Demon Hunts

by C. E. Murphy

  Heat rushed through me so fast it hurt. I swallowed a whimper and did my best to not curl up around the smaller woman like she was a teddy bear. If I did, odds were we’d both find ourselves frozen lumps in no time. I doubted she could sustain enough warmth for one very long, much less two. Instead I mumbled, “Thanks,” and folded my arms around her shoulders. It wasn’t as warm as her hugging them against me, but I didn’t trust she’d keep hanging on if this worked the way I hoped.

  I said, “Raven, it’s me again,” over Laurie’s head. She jerked like I’d stuck a pin in her, and I tightened my arms. “Shh. It’s okay.”

  She hissed, “You’re talking to ravens,” which I had to agree sounded a little crazy, especially since there weren’t actually any ravens around. On the other hand, stopping to explain just seemed tedious, so I didn’t. I tilted my head back, concentrating on my heartbeat as a substitute for a drum.

  “Raven, I know you were there when I entered the Lower World. I felt you. Raven and Rattler both. But I lost you when I came here, and now I need you or I’ll be lost, too. So will this woman, and she’s only here because of me.”

  “That is not true. I’m following a story, a—” I felt Corvallis shift, turning her head to glance around the storm-bound circle before she muttered, “Fine. Being here, wherever here is, might be because of you. You owe me an explanation, Detective.”

  “I already gave you one.” That was not helping. I made a disgusted sound in my throat and bared my teeth at the sky. Raven was out there somewhere, and he was good at storms and at passing through the flimsy barrier between life and death. I only had to give him a way to find me, and he’d come for us. There had to be a path somewhere.

  I tipped my chin down and looked at the top of Corvallis’s head. She didn’t strike me as the type who would get stuck between, not by any natural means. In so far as natural means applied to my life or scenarios like this one, anyway. “Tell me exactly what happened when you came here.”

  “I already did,” she said in exactly the same snappy, impatient tone I’d used on her a moment earlier. I swear to God, karma was not supposed to be an instant payback thing. I wanted to beat my head against something, but the only thing available was Corvallis’s head, which I didn’t think would help the situation.

  “Laurie, please.” People were supposed to respond well to the sound of their own names. I hoped it worked.

  Corvallis gave me a look which suggested she knew exactly what I was doing. She probably did. News reporters probably used that kind of trick all the time. But she answered, which was all I asked for. “I told you. The forest twisted in on itself, and when it unfolded we were—”

  “We?”

  “Jeff and me. My cameraman.”

  “You brought your cam…” I reminded myself that this was not the time. “When it unfolded you were what?”

  “We were here.” She glanced around, and I could all but see the gears whirling in her little reporter mind. Then she closed her eyes, and when she spoke again she sounded like the woman on the six o’clock news every night, her voice crisp and concise. “We stepped out of the forest into a clearing about thirty yards across. There was a path of trodden snow right in front of us, and…four. Four people about halfway across the clearing. Jeff stepped across the path and I followed after. Then I was here, in the middle of this storm.”

  She opened her eyes again, looking up at me. “Back to you at the studio, Jo.”

  “You,” I said, “are one hell of a reporter. When Jeff stepped across the path, did he scuff it?”

  “It’s snow.” Corvallis managed to look pleased at the compliment and sound irritated all at the same time. “How can you scuff snow?” But she closed her eyes again, making me think she was rebuilding the image in her mind, then nodded. “His snowshoes left a line from the forest’s edge to the path. Is that important?”

  “Very.” My circle had been broken, allowing the wendigo to escape and pulling Corvallis in to the between-place in its stead. I wished I had the luxury of panic, but I was starting to get cold again. It crystallized my thoughts, hurrying them to the necessary conclusions. “Look for a…lollipop, Raven. A lollipop in the snow.” It sounded silly, but it was a better analogy than a steering wheel, and besides, it involved food. Raven liked food. “A lollipop with a really short handle and the biggest candy circle you’ve ever seen. Find that in the snow and you’ll find us, and then I can bring you a lollipop just like that of your own.” I sounded like I was cajoling a two-year-old.

  Corvallis, almost reverently, asked, “Have you completely lost your mind?”

  I was just about to admit I had when Raven plunged from the sky to our rescue.

  ———

  The storm was a thing, not a sentient being. Not something that could recognize whether we were vulnerable or strong. I knew that, and yet it came to life, attacking as Raven plummeted down. Wind broke through the circular barrier, slashing at us with knives of ice carried in its invisible hands. Snow whipped around, moving so fast it became a weapon, tiny beads of cold driving into my face and exposed arms. I tucked Laurie’s hooded head against my chest and turned eyes blinded with frozen tears toward the hidden sky.

  There was no Sight to call here, no way to look beyond the blizzard and follow Raven’s path. But I could feel him almost as if I flew with him, battered and driven by the storm. The cold didn’t affect him the same way it did me, his existence a more supernatural thing than mine. But the wind did, and to my delight there was a part of himself given over to shrieking, gurgling laughter at being tossed around by the storm. He had a job to do, yes, and he knew it, and was dedicated to it, but he was of a breed known to go sledding down snowy hills, and to deliberately fold their wings so the wind off high bluffs could toss them to and fro. He worked his way through the snow toward us, but he had fun while he was doing it.

  It was probably an extremely good life lesson. I put it on my list of things to think about after I was no longer a Jo-sicle and had saved the girl.

  Which, if it didn’t happen soon, wasn’t going to happen at all. I raised my hand, skin stinging with the snow’s impact, and bellowed, “Raven! Here! Hurry!“ Corvallis was still warm, but I wasn’t. Snow-shadows tore around us, making me think I was seeing our rescuer, but every time I grasped for him, he disappeared. My fingers were so cold I wasn’t sure if I was clutching at ghosts or if I simply couldn’t hold on to Raven long enough to be saved.

  All I wanted was to escape the cold. I would do anything to escape the cold. I knew there was a world outside it, and clung desperately to the idea that Raven was on his way, but I could no longer feel him. I wasn’t certain I felt anything; Corvallis’s fur-wrapped self against my chest could have been a figment of my imagination. I kept holding on, just in case she wasn’t, but no matter how hard I tried to hug her, I felt no pressure, no give, nothing but the endless snow. Dying seemed preferable to the cold. Even forcing myself out of this world as a wendigo seemed like a better fate—anything to be warm again. I’d had very little sympathy for the monster, but if it had begun as human and had faced the cold between, now I at least understood how it could reach for such extremes in order to avoid the cold.

  Raven came out of the storm and sank his claws around my wrist, talons pinching far more sharply than the wendigo’s had when I’d fought it. A sob caught in my throat, too cold to go farther. I was glad I could feel pain because it suggested I wasn’t frostbitten from the marrow out, but I feared my blood would freeze as it fell to the snow, droplets forming a staircase for the cold to climb into the sky so it could chase me back to the warmer world.

  My spirit guide cawed, a stern sound which broke through the storm as he struggled to lug the weight of two mortals upward. I tried to think myself lighter, think myself as weightless as a snowflake, and relief burst through the raven’s second cry. We soared upward, striving for the sky.

  Halfway out of the storm, Laurie slipped from my numb grasp.

  CHAPTER THIR
TY-ONE

  I hit the real world in a lunge, trying to catch a woman I didn’t even like. Snow sprayed up in front of me and I surged to my feet, hoping against hope that Corvallis had somehow fallen to the Middle World, and not back into the storm.

  She had. Laurie Corvallis’s body was a dozen yards away, collapsed in the snow at the larger circle’s inner edge. Aching relief tore away my ability to breathe. Healing a spirit torn asunder was far less terrifying than searching for her physical body in that god-awful storm. I ran toward her, and only too late began to hear and see the other things going on around me.

  Gary and Sara were out of the protective inner circle, yards ahead of me in the race for Corvallis. Sara, younger, lighter, lither, got there before Gary and vaulted the woman to land on her other side. Gary crashed to his knees, both of them driving themselves under Corvallis’s arms to get her up and haul her to safety. Their auras blazed, fear buried beneath the determination to rescue a fallen comrade. I had no time to stop, no time to love them or admire them, but my heart damned near ruptured my chest, full of awe at the nerve they displayed.

  Somewhere behind me a man was bellowing, “What the fuck? What the fuck!“ I wheeled around, working a sort of mental triage: Corvallis’s lost soul could wait a little while. Not long, but a while, and I could use that time to deal with the wendigo. It would do. It would have to do.

  Jeff, the camera guy, was the one shouting as he crabbed backward through the snow. I had to perversely admire his professionalism. The film would be all Blair Witch Project, but he had the camera at his shoulder and the green light flashed to indicate he was recording. He was still doing his job.

  And he probably wouldn’t die for it, because Coyote, spear clutched in both hands, stood between him and the wendigo. His hair was loose and flying, and he looked both terrified and like a warrior out of an imaginative history, eyes alight with gold power and the spear brandished at a terrible beast. The wendigo swiped at him and he dodged back, its blow glancing off the spear with a vibration that rattled the cold air.

  I shot one despairing glance at the inner circle I’d gone to so much trouble to build. Empty and useless. Well, at least my friends were the kind you wanted to have your back in a fight. That was something. And they kind of deserved me to step up and do my part, so I cut across the circle toward Coyote, running as hard as I could in snowshoes and layered clothes.

  I hit the wendigo in a flying tackle that knocked it well away from Coyote and the camera guy. “Go! Go! Get back inside!”

  It was excellent advice. Neither of them took it, so far as I could tell while I flew backward across the larger circle again myself. I hadn’t even seen the damned wendigo hit me, though I could feel the blow in my belly. Coyote charged forward, jabbing at the beast. It turned on him, snarling, and it struck me that probably two of us had a better chance against the thing than just one.

  Better still if the others would get inside the inner circle. I yelled, “Go, go, inside!” again, not that “inside” was particularly helpful to Jeff, who hadn’t been there when I’d built the inner circle and who no doubt saw nothing resembling indoors in the snowy landscape.

  At least Gary and Sara knew what I was talking about. They rushed toward the circle’s center with Laurie, and in a flawless moment of slapstick, bounced off it.

  Because it was meant to keep things out. I finally hit the ground again, skidded backward, and doubled forward on myself to pound frustrated fists against the earth. My life was a Laurel and Hardy skit. Which would be fine if it were just my life, but other people were involved, and depending on me. A smart shaman probably would’ve tagged the good guys with some kind of “Let me in, let me in by the hairs of my chinny-chin-chin” thing so they could come and go from the safety of the inner circle, but I flat-out hadn’t thought of it. Someday. Someday I would be good at this.

  Assuming I managed to kick a wendigo’s ass and get everybody to safety right now, anyway. I got over my three-second wallow and charged forward, confident, at least, that Gary and Sara could keep dragging Corvallis around the outer perimeter of the smaller circle, which would make it harder for the wendigo to get to her if it decided it needed a snack.

  The wendigo was bleeding when I caught up to it again. I thought that was a great sign. Nothing I’d used on it had left a mark. Coyote, though, genuinely looked ill, all the certainty pouring away from his aura. A knot of worry bound up my lungs, and I breathed, “Do no harm.”

  Coyote went still, like he’d heard me, then turned toward me with hope and horror written in his golden eyes. I said, “It’s okay,” out loud, and did what I’d refused to do before: put my hand out for Herne’s spear.

  He winged it at me, throwing it lengthwise, so it spun a long horizontal arc across the snow. I caught it with a slap against my palm, audible even though I wore mittens, and Coyote sagged with relief. His aura strengthened instantly, like the weapon itself had drawn it down. I wanted to hug him.

  “Go see if you can help Corvallis.” I was oddly serene. The weapon fit in my hand like it was supposed to be there, and I already knew that fighting didn’t do to me what it seemed to do to Coyote.

  I hadn’t known. I really hadn’t known. Herne gave the spear to Coyote, not me, and when a god did something like that, I was inclined to follow his lead. And maybe he’d meant it as a test for Coyote, to see if my mentor had the warrior spirit in him. Or maybe he’d really just given him the spear to hold until it was time for me to use it. Those two things, in my opinion, weren’t incompatible. But it was clear that my friend and mentor was never going to take up the metaphorical sword. We were not alike, he and I. I was a little sad about that, but in the end, it was okay. We weren’t meant to walk the same path, and I could live with that.

  Then the moment’s glorious calm was gone. Coyote spun and ran for the inner circle. The wendigo, howling, tore after him, and I snapped myself forward, interceding faster than I should have been able to. I whispered thanks to my rattlesnake, and collided with the wendigo in a rush of fur and fury.

  For the first time, we did damage to one another. I heard ribs crack and thought they were its, not mine, and caught a blow across my cheek that sent me spinning. When I whirled back, the wendigo was running. Not toward the broken outer circle, but toward the smaller one, where my friends sheltered on its far side. Coyote was there, but only just: he was beginning to kneel at Laurie’s side while Gary and Sara got to their feet, the latter with her gun in hand. It wouldn’t do anything to the wendigo, but it was the act of defiance that mattered.

  I surged after it, fast, but not fast enough. I couldn’t match its leaps, not even with my snake-offered speed. The damned wendigo slithered around the inner column, claws scraping and digging against the magic. Sara lifted her weapon and fired repeatedly, and to my surprise the wendigo shuddered with each impact, blood spattering across the snow. It collapsed, crashing down the circle toward Coyote, who flung his hands up in a desperate attempt to protect his charge.

  When it came to rest, it became Laurie Corvallis.

  ———

  The monster simply disappeared, misshapen form falling into nothing, and Corvallis arched up out of the snow screaming in its wake. Coyote surged back in shock, and for a microsecond I just stood there agape and childishly infuriated. It wasn’t fair. It was just not fair that this goddamned monster could shuffle off its mortal coil faster than a thought; that its very body was so much a psychic construct that it could be discarded the moment something better came along. No wonder I couldn’t hold the damned thing. Even gods were more constrained by physical form than the wendigo was.

  I hated it. I hated it a lot, even knowing there was a woman somewhere inside there who needed rescuing. I hated that it was so slippery and that I wasn’t fast enough; I hated its need to kill to survive; I hated its cold ruthless will that let it cling to a world it should have already passed beyond.

  And I hated that Laurie Corvallis, whom I didn’t like very much, was goi
ng to die if I didn’t get my act together. Coyote shook off shock and slammed forward again, pinning her down as I skidded across the snow to join them.

  “I got her out.” My voice was so low and frustrated it sounded like it came from someone else. “I almost had her out of the storm, out of the cold between. I just couldn’t hold on, Coyote. I was so cold, and she fell. She fell, and…”

  Corvallis opened her eyes and dropped her jaw to hiss at me from the back of her throat. I toppled over with an undignified squeak, and Coyote, holding her shoulders down, gave me a look of pure disgust. Some great healer I was, when a little demon possession freaked me out, but Corvallis’s blue eyes were bloodshot red, even the pupils. Her teeth, at least, hadn’t undergone a transformation, and were nice and white and even rather than being filed points.

  “How far did she fall? How far did she fall, Jo?“

  “I don’t know! Far enough to leave her body empty!” I clapped one hand on Corvallis’s head and put the other, awkwardly, at her hip. Awkward because I still had the spear and didn’t want to let it go, not because I had some kind of personal space issue going on. “Raven, guide me. If I have to go back into that storm to find her, I will, but that place scares the crap out of me. I need your help. I promise lollipops.”

  I felt the reassuring non-weight of my spirit guide on my shoulder, his unearthly talons squeezing tight muscle. I whispered, “Don’t let us freeze to death, Yote,” and for what seemed like the hundredth time, closed my eyes to risk the storm.

  Corvallis slapped her hand up, fingers clawed inside their mitten, and hauled me back out.

  ———

  The world shifted, all signs of winter melting away. I was in a concrete jungle: skyscrapers wound with ivy reached for the stars, streams ran over the dashed lines of asphalt streets, predators prowled grassy sidewalks and lurked in alleyways while herd animals raced ahead of them, in a rush to eat, to work, to play. I thought I made a rather magnificent addition to the surroundings, in my torn jeans and oily tank-top and with a tall wooden spear in my hand. I fit right in as one of the predators. Men and women in business suits avoided me, while young punks sized me up for potential battle. I shook my spear and shooed them away so I could look around in peace.