Demon Hunts wp-5

by C. E. Murphy

  She got to her feet, an adult again, though still with the vaguely feline air. “A demon. Like in The Omen?”

  “No, that was the Anti-Christ, wasn’t it? More like…” My limited knowledge of pop culture failed me entirely. “Look, don’t worry what it’s like. That storm we were in was…Hell.” It wasn’t. Or at least I didn’t think it was. But it was the closest shorthand I had.

  Unfortunately, it also had a connotation I hadn’t quite thought through. Corvallis’s voice shot up: “You mean I’m dead?”

  “No! Not yet.” That was probably less than reassuring. “But you will be if we don’t go deal with the demon, so if you don’t mind, I think we should get out of here and go find it.”

  She folded her arms, fingers tapping rapidly against her biceps. “And just how do you propose we do that, Detective?”

  Bully for me. I’d gotten the Corvallis I knew and loved back. Still, it was a damned sight better than a child. “If I were the wendigo I’d be working from the part of your mind that contained the images and thoughts and places you wanted least to remember. I’d figure you’d avoid those places, nevermind stride in and pick a fight.”

  “I don’t back down from fights, Detective.” Corvallis was hard as steel now, while the backdrop shifted to show images of her scrappy childhood self standing up to a school-yard fight even while her heart pounded with terror. She got a tooth knocked out that day, but by God she didn’t back down.

  I had the sudden appalling idea that I could like this woman. Disconcerted by the idea, I extended a hand and raised my eyebrows in mild challenge. “Great. Let’s go find one, then.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  She took my hand, and the building disappeared around us, though the ground stayed solid beneath our feet as it changed from carpet to asphalt. A parking lot somewhere, half the lights out, only a couple of cars in it, the sounds of glass breaking and rowdy men in the near distance. There was no proper life here, not the way there was in the other gardens I’d visited, but it was certainly a familiar scene. It put me instantly on edge, hairs on my neck standing up and an apprehensive chill rushing over my skin.

  Despite holding a tall spear in one hand, I released the other from Corvallis’s grasp and dug into my pocket for my keys. I’d want them out, in this situation. I’d want them because I’d want to get into Petite as quickly as I could, and because, grasped in the palm and stuck jagged-side-out between the fingers, they made a decent weapon. I was nearly six feet tall and disproportionately strong from working on cars all my life, and even so, alone in a parking lot at night, I was scared.

  No. I was wary, in this situation. I’d never been scared. The fear was Laurie, who had neither my height nor my strength, and who was much, much prettier than I was. Her anxiety pervaded the scene, though beneath it there was anger, too. Anger that she was afraid, anger that there was reason to be, and anger, I suspected, at knowing what happened next. Anger at being unable to stop it. I glanced at her, and she said, tightly, “This is where I don’t like to go.” Her neck was stiff with strain, like she was resolutely refusing to look over her shoulder.

  I looked.

  What I saw was the wendigo, talons between her fingers like I held my keys. What I saw was the beast’s loping form, her raging eyes, her starving soul now determined to hold on to the body it had taken. The unwilling dead were so greedy for life it hurt me, like a blade in the heart. The handful of people I’d met who had died well, or who had understood their fate, had slipped away comfortably enough, but those who had gone down fighting or in fear would do anything to reclaim what they’d lost. It was a terrible thing, that we lived in a world that made such unhappy souls. I took a step forward, half intending to intercept the miserable creature, but Laurie spun around, fear and frustration making her aura sour.

  “David, leave me alone! How many times do I have to say it’s over? You can’t follow me like this. It freaks me out!”

  I never heard what David said in return. The wendigo rushed her, so abrupt even Corvallis was surprised, which suggested that this wasn’t in keeping with her memories of what had happened with David. She shrieked, an aborted little sound, and her head cracked against the pavement with a noise like a plastic bowl landing cup-side-down.

  For the second time in a matter of minutes, the wendigo sank into Corvallis’s body, leaving nothing of itself behind.

  I fell back, horrified. In the Middle World, the possession had been bad, but it had suggested Laurie’s soul was out for lunch, leaving the body empty to be occupied. Here, in Corvallis’s garden, there was nothing but her soul to replace. The landscape started to shift, mountains and cedar trees ripping up from beneath the pavement. I staggered, using the spear for balance, and my eyes were drawn to it as an unpleasant reality hit.

  I was actually going to have to kill her.

  She folded her arms up to put her hands palm-down on either side of her head, and did a full body surge that drove her to her feet. I’d only ever seen anybody do that in movies, and thought it looked just as inefficient in real life as on film. Also, it meant she came at me ribs-first, body arched forward to get the momentum she needed to gain her feet.

  I kicked her in the sternum.

  I didn’t know why nobody ever did that in movies. Corvallis slammed right back to the ground, hitting so hard I went breathless. But whether it was the wendigo in control or simply that it was Corvallis’s garden, she didn’t stay down. I’d never seen a more classic stop, drop and roll, in fact, overlooking the fact that the stop and drop had been initiated by a boot to the ribs rather than being on fire. Look, it had been a good analogy. It didn’t need close examination.

  She rolled to her feet a few yards away, which was a much better way of getting up. I went after her, bellowing, “Damn it, Corvallis, I don’t want to kill you, but I will if I have to!” I sounded like a parent threatening a child for its own good. I had yet to meet a kid who believed that. Either way, I brandished the spear, hoping it would cow her.

  She grabbed it just beyond the head and yanked it toward her to capture the haft between her arm and ribs. I very nearly let go from surprise, then grunted and set my weight. I had at least forty pounds on her, and it should have been easy to knock her off her feet using the spear as leverage.

  The bitch didn’t so much as tilt. I did a credible wendigo-sounding growl and shoved forward, managing to slide the spear and get myself a couple feet closer to her. I had no plan after that, but the Corvallis-wendigo did: she bared fingers whose nails had gone very claw-y, and slashed at my face. I dodged back, then kicked her in the ribs again, booted foot connecting solidly. She wheezed and her grip on the spear loosened. I yanked it away and backed up, ready for her when she pounced.

  I had to give the wendigo this much: it wasn’t an original fighter. Even with me armed with a spear, its inclination was to come from on high and bear down its victim by weight. That was more effective when it was three hundred pounds, not a hundred and fifteen. I took a chance and swung the spear aside so it wouldn’t impale her, and straight-armed her in the xyphoid process instead.

  Honestly, I couldn’t have done better if I were a professional wrestler. The heel of my hand caught her just above the gut and I let go the spear to grab her with my other hand and body-slam her to the earth. It would’ve been hugely more effective if we were still in the parking lot Corvallis had imagined up instead of in the wendigo’s preferred forest, but even so, it wasn’t half-bad. The blood rage faded from Corvallis’s eyes, and for a bewildered instant she blinked at me through a spray of snow.

  “Corvallis! Is that you?” Fighting the wendigo was one thing, but I had Laurie’s weight pinned, and confidence, if necessary, in my own ability as a brawler over her barracuda-girl attitude.

  I hadn’t counted on the possibility she knew how to fight.

  She brought her feet up, caught me in the belly, and threw me over her head. I flew spectacularly until freshly-grown trees stopped me, and I slithered down
them under a rain of snow and pine needles.

  Corvallis was on her feet again by the time I looked up, pretty features all snarly. “I told you, David. It’s over. Don’t make me hurt you.”

  Unwelcome comprehension unfolded a clear path before me. I had no idea at all what had happened with Corvallis and this David person, but everything about the scene had suggested something bad. That left me between a rock and a hard place, shamanically speaking, because if I kicked her ass now, whatever trauma she had to face might never get resolved. On the other hand, if it turned out she’d actually kicked his ass then, while reliving the victory would no doubt be good for her, it would be considerably less good for me.

  And the truth was, there wasn’t really much of a choice. Power fluttered behind my breastbone, eager to help. If Laurie herself had an incident in her past she needed to deal with, I pretty much literally couldn’t refuse. I just hoped like hell that it was Corvallis, and not the wendigo, in charge of this particular boxing round.

  That was all the time I had to think. She left the spear behind, for which I was grateful, but she delivered a roundhouse kick to my head when I pushed up from the trees. I was considerably less grateful for that, as I spun around to eat snow a second time.

  Corvallis jumped on my spine, a hand fisted in my hair. I could have shoved her off, but I thought-hoped-she wasn’t going to kill me. Or David, whichever of us she saw. She leaned down and put her mouth by my ear. “I’m not the same girl I was back then, David. I’m tougher now. I learned how to protect myself. If you want to hit somebody, you don’t need to look for somebody your own size anymore. I’m willing to fight.” Then she lifted my head by the hair and slammed my face forward into the snow. I hit a tree root and saw stars, but her weight came off my back and when I rolled over, dizzily, it was to see her standing above me in triumph.

  Her expression fell into confusion, though, as I worked my way toward sitting up. “Detective? What are you-” She looked around, clearly only seeing her surroundings for the first time. “Where are-?”

  “It’s complicated. Laurie, you’re possessed, you’ve got a-”

  The wendigo came back, and any chance to explain disappeared.

  On the plus side, I was almost certain I’d seen a pattern. Momentary confusion or a hard knock lent a chance for one or the other personality to take control. In theory if I could whack Corvallis alongside the head, she’d come back and I might have time to try to talk her out of killing me.

  In practice, I was afraid that, having put David’s head through the allegorical concrete, Corvallis herself might have accomplished what she needed to, and that her personality might be okay with stepping back for a breather and adjusting to a new world order. Unfortunately, that very likely meant she’d never wake up again. There weren’t enough swear words in the universe to satisfy my frustration.

  We met in a head-on collision, my major intent being to get past the monster and pick up the spear again. It seemed safer to hit the thing from a distance, if I could, and there were no rules I knew about that said I couldn’t use a spear like a really long baseball bat. With any luck I could grand-slam Corvallis’s skull and knock her back into control. If not, there was always the added bonus of having hit her with a metaphorical baseball bat. That was probably a bad attitude to take, but it had been a very long day.

  She clobbered me, back to the wendigo’s slash-and-burn fighting style. Unlike in the Lower World, these hits connected, leaving my ears ringing and my vision blurry. On the other hand, she didn’t have actual talons with which to gut me, so overall I called it a wash and hit her temple with my elbow. Her crimson-eyed focus went woozy and I scrambled over her, lunging for the spear.

  She caught my ankle and hauled me back, and for a horrified minute I had to kick her off to keep her from gnawing my ankle. Definitely the wendigo in control. Regardless of how often I called Corvallis a shark, I didn’t think she actually went in for biting body parts off. I lost a shoe to her ravening hunger, but that was a lot better than losing my foot.

  A little too late, she realized what I was doing. Claws pierced my calves as she tried crawling up my body, but by then I had the spear in hand. I hit her over the head and she reeled back, gaze gone fuzzy again. For the briefest moment, Corvallis looked out at me again, and whispered, “Do what it takes to get the story.”

  There was something profoundly perverse about that attitude when by all reasonable reckoning she was the story. Still, as a scream tore her throat and her eyes flashed from red to blue and back again, I couldn’t help thinking that she would. She’d do what it took to get the story, even if the story was her and it ended very badly. It might even win her a posthumous Pulitzer or something, and I had the impression Laurie Corvallis would be satisfied with that.

  I wasn’t, but I was also running out of options. I could spend most of forever in here trying to win back a reporter I didn’t much like, or I could roll the dice and see if it came up snake eyes.

  Corvallis was on the ground, fighting herself. I surged to my feet, the spear clutched in both hands, and stood over her. “Sorry, Corvallis. I wish it had ended differently.”

  I drove the spear down with every ounce of force at my disposal.

  I awakened to the real world, where I stood over Corvallis with the spear plunged through her fur coat and layers. I could feel her heartbeat through the spear, living wood carrying it to me: that’s how close she was to death.

  She opened her eyes, all the wendigo crimson flooding back to blue. We stayed where we were for a brief eternity, Corvallis breathing shallowly because a deep inhalation would puncture her. Then she caved her chest in, shoulders rising a little as she shrank back from the spear. “It’s me.”

  I nodded once and pulled the spear away, setting it butt-down in the snow. Coyote snatched it as I knelt over Corvallis, though I had no idea what he thought he would do with it. Use it as a bludgeoning weapon, from the way he held it. I would be the target, and I had to agree that from his perspective that might seem wise. I had, after all, just very nearly skewered one of the nominal good guys.

  I shucked my mittens to open Corvallis’s fur coat with one hand, then to push aside the layers beneath it. A tiny hole just above her heart drooled blood over the top of her breast, discoloring her bra. She said nothing, just kept her gaze fixed on mine as I bared her skin. It was by far the most peculiar, intimate moment I’d ever had with a woman, and she refused to blink or look away to lessen its intensity. Under the circumstances, if she wouldn’t, I didn’t feel like I could.

  Not until I put my hand over the wound did she move, catching my wrist. “Will it leave a scar?”

  “No.”

  “Then don’t.”

  The little puncture wound hurt. Hurt her, hurt me; I could feel it wanting to be whole again. It would be easy to ignore her wishes with a patch-up job that small. “You sure?”

  “Very.”

  I rolled back on my heels and withdrew my hand, blood on my palm. “Get it looked at, then.”

  “I will. As soon as you’re done here.”

  “Yeah.” I stood up again, deliberately not wiping my palm clean as I extended my hand for the spear. “I’m going to need it to finish this.”

  Coyote’s hands tightened around the weapon’s haft. “We need to talk, Jo.”

  “No.” My heart hurt with all kinds of regrets for the different paths we had to follow. “No, Yote, we don’t. I’m sorry. I just need the spear and my drum, and another path to the Lower World, if you’ll open one.”

  “What if I won’t?”

  I sighed. “Then I’ll go my own way, and this will be drawn out that much longer.”

  His silence said a great deal and was punctuated by words that contained more than just their surface meaning: “God damn it, Joanne…”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Please?”

  He gestured sharply behind me, and I turned to see a yellow sand road break through the snow. Gary, wordlessly, handed me my drum, an
d I tucked it safely beneath my arm. “Thank you.”

  There was nothing else to say. I nodded, then left my friends behind once again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The truth was, I’d had enough. I’d fought gods, ghosts, demons and spirits in the past, and none of them had the staying power of the wendigo. I’d lost count of how many times we’d faced off, and pretty much every time, I’d come out with my ass in a sling. I was tired of it. I was flat-out tired, although to the best of my ability to remember, I’d only been up since that morning. Honestly, though, after being hauled in, out, around and over the Middle, Lower, Hell and snowstorm worlds, I didn’t think I could be any more exhausted if I hadn’t slept in a week.

  The Lower World, with its too-hot, too-close sun, invited me to just curl up under the red sky and doze off. Instead I walked awhile, grateful for the silence, grateful to have left winter behind, grateful most of all that I had a little respite before fighting again. Sonata had explained in no uncertain terms that I was supposed to be the counterweight that made up for so many people of power dying a year ago in Seattle. I was willing to play that role, but there was a deep place inside me filling with envy for Coyote’s gentler path. Not poisonous envy, but more a sort of appreciation for what it meant to be only a healer, and not a warrior as well. It was a good thing. Not that my duties were bad, but they were maybe more complicated. I’d actually been willing to sacrifice Corvallis, if necessary. I’d thought-I’d hoped-that the wendigo’s desire to survive would send it skittering out of Corvallis before I struck the final blow, but I’d had to make it believe I’d kill her. In an astral world, where thoughts and intentions could be telegraphed even from behind shielded minds, that had meant I had to believe I’d kill her.