Demon Hunts

by C. E. Murphy

  “No. No, nothing like that. I mean, maybe,” Coyote said less than reassuringly. “But it’s not what I meant. You can’t wait for a wendigo to come to you. They take hunting, Jo. Not like a murder case, but real hunting.”

  “Like out in the woods with a rifle and an orange jacket hunting? I don’t look so good in orange.”

  “More like out in the woods with a spear and—”

  “Magic helmet?” I asked hopefully.

  Coyote, exactly like his furry counter-self, whacked his shoulder against mine hard enough to hurt. “If you have one, wear it.”

  I rubbed my shoulder, too glad to experience that again to sulk about the pain. “Did you come up here because you knew I had a wendigo on my hands?”

  “I thought you might be more willing to believe it was me if I showed up in the flesh. Besides, I haven’t seen you in real life since you were about five. I wanted to see how your mental image stood up to the real thing.”

  My heart lurched with sudden nerves. “And?”

  He leaned away so he could examine me, then smiled. “I haven’t seen your astral self in half a year. There’s no comparison. You were a mess then. Angry spikes shooting out of a wraith trying to stay unseen. Now…”

  I thought of the spiderwebbed windshield that reflected the state of my soul. “I’m still a mess.”

  “Nah.” Coyote traced a fingertip down the scar on my right cheek. I startled, then startled myself even more by closing my eyes and tipping my head into the touch. “You don’t have this,” he said. “I didn’t know you had a scar.”

  “Sure you did. It’s the one that didn’t want to heal that very first day, when Cernunnos stuck a sword through me.”

  “Oh, yeah.” He dropped his hand and I opened my eyes again to see him shrug thoughtfully. “Guess I didn’t expect it to leave a real scar, since you don’t have one in your image of yourself.”

  “Well, I did live twenty-six and a half years without one. And I don’t really see it when I look in the mirror.” I took a deep breath. “We’re procrastinating, aren’t we?”

  “Are we?” Coyote sounded amused. “On what?”

  I took a breath to say on dealing with the wendigo, and instead ran up against the disconcerting idea that he was flirting with me. I’d never considered the possibility that he might find me attractive. I found him attractive, but then, I figured anyone female, heterosexual and breathing probably would. For his hair, if nothing else, but it was only one of a number of what I considered to be very fine features.

  Instead of answering, I blushed. Coyote’s grin, of which I was becoming very fond, blossomed. He said, “Ah,” in a very wise and sagely tone, “procrastinating on that,“ and leaned in to kiss me.

  We left the Chinese food to be cleaned up in the morning.

  Thursday, December 22, 4:07 A.M.

  My room was lit up by the glowing numbers on my alarm clock and their reflection in the shining ceramic of the bedside lamp. Coyote was a comfortable, steadily breathing lump between me and the light. His hair, braided—we’d twisted it into loose plaits before falling asleep—was wound over his shoulder, where I couldn’t roll on it, and the red light made thick shadows of his eyelashes. I didn’t know why men so frequently got to have lashes like mascara companies advertised, although the idea that it was to keep dust out of their eyes while they hunted antelope on the savannah popped to mind. It didn’t matter. In modern terms they were just attractive, and I stopped myself from brushing a fingertip over them. I didn’t want to wake him up. I just wanted to lie there for a while, head propped on my hand, and smile stupidly while I watched him.

  Some vaguely rational part of my brain said this was not like me. That Joanne Walker, Reluctant Shaman, did not fall into bed with a guy a few hours after meeting him. That Joanne Walker didn’t succumb to stupid, giddy, exciting infatuation.

  Truth was, Joanne Walker couldn’t think of a single reason why she shouldn’t. I could even build a nice rationalization if I wanted to, because I’d technically known Coyote half my life, what with the shaman’s training he’d given me in the dream world when we were both teens.

  For once in my life, I wasn’t even vaguely interested in rationalizations. I was just happy. I was iridescent bubble, fluffy bunny, rainbow sky happy. I was happy Coyote was alive. I was happy we’d saved Mandy. I was happy he thought I was pretty. I was happy—bizarrely—that this was one guy who was neither unduly interested in nor threatened by nor uncomfortable with my aggravatingly esoteric set of talents. I could be me with Cyrano Bia, even if I hardly knew who that was.

  And this was a possibility that Suzanne Quinley hadn’t shown me. I liked that. I’d become resigned to feeling like there was some kind of destiny awaiting me, something I didn’t have much control over, but was going to have to face. The simple fact that there were still surprises in store, that there were paths untaken, even unimagined, made me feel like maybe I had a little bit of choice after all. For the first time that I could remember, I was just plain happy to see where the road took me. It felt good.

  I lay back down, put my nose against Coyote’s shoulder and my arm over his ribs, and went back to sleep.

  Thursday, December 22, 7:58 A.M.

  There was an Indian in my parking lot.

  All right, technically there were three, if you wanted to count me and Cyrano, but I wasn’t interested in us. I was interested in the low-slung, shiny green beauty that had no business at all being outdoors in a Seattle winter. I approached with the reverence due a vehicle old enough to be my grandfather, and knelt in the slush, not caring that my knees got soaked.

  I knew cars, not motorcycles, but I also knew beautifully restored work when I saw it. “It’s a, uh…What is it? Early forties? You didn’t…drive it up here. Not through the mountains. Not in winter.” I twisted to look over my shoulder at Coyote, who looked as nervous and hopeful as a six-year-old.

  “It’s a 1938 Chief. There’s a sidecar, but I didn’t want it to slow me down.” He shook his head, all but digging his toe into the slurry on the ground. “I shouldn’t have driven, I know. I should’ve flown. But…”

  The idiotic grin that’d been peopling my face for a lot of the past twelve or fourteen hours popped back up. “But you wanted to show off, didn’t you.”

  Sheepish little boy voice: “I thought you’d like it.”

  I turned back to the bike, smiling so widely my ears hurt. There was a fringe on its leather seat, and the rich forest green paint job was highlighted by white over the wheels. The poor thing’s engine was exposed, fine for someone living in the Navajo Nation, but less than fantastic for December in Seattle. “How the hell did you get through the Rockies without killing yourself? Without freezing to death?”

  He sounded guilty. Pleased, but guilty. “I shanghaied a friend with a pickup into driving me over into California and then came up the I-5 as fast as I could.” We both looked at the Indian, and the guilt in his voice turned smug: “Which was pretty damned fast.”

  “You weren’t on this yesterday when you showed up at Mandy’s house. I’d have noticed.” The world could have been ending and I’d have noticed. There was a small, indiscreet part of me that wanted to lick the bike. That’s how gorgeous it was.

  “No, I parked it here and took a cab to where I felt you. I didn’t want to bring you home on this without the sidecar. Or at least a helmet.”

  “You knew where I lived?” That didn’t bother me, for some reason, but I grinned over my shoulder at him again. “You were going to put me in a sidecar? Not you?” Okay, honestly, the idea of riding around in a sidecar built for a 1938 Indian Chief, wearing one of the old-fashioned leather motorcycle helmets, was pretty appealing. But I was used to being the driver, so I had to give him hell.

  “The apartment building felt like you. You’ve lived here a long time, haven’t you?” His smile broadened a bit, too. “I’ll let you drive the Chief the minute you hand over Petite’s keys.”

  I raised my hands
and stood up, defeated. “You drive. Except not in this weather. C’mon, we’re going to have to move him inside. You’re lucky it didn’t snow last night.”

  “Inside? Do you have a storage unit?”

  I wrinkled my eyebrows. “No, I have an apartment. We can bring him over to Chelsea’s garage tonight, and our beloved but impractical-for-winter vehicles can keep each other company until the weather breaks.” Or until Coyote went home, but I didn’t want to think about that just yet.

  He said, “Your apartment will smell like gas and oil if we store him in there,” but he was heading for the bike when he said it.

  I beamed. “Yeah. It’ll be great.”

  My apartment building was mostly filled with college students—Coyote was right; I’d lived there a long time, since I was one of them—and the few who were up at eight in the morning clearly thought nothing of someone wrestling a classic motorcycle into the slow-moving elevator, nor of wheeling it down the building hallway on the fifth floor. The Chief looked a lot bigger inside my apartment than it had in the parking lot, and we had to move my computer desk and the smaller couch to fit it in, but he was safer and warmer inside, so I was satisfied. Of course, doing that took all the extra time we’d bought by getting up early, and the bus delivered us to the precinct building ten minutes late. It wasn’t the optimum way to start a day when I needed a favor from my boss.

  Billy was already at work, head down over a stack of files, and though he glanced at his watch when we came in, he didn’t say anything. Possibly he didn’t say anything because it was we, and not just me, who came in, but I counted my blessings anyway, and made the introduction I’d failed to yesterday: “Coyote, this is my partner, Billy Holliday. Billy, this is Coyote. Cyrano. Cyrano Bia.” I noticed I was holding Coyote’s hand, and let go so he and Billy could shake.

  Billy looked like he was swallowing back seven or eight hundred questions as he shook Coyote’s hand. “It’s good to meet you. I’m glad you’re all right. Joanie’s missed you a lot.”

  Coyote mouthed, “Joanie?” at me, and aloud said, “Good to meet you, too. She thinks a lot of you. Sorry about the melodramatics yesterday. Have you heard from Ms. Tiller?”

  “She sent an e-mail late last night. She and Jake are home and okay. Looks like the news didn’t pick up on her adventure. Morrison still wants to see us.”

  Some of my good mood drained away. “Us, or me? Because this wasn’t really your fault.”

  “Us, and it was as much mine as yours.”

  I started to argue, then subsided. We were both in trouble, and Billy apparently wasn’t going to let me be the fall guy. “When’s he want us?”

  “About ten minutes ago.”

  I pulled a hand over my mouth, turned to Coyote, said, “Crap,” turned back to Billy, then walked in three little circles while trying to figure out what to do with myself. “All right. He’s going to kill me either way. I guess I should go get it over with. Hang tight, okay, Coyote? I’ll be back soon, if I’m not dead.”

  “We don’t have a lot of time, Jo. The wendigo knows there’s someone of power hunting it now.”

  “Oh, it more than knows. It checked me out while we were at Mandy’s.” I bet that was an important detail I should’ve mentioned earlier. I tried for an apologetic smile, managed a grimace, and added, “But it ran away,” hopefully. “Maybe it didn’t think it could take me.”

  Coyote’s expression suggested I definitely should have mentioned this earlier, and that I was probably also a moron for having made the hopeful suggestion. “If it’s already retreated, Joanne, it’s going to be all the harder to find. And it’ll get worse the longer we let it run.”

  “Right. So I better go talk to Morrison.” Who was going to kill me. Rightfully. I gave Coyote an impulsive kiss and scurried out of Homicide.

  Billy caught up, looking between me and where we’d left Coyote so sharply I thought he’d give himself whiplash. All he said, though, was, “‘Jo’?”

  My face wrinkled up entirely of its own accord. “Yeah. I didn’t used to like it, so everybody calls me Joanie. Everybody but Gary. He started calling me Jo and I guess I got used to it.”

  “Cyrano,” Billy said, as if he was afraid he was pointing out something dangerous, “isn’t Gary.”

  The stupid little smile cranked the corner of my mouth up again. “I know.”

  Billy said, “I see,“ and any further commentary was lost because Morrison flung his office door open and we slunk in.

  ———

  The captain left us standing there long enough that my feet began to itch from holding still. Under almost any other circumstances it would have started to be funny, and I would’ve turned into a smart-ass, but I was vividly aware that I wasn’t the only one in trouble. I was afraid to look away from Morrison, though I didn’t much want to look at him, either. I fixed on his right shoulder, judging it close enough to meeting his eyes. I could certainly still see his face, which was florid.

  “I don’t know what to do with you two,” he finally said. “I’m used to Walker being an idiot, but this is new territory for you, Holliday.”

  A modicum of wisdom suggested this was not the time to defend myself. Besides, it was a legitimate statement. I’d spent quite a bit of time making an idiot of myself in front of Morrison.

  For some reason that made me think of Coyote, and I smiled, which wasn’t really the smartest thing to do. Morrison snapped, “You think this is funny, Walker?”

  “No, sir.” I honestly didn’t, except possibly in a “the tension is getting to me, I must either laugh or scream” way. I had the presence of mind—barely—not to say that. And to bite my cheek when another dippy smile started to come out of nowhere. I was hopeless.

  That, at least, was a sentiment Morrison would agree with. “The only reason you’re not both suspended is Mandy Tiller is alive and well. I should suspend you anyway.” But there was a killer out there that only his paranormal detective duo was equipped to find, so he couldn’t afford to draw attention to us or the department by suspending us from a case we pretty much had to work on anyway.

  He didn’t say any of that out loud. He didn’t need to. Instead, he snapped, “You’d better goddamned well consider yourselves on probation. You will do nothing without clearing it with me first, and I mean nothing. I don’t want you taking a coffee break without my permission.”

  Billy, sensibly, said, “Yes, sir.” I, less sensibly, said, “Aw, hell, Captain, look, in that case I need permission to go haring off into the woods for a few days, because I’m going to anyway.”

  Morrison’s eyebrows shot toward his silvering hairline, and I had the distinct impression Billy was trying to run away without actually moving a muscle. “You what?“

  “This thing, the wendigo, Coyote and I are going to have to hunt it, but it’s not a city creature. I can’t stay here and report in and still do my job.” There was a certain irony to that, but Morrison didn’t look like he was buying.

  “You’re not going anywhere, Walker, and if you were, it wouldn’t be with a stranger who’s not on my force. I don’t care how well you think you know this guy. All I know is he’s showed up in the middle of a serial murder case claiming to know things about the killer that, frankly, I’m not sure he could know if he wasn’t involved.”

  I laughed. It was bad form, but I laughed. “Are you serious?”

  Morrison’s ears turned red. “Walker, you told me your mentor was dead. And now this guy with all the answers just happens to show up, wrapped in a package only you can recognize? You tell me if that isn’t suspicious.”

  Phrased that way, it was. Phrased that way, it also sounded just a little like jealousy, a trait which Morrison hadn’t exhibited over Edward Johnson while I’d been dating him. I wrote it off as amusing but unlikely. “It’s Coyote, boss. I know him. He taught me for months. He saved my life, for Pete’s sake. I trust him. And we can stand here all morning going around on this, but in the end I’m going to do this,
so you might as well give me permission so you can feel like you’re retaining some kind of control.”

  Morrison’s voice went very low: “I could fire you.”

  A pit of regrets opened up in my belly. “Are you going to?”

  I heard Billy take a surreptitious breath and hold it, like he might not draw attention if he was utterly still. Morrison stared at me, the raging color gone from his face, and I stood there on the edge of a coin, waiting to see which way it, and my fate, fell.

  The door opened behind us without so much as a knock of warning, and I caught Coyote’s scent as it closed again. Morrison clenched his jaw, but Coyote beat him to the punch: “I’m sorry for the intrusion, Captain, but Joanne and I can’t wait any longer. We really have to go.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I’d kind of gotten used to Morrison and Gary posturing at each other. It was a testosterone thing that made no sense, given that one was my boss and the other was forty-six years my elder. They’d also laid off the worst of it recently.

  So I was really in no way prepared for the explosiveness of two young men with equal interest and stakes in me facing off. The air actually got heavy, like it did just before a storm, and I shot a compulsive glance out the window, wondering when Seattle had started featuring dead-of-winter thunderheads.

  “Detective Joanne Walker is an officer under my command—”

  “Cosmically,” Coyote said, “I’ve got you trumped.”

  The way he said it reminded me, dismayingly, of me. I could never be that calm or casual, or manage to put that much weight behind a handful of on-the-surface silly words, but in terms of picking just the right thing to inflame Morrison, it could’ve come straight off my short list.

  Equally dismaying, Morrison responded just like he would’ve to me. His whole head turned crimson and he stepped forward to invade Coyote’s personal space, clearly expecting me and Billy to give way. Billy did. I almost did.

  My knees locked up, though, and my core went solid with determination I didn’t know I had. Gary and Morrison fluffing their feathers at each other was one thing. It was something else entirely with Coyote and Morrison, and I very much didn’t want to see either of them take it in the teeth. I didn’t want much of anybody fighting over me, but especially not these two, because God forbid somebody should lose, and someone would have to. I forgot I was a police detective and a shaman. For a minute I just ran with being a girl, and got between the men in my life. “Guys. Come on. Knock it off.”