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My eyes adjusted enough to make out some details The delowing sigil, and vicious claas the sa The second derey scales flecked with bits of rust red From shoulders to waist, he looked more or less human From the neck up and the waist down, he looked like sos Coils slithered out behind hi over the floor He too had the double pair of eyes, one set golden and serpentine, the other, inside the first, glowing faintly blue-green, ht that seeleam of the scales of the snake&039;s head

One little, two little, three little Denarians, or so I judged the last of them Of the three, he was the only one that looked human He wore a tan trench coat, casually open His clothes were tailor-fit to hi loosely around his throat He was a ht and build, with short, dark hair streaked through with an off-center blaze of silver His expression was mild, a He spoke English with a faint British accent "Well, well What have we here? Our bold thief and her-"

I got the iin one of those tradeuys see fans of, but before he could finish the sentence Anna Valmont turned with her little pistol and shot him three times in the chest I saw him jerk and twist Blood abruptly stained his shirt and coat She&039;d hit the heart or an artery

The man blinked and stared at Valmont in shock, as more red spread over his shirt He opened his coat a bit, and looked down at the spreading scarlet I noted that the tie he asn&039;t a tie, as such It looked like a piece of old grey rope, and though he wore it as apparent orna interrupted," the otten around to the introductions There are proprieties to observe, young woirl after my own heart, Anna Valmont had a quick reply She shot him some more

He wasn&039;t five feet away The blond thief aimed for the center of mass and didn&039;t miss hi neounds that bled freely He rolled his eyes after the fourth shot, and esture with his left hand until Valun clicked empty, the slide open

"Where was I," he said

"Proprieties," purred the feminine deled, due to the heavy canines that dimpled her lips as she spoke "Proprieties, Father"

"There seems little point," theI have an interest in Give it to o your oay Refuse me, and I will become annoyed with you"

Anna Valmont&039;s upper lip had beaded with sweat, and she looked froun to the man in the trench coat ide, wild eyes, frozen in confusion and obvious terror

The gunshots would bring people running I needed to buy a little time I leaned up, fished a hand into Valmont&039;s jacket pocket, and drew out a suely like a remote control to a VCR I held up the trans, and said to the art You and the wonder twins back off or the bedsheet gets it"

The led the remote "Click Boom Noin restless, lithe irl parted her lips in a snarl The man between them stared at me for a moment, his eyes flat and e"

"Like the bedsheet matters toBut his shadow did It writhed and undulated, and the uely carsick His eyes went froe tube on the floor "A re next to the device?"

I realized it I had no idea how big the incendiary was But that was all right, since I had no idea which button to push to set it off, either "Yup"

"You would kill yourself rather than surrender the Shroud?"

"Rather than letting you kill me"

"Who said I would kill anyone?"

I glared at hiirl and said, "Francisca Garcia mentioned it"

The man&039;s shadow boiled but he watchedeyes "Perhaps we can reach an arrangement"

"Which would be?"

He drew a heavy-caliber handgun from his pocket and pointed it at Anna Val woun? You&039;ve got to be kidding lanced at the revolver "Trendy, I know, but one can only watch so many disun at the terror-stricken Valmont and said, "Shall I count to three?"

I threw on a puppet&039;s Transylvanian accent "Count as high as you vant, but you von&039;t get one, one detonator, ah, ah, ah"

"One," Nicodemus said

"Do you expect ?"

"You&039;ve done such things repeatedly when there was a woer, Harry Dresden Two"

This Nicodemus knew oing to take long, however it turned out, so he kneas stalling for ti to be able to bluff him "Hold on," I said

He thumbed back the hammer of the revolver and aimed at Valmont&039;s head "Thr-"

So ht," I snapped, and I tossed the reo"

Nicode to catch the remote in his left hand I waited until his eyes flicked from Valmont to the remote

And then I pulled up every bit of power I could ht hand forward, and snarled, "Fuego!"

Fire rose up from the floor in a wave as wide as the doorway and rolled forward in a surge of superheated air It expanded as it lashed out, and slammed into Nicodemus&039;s bloodied chest The force of it threw him back across the hallway and into the wall on the opposite side He didn&039;t quite go through the wall, but only because there must have been a stud lined up with his spine The drywall crumpled in from his shoulders to his hips, and his head snapped back in a whiplash of impact It al wetly against the wall around him like blobs of tar

The snake to one side of the blast The deether in an effort to shield her as the fire and concussion threw her back and away from the door

The heat was unbearable, an oven-hot flash that sucked the air fros Backwash fro until I hit the wall myself I cowered and shielded my face as the scarlet flaly black s but the ha ofI wouldn&039;t have done if I&039;d had an option That&039;s why I had ic was difficult, dangerous, and likely to run out of control The blasting rod helped ic, contain it It helped s

I fu smoke, unable to breathe and unable to see I found a feminine wrist with one hand, followed it up to a shoulder, and found Anna Valmont I hauled on her with one hand, found the courier&039;s tube with the other, and crawled for the ventilation duct, hauling them both behind me

There was air in the ventilation shaft, and Valh of the storage rooh to see One of Valone, and one side of her face was red and blistered I screamed, "Move!" at her as loudly as I could Her eyes blinked with dull co in the laundry roo stiffly in front of me

Valmont didn&039;t crawl as quickly as I wanted her to, but then she wasn&039;t the one closest to the fire and the monsters My heart hammered in my ears and the shaft felt oppressively sher than either otten lethally lucky, they&039;d recover fro before they caet into a car, and fast, they&039;d catch us, plain and siination turned up is to shreds, or venoged me backward by my ankles

Valmont tumbled out of the air shaft and into the laundry roora habits My ears were starting to get their act together, and I heard the high, buzzing ring of a fire alarm in the hallway outside

"Harry?" Susan said She looked between Valmont and ?"

I got to ht now"

Susan nodded atsideways and into the wall of dryingirl&039;s hair pureeing its way out of the vents, and then the rest of the Denarian ca to all fours with dizzying grace

Fast as the Denarian was, Susan was faster The deirl came up with those rich lips split into a snarl, and Susan drove her heel right into the crunched, and the deirl screamed in surprise and pain