Demon Hunts

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.

"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.

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 stormbound 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.