This is the world I bring to you, mortal.

And then she thought at me again. She showed me the world she desired. A world of blasted cities, of smoke, of tears, of screams. Blood ran in the gutters rather than water. And columns of greasy black smoke rose from altars, from temples, from shrines decorated with skulls and crusted with the blood of sacrifices.

This is what is coming. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. Just as well that your daughter will not see it, I think. Just as well that you won’t, either.

And I felt her will gathering again, preparing to shatter mine.

Everything felt spinny. Empty.

Bob let out a wordless wail. I could feel my hold on the circle weakening. I could feel the Titan beginning to burst free of the binding.

Maggie, I thought. I’m so sorry. I should have done more. I should have been there.

“Dresden!” Marcone screamed from the water. “We’ll never get another chance at this!”

Ethniu’s will began to rip mine apart. Slowly. Almost sensually. I could feel her pressing against my mind. Pressing inside. She found my pain and my horror and she slithered inside while I gritted my teeth and held on to the Spear for simple support to keep from falling.

. . . thrumthrumthrumthrumthrumthrumthrum . . .

I couldn’t get the image of my daughter’s little shattered body out of my head.

Ethniu’s savaged face twisted into a hideous smile.

I should have done more, taken more measures to protect you than just leave you with Mou . . .

My head snapped back up.

I stared at her for a second.

And then I clenched my teeth in a sudden wolfish smile.

“Hey, Bubbles,” I said. “You forgot the dog.”

Ethniu’s smile vanished. “What?”

“The dog,” I said. “The dog was with them. Maybe your guys could take him out, maybe not. But it wouldn’t be fast. And they’d only get to my daughter over his dead body. But he’s not there. Question, where is he? Answer, with my daughter. That’s the only place it’s possible for him to be. Ergo, she wasn’t there. She was never there. In fact, none of them were, because the dog’s absence was a message, to me, from the person responsible. This girl I know had places to be this evening. Man, she really has been busy.”

Ethniu looked baffled.

I took a deep breath and said, “Honey, you’re fighting faeries. It was staged for your benefit. Wouldn’t be shocked if we went back there and found a bunch of bundles of wood where those bodies were.”

The Titan’s living eye widened.

“Listen betrayed me,” Ethniu hissed, spitting in her fury.

I stared at her for a second. For a second, I almost felt sorry for her.

Then I sighed.

“Sure, that’s the takeaway here,” I said. “Nice knowing you.” I set my jaw, kept my will on her, and cried, in a voice that echoed from the vaults of the apocalypse sky, “ETHNIU, DAUGHTER OF BALOR, I BIND THEE!”

A storm hit my mind. Even after Ethniu had expended such energies, after she had fought so many foes, after she had laid low a high school gymnasium full of supernatural heavyweights, the raw strength of the Titan’s remaining will was overwhelming. It tore at my perceptions, flooding them with random images and smells and sensations. It was like standing in a sandstorm, only instead of inflicting pain, every random grain forced you through an experience, a memory, so disjointed and intense and rapid that there was nothing to focus on, to hold on to. A flash sensation of summer-warmed grass between my toes. Plunging into a pool of chilled water in the hour before dawn. An image of watching warmly over a field worked by people with bronze tools. Another of strangling someone to death with my bare hands. And the images doubled, redoubled, multiplied into thousands of separate impressions all coming at me at once.

Memories. These were the substance of Ethniu, the pieces of her that railed against my will. She was going to hammer them into my mind as I tried to complete the binding, sandblast my psyche to pieces with an overwhelming flood of impressions.

I had to get to an image, a moment, that was mine. Me. That was strong enough to hold all the rest together.

I found one image.

Maggie, holding on to me with all four limbs, her little heart beating against my chest, while Mouse leaned against me, a solid presence of utter faithfulness and love.

And that was enough.

If the Titan shredded away everything else I had, this would be enough to build on. Friends. Family. Love. I focused on that memory, of my girl holding on to me with desperate strength, my fuzzy friend beside us, while her father’s arms held her safe.

The storm of the Titan’s will raged. But I found myself standing in the eye of the hurricane with the most quiet, defiant smile that had ever landed on my face.

The world came back to me. I could feel the Spear in my hands again, the broken rock and concrete beneath my feet.

Ethniu writhed and twisted in the center of the circle of campfire light, coming up off the ground as if gravity had suddenly stopped functioning.

“Bound, bound, bound!” I called. “Thrice said and done! Begone!”

The Titan shrieked in outrage.

My left eardrum exploded. Or maybe imploded. Whatever, it wasn’t there anymore. The world turned into one of those barrel rides where they spin so fast you stick to the wall. Only I didn’t have a wall to lean on.

I had the Spear of fucking Destiny.

THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM THRUM

It was as if I had started some vast and momentous engine.

“Alfred!” I screamed, and kicked the crystal out into the water of the lake.

The moment the bloodied crystal hit the water, there was a sound. A deep, deep sound, like a rumbling in earth miles below us. The surface of Lake Michigan went suddenly still—and then began to jump and vibrate like the indicator bars of God’s biggest stereo.

A light appeared in the water. I don’t mean like a spotlight or a glowing aura. This thing was huge. Hundreds of yards across. And it came through the water at a speed so great that it couldn’t readily be estimated.

But it pushed a bow wave ahead of it. A huge one.

“Oh crap,” I muttered.

In the water, Marcone snapped his head toward the wave, then calmly murmured something. He abruptly zipped through the water as though being pulled by a friendly dolphin and attained the shore.

“Dresden!”

“Go!” I said. “I’ve got to hold her here!”

Marcone gave me a look and said, “Of course you do.” He eyed the incoming wave, gold and green and across the entire horizon. Then he muttered something in a language I didn’t know, answered himself in the same language and a different voice, and then said, in English, “No, I don’t have any gopher wood. No one has any gopher wood. I’m not even sure it exists anymore.” Then he shook his head, looked at the ground, and started muttering and drawing in power.