Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 21

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Not only are they being followed, apparently the car is almost out of gas, so fancy driving to lose their tail isn't really an option. Harry asks Tera and Susan if they're sure they're being followed, and Tera says she can sense the danger their pursuers pose. Harry figures that means it's the Streetwolves, since as far as he knows they're the only people after him who would set off a magical creatures's danger sense. 

After a supremely cringeworthy moment in which Harry mentally describes Susan as "like some kind of Latin goddess", which I'm 95% sure is racist, Harry instructs her to get off the highway, pull in at the nearest gas station, and call the police. Susan has no idea what he's about here (although Tera does), but he's prepared to trust him. Once they're on the off-ramp, Harry jumps out of the moving car. 

The scene takes a second to ground in concrete sensory detail - the mug, the weeds, the pain of his injuries, and then Harry drinks the energy potion. It tastes awful, but he instantly feels better. Way better. Maybe more better than is really good for him. He immediately starts making bad decisions, starting with using his injured arm to get up. He's euphoric, almost manic, and not thinking clearly. This is also the first time we learn that Harry is into classical music. It's an off place for a characterization detail that never quite manages to affect the plot. He blows the tires off Parker's pickup truck, all four of them at once, and feels pretty damn pleased with himself, but he failed to account for lycanthrope sturdiness. 

Parker and the two others he had in the truck with him extricate themselves from the wreckage and start shooting at Harry, but he bounces the bullets off his shield, and Parker has them stop when he realized the bullets are going back at them. Harry also disperses the energy that the other one, the same woman who started chanting "kill him" at the garage, starts to call up, something he would not be able to do under ordinary, non-stimulant potion circumstances. He uses a ton of that extra energy in the process, and comes down enough to realize that he's carelessly spent most of the advantage the potion ought to have given him. He tries to be diplomatic instead, but that probably wouldn't have worked even if he hadn't started off antagonistic, because Parker and his cronies can smell blood, and they want it. Perhaps this begins to account for what powers the "spirits of bestial rage" for which the lycanthropes are channels, although that can't be the whole thing - they're not vampires. And blood notwithstanding, Parker has to kill Dresden if he wants to keep his place. 

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When Harry realizes that he can't talk his way out of this, he tries to blast Parker with fire, but it just... doesn't work. He's out of batteries. So he pulls a gun and shoots Parker in the kneecap. Parker takes this pretty calmly - he's surprised, but this conflict really isn't personal to him - and just chills and talks while he waits for the accelerated healing to kick in (and his backup to arrive). During this extremely odd conversation, he establishes that lycanthropes are affected by the full moon, although it's not at all clear whether that's a real thing or the placebo effect. Certainly, if the already unstable Streetwolves think they're supposed to be more aggressive on the full moon, sending them to fo run around outside and "let off steam", as Parker describes it, is likely the better part of avoiding an unproductive bloodbath. 

Unfortunately, Parker's knee does heal, and his backup does arrive. They beat the shit out of Harry and, unable to meaningfully fight back and aware that token resistance will only make things worse, he pretty much lets them, not even managing to curl up in a ball. It's similar to how he reacted to getting beaten up by Ace in Cold Days, but where that was something Harry accepted as necessary, even felt a little clever about, he he's actually shamed that he isn't able to resist, or willing to invite more damage by going through the motions. And because he can't accept that, he just kind of breaks, and eventually shuts down. 

They stuff him into the trunk of the other car, the one Harry didn't destroy, and the last thing he sees is agent Harris, watching from a passing car.