C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

Rich laughter rolled from the cavern, deep enough to make glassy rock crack and shatter against the ground. I bared my teeth, feeling very much like a mouse facing down a lion, and repeated, "No."

The earth rumbled, a scrape of stone on stone. A trapped sound, I thought with a tiny surge of hope. My mother'd done a thorough job of kicking the Master's ass, if he couldn't wriggle free from his mountain cave even in what looked to me like the depths of Hell. It gave me a little confidence, and a little, compared to what I'd had, was a lot.

I didn't know what the creature in the stone was, besides an enemy. He commanded the banshees, feeding on the blood of their victims. Feeding on their souls, maybe, though I had the impression that was an act of desperation on his part, after my mother and I had thwarted his more usual dinner plans. He was weak, but he was interested in me, and I was going to have to deal with him someday.

Personally, I wanted that someday to be as far away as humanly possible. The monster in the mountain commissioned death cauldrons and frightened gods. I was in no way a match for him.

He knew it, of course. He'd caught my attention, or I'd caught his, the very first time I'd used any kind of power as an adult. I'd known instantly that I was part of some game to him, and that if he could destroy me while I was young and stupid he'd be happy to. He almost had, too, but my dead mother had taken him to the mat, and ever since he'd been lingering at the edges of my mind, unable to break through.

I didn't like that he kept turning up in the shadows. It made me think I was being investigated for weaknesses, and I had more than enough to show. It also made me afraid that Sheila MacNamarra's smackdown was losing its hold. If he worked his way free before I was up to full speed, I was pretty sure it wouldn't be just me who suffered.

On what constituted a positive side, the best he could do right now was send minions—assuming they were his minions, and not just foolish demons who hadn't thought through their attack clearly enough—to drag me around and try to scare me. I was, by increments, becoming less scared and more pissed off. I leveled my sword at the cavern, willing power to carry my words to him. To weigh him down, too, as much as I could. Mom had pinned him. I should be able to reinforce that, at least. Silver and blue coalesced in the blade, almost humming, then leaped forward in a surge to rush the mountain like a locomotive. "You aren't ready for me yet, buster, and I'm not ready for you. One of us is going to pull a trump card sooner or later, but until then, quit dicking me around. I'm not in the mood."

His presence retreated under the weight of my power, and all the amusement I was accustomed to sensing from him went flat. Triumph blared through me.

And was followed hard by a tremendous heave from my bound enemy. The whole mountain range shook, earth roaring protest at rough treatment. Glass exploded everywhere as the Master's rage surged outward as if it were suddenly a living thing given body of its own. My own puny magic went thin and terrified, riding the upswell, trying frantically to pin it back down.

It couldn't, but neither could he quite break through my silvery power clinging furiously to the earth and keeping him from bursting through. All my bravado went up in smoke, and I whispered, "Raven, please, get me out of here."

The sky broke open under enormous talons. Red light bled through, sending demons squealing and scattering. My raven dived through the tear in the heavens and caught my shoulders to drag me back into the worlds I knew.

Coyote and Gary were both kneeling over me when I opened my eyes. Coyote had two black eyes, a split lip and a host of other small injuries I couldn't see. I felt them, though, as wrongnesses in his aura, in his power. Without thinking, I clapped my hand against his face.

His yowl of pain turned to a gurgle of astonishment as I pushed a torrent of healing power through him. The bruises cleared up, cuts sealing over, and it was only as a distant second that I thought of patching the paint job on a vehicle; the metaphor hadn't been necessary. He fell back on his rear, prodding at himself, and raised wide brown eyes to me. Gary did just the opposite, leaning forward all bright-eyed, like he couldn't wait to hear what had happened.

"A snake," I said before either of them asked. "A snake, like on my drum. They're symbols of healing, did you know that? It, I mean, he, it, um. Just cleared away all the cobwebs, kind of. Whoomp, no more messing around with metaphor. I can just do it." Oh God. I needed a swoosh, now.

"They're symbols of renewal," Coyote said in a deliberately pedantic tone. "They can also represent shape-shifting, Jo. The shedding of the old skin, coming into the new…."

I sat up. I didn't know when I'd fallen over, but I sat up. "He said there were other gifts I'd discover when I needed them. Maybe shape-shif…" Nope. I couldn't get through the sentence "Sorry. I just don't believe people can shape-shift, Ro. Maybe when you're traveling through the other worlds, yeah, okay, because I usually end up a mole or something when I'm trying to get to my garden, but not for real."

Muscle went tight along his jaw before he bobbed his eyebrows in a shrug. "All right, then. Some other gift, then, if he's offering more." I felt somehow chastised, and, contrary to the last, suddenly as if maybe I did so believe in shape-shifting, neener neener. Coyote, probably just as well for me, couldn't read my mind, and continued on with, "You should thank him for the healing, though." He glanced at himself, and muttered, " I should thank him."

"I should thank you. I had no idea those demons had come up, Coyote." Augh. He was right. I called him Coyote when I was trying to make an emotional connection and some variation on his real name when I was annoyed or trying to impart information. Good thing I never played poker. "I wasn't aware of anything except the quest. They'd have torn me apart if you hadn't been there. Thank you."

He said, "It's my job," but he sounded pleased. "But then what happened? You were playing them like a pro and then you threw down your sword and they jumped you and you disappeared."

I'd already forgotten it was my own moxy that had let the demons pull me into Hell. I wondered if the Master could've influenced me, made me pull a stupid stunt like that, but the sad truth was, I just wasn't too bright sometimes. It'd been all me. "Know anything about someone called the Master?"

"From about six different science fiction television shows, sure." Coyote's humor faded away when I didn't laugh. "Sorry. I didn't know it was important. Never heard of him. Who is he?"

"The bad guy." I shook my head. "I don't really know. My mother faced him a long time ago, and it's going to be my turn sooner or later."

"'Unto every generation a Slayer is born'?"

Gary, who was apparently more up on pop culture than I was, guffawed. I glared at them both, but mostly at Coyote. "You told me I was mixed up fresh. No baggage like whatever you're talking about. This isn't a generational thing, not like that." Actually, for all I knew, it could be. Maybe the women in my family had been fighting monsters in the dark all the way back to the beginning of time. I hoped they'd generally been more competent than me, if that was the case.

"No, no, that's not how it works on B…nevermind. What about the Master?"

"He was trying to get my attention again. That's where I went. It doesn't matter that much right now. I don't think he's influencing the wendigo." I rolled that statement around in my mind, testing it for veracity. It seemed accurate: as far as I could tell, the wendigo was after flesh and soul for its own survival, not for someone else's benefit. I'd been afraid something had been controlling it, but there'd been no hint of a link to another entity in my encounters with it. Besides, a soul-eating demon working for itself was plenty bad enough. "We can talk about him later. Right now you tell me, Ro. Am I in good enough shape to try this soul retrieval now? Can we take this thing before it kills anybody else?"