Awesome / Blood Rites

• In the Action Prologue, Harry stomps in a demon monkey's nose to protect a puppy, meeting Mouse for the first time, then smacks down another with a fire extinguisher.
  • The demon before getting hit with the extinguisher shows actual fighting skill, much to Harry's sorrow, even turning one of his moves against him.
  • The demons along with several of its brethren fuse into a huge one to take the fight to Harry, but Badass Driver Thomas is out there for rescue.
  • Once they are out of range, Harry lets loose a massive fireball between the "Demon Kong Voltron's" eyes, blowing its head off, damaging its vessel beyond repair, showing that the only reason he wasn't destroying them was to prevent the puppies he was rescuing from being caught in the collateral damage.
• Harry telling off a cop that insulted him and Murphy.
• Harry is Crazy-Prepared enough to keep water balloons filled with holy water in his car.
• Lara terrifying an Alpha Bitch who insulted her with nothing but a Death Glare and sending her running.
• Harry kills a Black Court vampire with a laser-guided frozen turkey dropped from an airplane passing overhead. Sure, it was someone else's curse that Harry redirected, but the end result had even the other blampires going WTF.
  "For my next trick," I panted into the startled silence, "anvils."
  • This has the added benefit of being quite possibly the funniest thing to happen in the entire series thus far.
  • It even gets a Call-Back in Battle Ground
• He then kills another one with Lara's high heeled shoe.
• Thomas holding off what Harry describes as a "Black Court killing machine" in a straight wrestling match, despite being near-death and in agony from bullet wounds.
• Mouse's Establishing Character Moment. While his the rest of his littermates are cowering in fear of approaching demons, he is not. He is facing them.
• Murphy refusing to break under the White King's mind control. Granted, that doesn't seem like much in this series, but not even Lara managed to do that before Harry managed to drain his power reserves and let her in on the fact that he can't replenish them.
  • Doubles up: Harry, who had no reason to believe Murphy hadn't started to break and was really, truly, out of it, only needed two words to be bet-his-life certain that she was faking.
    "Leave me alone, Mister Dresden."
  • What's even better, it was a case of Know When to Fold 'Em. Murphy knew if Raith pushed too hard, she couldn't resist, so she pretended to go under and let his arrogance do the rest.
• Awesome moment for Jim Butcher: Blood Rites has two of the best opening and closing lines in all of fiction. Opening: "The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault." Closing: "Hey. Why did you get large breed puppy chow?"
• Harry and Murphy, with a little magical help, motorcycle-joust a car loaded with Lord Raith's goons and send the car hurtling away on fire.
• The climactic battle of Harry and Murphy vs the Big Bad, Lord Raith. The villain proves to be several levels above the rest of his kind, and this was years after being cut off from his full power. And considering how Thomas described how wracking the thirst is for a White Court vampire in the next book, its amazing how he managed to retain what little sanity he had.
  • The climax, where Harry tricks Lord Raith into revealing his weakness—namely, his inability to feed due to Margaret Dresden's death curse—with Lara Raith as a witness, thereby allowing her to take over in a coup d'etat. Even Lara, no slouch at political intrigue herself, is impressed. Harry might not resort to subtlety often, but when he does he’s good at it.
    Lara Raith: You've made me the cat's-paw for you, Dresden. While making me think I had the advantage of you. You've played me at my own game, and ably. I thought you capable of nothing but overt action. Clearly I underestimated you.
    Harry: Don't feel bad. I mean, I look so stupid.
  • Which is also a lovely call back to Summer Knight:
    Lloyd Slate: Spooky. He doesn't look all that smart.
    • Also a crowning moment for Margaret Dresden herself; even when she was dying, she knew exactly how to hurt Lord Raith and eventually destroy him - leaving him to starve until someone could finish the job.
    • As Word of Jim pointed out, not only did Margaret's Death Curse cripple Raith, it also crippled the entire White Court by turning them from an expansionist agenda to one filled with infighting, paranoia, and literal and metaphorical backstabbing.
  • And since Harry can’t use magic directly against Lord Raith due to his Anti-Magic aura via Outsider protection, Harry simply shifts to guns and knives. And beating him up with keys under magical magnetism.
• While it's an Offscreen Moment of Awesome, Lara Raith's Rape and Revenge against her evil father and turning him into her puppet to continue ruling the White Court as she commands certainly counts.
  • Even more impressive is the effect that Lara's power has on Harry as he leaves; just the smell of her hair is very nearly enough to make him drop to the ground and crawl back, and she implies that once she really gets going, it'll get worse... and this is still only her ambient, unfocused power, against someone who still has True Love's protection.
• Harry, Murphy, and Kincaid's assault on Mavra's base, with the likes of Kincaid's impressive moves with his spear-slash-shotgun, Harry holding on to his shield despite his hand being burned away, and Harry and Murphy using the vampires' own land mine against them. And all without any of the children they saved getting hurt.
  • Meanwhile, Ebenezar is able to shut down, or at least severely limit, Mavra's magic, from outside the building, without a channel of any kind.
  • The next book reveals that it was simultaneously a villainous example for Mavra herself, as she'd not only survived, but staged it all in order to collect blackmail material on Murphy.
    • Mavra gets another Villainous Example. She manages to sneak up on Harry, deliver a chilling speech about how she's been watching him for some time now, and then has two of her Renfields try to scorch Harry alive with flamethrowers, while she laughs. Harry's shield can't fully protect him, and he ends up with his hand near useless for years after that. Creepy awesome at its best.
• How Murphy handled Kincaid's Secret Test of Character. Harry had enough sense to step back and let her whup Kincaid's ass while he was in safe watching distance.
• Ebenezar gets the draw on Kincaid, and reveals that he's responsible for the Tunguska Event, Krakatoa, and the New Madrid Earthquake. While that's rather sad, it also proves that the man is seriously badass.
  • Kincaid also states outright that he wouldn't have taken the job if he knew Harry was calling in Ebenezar—in fact, he'd be in another state. Think about how badass Kincaid is, and then consider that he's scared of Ebenezar.
• Harry cheerfully trolls his old mentor by listing every acronym he can think of after Ebenezar expresses his displeasure at "blampires." But then Ebenezar tells him to stop, and Harry, (who routinely gives lip to everyone up to and including actual gods), sits down quietly.

---