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.