Peace Talks

by Jim Butcher

  “Not Lara’s style,” I panted, leading us down another level. “She does the cloak-and-dagger stuff for politics, but for her personal enemies, she’s reliable. If she wanted me dead, she’d come at me with a knife. She’s straightforward that way.”

  “Until the one time she isn’t, and you’re too dead to complain about how reliable vampires ain’t,” Ebenezar growled.

  We spilled out onto the bottom level of the parking garage. It was mostly empty. We were near the limit of how low solid ground could go in this part of the city: The lowest depressions in the concrete were full of water that had the dank smell of long-standing sources of mold and mildew. We had to have been at the water level of the lake, or a little under.

  “Place like this isn’t going to react well to explosions and such,” I noted, looking around.

  “And it don’t go quite low enough to get us enough water to get them immersed in it,” he added. “All right, boy. Time to start teaching you this starborn business.”

  I blinked and almost tripped over my own feet. “Wait, what? You’re going to start talking about it … now?!”

  He cuffed me on the shoulder irritably. “We got maybe half a minute. Do you want to take a walk down memory lane?”

  “Freaking wizards,” I complained, rubbing at my shoulder. “Fine, tell me.”

  “Every couple or three wizard generations,” Ebenezar said, “the stars line up just right, and what amounts to a spotlight plays over the earth for a few hours. Any child born within that light—”

  “Is starborn. I get it,” I said. “What does it mean?”

  “Power against the Outsiders,” the old man growled. “Among other things, that their minds can’t be magically tainted by contact with anything from Outside. Which means …”

  My eyes widened. “Hell’s bells,” I breathed.

  See, when it comes to entities from way outside everyday reality, there are only a few options for dealing with them. In the first place, they aren’t really here, in a strictly physical sense. They’re coming in from outside of the mortal world, and that means constructing a body from ectoplasm and infusing it with enough energy and will to serve as a kind of avatar or drone for the supernatural being, still safely in its home reality. That’s what the cornerhounds had done when they’d come to Chicago to mess with us.

  Fighting something like that was often difficult. The bodies they inhabited tended to have no need for things like sensing pain, for example, and it took a considerable amount of extra energy to make a hit sink home. To fight them physically, you had to dismantle the machinery of the construct’s body, breaking joints and bones until they just couldn’t function anymore.

  For any creature of the physical size and resilience of these corner-hounds, it was a far easier prospect to bind and banish them—to simply pit your will against their own and force them out of the bodies they inhabited when they came here. But that was sort of like rubbing your brain against a bus station toilet; you simply had no idea what you were going to pick up by doing it—and wizards who frequently tangled with Outsiders (or even the weirder entities from within our own reality) tended to go a little loopy due to the contamination of direct contact with alien, inhuman intelligences. That’s why there was a whole Law of Magic about reaching beyond the Outer Gates.

  But if I was insulated against such influences …

  Was that why Nemesis, for example, had revealed itself to me but had never actually attacked me in an effort to take control of my thoughts and actions? Because it actually couldn’t? It made sense, grouped with my previous experiences with Outsiders, where others had been disabled by their attacks while I had still been capable of taking action. It meant that not only could I resist their influences, but I could go up against these things, mind to mind, without fear of short-circuiting my brain along the way.

  The old man meant for me to banish them, to trap them in a circle and will them straight out of reality.

  “How are we going to get them into a circle?” I asked.

  Ebenezar leaned his staff against his body, produced a pocketknife from his overalls, and said, “Bait.”

  He dug the knife into his arm and twisted, and a small rivulet of blood began to pour out of the wound and patter to the ground. The first of the cornerhounds appeared at the top of the ramp behind us and let out a pitch-dropping moan, its tentacles quivering in time with the sound of falling droplets. It moved several feet toward us in an oily blur, then went still again, like some kind of bizarre deep-sea predator.

  “So, here’s the exercise,” Ebenezar said, and passed me the knife. If he was in pain, it didn’t show up in his voice. “Defensive circle first. We go at the same time. The smell of the blood is going to drive them crazy, and they’re going to try to get at me. While they do, you’ll lay down a circle and activate it, then banish them.” He eyed me. “And just so I’m certain you haven’t missed the lesson, please also observe that every single point of the plan is vampire-free.”

  The corners of the lowest level of the parking garage began to glow with a sickly blue light.

  “Sir,” I growled, taking the knife. I bent over and walked around us in a quick circle, tip of the knife scoring the concrete as I went, until I had a closed shape that mostly looked like a circle. I stepped into it, touched the score mark, and made a minor effort of will, feeling the magical circle spring up around us like an invisible screen of energy. “There’s a time and a place for everything. This is neither.”

  I offered him the knife back by the handle. The old man pumped his fist several times and made sure the blood kept dripping. Then he folded the pocketknife and put it away, taking up his staff and holding it upright and parallel to his spine with both hands, carefully keeping it inside the circle. Cornerhounds began to thrash and tear their way into our world. Half a dozen more joined the one coming down the ramp in erratic bursts of speed—then simply crouched and waited.

  “You sure?” he asked. “How about we check with one of your stalwart vampire allies who are here in your hour of need?”

  I glowered at him. “That’s a cheap shot and you know it.”

  “Eleven, twelve,” the old man counted, “thirteen, aye. The whole pack is here. Now they’ll get serious.”

  “You think these things are smart?” I said.

  “Damned smart,” he said. “But so single-minded and alien you almost can’t tell.”

  “They’ll try to stop me from laying down a circle, then,” I said. “We need a smoke screen—but they don’t even have eyes. Do they? They don’t have eyes at the backs of their throats or something, do they?”

  “You don’t want to know,” said the old man.

  Suddenly, three of the cornerhounds speed-slithered close to us, tentacles flailing. One of them struck against the boundary described by the circle. There was a flash of light, a cascade of angry fireplace sparks, and a shuddering bass note of pain, and then the three cornerhounds went still again. The one with a singed tentacle was no more than two feet away from me.

  I swallowed and did a quick scan of the circle with my eyes. A magical circle was proof against beings summoned to the mortal world, Outsiders included, but if any solid object fell across the scratch in the concrete, the circle would lose integrity and collapse, and we’d be at the things’ mercy.

  “But they run on audio?” I asked him.

  “Like bats.”

  The cornerhound near me rose onto its hind legs, tentacles probing, as if seeking a way around the curtain of force provided by the circle. There were sharp popping sounds as tentacle tips brushed against the circle and recoiled in little bursts of sparks and low rumbles of pain.

  “No teeth,” I noted, my throat dry. “Out of morbid curiosity, what happens to us if they, uh … get us?”

  “They take us into one of those corners,” Ebenezar said, “and drag us back to wherever they came from.”

  I swallowed. “Then what?”

  The old man looked faintly disturbed a
nd said something that, for wizards, is akin to dropping an F-bomb. “I don’t know.”

  I blinked at him and felt my eyes widening. “Oh.” I swallowed again and said, “These are major entities. Don’t know if I can take them all on at once.”

  “There aren’t multiple entities there,” he said. “Just one, that happens to be running around in several different bodies. It’s a package deal, Hoss. You can’t banish one of them without banishing all of them.”

  I looked past Ebenezar to where an old pickup had been parked, the only car down on this lowest level.

  “Then we have to turn up the pressure,” I said, nodding at the old truck.

  “Ring of fire?” he asked.

  “Ring of fire,” I said. “Damn. Sure wish I had a buck—”

  The sneeze took me completely off guard. It came out of nowhere and was louder than it had any right to be, my voice cracking halfway through. There was a surge of tension and energy, a dizzying burst of involuntarily expended magical energy, and way too much ectoplasm coming out of my nose.

  There was also a clatter, and a galvanized five-gallon steel bucket fell to the ground at my feet and started rolling. Ebenezar spat a curse and stabbed his staff at the bucket, pinning it to the ground an inch or two before it could break the circle and get us both killed.

  “Bucket,” I finished lamely, my nasal passages completely obstructed by ectoplasm. Ugh. “Sorry. It’ll be gone in a second.”

  The old man blinked at the bucket. “Hell’s bells, boy. Conjuritis? At your age?”

  “Conjurwhatnow?” I asked.

  The old man lifted his right hand and murmured a word, fingers curling into a complex little sequence, and there was a surge of will from the old man that enveloped the bucket—and instead of quivering and collapsing into ectoplasm, it held steady while the old man bent over and picked it up. “Conjuritis. I’ve told you about that.”

  “No, you haven’t, sir,” I said.

  The old man scowled at me. “Are you sure? Maybe you just weren’t listening. Like on vampire day.”

  “Seriously? Really?” I demanded of him and swiped an arm at the tentacular horrors closing in on us. “Right now?”

  He thrust his jaw and the bucket at me. “Every time you get tangled up with them, you get burned,” he said. “Boy, when are you gonna use your head?”

  I seized the bucket from him.

  Suddenly, without a sound, without any kind of signal, all of the hounds crouched in an identical stance, and their tentacles began to vibrate all together.

  “Go!” Ebenezar thundered. “Fast!”

  Right. Time to get my head in the game. Maybe the cornerhounds couldn’t physically get to us, but if all thirteen of those things dropped the purely physical bass on us all at once, I was pretty sure we weren’t walking out of this garage.

  In a perfect world, I could have broken the circle, rendered myself undetectable to the enemy, and just slipped aside and let the old man keep their attention while I laid down the circle and came at them.

  But I’d have to make do with a birthday prank I’d been getting ready for Butters, instead.

  First, step out of the circle.

  As I did, the cornerhounds tensed, muscles and tendrils quivering.

  At the same time, Ebenezar began to backpedal to put his back to the nearest column supporting the garage, even as he brought up another bulwark of invisible force to take shelter behind. “Come on, ye great ugly beasties!”

  The cornerhounds’ tentacle heads flared out, tracking the old man, and rumbling, vibrating, subsonic thunderclaps filled the air and made me dizzy.

  I rose, will gathered, and lifted my right hand, fingers spread to project energy, and snarled, “Consulere rex!”

  The spell wasn’t a terribly complicated one. It basically duplicated an air horn. Just … a little bigger. And it played a tune.

  Okay, look. You’re going to have to trust me on this one: Having a friggin’ Tyrannosaurus rex roaring out the tune of “Happy Birthday to You” at full volume is an entirely appropriate birthday present for Waldo Butters.

  The sound that filled the parking garage wasn’t the volume of an air horn. Or a marching band. Or a train’s horn. It did, in fact, check in at around a hundred and sixty decibels. It wasn’t a hundred and sixty-five because when I’d tried that much, it broke all the glasses in the kitchen and set my hair on fire.

  I’m not kidding.

  For the record, that’s about the same amount of sound a passenger jet makes at takeoff. Now imagine being in a relatively small, enclosed, acoustically reflective area with that much noise.

  No, don’t. If you haven’t done it, you can’t imagine.

  The sound was less like noise than it was like being thrown into an enormous vat of petroleum jelly. Instantly, I felt like there was no way to get a good breath. There was pressure against all of my skin and pain in my ears, like when you dive to the bottom of a deep pool. I dropped my staff to the ground so that I could clap my hands over my ears, not that it did much good. This loud was a full-body, weapons-grade loud. It was a minor miracle I had the presence of mind to hang on to the bucket.

  I had planned to run for the truck—but I hadn’t really counted on how damned loud this spell was going to be. So I staggered that way instead, barely able to keep my feet and walk in a straight line.

  The cornerhounds had it worse than I did. Under the assault of my “Dino Serenade,” they crouched in pure agony, tendrils flailing, head tentacles flapping wildly, like some kind of flared-hood lizard receiving jolts of current. They weren’t howling now, or if they were, it was kind of redundant.

  Sometimes the best defense is a T. rex.

  I drunkenly fell only twice on the way to the truck. Then came the hard part.

  I had to take my hands off my ears, and the, uh, music felt like it was going to burst my eardrums. I put the bucket down, crouched beside the truck, and called upon Winter.

  Being the Winter Knight isn’t much fun. Having that mantle in my life on a daily basis meant that I had to fight and work, every day, to keep being more or less me. The damned thing made me think things I would rather not think, and want things I would rather not want. Being the Winter Knight doesn’t help you be a good dad, or make better pancakes. It doesn’t help you understand philosophy, create beauty, or garner knowledge.

  What it does do is make you hell on wheels in a fight.

  I seized the truck by its frame, used the hem of my spell-armored leather duster to protect my hands, tensed my back and my legs, and stood up.

  It was hard. It hurt like hell as the edges of the frame and the mass behind them bit at my hands, even through the duster. My muscles screamed in protest—but the absolute cold of Winter ice filled my thoughts and my limbs, a counteragony that either dulled the physical pain or gave me so much additional pain that the mere physical torment seemed irrelevant by comparison.

  The pickup truck quivered and creaked in my hands, and with a surge of my shoulders and legs I got my grip reversed and pushed the vehicle up onto its side.

  Staggering under the assault of the ongoing “Dino Serenade,” I clenched my right hand into a fist and peered at the truck until I found the plastic of the gas tank. Then I drove my fist into it and right through the tank’s wall.

  I ripped my fist out and brought the bucket up with the other hand at the same time. Gasoline flooded onto my shirt and then into the bucket. Five gallons fills up pretty damned quick from a fist-sized hole. Once it was sloshing over the brim, I turned and staggered back toward the circle.

  And my “Dino Serenade” ended.

  The silence hit me like a club. I staggered to a knee, barely able to hold on to the bucket, and gasped.

  As I did, I became aware of the cornerhounds. Most of them were gathered around Ebenezar, who was protected by so many layers of energy that his actual bodily shape was distorted to my sight—but one of the hideous creatures wasn’t three feet to my left.

  Anot
her was less than six inches to my right.

  There was a stunned, frozen instant where none of us moved and the world was one big after-tone from a chime the size of a skyscraper. And then my own sadly unremarkable singing voice added, into the silence at the spell’s finale, “And many moooooooooore!”

  Tendrils flailed in excitement.

  Tentacles flared in angry aggression.

  I broke into a sprint, sloshing gasoline from my bucket.

  “Sir!” I screamed.

  A cornerhound leapt at me, a thousand pounds of tentacles and talons and muscle.

  I ducked, reflexes as sharp and fast as the report of a gunshot on a clear winter evening.

  Claws raked at my back.

  My duster’s protective spells held, and all the night’s sweat and discomfort became worthwhile.

  Ebenezar, meanwhile, had survived the blast of infrasound that the pack had begun to deliver just before my spell went off, and he hadn’t wasted his time since. With a single word, he pointed at the concrete floor of the parking garage, and a cloud of fine chips of rubble flew upward in a perfect circle as the old man’s will dug a trench two inches deep and four across in the obdurate flooring.

  Three of the hounds hit him, one second motionless, the next moving like serpents guided by some singular, terrible will. The old man swatted one of them away with an upward blow of his staff and a detonation of kinetic energy that slammed the Outsider into the concrete ceiling and brought it back down in a shower of rubble from the impact. The second hit him square in the chest with outstretched talons, and there was a humming snap of expanding energy that sounded like a bug zapper the size of a Tesla coil. It recoiled from the old man, claws burned black. But the third cornerhound hit him in one leg, and while the old man’s shield protected him from the impact, the natural consequences of Newton’s First Law and having one leg slammed out abruptly from beneath him were harder on the old man. He went down with a gasp as another trio of cornerhounds blurred to within striking range at the base of the column.