Nicodemus slipped on the treacherous ground as Karrin slammed into him, but he swept a leg back, dropped one knee to the ground, and prevented himself from falling. She pressed her advantage, their swords locked, each blade exerting lethal pressure against the other.

I didn’t dare intervene. The least slip or mistake in balance from either of them would mean that the two razor-sharp blades would slice like scalpels into unprotected flesh.

I watched them strain silently against each other, strength against strength. Karrin wasn’t relying on upper-body strength to get it done. Her arms were locked in tight against her body, her weight and her legs pressing forward against Nicodemus, and her two-handed grip on Fidelacchius gave her a significant leverage advantage against his one-handed grip. The edge of her sword pressed closer to his face with each straining heartbeat, until a thin, bright ribbon of scarlet appeared on Nicodemus’s cheek.

He showed her his teeth, and the strain on his arm quivered through his entire body as he pushed the Sword back a precious half inch from his skin. “So,” he hissed, “the burnout thinks she has found her new calling.”

She didn’t say anything back. Karrin’s never been a big one for backtalking the bad guys without a damned good reason. It’s not her fault. She’s a practical soul. She took a slow, contained breath, and kept up the pressure, veering the blades, altering the direction slightly, so that the locked swords began a slow descent toward Nicodemus’s throat.

“And you think you deserve to join the ranks of real Knights of the Sword,” Nicodemus said, his voice smooth and confident. “You battered, scarred, broken thing. In my centuries I’ve learned exactly what is needed in a real Knight. You haven’t got what it takes. And you know that. Or you’d have taken up the Sword before now.”

Her eyes blazed, bright blue in her pale, frightened face, and she leaned forward, pressing the Sword closer to his neck, and the beating artery there. I’d seen how sharp the katana’s blade was. It would take a feather’s pressure and the movement of a blade of grass to open Nicodemus’s neck once that steel reached his skin.

“You’ve never done this before,” he said. “Been this close, this tense, this still—not in earnest. Do you know how many times I’ve talked to novices exactly like you, in situations almost exactly like this? I’ve forgotten more about real sword fighting than this pale modern world knows.”

Karrin ignored him. She shifted her h*ps the barest fraction, seeking a slightly different angle of pressure. The blazing Sword dipped another fraction of an inch closer.

“Dresden,” Nicodemus said, “I’m giving you ample chance to call off your dog before I put her down.” His eyes flicked to me. “End the little doctor and come back to headquarters.There’s no reason I should have to kill all three of you.”

I ground my teeth. Getting myself killed defending Butters was one thing. Taking Karrin with me was something else. But I knew her. I knew what choice she would make, without needing to talk to her about it.

Karrin didn’t let the monsters take her people, either.

But there just wasn’t a good option open to me. The Genoskwa wasn’t far from us, and the damned thing was fast. Even if Butters ran for the safety of Michael’s place right now, he’d never get there before it caught him—and I couldn’t slow the huge thing down with magic, either.

I only had one choice.

“All right,” I croaked. “Dammit, all right.”

I grabbed Butters and threw him out in front of me, pointing my staff at him and calling forth my will. The runes blazed up with the pale green-white light of the crystals beneath Demonreach, from whence the wood for the staff had come.

“Sorry about this, Butters,” I said. “Nothing personal.”

Nicodemus’s eyes widened. Karrin’s gaze flicked toward me for an instant, disbelieving and then resolute.

“Harry?” Butters asked.

“Forzare!” I thundered, and unleashed a blast of unseen force from the staff.

It took Butters full in the chest, hitting him like a charging bull and hurling him through the sleet—and over the little white picket fence into the nearest corner of the Carpenters’ yard.

Everything happened in the same instant.

Nicodemus’s left arm blurred and produced a short-barreled pistol from somewhere on his body. He jammed it into Karrin’s belly and pulled the trigger half a dozen times.

I let out a scream of defiance and drew that monster revolver from my duster even as the Genoskwa came charging toward me. The Winter mantle made me faster than I could ever have been on my own, but even so there was no time for anything but a hip shot. The Genoskwa was maybe three feet away when the gun went off, thundering like a high-powered rifle. Then the huge creature hit me like a freight train, picking me up in its onslaught like a piece of litter being towed along by the breeze, and carried me across the street and into the side of the neighbor’s minivan.

Metal crashed and crunched. Glass broke. Silver lightning ran through my body without causing me any real pain. The carnivore stench of the Genoskwa filled my nose. My arms slammed against the vehicle, but I hung on to the pistol, shoved it against the creature’s torso, but before I could shoot, it got hold of my wrist, its huge hands wrapping my forearm as if I’d been a toddler, and slammed it against the minivan, pinning the pistol there. Its other hand landed on my head, claws pressing into my skin as the thick fingers tightened on my skull like a nutcracker.