Demon Hunts

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.

Coyote—Big Coyote, the Trickster himself—might have appreciated that ruthless game. My Coyote didn't, and I didn't blame him at all. I was afraid that in finding him again, I'd lost him for good.

A lush dark purple forest had come up around me as I walked. There were vines beneath my feet, leaves so dark they were almost black, and red sun filtered down through the trees above so shadows danced across my skin and played tricks with my vision. I wanted the forest; that was where a wendigo belonged, but I didn't know if winter ever came to the Lower World at all. Not that I had any desire to re-enter the storm, even with Raven at my side.

Which he was, skittering above the trees, diving through the branches so he was one of the objects mucking with my sight. I didn't mind. His presence made me more confident. I'd been walking without thought as to how I would end this thing, but a nugget of a plan formed at the back of my mind. I left it alone, afraid that if I focused on it too hard, it would disappear.

The forest broke abruptly, leaving me on a rock face in the full blasting sun. My rattlesnake was coiled there, baking away, and I sat beside him, eyes half-closed as I turned my face toward the sky. Despite the heat, I wasn't sweating. A gift, I supposed, from my cold-blooded spirit animal. I reached over to stroke his back, and he flattened out, scales rippling in the boiling light. Raven dropped on my other side and head-butted my knee, impatient as a cat, then quarked happily when I rubbed the top of his head, too.

They were the tools I needed. The snake, representative of healing and change, and the raven, able to wing between life and death. I tucked the spear by my thigh and took my drum into my lap, knocking it with my knuckles.

I had fought and fought and fought the wendigo, and each time it had been, at best, a draw, where "draw" really meant "Joanne lost, big-time." There were other paths open to me. I'd learned that, if nothing else, from Begochidi. All this time I'd been taking it to the wendigo's territory. This time I wanted her on mine, and for once—maybe for the first time—I was confident of what and where that territory was. Rattler and Raven helped define it, and with them beside me, I believed nothing could take it away.

Drum in hand, spirit guides at my side, I called the storm.

I knew it now. I'd been there often enough that I recognized the static scream warning me of its arrival long before the cold hit. There were so many voices in that storm, so many people lost beyond the boundaries of the worlds they'd belonged to. Most were echoes carried by shrieking wind, just a memory giving strength to the squall. I wondered if, with enough time, enough care, enough shamans, the whole of it might be dismantled, and if no one would ever be lost to the cold universe again.

And discarded the thought almost instantly. I believed it could be done. I also believed that the moment it was, the moment magic-users stepped away from the emptiness they'd left behind, a new soul would find its way through, and the storm would begin again. Nature abhorred a vacuum, even in levels of reality where nature seemed to play no part.

The cold wanted inside me, the way it had been accepted before. It slammed toward me and was rebuffed by the Lower World's warmth still clinging to my skin. I sat on the yellow stone cliff beneath the red sun's amazing heat while winter raged around me. Even my rattlesnake seemed undisturbed by the wind and weather, untouched when by all rights he should have frozen solid within moments. Raven, on my other side, hopped at the edges of our safe little circle, thrusting his head out to bite at flying snowflakes in an act that looked like pure silly defiance.

"There's a warmer world waiting for you, wendigo." I finally took up my drumstick, its raspberry-red rabbit fur end all bright and tasty as I turned the leather end against the drumhead. Raven lost interest in the storm and came to eye the waving fur hopefully, but I laughed and nudged him away with my elbow. "She'll need you, Raven. She'll need the cleverness you have to see her way out of the storm. But there'll be lollipops and shiny things when we're done. Will you watch for her?"

He klok'd, a huge self-important sound, and bounced back to the edge of our circle, wings half-spread in anticipation. I banged the drum properly for the first time, enchanted by the reverberation of leather hitting leather, and to my own surprise, began to sing.

I thought the idea came from Mandy, singing on solstice morning. Singing in light and warmth and life, giving the sun a reason to return, like the star itself was a lost soul searching for its way back home. I wished I knew something about the woman who'd become the monster, something more than that she had a terrible will to live. But I sang to that, first just high notes in minor keys, where love songs from musicals always reached to twist the heart a little. They had some of the right idea, that touch of longing, but I wanted something more, something compelling. The drum provided a backbone to that, and after a while I found what I was looking for: wordless, atonal, urgent. Aboriginal song, like something the elders might have sung back in Qualla Boundary to teach the kids how to recognize their culture's music. I even managed to find a few phrases to call out in Cherokee, although it had been so long since I'd used that language I was sure I thoroughly mangled it.

But the song, or the willpower behind it, cut a path through the storm. Not quickly, but steadily, with Raven hopping forward eagerly with every inch it gave. He bounced far enough away I shouldn't have been able to see him, but we were bringing the Lower World into the heart of the blizzard. Proportions and distance were never quite right, in the Lower World, and he remained his full size even when he was hundreds of feet away.

The voices crying in the storm slowly faded away. They still hungered, they still wanted, but they seemed to understand I wasn't looking for them. As their howling shadows faded, a shape appeared at the far end of the path I was building. Raven got very excited, leaping around with his wings spread, and then suddenly dived into the storm itself, disappearing from view. The rattlesnake at my side finally stirred, lifting his head and flicking his tongue out in snaky interest. My heartbeat sped up and so did the pattern I thumped on the drum, like the two were intimately tied together.

Raven reappeared, another form stumbling behind him. It—she—stopped when she reached the yellow-earth path of the Lower World, its intrusion into the storm so astonishing I felt her amazement all the way down the road tying us together. Unlike Raven, she was tiny with distance, or her sense of self was so fragile, so lost, that she was nothing more than a speck on the horizon. I lifted my voice again, calling to her in song, and Raven, who had a distinctive but not beautiful voice, settled on her shoulder to flap encouragement.

The road closed up behind her, as if the storm was trying to take her back. I could feel her fear and confusion, and beneath that a thread of hope so thin it seemed impossible that it had sustained her as long as it had. Because I could only imagine hope had sustained her, a hope of returning home so very strong that it had made her into the wendigo. It was sheer cruelty that someone of such determination could be twisted into something of such horror, but if I was learning anything, it was that everyone had as much potential for dread as for beauty.

Even I did, which wasn't a comforting thought. Nobody who was purely full of lightness and fluff and goodness would have come so close to stuffing a spear through somebody's heart. That was, frankly, bleak as hell, and suggested I'd turned a corner somewhere. If I was capable of making that decision, I wasn't sure what other choices I might be able to make. I was even less sure I wanted to find out. I would have to talk to my disapproving mentor about the fine line between good and bad, and try like hell to stay on the right side of it while still acknowledging, even embracing, the need and ability to make the hard choices.

Maturity, I decided, sucked. On the other hand, the thought brought a warble of laughter into my song, and the woman on the pathway looked up at the sound. Something about her brightened, like she recognized laughter, and she came forward more eagerly, until I could see her clearly. She was still inhuman, but no longer in the way she'd been. No longer disjoined or falling apart, no longer a slavering monster of teeth and claws. She looked thin, not just physically but spiritually, like she'd almost faded away. I wasn't sure if the storm had done that to her, or if her attempts to break free had, but I was inclined to blame the storm.

I waited until she was only a few feet away, Raven whacking her on the head with his wings, before I set my drum aside so I could take up the spear and get to my feet. The rattlesnake finally uncoiled from his warm spot and slithered forward, wrapping around the woman's ankles. She looked down with alarm, and I shook my head. "It's all right. He's a friend. A guide, just like the raven. And I'm…"

For the first time I could remember, I wanted to hand over my full name, freely given. I wondered what that meant about this woman, about her fate, and what it meant about me, but I smiled and said, "I'm Siobhán. Siobhán Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick, and I've come to take you home."

It sounded like such a gentle promise that it nearly broke my heart. I knotted my fingers around the spear's haft. "Home isn't back into the world you knew. I'm sorry. I don't know anything about you, but if we understand what happened, I'm afraid you've been lost to the cold for a long time. I think your body is probably dead, and I can't…"

She swayed a little, but stepped closer, like she was listening hard. I took a deep breath. "I can't let you go again unless I'm sure you'll return to your body. If there's no body to go back to, I'm afraid you'll become the wendigo again, trying to break free from the storm. I can't…let you do that. Too many people have already died. All I can do is bring you out of the storm and…set you free." It was such a stupid phrase. Free of what? Hope? Life? Chances? Those weren't things people sought to be set free from. We tried to escape prisons and bad situations, not gambles for survival.

Then again, if there was a worse situation than becoming a wendigo, I never wanted to encounter it. I would want to be freed from that, if for some hideous reason I ever became such a thing.

On the other hand, I wanted to be very, very clear about the limited options I was offering this woman, and so, voice low, I spelled it out. "You're going to die. It's the best I can offer you. But you'll die here, under the red sun, instead of out there in the storm. I wish I could give you more."

Something in her eyes suggested she still had words. Had the capacity to speak, but chose not to. A gift, maybe, for me. Something to make it easier, a pretense that she was nothing more than the animal she'd become. That was a kindness, and a lie: it took a thinking creature to do what she did next. She reached for the spear's neck, controlling it, and I let her. Let her bring it all the way down until the black wooden tip rested between her ribs, a certain kill shot. She lifted her gaze to mine, gave me a brief smile, and braced herself.

This was not how soul retrievals were supposed to end. They were meant to be a reunion of body and spirit, not a violent finish, not even if that finish was the closest thing to peace a lost soul might find. I hated it. There had to be another way. A promise I could make, a magic I could build. There had to be. The woman's gaze was clear on mine, waiting.

I whispered, "I'm sorry. I can't."

And shoved.