Peace Talks (The Dresden Files 16)

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 and 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.”