Body Surfing

time since he’d had the chance for this kind of sport.
    Leaves crunched under heavy feet. There was a grunt as Q. launched himself into the air. Leo jerked the stick upward, felt it catch Q.’s kicking legs. The boy’s body crashed to the ground. In a moment Leo was on top of him. The kick in the gut was just for fun, as was smashing the boy’s head into a tree trunk and making him eat a faceful of dirt. It was important to let Q. know Leo was still in control, whether he was inside the boy or not. He poked the sharp end of his stick into the boy’s back.
    “One word, and you’ll be pissing out a brand new hole.”
     
    A hand roughly rolled Q. over. The first thing he saw was the nasty gash in Michaela’s left shoulder, clotted with blood and silt from the river.
    “Michaela! Are you all ri—”
    Michaela punched him in the jaw, and the iron tang of blood filled Q.’s mouth.
    “I told you to keep quiet.” She smiled wickedly, ran a hand over Q.’s chest. “So this is what you look like from the outside? Nice.”
    Q. tried to jerk free, but the tiny girl held him down as if he were a toddler. She leaned over until her face was directly atop Q.’s, stared into his eyes until the boy could see the demon clearly.
    “Leo,” he whispered.
    Leo twitched at the sound of his name, then nodded, sat up.“Who is with you? Answer quietly, or I’ll twist your arm out of its socket and use it to beat the truth from you.”
    Q. saw no reason to lie. “The doctor. Dr. Thomas. And Ileana.”
    Leo’s eyes narrowed. “Ileana Zanic?”
    “I don’t know her last name.”
    “Croatian? Blond, gray eyes, thirty-four?” Q. nodded, and Leo smiled in amusement. “This is going to be even more fun than I thought.”
    When Leo didn’t elaborate, Q. said, “What’re we gonna do now?”
    The demon looked down as if he’d already forgotten about Q. The wet tanktop pulled heavily around Michaela’s breasts, and Q. hated the fact that he noticed this, and hated even more that Leo saw him notice it. The demon glanced down at the nubile body he’d chosen, looked back up with a smirk.
    “We wait, Q. Patiently and very, very quietly. Do you understand?” He dropped his knee heavily on Q.’s groin for emphasis.
    Q. fought back a groan. The demon’s knee was pressing his belt buckle painfully into his pelvis, but when he squirmed Leo only pushed harder.
    A moment later he lifted his head. The demon had slitted his host’s eyes. Q. realized the Mogran had refocused his senses, was surveying the forest in search of Jasper and Ileana. The demon’s eyes carved lines through the tree trunks, and he made micromovements of his head to adjust the angle of his ears. Even his nose wrinkled as he sniffed the air, like a leopard scenting for prey.
    Q. closed his own eyes, tried to slow his breathing, refocus his senses. The first thing he noticed was something moving over the skin of his left ankle. It could’ve been a spider or it could’ve been a weed waving in the breeze, but he didn’t look. The moisture in the ground was soaking through his shirt, and he started to shiver. He wanted to open his eyes but was afraid to. It was so hard to look at Michaela and think of her as the enemy, and yet he knew he had to. He asked himself if he could kill her to get Leo, but couldn’t answer the question—which, when you got right down to it, was basically thesame thing as saying no. He couldn’t do it. Not Michaela. Maybe not anyone. At the same time he felt guilty, because he knew if he let the demon escape that there would only be more victims. Dozens, hundreds, thousands even, and each of those new hosts would be someone’s Michaela. Someone’s friend, daughter, wife. For the first time he began to understand why Ileana was the way she was. It was an impossible choice, and yet it had to be made.
    But if the doctor was right—if it were somehow possible to zap the demons out of their hosts—it could all change.
    If, if, if. Q. told himself to stop dreaming and focus on staying alive. Unable to move, afraid to open his eyes, he opened his ears instead. At first all he heard was his heart thud-thud-thudding in his chest like a drum machine, but then other sounds came to him. Leaves rustling, branches rubbing together with an itchy creak. A bird called, a yakkety-yak sound like a bluejay or a squabbling blackbird. A sigh escaped Michaela’s body, and even as he wondered whether it was her or Leo who made it, he noticed that