C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

I could hardly do less. I got up, ice crystals forming on my arms, and tried not to shiver too hard. "Can you hear a drum?"

Corvallis glared at me. "Of course I can't hear a drum. All I can hear is you. I can't even hear that. " She jabbed a finger at the storm whirling outside the circle's boundaries. Then wariness came over her face and she said, "Why? Can you hear a drum?" like it would be a very bad sign if I could.

I envisioned Police Detective Loses Mind! as the headline, and sighed. "No. I wish I could." It would give me a direction to head in, or at least provide some kind of promise there was still a world outside this one. "Corvallis, come over here and put your arms around me, and whatever happens, don't let go."

She stayed right where she was. "Why?"

"Because I'm going to freeze to death if you don't." While true, that was less than half the reason I wanted her to hold on to me. It did, however, sound much more reasonable than the real explanation, and after a few seconds of looking for its flaws, Corvallis did as I asked.

Heat rushed through me so fast it hurt. I swallowed a whimper and did my best to not curl up around the smaller woman like she was a teddy bear. If I did, odds were we'd both find ourselves frozen lumps in no time. I doubted she could sustain enough warmth for one very long, much less two. Instead I mumbled, "Thanks," and folded my arms around her shoulders. It wasn't as warm as her hugging them against me, but I didn't trust she'd keep hanging on if this worked the way I hoped.

I said, "Raven, it's me again," over Laurie's head. She jerked like I'd stuck a pin in her, and I tightened my arms. "Shh. It's okay."

She hissed, "You're talking to ravens," which I had to agree sounded a little crazy, especially since there weren't actually any ravens around. On the other hand, stopping to explain just seemed tedious, so I didn't. I tilted my head back, concentrating on my heartbeat as a substitute for a drum.

"Raven, I know you were there when I entered the Lower World. I felt you. Raven and Rattler both. But I lost you when I came here, and now I need you or I'll be lost, too. So will this woman, and she's only here because of me."

"That is not true. I'm following a story, a—" I felt Corvallis shift, turning her head to glance around the stormbound circle before she muttered, "Fine. Being here, wherever here is, might be because of you. You owe me an explanation, Detective."

"I already gave you one." That was not helping. I made a disgusted sound in my throat and bared my teeth at the sky. Raven was out there somewhere, and he was good at storms and at passing through the flimsy barrier between life and death. I only had to give him a way to find me, and he'd come for us. There had to be a path somewhere.

I tipped my chin down and looked at the top of Corvallis's head. She didn't strike me as the type who would get stuck between, not by any natural means. In so far as natural means applied to my life or scenarios like this one, anyway. "Tell me exactly what happened when you came here."

"I already did," she said in exactly the same snappy, impatient tone I'd used on her a moment earlier. I swear to God, karma was not supposed to be an instant payback thing. I wanted to beat my head against something, but the only thing available was Corvallis's head, which I didn't think would help the situation.

"Laurie, please." People were supposed to respond well to the sound of their own names. I hoped it worked.

Corvallis gave me a look which suggested she knew exactly what I was doing. She probably did. News reporters probably used that kind of trick all the time. But she answered, which was all I asked for. "I told you. The forest twisted in on itself, and when it unfolded we were—"

"We?"

"Jeff and me. My cameraman."

"You brought your cam…" I reminded myself that this was not the time. "When it unfolded you were what?"

"We were here." She glanced around, and I could all but see the gears whirling in her little reporter mind. Then she closed her eyes, and when she spoke again she sounded like the woman on the six o'clock news every night, her voice crisp and concise. "We stepped out of the forest into a clearing about thirty yards across. There was a path of trodden snow right in front of us, and…four. Four people about halfway across the clearing. Jeff stepped across the path and I followed after. Then I was here, in the middle of this storm."

She opened her eyes again, looking up at me. "Back to you at the studio, Jo."

"You," I said, "are one hell of a reporter. When Jeff stepped across the path, did he scuff it?"

"It's snow." Corvallis managed to look pleased at the compliment and sound irritated all at the same time. "How can you scuff snow?" But she closed her eyes again, making me think she was rebuilding the image in her mind, then nodded. "His snowshoes left a line from the forest's edge to the path. Is that important?"

"Very." My circle had been broken, allowing the wendigo to escape and pulling Corvallis in to the between-place in its stead. I wished I had the luxury of panic, but I was starting to get cold again. It crystallized my thoughts, hurrying them to the necessary conclusions. "Look for a…lollipop, Raven. A lollipop in the snow." It sounded silly, but it was a better analogy than a steering wheel, and besides, it involved food. Raven liked food. "A lollipop with a really short handle and the biggest candy circle you've ever seen. Find that in the snow and you'll find us, and then I can bring you a lollipop just like that of your own." I sounded like I was cajoling a two-year-old.

Corvallis, almost reverently, asked, "Have you completely lost your mind?"

I was just about to admit I had when Raven plunged from the sky to our rescue.

The storm was a thing, not a sentient being. Not something that could recognize whether we were vulnerable or strong. I knew that, and yet it came to life, attacking as Raven plummeted down. Wind broke through the circular barrier, slashing at us with knives of ice carried in its invisible hands. Snow whipped around, moving so fast it became a weapon, tiny beads of cold driving into my face and exposed arms. I tucked Laurie's hooded head against my chest and turned eyes blinded with frozen tears toward the hidden sky.

There was no Sight to call here, no way to look beyond the blizzard and follow Raven's path. But I could feel him almost as if I flew with him, battered and driven by the storm. The cold didn't affect him the same way it did me, his existence a more supernatural thing than mine. But the wind did, and to my delight there was a part of himself given over to shrieking, gurgling laughter at being tossed around by the storm. He had a job to do, yes, and he knew it, and was dedicated to it, but he was of a breed known to go sledding down snowy hills, and to deliberately fold their wings so the wind off high bluffs could toss them to and fro. He worked his way through the snow toward us, but he had fun while he was doing it.

It was probably an extremely good life lesson. I put it on my list of things to think about after I was no longer a Jo-sicle and had saved the girl.

Which, if it didn't happen soon, wasn't going to happen at all. I raised my hand, skin stinging with the snow's impact, and bellowed, "Raven! Here! Hurry! " Corvallis was still warm, but I wasn't. Snow-shadows tore around us, making me think I was seeing our rescuer, but every time I grasped for him, he disappeared. My fingers were so cold I wasn't sure if I was clutching at ghosts or if I simply couldn't hold on to Raven long enough to be saved.

All I wanted was to escape the cold. I would do anything to escape the cold. I knew there was a world outside it, and clung desperately to the idea that Raven was on his way, but I could no longer feel him. I wasn't certain I felt anything; Corvallis's fur-wrapped self against my chest could have been a figment of my imagination. I kept holding on, just in case she wasn't, but no matter how hard I tried to hug her, I felt no pressure, no give, nothing but the endless snow. Dying seemed preferable to the cold. Even forcing myself out of this world as a wendigo seemed like a better fate— anything to be warm again. I'd had very little sympathy for the monster, but if it had begun as human and had faced the cold between, now I at least understood how it could reach for such extremes in order to avoid the cold.