“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!”

Forty-seven

Ursiel was too big to fight.

Look, people go on and on about how size isn’t everything, and how the bigger they are, the harder they fall, but the people who say that probably haven’t ever faced down a charging demon-bear so big it should have been on a drive-in movie screen. As a defensive adaptation, sheer size is a winner. It’s a fact. Ask an elephant.

But.

As a hunting adaptation, size is only good when the things you’re hunting are also enormously huge. Successful predators aren’t necessarily bigger than the things they take down—they’re better armed, and just big enoughto get the job done if they do it right. Too much bulk and nimble prey can escape, leaving the hunter less able to handle a broad range of targets.

Grey had done something brilliant, in blinding the Genoskwa: He’d forced it to rely upon Ursiel’s eyes. That meant, apparently, that he had to stay in that giant bear form to do it. If the Genoskwa had been able to pursue me in his natural form, he would have caught me and torn me apart in short order—I’d seen him move. The bear might have been an irresistible mass of muscle, claws, and fangs, but I’d had a little experience with very, very large creatures on the move, and I’d learned one important fact about them.

They didn’t corner well.

Ursiel closed in and went into a little bounce, a motion as close to a pounce as something that size could manage, and I darted to one side. Harry Dresden, wizard, might have bought the farm right there. But Sir Harry, the Winter Knight, dodged the smashing paws and snapping jaws by a tiny margin, hopped back several yards, and shouted, “Olé! Toro!”

Ursiel roared again, but its head swung around toward the retreating forms of Michael and Grey. Ursiel was no tactical genius, from what I’d seen of it, but both it and the Genoskwa were predators—and Michael and Grey were wounded and vulnerable. It could catch them and dispatch them easily and then hunt me down at its leisure, like a cat dealing with so many troublesome mice.

So I lifted my staff, pointed it at the demon-bear, and shouted, “Fuego!”

The blast of fire I sent at him wasn’t much. I didn’t feel like passing out from exhaustion at the moment, and both the Genoskwa and Ursiel had displayed a troublesome resistance to my magic. That wasn’t the point. The mini-blast of flame struck the bear in the side of the nose, and while it didn’t sear the flesh, it singed some hairs and I bet it stung like hell.

The bear’s head whipped back toward me and it rolled a step forward. Then the glowing eyes brightened and it swung again toward the wounded men, now leaving the vault. The conflict of wills going on between the Genoskwa and the Fallen angel was all but visible.

“Jeez,” I drawled, in the most annoying tone I possibly could. “You suck, Gen. I’ll bet you anything River Shoulders wouldn’t be all torn and conflicted right now.”

That got it done.

The great bear whirled back to me and lunged into instant, savage motion, and again I skittered out of the way a couple inches ahead of being ground into paste. I darted a few more yards to one side, putting one of the displays between us. It didn’t bother to go around—it just crashed straight through, spraying gold and jewels everywhere, and I damned near got my head redecorated with a falling marble column. I slipped, recovered my footing, and kept moving, forcing the huge bear to keep turning laterally if it wanted to pursue me.