C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

A breath of humor rushed through my lips. While that would be nice, it had no basis in reality. I stepped away from the hotel, closer to the forest. "Herne?"

The god stopped, and in his stillness was nothing more than a tree, all black branches in the moonlight. I waited for him to say something, then realized he wouldn't and blurted, "There was one other person we lost today, one of my friend's agents. Is he still out there?"

"I brought everyone who still walked the forest to you. If he is missing, there was no life to be found."

I slumped. "I was afraid of that. Okay. Thank you."

The tree bent a little, creaking as it did, and then was nothing but a tree, Herne's presence from it gone. I stood there alone for a moment, gazing at where he'd been, then twitched as Sara called my name. "What was that?"

I turned toward her, at a loss for anything but the truth. "That was…I thought you'd gone inside. It was a forest god. Sara, I'm sorry. He says your agent is dead."

She stared at me a long moment, then passed a hand over her face. "Yeah. You said he probably was." Another brief eternity passed before she shook herself. "All right. Thanks for telling me. You…you should go home for a while, Joanne."

Cold, not quite so bad as the storm, but abrupt and uncomfortable, clenched my gut. Sara scowled, reading denial in my face. "I'm serious. If this is what you're doing…you should go home. See your dad. Talk to the elders. You should do that."

Cold turned to ice and cracked in my voice. "Is he still there? Do you see him?"

"No, I live out here, but I go back sometimes. He was there last summer, anyway."

"You live here? In Seattle?" That was an easier thought than my dad back in North Carolina. "Maybe we should…" I thought of Lucas, and watching Sara's expression, said, "Or maybe not. I'll think about North Carolina."

Sara nodded and looked away, neither of us sure what to say next. We weren't friends, not anymore, but we were maybe less antagonistic than we'd been for years. Funny how rivalries could remain, even through time and distance and living only in memory. I didn't want to leave us with history as the last thing between us, and blurted, "What're you going to tell your bosses?"

She glanced back at me with a frustrated huff. "What can I tell them? Nothing. I'm going to spend the next six months or more working on this case, until it goes cold to their satisfaction. You're sure it's over?"

"Yeah. Look, I'm sorry about your man, Sara."

"Me, too." Sara fell a step back, precursor to escaping my presence. "I'll see you around, okay, Joanne?"

"Yeah." I didn't offer a hand, and neither did she. "I'll see you."

She walked away, and I waited until she was gone before following her in, and driving home to Seattle in time for Christmas.

Sunday, December 25, 5:20 A.M.

I had long since gotten over leaping out of bed bright and early on Christmas morning. Someone, though, apparently hadn't: pervasive thumping on my door dragged me out of a very nice sleep. I crawled over Coyote and into my fuzzy green robe half inclined to yell at the interloper who'd dragged me out of bed at such an unreasonable hour, but holiday cheer got the better of me before I even got to the door.

There wasn't even anyone there to be cheerful at. A gift-wrapped DVD-sized package sat outside my door, and I could hear somebody thudding down the apartment building's stairs. Coyote said, "What happened, Santa forgot where the chimney is?" I shot him a sleepy smile as I tore the wrapping paper open.

It was, in fact, a DVD. Not a popular movie sort, just a silver disc with a note that said "For Joanne" stuck to it. I shuffled to my computer and dropped it in. Coyote sat behind me and I pulled his arm around my waist as the disc spun up and began to play.

Jeff the cameraman, it turned out, was a dab hand with a video camera. Even his crab-walked retreat from the wendigo was surprisingly steady, and Coyote looked like a native god in the moonlight as he fought the thing. I blew in from offscreen, slamming into the wendigo hard enough that I grunted again, watching it. It and I flung each other back and forth, and Jeff's camerawork was only a half second behind as the wendigo leaped on Laurie Corvallis's prone body.

The next couple minutes were spent enthralled by the utter peculiarities of seeing what one of my psychic/realworld battles looked like from the outside. Every fight, every step, every gesture and every expression I made in Laurie's garden registered itself on my face and body in the Middle World. The wendigo wasn't visible. I just looked like the world's most dedicated mime, flying backward when something hit me, staggering around like a drunk after a bad blow. Not until I raised the spear and drove it down toward Corvallis, awakening her, did the fight have two participants. Moments later, Coyote opened a path to the Lower World for me, and I watched myself walk along it and disappear.

It looked, swear to God, like a magic trick. Like the audience should be peering around in search of the mirrors before applauding wildly. I was gone for a long time, long enough that Jeff panned around to the others. Coyote and Gary were all but leaning forward, both of them obviously—to me—offering strength and support and concern. Sara and Corvallis both looked grimly gobsmacked, and Laurie kept touching her breast where I'd very nearly impaled her. A clock came on in the screen's lower right-hand corner, then jumped ahead by half an hour, footage cut out before I finally returned.

The me on the recording looked so very sad. So tired, and so glad to hand the spear to someone else. I reached out to turn it off, and Coyote stopped me. I said, "C'mon," quietly. I'd already watched more than I wanted to, and all I could think was how utterly insane it was going to look on the evening news. Morrison would kill me.

The screen faded to black, then came up again in a news studio. Corvallis held a DVD between two fingers, turning it so it caught the light. "There are two copies. The one you've got, and this one."

She broke hers into pieces, and the screen went dark.

After what seemed like a long time, I cleared my throat and turned the computer off. "Guess we scored one for the home team there."

"So how come you don't sound thrilled?"

I shook my head. "Because I don't like making believers out of people. It's too big a thing to ask."

Coyote chuckled against my shoulder. "You went and grew up, Jo. While I wasn't looking. I didn't expect that."

"Oh, believe me, neither did I. I tried hard not to." I twisted, trying to see him, and he got to his feet, then pulled me to mine and herded me back toward the bedroom. I went, grateful he didn't have an overwhelming urge to be up at five in the morning either, even if it was Christmas. We tucked up together, me tracing idle patterns on his chest before I mashed my nose against his pectoral and mumbled, "I can't do things your way. You know that, right, Yote? I don't know if I'd have been able to even if I'd stuck with studying with you all those years ago, or if the past six months had gone differently. But I don't think so. You…you're a healer. I'm something else."

"Warrior's path." He put his mouth against my hair. "I don't envy that. But you've still got a lot you can learn. A lot I could teach you," he amended hesitantly. "If you want."

I pushed up on my elbow, feeling all serious suddenly. "I can't think of a better teacher."

The man had a smile like no other. I thought it had just been how happy I was to see him at first, but I'd had a few days to get used to it now, and it was definitely a grade-A smile. Bright and fleeting and all the more delicious for its quickness. He caught my hand and kissed the palm, then folded our fingers together on his chest. "Okay. I'll stop trying to remake you in my image, and you can…"