She screamed at me, her eyes furious, gathering more fire in her hands, seeing only a passive target, weakened and fallen to one knee, one she could smash to bits with a third and final strike—but I saw Lasciel’s glowing eyes widen in sudden dismay and understanding as the Fallen reached her own comprehension of consequences a few portions of a second too late to do any good.
An instant later, several hundred tons of molten and red-hot rock, chewed from the earth above us by Ascher’s own Hellfire-infused strike, came crashing down on top of her.
The noise was terrible. The destruction was appalling. Glowing hot stones bounced from my shield and then began to pile up against it, pushing at me and physically forcing me back across the ground. The pileup shoved me a good twenty feet across the amphitheater floor, with Michael hobbling frantically along a couple of feet ahead of me, crouching to take advantage of the protection of my shield.
After a few seconds, the falling stone became less violent and random, and I dropped my shield with a gasp of effort. I stayed right where I was, down on one knee, and bent forward at the waist, struggling to catch my breath, exhausted from the efforts of the past few moments. The vault was spinning around and around, too. When had it started doing that?
The air had gone thick with dust and heat and the smell of brimstone. Half of the freaking amphitheater had been buried by fallen stone. One of the enormous statues was covered to the thighs.
And Hannah Ascher and Lasciel were gone.
A few last stones fell, clattering over the mess, bouncing. I noted, dimly, that their arches didn’t look the way they should have. Gravity was indeed something heavier here than in the physical world. It was so heavy, in fact, that I thought I might just close my eyes and stay on the floor.
“Harry,” Michael breathed.
“Sorry about that, Hannah,” I heard myself mutter. “I’m sorry.”
Michael put his hand on my shoulder. “Harry? Are you all right?”
I shook my head, and gestured weakly at the fallen rock with one hand. “Hell’s bells, Michael. That wasn’t even a fight. It was just murder. She wasn’t a monster. She just made a bad call. She let that thing inside her and . . . it just pushed her buttons. Drove her.”
“It’s what they do,” Michael said quietly.
“Could have been me over there . . . There but for the grace of God goes Harry Dresden.”
Michael limped around to stand in front of me, slapped me lightly on the cheek, and said, “We don’t have time for this. Reflect later. We’ll talk about it later. Get up.”
The blow didn’t hurt, but it did startle me a little, and make me shake my head. The immediate exhaustion of slinging that much power around began to fade, and I shrugged off the lethargy that went with it. The ugly, prickling cold was still coming closer.
“Harry,” Michael said, “are you with me?”
“Headache,” I muttered. And then I realized what that meant. Mab’s earring burned like a tiny frozen star in my ear, and my head was beginning to pound anyway.
I was running out of time. And unless I could get everyone back to the first gate and open the Way back to Chicago, it was running out for everyone else as well. I planted my staff and pushed myself to my feet. I felt creaky and heavy and tired and I couldn’t afford to let that matter.
Everything snapped back into focus, and I swiped at something hot and wet in my eyes. “Okay,” I said. “Okay. Let’s get Grey and get the hell out of here.”
Just then, something that looked vague and lean, and had huge batlike wings, streaked through the air toward us from the far side of the amphitheater. One of its wings faltered, and it tumbled out of the air, hit the marble floor, and started bouncing. The form rolled several times, and when it stopped, Grey was lying there looking dazed. The lower half of his face, as well as his hands and forearms were soaked with scarlet blood.
“Michael,” I said.
We moved together, getting Grey onto his feet between us, and started back toward the entrance to the vault, skirting the hellish heat coming off of the rubble. “Grey,” I said, “what happened?”
“He got smart and shifted down,” Grey said. “My jaws slipped. But something got in his eyes, and I disengaged before he could reverse the hold on me.”
From somewhere behind us came the Genoskwa’s furious roar and the crash of another column falling. Then another roar, pained, that grew deeper in register as the Genoskwa assumed Ursiel’s demonform again and rose up onto his hind legs, coming into sight of us. Doing so put his head damned near twenty feet off the ground, and though we were most of the way up the amphitheater stairs, Ursiel’s glowing eyes and the Genoskwa’s ruined and bloody eye sockets were level with my own. The demon-bear opened his jaws and roared in fury.
“He looks pissed,” I squeaked.
“Certainly hope so,” Grey said, slurring the words a little. He was only barely supporting his own weight, and his eyes still looked vague. “Gimme sec, be fine.”
Ursiel dropped back down to all sixes and started toward us. He was limping on the leg Michael had cut, but it wasn’t just flopping loosely the way it should have been. Hell’s bells, he recovered fast.
“Valmont,” I said to Grey. “Where is she?”
“Sent her back to the first gate,” Grey said, “with your magic artif . . . art . . . toys.”
“That’s it,” I said to Michael. “You’re hurt. Grey’s scrambled. Get him back to the first gate and do it as fast as you can.”
Michael clenched his jaws. “You can’t fight Ursiel alone, Harry. You can’t win.”
“Don’t need to fight him,” I said. “Just need to buy you two some time to get clear. Trust me. I’ll be right behind you.”
Michael closed his eyes for a second and then gave me a quick nod and shouldered Grey’s weight more thoroughly. “God be with you, my friend.”
“I’ll take whatever help I can get,” I said, and stopped at the top of the amphitheater stairs, while Michael half carried Grey back out the way we’d come.
My head pounded. I shook the sheathed knife out of my sleeve and dropped it into the duster pocket with my overgrown revolver, then checked the Shroud to make sure it was secure.
From the far rear of the vault, I heard something let out an eerily windy-sounding cry, and the sensation of cold around me grew more and more intense, gaining an element of irrational, psychic terror to go with it. An instant later, other cries echoed the first, and the sensation of unthinking panic swelled. My heart sped up to a frantic pace and my limbs felt shaky and weak.
The shades were coming.
Ursiel let out another furious roar and then the twenty-foot horned bear the size of a main battle tank broke into a lumbering run as it came up the stairs toward me, fangs bared, intent upon mayhem.
And rather than turning to flee like a sane person, I brandished my staff in one hand, flew him the bird with the other, and screamed, “Hey, Yogi! Here I am! Come get some!”