C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

"A trap." The only problem was, I didn't know for whom. "Gary, back up really slowly. Just a few feet. I want to see if it…cares."

"That don't fill me with confidence, doll." He backed up anyway, a few slow steps down the road. The wendigo went very still, thick torso lifted like it was scenting the air. It cared, in other words. I swore under my breath, and Gary froze again. "That don't, either."

"It shouldn't. Don't move again." The wendigo relaxed when Gary stopped inching backward, though it began pacing back and forth, a few steps at a time, as it stared down the mountain at us. I had the unpleasant and probably accurate feeling it was assessing us in terms of easy pickings, and I very carefully began building a shield.

The heat of desert sand, delicious when I stood in the middle of a snow-covered forest, washed over me. Dune yellow and sky blue became a part of my shield, strengthening it beyond measure. I'd only ever made a weaving with so much power one other time, when I'd borrowed my dead mother's talent to fight a banshee. It felt terrific, and despite the wendigo I shot a smile toward Coyote. He didn't exactly smile back, but the heat of his magic intensified a moment, making me feel welcome.

The wendigo snarled, the same low threatening sound that had started an avalanche the day before. There were more trees along the road here, maybe enough to stabilize the snow, but it wasn't a risk I wanted to take. Not with a news crew and a couple dozen FBI agents who could be swept away.

Right on cue, they noticed the wendigo. Half a dozen people voiced variations on, "What the hell? " and Sara bellowed, "Jesus Christ, Joanne, what're you doing now?" like a semi-visible slavering monster was obviously all my fault.

I decided she would rather I kept her alive than give her an answer. Our shield stretched across the road, making a wall between ourselves and the wendigo, but I'd seen the thing jump. "The shield has to go over us, too."

"I can do that if you've got a plan for the wendigo." Coyote sounded strained, which surprised me. I was used to thinking of him as well-nigh omnipotent, but I could feel the intense concentration in his magic as he stretched the shield back in a wide curve. The whole investigative area, including the road, covered a good forty square yards, maybe a little more. I didn't think we needed a bubble unless the wendigo was smart enough to leap the shield and attack from behind, but I'd never dreamed that sustaining a shield that big might wear my mentor out.

Especially when I had plenty left to give. I poured more into the shield, feeling it strengthen, and turned some of Coyote's energy toward my favorite catch-all. Tight bands of magic wove together, creating a net with much greater holding capacity than the one I'd built yesterday. "I've got a plan."

It would've been a better plan if a net had worked the day before, but I saw no reason to burden Coyote with that knowledge. "If this works, I want you to try to get everybody off the mountain, Gary. Back down to the lodge, at least. I don't think Mister Stinky here cares much about whether he's noshing on outdoorsmen anymore."

"If what works?"

Crap. I'd forgotten he couldn't See what I was doing. "I'm going to try to catch it in a net. I just want to hold it in place until everybody's safe. It didn't work yesterday, but it's more real now and Coyote's backing me up."

"Joanne Walkingstick, what the hell are you doing?" Sara'd caught up to us, but I still didn't think it was a good time to answer her questions. I almost hoped she'd grab me. I had this idea that power would zot off me like an electrical arc, and she'd end up ten feet away in the snow with her hair all frazzled. It wasn't nice, but it was funny.

Gary was apparently down with ignoring the Feds, too. His voice dropped to a low enough grumble that it raised hairs on my nape: "And if it don't work?"

"Then we're all fucked."

"Gotcha. Just tell me when, darlin'."

Coyote eyed me. "Are you always this inspiring?"

"You should see me on a bad day. Ready?"

"Joanne, what are you doing? "

Nobody paid Sara any heed at all. Coyote nodded, tensing in preparation. I launched the net and yelled, "Run!" at Gary as the wendigo leaped.

Time, as it so often did, collapsed into infinite slow motion as everything went to hell.

I understood immediately that my mistake had been in making the shield one-way. It was meant to keep wendigos out, not FBI agents in. Not, as it turned out, FBI agents and over-eager television news reporters. Laurie was there all of a sudden, cameraman in tow, two steps behind Sara and on the wrong side of the shield.

A part of me was given over to admiring Sara's weapon stance as she slapped her duty weapon from its holster and brought it up, firing repeatedly at the wendigo. Her honey-blond hair made her vivid and living against white snow and black trees, real in a way the wendigo wasn't. I saw flashes from the muzzle of her weapon, bright imprints in dilated time, and I could almost watch the bullets spin through the air.

I could without question see how they utterly failed to impress the wendigo. They didn't seem to strike it at all: no shudder of impact, no mist of blood, no slowing of its headlong rush. Middle World means clearly couldn't stop it, even if it was more connected than it had been yesterday.

Corvallis and her cameraman were Sara's civilian mirrors. The guy was on his knees, face stretched with enthusiasm and terror, but his camera light was flashing and the lens was angled to catch the wendigo's leap. Corvallis, as admirable and idiotic as Sara, shouted breathless commentary while five hundred pounds of monster barreled toward her.

I swear to God, people like them should've gotten my shiny weird power set. They were delighted to throw themselves into danger's face, ready and eager to take on the world, happy to do stupid, stupid things in the name of truth, justice, and getting the story. I had no desire for that much excitement in my life.

That was probably why I got it, and they didn't.

I flung my net forward, putting all my will behind it: it had to hold. Its cables were steel, titanium, unobtanium, whatever couldn't be broken. I had held gods with that net. I could, by God, hold one nasty little demon spirit.

Wendigo and net collided, and the net stretched, pulled out of shape by the wendigo's need to feed. I let out a wordless roar that felt every bit as deep and earth-shattering as anything the wendigo had voiced, and surged forward a step, holding the line.

The net rebounded from its stretch, knocking the wendigo ass-over-teakettle back up the mountain road. It bumped and crashed and shuddered to a stop, thrashing and snarling as it fought the psychic bonds that held it. Over its screams I heard Sara shouting, "What the hell? What the hell!? " as she fired her gun again and again.

I yelled, "Get behind me! Get behind me! " Instead, a dozen more federal agents ran forward to join her in trying to shoot to death a creature that only barely had a corporeal body.

Exasperation erupted in my chest and I had sudden, bone-deep sympathy for Coyote and everybody else who'd dealt with me in the first months of my shamanistic career. The federal agents simply would not accept that were facing something they were completely unprepared for, which was the moral equivalent of me utterly refusing to accept my talents. It was incredibly frustrating, and I made a note to apologize to everyone I knew.

Right after we got out of this alive.

I kept feeling pops in my power, like soap bubbles exploding in the air. A bit of the wendigo, an elbow or a claw or an ear or a tooth, broke through the net every time it happened. The net resealed itself, drawing more power each time, and I got a double-vision impression that the monster was slipping between its physical and psychic form. I had its tangible self under control, but if it pulled itself just a little farther into the spirit realm I wasn't sure I could hold it. The nets I'd cast in the past had held physical things, not spirits.