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Oh god.
Murphy was down. Murphy was dead.
And Harry was breaking.
Harry was breaking and as much as I hated it, we couldn’t afford to let him break and mourn, not with a goddess marching on the city and Harry standing as the key to stopping her.
I tried to get him moving, a hand on his shoulder. “Harry, we’ve got to go. We have to.”
He twisted out of my grip with more force than necessary, and I hated having to contemplate how to drag him away from the corpse of his soulmate. I mean, I don’t think soulmates were a real thing, but if they were, Harry and Murphy definitely were. They had stood beside each other so solidly, loved each other for years before finally going for it, and now it was ended all too soon.
Then things got Scary.
Harry turned off the tears, stopped screaming, gently kissed Murphy’s forehead, and when he came up, a red targeting carat was wavering into existence over his head.
“Harry,” I called in a bid for his attention, hoping if I had it I could get him to think, not just react based on his emotions, I could get that little symbol to disappear. “Harry, what are you doing?”
I’d seen Harry look like this before, almost a year ago on Demonreach. Harry Dresden was checking out, the Winter Knight taking his place. And the Winter Knight was a monster.
He rose with the smooth grace of a predator, the kind of grace I was used to seeing Thomas move with when the action went down.
He looked terrifying. Harry’s tall, he always has been, but he hadn’t ever quite loomed like this. Part of it was probably the fact that without his shirt or duster, you could see the tension in the corded muscle of his frame, the tapestry of scars across his upper half that showed all that he’d survived, the way the shadows sharpened the already sharp angles of his figure, but I think mostly it was the knowledge that both Rudolph and I possessed that Harry could rip apart a mortal man without ever even touching him, yet he was angry enough right now to want to do it with his bare hands.
“Harry, no!” I shouted at him, like he could be brought to heel. If Harry did this─
Rudolph bolted and the red carat came into sharp relief.
That damn cop did the damned stupidest thing he could when faced with an apex predator trying to decide what to do with him and ran like prey! I could have screamed in frustration from the cop’s decision to do as much damage as possible to Harry’s psyche through sheer stupidity, but instead I was hauling my scrawny butt after them, wishing I had longer legs that had a chance of keeping up with them.
When I did catch up, I was both relieved and terrified to see Sanya already there. Relief because someone stronger, more experienced than I was there to hold Harry back. Terrified because it didn’t seem to be going well for Sanya with as vicious as Harry was being.
A small voice in the back of my mind gibbered that we were in big trouble if both Knights were sent to stand up to Harry. God won’t give you a burden bigger than your shoulders can bear, so how terrifying was Winter Knight Harry to need two Knights of the Cross to bear his fury?
I slipped past the brawl to see if we had been too late.
Rudolph was a mess. Broken bones and bowels loose as he lay curled on his side, whimpering and choking on his own breath, but still alive at least.
The impact of flesh on flesh ceased behind me and I knew even before I looked that Sanya hadn’t been the victor of that fight.
I looked up and up and up at the Winter Knight.
God, I was so scared. I thought earlier this year that I’d been ready to face down Harry if he went bad, had thought I was facing down a Monster Harry until he caught up with me and started dragging me towards safety. And oh man did I wish was this just another misunderstanding.
But it wasn’t, and I knew it wasn’t.
What loomed before me was everything Harry had feared he’d become, one man’s life away from destroying my friend, and it seemed ready to go through me to do it too.
Rule one of facing monsters, don’t let them see your fear, a gentle version of Harry’s voice echoed through my head. So I got to my feet as steady and unhurried as I could. I think I did pretty good on the unhurried, the steady didn’t seem to be working out so great. My everything was trembling as I faced down the monster living under my friend’s skin.
“Harry, I can’t let you,” I told him, hoping against hope the words would get through.
“You saw what he did. What he did to her,” Harry rumbled, such pain and fury scratching and ripping at his voice.
“You have lost it, man,” I said, trying to get him to see that he wasn’t anywhere close to thinking straight. “Harry, I can’t let you.”
“You’d protect that thing?” he demanded, baring his teeth in a bloody snarl.
“He’s not the one I’m trying to protect. I’m trying to protect my friend,” I declared, the fear melting away into clarity.
I didn’t much care if Rudolph got himself killed and/or eaten by a monster, as long as it wasn’t this monster. If I let this monster do the deed, my friend Harry Dresden would die alongside Murphy and Rudolph, and I could not let that happen.
I could see that my words had an effect, that they’d shaken the predatory calm Harry had. There was still a chance to draw my friend clear of that pained rage.
Though shaking that calm may not have been the best idea as he raised his hand in a fit of fury and called down a thunderbolt out of thin air to smite Rudolph. I barely got Fidelacchuis between the beaten cop and the lightning in time.
Once Harry saw that it had failed, he stalked forward, raising his left arm for some kind of chop or backhand.
“Harry. Don’t,” I whispered as my eyes pricked with tears and I feared for my friend. If Harry attacked, I’d have to defend, and that red carat meant Fidelacchius would cut through him unlike that experiment in Michael’s backyard. God, I didn’t want to hurt my friend more than he already was.
Harry struck.
I parried.
I suppose we got lucky. Harry did not lose an arm Star Wars style, but he was burned to the scent of sulfur and brimstone. That sent a shiver down my spine as I stood between him and Rudolph, Fidelacchius ready to intercept another attack. Yet Harry just stumbled back, horror and pain overtaking the fury upon his face as the red carat faded.
My heart broke alongside his as Harry fell to his knees, burned arm cradled to his chest, and screamed, not loud, but filled with pure agony. As he sobbed, I knew the monster was banished, my friend saved, and wounded deeper than he’d ever been before.
“I’m here Harry,” I choked out past my own tears. “Harry, I’m here.” Because Murphy’s words echoed in my ears as I watched Harry break down. He needs his friends to believe in him. The fastest way for us to help make him into a monster is to look at him like he is one. Harry is my friend, he is a good man, and I would never leave him to be consumed by the monster within. I am here and I’m not leaving Harry’s side anytime soon.
I let Fidelacchius go inert as I crouched down to hug him, though not far given that a kneeling Harry was nearly as tall as me. “I’m here, man. I’m here.”
Damn if Harry wasn’t heavy as he leaned against me, sobbing his heart out, but this was a burden I was more than willing to bear. My friend who had propped me up, protected me, so many times needed me to be strong for him. I could do that. Maybe not as well as Murphy would have, but I could do it.
“He took her,” Harry choked out, barely drawing enough air past the sobs wracking his tall frame to form the words. “He took her from me.”
My heart broke just a little more for Harry as my arms tightened around him. I knew Harry never had many friends, had spent most of his life without blood family, and I knew Harry clung desperately to the people that made themselves his family because he treasured anyone who took the time to really care for him.
I just had to correct one thing.
“He took her from all of us,” I reminded Harry, pain lacing my own voice. “And he’ll answer for it before the law, Harry.” Even if I had to take the case to the law myself, screaming and shouting at the injustice done. “But it can’t happen like this. You can’t let it happen it like this.”
I paused to turn him and look him in the eyes as close as I dared, which after so many years in his company was fairly close, because this was the important part, what would hopefully put him back together enough to get us through the night.
“We need you. You, the good man. I can’t let you hurt that man. Too many of us need him.” I could tell how lost inside Harry was by the lack of reaction to being called a good man. He always got this disbelieving yet pleased light to him when his friends told him he was a good man, like he couldn’t quite believe we thought that. According to Michael, Harry didn’t quite believe himself good, so he was surprised anyone else did. Since that didn’t work, it was time for the big guns to pull Harry all the way out of the grip of this monster.
“Your daughter needs him.”
That did the trick.
Horror and shame filled his face as he apologized, “I’m sorry. Butters, I’m sorry.”
I would have told him I forgave him if that hadn’t brought a new flood of tears to my eyes as the good man came back to the fore.
“Sanya,” he choked out, and I felt a sliver of guilt for forgetting about the other Knight Harry had beaten.
“Am all right,” Sanya reassured us in a groggy voice. “Bozhe moi, you fight dirty,” he proclaimed as he approached us and placed a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “Like a Russian.” Well, at least Sanya sounded happy despite the loss, but then again, Sanya rarely didn’t sound happy outside a fight.
“Sanya’s here, too. He’ll be okay,” I confirmed for Harry. He needed to know he wasn’t as alone as losing Murphy was making him feel. We are here.
Harry collapsed, the strength to hold himself up, to hold himself together, gone. We caught him and held him close.
“I’m here, Harry. I’m here,” I chanted in a litany of reassurance.
“She’s gone,” he whispered, so very broken.
“Yeah,” I whispered back, hurting too. Hurting for the absence of a firecracker of a woman and the loss of the man who loved her. “I know. I’m here.”
We held Harry as he hurt, and wished the night was already over so we wouldn’t have to drag him to his feet and force him to soldier on.