I made an impatient clucking sound and stepped forward.
Butters fumbled what looked like a glass Christmas ornament from his coat’s inner pocket and flicked it at me weakly.
Winter was still upon me. I bent my knees a little and caught it on the fly, careful not to break it. “Whoa,” I said. “Easy there, killer. I’d rather not have us both forget why we’re standing out here in the sleet.”
He stared up at me, struggling to draw a steady breath. “Harry . . .”
“Easy,” I said. “Here.” I passed the ornament back to him.
He blinked at me.
“Come on,” I said. I bent down, got a hand under his arm, and more or less hauled the little guy to his feet. He slipped again at once, and would have fallen if I hadn’t held him up. I steadied him, guiding his steps off the treacherous concrete and onto the grass in front of one of the houses. “There, easy. Come on, let’s get you out of the cold at least.”
He groaned and said, “Oh, God, Harry. You’re not . . . You haven’t . . .” We stumbled a few more steps and then he said, “I’m an idiot. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I said, looking around us warily. “Be inside.”
“How bad have I screwed things up?” he asked.
“We move fast enough, nothing that can’t be fixed,” I said. Impatient, I ducked down enough to get a shoulder beneath his arm and more or less lifted him up, dragging him along with his feet barely touching the ground toward the Carpenters’ yard.
Twenty yards.
Ten.
Five.
The wind rushed. Something shaped like black sails billowed in the sleet, and then swirling shadow receded, and Nicodemus Archleone stood between us and safety, a slender-bladed sword held in his right hand, blade parallel with his leg. He faced me with a small smile.
Behind him, his shadow stretched out for twenty yards in every direction, writhing in slow waves.
I drew up short. Butters’s legs swung back and forth.
I took a step back and looked over my shoulder.
The Genoskwa blurred into vision through the thick sleet, maybe twenty feet back, staying in the shadows of a large pine tree, his enormous shaggy form blending into its darkness. I could see the gleam of his eyes, though.
“Ah, Dresden,” Nicodemus purred. “You caught him. And in the nick of time.”
I set Butters down warily, and kept him close to my side. The little guy didn’t move or speak, though I could feel him shuddering with sudden intelligent terror.
“The little doctor,” Nicodemus said. “Quite a resourceful rabbit, is he not?”
“He’s quick,” I said. “And not much of a threat. There’s no reason not to let him go.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Nicodemus said. “He’s heard entirely too much—and my files on him say that he’s been associated with Marcone’s Chicago Alliance. Only an idiot wouldn’t recognize a potentially lethal security leak.” He tilted his head to one side. “He dies.”
The Genoskwa let out a hungry, rumbling growl.
Butters stiffened. He did not look behind him. I didn’t blame him. I didn’t want to look back there either.
Nicodemus was enjoying this. “It seems, Dresden,” he said, “that it is time for you to make a choice. Shall I make it easier for you?”
“What’d you have in mind?” I asked.
“Practicality,” Nicodemus said. “Give him to me. I will take him from here. It will be quick and merciful.” His eyes shifted to Butters. “It’s nothing personal, young man. You became involved in something larger than you. That is the price you pay. But I’ve no grudge with you. You will simply stop.”
Butters made a quiet, terrified sound.
“Or,” Nicodemus said, “you can breach Mab’s given word, wizard.” He smiled. “In which case, well, I have no need of you.”
“Without me,” I said, “you’ll never get through the second gate.”
“Once I kill you,” Nicodemus said, “I’m quite certain Mab will loan me her next Knight or another servant as readily as she did you, if it means a chance to make good on her word. Choose.”
“I’m thinking about it,” I said.
Nicodemus opened one hand, a gracious gesture, inviting me to take my time.
Giving him Butters wasn’t on the table. Period. But fighting him did not seem like a good idea either. With Nicodemus on one side and the Genoskwa on the other, I did not like my chances at all. Even with the Winter Knight’s mantle, I didn’t know if I could have beaten either of these guys, let alone both of them at once.
If I gave him Butters, I might live. If I didn’t, both of us were going to die, right here next door to Michael’s house.
I was out of options.
“You take the guy behind us,” I muttered to Butters.
The little guy swallowed, and jerked his head in a tiny nod, gripping his Christmas ornament carefully.
Nicodemus nodded, his dark eyes glittering. The point of the slender sword swept up, lithe as a snake’s flickering tongue, and his shadow began to dance and waver in sudden agitation. The Genoskwa let out another rumbling growl and stepped forward. I gripped my staff, and Butters’s tremors abruptly stilled into an electrified tension.
And then Karrin stepped out of the sleet with her rocket launcher prepped and resting on her shoulder, aimed directly at Nicodemus.
“Hi,” she said. “I really don’t like you very much, Denarian.”
“Hah,” I said to Nicodemus. “Heh, heh.”
His eyes slid from me to Karrin and back. His smile widened. “Ms. Murphy,” he said. “You won’t shoot.”
“Why not?” Karrin asked brightly.
“Because it is obvious to me that you love him,” Nicodemus said. “That weapon will kill the wizard, as well as your friend the doctor, if you fire it. At that range, I’m not at all certain that you would survive the blast, either.”
Karrin seemed to regard that offering thoughtfully. Then she said, “You’re right,” and took several steps closer. “There. That should just about do it, don’t you think?”
Nicodemus narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
Karrin spoke in a very low, very calm voice. “People do crazy things for love. I’d rather kill us all and take you with us than let you harm him.” Her voice became a bit sharper, and she took another pair of quick strides nearer Nicodemus. “Take one step closer, Tall, Dark and Furry, and I blow us all to hell right now.”
I checked over my shoulder, to see the Genoskwa pause in the act of slipping a little closer. Its cavern-eyes glittered in silent rage.
Karrin took a couple of slow steps toward Nicodemus, her eyes strangely bright. “Crazy, crazy things. Don’t push me.”
Nicodemus’s smile turned into a smirk. “You proceed from a false assumption,” he said. “You assume that your toy can actually threaten me or my companion.”
Guy had a point, even if I didn’t want to admit it. With that Noose around his neck, I was pretty sure Nicodemus would smirk just as hard at a flamethrower, or a giant meat grinder, for that matter.
“Actually, you’re the one proceeding from a false assumption,” Karrin countered in that same deathly calm voice, a decidedly odd light in her eyes, still approaching. “You think I’m holding a rocket launcher.”
And with that she knocked some kind of concealed cap off the back of the rocket launcher’s tube, and from its length withdrew a sword.
Check that. She withdrew a Sword.
It was a Japanese-style katana blade, set into a wooden cane sheath, in the same style as that of the apocryphal Zatoichi. Even as the false rocket launcher casing fell to the ground, the Sword’s blade sprang free of its sheath, and as it did, Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith, blazed with furious white light.