C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

I faced my palms upward. "The murders in Woodland were ugly, but their point was to channel souls to something separate that hungered for them. Same thing with the mess at Halloween. This is a little different, so I don't know that it's possible, but I'm not ruling it out."

"Wouldn't it leave a mark? Like Mel's power circle?"

I'd never seen Billy seem out of his depth before. Maybe it meant I was finally catching up to the rest of the class. I wasn't sure if it felt good or profoundly alarming. "I just rearranged your desk with almost no effort, much less a power circle, so not necessarily. If you're talking about somebody with a lot of rage or fear, and I'd think we kind of have to be, it's…" My brain caught up with where my mouth was going, and stopped my chatter with a sound of dismay. "Somebody could be doing this without knowing it."

"They could be eating bodies, stripping them of their souls, and leaving the corpses on unmarked territory without knowing it?" Billy's voice rose sharply enough that the handful of remaining detectives looked around at each other again, then, to a man, started mumbling about coffee breaks. In a rustle of coats, heavy boots and slamming doors, we were alone. Billy glowered after them. "Nobody offered to bring us a cup back."

"I wouldn't have, either. Look, I'm just saying it's possible. Maybe not probable, but the human psyche is messed-up territory. So we need to pursue this, but for the first time I'm thinking maybe we shouldn't go in with all guns blazing."

My cell phone gave its six-note warning that a text message was coming in as I finished speaking. So did Billy's. We both went still, my tense expression mirrored on his face, and I silently put a fist on one palm. He echoed the motion and we beat our fists against our palms in tandem, one two three.

I came up scissors. He came up rock. I swore and stood up to pull my phone out of my pocket, reading the message out loud: "Possible new victim. Positive identification, oh, shit. "

"What?" Billy was on his feet, leaning toward me like the tension in his body would negate whatever I had to say. "Who?"

I pressed my hand over my mouth, fingers icy, belly cramping. "I'm sorry, Billy. I'm so sorry. It's Mandy Tiller."

And it was unquestionably my fault.

Mandy was still breathing when we got there.

We were fast: the paramedics were only just pulling into the driveway when we reached the Tillers' home, a few blocks away from Billy's. The fact that there were paramedics at all pushed some of the churning terror in my stomach aside and made room for something almost worse: hope. No one else had needed a paramedic. I fell out of Billy's van and ran across the Tillers' lawn, skidding across snow to reach Mandy's side.

Unlike the other victims, she had only one bite mark. A stretched-out wound had torn her coat and shirt and left a broad toothy gash in her forearm. A pool of blood stained the stairs under her head, which was both horrible and wonderful. All the others had been found in clean sites, and I knew for certain Mandy hadn't been attacked miles away and been dumped on her own front steps. I'd been with her barely an hour earlier.

A paramedic put a hand on my shoulder. "Excuse me, ma'am."

I whispered, "Ten seconds. Just give me ten seconds. Please," and let the Sight wash over everything.

Blood seeped from her skull, a simple but significant wound that cried out for healing. I clenched my hands, wishing I had time, wishing I didn't have an audience. But the paramedics could care for the head wound; what I was more worried about was the utter nothingness which had surrounded all the other victims. And though unlike them, Mandy still breathed, she also had no spark of life. Her aura didn't even lie flat against her skin, giving me some hint of her well-being. It was just gone.

What I could See were vestiges of my own power, familiar silver-blue tendrils still lingering from our adventure earlier in the day. I jerked around to look at Billy with the Sight, searching for similar remnants around him, and found nothing. But it had been weeks since I'd used my power on him, and even then it hadn't been the kind of physical shield I'd used on Mandy. I didn't know if the residue had protected her in some way or not, but even if it had, that didn't exactly balance out setting her up as a potential victim in the first place.

While I was looking at Billy, the paramedics swooped in and got Mandy onto a stretcher. Jake Tiller sat on top of the porch steps, wrapped in a huge winter jacket and blank-gazed with fear. One of the paramedics offered his hand. Jake took it blindly, letting the man guide him down the stairs toward the ambulance. The poor boy's aura was static white, shock too great for his true colors to wash through. Billy, a few yards away, was talking to the cop who'd texted us, and I heard the guy say, "The kid came home from ball practice and found his mom lying on the steps. He called 911. Probably saved her life."

"He's smart," Billy agreed. "Friends with my son." I let the rest of their conversation fade away as I turned my gaze to the snow-littered steps and yard.

Anybody else and I might've thought she'd slipped on the stairs and cracked her head, but I knew Mandy Tiller hadn't received a gash-toothed bite on her arm that morning. I'd have healed it if she had. So the thing had come after her, and somehow, it had failed to walk away with her life. I was less certain about the safety of her soul.

There were imprints in the snow on the uncovered porch, just like the ones I'd seen yesterday morning. I didn't touch them this time, afraid I'd flatten them into nothing and destroy any chance of a lead. I'd seen, that morning, how far this thing could jump in a single bound. And it did jump, traversing space like it was real. But then, so did I, when I separated from my body. I didn't float through walls or fly up to rooftops. I walked through the doors and climbed stairs, treating the astral world essentially like the real one.

It was a paltry thing to go on, but at least it was something. I stood up and followed their imprints' potential trajectory, scanning the yard and sidewalk and street without finding a hint of where the thing might have landed. Neighbor's yard, across the street, empty. No trees bigger than bushes to ricochet off anywhere in easy sight.

A quick wash of snow, unsettled by the rumble of ambulance engines, slid off the roof and poofed into the yard, narrowly missing the porch. I flinched, reminded of the avalanche.

More snow flopped down, less vigorously than if someone had shoveled it, but with a certain amount of enthusiasm. A ghost of forensics training came back to me and I crouched again. There was no kickback in the imprint, no spray that suggested the beast had jumped forward. The indentations looked like it had squatted, just as I was doing now. My gaze strayed to the roof.

Well. Just because I'd never tried floating up to a rooftop didn't mean I couldn't do it. I pressed my spine against the house, propping myself against it, and for the second time in an hour, slipped the surly bonds of earth.

My subconscious had a mean sense of humor. It had let me float through a closed door, but not a wall, because one was meant for walking through and the other wasn't. But that had been nearly a year ago, and I had more control now. Gravity was permitted, I decided, to exert the smallest influence over me, just enough to keep me from floating into the stratosphere and beyond. I weighed in at a little over one-sixty, but there was no reason my astral form couldn't be light as a thought.

I stayed firmly stuck to the ground in both body and spirit. I bared my teeth at the sky, willing to admit that thoughts could be depressingly weighty. Better to be light as a bird, with hollow bones and an ability to fly. I could break free from gravity's pull and soar up to the roof on an impulse of will.