Body Surfing

free to floor it. There was no squeal of wheels or smell of burning rubber—at two and a half tons, the Pierce-Arrow was too heavy for that, no matter what was under the hood—but the doctor’s head was still pushed back into the headrest. It was a very satisfying effect. Yes, it was.
    Very satisfying indeed.

9
    L eo parked at the end of a dirt road. A few willow trees waved between them and the river. Why do I keep ending up back here? Jasper thought. I didn’t even like the river when I was alive.
    Leo got out of the car. The alert bell dinged insistently, but Jasper left the keys in the ignition and followed the demon. The bell tinkled faintly after him like an admonition, a tiny reminder of Leo’s prowess.
    In front of him, Michaela’s ass moved up and down in the tiny pair of shorts, but her walk was anything but enticing. Her bare feet crushed pebbles beneath her soles, her hands snapped branches out of her way as if they offended her. When she reached the river, she climbed out on a slanted trunk and stood above the dark water. Her back was to Jasper. Her arms and legs were golden and hairless—flawless, really, but Jasper couldn’t find anything sexy in the girl who stood in front of him. Sexuality requires a hint of vulnerability, and there was nothing vulnerable about Michaela. Not with Leo inside her, filling her like a nylon stocking stuffed with pennies. And yet, despite that, Jasper was still filled with desire. The desire to fuck and the desire to kill—equal parts lust and hatred, which, instead of canceling each other out, only made both burn more wildly. This was Michaela. This was Leo.
    This sucked .
    Leo pirouetted to face Jasper and waved Michaela’s arms at the expanse of water.
    “1609. Henry Hudson ventures up these waters in search of the fabled Northwest Passage. The enormous width of the river is encouraging. This is a mighty stream indeed. But less than thirty miles north the river narrows, and he can go no further. He’s forced to return the way he came. A year later he tries again, this time heading much farther north. Hudson Strait and on to Hudson Bay, where his ship becomes locked in ice. He and his crew winter on the rocky coast, living off nothing but dried meat and the occasional Arctic hare. When the ice finally melts, Hudson wants to push on for the Pacific, but his crew mutinies. They leave their captain and his son in an open boat with no food, water, or weapons and turn for home. Hudson dies, of course, but so do his renegade sailors. Only eight of them make it back to Europe, where they’re promptly arrested and tried for treason.”
    Leo paused, and a faint sound came to Jasper’s ears: the alert bell in the stolen car. He reminded himself that he had the same abilities Leo had. As the demon opened his mouth to speak again, Jasper cut him off.
    “Get to the point. I know you’ve got one in that sick little brain of yours.”
    Leo laughed. “My point is that sometimes you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Sometimes,” he stared at Jasper with eyes that did not belong to Michaela, “you’re just damned.”
    Jasper pretended his shiver was caused by the wind off the water. “Yeah, I’m still not getting it.”
    “Hudson was an explorer. He risked everything—hell, he lost everything, including his own son—for the sake of discovering something new. Something about the world, but also something about himself. You, Jasper, have an opportunity compared to which Henry’s journey looks like a plastic boat running up and down a bathtub. You’re the first new Mogran in hundreds of years. The first intentional one in thousands. One day they’ll call you Gamma-I. The first of the Gamma Wave. The first of a new generation.”
    Jasper leveled his gaze at Leo. Leo in Michaela’s body. Saw both the conjunction and the distinction. Steeling his voice as best he could, he said, “I won’t become you.”
    “You don’t even know what I am. You don’t know what you are. You are Mogran , Jasper. The rarest and most powerful entity this world has ever known. In twenty millennia there have been fewer than one thousand of us. Now there is just you, me, and the Alphas. Thanks to the ridiculousness of the Covenant, we came close to making ourselves extinct. But we can start over. On our terms. We can make a new world.”
    Jasper opened his mouth, but Leo waved him silent.
    “Listen to me, Jasper. The planet was bigger when Hudson sailed up this river.