Awesome / Death Masks

• After Red Court Duke Ortega cheated in a duel against Dresden, Ebenezar McCoy pulled a deactivated Soviet communications satellite out of orbit and dropped it on the duke's mansion. Then remember: of the seven senior members of the White Council, Ebenezar is, according to Harry, the youngest and the least skilled.
• The night-time Traintop Battle in the climax
  • John Marcone, pulling a drowning Harry out of the river with the freaking Shroud of Turin. And prior to that, Marcone takes on Nicodemus, and actually manages to drive him off with concentrated fire from an AK-47. Immediately afterward, when Harry explains that Nicodemus can't be killed and can probably run faster than the train they're fighting on, Marcone's only response to glance to Sanya and ask for more ammo.
  • The "drive him off with concentrated fire from an AK-47" bit should be expanded on, as it's especially impressive. From the back of one moving train car to the next, he hits a moving target with three bursts from an AK he's never shot before, at night, and avoids hitting the Shroud of Turin draped over his target's shoulders in the process.
  • In addition to his physical feats of badassery during the climax, when Nicodemus offers him one of the Fallen Angel-possessed coins and asks him if he wants a job, Marcone replies that he was about to ask Nicodemus exactly the same thing. The best part is, this isn't just the snide sort of joke that Harry might make; from what we know of Marcone, there was every possibility that he would have walked up to this ancient, powerful, mass-murderer who interacts with the Fallen Angels on an equal footing and asked him to come and work for him. Nicodemus is so impressed by his audacity and unwillingness to accept being subordinate to anyone that he gives the Badass Normal Don some completely sincere praise.
  • Let's talk a bit more about the "physical feats of badassery": there are four people facing Nicodemus and his goons, two of them are Knights of the Cross, one is a quite powerful wizard and the last one is our plain, vanilla Marcone. Marcone is the only one who ends the fight unscathed, and not for lack of action. His impressive shooting has already been mentioned, but after that he finds himself fighting Nicodemus from close distance and he ducks his swords, throws a knife at his face, then produces another one and starts a short fight ending with Marcone taking the Shroud from Nicodemus and jumping off a running train without even blinking. Badass Normal indeed.
• Harry holding up Anna Valmont with a plastic duck instead of a gun is a pretty great moment too.
• Nicodemus' entrance into the room Harry and Anna Valmont were in where she had the Shroud after she says that the people who killed her friends can't hurt her any further and he smashes the door open and quips
  "Cannot hurt you any further? No matter how many times I hear that, it's a fresh challenge."
• How about Marcone, Harry and the gang riding in to save the day in Marcone's helicopter? "All we need now is some Wagner..." and Gard presses a button and Ride of The Valkyries starts playing. Definitely awesome. Made Hilarious in Hindsight when we find out that Gard actually IS a Valkyrie. That and the other helicopters Marcone provides must be from Monoc Security, because the "Ride of The Valkyries" button seems to be a standard feature in all of them.
  • Even better, it's a Coast Guard helicopter. Puns are great!
• Shiro's Heroic Sacrifice. He peacefully surrendered himself to his worst enemy, accepting to be viciously tortured, to save another's life. Also, the fact that he survived a torture so bad Nicodemus thought him to be dead along with the plague curse, silently enduring all that pain just to give one last advice to Harry and the others and overhearing details of his enemy's plan-B to boot.
  • Not only that, it was an impressive Batman Gambit. Nicodemus may well have had more to gain by keeping Harry out of the picture, but Shiro knew that he wouldn't be able to resist the bait of his longtime nemesis offering himself up.
  • Shiro also got in a Stealth Insult that way without even saying a word. Nicodemus kept going on about his superiority to humans. By letting someone as versatile as Harry go in order to get at his Arch-Enemy he fears, Nicodemus proved that he was no better than any human.
• Also, Shiro breaking into the Denarians' hideout to save Harry. With a Big Entrance opened by a goon sent flying in. The first thing Harry notices is that Nicodemus, who hadn't been impressed by anything so far, is terrified, and likewise for his Fallen. And is proven right to be when Shiro takes out his goons and his daughter in a matter of seconds.
• Someone, later revealed to be Nicodemus, casts a continuous entropy curse, known as Barabba's curse at Harry. Harry and Susan manages to escape few accidents and get inside his apartment. The curse splinters like waves on beach against Harry's apartment wards with zero problem. Making it even better is that that curse has been killing people at least since the time of The Crucifixion, needing a Knight of the Cross to perform a Heroic Sacrifice in their place, but were worthless against Harry's protective magic. Nicodemus clearly has no idea what White Council's powerful members are capable of when prepared. Michael and the other Knights should have had more faith in him.
• Harry, confronted with Cassius and his attempt to loophole his way out of being slain by the Knights of the Cross by surrendering and sarcastically promising to repent, and then taunts Harry about how Shiro and Susan were tortured by him, responds to the mockery by breaking his kneecaps, ankles and one arm with a baseball bat.
  Dresden: Fortunately for you, they [the Knights] are good men. Unfortunately for you, I'm not.
  • Cassius literally pisses in fear at that.
  • Then he drops a quarter on the ground and tells the guy the nearest payphone is across the parking lot through broken glass. What Harry knows, and Michael later points out, is that phone calls no longer cost twenty-five cents.
• After Rudolph leaks info on them to other departments and keeps giving them problems, Harry gets the idea to turn it around on him, and tells Murphy exactly what to tell him. If the info is correct, they save people and are unharmed. If it’s wrong, its Rudolph who gets roasted. Win-win.
• The Archive, slaughtering a half-dozen Red Court vampires using a chunk of pure anti-life. Then she comments that it's past her bedtime.
• Gentleman Johnny Marcone in general. All the things on the Tear Jerker page and all of Marcone's actions here are what finally cement Marcone as an anti-villain and a total badass.
• Susan beating the crap out of a Denarian, in the first time we get to actually see her vampire powers.
  • And not just any Denarian, but Deirdre, probably the most out-and-out lethal fighter they have. Susan throws a washer at her. Casually. She then traps Deirdre's head in a washing machine and beats her unconscious with a metal ironing board.
  • Her first scene in the book has her literally punting away a vampire mook trying to sneak into Harry's apartnent. Hell of an Establishing Character Moment for a Violently Protective Girlfriend.
• Harry swiftly pulls a counterspell on the curse Cassius drops on Susan, before flattening him with a wind spell.
• Michael throws down with not one, but two of the most deadly Denarians, and not only survives, but injures Deirdre and survives a swordfight with Nicodemus, who is said to have killed over a hundred Knights of the Cross in the past. While Dual Wielding Amoracchius and Fidelacchius.
• When faced with an enemy that is wearing Judas' noose, which makes him immune to any physical harm, what better course of action than to strangle him with it?
  • Even better, as far as Harry knows, he's the first one to realize that the noose won't protect Nicodemus from itself. And that means Nicodemus, leader of the Denarians and arguably the smartest and deadliest of all thirty, is afraid of Harry Dresden.
• Nicodemus gets one at the end of the book with a Batman Gambit of his own, as after getting his main plan foiled, he waits in the street behind the backyard of the Carpenter House, and tosses in a Denarian coin where the children are playing, forcing Harry to pick up the coin before they do, to protect them from being possessed and thus Harry gets infected by a part of the essence of the Fallen Angel within.
  • And as explained few books later, if Nicodemus calculated correctly, its a win-win situation. If Harry picks it up and gets possessed, Nicodemus gets the most powerful wizard of the latest generation of White Council. If one of the Carpenter children pick it up, he's got a Manchurian Agent in the house of one of the Knights of Cross. The only thing he didn't know and undid his plan was Harry's iron will, and more importantly, his good heart.
• Harry's duel with Ortega.
  • Ortega was clearly winning and Harry barely holding on. Then he threatened Harry's friends. Ortega was instantly owned, forcing him to cheat.
  • As Ortega prepares to kill Harry with a hidden bullet, a hidden sniper (Martin) caves in his chest and thigh, followed by Harry blasting at him. He would have been killed right there if not for his minions sacrificing themselves to rescue him.
  • Ortega casually owning Susan with one hand despite having his chest and thigh caved in along with being blinded. He isn't a warlord for nothing.
  • Kincaid unleashing his arsenal on Red Court vampires, from handguns to shotguns with Dragonbreath rounds.