The demon charged, her hooves cleaving the asphalt. The ichors dripping from her torn and dangling torso left scars in the road. Alec stepped back and into a wolf’s skin, a movement so fluid you’d be right to think he’d done it for centuries. And Simon didn’t blink, didn’t stutter – he raised the fist clutching the miniature sword and he screamed in Latin that wasn’t Latin:

�I, Simon, American magus of the Ninth Order replevy your name; I take what is mine, loaned in haste; I take it in my name, with my blood; thou art nameless!�

Her goatlike legs twisted as she charged; she changed states of being. Something like a hungry exhalation and something like a fading demon slid and twisted towards the prone wizard, and he threw the miniature sword at her. He threw it with a curling, underhand motion, a fling more than a toss, like he might have been discarding a wadded tissue instead of throwing a two-inch long replica claymore.