The Genoskwa let out a low growl. It had to turn its shoulders and twist at the waist to look back at him, a simian gesture—there was just too much muscle on that huge neck to allow it the full range of motion. As a result, I was able to see past it.
Karrin, apparently unhurt, still stood, and she had Fidelacchius pressed against Nicodemus’s throat.
I blinked, and felt a sudden surge of ferocious pride.
She’d beaten him.
“I may be no true Knight,” Karrin snarled into the sudden silence, her voice tight with pain. “But I’m the only one here. Tell the gorilla to let Dresden go or I take your head off and give the Noose back to the Church along with your Coin.”
Nicodemus stared at her for a moment. Then he opened his hands, slowly, and the sword and pistol both tumbled to the frozen ground. The sleet rattled down in silence.
“I surrender,” he said quietly, his voice mocking. He tilted his head slightly toward Butters. “And I relinquish my claim on the blood of the innocent. Have mercy on me, O Knight.”
“Tell the Genoskwa to let him go,” Karrin said.
Nicodemus held out his hand. The swarming shadows around him abruptly surged, condensed, flooded toward him. They gathered in his palm, and an instant later, a small silver coin gleamed there, marked with a black smudge in the shape of some kind of sigil. Without looking away from Karrin, he dropped the Coin, and it fell to the icy sidewalk without bouncing, as if it had been made from something far heavier than lead.
“Let Dresden go,” Karrin said.
Nicodemus smiled, still, his eyes and hands steady. He reached up and undid the Noose tied about his throat, and let it fall to the ground beside the Coin.
Karrin bared her teeth. “Let him go. I’m not going to ask again.”
Nicodemus smiled and smiled, and said, “Crush his skull. Make it hurt.”
The Genoskwa turned back toward me, his eyes blazing from back beneath his cavernous brow, and his fingers tightened on my skull. I dropped my staff and tried to reach up to pry his hand off my head, but quickly realized that I was hilariously outclassed in the physical strength department. If I strained with my entire body, I might have a chance against one of the Genoskwa’s fingers. I tried that. The vise tightened. My breathing turned harsh as red cracks began to spread through the silvery sensation.
“But I’ve surrendered,” Nicodemus assured Karrin. “It’s very clear, what you must do.” His smile had returned, and his voice dripped contempt. “Save me, O Knight.”
“You son of a bitch,” Karrin snarled. Her breath had begun to come in gulps. “You son of a bitch.”
Pain finally began to hammer through the mantle of Winter. I heard myself make an animal sound as the Genoskwa’s grip tightened. His breathing was getting faster and harsher, too. He was enjoying this.
My groan shook Karrin, visibly, her body reacting to the sound.
I saw it coming, what Nicodemus was doing. I tried to warn her, but as I began to speak, the Genoskwa rapped my head back against the minivan and nothing came out.
“Save me,” Nicodemus said again, “and watch him die.”
“Damn you!” Karrin snarled.
Her hips and shoulders twisted, to deliver the lethal slash.
The light of the blade died away as abruptly as that of an unplugged lamp. The thrum of power that resonated through the very air vanished.
Nicodemus rolled, moving like a snake, anticipating her perfectly and flowing away from the Sword with a sinuous motion of spine and shoulder. Karrin was thrown slightly off-balance by the lack of resistance, and his hands swept up and seized her wrists.
The pair of them struggled for a second, and then Fidelacchius swept up high, over Karrin’s head. Her expression whitened in horror as she saw the Sword, now gleaming with nothing more than ordinary light.
Then, guided by Nicodemus’s hands, the ancient Sword came smashing down onto the concrete of the sidewalk, the flat of the blade striking the frozen stone.
It shattered with a rising shriek of protesting metal, shards flickering in the streetlights. Pieces of the blade went spinning in every direction, sparkling reflected light through the darkness. Karrin stared at it with unbelieving eyes.
“Ah,” Nicodemus said. The wordless sigh was a slow, deep expression of utter satisfaction.
Awful silence fell.
The Sword of Faith was no more.
Thirty
Sleet rattled down.
A dog howled, somewhere a few blocks away, a lost and lonely sound.
Karrin’s breath exploded from her in a sob, her blue eyes wide and fixed on the shattered pieces of the blade.
“Judge not, lest ye be judged, Miss Murphy,” Nicodemus purred. And then he slammed his head into hers.
She reeled back from the blow, and was brought up short by Nicodemus’s grip on her arm.
“It is not the place of a Knight to decide whether or not to take the life given to another,” Nicodemus continued. Before she could recover, he struck her savagely, the heel of his hand cracking into her jaw with an audible crunching sound. “Not your place to condemn or consign.”
Karrin seemed to gather herself together. She flicked a quick blow at Nicodemus’s face, forcing him to duck, and then their hands engaged in a complex and swift-moving series of motions that ended with Karrin’s left arm held out straight, while she was forced down to her knees on the freezing sidewalk.
I’d never seen her lose when it came to grappling for a lock. Never.
“I’m not sure what would have happened if you’d simply struck, without that condemnation,” Nicodemus continued, “but it would seem that in the moment of truth, your intent was not pure.” He twisted his shoulders in a sudden, sharp motion.
Karrin screamed, briefly, breathlessly.
I struggled against the Genoskwa’s crushing grip. I might as well have been a puppy, for all the effect my best efforts had on the thing. I gathered my will and flung a half-formed working of power against him, but again, the energy grounded itself harmlessly into the earth as it struck him.
I could do nothing.
Nicodemus twisted Karrin, tilted his head to one side, and then drove his heel against her knee with crushing strength.
I heard bones and tendons parting at the blow.
Karrin choked out another sound of pain, and crumpled to the ground, broken.
“I was afraid, for a time, that you actually would leave the Sword out of it,” Nicodemus said. He bent and recovered the Noose calmly, fastening it around his neck as casually as a businessman putting on his tie. “Survivors of Chichén Itzá—and there were more than a few, in part thanks to your efforts—describe your contribution to that conflict as impressive. You were obviously ready and in the right, that night. But you were never meant for more. Most Knights of the Cross serve for less than three days. Did you know that? They aren’t always killed—they simply fulfill their purpose and go their way.” He leaned down closer to her and said, “You should have had the grace to do the same. What drove you to take up the Sword, when you knew you weren’t worthy to bear it? Was it pride?”
Karrin shot him a fierce glare through eyes hazed with pain and tears, and then looked over at me.
He straightened, arching an eyebrow. “Ah, of course,” he said, his tone dry—yet somehow filled with venomous undertones. “Love.” Nicodemus shook his head and picked up his sword with one hand, and the Coin with the other. “Love will be the downfall of God Himself.”
Karrin snarled weakly, and flung the broken hilt of Fidelacchius at Nicodemus’s head. He snapped his sword up, flicking it contemptuously away from him. The wooden handle landed in the Carpenters’ yard.
Nicodemus stepped closer to Karrin, dropping the point of his sword again, aiming it at her. As he did, blackness slithered down his body again, onto the ground, his shadow spreading out around him like a stain of oil over pure water.
Karrin fumbled backward, away from him, but she could barely move with only one arm and one leg functioning. The wet sleet plastered her hair to her head, made her ears stick out, made her look smaller and younger.
I kicked at the Genoskwa through the red haze over my vision. With Winter upon me, I can kick cinder blocks to gravel without thinking twice. It was useless. He was all mass and muscle and rock-hard hide.
“Face it, Miss Murphy,” Nicodemus said, keeping pace with her. His shadow swarmed all over the ground around her, surrounding her. “Your heart”—the tip of his sword dipped toward it by way of illustration— “simply wasn’t in the right place.”
He paused there, long enough to give her time to see the sword thrust coming.
She faced him, her eyes fierce and frightened, her face pale with pain.
And the front door of the Carpenters’ house opened.
Nicodemus’s dark eyes flickered up at once, and stayed focused on the front porch.
Michael stood in the doorway to the house for a brief moment, leaning on his cane, surveying the scene. Then he limped down the steps and out onto the walk leading from the front porch to the mailbox. He moved carefully and steadily in the sleet, right up to the gate in the white picket fence.
He stopped there, maybe three feet from Nicodemus, regarding him steadily.