Demon Hunts

THE WALKER PAPERS

Urban Shaman

“A swift pace, a good mystery, a likeable protagonist, magic, danger—Urban Shaman has them in spades.”

—Jim Butcher, bestselling author of The Dresden Files series

Thunderbird Falls

“Fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels and the works of urban fantasists Charles de Lint and Tanya Huff should enjoy this fantasy/mystery’s cosmic elements. A good choice.”

—Library Journal

Coyote Dreams

“Tightly written and paced, [Coyote Dreams] has a compelling, interesting protagonist, whose struggles and successes will captivate new and old readers alike.”

—RT Book Reviews

Walking Dead

“Murphy’s fourth Walker Papers offering is another gripping, well-written tale of what must be the world’s most reluctant—and stubborn—shaman.”

—RT Book Reviews

THE NEGOTIATOR

Heart of Stone

“An exciting series opener…Margrit makes for a deeply compelling heroine as she struggles to sort out the sudden upheaval in her professional and romantic lives.”

—Publishers Weekly

House of Cards

“Violent confrontations add action on top of tense intrigue in this involving, even thrilling, middle book in a divertingly different contemporary fantasy romance series.”

—LOCUS

Hands of Flame

“Fast-paced action and a twisty-turny plot make for a good read…. Fans of the series will be sad to leave Margrit’s world behind, at least for the time being.”

—RT Book Reviews

Author Note

By the time Demon Hunts comes out in June 2010, you’ll have just missed the Brenda Novak Diabetes Research auction, which she runs every May. In 2009 I offered a “Tuckerization”—an opportunity to have a character named after a reader—in the auction, and will very likely do the same in future auctions. Please keep an eye on my Web site, cemurphy.net, for information about such opportunities in the upcoming years!

—Catie

This one’s for Tara.

(I think that’s enough apologizing now, don’t you? :))

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Tuesday, December 20, 4:34 A.M.

Someone had been chewing on the body.

Not something. Something, in the grand scheme of life, seemed like it would be okay. Things—cats, dogs, raccoons: choose your omnivore, I wasn’t picky—were expected to chew on dead flesh. I was no forensics expert, but I’d learned a few basics at police academy. For example, a bear stripped of its skin and missing its skull can so easily be mistaken for a skinned human that the exposed meat has to be tested in order to ascertain what kind of animal it had been. For another example, humans have a very round, even cusp to their bite that most mammals don’t share. So I was pretty confident it was a someone, and not a something, who had eaten part of Charlie Groleski’s left arm.

This was really not how I wanted to start the holiday season.

My partner, a holiday himself—Billy Holliday—swung down beside me. The Christmas carol he was whistling turned into a low long warble of dismay. “Looks like somebody ate him.”

“I’d noticed.” I rocked back on my heels—a dangerous endeavor, since I was halfway up a low cliff, standing on a semi-sheer rock face. I was roped into a harness that was secured at the top of the cliff, but leaning back still felt like asking for trouble. “Tell me something, Billy. How come we get all the exciting cases?”

“We don’t.” Billy crouched beside the body, his own harness squeaking and rattling with the motion. I edged several inches to the side and squinted nervously at the drop immediately to my left. Harsh white searchlights stared back at me, the generators powering them shaking all quietude from the morning. The lights made sharp shadows of our narrow ledge, enhancing my awareness that there wasn’t really enough room for two people on the ledge, much less two people and a corpse. “Daniels, he gets exciting cases,” Billy said. “Drug murders, Mafia turncoats, revenge killings. We never get that stuff.”

“You don’t think half-eaten dead guys stuffed into crevasses are exciting?”

He shook his head. “No. I think they’re weird. We get the weird cases, not the exciting ones.” He pushed up and wrapped a hand around his rappelling line for balance. “Groleski must’ve been dead from the time they called in a missing persons report, maybe before. Too many days. I can’t get anything from him.”

I muttered, “Crap,” and let the Sight wash over me.