Demon Hunts

by C. E. Murphy

  That wasn’t something I remembered often. Mostly, looking back at my childhood, I tended to focus on the changing schools every six weeks, the inability to make friends in such a short time, the weird period when I was seven or eight when Dad had been teaching me Cherokee, and I’d almost forgotten how to speak English. Since then I’d made up for it by almost forgetting how to speak Cherokee. But long car trips made me think about the good stuff, especially if I wasn’t driving, and for the first time in a long while I wondered how Dad was doing. I hadn’t talked to him in years. Last I’d known he was still in Cherokee County back in North Carolina, but it was hard to imagine he’d stayed on after I left for college. He’d grown up there, but he’d never given any impression of wanting to stay. He’d never given any impression of wanting to stay anywhere, particularly after a year-long stint in New York had given my mother a chance to relocate him and drop me on his metaphorical doorstep.

  These days I suspected she would have found him if he’d been on the lam in Timbuktu, but I certainly hadn’t known that growing up. Besides working on cars and moving around a lot, my real, lasting impression of childhood was that my father often looked like he neither knew how he’d ended up with a daughter, nor what to do with one now that he had it. He’d been the one who called me “Jo” in the first place, which was why I didn’t like it. Once I’d gotten old enough to think about it, I’d suspected he’d used that nickname so he could pretend he was just talking to himself. It had more recently occurred to me that maybe he’d been trying to find another point of similarity for us to build on, but I hadn’t been anything like that forgiving as a kid. In retrospect, I was probably lucky he hadn’t drowned me. Thoughts like that slipped away at the speed limit, following hard on one another like the dashed lines on the road. It was as close to meditation as I ever got.

  For some reason when we got to the park entrance Coyote and Gary both looked at me like they expected me to pay the fee for all three of us. I’d paid it at Olympic, but Mandy’d been doing me a huge favor. This time we were all in it together, although Gary was more all in for fear of missing something than for standing the line. Not that he wouldn’t. He was a good guy to have at my back when things got rough, a fact I knew from experience.

  Somehow that talked me into paying the fee, and we drove into the park with me feeling like I’d been Jedi-mind-tricked. “Wait a minute, where are we, anyway? Which entrance was that?”

  “Nisqually.” Coyote looked over his shoulder at me. “Weren’t you listening? The body was found near the Longmire museum.”

  “Wouldn’t the pickings be richer at Paradise?” That was the only section of the park I’d ever really heard about, mostly thanks to the occasional news story about the visitor’s center. It looked like a flying saucer, and the roof kept threatening to collapse under the snowfall. They were going to build a new one any minute now.

  “There’s a lot of old growth forest around Longmire. The wendigo’s probably drawn to it.”

  I said, “Ah,” then squinted at him. “You’re from Arizona. How can you possibly know this?”

  He held up a PDA with a Wikipedia entry visible on its little square screen. “Oh. That’s not very mystical of you.”

  “No, but it’s handy.” He flashed me a grin underscored by Gary’s chuckle, and we fell into a companionable game of glimpse-the-mountain wherever there was a gap in the trees. Not too much later we pulled into the parking lot of what a sign proclaimed was the National Park Inn, which, from the outside, was a genuinely gorgeous rustic-looking building with the mountain serving as a dramatic backdrop.

  Gary whistled. “Damn, that’s something.”

  I said, “It is,” except my eyes had fallen right off the vista and landed on a black 1967 Chevy Impala. It didn’t belong up here in the woods any more than Petite might’ve, but it was a beautiful car. Gary parked a few spaces down from it and I got out to walk circles around it. Kansas license plates. I patted the Impala’s hood and mumbled, “Long way from home, aren’t you, baby?” before reluctantly turning away.

  Laurie Corvallis, evening anchor for Channel Two News, stood right behind me with a smile as pointy as a crocodile’s. “And so are you, Detective Walker.”

  ———

  In any other circumstances I’m sure I would’ve seen the news van another fifteen feet down the lot, and suggested to Coyote and Gary that we get the hell out of there. But I was weak in the face of classic cars, and truthfully, we couldn’t have escaped anyway. This was where the job was, for us just as much as for Laurie Corvallis.

  Which was hardly something I could say to her. I fished my best genuine smile out of somewhere and said, “Fancy meeting you here. You up for the Christmas break?”

  “I’m not,” she said, every bit as pleasantly. “And neither are you.”

  “Really? I thought I was. I’m going to be disappointed, then. So why am I here?” She didn’t have a microphone, so I didn’t much care that I sounded like a babbling idiot.

  “You’re up here following the Seattle Slaughterer, just like I am, Detective. And the fact that you’re here makes me all the more certain I’m going to get my story. I’ll be watching you.”

  “Ms. Corvallis.” I rubbed a finger over my eye. I hadn’t been smart enough to take my contacts out at the apartment. Three hours of staring out the window and forgetting to blink made me wish I had. Glasses were more forgiving of that behavior. “If I were up here on police business I’d be here with my partner, not friends. Call Captain Morrison, if you like. I’m here on my own.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not where the story is, Detective. I look forward to seeing more of you soon.” She walked away, leaving me with an increasing pit of dread in my tummy.

  Coyote caught up to me, carrying his own bag, but not, I noticed, mine. “Cute. Who is she?”

  “The devil.”

  “Really. I thought the devil would be taller.” He jogged into the lodge after Corvallis. I bent, scooped up a handful of snow, and caught him in the back of the head with it just before the doors closed behind him.

  Gary, who was carrying my bag, stopped at my side. “What’s the deal, Jo?”

  “Nothing, it’s just that woman is going to make this a lot more complicated.”

  His bushy eyebrows went up and he glanced after Coyote. I don’t know how I knew he was looking at Coyote and not Corvallis, but I did. “Is that a that woman like a woman means it, or like a cop means it?”

  I took my bag from him as an excuse to give him a hard, considering look. “Whoever said men don’t understand women obviously never met you. It was a cop that woman. I don’t care if Coyote thinks she’s cute. She is cute. She’s also going to get herself killed.”

  “Nah. She ain’t the outdoorsy type.” Gary, clearly satisfied with his line of reasoning, marched into the lodge. I stared after him, then, because there was nothing else I could do, shrugged assent and followed him.

  Corvallis was at the front desk, trying to flirt with Coyote, who arched an eyebrow at me over her head. She looked to see who he was making eyes at, and her smile went flat. It went flatter still when I gave my name and the desk attendant pulled up our reservations. I saw no reason at all to tell Corvallis they’d been made from the phone on the drive down. Better to let her think we’d had them for weeks. Maybe it would throw her off the scent, although I didn’t really think anything could.

  Certainly she didn’t fail to notice we were all staying in one room, which clearly, in her opinion, put the kibosh on any potential romance between me and Coyote. I sort of had to agree with her, but on the other hand, if we were going to fight monsters, I didn’t want the team split up even for sleeping. That was how people got picked off in horror movies.

  Corvallis, who wasn’t privy to my line of thought, cozied up to Coyote a little more. I resisted the urge to drop my bag on her foot, but only because it was a soft-sided backpack that wouldn’t do her any damage. Coyote gave me another look over her head. Gleef
ul, I said, “Cut it out, Corvallis. He’s with Gary.”

  I couldn’t decide which of the three looked more shocked, but it left me grinning as the girl behind the counter offered me room keys. “It’s a bed-and-breakfast package. Just give them your room number in the morning. Welcome to the National Park Inn, and please let us know if there’s anything we can do to make your visit more comfortable.”

  A blast of cold air dropped the lobby’s temperature by about ten degrees. We all turned to see a petite park ranger with a grim expression holding them open. Her face was pale, cords standing out in her throat, but she lifted an extremely steady voice to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to have to ask everyone to stay inside for a little while. I’m afraid we’ve had another incident.”

  Coyote, Gary, Laurie Corvallis and I all ran for the door.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I had to give Corvallis credit for chutzpah, anyway. She was easily the least physically threatening of the four of us, but she was quick on her feet, and got in the park ranger’s face first. The poor woman took a breath to argue and the rest of us went galloping by like wolves to the slaughter.

  I don’t know what I was expecting. A gnawed-on body spread all over the parking lot, maybe, staining the snow red and fixing nightmares in holiday-makers minds for the rest of their lives. If I’d taken half a second to think I’d have known there’d be no such scene. If nothing else, we had yet to encounter a victim who’d actually been allowed to bleed out.

  The only saving grace was Coyote and Gary both looked like they’d had expectations similar to mine. Coyote glowered around, dumbfounded, then turned on his heel to face me. “We’re going to need to find out where the body is. The faster I can get to one and take a look, the more likely I am to be able to track it.”

  A sting of possessive envy caught me in the gut and left me trying to catch my breath. For months I’d been wishing Coyote was on hand, metaphysically speaking, to show me the path. To take responsibility. Now, finally, he was, and I had the un-charitable thought that this was my territory, my game, and I should be the one taking charge.

  I had the unpleasant sensation that I now knew just exactly how Morrison had felt a few hours earlier.

  “I almost had it yesterday. Before we saved Mandy.” I was trying really hard not to sound petulant. Judging from Gary’s carefully neutral expression, I wasn’t succeeding.

  “Almost had it how?” Coyote either didn’t care about or hadn’t noticed my churlish tone. I wasn’t sure what I thought of that, either. It was good, of course, except it sort of meant he either wasn’t listening, or was blowing me off.

  God, if I was going around in circles like that I’d blow me off, too. Exasperated with myself, I threw my head back and glared at the sky until I felt some modicum of rationality return. “I’d been about to follow it across the astral plane when—” When Morrison touched me and woke me up. I was glad for the cold. It made a legitimate excuse for my face to be pink. “When I got pulled back to the normal world. You showed up a minute later.”

  “What were you going to do when you found it?” The way he asked wasn’t a good sign. It suggested I’d screwed up beyond belief without even knowing it. Given that that had been my modus operandi for most of the last year, it was a perfectly legitimate assumption, but it didn’t sit well. I hunched my shoulders and turned my scowl at the snow.

  “I was going to kick its ass. I don’t know, Ro.” I’d barely ever called him Cyrano, much less shortened it to “Ro,” but it rhymed and I was childishly pleased with that. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

  “You’ve got to start.” Now he was the stern, slightly worried teacher. I had no idea how he fit so many personalities into so few words, or so little time. “The astral plane’s an incredibly dangerous place to take on a wendigo, Jo. It’s its home turf. Out there it’d be simple for it to cut you away from your body, and for something like this creature, you’d be a seven-course meal. You can’t afford that kind of mistake.”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know? It’s not like you left me a shaman’s primer to study! There’s no fricking handbook for all of this! I’m doing my goddamned best!” Frustrated, I scooped up a handful of snow and whipped around to fling it across the parking lot with as much strength as I could muster.

  It hit the defenseless Impala, twenty feet away. I said, “Fuck,” and went to wipe the marks of my temper tantrum away.

  Coyote, very mildly, asked, “Would you have felt that bad if you’d hit me?”

  “No.” A better person than I would’ve apologized, but I was by definition not that person. “C’mon. Let’s go find the body.”

  “I’ll tell you where it is,” Laurie Corvallis said from behind me, “but you have to take me with you.”

  ———

  I was really beginning to hate how she kept doing that, turning up behind me or off to one side with a pithy statement and a microphone. I snapped, “No,” and then because I was stupid, added, “How do you know where it is?”

  The park ranger came out of the inn looking a little like she’d been bulldozed, saw us, shook herself, and put purpose in her stride as she approached. I said, “Ah,” under my breath, and turned back to Corvallis. “Why is this turning into a you’ll-tag-along instead of us trying to sneak after you while you go get your story?”

  She studied me for a long moment, during which the park ranger reached us and began, firmly, insisting that we return to the lodge, everything was under control, but it was imperative that we not be outdoors for the immediate future. I made accommodating noises and didn’t move. Corvallis just ignored the woman entirely, no more interested in her than she might’ve been in a silent rock face. Eventually the ranger faltered, then went to try her spiel on Coyote and Gary.

  Only when she was gone did Corvallis say, “Inexplicable things happen around you, Detective Walker. Inexplicable, dangerous things. We both know there’s a story there, and someday I’m going to get it. But let’s pretend for a minute that I’m not after that right now.”

  I rocked back, bemused at her frankness. “Okay…?”

  “My job is to go somewhere and learn more about the situation. The best way to do that is to make some kind of connection with the people I’m investigating. Sometimes it’s dangerous. I’ve done gangland exposé pieces, I’ve gone to the Middle East, I’ve—”

  “I watch the news, Laurie. I don’t need your résumé.”

  She shrugged her eyebrows, a more ordinary expression than I was used to seeing from her. “The point is, when you’re following a story into a world you don’t know a lot about, you try to make friends, or at least allies, with somebody who can show you the ropes. Somebody who’s going to offer a degree of protection, because they’ve got a vested interest in the story being presented.”

  “And then you hang them out to dry.”

  “Less often than you think. You can’t keep going into investigative situations and expecting to get your story, your truth, if you’ve built a reputation for selling out the people who open their doors to you.”

  “My door is not open to you, Corvallis.”

  “But it is. You have no idea how much research I’ve done on you, Siobhán.”

  Nausea ruptured inside me, backwash of acid climbing up my throat. Siobhán was the name my mother’d given me at birth. Siobhán Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick. Dad took one look at Siobhán, determined nobody in America was ever going to say it correctly, and gave me a whole different use-name, Joanne. Technically it was an Anglicization, as Siobhán more or less translated as Joanne, but nobody could tell that by looking at it.

  I’d abandoned Walkingstick of my own accord, the day I graduated high school. It hadn’t been much of a trick to hack the school records so I was Joanne Walker on them, and that’s the name I’d used for more than ten years. I’d always known the full name was out there if somebody wanted to research it—Morrison had—but I’d never imagined anybody would want to. Moreover, rec
ently I’d become aware of the power of true names, which made me particularly uncomfortable with anybody bandying mine about.

  If Corvallis knew my full name, she certainly knew plenty of other things about me that I’d left, deliberately, on the eastern side of the Mississippi. I wanted them to stay there. I might’ve been growing up and getting in tune with myself and other garbage like that, but there was plenty I planned on leaving alone.

  And Laurie Corvallis wasn’t going to let that happen.

  Carefully—very carefully, because I was honestly afraid of what I might do if I let go—I triggered the Sight. I did it because I wanted to see her aura, to see if I could read her intentions, and I did it forgetting that it made my eyes change color. Hazel to gold; I’d watched it happen in Coyote’s eyes, and once in Billy’s when I’d lent him the ability to See. I thought it wasn’t half as disturbing as the blind bone-white that rolled over the eyes of people who could see the future.

  Judging from how Corvallis blanched, it was disturbing enough. Her aura was yellow, incredibly clear and tightly focused, and for the second time I had to give her credit for cajones. Spikes of red panic, every bit as clear as the yellow, shot through her aura and made loops as she sucked them back down, controlling them. Her whole body was rigid, blue eyes round and lips pale, but shots of green rushed across her aura, like she was recording every second of her emotion. Recording it, mastering it, ultimately subsuming it: her whole range of flipping out lasted about a nanosecond, and then she was back to clear yellow.

  And almost all I could read out of that was ambition. No urge to hurt people, but no particular desire not to, either. She wanted one thing above all else: the story. Maybe other things came to the fore when she was off duty, but I’d never seen her anything but on. I closed my eyes, letting the Sight go. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”