C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

I'd known almost since the beginning that real shamanic healing didn't have to go through all the tiddly steps I took, all the metaphorical stretches that I used to convince myself any of it was possible. Knowing it, though, and experiencing the pure blowout of power, the instantaneous transformation from broken to whole, were two very different things. I took a deep breath, marveling at how it didn't hurt, how my lungs weren't melting inside my chest, and sat up beaming.

Snakes were not creatures well-known for their expressive faces, but my rattler managed to look pleased anyway. "That was sssatisssfactory. Ssstrength you have, ssshaman. Ssstrength, but little sssense. You would be wissse to heed the raven."

Bemused, I said, "Yeah? I'm trying. What do you bring to the table?" and winced at my own lack of gratitude. "I mean, um…"

"You mean asss you sssay. Sssnakesss, like you, are sssimple creaturesss. We ssstrike when it isss necssesssssssary. It isss sssomething I like about you. Asss for my giftsss, they are plain to sssee, if you ussse a little sssenssse."

I wasn't sure I liked being a simple creature, but I did like how his forked tongue got all excited and tangled around a word like "necessary," with all those ess sounds. I bet if I could get him to do the "she sells sea shells" tongue twister he'd get such a hiss going he couldn't ever stop. I also bet he wouldn't appreciate it at all, and bit my lip against trying. "The healing," I said instead. "I couldn't do it like that before."

He inclined his head quite elegantly, and I reached out, tentatively, to see if snakes liked being scratched on the jaw. This one evidently did; he preened and tipped his head like a cat, leaning into the scritch. "There isss more. It will come to you when you need it mossst."

"More? Instantaneous healing is kind of a lot."

"Yesss, but it isss not all of what you are." His snaky eyes lidded contentedly and he began coiling down on himself, clearly ready for a nap. "Sssoon you will sssee."

"I can't wait to find out." I even sort of meant that. "One more question. How come you talk to me? Raven doesn't."

The rattler swayed his head to the side, examining me as if I were a fool. "Becaussse ravensss can talk in your world, sssilly ssshaman." He bumped me with his blunt nose, and I awakened to the Lower World, and chaos.

It wasn't the wendigo, if I wanted to count small favors. There was none of the blood stench, none of the bitter cold, none of the almost-human drive for food. Instead, Coyote staved off wolves, for a metaphorical if not literal description.

I had some familiarity with the demon denizens of the Lower World, having accidentally released them into Seattle one time. Coyote faced them and their brethren: chimeras of terrible form and shape ranging from vicious-toothed, segmented worms to giants whose bodies were twisted with hate. One of those, a stone giant called an a-senee-ki-wakw, locked gazes with me as I woke, and I saw from the depths of rage in its eyes that it knew me. I'd released it and then I'd put it back, and it intended on having its revenge. They all did, and knew they only had to go through Coyote to get to me.

Now would be a good time for whatever other gifts the rattlesnake had offered to show up. I drew my sword and rushed forward to join Coyote in battle. He was bleeding and his jaws were red, and my appearance at his side was shock enough that he snarled and turned on me for an instant before he knew who I was. Then relief sagged his features and he turned back to the demon spirits, hunched low in preparation for attack. "You need to get out of here. We can't kill them, not here, but they won't stop hunting until your spirit has been extinguished. You really pissed them off."

"It's a feature." I fell into step with him, backing up, but the holler wasn't built to scramble out of backward. "You go first. Get up there so you can give me a hand out."

He barked a protest and the twisted giant surged forward, slamming a huge first into the ground. The drumbeat faltered, then sped up, shaking the earth as if somewhere out in the real world, Gary knew what was happening and was trying to help. "Coyote, go! I've got the reach weapon!"

He snarled again, but my logic apparently swayed him, because he suddenly turned tail and raced up the back side of the holler. The demons, eager for their prey, leaped as one, converging on a single point.

Me.

I twitched to the side, faster and more graceful than I knew I could be. My sword lashed out, whipping like a saber, and blue power flared along it to score a mark against the giant's hide. One of the others, a flint-winged monstrosity, turned on a wing tip and jumped at me again. I flattened against the earth, rolled, and came up again in a fighting stance, all while my brain was still shrieking in panic and waiting to get crushed. "I am not your enemy!" My staccato shout bounced off the holler's walls until the only word left was enemy. The aseneeki-wakw seemed to feed on it, getting stronger and taller with each repetition. I darted back and forth, avoiding scorpion tail stings and gnashing worm teeth sheerly by the grace of God, while Coyote stood above me barking his fool head off.

I wanted to scurry up the hill after him. I really did. But aside from the fact that I didn't think I'd make it, the blinding need to do something about these creatures, the simple wish to succeed in defeating something, since the wendigo kept kicking my ass, had grown stronger than the impulse to run. The misses got narrower, and I got angrier, until I flung down my rapier and bellowed, "Fine! You think you can take me? Come and get me, motherfuckers!"

It was awesome. I felt like Samuel L. Jackson, right up until the motherfuckers came and got me.

I didn't know there was anywhere below the Lower World to get dragged down into. It turned out there was, and the best word I had for it was Hell.

The Lower World, for all its bizarre proportions and colors, was a comparatively friendly place. Dangerous, sure, but I'd yet to encounter a plane of existence that wasn't. The Lower World, though, didn't shove knives into my chest when I breathed. It didn't smell of sulfur and brimstone and fire, and it didn't reflect a gory sky in its obsidian surface. There was no sun, but where there was light, it shone dull red through dark translucent rock.

Demons roamed the gleaming black earth. They fought each other, they bled, they rose again. Some reached for the bleak sky, trying to claw their way free. There were rents where a few had succeeded: where a handful had been sufficiently inspired by my presence to tear through to another realm.

Peculiarly, now that they had me, they seemed reluctant to attack. My sword was lying on the ground in front of me, glowing so brightly it hurt my eyes. It struck me that the blade was really the only source of light. I could see the sky because of its brilliance, and where black stone looked red, the rapier also reflected there. I squatted to lift it, and the monsters shrank back, mewling and twisting their gazes away.

Demons didn't strike me as particularly smart, but my limited experience suggested they wouldn't, of their own volition, have brought me somewhere that I had the upper hand by dint of a glowy sword. Slowly, semiconsciously, I looked to my left. Followed the beat of my heart in that direction, half knowing, half dreading, what I would see.

A cavern, black maw in a black mountain, made one dark shadow against another. It looked warm, somehow. Warm and not exactly inviting, but more comfortable than a jagged plain filled with things that wanted to eat me.

"Oh no." My voice came out light and shaky, an alien thing in a world made for screams. "No. I'm dumb, but not that dumb. And I don't believe you're Lucifer, God damn it, even if this is Hell." I didn't believe it was the devil because I didn't believe there was any way, on any level of reality, that I could ever go head-to-head with The Devil Himself, and I knew someday I was going to have to face the thing under the mountain. Therefore, it couldn't be the devil. Cogito, ergo sum.