C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

I'd never thought about the mass I was protecting when I'd created a shield before. Now I could feel her weight like the shielding was a hammock, drawing down toward the buried earth where her body touched it. But that drop-point could be eliminated by increasing the hammock's tension, pulling its corners farther apart until it was a smooth, stretched-out expanse still capable of bearing the same weight. All the change was in the hammock, rendering its burden unchanged, yet perfectly safe on a taut surface.

Mandy's shield popped out wide and thin, just like my image of the hammock. The wind carried her gasp of relieved bewilderment to me as she got free of breaking snow and lay atop it. She went preternaturally still, lying with her arms and legs spread out like she was on thin ice and, intentionally or not, reducing my need to pay attention to her shielding's form.

I had exactly enough time to look back toward the featureless monster before it bashed into me.

Up close it smelled like carrion. I gagged, choking for breath, and aspirated snow. I coughed it out, vision blurring, though I couldn't tell if it was tears or just that the world itself had gone white and cold, with no sense of up or down. I wasn't hurt—the shielding I'd wrapped around Mandy surrounded me, too—but the thing rolled me in the snow, disorienting me further. I grabbed at it, fingers clawed uselessly inside my mittens, and it pulled away without effort.

I got a glimpse of it, an outline against the pale blue sky. Its eyes were white, or transparency's closest brother to white, and its mouth was a tear across its head. The teeth, more visible than anything but the claws, were a skull's grin, but the head stretched wider than a human head should have. There was no way this thing had eaten the people we'd found so far.

Or, if it had, it was becoming more and more wild, losing any vestiges of humanity that it had once had. I caught a downward strike with my mittened hand, and felt myself sink deeper into the snow. I didn't want to think too hard about how far it might be to the mountain rock below; the idea made me feel like I was drowning in snow, just as I had in my vision the day before.

Snow collapsed on my head, which didn't help at all. I gasped for air and got a lungful of rotted meat stench. For something that had landed on the snow crust light as a feather, it certainly was strong and stinky. I tried Mandy's trick, straight-arming it, and caught it solidly in the chest to no dramatic effect except fueling another roar.

That time I felt it in the ground, the way it shivered and dislodged a bit of the packed snow it held in place. One more howl like that and the whole mountainside was going to go, which might be okay from my monster buddy's point of view, but which would be a world of hurts for me and Mandy. I reached for a psychic net, an idea that had worked for me in the past. A blue-white mesh burst out of my fingertips and stuck against the monster's mutating form.

It reared back, clawing at the net, then simply dissipated like it had never existed. My net collapsed, partly because it had nothing to hold and partly because I was too surprised to keep its idea in mind.

Barely a heartbeat later the creature reappeared and clobbered me with a mallet-sized fist. Stars burst in my vision, and right about then I started wondering why I'd been trying to capture instead of kill it. I slammed a hand out to the side, grabbing a fistful of snow and willing it to become my weapon of choice, the silver rapier I'd taken from a god.

Power surged, and I held the blade like it had always been there. In a way it had been: it made up part of psychic armor and weaponry grown from gifts I'd been given and tokens I'd won. The first time I'd drawn it had been in a dreamscape plane, but since then I'd learned I could pull it across the real world from its usual hiding place under my bed into my hand when I needed it. It was more convenient than carrying a rapier around in day-to-day life, though its lack of physical presence tended to make me forget about it until I really, really needed it.

Like now.

Technically it was a stabbing weapon, not a slashing one, but it had an edge and that that was enough for me. I swung wildly, pouring power into the blade. I'd overloaded monsters before, essentially exploding them with magic, but the invisible snowman only squealed and scampered backward. I lurched forward, trying to follow the path it broke in the snow, but a sword in one hand and snowshoes on the feet did not make for easy movement.

I burst out of the snow like a bit of a fool, powder spraying everywhere. The critter was out of reach and in arrest, making it almost impossible to see. It shimmered slightly, a miragelike distortion of light, and I couldn't take my eyes off it for fear I'd never locate it again. It was on top of the snow now, no longer breaking it, but the path it had made while escaping me gave me an angle to run up, in so far as I could run while wearing snowshoes. Nothing about the carnivorous beast had suggested it had a sense of humor, or I might've slain it with laughter at my blundering.

It crouched, visible only because the distortion in the air lowered: its only two easy markers, tooth and claw, were hidden in mouth and snow respectively. I did a c'mere gesture with my free hand, hoping it'd jump me again, since I already knew which of us was faster. Being on the defensive was just fine with me, when my opponent could cover twenty yards while I blinked.

I still wasn't ready when it sprang at me. It came from up high, which I expected, but it was smarter than I hoped: instead of skewering itself on my raised sword, it twisted at the last second, coiling toward my undefended left side. Well, my semi-defended left side; I snapped the blade around, scoring a point-tip slash across what I thought of as the thing's ribs.

It didn't so much as flinch, though its howl turned aggravated, like it was smart enough to change its line of attack but not smart enough to imagine I might change mine. This time when it hit the snow beyond me it turned with a snarl, but backed away. I swore and tromped after it, earning another one of its low-bellied rumbles.

A crack opened up between me and the thing, and a heavy block of snow slid several yards down the mountain, then edged to a stop. I froze, arms spread wide and eyes even wider, and although I couldn't see the damned critter's face, I got an overwhelming sense of smugness from it. It emitted another low roar, then another, and when the snow began to slide that time, I knew it wasn't going to stop.

I'd been in earthquakes, but they had nothing on the sensation of watching the snow before me collapse and surge as it started an irreversible downward trend. Time dropped into a zone that only happened in emergencies, and I watched chunks of snow break loose and surge forward in slow motion as the packed material in front of it gave way. It was utterly beautiful in a purely chaotic way.

The half-embodied monster was clearly able to stay on top of the havoc it was wreaking, the impressions its claws made gobbled up by rolling snow. I doubted I could manage the same trick, but even if I could, the nasty beast had put me between a metaphorical rock and a hard place. I could try to go after it.

Or I could keep Mandy Tiller from getting killed.

I sucked my gut in, made an apology to my sword, and threw it away so that when the snow fell out from under my feet, I could fling myself forward with it. All I had to do was get to Mandy before her part of the shelf turned to icy dust. The slow-time of heightened awareness helped: even though I knew everything was happening impossibly fast, I could see giant snowballs breaking free, big enough for me to throw my weight onto them as I dashed across a shattering snowfield. The avalanche's momentum helped, driving me forward faster than humanly possible. I belly flopped on Mandy, my arms spread wide, just as the snow beneath her collapsed.