Harry vs Ursiel

Ursiel was too big to fight.
Look, people go on and on about how size isn’t everything, and how the bigger they are, the harder they fall, but the people who say that probably haven’t ever faced down a charging demon-bear so big it should have been on a drive-in movie screen. As a defensive adaptation, sheer size is a winner. It’s a fact. Ask an elephant.
But.
As a hunting adaptation, size is only good when the things you’re hunting are also enormously huge. Successful predators aren’t necessarily bigger than the things they take down—they’re better armed, and just big enough to get the job done if they do it right. Too much bulk and nimble prey can escape, leaving the hunter less able to handle a broad range of targets.
Grey had done something brilliant, in blinding the Genoskwa: He’d forced it to rely upon Ursiel’s eyes. That meant, apparently, that he had to stay in that giant bear form to do it. If the Genoskwa had been able to pursue me in his natural form, he would have caught me and torn me apart in short order—I’d seen him move. The bear might have been an irresistible mass of muscle, claws, and fangs, but I’d had a little experience with very, very large creatures on the move, and I’d learned one important fact about them.
They didn’t corner well.
Ursiel closed in and went into a little bounce, a motion as close to a pounce as something that size could manage, and I darted to one side. Harry Dresden, wizard, might have bought the farm right there. But Sir Harry, the Winter Knight, dodged the smashing paws and snapping jaws by a tiny margin, hopped back several yards, and shouted, “Olé! Toro!”
Ursiel roared again, but its head swung around toward the retreating forms of Michael and Grey. Ursiel was no tactical genius, from what I’d seen of it, but both it and the Genoskwa were predators—and Michael and Grey were wounded and vulnerable. It could catch them and dispatch them easily and then hunt me down at its leisure, like a cat dealing with so many troublesome mice.
So I lifted my staff, pointed it at the demon-bear, and shouted, “Fuego!”
The blast of fire I sent at him wasn’t much. I didn’t feel like passing out from exhaustion at the moment, and both the Genoskwa and Ursiel had displayed a troublesome resistance to my magic. That wasn’t the point. The mini-blast of flame struck the bear in the side of the nose, and while it didn’t sear the flesh, it singed some hairs and I bet it stung like hell.
The bear’s head whipped back toward me and it rolled a step forward. Then the glowing eyes brightened and it swung again toward the wounded men, now leaving the vault. The conflict of wills going on between the Genoskwa and the Fallen angel was all but visible.
“Jeez,” I drawled, in the most annoying tone I possibly could. “You suck, Gen. I’ll bet you anything River Shoulders wouldn’t be all torn and conflicted right now.”
That got it done.
The great bear whirled back to me and lunged into instant, savage motion, and again I skittered out of the way a couple inches ahead of being ground into paste. I darted a few more yards to one side, putting one of the displays between us. It didn’t bother to go around—it just crashed straight through, spraying gold and jewels everywhere, and I damned near got my head redecorated with a falling marble column. I slipped, recovered my footing, and kept moving, forcing the huge bear to keep turning laterally if it wanted to pursue me.
It went like that for a subjective century and a half, and maybe thirty objective seconds. Several suits of armor were crushed and scattered when a flashing, enormous paw shattered the marble column holding up the roof of their display area. Half a dozen pieces of art that might have been Fabergé eggs in delicate golden cages were smashed flat when a sledgehammer blow missed me by an inch. At one point, I picked up a cut diamond the size of my fist, screamed, “Get rocked!” and flung it at Ursiel’s nose before darting behind another exhibit, this one of rare sacred texts, featuring half a dozen Gutenberg Bibles as the centerpiece.


Skin Game Chapter 47, Page 393-394