Page 78 of Helsing: Demon Slayer
Before the defenses target you,he refrained from adding.
She nodded, surrendering to his authority, and stood. The Glock was once again in her hand.
But it was too late. The nanodrones had locked in on her corrupted harmonic signature. Ryan tilted his head to see a glowing mass of the microscopic aerial vehicles converging into an attack formation above them.
Ryan swore and let the Disrupter swing in its sling across his chest. Then he bent down and grabbed Dianne around the waist. She shrieked as he tossed her over his shoulder. Holding her against him with his aching arm, he gripped the Disrupter one-handed and began to jog down the rest of the terraced steps now turning to mud.
He wasn’t running to escape. He was running to buy time—to let his harmonic signature override hers, to throw off the drones, to keep them from recognizing what she’d become. But he wasn’t sure it would work. No one had told him he had the ability and the authority to take control of Dianne’s signature. And if it didn’t—he’d be the shield between her and whatever energy those drones carried.
He felt the shift in the rain-clogged air before he saw them—the formation descending, their energy pulsing like an impending storm.
No way to outrun them. No way to fight them.
He tightened his grip on Dianne, bracing. She stilled, as if sensing the imminent danger.
Then the first harmonic pulse struck.
Twenty-Two
Mileswatchedthemonitorin front of Greta, activated from its recessed cabinet in the mahogany table in the conference room, its screen flickering with an array of live data feeds. They’d both set up office here hours ago, ever since Helsing and theElioudhad taken down the dire wolf, when it became clear that their usual workstations wouldn’t be enough to manage the chaos. It was easier here—easier to track multiple data streams, monitor tactical deployments, and keep a direct line open to Olivia and Mihàil.
Now, every display hummed with real-time updates—bio-signatures, drone formations, harmonic-grid fluctuations—and Miles could feel the weight of it all pressing against his ribs. It had been years since he’d been deployed as a Marine, first to Iraq and then to Afghanistan, but no soldier ever forgot the anxiety and adrenaline rush of battle. He’d had more than one firefight where he and his fellow warfighters were surrounded and outnumbered.
But never surrounded by a vast army that had far more firepower than they could bring to bear, and only once without hope of support or rescue. As then, the only way forward was through. And to never lose hope. They were, after all, the Archangel Michael’s favored troops.
Are you?asked a skeptical mental voice that sounded a lot like his last CIA case officer, the one who’d loved to test Miles’s ingenuity at retrieving targets more than she cared about planning and preparing for complex operations. It might have made him legendary among Special Operations Group operators, but it almost cost him his life more than once. It certainly drove him to the edge of despair, at least until Olivia gave him a way out.
She was the one who was favored—her, and the otherElioud. Would the Commander of the Heavenly Host or his sidekick, the quirky cherub Zophiel, deem Miles and the other humans worth rescuing?
“Sir,” said Greta, bringing Miles back to the conference room in the TOC, “I’m getting a harmonic anomaly on the pilgrim’s path from the clinic. Surveillance drones register a modulation we’ve never encountered before.” She paused and looked at him, her eyes wide. “Sir, Dianne Markham’s harmonic signature has been overwritten, not just suppressed or corrupted. She has the signature of a powerfuldaemon.”
Miles leaned closer to study the graph depicting the harmonic signatures in that sector. Historical data showed that Helsing and Dianne Markham as well as Olivia and a team of four had been at the top of the mountain near the clinic only ten minutes before.
And then, Dianne’s signature had disappeared, only to be replaced by a chaotic, almost formless, frequency that reminded him of Kôkabîêl, the Star of God, imprisoned in the Accursed Mountains as a seven-headed dragon and freed by the DarkIrimAsmodeus. The dragon who’d rampaged in this very valley, nearly killing them all until Zophiel lopped off its final head with an angelic broadsword calledCaelistra.
Zophiel and her sword were nowhere around.
Miles’s pulse hammered him behind his left eye, presaging a killer headache.
What did this mean? Had adaemontaken on Dianne’s avatar in order to infiltrate the Kastrioti stronghold? Miles was a little shaky on hisdaemonlore.
“Replay video at timestamp 20:38,” he said, reassured that his voice sounded unmoved.
Greta nodded. Miles saw her fingers tremble as she typed.
In a large pane on the young specialist’s monitor, Ryan and Dianne stopped on a terraced step where they appeared to argue as rain soaked them. What little protection their harmonic gear had offered against the elements had been depleted.
Dianne moved to go around Ryan, who reached for her.
Only to reel backwards, one arm hanging awkwardly. His system diagnostics showed that severe dissonance had reverberated through his hand and up his arm, temporarily limiting the big soldier’s motor control in both.
“Zoom in on Dianne Markham’s wrist,” he ordered, though he already knew what they’d see.
“What is that, sir?” asked Greta, her voice barely above a whisper as the video image enlarged on an intricately engraved metal artifact that radiated a malign energy.
“A tether to Abaddon,” he said. “Thezonjë’s sister has been claimed by the Angel of the Abyss. Open a line to the secure bunker.” When Greta just stared at him open mouthed, he said, “Now, lieutenant.”
Miles watched as the surveillance drones assessed the disharmonyoriginating from Dianne Markham. He read Helsing’s command logs, saw when the former Army Ranger tried to disarm the priority defense-directive that he’d ordered when the dire wolves had reached the clinic.
