. But the metal beneath his fingers had whispered otherwise. He wasn’t the only one who thought she belonged to him.
“How long have you worn an Eye of Hamsa charm?” he asked, his voice so hoarse he could have been shouting for hours in a tempest. He clamped down on his rising horror, clenching his jaw until it ached. “How long have you been linked to Abaddon?”
Next time he saw Miró he was going to personally beat theElioudscientist into a bloody pulp for not figuring out that Dianne also wore a charm.
Dianne, who’d stared in horror at the Dark angelic shackle on her wrist, looked up at him, terror and panic widening her beautiful eyes.
“Germaine gave it to me before the attack on the highway,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. She began tugging at the snake with her fingers, ignoring its angry sibilance. “It won’t come off, Ryan! It’s burning me to the bone.” She sobbed, the sound twisting the pain in Ryan’s gut like nothing he’d ever experienced before. “Is this what happened to Germaine?” She swallowed. “Is that how Abaddon possessed her?” She dropped to her knees before Ryan could answer and buried her face in her hands. “Oh, God! Am I going to attack you too?”
Ryan dropped to a knee next to her. Ignoring his own pounding heart, he put his good hand on her shoulder and lifted her face to his. “Look at me, Beauty Queen,” he said, infusing his voice with command.
He waited patiently although he’d already started to receive warning vibrations from the drones overhead as more of them assessed the discord from Dianne. It was only moments before she was identified as an intruder or, worse, an enemy. He’d tried to override his earlier priority defense-directive, but the dissonance emanating from Dianne had blocked his comms.
Dianne dropped her hands and lifted her face, covered in rain and tears, to look at him.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, do you hear me, soldier?You’re mine. You got that? I don’t let what’s mine go.” He held her gaze with his unwavering one, narrowing his eyes but tracing her cheeks with tender fingertips. “Now, get to your feet and get a move on. We’ve got to get across this valley and to the Aerie.”
