C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

I flung power toward them, not even so much as a net. More like a lasso, just to find out if my magic had more effect than my physical attack had. It whistled through the wendigo harmlessly, which didn't surprise me, and whooshed through Gary as effortlessly, which did. I lurched toward the incline, heart hammering so hard I could barely see. If Gary was as unaffected by my magic as the wendigo was, I was horribly afraid he wasn't exactly alive anymore.

Coyote's hand on my shoulder stopped me. I jerked away, but he caught me again, pulling me around so I could see astonishment curving his lips into a smile. "Your friend's spirit is strong."

That sounded so much like hokey-jokey Indian crap that I nearly decked him. Then a tiny bit of cleverness caught up and I whipped around again, trying to See more clearly. I'd been using the Sight all along, but I'd been paying attention to the wendigo, not Gary.

Who was carrying a great big beautiful tortoise shell on his back. More than on his back: it was somehow larger than he was, solid plates protecting him all around. A tortoise's huge snapping jaws translated into enormous physical strength, far more than an ordinary man could command. He got to his feet ponderously, every action deliberate, and when the wendigo leaped at him again he ducked, caught it on his back, and did the nicest back-slam I'd ever seen outside of pro wrestling.

The wendigo screamed. Gary rolled over, unscathed by its tiny clawing arms, and lifted a heavy fist to drive it down, not fast, but implacably, into the beast's chest.

It wasn't bone that splintered, but souls. The fragments and tattered remains of the wendigo's meals contracted and shriveled, becoming part of its body as it tried frantically to repair itself. Gary hit it again, then again, and its screams turned to panicked squeals as it twisted, trying to escape. Gary held it where I couldn't, caught between corporeality and insubstantiality. Even now I couldn't get my magic to take hold, though a glimmer of understanding finally washed over me.

I was used to fighting in one realm at a time. There were frequently metaphysical manifestations that cropped up during physical battles, but mostly, I fought in the Middle World. I wasn't used to switching wholesale from one level of reality to another in the middle of a fight. The wendigo, though, was completely unconstrained in its ability to move from the physical world to the spirit. I couldn't catch the damned thing because I couldn't keep up. Watching Gary and his tortoise spirit, I thought maybe, maybe, if I gave myself over to Raven entirely, I might be able to slide between realities as freely as Gary and the wendigo were now doing.

I wasn't sure I trusted Raven that much. I wasn't sure I trusted anything that much. I admired the hell out of Gary, that he could let himself be so subsumed by the tortoise spirit. I'd asked the tortoise to protect him, but I didn't think either of us had anticipated just how far the totem animal would go to do that.

I also wondered, briefly, if giving myself to Raven that completely would be as effective as Gary's tortoise was against the wendigo. I didn't exactly think of tortoises as deadly predators, but their sheer size and strength made them worth reckoning with. Ravens were more likely to peck somebody to distraction than destroy them with slow relentless determination.

Determination that the wendigo couldn't stand against. It broke free, shrieking with pain and terror, and Gary's lunge at it was just that much too slow. Hope springing eternal, I flung a net around both of them, encompassing whole yards of sky and earth within it, but the wendigo slipped to spirit form and disappeared through my lashings without a trace. "God damn it! Where'd it—is it coming back? Coyote? Is it going to—?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's too badly hurt."

I whispered a prayer to a deity I didn't entirely believe in, and slid down the mountainside until I reached Gary. He was on his knees, gray eyes wide and uncertain. His tortoise spirit was retreating, no longer needing to encompass him with its protective strength. I crashed into him, hugging him hard, and poured a pulse of my own healing magic through him. Even if the tortoise had taken the brunt of that fight, getting chewed on by a wendigo couldn't be good for anybody. "Gary, are you okay?"

"Right as rain, doll."

His eyes rolled up and he fell over in a faint.

He woke up again almost instantly, a face full of snow apparently just about as effective as smelling salts. I got myself under his arm and we clambered back up the hill, huffing and puffing like two old geezers. Well, like one old geezer and one young one. Close enough.

Somehow I was surprised to find a couple dozen federal agents and a news team waiting for us at the top. I said, "Don't ask," and of course everybody did anyway. Under their babbling, I said, "Mind playing up being fragile? At least some of them will volunteer to help get you back down the hill, and that leaves me fewer to deal with."

Gary whispered, "I donno," back. "Am I fragile?"

I snorted, trying not to let it turn into an out-loud laugh. "About as fragile as a bulldozer, I think."

"In that case I don't mind at all." He lifted his voice a little and put a convincing quaver in it, sounding more like a querulous old man than I'd ever heard him. "Somebody gimme a hand? I ain't feelin' so good. I think I hit my head…."

More Feds than I expected stepped forward. A few just looked like they wanted to be anywhere but here, but one, a woman about my age, looked a little starstruck. If Gary hooked up with a girl forty years his junior I was never going to hear the end of it. Either I'd lost my old silver stallion to a younger, prettier model, or I'd set him on the road to being a dirty, dirty old man. He came out ahead and I looked like a dork either way.

Oh well. It wasn't like I didn't have a lot of practice at that. About eight of them, including the young woman, opted to help carry him down the mountain. I didn't think any of them saw the roguish wink he gave me as they carted him off.

Sadly, eight still left me with about fifteen agents and two news reporters to deal with. Corvallis looked like her brain was collapsing in on itself as she tried to process what she'd seen, or maybe more accurately, hadn't quite seen.

Sara said, "Get back to work," to her team, then gave me a sharp look. "Is it safe?"

I wondered what it had cost her to ask, and wished I had a better answer than, "I think so."

She nodded, and her people reluctantly dispersed. I hated to think how much mess had been made of their crime scene, though on the positive side they weren't going to find anything useful anyway. When we were alone, she said, "What was it?"

"A wendigo." I mostly wanted to see if it meant anything to her. It wouldn't have to me not that long ago—like, yesterday—but the skin around her eyes tightened a little, as if she at least recognized the word.

"Don't tell me you're still into that mystical crap, Joanne."

I started to say, "It's a soul-eating demon," only it came out "Woo-woob-wha? Mystical crap? Me? Into it?"

"You were totally into it. Freaky into it. You were always talking about these big meaningful dreams you had." She made quote marks around half the words in that sentence, while I reeled and tried to match my teenage memories with Sara's violently clashing ones. "Your 'spirit guide,'" she said. "Your 'shamanic training.' You were so full of shit."

I put away trying to reconcile disparate memories and looked down at her for a while. I was tall enough that just looking at people could get them to back off sometimes, but she had federal agent training and, more important, remembered me as an awkward teenager. One she apparently hadn't liked as much as I thought she had. That's what I said, actually. "Wow. You really didn't like me very much, did you? I had…no idea." It stung, the same way learning she and Lucas had kept in touch. I was willing to admit I'd screwed it up. Unintentionally, maybe, but I'd screwed it up. Still, the idea that we'd never really been friends cut a lot deeper than it should've, all these years later.