C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

In this particular case, though, even if I hadn't been angling for it, Billy and Morrison backed down looking shamefaced and uncomfortable, and I was nothing but glad for it. I was exhausted all the way down to the bottom of my soul. Not just physical tiredness from being thrown down a mountain as an avalanche that morning, not just the shaky emotional collapse of Coyote's arrival, but fundamentally, flat-out spent.

Coyote, who was fast earning rank as the number one most fantastic man in the universe, took my hand and gently uncurled it from its fist before slipping his fingers through mine. "Jo's probably right. Not only do I owe her a lot of explanation, but she's just done her first full-fledged soul retrieval, which isn't something I'd usually suggest trying in an ambulance. She needs a sacred place and some food, so I'd like to take her home. It's good to finally meet you, Captain. Detective Holliday." He nodded at my partner, despite having not been introduced, then drew me away from the ambulance and hospital and pressure presented by my friends.

I went into the hospital and used one of their dial-a-cab phones to call a taxi company Gary didn't work for. We were both silent on the drive to my apartment, because the only cab driver on earth I'd have a "So you're back from the dead, how's that working for you?" conversation in front of was Gary. As much as I loved him, right then Gary fell into the same category as Morrison and Billy: I was not ready to share Coyote with anybody, not until I got a chance to hear and assimilate some answers on my own. The whole drive home I watched Coyote, half afraid he'd disappear if I took my eyes off him. I was so exhausted even the joy had drained out of me. Coyote had to guide me out of the taxi when we got to my apartment building, or I'd have sat there all night.

We took the world's slowest elevator up to my fifth-floor apartment because I couldn't face that many stairs. Once ensconced in my apartment, I handed Coyote the phone and a menu from Mrs. Li's Chinese restaurant on the Way, and he placed an order for what sounded like every item of food on the menu while I, mindful of his comment about sacred space, went to lie down in the middle of my living-room floor. The draft from under the front door turned my skin to goose bumps, but once down, I couldn't summon the will to move.

Coyote, who was bordering on suspiciously perfect, looked at me, went and dragged the quilt off my bed, and lay down behind me, the cover draped over both of us.

I didn't remember falling asleep, but I woke up when the delivery guy rang the doorbell. Coyote got up again, paid the guy, and came back to sit on the floor with me and spread two paper grocery bags worth of Chinese food around us in a veritable moveable feast. I ate all the Mongolian beef, half the cashew chicken, two egg rolls, a carton and a half of white rice, eight slices of barbecue pork, and drank a sixteen-ounce glass of milk before I felt even vaguely stable enough to whisper, "I'm really, really glad you're okay. What, um…? The last time I saw you…really saw you…was when I went into the Dead Zone and fought that snake thing."

"Fought." Coyote ducked his head over a heap of rice and sweet-and-sour pork. "Is that what you call it?"

"I got you out of there, didn't I?" All of a sudden I wasn't sure. "Didn't I?"

He looked up, dark eyes tempered with sympathy. "You did. Not very well, Jo. You shouldn't have even been there in the first place, not without me or at least a guide like Raven. But you did get me out."

"And then?" I really didn't want a scolding about where I should or shouldn't have been, or what I should or shouldn't have done. I was sure I had plenty of those in store. But my hands were cramping around the chopsticks and my tummy was getting upset waiting to hear where my mentor had been the past six months. "You just never came back, Coyote. I thought…I don't know what I thought. That you were mad at me. Or in trouble."

Coyote sighed. "I wasn't well enough prepared when I met you in the Dead Zone—that's a terrible name for it, Jo."

"Do you have a better one?"

He shrugged his eyebrows and went on. "I'd been in too much of a hurry, maybe, to meet you, but I wasn't shielded well enough. When you threw me out I never woke up from the dream state, not entirely. I got…lost on my way back to my body."

I took a shaking breath and put my box of rice aside. "I'm sorry. I was afraid that snake was going to eat you."

"It was going to." His smile was bright and sudden and made me want to crawl over and hide in his arms. "You were doing your best. It was messy, but you did your best."

That didn't make me feel as much better as I hoped. "And with…what happened with Begochidi, Coyote? I was dreaming about you all the time, but I wasn't sure any of it was happening…then." That sounded so absurd I put my head in my hands, fingertips pressed hard against my hairline. "Every time I saw you in those dreams it seemed like another time, another place. Your memories, or even your dreams. Sometimes my dreams, from when I was a kid. And I know something happened there, a closed time loop of some kind, because I had to take all of my younger self's memories of studying with you and bring them forward so I could use them now. Time got all fucked up, Coyote, and then you—"

I jerked my gaze up, heart thudding again, but not in the nice way it had earlier. Now it just made me feel like I'd eaten way too much and should probably run to worship the porcelain god. "You let go so much power," I whispered. "You got me out of that amber place where the night had butterfly wings, but…you died. I thought you died, Coyote."

He sighed again, that explosive sound that I'd heard from his coyote form more than once. "I almost did, but I was betting on Begochidi never deliberately harming one of the Diné. I thought it was worth the risk of drawing her attention to me, but she was stronger than I thought. Or maybe less strong, in the end, because if she'd been at her best, I think I would have woken up. Instead I've been sleeping all this time."

"There must be healers—"

"My grandfather," Coyote said. "He's a shaman, too. He spent every day at my side, keeping me strong, but what he saw when he tried a soul retrieval on me was Begochidi standing before the rainbow that lasts all day. It wasn't a path he could travel. He knew then that someone else would guide me home. She nodded to him once, though."

I whispered, "Her. I saw Begochidi as a man."

Coyote shrugged. "We see in the god what is different from ourselves. In her acknowledging him, my grandfather believed he was allowed to keep my body strong, so he did, and he waited for you."

"I didn't do a soul retrieval, Coyote…."

"Didn't you?" He looked up, strands of fine black hair falling across his face. "I heard you calling, and saw your raven guide me from the storm."

I stared at him slack-jawed. "That—in Mel's power circle? That was you? The one who went running the other direction?"

His smile broke again. "Guilty as charged. It wasn't a classic retrieval like you did today—the Tar Baby was a good idea, by the way—"

I mumbled, "It wasn't my idea," guiltily. "I got it from a seven-year-old."

"A sss—I'd like to meet that kid!"

"Her name's Ashley. She's kind of amazing." A little grin worked its way over my face as I thought about Ashley Hampton and her ambition to be a "peace ossifer." "I'll introduce you."

"I'd like that." Coyote shoveled a couple more bites of pork into his mouth. "So I woke up yesterday morning with my grandfather sitting beside me. He'd done well. I was a lot stronger than I should have been, after all that time. I spent about six hours in one of our own sacred places—" He broke off, eyeing my living room floor dubiously.