C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

The final time the monster jumped for me, I ducked, and it knocked my simulacrum to the earth with a howl of triumph, rending it with tooth and claw.

I surged forward and snatched Mandy's cowering soul in my arms, lifting her with no trouble at all. It was tiny, almost weightless, like a very young child, and I hoped that didn't mean it was dying.

Coyote said, "Quick, come on," and I turned and ran after him out of the snowstorm, a raven winging above us.

I woke up still cuddling Mandy's spirit. The woman on the paramedic's stretcher looked thin and wan, while the ephemeral thing in my arms was bright but fading fast. I leaned forward without thinking, hugging her body close, and felt her soul slip away, settling back into the form meant to hold it.

Color sprang up around her, flat against her skin but visible: her aura returning a little worse for the wear, but indicative that all would be well. Coyote murmured, "Well done," and when I glanced up at him, his eyes were gold and his smile wide. "The rest is easy. Finish it."

The blow to her head was nasty blunt trauma, a radial fracture like what happened when a rock hit a windshield. There was no blood below it, no sign of deeper trouble, and I tended the fracture with the images I was most comfortable with: new bone filling the cracks like it was heated glass melding a window together. Reluctantly, I left some of the bruising in place so she still had a goose-egg lump on her head. I'd offer to fix it later, but utterly obliterating the signs of injury when there were paramedics standing by seemed excessively complicated.

The bite on her arm, unexpectedly, was harder. It had a cold core to it, like winter had lodged in the bone and seeded there, difficult to root out. I looked at Coyote, but he only raised an eyebrow, a none-too-subtle hint that this was a test, and that it'd be better if I passed.

Vehicle analogies didn't work so well with cold spots, though the idea of a faulty heater crept in. It gave me a place to start, at least: from inside, like the wiring had gone bad, rather than from the outside where all I'd be doing was poking around at an external symptom of an internal problem.

I put my palm over the bite and let magic sink all the way through, until I could see through her arm the same way I'd seen through mine a handful of times. Skin and sinew and blood and muscle and bone all lit up in shades of life, Mandy's colors gaining strength now that the greater physical damage was healed. But there were dark spots inside the wound, those seeds of cold, and delicate trails danced out of them and led into the world.

Marking her. Marking her more literally than I'd thought. It wasn't just that she was outdoorsy, not anymore. The bite connected her to the monster, so if I didn't get those tendrils cleaned out, it would come for her again. I gathered them up and tugged gently, just to see if they would loosen. They didn't. I hadn't thought it would be that easy.

The trick—the real trick, the most effective expulsion—would be to convince her body to reject the seeds itself. Thoughtful, cautious, I murmured, "Mandy? Can I come in?"

After a brief hesitation, I felt—not agreement, exactly, but a lack of resistance, and with that invitation, stepped inside the garden of Mandy Tiller's soul.

I wasn't in the least bit startled to find myself in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest for the second time that day. This time, though, it was summertime, the sky a blaze of blue glory and the mountainside green and ripe with life. Mandy, lithe and athletic in hiking shorts and a tank-top, was climbing toward a host of pine trees. A backpack was slung over her shoulders and a hiking staff was in one hand, making her the epitome, in my opinion, of wilderness chic.

She waved when she noticed me. "Come on over here, take a look at this? See that clinging moss? These trees are going to be dead by the end of the year if we don't give them a hand."

I almost said, "Isn't that the natural cycle?" but bit my tongue before the words escaped. There was sickness in her garden, and she had the wherewithal to be rooting it out on her own. I hurried after her.

"It spreads," she told me with a sort of resigned dismay. "One tree to another, blocking their ability to draw down sunlight. The hard part's getting it off the tree without damaging the bark, but if you can they'll survive? Here's a knife." She tossed me a relatively blunt blade and showed me how to work it under the moss, how to loosen its clinging runners, and ultimately handed me the backpack so I could stuff the moss we'd cleared away into it. "I take it home and burn it."

On a whole different level, I felt one of the seeds of cold in her arm loosen, then shrivel and die.

It was good hard honest work, both of us sweating and swearing cheerfully as we scrambled up thin-trunked trees to find far-spreading gobs of moss. Every time a tree came clean, another seed fell away, until suddenly the whole grove brightened, fresh green needles sprouting instantly on all the afflicted spruce. Mandy stood back, brushing her hands with satisfaction, and gave me a sharp, pleased nod. "Thanks!"

The great Northwest faded out, leaving me in the back of an ambulance with Mandy Tiller blinking up at me.

Jake Tiller squeaked, "Mom?" and threw himself forward. I lurched back, getting free of paramedics and kid alike. The latter didn't care what had happened, but the former rushed in to check Mandy's vitals, then turned to Coyote and me with expressions raging between incomprehension, anger and relief.

"What are you?" one of them said. "Some kind of faith healers?"

Coyote shrugged a shoulder, graceful smooth movement. The truth was he probably could've picked his nose and I'd have thought it was gorgeous because I was just so glad he was alive. My heart sped up again like it was going to burst, then kind of exploded with messy joy inside me like it had burst. It was the happiest thing I'd ever felt, and it made the corners of my mouth turn up in an idiot smile. Again. Coyote said, "Something like that, without the religious overtones," and the medic who'd asked crossed himself anyway.

The ambulance thumped over speed bumps and came to a stop. The doors flew open, two new paramedics ready to help unload the injured person, and were greeted by six fully awake, undamaged human beings. Mandy'd gotten half her restraints off and was alternating between hugging Jake and prodding at the goose egg on her head. She looked at the new medics, then at the ones on either side of her. "I'm not sure I really need to be checked into the hospital?"

"You do," the one who hadn't spoken said, firmly. "I want to get those injuries X-rayed, maybe do a CAT scan. Or an MRI."

What he wanted, really, was an explanation for her recovery. He wanted something to tell him he'd been wrong, that she'd never been hurt as badly as it had seemed, even though he'd seen it with his own eyes. He didn't want a miracle. He wanted something comprehensible.

"I want Mom to come home!"

Mandy put her hand on Jake's head. "It's okay, Jake." She fingered the torn sleeve of her shirt and the still-raw wound beneath it. I hadn't healed that all the way, either, though it was neither as deep nor as dangerous as it had been. "I had a bad fall on the stairs," she said to no one in particular. "Maybe a neighborhood dog bit me while I was out, I don't remember? But with that cannibal everybody's talking about, and me being an outdoors type, it got a little out of hand?"

Tight-mouthed and unhappy, the second paramedic muttered, "Please stay on the stretcher, ma'am. We'll wheel you into the hospital for your examination."

"If you have to." She lay back down and the paramedics lifted her out. Jake jumped after them and grabbed her hand as they abandoned Coyote and me to the ambulance.