Demon Hunts

by C. E. Murphy

  “They’re not going to recognize it as the same killer,” Coyote said as soon as he did. “I got close enough to look at the cusp marks. It’s more like a wild animal. That, and there’s blood this time, and pieces of torn flesh in the snow around the body. It’s getting more savage.”

  Corvallis all but lit up and pulled a sleek phone from the pocket of her coat. “A copycat killer? We can call it mountain madness. Christmas killer? No, that’s been done.” She hurried ahead of us, shaking her phone like that would help her pick up a signal.

  Gary chuckled in her wake. “Think she ever met a story she couldn’t tackle?”

  “I think she’s going to if she stays out here.” I stopped in the snow and Coyote knocked me into motion again. “Ow. Look, I don’t know if you saw anything, Ro, but—”

  “Do you have to do that?”

  “You call me Jo, I get to call you Ro.”

  “I like Coyote better.”

  “You don’t look so much like a coyote in the real world. Did you see anything?”

  He bared his teeth at me, the expression surprisingly close to that of his coyote-form self, then shook it off in much the same way I’d seen him do on the astral plane. “Aside from a body that doesn’t fit the physical signs of the other murders, no. It is the wendigo,” he said, like I’d been going to argue. “There’s no hint of soul left to the corpse at all. Like Mandy was.” His mouth thinned, eyes gone grim. “But much too late to save her.”

  “I believe you. I think every time it feeds it’s getting more distorted.” I puffed my cheeks and followed Corvallis down the mountain listlessly. “The bite marks on Charlie Groleski were rounder than the ones on Karin Newcomb. If it had managed to take Mandy out, it might’ve looked like a different case, too. Wait, what are we doing?” I stopped following Corvallis and frowned. “We’re going the wrong way. Its tracks went up the mountain. We should get them out of here, but we should stay.”

  Gary, in a low rumble, said, “‘Should’ is one of those funny words that don’t mean what you think it means,” and pointed behind us.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A shadow paced on the snow, clearly watching us. Tooth and claw and red raging eyes; the rest was white and translucent and almost impossible to see. The Sight snapped on, making it more visible, though I instantly wished it hadn’t.

  Rivulets of blood dripped and flowed from its teeth, never falling far enough to stain the snow. Its claws were tangled with shredded souls. The tatters could have been anything from cobweb to gauze, fragile against the beast’s bulk, but the healer’s magic within me knew I was seeing the last vestiges of what had once been human beings. It was all much, much more clear than it had been on the mountain yesterday morning. Clearer, even, than it had been on Mandy’s rooftop the evening before. I had the gut-sinking feeling that having sized me up, it had decided it was time to get serious about manifesting in the real world.

  It was still nominally manlike, in that it had arms and legs, but its shoulders and neck had disappeared into a massive head with a wide-gaping, grinning mouth. Even the humanoid features were stunted: the arms were short, the chest incredibly thick, the legs seeming too small to carry its weight.

  It stank. From thirty yards away, it smelled of rotten meat and offal. It had smelled like roses yesterday, by comparison. The transition toward more real wasn’t doing it any favors.

  Very, very quietly, I said, “Gary, what do you see?”

  He said, “A bear,” in a way that let me understand how utterly inadequate, how completely wrong, the description was, and yet that it was the best he could do. It was no more bearlike than I was, but with its shifting, fluid white form almost impossible to focus on, I thought bear was as close as any non-magically-gifted person was going to get.

  “Coyote?”

  “…not a bear.” He sounded like Gary did: unable to express what he saw any more clearly. “What do you see?”

  “A trap.” The only problem was, I didn’t know for whom. “Gary, back up really slowly. Just a few feet. I want to see if it…cares.”

  “That don’t fill me with confidence, doll.” He backed up anyway, a few slow steps down the road. The wendigo went very still, thick torso lifted like it was scenting the air. It cared, in other words. I swore under my breath, and Gary froze again. “That don’t, either.”

  “It shouldn’t. Don’t move again.” The wendigo relaxed when Gary stopped inching backward, though it began pacing back and forth, a few steps at a time, as it stared down the mountain at us. I had the unpleasant and probably accurate feeling it was assessing us in terms of easy pickings, and I very carefully began building a shield.

  The heat of desert sand, delicious when I stood in the middle of a snow-covered forest, washed over me. Dune yellow and sky blue became a part of my shield, strengthening it beyond measure. I’d only ever made a weaving with so much power one other time, when I’d borrowed my dead mother’s talent to fight a banshee. It felt terrific, and despite the wendigo I shot a smile toward Coyote. He didn’t exactly smile back, but the heat of his magic intensified a moment, making me feel welcome.

  The wendigo snarled, the same low threatening sound that had started an avalanche the day before. There were more trees along the road here, maybe enough to stabilize the snow, but it wasn’t a risk I wanted to take. Not with a news crew and a couple dozen FBI agents who could be swept away.

  Right on cue, they noticed the wendigo. Half a dozen people voiced variations on, “What the hell?“ and Sara bellowed, “Jesus Christ, Joanne, what’re you doing now?” like a semi-visible slavering monster was obviously all my fault.

  I decided she would rather I kept her alive than give her an answer. Our shield stretched across the road, making a wall between ourselves and the wendigo, but I’d seen the thing jump. “The shield has to go over us, too.”

  “I can do that if you’ve got a plan for the wendigo.” Coyote sounded strained, which surprised me. I was used to thinking of him as well-nigh omnipotent, but I could feel the intense concentration in his magic as he stretched the shield back in a wide curve. The whole investigative area, including the road, covered a good forty square yards, maybe a little more. I didn’t think we needed a bubble unless the wendigo was smart enough to leap the shield and attack from behind, but I’d never dreamed that sustaining a shield that big might wear my mentor out.

  Especially when I had plenty left to give. I poured more into the shield, feeling it strengthen, and turned some of Coyote’s energy toward my favorite catch-all. Tight bands of magic wove together, creating a net with much greater holding capacity than the one I’d built yesterday. “I’ve got a plan.”

  It would’ve been a better plan if a net had worked the day before, but I saw no reason to burden Coyote with that knowledge. “If this works, I want you to try to get everybody off the mountain, Gary. Back down to the lodge, at least. I don’t think Mister Stinky here cares much about whether he’s noshing on outdoorsmen anymore.”

  “If what works?”

  Crap. I’d forgotten he couldn’t See what I was doing. “I’m going to try to catch it in a net. I just want to hold it in place until everybody’s safe. It didn’t work yesterday, but it’s more real now and Coyote’s backing me up.”

  “Joanne Walkingstick, what the hell are you doing?” Sara’d caught up to us, but I still didn’t think it was a good time to answer her questions. I almost hoped she’d grab me. I had this idea that power would zot off me like an electrical arc, and she’d end up ten feet away in the snow with her hair all frazzled. It wasn’t nice, but it was funny.

  Gary was apparently down with ignoring the Feds, too. His voice dropped to a low enough grumble that it raised hairs on my nape: “And if it don’t work?”

  “Then we’re all fucked.”

  “Gotcha. Just tell me when, darlin’.”

  Coyote eyed me. “Are you always this inspiring?”

  “You should see me on a bad day. Ready?”

  “Joan
ne, what are you doing?“

  Nobody paid Sara any heed at all. Coyote nodded, tensing in preparation. I launched the net and yelled, “Run!” at Gary as the wendigo leaped.

  Time, as it so often did, collapsed into infinite slow motion as everything went to hell.

  ———

  I understood immediately that my mistake had been in making the shield one-way. It was meant to keep wendigos out, not FBI agents in. Not, as it turned out, FBI agents and over-eager television news reporters. Laurie was there all of a sudden, cameraman in tow, two steps behind Sara and on the wrong side of the shield.

  A part of me was given over to admiring Sara’s weapon stance as she slapped her duty weapon from its holster and brought it up, firing repeatedly at the wendigo. Her honey-blond hair made her vivid and living against white snow and black trees, real in a way the wendigo wasn’t. I saw flashes from the muzzle of her weapon, bright imprints in dilated time, and I could almost watch the bullets spin through the air.

  I could without question see how they utterly failed to impress the wendigo. They didn’t seem to strike it at all: no shudder of impact, no mist of blood, no slowing of its headlong rush. Middle World means clearly couldn’t stop it, even if it was more connected than it had been yesterday.

  Corvallis and her cameraman were Sara’s civilian mirrors. The guy was on his knees, face stretched with enthusiasm and terror, but his camera light was flashing and the lens was angled to catch the wendigo’s leap. Corvallis, as admirable and idiotic as Sara, shouted breathless commentary while five hundred pounds of monster barreled toward her.

  I swear to God, people like them should’ve gotten my shiny weird power set. They were delighted to throw themselves into danger’s face, ready and eager to take on the world, happy to do stupid, stupid things in the name of truth, justice, and getting the story. I had no desire for that much excitement in my life.

  That was probably why I got it, and they didn’t.

  I flung my net forward, putting all my will behind it: it had to hold. Its cables were steel, titanium, unobtanium, whatever couldn’t be broken. I had held gods with that net. I could, by God, hold one nasty little demon spirit.

  Wendigo and net collided, and the net stretched, pulled out of shape by the wendigo’s need to feed. I let out a wordless roar that felt every bit as deep and earth-shattering as anything the wendigo had voiced, and surged forward a step, holding the line.

  The net rebounded from its stretch, knocking the wendigo ass-over-teakettle back up the mountain road. It bumped and crashed and shuddered to a stop, thrashing and snarling as it fought the psychic bonds that held it. Over its screams I heard Sara shouting, “What the hell? What the hell!?“ as she fired her gun again and again.

  I yelled, “Get behind me! Get behind me!“ Instead, a dozen more federal agents ran forward to join her in trying to shoot to death a creature that only barely had a corporeal body.

  Exasperation erupted in my chest and I had sudden, bone-deep sympathy for Coyote and everybody else who’d dealt with me in the first months of my shamanistic career. The federal agents simply would not accept that were facing something they were completely unprepared for, which was the moral equivalent of me utterly refusing to accept my talents. It was incredibly frustrating, and I made a note to apologize to everyone I knew.

  Right after we got out of this alive.

  I kept feeling pops in my power, like soap bubbles exploding in the air. A bit of the wendigo, an elbow or a claw or an ear or a tooth, broke through the net every time it happened. The net resealed itself, drawing more power each time, and I got a double-vision impression that the monster was slipping between its physical and psychic form. I had its tangible self under control, but if it pulled itself just a little farther into the spirit realm I wasn’t sure I could hold it. The nets I’d cast in the past had held physical things, not spirits.

  A small, weary part of myself thought I should probably be able to hold spirits, as well, and that we were going to pay heavily for my lack of skill. But slowed-down time or not, I didn’t have the luxury of dwelling. “Coyote, can you kill it?”

  “Me?” Incredulous horror spiked through the question, though he toned it back down with the next question: “With what?”

  I shot a sideways glance at him. He looked like breathing and maintaining his part of the shield was just about the limit of his capability, which made my brain cramp again. He was my teacher, for pity’s sake. I wasn’t supposed to walk all over him in the sheer wattage department.

  On the other hand, again, not such a good time to worry about it. I turned my attention back to the wendigo and the popping net. One hand fisted of its own accord, like I was holding on tighter, and the rest of me divorced itself from the wendigo just long enough to reach across space and seize my rapier.

  It became real in my hand, a solid silver weight. I threw it to Coyote and hissed, “With this.”

  He caught it clumsily, and stood agog for what seemed like a horribly long time, maybe a whole second or so. Then he bolted forward, black braid bouncing against his spine, and I found myself the unhappy maintainer of both the entire shield and the net.

  Screw it. We didn’t need the shield as long as the net held. I let it go and focused on the rippling power containing the wendigo. The popping stopped, and relief lightened my heart. We were going to win.

  The whine and roar of gunshots ceased abruptly as Coyote tore past the federal agents. Only Sara’s protests followed him, unexpectedly thin after the world-shattering noise of the guns. The wendigo still howled, but the mountain was a bastion of silence, compared to what it had been an instant earlier.

  Coyote’s attack was cinematic. Two quick steps up the wendigo’s bulk and he was on top of it, sword lifted in both hands. Power sparkled around him, dune yellow and sky blue connecting with the net, glimmering along the length of the sword, though I could See he hadn’t infused the blade with power the way I’d once done. He froze there, captured in time like the Iwo Jima photo, and I Saw sudden gut-churning reluctance splash through his aura.

  I was already roaring approval, a tremendous yawp of sound, and it hit him like a physical thing. He flinched and drove the blade downward.

  The wendigo vanished.

  Gary’s whoop of triumph echoed mine. Coyote stood on air for the briefest instant, levitating before he crashed to the snow where the wendigo had been. The rapier plunged deep, leaving him kneeling over it like a king of old, and Gary snatched me up and spun me in a circle, both of us shrieking like idiots.

  The others—the federal agents, the news crew—were less excited, their questions an endless round of what the hell? Coyote stood up slowly, expression grim as he pulled my sword from the snow and came back to us. He offered me the blade and I took it happily, turning it this way and that to examine it. There was no blood, nothing but a shimmer of melted water against silver. Coyote, unexpectedly softly, said, “Where did that come from?”

  “It’s the one I got skewered with. I kept it. Spoils of war.” I peeked toward Corvallis, trying to make sure the camera wasn’t on me, and whispered it home again. It disappeared as readily as the wendigo had, sending a little thrill of glee through me. Healing powers were handy and all, but a magic sword was six kinds of awesome. I wanted one. I had one, and I still wanted one. That’s how cool it was.

  Laurie elbowed me in the ribs and shoved her microphone in Coyote’s face. “Laurie Corvallis, Channel Two News. You are?”

  Coyote gave me a genuinely panicked glance, and I insinuated myself between them. Her camera guy’s light turned the world to a bright blur, but I figured I was too close to focus on, which was a small favor. “He’s not part of your story, Laurie.”

  “The hell he isn’t. He just killed that thing with a sword. A sword! Where’d he get a sword? Where’d it go? What was that thing? Where did it go? I could barely see it. Did you see how it bounced back during the attack? Like it hit an invisible wall—”

  I was going to hav
e to ask Gary what that whole thing had looked like with unSighted eyes. “Ms. Corvall—”

  “This is not a case open for discussion.” Sara got between me and Laurie, which more or less put her nose against the camera lens. She put her hand over it, too, blocking any hope of a picture, focused or not, and repeated, “I’m sorry, Ms. Corvallis, but this is a federal situation and I’m going to have to ask you to respect the on-going nature of the investigation. I’ll be happy to release what information I can, when I can.”

  I stepped backward gratefully, removing myself from sight and, I hoped, from Corvallis’s mind. All the major cases I’d been involved in so far had been cover-up-able with some kind of vaguely plausible story. I couldn’t think of a damned thing to explain away the apparent reversal of certain laws of physics, like an object in motion will remain in motion after everybody’d seen the object in question hit an invisible wall and bounce off. Nor could I explain where Coyote’d gotten the sword, or even more importantly, how he’d slain a monster which disappeared upon being skewered.

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to. While I was worrying about it, the wendigo rose up out of the snow and snatched Gary.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The old man roared louder than the wendigo did, though it sounded more like surprise than pain. I dived at them with no plan beyond save Gary, and passed right through both of them to face-plant in the snow beyond. I shoved up to my hands and knees, spitting ice, and twisted around to gape helplessly as an epic battle erupted.

  The wendigo was in no way damaged from the sword thrust. It had to have gone incorporeal, losing cohesion just as Coyote drove the blade down. Either that or having a four-foot-long pointy thing stuck through it simply didn’t have any effect at all, which was not a happy thought.