Nicodemus rocked back from the force of Harry's punch, a wheeze escaping him as the sledgehammer blow landed.
Then Harry seized Nicodemus by his tie and drew the noose taut around his throat. He bore Nicodemus down to the deck, lodging one knee into his gut, pinning him like an ugly moth to a board. Nicodemus' eyes went wide with panic and he thrashed, tried to unseat Harry, and, when that failed, tried to claw at his eyes. He threw furious kicks and punches into Harry's legs and sides.
None of it made any difference. The blocks I'd installed in Harry's head would keep the pain at bay for long enough to get the job done.
But I only absorbed this information in my periphery. Because I was engaged in my own battle for survival.
Lasciel's howl sounded like a thousand baying hounds, the scream of the wind, the boom of thunder, and the implosion of a star all at once. The noise alone stunned me into stillness, made me want to retrieve the keys from Nicodemus' hands and screw the metal ends in until my eardrums bled. My hand stuttered to a stop halfway to my throat, every muscle fiber in my arm seizing as liquid fire seemed to shoot through my veins.
Her fury was as black and turbulent as the tides that dragged the bottom of the ocean. A veil of darkness dropped over my eyes, and I was suddenly drifting in that vastness she and Anduriel had shown me, but every point of light had been extinguished. I was cast into vast, hyperborean nothingness. I couldn't move, and even if I could have forced myself to move past the grip of the fire in my veins, where would I go? There was nothing. No one here to help me.
Lasciel's presence was all around me, voice still screaming into the void. The vast power was going to parse me into individual elements and send me spinning into space, nothing but atoms.
"Please," I managed to whisper. "Please...help..."
Something touched my shoulder. At that point, I hadn't been sure I had a physical body any longer. I was just pain bound my flesh, a tiny, quivering consciousness being pressed flat by an indomitable will.
"Enough."
The voice was quiet. Gentle. But somehow, despite that, it cut through Lasciel's howl and brought the whirlwind of pain and terror in my head to a standstill. I craned my neck to see who'd touched me.
Behind me was a young man with dark gold hair that curled lightly over his brow, and tucked neatly behind his ears. He had a slightly sunkissed glow to him, and his eyes walked the line between polished silver and the perfect blue of a summer sky. He stared pointedly into the blackness and, as he did, the stars began to slowly seep back. The dotted forms of trillions of angels reemerged. The sloshing black sea beyond the gates continued to roil.
"Enough," he repeated calmly. No thunderous roar of challenge. Just a simple, placid statement that nonetheless rang with finality. "You move beyond your limits, Lasciel."
Then Lasciel was there, shining in all her glory, Bronzed skin crisscrossed with white and red battle scars. Whirling galaxy eyes, singed wings, and a feathery mass of incandescent hair that seared my mortal eyes. Another punch of agony. I attempted to double over in the man's grasp.
"She's mine, Watchman. Mine."
The man merely flicked his wrist in an almost dismissive gesture and the furious fallen angel's true form melted away, replaced by the construct I'd made for her. The wildly curly red hair, freckles, and girlish figure of Mercy stood before me instead, hands balled into fists, her formerly guileless eyes shining with inhuman anger.
"She has chosen. You will not impede her will."
"Mine," she hissed back.
And then she turned that gaze to me. My body still burned, the cold seemed to flay the skin off of my bones, and yet when she looked at me, the draw was still there. I wanted to go to her. I wanted to be known by her. I wanted...
A soft thud, a whooshing sound, and when I blinked next, Lasciel had flown a thousand feet away, spiraling into the boreal reaches of space. The Watchman's hand was held aloft in a defensive gesture.
"Choose, Molly," he said softly.
And distantly I could feel my body now, my limbs unlocking at last. I reached up for the chain at my neck. I yanked it free.
"No! You do not get to leave me!"
"Sorry, Lash," I muttered, gathering up the last of my bravado. "It's not me. It's you. Hasta la vista, babe."
And then I was back in the boat. Nicodemus' face was purpling. Anduriel's shadow hissed furiously, but couldn't strike at Dresden past the glow of Fidelacchius that leaked through the slats on the cane on Harry's back, nor the naked blade of Amoracchius held loosely in my father's hands.
He couldn't move to stop Harry. Couldn't have shaken him from the berserker's rage I'd instilled in his head that was fueling the pain blocks. But he tried nonetheless, tugging on Harry's pant leg, murmuring quietly about mercy.
My father was a far better man than I deserved to know.
His gaze traveled back to me as I flicked the pendant open and Lasciel's coin tumbled into my palm, an oily stain seeming to suck into the tainted coin even as I watched. I bounced it once in my palm then wound up, like a professional ballplayer and hurled it away from me.
It didn't have the panache I wanted. The coin didn't go sailing out of the boat and skipping across the black water of Lake Michigan as I'd planned. The toss was rather limp, after all the buildup, and it bounced off the engine and back into the interior of the boat. Still, the coin disappeared into the darkness, which was what I'd been after.
It's going to hurt, Harry had said. And he was right.
Almost the second Lasciel's coin parted company with my body, the walls she'd built began tumbling down. The pain of a dozen injuries flared red-hot in my awareness, but more than that, the internal damage began making itself known. Lasciel had been wrapping me in a big down blanket and shoving me in a soundproofed room where the emotions of others didn't penetrate. Where the psychic echo of the violence I'd committed couldn't touch me.
Now that the blanket had been whipped off, almost a year's worth of backlash hit me all at once. It felt like being ripped apart by Lasciel all over again, drowned by pain and terror. But this time, it was my own damn fault.
And again, gentle hands saved me, even as I fell to my knees on the deck, clutching my head. My father set Amoracchius aside and drew me onto his lap, cradling me to his chest, praying over me.
The pain dulled marginally. The blackness encroached. I was pretty sure I was going to die. I just had one thing I needed to ask him before I went.
"Forgive me," I whispered. "Please."
And then my eyes shut, and I let the pain take me.