Page 83 of Helsing: Demon Slayer
Ryan stiffened. He could feel her swinging her sniper rifle around, locking onto the monsters. “Stay on overwatch,” he said, tension crackling in his command. “Don’t call attention to your location.”
“Don’t worry,” she said, her voice lowering to that of the focused sharpshooter, “they won’t know what hit them.”
A moment later, the recoil from her shot rippled through space, its impact true.
She’d hit one of the dire wolves.
“Whoo-hoo!” said Dianne in a low whisper, putting glass onto another target.
Ryan turned back to the tactical feed on Greta’s monitor. He frowned as he scanned it, then his breath stalled. A single marker blinked on the grid, well outside the Aerie compound’s secured perimeter.
An instant later, Dianne’s sharp hiss confirmed it. “Oh, crap! That’s Michael. What the hell is he doing outside the quad?”
At the sight of the dire wolves surrounding her brother, mounted on a horse and flinging a glowing harmonic ribbon to keep them at bay, Dianne’s numb fingers slipped from the sniper rifle. For a moment, she lost all thought, staring until her dry eyes burned.
And then she gripped the rifle again, sighted through the scope, and squeezed the trigger on a controlled exhale. A dire wolf’s head exploded a few seconds later, but by then she’d moved the sight onto another target.
And for a minute—no more—she actually entertained the idea that together she and her brother could annihilate these foul Hellpuppies.
Until the alpha dire wolf sprang onto the rear of Michael’s mount. The horse screamed and reared, its front hooves flailing as two more dire wolves came in low for its exposed belly.
It was enough to dislodge an experienced horseman. For Michael, who’d only learned to ride a few weeks ago, it was more than enough to throw him to the ground.
Two of the remaining dire wolves were on him before Dianne could re-center her scope. One clamped onto a leg while the other did something far more disturbing: he placed two meaty paws on Michael’s shoulders and lowered his bloody muzzle to within inches of her brother’s face.
The world dimmed for a fraction of a second. Then, as if torn from thin air, the mercenary commander from the ambush at the bus station in Split appeared next to Michael and his monstrous attackers. The one whose men had battered and brutalized Ryan.
Something about his corrupt body scared her in a way that seeingdaemonsdidn’t.
Fear corroded Dianne’s stomach. For the first time, a splinter of doubt cracked through her fear. Was it just her and Germaine that Abaddon wanted? Or …
Then the mercenary’s cruel voice reached her, resonating everywhere all at once—honeyed, mocking, insidious. “Come to me, Dianne Markham, and I will release him. Wait, and you will hear his screams and taste his fear.”
As if on cue, Michael’s faint, strangled cry echoed around the mountainside, weirdly resonant in the predawn air.
“Let’s end this tug-of-war over Dianne, Your Lowly Abysshole. You want a fight? Leave the boy and face someone who knows how to finish one.”
Dianne barely registered Ryan’s voice—until she realized she was already crawling toward the hatch, her body moving on instinct. She had to get down there, had to do something to keep Abaddon from taking Michael. From hurting the man she loved, who’d come out to save them.
Dianne started to protest, to pull at the hatch, when Beta’s warm hand dropped onto her shoulder, grounding her. Startled, she looked up at theElioudfemale to see her finger on her lips. Beta gestured back toward the edge of the nest. Together, they crawled to the lookout point.
Beta pointed toward the quad and the buildings surrounding it where an immense rhythmic glow swallowed the inky night like the first breath of dawn.
András and Elias come. Her crisp voice resounded in Dianne’s thoughts, leaving no room for doubt.
But that promised rescue was moot. They wouldn’t get here in time to save Ryan.
Because the Angel of the Abyss stepped toward the man she loved, who stood tall and erect on the Aerie’s perimeter. As the Dark Angel came closer, overhead drones illuminated the field of combat, capturing the surreal moment that reality twisted and buckled around Abaddon—as if the battlefield itself shrank before him, bending to his presence.
He grinned, the evil expression underscored by his empty eye socket. “I only delayed the inevitable, Paladin, but now you will bow before your lord.”
Then Dianne watched in utter horror as Ryan, instead of pulling out his combat knife, simply nodded. “Ryan, don’t—” But the words choked in her throat.
He stepped forward. He knelt.
Something rippled in the warp and weft of the world around them, as if the very fabric of existence shuddered at the significance.
When Ryan spoke, the overhead drones amplified his voice so that all present heard his surrender. “You win. I have nothing left to give.”
