C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

And then the story would be about SPD Detective Joanne Walker getting a federal agent to oust a local news reporter from the heart of the action. The investigation would be about what I was hiding, and in the end, it would come out exactly the same way. Maybe magic wouldn't be involved, but the way people found themselves dead after not very long in my presence would be more than enough to screw me over and nail Morrison in the process.

Rock, meet hard place. I exhaled and finished my sentence: "He was there when I shielded everyone this afternoon. You have vestiges of the shielding clinging to you. The only person who's survived this thing did, too. It might not be enough, Sara."

She nodded once, sharply. "It's more than I've got right now. The rest of us will break up into teams of three to search—"

"Don't be stupid." That was probably not the most politic thing I could've said, and it wasn't likely to earn points for honesty, either. I barreled on before Sara had much chance to protest. "I can barely keep this thing off me. You saw how little effect bullets had. Everybody, and I mean you when I say that, is going to be a lot safer if you stay inside. The fact that your guy's gone missing should tell you that." My stomach lurched. "He was outside when he went missing, wasn't he?"

"Yes, he was. I have people on patrol, Joanne. I can't leave this thing—"

"You have to. Sara, you can't go out there—"

"Yes, I can."

"No, you can't."

"Yes I can!"

"No you ca—" Wow. We were, like, six. Clearly I was going to have to do something drastic for her own good. "Okay, fine."

I punched her in the jaw.

The Sara I knew would've dropped like a hot potato. Sadly for me, that girl had been a decade plus some federal training ago. Her head snapped to the right and tears glassed her eyes, but she didn't so much as stagger, much less fall. After a couple very long seconds she cranked her face back around to look at me, a red mark blossoming on her chin.

The emo desk attendant breathed, "Oh, this is gonna be good," and Coyote said "Ten bucks on the blonde," loudly enough for me to hear. Gary, wisely, didn't respond, only shuffled backward, getting out of the way.

Sara spun around and smashed a booted heel into my ribs.

I bet somewhere there was a really important law about not hitting federal agents. I bet there was an equally important one about federal agents only using necessary force. Lucky for Sara, my big poofy winter coat cushioned so much of the kick that she had all kinds of excuse to keep right on being forceful. I slammed into the registration desk, not quite winded, and she came after me with gut punches. I threw an elbow and hit her in the face. Padded or not, elbows were pointy, and she fell back with tears streaming down her cheeks. I swung around to put my weight on the desk, lifted both feet, and kicked her in the chest.

She went flying backward, slamming into one of the lobby chairs with a satisfying crash, and she came up with a girl-gladiator expression that belied her tears. That was okay. I knew they weren't oh-ow-woe-is-me tears. They were merely the by-product of being hit in the face twice. If I'd hoped that was enough to take her down—

Okay, realistically, although I'd thought the first punch might take her down, we weren't really hitting each other over the topic of who was or was not going out into the night to fight the monsters. The juvenile truth of the matter was I'd hit her mostly because Lucas had kept in touch with her after he left Qualla Boundary, and I was pretty sure she retaliated because I'd slept with him in the first place. Emotional maturity was overrated, anyway. I didn't think fighting over a boy was usually quite this literal, but right then it felt kind of good, so I didn't care. It'd been a long time coming.

All that introspection took place while Sara shoved herself out of the chair and rushed me. I waited until the last possible second and stepped aside, hoping for a real Three Stooges moment, but instead of bashing her head into the registration desk she flicked a hand out and caught me in the throat with its stiffened edge.

I went down clawing at my throat as I gagged for air. A tiny oxygen-deprived part of my brain thought to heal myself, and the power flat-out deserted me, which I no doubt richly deserved. Sara kicked me over and nudged my hands out of the way with her toe so she could put a booted foot on my throat. Then, with all the grace and time in the world, she withdrew her duty weapon and pointed it between my eyes.

I had never actually been at the business end of a .45 before. It turned out the scenes in films where the relatively small muzzle of a gun suddenly looked bigger than God Himself were pretty accurate. I didn't think she was really going to shoot me, but that was less reassuring than it might've been. I wheezed, "Okay. You win. You can come hunting with me," and put my hands above my head.

"Do you know what the penalty for assaulting a federal officer is, Joanne?"

"Two weeks' detention after school and a stern warning from the principal?"

Sara stared at me, and for a horrible moment I thought maybe I'd been the only one fighting over Lucas. That was bad, especially after I'd been all high-horse about her attitude earlier. But after a few more seconds she lowered her weapon a few inches and said, "Yeah. Something like that. Are we even?"

"No. I think you won across the board."

She pursed her lips, glanced skyward, and shrugged her eyebrows in a silent consideration that said, essentially, hmm, well gosh, yeah, you're right, I did. Words were overrated. Sometimes faces could say everything necessary. Hers also said I'd probably broken her nose, given how it was swollen and bleeding. The fact that she was still making expressions around it suggested some nerve damage, too, because otherwise it would've hurt too much. I put my hand up, just curious, and she put the gun away to pull me to my feet. I said, "Thanks. This is going to hurt like a son of a bitch," and pulled her nose straight with no other warning.

Her pained howl faded into a surprised squeak as I pulsed healing power right behind that yank. Fender bender, nothing worse, but I didn't have to go through the mental gymnastics of pounding the dents out. Her bruising faded, and when a little part of me wanted to leave a hint of yellow behind, Coyote hit me on the back of my head like he knew what I was thinking. He probably did, since he'd taught me a lot of what I knew.

Sara prodded her nose cautiously when I dropped my hand. "How the hell…?"

"It's easier when you don't know it's going to happen. There's no disbelief for me to fight. Healing's easy." I shrugged uncomfortably. "The body wants to be put right. I'm just speeding it along. Sorry about your nose."

She wriggled its tip with a finger. "I guess there's nothing to be sorry for. If you ever hit me again, Joanne…"

"Yeah, I know, straight to the principal's office with me." I was painfully aware of—well, several things, actually, ranging from my ribs to my kidneys to my throat, but mostly of Laurie Corvallis, who was on her feet. Her hands were working like she wanted to grab something but couldn't quite manage, and I felt a rare bolt of compassion. My world just didn't make any sense from the outside. I wondered if she would go away if I explained I was just trying to keep her out of a situation that she would never comprehend.

Probably not. For one, with the way my luck ran, it would turn out she was much more open to the possibility of and interested in the dynamics of magic than I was. For two, I suspected any time she was told "You wouldn't understand," it made her that much more determined to get to the guts of the thing, whatever it was.