Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(36)

“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.