Demon Hunts

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It smelled of desperation, a scent I'd only associated with humans before, and even that as a parable rather than an actual definable stink. But its stench was sour, and there was no method to its behavior, just a frenzied launch at those closest to it. Sara was facedown in six inches of snow, and the thing rebounded off me, sending me into a backward stagger.

I could feel the agents' life-pulses so clearly I didn't need to see them, and snapping fresh shields up was by now instinctive. The wendigo leaped from body to body, bouncing off, and finally, with a howl, turned back to me. Shields or not, it landed on me like a ton of bricks. I sank down but shot my hands upward, grabbing at its thick neck.

Thick, but smaller than it had been. Gary'd done a lot of damage in his brief battle, and I knew it was starving for lack of souls, for lack of flesh.

Given that it had backed off from me twice now, it had to be desperate to attack me when it had been weakened. It made sense: I could probably power it back up to its previous size, all in one tidy snack, but I didn't think it was happy about its range of choices. It swung its head, hot saliva spattering my face as it pressed down, trying to make my arms buckle. I wasn't about to falter, but neither did I know exactly what to do now that I had it by the throat. Using my magic as a weapon was a cosmic no-no, and I didn't dare let go so I could draw my sword. I had unpleasant visions of lying here in the snow for the rest of eternity, trying to throttle something that wasn't exactly alive.

Coyote appeared, a silhouette against the blue sky, and clobbered the wendigo with a tree branch. It howled, whacked him away, and fled. I heard Coyote hit the snow, and then silence broken only by the harsh breathing of those around us. Even that faded after a minute, and there was nothing but wind and the occasional plop of snow falling from trees to the ground. I ventured, "Sara?" and got a muffled grunt in reply.

"I think it's gone. I think maybe you and your people should go back down to the lodge and keep anybody from going hiking or skiing or whatever. What do you think?"

"I think that sounds like a good use of federal resources." She sounded almost like the girl I'd been friends with a lifetime ago. Snow squeaked as she got up, and I lay there listening to the brief, unconvinced and unconvincing arguments presented by her forensics team. A couple of them decided to stay behind, with a handful of others offering to stand guard while they worked. I didn't think any of them imagined they were going to find anything, but I admired their work ethic. The rest took Corvallis and her cameraman, the former complaining bitterly, and headed back to the hotel to keep tourists from getting themselves eaten.

I was pretty sure I should join them, but staring at the sky as I lay deep in what would be a snow angel if I could muster the energy to wave my arms and legs had its appeal, too. "So," I said eventually. "Nice job there at the end, scaring it off."

Coyote's voice drifted up out of the snow. "I think it was trying to escape and went after you because it was desperate. That wasn't a real attack."

"Yeah, I know. Still, you got it off me." I lay there awhile longer, replaying the last several minutes in my mind, and coming up repeatedly against Coyote's expression of distaste and terror as he struggled with the wendigo. In time, I repeated, "So. This fighting thing. You're not actually very good at it."

"No." Coyote sounded like he'd like to say a lot more, and yet like he knew absolutely none of it was of any use.

I nodded. Snow creaked under my head. "Interesting."

"It's not—"

"No," I said, "really. It's interesting. I'm not mad." I considered that, then decided it was true. "You're a teacher. You're a healer. A guide. Right after this all started I was told I was on a warrior's path. I'm guessing nobody ever said that to you."

He said, "No," again, and then, "People usually don't, to shamans. It's sort of anathema to the purpose."

"Yeah, no, I get that. It's cool. It's okay." I stared at the sky for another little while, making a half-hearted effort to formulate a plan, or an opinion about me being a fighter when my mentor wasn't, or in fact to do anything besides lie there in the snow. I was pretty content with lying there, really, except, "My butt is freezing."

Coyote let out a sharp, barklike laugh. "Mine, too."

I sat up, hunching my shoulders against snow falling down my spine. "I vote we regroup back at the hotel with hot soup and carbs and a boiling-temperature bath."

"Yeah." Coyote sat up, too. "All except those last three things. We've got some work to do first."

I whimpered, and we got up and went back to the hotel.

Gary was sitting by the fireplace in the hotel lobby with an enormous cup of tea in his hands and the twenty-five-year-old FBI agent perched on his knee. He spilled both in his haste to get up when we came in, but instead of looking abashed he gave me a broad wink and a wicked smile. I had to look away to keep from giggling, and when he got close enough I whispered, "You Lothario, you."

"Keeps me young, darlin'. Keeps me young. What happened after I left?" He waved goodbye to his FBI agent as we headed for the room, filling in details as we went. "You left 'em up there with no protection?"

I spread my hands, defenseless and helpless alike. "I think it's gone for now, and there are other things we need to do. You were the only one who even laid a hand on it out there, much less—" We got to the room and I stopped to gaze up at the old cabbie while Coyote unlocked the door. "I don't think I said it before, Gary. You were fantastic out there. You were amazing."

Red curdled along his cheeks and he all but dug a toe into the floor. "Wasn't me, mostly. It was that tortoise you found for me, Jo. I never felt him like that before. The way I figure it, you did all the heavy lifting. I was just the vehicle."

"No." We stepped into the room and I turned to give him a hard hug. "That was you, Gary. It was all you. You kicked ass, took names, and saved a lot of lives."

"You can thank your protector during our spirit journey," Coyote said. "He'll hear you. Jo, when was the last time you slept?"

I gave him a look. Gary peered between us all bright-eyed and curious. Coyote had the grace to blush, which warmed his already-warm skin tones attractively. "Right. It'd be better if we hadn't—"

I gave him another look, this one explaining how he was going to die unpleasantly if he came anywhere near suggesting the phrase this was a mistake. "If we hadn't slept," he said firmly. Gary brightened up even more, his low-brow suspicions apparently confirmed. I averted my eyes so I wouldn't revert to grinning like an idiot, and grinned like an idiot anyway. Coyote, in his best superior teacher tone, said, "You should know by now that spirit journeys are easier when you're sleep deprived."

"Oh." Heh. I did know that. My stupid grin fell away in embarrassment, and I stared at nothing for a moment. "We could get high instead."

There was a little silence while we sat there, none of us quite believing I'd said that. First, as far as I knew, we had nothing to get high on except the overpriced alcohol in the hotel bar. Second, and far more importantly—

"That'd go over great with the random drug tests at work," Gary said. "You lost your mind, Jo?"

"I'm beginning to think so, yes."

"We did bring your drum," Coyote said tartly. "Unless that's not recreational enough for you."

"Oh, bite me. I don't know why I said that. It just popped out." I was a stick in the mud when it came to drug use, and had been long before I became a cop. I just flat-out didn't get why anybody would risk the high when there was always the very real possibility that the low would include sudden and permanent death. That, obscurely, reminded me that I couldn't remember the last time I'd snitched a cigarette, which somehow made me feel like I had the moral high ground. Satisfied, I got up to unwrap my drum and hand it over to Gary.

Coyote intercepted me halfway, his palms turned up and his expression unexpectedly shy. "May I? I've never seen it, and I remember how excited you were when you got it."

I almost tripped over my own feet fighting off the urge to cling to the instrument. It had been in my bedroom the night before, but we hadn't exactly stopped to admire it. I'd never imagined it might be an object of interest to my mentor, and I wasn't in the habit of letting people besides Gary handle it. Morrison had, a couple of times, and the first time he'd picked it up I'd felt it from across the room. I thought I would have felt it from across the world. Given that history, handing it to Coyote was a lesson in anticipation.

Magic spilled through me as he took it. Not like what I'd felt with Morrison: that had been warmth bordering on sensuality. With Coyote it was the heat and clarity of the desert, like the colors of his aura were pouring into me in short, intense bursts. Hairs stood up on my arms and his gaze, gone gold, jerked to mine. The wendigo—in fact, the entire world—faded from relevance, and I took a half step toward him.

Gary, very politely, cleared his throat. I jumped backward, cheeks flaming with teen-level angsty guilt. Coyote flinched, stared at Gary like he'd appeared from the ether, then hastily transferred his attention back to me. "What—?"

"The drum, it has, I guess it has—" Opinions. I couldn't quite bring myself to say that, and instead started whistling the Matchmaker song from Fiddler on the Roof. Coyote's eyebrows went up and I stopped whistling to rub my face. I wondered if Morrison had felt anything when he'd picked up my drum. I wondered what would have happened if I'd let Thor handle it. I wondered if I really wanted to know in either case. "Look, just nevermind, okay? Can we just get on with it?"

Coyote's eyebrows remained elevated, which left me to imagine all sorts of things we might get on with, none of which were hunting down a wendigo. Gary, who had as dirty a mind as I did, gave an indiscreet snort that probably masked a much less discreet guffaw. I cast an exasperated glance skyward, then put my hand out for the drum. "Come on, Ro."

He put his eyebrows back down where they belonged and otherwise ignored me, concern creasing lines into his forehead as he examined the drumhead. "What happened?"

"The wolf—the—" I gave up and sat on the end of Gary's bed. "I always thought it was a wolf there. A wolf and a rattlesnake under the raven's wings." They were painted beautifully, raven wings following the drumhead's curves, and the colors were gorgeous, as bright as they'd been the day I received the drum. But the wolf was smeared, like it had gotten wet and was fading away. "But it started changing after you—died—and so I've been wondering for months if maybe it was a coyote, not a wolf at all. I don't know what it means, especially since you're not dead."

"If it was a coyote, maybe it means I have less influence over your future than I used to." Coyote gave the drum a gentle shake, rattling its beads, then offered it to Gary. "Or maybe it just means the elders who gave it to you saw wrong, and it's changing itself so it's more in tune with your needs."

"It's an inanimate object, Coyote, it can't…" Logic held sway in the completion of that sentence, but like it or lump it, my life encompassed a great deal more than just logic these days. "Yeah, okay, maybe. Can we get started?"

He gave me an odd little smile. "That's the third time you've said that. What happened to the woman who didn't want anything to do with magic?"

"She nearly got her mentor killed, and a lot of other people did die. Come on, Coyote. What are we doing here? Guide me."

His smile fell away into apology. "Right. Okay, so I've seen your—" he broke off, eyed Gary, and euphemized what he'd been about to say "—your spirit animal, so I—"

"My raven," I interrupted petulantly. The idea of excluding Gary from the small circle of people who knew what my spirit guide was seemed all wrong. I resented Coyote's attempt, even though the smarter part of me knew he was trying to protect me. Spirit animals, like true names, were not to be taken lightly.

Coyote gave me a brief, steady look, then corrected himself. "Your raven. So I know you've managed at least one successful spirit quest, which is heartening."

"You don't have to sound so surprised."

For some reason he ignored me. "You need a second for this, Joanne. The kind of soul retrieval we're looking at doing here is significant. The raven is a very good guide, but I want you to have something whose purpose is to protect you, as well."

Worry began to loose worms in my tummy. "I thought any spirit guide protected you in the astral realm."

"They do, so maybe you see my point. I don't think one's enough. I wish you had three, but this kind of quest usually only brings them one at a time."

"There were—" I swallowed, heat suddenly burning my face. Three spirit animals had turned up when I'd done a quest with Judy Morningstar, but that entire situation had gone to hell in a handbasket. Odds weren't good that any of them had been real, even if a raven had legitimately chosen me later, as it had seemed to then. "Okay. One quest, one guide. Is that going to be—" I was having a hard time getting through sentences. That one was supposed to finish enough? but Coyote's tense-jawed expression made me swallow it.

He was afraid. My mentor, my golden-eyed, laughing Coyote, who had saved my life and taught me most of what I knew about shamanic magic, was scared of the monster in the woods. It was a bigger bad than he was accustomed to dealing with, and he'd only just woken up from a special kind of hell that had a lot in common with what the wendigo was doing to people. I'd been staggering along for months, desperate for reassurance, and now the guy I'd expected to provide it wasn't in any shape to do so.

"It'll be enough." I hardly recognized my own voice, though there was something vaguely familiar in the tone. "One guide, one shield, and besides, I've got these." I touched the silver necklace at my throat, garnering a smile from Gary and a look of incomprehension from Coyote. "Talismans of faith. They'll help. Trust me."

Coyote's shoulders relaxed a little and, bemused, I recognized the tone I'd taken. It was exactly the same one he'd used to convince the paramedics to let us help Mandy Tiller: utterly reasonable and calm and certain, even if the words themselves were preposterous. He gathered himself, then nodded, equilibrium regained. "This is dangerous, Jo. The wendigo is hunting in two worlds, so during a spirit quest you're going to be particularly vulnerable. For this journey, I'll be your protector as much as the raven."

God. No wonder he was freaked out. Hunting monsters was scary enough, but hanging around waiting for them to attack had a particular kind of nerve-wrackingness to it. "I'll try to hurry."

"It's not the kind of thing you can rush." He slid to the floor, making himself, by all appearances, less comfortable, and I reluctantly joined him. I didn't see why I couldn't sack out on the bed and do my spirit quest in comparative luxury, but I bet he'd argue that comfort invited complacency. Even I didn't want to invite complacency in the face of a soul-eating demon.

He said, "We should wake up naturally," to Gary, who nodded, lifted the drum, and began the familiar heartbeat cadence.

For the first time ever, I had instantaneous company in my journey to the other worlds.