"Do you want me to run her over?" Murphy asked.

I seriously considered it for a second, then shook my head. "I don't think so. Not yet, anyway."

I stared out the windshield. The Leanansidhe was standing in the middle of the road, staring right back, about fifteen feet away, bathed in the pick-up's headlights. And she looked like Hell. Her dress was a beautiful green, though it hung in tatters. Her hair was limp and looked to be soaking wet, with streaks of white threaded through the normally fiery red. And her face… her eyes were dark, the cheeks were gaunt. Her hands were almost skeletal.

"We need to speak, my godson." Lea's voice was hindered by the glass and metal of the truck's cab, and the sound of the engine, but it had lost none of its ethereal beauty. Even if her body was worse for wear, Lea was still Lea.

"I thought she was… you know, not around," Murph said.

"Last I saw, Mab was torturing her in Arctis Tor."

"Did she escape?"

My head moved side to side. "One does not escape the Winter Queen. One is released… or turned loose."

"Oh, goody. I was afraid this trip was going to get boring."

Enough sitting around. I sighed. "What the hell. You coming?"

Murph glanced at me, then back at the dishevelled sidhe. "After the weekend we've had? Sure, why not?" Her voice sounded like she was getting ready for a walk in the park; her expression said walk in a minefield.

Murphy killed the engine but left the lights on, and we hopped out, Fidelacchius joining us. We stepped up to Lea, who hardly moved. Perhaps subconsciously, we took up flanking positions just outside her reach. Position would do nothing to protect us if she wanted us harmed, of course, but a sidhe can't kill an unassociated mortal, not directly. Murphy was safe.

I, on other hand, as a willing member of the Court, was not.

Lea just kept standing there, hands at her sides, slightly vacant expression on her face.

"Godmother," I said.

"Knight of the Court," she said back. She turned to Karrin. "Knight of the Sword."

Murph looked uncertain for a second, then said, "Hi."

"You were released," I said.

Lea didn't look put out as she turned back to me. "My Queen has seen fit to return my freedom. I am… better now."

"Better?"

"I forgot myself. I tried to usurp my Queen's place. Curry favour with her allies and courtiers." She looked away and twitched. "I took that which was not mine to have." She twitched again, slightly less violently. She blinked and smiled. "La. I have returned to my Queen's favour. My foolishness is purged."

"Purged? How?"

"Why, through pain, my godson. Of course." She twitched again.

"Of course." I shuddered, thinking of what it would take to inflict lasting damage on a sidhe of Lea's power. "Why are you here, Lea?"

"I bring a message from the Queen, dear boy. She has engaged the Queen of Summer directly. Summer and Winter make war to the northwest."

"That's why we haven't seen any Summer Fae."

Lea inclined her head, that same absent smile still on her face. It was unnerving. "It also means, that should you defeat the Red Court, the King and his Lords of Outer Night, the Transit would be undone."

"Really?"

"Of course, godson. Behold the sky." She gestured at the blue-stained-with-red dome above us. "It returns to its natural state. As does Chicago itself."

"Well, that's good news."

"And further, the Queen has entrusted me to deliver unto you a weapon."

I grew wary. Gifts from the sidhe are nothing to sneeze at. Or accept, most of the time. "A weapon? What kind of weapon?"

Her voice shifted to a whisper. "The finest weapon of all." She reached one hand up the opposite sleeve, and pulled out a small knife, still in its sheath. No, on second glance, not exactly a knife.

"What is that?" Murphy asked.

"An athame," I said, turning to her. "The athame."

"The one that bitch stabbed you through the heart with?"

I nodded. "Yup." A standard athame is a blade never intended for shedding blood, or even for physical cutting, but for the closing of circles and channelling of energies; spiritual cutting. It's one of the quintessential tools of practitioners. And this athame was the perfect expression of that. "But it's incapable of spilling blood." I glanced at Lea again. "Well, mortal blood. It can, however, kill anything normally immortal."

"Yes," Lea said. "It is power beyond reason." I looked at her face; her eyes were fixed on the blade. "Power turned upon its head." She stroked one hand along the handle. "Power that inspires."

"Power that corrupts," I said, still looking at her.

Her eyes snapped to mine. She looked back down and drew her other hand away as though it had been burned. She held the athame out to me. "Take it, Harry. I beg of thee." Her eyes were already drifting back down to it as I reached out my hand. I didn't touch her. I don't know why, it just seemed like a bad idea.

Lea turned her hand to drop the old blade into mine. She hesitated.

"Lea!" I said.

She blinked and came back to herself again. Seeing her hand above mine, she finally let go. The solid weight of the athame dropped into my hand, and I immediately placed it in a pocket. Lea watched it go.

Once the blade was out of sight, she blinked a few times, then smiled again, that small, vacant smile. "La. It is a small thing, but I have passed my Queen's test."

"Christ," Murph said. I looked over and saw her hand was on her Sword's hilt. She glanced at me. "Like asking a junkie to deliver heroin."

"My Queen believes the burned hand teaches best," Lea said. "Now, I must return to her side. She bids you destroy the Red King, and protect your city."

"I was going to do that, anyway," I said.

"It is well your wishes and hers coincide, my godson. For if they did not… she would have to purge you of your foolishness."

I tried to look unimpressed and failed.

Lea turned away. "Do not underestimate her, Harry," she said without turning back. "She has made a habit of humbling greater men than yourself. And lesser. She will adhere to the letter of the deal you made with the Lady, of course. But be careful that you do not accept the spirit of the bargain lightly. Also remember that she is gifted with the power of foresight; she would not allow you to use this gift if she did not believe you would need it. The Red King stands nearly as her equal." I grimaced at the implication, but had trouble believing it.

I said, "So, what, you're saying she's guiding me in all this? Controlling me?"

"You would already be dead without her power. The unnatural one you just stood against – the one who called himself Cowl – would have killed you with hardly any effort at all. The mantle is a piece of her." She turned just enough that I could see one of her eyes. It caught a sliver of the returning sun, and blazed with an emerald fire. "A piece of her is within you. Never forget that."

Then she stepped into a shadow and vanished with no fuss at all.

We hopped back into the truck and Murph got it moving just as the rest of the column was catching up to us. I was unsettled, obviously. Murph picked up on it, and decided not to talk about it until she got us on I-90/94. She's awesome that way. "So," she said as we got on the strangely-wide-open lanes. "This new toy of yours." I pulled the old knife out of my pocket. "Powerful?"

I eyed Fidelacchius. "On the same level as that toy of yours."

She gave me a startled glance. "You're serious."

I pulled it free of its leather sheath. I'd hardly had a chance to look at it last time I'd been this close to it. Closer, really, since I'd been stabbed in the chest at the time. True to its nature, though, I hadn't died, or even bled.

The blade was solid bronze – no iron would be revered in Faerie, no matter what enchantment or essence it held. The handle was dark, maybe made of ebony. It was carved with small runes and glyphs that were familiar, almost rudimentary versions of the ones McCoy and I had carved into our staves. Which meant I'd be able to use it as a focus. Combined with its natural ability to slay anything immortal…

"Deadly serious," I said.

We drove right into a firefight. Murphy slowed down a bit as we came to the 35th Street overpass. The number of abandoned cars on the freeway had slowly increased as we approached the ballpark, until there seemed to be a double-lane opening heading straight up the off-ramp, and nowhere else to go. The stadium itself loomed up on our right and a little ahead. A lightshow was playing out on its walls; magic and gunfire exchanges. Murph took her foot right off the gas, looking around suspiciously. "Spider-sense tingling?" I asked. She nodded, once, using her cop-face.

One of the other cars in our convoy – it may very well have been the same car that had been sitting outside Murph's house just a few short days ago, when I was a felon and the world made sense – passed us, heading up the off-ramp. The ramp was long, with a mostly-full parking lot stretching along the right side.

I felt a disgusting, oily sensation run up my spine at the same instant Murph's eyes popped open. "No! No, you idiots, get back here!" She smashed the accelerator down again. I got a hand on the dashboard to keep myself steady and hit the button to lower my window. Something was waiting for us at the top of the ramp.

As the car ahead of us reached 35th, a flood of vampires exploded from the bridge. The concrete lip was only about two feet high, but that was enough to hide two dozen masses of squidgy, writhing, char-black flesh. They hit the car like wrecking ball-sized bird shot.

Murphy turned the truck just a bit to point right at the swarm as the car crumpled and went up on two wheels. I leaned way out my window and held the athame tightly in my hand, silently hoping it wouldn't blow up in my hand or just not work at all.

I drew in a breath and a little magic, and with one finger laid along the blade, pointed at the bad guys and shouted, "Fuego!"

The air caught fire. That's the only way I can describe it. A solid wall of flame just exploded from the knife, flew forward, enveloped the vampires and a corner of the smashed car, and melted the asphalt.

Murphy stood on the brakes, but the pick-up slid into the gooey, tar-saturated mess. We lurched forward as the tires caught in the industrial quicksand. One of them blew out. Behind us, the rest of the cop convoy screeched to a stop and started piling out of their vehicles. The car ahead of us had been pushed far enough by the vampires that it now rolled over on its roof. And the vampires themselves had been incinerated.

Maybe three or four had survived, and they lay on the road, in the bubbling and steaming asphalt, screaming with inhuman voices, large chunks of their flesh burned away. I looked down at the old knife, then over at Murphy. She was staring at the blade, too. "Wow," she said.

"You're telling me." I stuck my head and arms out of the window again, pointed at the ground and muttered, "Arctis." The asphalt solidified almost instantly, a thin layer of frost clinging to it. We both jumped out of the pick-up, and joined the rest of the law-enforcement types as they ran towards the upside-down crumpled lead car. Rawlins and I got there first.

Agent Tilly was in the passenger seat, buckled in. Aside from turning a bit red, and a small cut on his temple, he seemed okay, if woozy. I didn't know the driver, but he hadn't been buckled in and looked much the worse for wear. "Hey, Slim," I said as I got Tilly's door open.

"Mr. Dresden," he said, voice strained.

"You okay?" I dropped down on my back to get a look at his belt. He lifted his hands so I could squeeze in a bit. I heard a trio of gunshots, probably putting the last of the vampires down.

"Been better, obviously. Shoulder feels awful. Might be dislocated."

"Can you feel your legs? Wiggle your toes?"

He paused a second. "Yeah. Everything's still working."

"Okay, I'm going to get out of here. Put your good arm up to brace yourself, I'm going to cut the belt."

He complied with a grunt. I got the athame in my hand slid into the space between the seatbelt and the seat, where Tilly's hip was supposed to be, and my other arm up against his chest. With a gentle tug, the belt gave way under the blade instantly. Tilly crumpled to the roof in slow motion, his knees bumping against the dashboard. The remainder of the seatbelt was hooked around his right arm, but I cut that, too, then a detective – Stallings, it turned out – helped me pull Tilly free.

Once we were out, I saw the operation had been repeated on the driver's side by Rawlins and Rick, Murphy's ex-husband, while everyone else had formed a rough circle around us. We were separated from the chaos at the park by a mess of other vehicles. I heard Murphy say Rick's name, quietly.

I got around the car and joined the conference. The driver was sitting on the distorted pavement. He looked a bloody mess – scalp wound, likely – but he was alive.

"It's not good," Murph was saying. "They're trapped."

"Where?" he asked.

Murph pointed, and I looked. About 500 yards away, in the middle of another parking lot, a rough circle of cars, hot-dog stands, random pieces of metal and masonry, and what looked like a carcass of a crashed helicopter had been assembled into a makeshift breakwater. Or breakvampire, I guess. (Breakpire? Sure.) It looked small, compared to the ballpark beside it. Hastily constructed.

From behind the wall, bursts of gunfire and colourful balls and streaks of light leapt forth and into the vampires, taking them down. All well and good, but the vamps weren't exactly hurting for numbers. There had to be thousands of them, still pouring out of the stadium. They were throwing themselves at the fortification mindlessly. The second the main body of Reds saw our group, we'd be overrun. We had weapons, but there were less than forty of us.

"Not exactly a clear shot, Karrin."

"We have to go. We have to give them a way out."

I glanced around, and up. "Okay," I said. "I've got a problem, and a solution."

"Let's hear them," she said, pulling out her Glock.

"Problem: I can see the red distortion in the sky – the sign of the Transit – is centred on the stadium." I pointed up, above Cellular Park, where a shadow of a twister was formed, a tornado of red smoke. When the Transit was in full swing, when the Sun had been hidden, that smoke would have been invisible. "That means the Red King and his most powerful casters are inside, and we have to get them before Chicago can be safe."

She nodded, slid a magazine into the handgun. "You mentioned a solution?"

"I can get you an opening, to reach the survivors."

"How?"

I smiled. "A distraction. One I've always wanted to pull off."

She shook her head, put the gun into a shoulder holster. "I'm not even going to ask. Just do it."

I nodded. "Just be ready to move when you see it." Then I turned, squeezed between two cars, and started running.

Towards the gasoline tanker truck parked on the off-ramp across the bridge.

The ten foot wall that, in better times, had surrounded the park had been flattened. I didn't try to stay low, or hidden, I just ran down South Wentworth Avenue. As I went, a small group of vamps, six of them, trying to circle around to this side of the breakpire, emerged from behind a turned over minivan and saw me. One of them shrieked, and all of them started to come after me as a group.

I turned a little to aim for the fence at the side of the freeway, down a short, grassy slope. The vamps followed me. I hopped a little at the fence, got a hand on top of it, and swung my legs over. Doing so was surprisingly easy; I supposed that at some point I had to stop being surprised at the Winter Knight upgrade.

The vamps got closer still. Without breaking stride, I lifted the athame, pointed it at them, and snarled, "Fuego!" My hand became a flamethrower. I caught three of the damn things head-on, turning them into greasy black smears on the grass. Two of the others turned and fled.

One of them did not. It was either blinded by blood-lust or honestly thought it could take me. As it lunged over the fence, fangs first, I swung the knife at its face.

The blade slid right through its skull. I felt resistance, but it was minor, as though I were cutting through water rather than flesh and bone. The vampire simply collapsed into a loose-limbed mess, with no physical mark on it. I didn't stop to study it.

Running all-out had often been a distraction for me; a way to clear my head, just listen to my heartbeat thundering away and feel the blood pounding in my veins. The run hadn't been too far, maybe 200 yards, mostly downhill. A decent sprint, coupled with a surge of adrenaline the vampires had so generously given me.

I wasn't even breathing hard when I slid to a stop beside the rig. I stopped for a three-count, making sure nothing else was coming after me. I gave a wave back to Murphy and the others. I saw several of them just shaking their heads at me. Karrin just returned my wave.

I stepped back from the rig. Lash appeared next to me. "I understand your confidence that this will work."

"But?"

"But, I am uncertain that you will not be killed in the immediate aftermath."

"There's only one way to find out." I took another step back and started drawing in magic.

I heard her sigh, and vanish. Good luck, Harry.

Yeah. To both of us.

I continued to pull in raw power, felt it trying to escape me, a pressure building behind my eyes like a migraine. At the same time, I was shaping the spell I was about to use; usually, it was a pin-point strike, but this time, I needed a wide impact. With a final deep breath, I took in all I could, then snapped my arm forward in an underhand motion, shouting "Forzare!"

I felt a rush of power leaving me, and sagged to one knee. For a second, I felt every bit of the lack of sleep, over-use of Soulfire and skipped meals of the last two days weigh down on me. Then it passed. I didn't have time to think about it, but the rapid recovery didn't make me feel good – I realized then that I was still going only on Mab's good grace.

The rig jerked like it had been slapped by the hand of God, and jumped into the air, crumpled and rolling. Drawing my focus back down to a point, I lifted the athame again and shouted, "Fuego!" five times. Five tiny balls of fire jumped from the knifepoint like slugs from a slingshot and punched into the side of the still flipping trailer.

My cry of "Ventas fortius!" was lost in the explosion.

Hell, I was almost lost in the explosion. I've seen fireballs in movies, usually involving a tanker truck or a car. Almost without exception, they've been enhanced in some way; shooting a car's gas tank isn't all that likely to make it explode, since the gas has to be in a vaporous form to do that, and the gas in the tank is liquid, sealed away from all that pesky air until it gets injected into the engine.

This tanker, however, had cracked in several spots when I hit it, letting air in to mix with the pressurized liquid, and letting some of the now-vaporous gasoline into the air around it. The follow-up fireballs ignited the vapour, and ka-boom!

The shockwave from the blast hit me like a truck and knocked me flat on my back, about ten feet behind where I'd been standing. I felt the force on my chest, I felt the heat on my face, I felt the pressure on my eardrums. I managed to keep my head from bouncing off the pavement yet again, though it was a near thing.

But the air spell I tossed out, draining myself pretty thoroughly in the process, swept the fire itself forward on the wings of hurricane-force winds. A wall of flame washed across the parking lot, melting car windows and tires, bubbling asphalt and paint, and incinerating vampires. It blew a cone of destruction 60 feet wide at the near end and 200 feet at the other straight through the lot between the fortress and the cops.

I saw all that a few minutes later. At the time, I was trying to get my legs under me, but they didn't want to move. Oh, and sure, now I was starting to breathe hard. Physical exertion couldn't drain me, but apparently rapid-fire magic could. I managed to turn my head and saw Murphy leading a charge, Fidelacchius out and shining. I took a few breaths, then tried to roll over and failed.

I was also deaf. Not permanently, but everything sounded like it was coming from underwater, even my own breathing. I got a finger up to one ear, dug in and wiggled it. That helped a little. I just lay there and breathed, looking at the oddly streaked sky, feeling strength slowly returning to my limbs. Again, I didn't exactly welcome the sensation, since the fuel in my tank was going on Mab's corporate card.

After a minute or two, I managed to get myself up on one elbow. McCoy, Elaine and Thomas were running up to me. Thomas got to me first, and dropped down beside me, a hand on my shoulder. "You okay?" he said. Wonder of wonders, I actually heard him.

"Hard to tell," I said. "My body keeps writing cheques, and Mab keeps cashing them."

He tilted his head. "Top Gun? Seriously?"

"Problem, Goose?"

Elaine got to us a second later. Her hair was a mess, her face covered in dirt and scratches. Funny. Seeing how beat up she was only drew attention to how put-together Thomas still looked. The bastard. "Harry! Mother of all, you're alive!" She hugged me with one arm. "Was that fireball your work?"

I bounced my eyebrows. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"Hoss! You okay?"

"Help me up."

They got me to my feet just as McCoy reached us. In the distance, I could just make out Murphy, Sanya, the cops, soldiers and Wardens forming a column around the civilians, most of them moving under their own power, but many on makeshift stretchers or supported by other people. "Hello, Sir."

"Hell's bells, boy, how did you manage to - " He cut himself off as I held up the athame. I saw recognition flash over his face. "Where did you get that?"

"On loan from the head office," I said.

"Is that an athame?" Elaine asked. She was eying it suspiciously.

"Not a normal one," McCoy said. He shook his head. "Never do anything by halves, do you?"

"How long have you known me Sir?"

He snorted. "Can you move?"

I tried my legs, found they responded. Found I felt physically fine, in fact. "Yes, Sir."

"Then come on. We have to get after those blood-sucking bastards before they regroup. We have a real chance to deal them a blow they'll never recover from."

"They retreated into the stadium?"

"Yeah."

"Well, lead the way," I said.