A cone of fire and light over two hundred and fifty feet long sprang from the end of Harry's gun. There was a lot of furious sound and movement in my periphery as the other Denarians reacted.

I recoiled from the heat of the blast, staggered to the right, and threw up a shield, rippling out of sight in an instant. I shoved the Crown Royal bag into the deep line of my cleavage and pelted away toward the woods.

Running through a forest at night was a dangerous proposition. Hell, running through this place even with daylight, would have been risky. Old-growth forests like this one were basically a carpet of knotted roots, moss, and mud. One wrong step and my ankle would twist, I'd go down hard, probably knock a few of my teeth loose. In the flashes of brilliant light available, Lasciel helped me catalog the twists and turns through the barely worn footpath, helped me locate the obstacles, both from above and below that I'd need to bypass before I could escape.

I kicked off my shoes only a few feet in, leaving the stupid heels behind. I clutched my sword in one hand, held the other to my chest to secure the precariously balanced coins, and took off into the night.

I crossed twenty feet in a matter of seconds, pushing the limits of my endurance further than they'd ever been tested. The snow on the ground sank spikes of agony into my skin at once. The cold was so intense it boomeranged around, somehow feeling like I was sprinting over coals instead. Something on the ground cut a gouge about an inch deep from my arch to my ankle, and my steps faltered for another thirty feet. I was leaving a nice visible blood trail for someone to follow.

And follow it they did. I heard at least two shapes, possibly more, moving in the brush behind me.

If it was one of Nic's people, I was probably done for. I'd served my purpose as a combination distraction and stumbling block for my father. I'd handed Nicodemus his answer to deal with the Red Court. I'd delivered five coins into his hands total since arriving. I'd outlived my usefulness, and I'd just betrayed him. The only reason he'd keep me around would be to drag my suffering out over the course of, say, a few months.

"Just a little farther," Lasciel said, a touch distractedly. She was busy compartmentalizing the pain of my injuries and the searing cold, boxing it to be dealt with later when we were safely away. "The boat will be tethered near the ruins of the dock."

We'd be spectacularly lucky if the thing got us back to shore, but in the end, it didn't need to. Lasciel's battle form wouldn't feel the cold half as much as I did, and with her help, we could make it far enough inland to steal another boat, or even open a waypoint to a safer place in the Nevernever.

I was just reaching a break in the trees when the first of the shapes finally caught up with me. Green lightning arched all around me, sailing in at five different directions like heat-seeking missiles. Thorned Namshiel's strangler spell.

"Shit!" I lobbed the word into the night like it might somehow help me. I brought up my hand, employing the best shield I could muster without the use of a focus. Most of my gear was still at the base of Nicodemus' throne, stripped away from me intentionally to keep me in need of their protection.

Lasciel infused the shield with hellfire, bringing four of the five strands of magical energy to a quivering halt, but we weren't in time to stop the fifth. An icy slice of pain, the oily run of Namshiel's magic along my skin, and then the spell was pulling taut, drawing my airways closed with inevitable finality. With a lazy jerk, the Fallen used the thread around my neck to pull me back like a misbehaving puppy on a leash. My legs parted company with the ground, and I was tossed fifteen feet backward, landing in a sprawled heap at the jutting, bony feet of Thorned Namshiel.

The skeletal, gray-skinned Fallen loomed over me, and both sets of eyes, luminous green and mundane brown, burned with hate. He jerked the line of magic taut with a savage snarl at the same time he threw that spiny foot into my side. The spurs on his feet dug in deep, like a pair of bone knives, gouging inch-deep furrows into my flank. He'd only missed breaking my floating ribs because I'd turned desperately to avoid him.

Unspeakable pain flared up from the wounds, and I was willing to bet there was poison on the tip of every spur. I'd have screamed if I'd been capable. Instead, I wheezed. The Fallen scanned me up and down, looking for the coins. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately for me, they'd managed to spill down the interior of my dress after he'd lassoed me. It'd be hard to tell where they all were in the darkness.

"You noxious, duplicitous, thieving little strumpet! Hand over the coins now before I use your entrails to do macrame in the nearest oak."

I wheezed again, hand scrabbling for the thread around my throat. If I could make contact with it, Lasciel may be able to unravel the spell work. The thread loosened a fraction, enough to allow me to drag in a scraping breath.

I used it to scream. A wail of sound that surprised even me with its volume escaped my throat and went trumpeting into the night. Namshiel snarled another word, and the thread closed my airways again, and this time it began to burn. It felt like he was going to saw my head off with a jagged, super-heated blade.

With the fingers of his free hand, he reached down and ripped the dress open from bodice to hemline. The coins showered out of the fabric and thudded into the snow like I was the world's worst exotic dancer.

The thread loosened again as Namshiel bent to retrieve the coins, stuffing them into a messenger bag that he had slung around his shoulders. He began methodically placing them one by one into the interior. Something moved quietly through the brush nearby. Namshiel ignored it, too consumed by his quest.

"I think my Lord and Lady will not begrudge me the pleasure of killing you, little girl. Any last words?"

"Duck."

"Wha-?" Began Namshiel.

Then the ringing light and sound of Amoracchius split the night air as my father drew back the sword and brought it down with a neat snicker-snack, parting Namshiel's head from his body.

Thick, oily blood splashed onto my front as Namshiel's body toppled forward. It sluiced over me, gathering in my navel and the gaps between my ribs. I was almost naked, kept from being totally bare by the matching red bra and panty set I'd been given to wear.

But it wasn't the partial nudity that shamed me. Under the light of Amoracchius, every poor decision I'd made was thrown into sharp relief. I could see every fork in the road that could have led to a less destructive outcome. I could see the many opportunities to improve myself and others that I'd overlooked in favor of indulging my own selfish whims.

And through the furious glow of Amoracchius, I saw my father's face, fixed into lines of righteous fury. And I understood then why Harry called him the Fist of God. Now that I was on the receiving end of the justified punch, I knew precisely why the Fallen faltered before the Swords. Lasciel's presence retreated from the light of the blade and its wielder, pressing flat to the back of my skull like a roach trying to escape notice. My heart thrummed so hard I felt like one enormous pulse point.

I closed my eyes and braced for the strike.

A hand closed around my upper arm and dragged me up from the snow roughly. Not out of anger, but because there was no time to be gentle about it. My father was over six feet tall and built for battle. If he'd wanted to hurt me, he could have. Instead, he very gingerly set me on my feet and took a step back from me.

I stood there, staring at him, a tide of bewildered hope rising in my chest. After my little speech at the lighthouse, I'd thought for sure...

Carefully, without taking more than one hand off of Amoracchius at a time, he unlatched the cloak that hung around his shoulders and then held it out to me. I just sort of stared at it for a second.

"W-why?"

"You're cold. Put it on."

I honestly hadn't noticed until he'd pointed it out, but every inch of exposed skin was speckled with gooseflesh. There were other, more obvious indicators as well. I took the cloak hastily and wrapped it around my shoulders, holding it closed to keep the worst of the wind off of me.

It was a long, tense moment before either of us spoke again. The battle raged not far away. I could make out the whump-whump of chopper blades, though I had no idea when that had gotten there. The animalistic shrieks coming from Tessa meant that at least one combatant was still on the field. Not far off, I could make out the bellow of Magog's beast form. So that meant two Denarians that I knew of were still on the island.

No...three. I was still here.

"We're going home," my father said at last. "And you're grounded, young lady. Until you're thirty."

A strangled sound burst from my mouth. It sounded more like a choking cat than an actual laugh. It died away quickly. Not everything I'd told him in front of the lighthouse was a lie.

"I can't. If I go...I'm not protected under the accords. The Wardens will kill me."

Not to mention the tense and ready curl of Lasciel in the back of my mind. She was coiled, deadly force, ready to spring if I decided to dump her ass on the frozen ground of Hard Rock. She couldn't stop me if I tried, but she would make me regret every second leading up to it.

My father shook his head. "God did not return you to me only to bring you to His side so quickly, Molly. Have faith. Drop the coin and take my hand."

He released the iron grip on Amoracchius and held one hand out toward me.

"You can't protect me," I whispered.

"I will always protect you." Conviction layered his voice. Love radiated off him so powerfully that tears formed unbidden and began to pour down my cheeks.

I reached one hand, tentatively up toward the pendant at my throat. Lasciel's consciousness seethed.

"Molly-" she snarled.

But that was a far as any of us got because through the trees hurtled two new shapes. One long, inhumanly quick, and serpentine, and the other in a simian charge that shook the earth. My father whipped around at once, putting me at his back, Amoracchius assuming a guard position.

I found my sword laying feet away, and I retrieved it, though every part of my body was protesting the forward motion. I was tired, and though the pain was distant, I knew I was also hurting. I wasn't going to be able to keep going indefinitely. Still, I limped to my father's side, lifting my sword as well, channeling as much hellfire as Lasciel was willing to give me into the blade. It sparked and groaned, the sigils pulsing like blood behind bruised skin as we faced off against the oncoming Denarians.

The smaller of the two shapes was a large, anthropomorphized snake, with its body held upright like a cobra about to strike. Jordan, in Saluriel's battle form. The familiar eyes that had so often fixed on me with adoration in the past months were narrowed in dislike as he regarded me now. A forked tongue flicked out to taste the air, and his lower body coiled, ready to spring his mass forward to strike with deadly fangs or claws.

The second was truly behemoth, a big leathery ape with curling goats horns and savage claws. It wouldn't need either to do us in. It had to be at last seven to eight hundred pounds of muscle. All it would have to do would be to step on us, and we were done for. Magog. Dear God, this was probably my worst nightmare. Lasciel didn't like the thought of facing him in direct battle. Even with the Knight at our side, it was almost certainly a doomed effort.

"Kill the Knight," Jordan hissed at me, words distorted by the flickering tongue and the fangs. "And turn the coins over. Perhaps our Lord will be merciful."

"Or you could come with me," I panted, getting a death grip on my sword. The pain was beginning to leak through the levies Lasciel had constructed. Namshiel's attack had hurt me far more than I'd realized. "You haven't had Saluriel's coin long, Jordan. He can't have popped your head off like a pimple just yet."

Jordan let out an angry hiss. At least, I thought it was angry. He could have been laughing at me, and I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.

Then, in a move difficult to track, he struck, enormous hooded head lurching forward with the speed of a cobra strike, teeth bared. He bore down on my father, and I was too far away from him to do anything but let out a furious shout of, "No!"

Jordan's teeth sank into my father's arm, lodging into the thick meaty muscle of his bicep. It cost him to do it. Amoracchius swept up and carved his flank almost entirely off. He barely kept his teeth in for longer than a second, but it was enough. He reared back, taking a chunk of fabric, mail, and flesh with him. My father's arm looked like so much hamburger, and the ruined remainder was beginning to leak bubbling yellow pus.

"Dad!" I cried, rushing forward.

Magog batted me away like a fluttering moth. Casually, without effort. It sent me flying into a tree, and I took the impact on my already battered back with a moan. I was going to be a mottled sheet of bruises in the morning. Assuming I made it until morning.

Magog took one sausage finger and used it to flick my father back a hundred feet before shuffling after him, releasing a bellow that made every loose twig and stone jump and every sphincter in the area batten down. My father staggered, stumbled, and then fell onto his back.

I swore the giant ape was grinning when he came to hover over my father's fallen shape. Then it very slowly and deliberately brought one massive paw down on my father's right leg and began to lean all of its weight onto the appendage.

The resulting grinding and snapping sounds were horrific. Almost worse to listen to than the scream it drew from my father.

Something in me snapped, and I shoved the rising tide of pain and fatigue down just long enough to focus my fury, to draw on hellfire. Then I crouched, slammed a palm down onto the ground, and shoved all of my will toward the ape-like Magog.

"Tsuchi!"

The ground rippled underneath my hand, and then, a second later, a jut of earth exploded underneath Magog's other legs, pushing him up and off of my father and shimmying back the way he'd come. But I didn't stop there. Anywhere the beast's feet touched the ground, I sent a pulse of hot, rage-fueled magic so that it was like a game of reverse Whack-A-Mole, with me hitting the creature every time he touched the board.

He let out a frustrated bellow and swiveled its gaze toward me. I saw murder in those eyes. It was going to charge me next, and I wasn't going to be able to stop it. It'd grind me between giant tombstone teeth, or maybe just crush the life from me, snapping my ribs like popsicle sticks.

Then flame sailed over all our heads, a jet of ordinary but still potent fire magic. It singed the tops of Magog's goat horns, had him shuffling around to see who'd had the gall to attack him from behind.

Harry Dresden was standing further up the footpath, quarterstaff held at the ready, Fidelacchius strapped to his back once more. He had the bag of coins that Namshiel had collected clutched tightly in one hand.

"Yo, Curious George!" he taunted with a manic grin. "You want this? Come get some."

Then he took off running. Faster than he should have ever been capable before Lasciel and I's excursion into his brain. She'd done a better job than I'd thought. Something she was clearly beginning to regret now. I got the sense that when we left the island, I was going to be given a detailed list of just how much ass-kissing would be required to make this up to her. I'd say that we were about even now, given she'd tried to kill my father.

Magog hesitated only a fraction of a second, glaring balefully at my father and me before taking off up the hill after Harry. Jordan dallied a little longer, but he ultimately followed, disappearing into the snowy underbrush with a serpentine hiss of sound.

I couldn't unlock my rigid muscles for a full minute. And even then, it was a slow trudge to my father's side. I wanted to go faster. But I could barely summon the energy to keep my eyes open after the amount of magic I'd been slinging. It seemed like a lifetime ago that I'd been picking at the brown bag lunch my mother had packed for me.

My father was still conscious, which was astounding. My injuries weren't half as bad, and I was already teetering on the edge of collapse. I knelt by his side, examined first the bite, and then the leg. The bite was still bubbling, and the pus had begun to soak into the material of his surcoat. He needed help, fast.

"Lash? Can you heal it?"

She remained stubbornly silent, the way she had only once before. Then it had been a matter of getting me to take up her coin.

"Lash?"

"I am not healing the Knight," she hissed.

"He just saved our lives!"

"Your life. He cares nothing for mine."

"Fine. I'll do it myself."

It was difficult and time consuming to draw up the right memories from my murky memory without her help. The pain made it hard to think, and she might have been purposely obfuscating the lessons where she'd covered the topic.

The sound my father made when I probed the wound absolutely gutted me. He shouldn't have been here. He shouldn't have endured this for my sake. My magic came slow, but it did eventually come. I tried to ease it in with some finesse, but in the end, it was going to hurt no matter what I did.

It was a tricky business, trying to duplicate what Lasciel had done almost two years ago. There was so much liquid in the body, and isolating one from another was difficult. But the venom ran on a slightly different magical wavelength than the average human's life force, and that was what I reached for. I pulled at that corruption, willed it to separate like oil from water, and fight against the flow of blood, away from the heart and back toward me.

It pulsed out of the wound sluggishly, and I used a mild effort of will to send it feet away in a putrid yellow arc. The snow melted beneath it with a hiss.

Dad was dragging in heaving breaths, eyes glazed with pain. He wasn't far from passing out. I needed to get him out of here before he went into shock. A brief glance at the leg told me that it was going to be difficult. The leg was grossly misshapen, with what bits of bone remained attempting to break the surface of the skin. A few white shards were already poking through.

He was going to be lucky if he ever recovered even partial use of that leg. Even if he survived this encounter, his days as a knight were over.

The thought pleased Lasciel enough that she grudgingly leant me enough strength to haul my father to his feet and support most of his weight. It drew involuntary sounds of pain from him every time we took staggering steps forward, but he did his best to help me, navigating the trail toward the dock at a snail's pace.

"When the knight is safe, you and I will be having a talk, my host," Lasciel said with an air of deadly calm. "I see we've been unclear about the rules of this partnership."

"Yeah, yeah," I muttered to her. Most of my concentration was put on trying to keep my footing and keeping a close eye on my father's condition. I couldn't tell, over the huff of my own breath, if his was slowing down.

We were joined by Harry halfway down the path to the docks. He drank in the sight of me huddled beneath my father's cloak, holding him upright, and nodded, as though I'd just confirmed something to him.

"Scoot over, kid," he said, extending an arm of his own. He shifted the quarterstaff, stuffing it into a sort of makeshift holster at his back. I'd never seen that one before. Apparently, Harry had learned a lot of new tricks in the two years I'd been gone.

He shouldered most of my father's weight, allowing me to hobble along and correct our balance when we began to list off the path.

The water was the difficult part. The boat that Rosanna had brought the others in on was secured to a stump that was one of the last remnants of a dock. Harry grunted and eventually managed to maneuver my father into a fireman's carry over one shoulder, handing Amoracchius to me for safekeeping. I kept my hands curled loosely around Amoracchius' scabbard, almost unwilling to touch it.

"You're trusting me with this?" I muttered. "I still have Lasciel's coin, Harry."

"I'm not trusting you. Do anything hinky with that sword, and I'm sending you bobbing like an apple into Lake Michigan. You and Lasciel can have fun swimming to shore. Michael trusts the angel of your better nature. I don't. Your track record says you're selfish, so I'm betting you won't act until you're safely away."

Oof. That one had really freaking hurt. I turned my face away even as we began to wade through the shallows so he wouldn't see the tears beginning to bead on my lashes. Truth was truth.

The slimy vegetation at the bottom of the lake squished between my toes as we sloshed our way toward the boat. I climbed aboard first and held the whole thing steady so that Hary could get my father aboard and then climb in himself. He held out a hand for Amoracchius, and I handed it back to him, much to Lasciel's chagrin.

Harry nodded once more. "Good. I'm gonna try to splint Michael's leg, for what good it'll do him. Your Fallen show you how to drive one of these things?"

"Didn't need to. There were a couple of aquatic missions with the Fellowship. We were given lessons."

"Start this baby up, and let's blow this popsicle stand."

I obediently slid into the driver's seat, reached for the keys, and...

"Harry, there's no keys."

"What? That's not right. Rosanna left them in the ignition."

Swish, clink. Swish, clink. The sound of a key being spun around a fingertip split the quiet sounds of the night, and I turned in my seat, a chill creeping down my spine as the fog-like shadow lifted off the aft of the boat and revealed a figure sitting in the very back.

"Looking for these?" Nicodemus drawled.

Those merciless dark eyes were fixed on me, and though he smiled, it didn't begin to thaw the ice there. Staring at him, I saw the words being carved into the wall with a rusty poker. Nicodemus was going to kill me. Slowly. Drag it out over years, make me beg him for the mercy of release. And even if he decided, after a time, to let me live, I wouldn't be recognizable as the person I'd been before. I'd be a husk, only technically alive because my heart beat and my lungs pulled in air. I'd be a meat suit for a Fallen angel, a specter trapped in a spire of my own haunted castle, unable to do anything to stop it.

Harry tried to act, but couldn't get his quarterstaff up in time. Nicodemus spat the trigger I'd given him quickly, complete with absurd voice and sound effects. Harry slumped over a second later, landing on my father's injured leg, drawing a pained sound from him.

"Juvenile but effective, I'll admit." Nicodemus calmly stood, held out his hand toward me. "The Coins, Miss Carpenter. Now."

"I don't have them," I whispered.

"Do not lie."

"I'm not," I said, a little louder. Speaking was a real effort. Whatever Namshiel had done to my throat made me sound like a forty-year-old a pack-a-day smoker. "Namshiel put them in a messenger bag. My father killed him, and Harry took off with the bag to draw Magog and Jordan away. He didn't have them when he came back, which means either Tessa or Jordan has them."

"A pity. But there have still been gains from this night. I heard Magog's bellow end quite abruptly, which means Tessa has lost her bruiser, and her sorcery teacher in one fell swoop. And you have now delivered two Swords, a potential recruit, and a Knight of the Cross to me."

He stepped deliberately over Harry toward me. I was struggling not to quail beneath him. I wasn't going to whimper and beg like some scared little girl. I knew I couldn't beat him. I was too tired to conjure hellfire to lob at him. Even if I'd been capable, Anduriel would bind and gag me within seconds. I was too hurt to engage in a physical fight.

He read the realization in my face, and it summoned a sly grin.

"Yes. It was a clever little bit of trickery, Miss Carpenter. Amusing in its way. But you've lost. I've been playing this game for over a millennium. You cannot beat me. Fold quietly, now, and there will be less pain for all involved. Perhaps there may even be mercy. It might be gratifying, as you said, to give the Knight a coin. I'm sure he could be persuaded after a day or two of hearing your screams."

Wrong. I still had once card left to play, stuffed up my sleeve by Harry himself.

"You've failed, your highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me."

A beat of confusion from both Nicodemus and Lasciel. Then the latter finally read the truth of my thoughts and howled;

"No!"

Just as Harry Dresden lunged up from the deck with a savage snarl of fury and punched Nicodemus hard in the neck.