rebar

I was airborne when I saw the attack coming—jagged spears of metal, made from what looked like rebar scavenged from the wreckage of demolished buildings.
There wasn’t one spear.
There weren’t a dozen.
There were hundreds.
If the Winter unicorn had not reared to protect Mab, I figure I’d have died right there. Instead, the creature’s body intercepted maybe a dozen of the spears. I had leapt so that my back and the spell-armored duster that covered it would be between the spears and the Winter Queen.
I hit Mab and carried her off the back of the doomed unicorn.
Two spears hit me. One of them in the small of my back, and one of them directly in the center of my right butt cheek. The damned things were heavy enough to carry considerable force, and while my duster stopped their jagged ends from spearing right through me, it couldn’t do nearly as much for the pain of the impact, and half of my body vanished beneath a cloud of tactile white noise as the Winter mantle masked the pain.
I came down on top of Mab and sudden, hot, scarlet blood sprayed against me.
I lifted myself off her rag-doll-limp body, even as I felt another powerful wave of earth magic building.
The Queen of Air and Darkness stared up at me with wide, glassy, grass green eyes.
Three feet of bloodied cold iron stood clear from the center of her torn, spraying throat.
“Butters!” I screamed.
I grabbed Mab by the nearest handle, her hair, and dragged her into the shelter offered by the body of the screaming unicorn thrashing weakly on the ground, just as another tsunami of metal spears flew our way.
I fell over her as much as I could and heard the spears thwacking into the unicorn, which ceased its thrashing and screaming, and into the earth all around us.
The haze was suddenly burned away in a circle around us as the Sword of Faith sprang to life, its fire singing in angry angelic chords. Butters advanced, whirling the Sword rondello style, slashing spears out of the air with shrieks of protesting metal.
He reached my side, threw himself down behind the dead unicorn, and took one look at Mab.
“Jesus,” he blurted. “Again?”
“Shut up and get it out of her neck,” I said.
“Harry, there’s no point.”
Mab’s green eyes tracked to Butters and narrowed.
“She’s immortal, dummy,” I snapped. “Get the rebar out of her and she’ll be fine.”
A dank, fetid wind that smelled of swamps and decomposition began to blow from the east. The haze around us began to clear.
“Dammit,” I snarled. “Don’t get cute with it. Just rip it out of her neck.”

Battle Ground Chapter 27, Page 253-255


The little guy stood, put his boot on Mab’s forehead, grabbed the rebar with both hands, and strained to tear it out of her neck.
Mab’s thin body arched in silent agony.
The rebar began to slide, slowly at first, as Butters threw his whole weight into it, and then suddenly tore free. Butters went sprawling to one side.
Mab’s lips moved, and her voice sounded clearly inside my head, even though I couldn’t hear anything else. “Finally.”
She rose, just levitated the hell up, stiff as a board, like in the old vampire movies, her hair and battle mail covered in blood, and as she did, she lifted her left hand—and suddenly squeezed it into a fist.

Battle Ground Chapter 28, Page 258-259