Demon Hunts wp-5

by C. E. Murphy

  For some reason they all three shook their heads rapidly. I thought they weren’t any fun at all. Still pissed off, I let the magic go. Morrison, whose posture had been extremely erect while I’d held him in place, sagged a little, then scowled at Coyote. “Couldn’t you stop her?”

  “Couldn’t you?”

  I’d become the common enemy. It wasn’t exactly what I’d been going for, but it was better than the two of them at each other’s throats. Billy just gaped at me like I’d sprouted another arm, or a second head. Apparently ostentatious displays of power were not what he’d come to expect from his partner in crime. Anti-crime. Whatever.

  I turned to Morrison and said, “Sorry,” with about as much emotional integrity as he could expect after behaving like a hormone-ridden teenager. “Boss, this hunting party is the best shot we’ve got at stopping this thing. I’m your best shot at it. We know I’m going anyway, so may I please have permission?”

  Morrison suddenly looked older than his thirty-eight years. I probably would, too, if I had me to deal with on a regular basis. “How often are we going to do this, Walker? How many times are you going to walk into my office and tell me how it is, even if it’s against every rule and regulation we stand by?”

  “I don’t know.” I wasn’t angry anymore. I wasn’t bubbling over with goofy happies, either. I was almost sad, really, like I was losing something I barely recognized. “Until neither of us can take it anymore, I guess.”

  The captain looked between me and Coyote, and when he looked back at me again I wasn’t sure we were still talking about the same thing, even though nothing more had been said to change the slant of what I’d just offered.

  More, and worse, something subtle happened in Coyote’s face, as if he’d heard and understood the change in subtext, too. My heart spasmed and I glanced away from both of them.

  That might have been okay, except there was somebody else in the room, and he’d followed the unspoken conversation just as clearly as the rest of us had. Billy met my gaze with the deepest, most tempered expression of compassion I’d ever seen, and the small sadness inside me burgeoned into something so big I had a hard time swallowing around it.

  Billy was the one who broke the silence, which hadn’t dragged out for long, but a lot had been said inside it, and none of it had been easy to hear. “You want me along on this, Joanne?”

  His timing was perfect. Half a second earlier I wouldn’t have trusted my voice. Half a second later I’d have fallen over into a sniffle that would’ve belied my tough-girl antics. “I think it’ll be just me and Cyrano on this one. Thanks, though.” I looked in Morrison’s general direction without actually going so far as to meet his eyes. “We’ll rent a car, or something. Keep it off the department books entirely.”

  “Something happen to Petite?”

  I hadn’t fully realized Morrison knew my car’s name. I mean, yes, her license plate said PETITE in big block letters, but given he felt my relationship with her was pathological, I wouldn’t have expected to hear him call her by name. A pinprick hole released some of the ache inside me, and I crooked a smile. “She’s in the garage. The insurance paid up after that Doherty guy came by in October, so I’ve got enough money to switch out her transmission to a manual. It’s my winter project.”

  There was no way on earth Morrison cared about any of that. I’d never met an American male with less interest in cars than my boss. But he nodded like it meant something to him, then nodded a second time, this time at the door. Not at Coyote. At the door. And said, “Take care of yourself, Walker.”

  “Yes, sir.” I left his office with Coyote on my trail, confusingly aware that last time I’d walked away from Morrison with another man, he’d told the guy to take care of me. I had the uncomfortable sensation that last time, he’d been willing to relinquish-ownership, for lack of a better word, though it wasn’t a good one-because he hadn’t seen Thor as a threat. This time I was responsible for myself, which suggested, awkwardly, that Morrison was still in the game.

  My life had been a lot easier when I was emotionally stunted.

  Coyote waited until we got all the way out to the parking lot before he said, “So. That’s how it is with Morrison, huh?” like that should mean something to me.

  Aggravatingly, it did. “It isn’t any-how with Morrison. He’s my boss.” Butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.

  “You called me Cyrano, back there.”

  My life had been a lot easier when I was emotionally stunted. I knotted my hands into balls and glared at the ground. “Okay, yes, fine. That’s how it is with Morrison. Jesus Christ.”

  “What about last night, then?”

  I did not want to do this. God, how I did not want to do this. I walked a dozen steps away, shoved a hand through my hair, and came back a few feet. Coyote, slim and lean and beautiful, just stood there watching me. His brown eyes had a gold tint to them: he was watching my aura, reading more from it than my body language would tell him. I wondered if it showed my heart as an aching, tender, beat-up point inside me, bleeding red through my usual colors.

  “Why does there have to be some kind of big explanation for last night? I’ve had a crush on you since I was about thirteen. You came back from the dead and, I don’t know, Coyote, I kind of like the idea of being stupid in love with you. You had me at hello. Why can’t that be enough? Morrison’s my boss. Nothing’s going to happen there as long as he is, and I’m not planning to quit my job. So why does it have to matter?”

  “Maybe because you just chose him over me.” Coyote’s voice was remote. I utterly refused to look at him with the Sight and find out how much or little of that was an act. I didn’t want to see him hurting, too. I was confused enough already.

  Except on one thing: “I didn’t choose anybody, Cyrano. But you should have known better.”

  Coyote snapped his gaze up to mine, astonishment mixing with injury. “Me? I should’ve known better? Why me? Why not him?”

  “Because you’re on his territory. For that reason alone you shouldn’t have walked into his office and tried laying down the law, and you know it. That wasn’t about us needing to get going. It was about who gets to tell Joanne what to do, and honestly, Coyote, in the scheme of things, he does. If that’s choosing him, then yeah, I choose him, because he’s my boss. We have our issues, but we get it figured out, and we would’ve gotten this one figured out. So if nothing else, you should’ve respected being on somebody else’s playing field. Instead you had to push it.” And spoil everything, I didn’t say out loud.

  We stood there a long time. A wind came up, making my cheeks cold but failing to get under my jacket and wool sweater. Finally Coyote mumbled, “I’m sorry,” and looked up with credible puppy-dog eyes.

  It was more or less the last thing in the world I expected him to say, and the excessively mournful gaze was enough to break the tide of my anger. In fact, it was nearly enough to make me giggle, which I resented enough that it almost made me angry again. I said, “Stop that,” with enough asperity that he did. “People who actually possess puppy-dog eyes in another shape aren’t allowed to use them to get themselves out of trouble. I say so. It’s the rules.”

  “Okay.” Despite the promise inherent in the word he gave me another puppy-dog look, though this one more said “Am I forgiven?” than “I’m sorry.”

  I glowered at somebody’s Jeep, trying hard not to fall for manipulative men with big brown eyes, and gave up with a snorted laugh. “Okay. You’re forgiven. But if you do something that stupid again, Coyote, I swear to God…”

  “I won’t.” He sidled up to put his arm around my waist and his nose on my shoulder. I fought off another giggle, and he repeated, “I won’t. You’re right. I was being a dick, and I’m sorry. You’ve changed a lot, Jo.”

  I eyed him, which was difficult given his proximity. “You mean, six months ago if you’d shown up and tried going to the mat with Morrison over what my responsibilities were, I’d have been delighted to let you pla
y hero so I didn’t have to face up to any of those decisions or responsibilities myself?”

  He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t have said it like that, but yeah.”

  I turned in to him, catching his coat in my hands and bumping my nose against his. “You’re right. I’ve changed. I’m a superhero now.” I stole a kiss, then smiled against his mouth. “So let’s go save the world.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  That kind of line needed a supersonic jet to swoop down and pick us up, just for the drama of it, but I was obliged, much more prosaically, to call Gary and wait fifteen minutes for him to pick us up. We spent most of the time taking turns being the one to lean our rear ends against the cold hoods of other people’s cars, and being the one to warm up our hineys by getting to lean on each other. I was sure it was an affront to his masculine dignity, but we fit together better when Coyote leaned on me, since I had a two-inch height. Furthermore, my arms were slightly longer than his, so I could get a better grip on him than he could on me. I’d just stuck my cold nose in the corner of his neck and was holding him so he couldn’t squirm away when Gary pulled up. His disgruntled, “Did I miss somethin’?” rose over the sound of his Chevy’s engine, and I let Coyote go with a grin.

  Gary gave us the fish eye through the rolled-down driver’s side window. “Who’s this, doll?”

  If I’d been hanging on to any resentment, it dissipated. Gary was like my own personal cheer-o-meter. I jolted forward and whispered, “This is Coyote,” like it was a tremendous secret. “He’s not dead. He got better.”

  Gary gawked at me, then got out of the cab looking like he couldn’t decide what to ask first. I interrupted with, “Coyote, this is Gary. My best friend. The best thing that’s ever happened to me. I wouldn’t have made it through the last year without him.”

  Coyote, looking unexpectedly nervous, stepped forward to shake Gary’s hand. Gary seized his shoulders, looked him up and down, then hauled him into a rib-popping hug instead. “Heard a lot about you, son. Glad to see you alive. How the hell’d that happen?”

  Coyote said, “Joanne set me on the path home during a spirit walk,” like it was a perfectly rational thing to say, and I said, “‘Son’? I get ‘doll’ and ‘dame,’ and he gets ‘son’?”, which was a perfectly rational thing to say.

  “Ain’t my fault. Language’s got a lot more oddball words for women than men.” Gary set Coyote back, hands on his shoulders again, and examined him for a second time. “Knew she was getting better at that spirit quest stuff. What’re you two kids up to?”

  “We need to go-” That was both of us. I said, “To Olympic National Park,” and Coyote said, “Home,” and we looked at each other while Gary ping-ponged between us. “I fought with it at the park,” I said after a few seconds. “It’s our best lead.”

  “If it came into the city to study you, it’s smart enough to not return to the place you hunted it, Jo. We need to create a sacred space and search for it in the Lower World. That should help us pinpoint its location in this world.”

  “Don’t you think I’ve been trying that?” I snapped off a description of my power circle adventure, and the Space Needle-based search of Seattle. “The power circle was how I rescued you, but I didn’t get any kind of bead on where the thing was.”

  “Yes, but I’m here now,” Coyote said with an air of authority all the more aggravating for being apropos.

  I’d become aware of Gary drawing breath to speak every time one of us finished a sentence, and that we’d kept running over whatever it was he had to say. I finally looked at him, eyebrows arched, and he said, “You wanna go to Rainier National Park.”

  A flicker of polite patience crossed Coyote’s face. “How do you know that?”

  One of the many things I loved about Gary was his inability to bear fools. He gave Coyote a look that reminded me sharply of the throw-down in Morrison’s office, but instead of turning it into a thing, he just said, “Because that’s where the news just reported a new cannibal murder, kid.”

  Downgraded from son to kid in less than two minutes. Maybe it was some kind of throw down after all. Either way, Gary said, “I’m drivin’,” and thirty seconds later we were on the road to Mount Rainier.

  Thursday, December 22, 10:16 A.M.

  It turned out we were actually on the way to my apartment. It took the drive over, plus time for Coyote and me to pack up some clothes and my drum, minus several minutes of Gary cooing over the Chief and heating toaster pastries while trying to find something in my apartment that would serve as on-the-road lunch, just to explain Coyote’s return. Gary kept saying, “I’ll be damned,” in a tone that suggested being damned was about the niftiest thing possible. By the time we got back out the door, he and Coyote were old friends, and some of the explosive joy I’d felt earlier had returned. More quietly, maybe, but it still felt awfully good.

  For a girl who’d grown up on the road and who loved driving as much as I did, I didn’t get out into the countryside nearly enough. I’d driven out to western Washington to test the promise of some of its long straight stretches at high speeds, but I’d never headed south.

  The road to Rainier National Park wasn’t a speed demon’s dream, but even in the dead of winter it was beautiful. Bare-armed trees reached over the black strip of road cutting through white countryside, every curve and hill promising more of the ever-changing same. Gary and Coyote rattled on about a variety of things, starting with Coyote’s resurrection and touching on Gary’s misspent youth as a saxophone player: things I knew about, by and large, which let me just slip into the thoughtless rhythm of the road.

  It reminded me of being a kid, traveling all over America with my dad. He’d had an old boat of a Cadillac that never broke down, but we’d taken the engine apart eight or ten times I could remember, just so I could learn how to do it.

  Those had been the good times. We’d stopped at junkyards all over the country, Dad chatting up the owners-he’d been good-looking, tall and rangy with hair almost as long as Coyote’s-and getting them to let me, or teach me to, work on the old beasts they had lying around. I’d gotten into the bellies of cars most people my age didn’t know existed. I’d loved it.

  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.