Peace Talks

by Jim Butcher

  The Outsiders closed on my grandfather, talons and tentacles tearing. Flashes of light, humming howls of electricity, the stench of charred flesh, and basso moans filled the air as the old man fought them, his body encased in armor of pure will that made my own defensive spells seem crude and primitive by comparison.

  I sprinted to help him, and as I did, I felt the plummeting tone of a subsonic roar hit my back, a sensation weirdly like that of a low-pressure stream of water.

  One second I was moving fine. The next I was staggering, the entire garage a sudden blur. My guts had turned to water, my knees to jelly. It was everything I could do to get a hand on the ground and shift to a modified three-point gait, in order to keep from simply falling over and spilling the bucket and its contents everywhere. As I moved forward, the ground kept rotating counterclockwise, no matter how much my rational brain insisted that couldn’t be happening—my inner ears weren’t having it.

  Behind me, the hounds came forward in sudden streaks of oily speed.

  I gollumed across the lower end of the circle the old man had cut in the floor around him, with the hounds in full pursuit—and two more flying toward me from the circle’s upper end. They were already in midleap.

  From the floor, from beneath a mound of foes, the old man shouted and a burst of wind suddenly swept up from the floor. It caught the two hounds with exactly enough force to lift them over my head and past me, sending them crashing into the pack pursuing me, briefly disrupting their advance.

  And the old man did that from a under a pile of nine more of the things trying to seize him with their tentacles and tear him into quarters.

  That is a wizard, people.

  I covered the rest of the ground toward the uphill end of Ebenezar’s circle. I couldn’t have dropped the gas into the circle at its lower end. Gravity wouldn’t have been our friend. But I got to the uphill side of the circle and poured out the gasoline as quickly as I could without sloshing it out of the little trench in the concrete.

  One of the cornerhounds let out an ululating cry, the sound distressed, and half the creatures atop Ebenezar peeled off him and flung themselves at me.

  The cornerhounds probably should have thought their way through taking pressure off a man of my grandfather’s skills. A shouted word sent a burst of flame roaring out from the surface of his body in an expanding Ebenezar-shaped wave of blue-white fire, and the cornerhounds around him recoiled. The old man slammed his right palm on the earth, growling a low phrase, and gravity suddenly increased around the hounds coming toward me, dragging them to earth as they fought in vain against the weight of their own bodies.

  The hounds on Ebenezar recovered from the blast of flame and threw themselves onto him again. Now he couldn’t fight back—not and hold the hounds coming toward me, anyway.

  The Outsiders went at him, and there was another light show as the old man’s personal defenses resisted and spat sparks of defiance back at them. In that moment, only the power of my grandfather’s mind and will stood between him and death.

  Meanwhile, the four who’d originally been on me came darting spastically back into the fray, circling out around the field of increased gravity that held their companions.

  I looked up to see cornerhounds blurring toward my face, which was exactly where I did not want them—but I flung my face into the circle, because that was where I absolutely did want them, spinning as I went so that I could look back and see the cornerhounds leaping toward me in a group so tight that each of the four hounds was touching the others, talons and tentacles outstretched, in one of those moments that, at the time, seemed to last forever.

  And as I went, as their tails cleared the line of the circle, I focused my will on the trough in the floor, snapped my fingers, and shouted, “Flickum bicus!”

  My will carried fire to the gasoline in the circle, a single small static spark of eye-searing brightness, and flame leapt up with a low sound like something huge taking a deep breath, the fire racing swiftly around the circle’s exterior and burning with a clear, cold blue light.

  Working magic inside of circles is intense. Doing it in a ring of fire, where the flames close the circle is … like being inside a room where the walls and floors and ceilings are all sheets of mirror, with infinities of reflection spinning in every direction. Anything you do with magic inside a ring of fire has a tendency to build power very, very rapidly, and to send fragments of energy rebounding around inside of it, recombining in potent and unpredictable ways—so potent and unpredictable, in fact, that while the technique was not black magic per se, it was nonetheless on the list of prescribed spells and actions that the Wardens used to assess the warlock potential of any given wizard. It was that dangerous.

  Think of a ring of fire as, oh, an experimental fusion reactor. One way or another, something big is going to happen. If this banishing got out of hand, something closely resembling a small nuke could go off in the middle of the Gold Coast.

  The good news was that this was the kind of magic I was good at—moving massive amounts of energy in a straight line. Even better, the fact that the Outsiders were in the circle with me meant that I didn’t need any of their bits to create a channel for the spell.

  Of course, it also meant they could rip my face off while I tried.

  God, I love working under pressure.

  I hit the ground and slid a ways as the first of the hounds closed on me. I kicked its squishy nest of tentacles as hard as I could with one booted heel along the way. That pushed me back a bit from the thing and seemed to disorient it long enough for me to shout, “Hounds of the corners, I banish thee!”

  I infused my voice with my will, and the normally invisible screen of the circle suddenly came to green-gold life, myriad ribbons of tiny flame stretching up to the ceiling of the garage, but rather than remain a steady column, the ring of fire pulsed and swelled and subsided again. Flickers and sparks began to spit from the stone where Ebenezar’s will held gravity against four of the hounds. More sparks began whirling off his defensive spells, larger and brighter, moving more like fireflies, with an eerie emulation of biological purpose.

  When I added my voice to that, the flames brightened to an almost unbearable intensity—and a basso wail went up from thirteen throats at once, and every single hound turned to fling itself at me.

  Once the old man was loose of them, he promptly raised his left hand and smacked his palm down on the concrete, and concrete groaned as gravity increased again, dragging at the hounds, who despite their resistance were crushed inexorably to the floor.

  And the old man’s face had gone purple with the effort of the spell, his expression twisted into an agonized rictus.

  My God, he could be killing himself right in front of my eyes.

  He couldn’t keep up an effort like this for long.

  “Cornerhounds, servants of the Outer Night, this world is not meant for you!” I shouted at them. “I banish thee!”

  Again came a chorus of basso moans, but the helpless hounds couldn’t break the grasp of Ebenezar McCoy’s will.

  Except for one—the one who happened to be nearest me.

  The old man, while holding his defenses and an earth magic working that would take me at least a minute to even assemble, had done a second earth spell with such precision that he had excluded me from the excessive gravity while catching all the cornerhounds in his mind’s net.

  Well. Twelve out of thirteen. The last one began to drag itself out of the gravity well and toward me, pushing itself upright the moment its front talons cleared the increased gravity, its legs bunching for a leap that would end at my throat. It got clear and leapt.

  The ring of fire began to make a howling sound, the light flickering and strobing through several spectrums of color that fire had no business emitting. The energy in the air became so thick that it made my eyes itch, and I hadn’t even added my own gathered will to it yet. If I defended myself from the hound, abandoned the banishing, there would be no way to predict what
would happen with all this gathered energy.

  So I stood my ground as the hound tore free of the heavy gravity, and shouted, “Hounds of Tindalos, return to the Void that awaits thee! I banish thee!” I raised my staff in both hands and began to release my will.

  And I felt them.

  Inside my head.

  Felt the Outside.

  I’m not going to try to explain to you what it was like to experience that. If it hasn’t happened to you, there’s no common point of reference.

  It hurt. That much I can tell you. The Winter mantle didn’t do a damned thing against that kind of pain. Pain is as good a way to think of it as any. Touching their thoughts to yours is like licking frozen iron and giving yourself an ice-cream headache from it at the same time.

  Their thoughts, or whatever madness it was that passed for them, began to devour mine. I felt like my mind was being chewed apart by a swarm of ants. And then for just an instant, the alien thought patterns made sense, and I saw an image from their point of view—a being made of coherent light, a column of glowing energy centers, and pure dread, standing like an obelisk before the cornerhounds, a bolt of terrible lightning gathered around its upraised fists, head, and shoulders, like a miniature storm front.

  I saw what they saw when they looked at me.

  And I felt their fear.

  The Winter mantle howled with sudden hunger, Winter’s power flooded into me, and frost gathered on every surface in the parking garage with a crackling like a swimming pool full of Pop Rocks. Certainty flooded over me, the sense of the fusion of purpose, will, desire, and belief—certainty that moments like this were precisely why I existed in the first place.

  “BEGONE!” I roared, and slammed my staff down, unleashing my will as I did.

  And within the ring of fire, reality became a storm of ghostly energy, of random light and sound, of darting bolts of light and color. I felt the cornerhounds raise their will against mine—and theirs crumbled like day-old corn bread. I tore them from their ectoplasmic bodies and sent their unseen, immaterial asses screaming back to the Void outside of all Creation.

  The thirteenth hound’s talons were maybe eight inches from the tip of my nose when energy howled and swirled in the circle as the banishing spell caught up the cornerhounds. There was a sudden indrawn-breath sound that moaned through the night all around us, a great shuddering in the air—and then they simply vanished.

  So instead of being dismembered by a thousand-pound monster, a thousand pounds of gross, slimy ectoplasm smashed into my chest, promptly knocking me on my ass and sending me sliding fifteen feet across the floor.

  Twelve more cornerhounds’ worth of ectoplasm washed out over the now-extinguished ring of fire and began to ooze over the entire parking garage.

  Ebenezar sagged down to lie on his side, then rolled onto his back, breathing as heavily as if he’d been running up stairs, while a sludgy flow of ectoplasm three or four inches deep went past him. It looked like the after-party on the set of The Blob.

  I tried to flick goo from my fingers and had little luck. The stuff was like snot but stickier, and if not for the fact that it would sublimate and vanish within about a quarter of an hour, it would have put a real dent in my wardrobe over the years.

  But for the moment, I was covered in clear, gelatinous snot.

  We were both silent for a moment before Ebenezar croaked, “See? Not one vampire needed.”

  I eyed the old man, weary from the expenditure of so much energy. Then I asked, “Why do you hate them so much, sir?”

  He glanced over at me and stared for a moment, pensive. Then he asked me, “Why did you hate those ghouls you killed at Camp Kaboom?”

  I frowned and looked away. I wasn’t proud of what I’d done that day. But I wasn’t sure I’d do it any differently, either. The things those ghouls had done to a couple of kids I’d been helping to teach did not bear thinking upon.

  Neither did the ghouls’ endings.

  I used ants.

  The old man sighed. When I looked back at him, his eyes were closed. His cheeks seemed sunken. And there was a sense of desperate weariness to him that I had never seen before. When he spoke, he didn’t open his eyes. “See? You know why. I hate them because I know them. Because they took someone from me.”

  “Mom?” I asked.

  His jaw muscles tightened. “Her, too. What you did to the Reds was a hell of a thing, Hoss. But the part of me that knows them thinks it was only a good beginning. God help me, some days I’m not sure I don’t agree.”

  “The Red Court got the way they were by killing a human being. Every one of them. The White Court is different. They’re born that way. And they’re not all the same,” I said.

  “Game they’ve played for a very long time, Hoss,” he said. “You’ll see it for yourself. If you live long enough.”

  He exhaled and sat up. Then he reclaimed his staff and shoved himself to his feet. His face didn’t look right. It wasn’t purple at least, but it was too pale, his lips maybe a little grey. His eyes belonged on a starving man.

  “It’s best if we get off the street and behind some wards,” he said. “If they’ve got the gumption and resources, whoever sent those things might try it again.”

  “No,” I said. “Not until I get something on this whole starborn thing.”

  His jaw flexed a couple of times. Then he said, “I told you. You were born at the right time and place. As a result, you …” He sighed as if struggling to find an explanation. “Your life force resonates at a frequency that is the mirror opposite and cancellation of the Outsiders. They can’t take away your free will. They’re vulnerable to your power. Hell, you can punch them and they’ll actually feel pain from it.”

  Well. A kick to the sort-of face had made that cornerhound flinch for three-quarters of a second, anyway. “Let’s call that one Plan B.”

  “Good idea,” Ebenezar said.

  I frowned. “This starborn thing. It happens all the time?”

  The old man seemed to think about that one before he answered. “Once every six hundred and sixty-six years.”

  “Why?” I asked him. “What’s it for? What’s coming?”

  The old man shook his head. “Lesson’s over for tonight. I already said more’n I should’ve.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  “Hoss,” he said, his voice quiet and like granite, “there’s nothing you can do for the vampire except go down with him. Drop it.” He closed his eyes and spoke through clenched teeth. “Or I’ll make you drop it.”

  I expected to feel fury at his words. I don’t react well to authoritarian gestures.

  But I didn’t feel angry.

  Just … hurt.

  “You don’t trust my judgment,” I said quietly.

  “Course I do,” he said grumpily. “But I care about you even more—and you’re ears-deep in alligators and you ain’t thinking so straight right now.” He pushed back a glob of ectoplasm that threatened to gloop down into his eyes. “You know me. I don’t want to do this to you, Hoss. Don’t make me.”

  I thought about what I was going to say for a moment.

  I had always known Ebenezar McCoy as a gruff, abrasive, tough, fearless, and unfailingly kind human being, even before I knew he was my grandfather.

  I wanted to tell him about his other grandson. But I understood the hate he felt. I understood it because I felt it myself. It was the kind of hate not many people in the first world are ever forced to feel—the hate that comes from blood and death, from having those near you hurt and killed. That was old-school hate. Weapons-grade. Primal.

  If someone somehow revealed to me that a ghoul was actually my offspring, I wasn’t sure how I’d react, beyond knowing that it wouldn’t be reasonable and that fire was going to come into it somewhere.

  I couldn’t count on my grandfather. I might be all my brother had going for him.

  “Sir,” I said finally. “You know me. When someone I care about is in trouble, I’ll go
through whatever it takes to help them.” My next words came out in a whisper, “Don’t make me go through you, sir.”

  He narrowed his eyes for a long moment. “You figure you can, Hoss?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “Said the man falling past the thirtieth floor.”

  We both stood there for a moment, dripping ectoplasm, neither one of us moving.

  “Stars and stones,” the old man sighed finally. “Go cool off. Think it over. Sleep on it.” His voice hardened. “Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

  “Maybe one of us will.”

  “One of them,” he spat the last word as if it had been made of acid, “is not worth making an orphan of your daughter.”

  “It’s not about who they are,” I said quietly. “It’s about who I am. And the example I’m setting.”

  The old man stared at me for a moment, his expression unreadable.

  Then he turned and stalked away, slowly, his shoulders slumped, his jaw clenched. As he went, he vanished behind a veil that was, like most of his magic, better than anything I could do. Then I was standing there alone in an empty parking garage.

  I looked around at the wreckage and closed my eyes.

  Family complicates everything.

  Dammit.

  13

  Hounds of Tindalos are real, huh?” Butters asked. “Weird.”

  “Well. For some values of ‘real,’ ” I said. “Lovecraft got kicked out of the Venatori Umbrorum for mucking about with Thule Society research. Don’t know many of the details, but apparently it wasn’t actually cancer that ate his guts out later. It was … something more literal.”

  I sat at the little table in Butters’s apartment kitchen. I had my duster off and both arms resting on the table with my palms up. Butters sat across from me wearing loose exercise clothes. An EMT’s toolbox sat on the table next to him, and he was currently peering at my hands through his thick glasses, which he now wore in the form of securely fastened athletic goggles.

  Butters was a little guy in his early forties, even littler since he’d gotten in shape. Now he was all made of wire. Maybe five foot five, but if he weighed more than a hundred and forty pounds, I’d eat my duster without salt. His hair was a dark, curly, unkempt mess, but that might have been a factor of my showing up at his door after hours.