"Please, Mister Dresden, I don't know what you mean." He coughed, panting, and I saw droplets of scarlet dripping onto the carpet. I'd bloodied his nose, or maybe his lip. He turned his head a tiny bit, eyes wide with panic. "Please, don't do anything to me. I don't know what you want, but I'm sure that we can talk about it."

I drew back the hammer on the revolver and said, "I'm sure that we can't."

His face went white. "No, wait!"

"I'm getting tired of playing pretend. Three."

"But I don't know-" He choked, and I heard him trying not to retch. "You have to tell me-"

"Two," I said. "I'm not going to elaborate about the other number."

"You can't! You can't!"

"One," I said, and pulled the trigger.

In the instant between the word and the deed, Vincent changed. A sheath of green scales appeared over his skin, and his legs twined together into a serpent's long and sinuous body. The eyes went last, changing to vertically slit yellow orbs while a second set of glowing green eyes opened above the first.

The trigger came down on an empty chamber. Click.

The snake twisted to bite me, but I was already getting out of the way. Michael came through the door, his unshaven face set in grim determination, Amoracchius blazing with its own white light. The snakeman whirled to face Michael with a hiss. Michael tried for a clean horizontal cut, but the snakeman ducked under it and went for the door in a streak of gleaming green scales.

When the snakeman went out the door, Sanya brought a four-foot length of two-by-six down on its head. The blow drove the snakeman's chin flat to the ground. It twitched a couple of times and then lay still.

"You were right," Michael noted. He slipped the sword away into its sheath.

"Better get him back inside before some maid sees him," I said.

Michael nodded, grabbed the snakeman's tail, and hauled him back into the hotel room.

Sanya looked in, nodded, and set the end of the length of heavy board down with a certain amount of satisfaction. I realized he'd used the thing with one arm. Good grief. I needed to get to the gym. "Good," the big Russian said. "Let me put this back in the truck, and I will join you."

A few minutes later, the snakeman woke up in the corner of the hotel room with me, Michael, and Sanya standing over him. His tongue flickered out and in a few times, and his two sets of eyes darted around the room.

"What did I miss?" it hissed. The last word came out with an extra large helping of S sounds.

"A tattoo," I said. "Father Vincent had a tattoo on the inside of his right arm."

"There was no tattoo," the snakeman insisted.