Demon Hunts

CHAPTER THIRTY-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 going 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.

Billboards and electronic tickers were half destroyed by wilderness, though their remnants showed news images, one of them recurring over and over: Corvallis at a news anchor's desk, internationally famous eye symbol predominant behind her. There was something not quite right about her, hard to pinpoint from the fractured images.

She was tawnier than in real life, black hair streaked with blond, warm skin tones a little more golden. There was something feline about her, and I laughed as it came to me: king of the jungle. This was pretty, ambitious Laurie Corvallis's garden, a cityscape jungle, and she was its lioness. Which was way, way more than I'd ever wanted to know about her. Still, I kind of admired it. At least she knew what she wanted.

Though in this particular case, the fact that I was here, and not in the wendigo's storm, suggested that what she wanted was help. It also suggested she had some vestige of control left, which was good for both of us. All I had to do was find her, and maybe together we'd stand a chance against the demon. "Laurie? Hey, Laurie!"

Her name echoed off ruined buildings, but she didn't appear. I pursed my lips, then took off at a run through the streets, trusting Corvallis's subconscious to take me where I needed to go. The city bent and folded and presented me with the Channel Two News building within a few dozen strides. Unsurprised, I took the stairs up two at a time, and burst into the anchor room. "Laurie?"

"I can't come out." Her voice was a whisper, bouncing around so it seemed to come from nowhere. "It'll get me if I come out."

"I'm here to stop it." I thought I sounded remarkably confident. I hoped she thought so, too. "Where are you? Can you tell me what you remember?"

"There was a storm. I was lost." She sounded about six. "Someone tried to rescue me, but then I couldn't see her anymore. The storm came up and I started to run, and I ran until I came here. But now the storm is here, too, looking for me. I think it wants to kill me."

I'd pinpointed her by the end of her explanation, though I didn't want to let her know that. Instead I came to sit on the anchor's desk, pretty sure she was under it. I wondered if she always thought of herself as a kid who hid beneath desks.

If she did, that probably explained a lot about her aggressiveness. Talk about making up for perceived inadequacies in spades. "I think you're right. The storm is trying to get to you. But I can help you fight it, if you want."

"…you can?" She looked about six as she peeked out from under the desk, all big hopeful eyes and quivering lower lip. Given a set of whiskers, she'd be the world's most pathetic kitten. Man, if I got her out of this alive I would have all the blackmail material I'd ever need to keep myself off the news.

Not that I would ever, ever use my special magic powers to such a naughty, self-involved end. Of course not. That would be wrong. And more to the point, the gift I'd tried so hard to ignore and had finally grown comfortable with would no doubt depart at the least opportune moment in retaliation for my bad behavior. Look, I never said I was a good person. Sometimes threats to my own health and happiness were the best way to keep me on the straight and narrow.

"I can," I said firmly. "That's what I do. I help people."

Corvallis squinted suspiciously over the edge of the desk. It reduced the kitten aspect and aged her considerably, which was something of a relief. I did not want to introduce six-year-olds to fighting wendigos. Or anything else, for that matter. She inched farther up the desk, frown deepening. "How?"

"How? How do I help? Messily, usually, and you don't make it any easier." Probably this was not the time to scold her. I made a face and tried again. "I'm a shaman. I deal in sicknesses that doctors don't believe exist. Right now you're sick. A demon's taken over your body. I can help you get it back."

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."