Butters vs Cassius

Cassius stared down at me, his eyes bright. He stood there, watching me try to writhe, enjoying my helplessness and pain.
An image flashed through my mind-an old man of faith and courage who had willingly given himself into the hands of the Order in exchange for my freedom. Shiro had died after sustaining the most hideous torments I had ever seen visited upon a human body-and some of them had come at the hands of Cassius. I closed my eyes. I knew what he wanted. He wanted to hurt me. He wanted to see how much pain he could deliver before I died. And there was nothing I could do to prevent it.
Unless...
I thought of what Shiro had told me about having faith. For him it was a theological and moral truth upon which he had based his life. I didn't have the same kind of belief, but I had seen how forces of light and darkness came into conflict, how imbalances were redressed. Cassius was in the service of some of the darkest forces on the planet. Shiro would have said that nothing he did could have prevented a balancing force of light-such as Shiro and his brother Knights-from being placed in his way. In my own experience, I had noticed that when something truly, deeply evil arose, one of the Knights tended to show up.
Maybe one would show up to face Cassius.
Hell's bells. That was mighty thin.
But it was technically possible. And it was all I had.

Dead Beat Chapter 37, Page 331-332


"Hey," I said quietly. "I told you to run. I was doing that heroic rearguard thing. You screwed it all up."
"Sorry," he answered, his voice serious. "But... I got outside and I couldn't run. I mean, I wanted to. I really wanted to. But after all you've done for me..." He shook his head. "I just couldn't do that."
"What did you do?"
"I ran around the outside of the museum. I tried to find help, but with all the rain and the dark there wasn't anyone around. So I ran to the car and got Mouse. I thought that maybe he could help you."
"He could," I agreed. "He did."
Mouse's tail thumped on the floor, and he kept on licking at my head. I realized, dully, that he was cleaning the dozens of tiny snakebites.
"But he couldn't have done it without you, Butters," I said. "You saved my life. Another five minutes and I'd have been history."
He blinked down at me for a moment and then said, "I did, didn't I?"
"Damned brave of you," I said.
His spine straightened a little. "You think?"
"Yeah."
"And check it out," he said, gesturing at his face, his mouth opening into a toothy smile. "I have a broken nose, don't I?"
"Absolutely," I said.
"Like I'm a boxer. Or maybe a tough-as-nails gumshoe."
"You earned it," I said. "Hurt?"
"Like hell," he said, but he was still smiling. He blinked a few times, the gears almost visibly spinning in his head, and said, "I didn't run away. And I fought him. I jumped on him."
I kept quiet and let him process it.
"My God," he said. "That was... that was so stupid."
"Actually, when you survive it gets reclassified as 'courageous.'" I reached out my right hand. Butters shook it, gripping hard.

Dead Beat Chapter 38, page 344-345


I grunted. Then I said, “Butters.”
Uriel smiled.
“When Cassius Snakeboy was about to gut me, I remember thinking that no Knight of the Cross was going to show up and save me.”
“Cassius was a former Knight of the Blackened Denarius,” Uriel said. “It seems appropriate that he should be countered by an incipient Knight of the Cross. Don’t you think?”

Skin Game Chapter 51, Page 440