by C. E. Murphy
“You bastard. You weren’t even trying to…”
“It wanted us,” Coyote confirmed quietly.
“No,” Sara said. “It just wanted to see if it could get to us. It’s dangerous, Joanne.”
I twisted around from where the wendigo had dumped me in the snow and gave her my best no shit, Sherlock? look before getting to my feet. The wendigo had circled almost all the way back around to where it had begun, and now paced, breath steaming in the cold air as it watched me. I slid around the inner circle’s circumference and stepped toward the beast, lifting my free hand in invitation. “C’mon, you smelly son of a bitch. Let’s go.”
I didn’t actually expect it to come for me, but it did, showing off its unearthly prowess for leaping once more. I flung myself forward to meet it, blade lifted, and saw confusion flash through its beady little eyes. I was clearly prey, and prey wasn’t supposed to return attack. We collided midair, my sword sliding through its chest like there was nothing there, and I bellowed, “Coyote!”
A door opened, and the sky went red as the world went yellow.
———
We fell to earth in the Lower World, crashing to the too-close earth with more force than I expected. Dust rose up around us and we rolled apart, me dragging my sword with me. Its presence reassured me, as did the faint brush of wings that too-briefly cooled me beneath a nauseatingly hot sun. I was wearing my favored oily tank top and torn jeans rather than my winter gear, which brought me up short: I’d intended to enter the Lower World physically, actually leaving the Middle World behind for the duration of this fight. Moving into another plane shouldn’t, I thought, change my clothes.
I raised my eyes, confused, and was caught with a jolt of understanding. There was a woman before me, stringy hair falling in her face, gaunt cheekbones making her eyes too large. Her teeth were filed into narrow points, an affectation that gave me the heebie-jeebies. I could only think of filed teeth as being fingernails on chalkboards to the umpteenth degree, and the very idea sent horror rushing up and down my spine and tap-dancing on my skin. I wanted to throw up, which was not the ideal way to begin a spiritual smackdown.
She pulled her lips back from her nasty, nasty teeth and hissed at me, breath as hideous as it had been in her wendigo form. It actually distracted me from her teeth, which probably hadn’t been her intention, but I was grateful.
I was less grateful for the talons she had lashed to her hands. Two on each, between the fingers. She only had one each tied between her toes, but it was quite enough; she looked like a demented dinosaur, arms raised and feet kicked high as she lurched back and forth in front of me.
A demented, starved dinosaur. There was ropy muscle on her skinny arms and legs, but I could count the ribs above her starvation-bloated belly. This pathetic, mad-eyed woman was what lay at the wendigo’s core. Traveling into the Lower World physically had stripped us to more fundamental versions of ourselves, the winter trappings taken from me and the monster torn away from this woman. My heart twisted, suddenly sorry for her, and I stepped back rather than close in. “I can help you, if you’ll let me.”
She bobbed back and forth, apparently taking that into consideration. Then she lashed forward, much, much faster than someone in her condition should have been able to move, and struck out with her taloned hand. It was a flawless hit, executed so fast I could barely see it, and it should have gutted me.
It missed by a hair’s breadth. My gut sucked in to my spine as I curved backward, air whooshing from my lungs. She surged past me, carried by her own momentum, and whirled back with a shriek of angry surprise.
I was right there with her with regards to surprise. I knew myself. I’d spent most of the past year studying fencing, and my reflexes were better than they’d been. They were not, however, that good. Nobody was that good, in much the same way that the wendigo-woman couldn’t be as fast as she was. It was inhuman, lightning fast, snakelike reflexes; name the cliché, and I’d just fulfilled it.
She struck again, this time with both fists raised, bringing them down in an X meant to slice me apart. I was too busy gawking at myself to parry, but for the second time I folded in on myself, taking my body just out of reach.
This time I snapped my rapier out, not so much for the kill as to gain space and time. It whipped toward her so quickly it vibrated, almost unfurling as though it were liquid or leather, and it cracked when I reached full extension. Power surged through me into the blade, making it a weapon worth reckoning, and the wendigo skittered back, avoiding the shining silver.
Impulse drove me forward in a series of quick attacks. She countered, catching the sword on her talons every time, all of it so fast my mind lagged behind what our bodies were doing. By the time we broke apart again I was panting through a grin splitting my face.
Snakelike reflexes. The rattler had promised me a second gift to be discovered when I needed it. The tremendous healing ability belonged to the Middle World, a place of physical bodies. But a significant percentage of the things I encountered belonged to spirit worlds, where the laws were defined by what they believed they could do.
Defined by what I believed I could do, and by what my power animals were willing to grant me as gifts. I felt a hiss of snakeskin over my own, and grinned wildly. I would never have dreamed of moving so fast, but to a rattlesnake, it was second nature. First nature, even, and so it became for me. I loved it.
The wendigo, on the other hand, didn’t like it one little bit at all.
We came together again with a great crashing roar that was equal parts her shrieks and my laughter. I was sure I’d get over it soon enough—as soon as she landed a blow, for example—but in the first moments, the speed was glorious. I ducked under her claws and dragged my blade across her belly, dismayed when its silver edge drew no blood. Probably I wasn’t supposed to be eviscerating people, but she hadn’t seemed inclined to listen. Sometimes a sharp knife to the gut could get somebody’s attention. At least, it had always gotten mine.
She somersaulted over the rapier and rolled to her feet, striking backward toward my unprotected spine. I snapped forward again, just avoiding her talons, then jerked around and grabbed her arm, trying to get a better look at the claws.
They’d belonged to a bear, once upon a time, or some similar massive predator. A mountain lion, maybe, but I thought their curve was too shallow for that. Certainly a creature of at least that size, though: they were black and as long as her fingers. They were strong, too, stronger than any mortal remains should be. My sword should have sliced through them, not bounced off.
I wasn’t used to being Ms. Intuitive, but comprehension slid through me, a clear and bright rain. “Did they belong to your spirit guide?”
Rage turned her eyes red, ending our brief moment of arrest. She stuffed her free hand into my gut, the punch hard enough that I went cold with breathlessness, but we were both surprised when she pulled back unbloodied fingers. I looked down to see bloodless gashes closing in my torso, and clenched my fist around her wrist all the harder. She squealed and tried to pull away, but in a fit of morbid curiosity I slammed my forearm onto her black talons.
Cold sliced through my arm, making muscle cramp with its intensity. I drew back and the cold faded as the wounds sealed flawlessly. Nothing but an inexorable sense of rightness accompanied the healing, no rush of power, no silver-blue aura hurrying to fix what was wrong. I knew I could bleed in the Lower World; I’d done it before.
I’d done it before Raven and Rattler had come to protect me. Healing wasn’t Raven’s purview, but Rattler had already proven what his presence could offer. “Your spirit animals give you the weapons,” I said slowly. “Mine protect me from the wounds.” I let her go, and turned a considering look on my sword.
I’d struck her with it any number of times, in both her wendigo form in the Middle World, and her more-human shape here in the Lower. It wasn’t precisely a power animal, but it did, unquestionably, represent my power. It was part of a circle of ma
gics which protected me and offered me weaponry to fight with. It was a thing of spirit, whether it was an animal or not.
And it was useless to me in this fight. Her bear-spirit would drive her past whatever wounds I inflicted with it, the rapier’s slim blade too delicate to disturb such a great force. Maybe if I managed a heart-shot, but I wasn’t actually here to kill this woman. I was going to save her, if I could. I released the rapier from my thoughts, and it faded away. “C’mon, sister. It’s just you and me.”
She screamed and kneed me in the belly, which was more effective, overall, than her talons had been. I doubled over, coughing, and she brought her fisted hands down on the back of my neck. I hit the yellow earth teeth-first and came up spitting dust. Mandy had not put up this kind of fight, when I went after her soul. Then again, Mandy hadn’t turned into a slavering flesh-eating monster, either. I said, “Oh my God, is that Chuck Norris?” and pointed dramatically past the wendigo’s shoulder. To my amazement, she actually turned to look, and I knotted my hands together, swinging for her temple.
She dropped and I pounced on her, pinning her arms. She smelled worse than humanly possible, and flung herself up and down with a lot of enthusiasm for such a skinny thing. Still, I had the upper hand and shook her entire torso, not caring that her head bounced off the ground like a bowling ball. “I am trying to help you!”
Her eyes cleared for an instant. Triumph shot through me, sharp enough that I didn’t care about her stench. “You’re in there! Come on, let me—”
The dusty yellow earth turned white beneath her, and the broiling Lower World sun fled behind sudden thick clouds. Wind howled up around us, cutting through my flimsy summertime clothes and icing my skin. My nose hairs froze, and my eyebrows went stiff inside a single breath, the air colder than I’d ever felt. The wendigo’s human shape warped, twisting under my hands to become the monster once again, as loose-jointed and dangerous as it had been when I’d entered the cold universe searching for Mandy’s soul.
This time, though, its face was stretched in agony, and its voice was that of the storm’s. It had been the predator, then; now it was something else, not even prey. It needed protecting, rescuing from the cold threatening to tear us both apart. I hauled myself closer to its face to shout, “Let me take you out of here! Let me take you away from the—”
From the storm was how that was supposed to end, but the last few words were already shouted into silence. Even without the wind, the cold intensified to a killing temperature so extreme it seemed malicious. My exposed skin went numb, and the breath I drew through an open mouth hurt my lungs, like cold lead had been poured down my throat.
I let the wendigo go and shoved to my feet. The storm still raged around us at a distance as great as the circle I’d made in the Middle World, but it was quiet now, its screams pushed away.
Loneliness crashed over me, a feeling of isolation that expanded beyond my most melodramatic childhood moments. There was no way free from the circle of silent snow, and its featureless blur made my gaze unfocus. Disoriented, I reeled around, bewildered at how the silence and lack of wind could be worse than the battering storm itself. I wanted to escape, but my body was failing me, thick icy limbs refusing to respond, frozen thoughts running evermore sluggishly.
Someone stepped through the storm, joining me in the relentless white circle.
The wendigo gave a gleeful shriek and rose up out of the snow, racing for the distant sky.
I tried to follow, and failed.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I was too cold to be afraid. Too cold to be surprised, even, like the oncoming storm had taken away my capacity for emotion. There were things I should be able to do. Command my healing aspect to heat my blood, to shake off the malaise of ice. Imagine myself in warmer clothes and have them appear. I’d done them, or things like them, in the past, but my thoughts were sluggish and my magic frozen, just a solid lump inside me where it should have been reassuringly alive.
If this was what the wendigo had experienced, then I had a hideous bleak appreciation for the sheer willpower that had brought her back into the mortal world to feed. I was lost and too numb to care. My rattlesnake friend could do nothing for me here; he would freeze even more quickly than I did, cold blood turning to slush in his veins. Maybe that was how the wendigo had survived, if her claws had been a bear’s. Maybe she had the gift of hibernation, of holing up and storing energy until she’d conserved enough to break free. It wasn’t how hibernation worked in the Middle World, but this place was something else entirely.
Someone else was here. Someone else had crossed into the circle. It was something to focus on, a way to force myself to move. My own safety, apparently, wasn’t quite enough, but if someone else had wandered into the storm, they needed rescuing, and there was nobody but me to do the job.
“Here.” My voice cracked in the cold like I’d been without water for a week. “Here, can you hear me? Can you see me?” The wendigo had left a dent in the snow when she’d fled. I tripped on it, my legs too heavy to move properly, and I splayed facedown in the ice.
It almost felt warm. That was wrong, dangerously wrong; my dull mind recognized that much. It meant I’d lost too much of my own heat. It meant, in fact, that I was dying, and while I had plenty of experience at dying, it was usually accompanied by a certain amount of anger which sparked me through the unpleasant parts and back out the other side.
This was not a place for fire of any kind. I was willing to let mine fade, just to evade the terrible cold. I sighed into the snow, my breath not even warm enough to melt it, and my eyes drifted shut as sound finally broke through the silence: squeaking, coming ever closer. My curiosity sputtered, then died again, frozen out of existence.
Hot hands rolled me over like a giant rag doll, and Laurie Corvallis put her face close to mine to whisper, “Detective? Is that you?”
Ice cracked at the back of my mind, like amazement had the strength to punch through cold. Of all the people I might have dreamed up to accompany me into a frozen hell, Corvallis was about the bottom of the list. It suggested she was real, which was both good and bad. Good because she was substantial, something to focus on. Bad because I was quite certain her physical body had crossed to this plane, just like mine had, and it was a short dash to death from where we currently stood.
At least she was still dressed for the weather. Her cheeks were reddened by cold, but her eyes were bright, and her face was framed by the soft fur of her expensive coat. It was fitted, but not so snugly she couldn’t wear layers under it, and from the way her breath steamed warmly I figured she probably was. Her hands were mittened, which told me a lot about both the amount of heat she was putting out and how very cold I was: even through the mittens they’d been hot on my skin. She muttered, “Where’d your coat go?” and started to shrug hers off.
“No, don’t.” I was surprised I could talk, then relieved that I could be surprised. It was like her presence offered enough warmth and life to reawaken me. Given my peculiar talents, that seemed fairly probable. She stopped mid-action, her coat still on, and I shook my head against the snow. “It wouldn’t fit anyway. Just stay close to me, okay? I’ll get you out of here.”
“Where’s here? I was following you through the forest when it all went twisty and I got dumped in this field.”
It all went twisty sounded like something I would say. I started to say so, then shoved up on my elbows, suddenly actually awake. Herne had said some were closer, others were farther away and would take longer to guide to the power circle. It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d meant there were other people out there besides Gary and Sara. “You were following me? You were supposed to be asleep!”
“I woke up.” Three little words shouldn’t sound like portents of doom, but somehow they did. Well, there’d be time for a reckoning later, if we were lucky. I resisted the urge to hug her—for warmth, although I was kind of happy to see her, too—and instead blew into my hands, trying to get some feeling back.
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“Did you see the others? Coyote and—” She was shaking her head no, and I echoed the motion, then said, “Shit. I wonder if that means you just got dropped directly between.”
“Between what?”
“Between here and there. Between life and death. Between the cold.” I sounded like an idiot. I felt like an idiot. “Don’t worry about it. All right, look—”
“Don’t worry about it? Don’t worry about the fact that a minute ago I was in a snowy forest under a clear night and now I’m in a field someplace in the eye of a blizzard? Fine. I won’t worry about it. I’ll just figure out how to get out of here, since you’re no use at all.” She stood up, a small figure full of fire. Admiration, which was not an emotion I wanted to associate with Corvallis, bloomed in me. She wasn’t a woman who would get trapped by the cold universe. She’d build a flameth-rower out of snow and blast her way free.
I could hardly do less. I got up, ice crystals forming on my arms, and tried not to shiver too hard. “Can you hear a drum?”
Corvallis glared at me. “Of course I can’t hear a drum. All I can hear is you. I can’t even hear that.“ She jabbed a finger at the storm whirling outside the circle’s boundaries. Then wariness came over her face and she said, “Why? Can you hear a drum?” like it would be a very bad sign if I could.
I envisioned Police Detective Loses Mind! as the headline, and sighed. “No. I wish I could.” It would give me a direction to head in, or at least provide some kind of promise there was still a world outside this one. “Corvallis, come over here and put your arms around me, and whatever happens, don’t let go.”
She stayed right where she was. “Why?”
“Because I’m going to freeze to death if you don’t.” While true, that was less than half the reason I wanted her to hold on to me. It did, however, sound much more reasonable than the real explanation, and after a few seconds of looking for its flaws, Corvallis did as I asked.
