Body Surfing

pass out first: him or the dog.
    His left hand flailed for anything it could find. There was another sharp pain as he smacked his hand into a piece of glass, but it felt like a bee sting compared to the pain in his right arm. He grabbed the shard and stabbed it into the dog’s face. He couldn’t tell if he was doing any real damage, but he could feel Gunther’s jerks slowing down, could hear his nails scrabbling for purchase on the linoleum floor. Q. realized his eyes were closed and struggled to open them. The glass had fallen from his bloody hand, but it had done its damage. One of Gunther’s eyes was a bloody pulp. The other stared at him weakly but malevolently. The animal’s abdomen was spasming, but only a few drops of bile squeezed past Q.’s hand.
    “Fucking die already!”
    The dog’s back legs fell out from under him. He shook his neck, but it was like he was trying to dislodge a fly from his ear. His abdomen contorted again and again. His eyes opened wide with surprise, and then, almost as if he’d been shot, he fell to the floor with a thud. Q.’s grip loosened, and his hand slipped out, along with pints of vomit.
    The boy fell on his back, his own gut heaving as he threw up the contents of his stomach. But at the same time he was wondering what the hell had just happened. Dogs didn’t just snap like that. Not overnight. Not even with rabies. There had seemed to be an intelligence to the way Gunther had destroyed the house, the way he had lain in wait for Q. at the top of the stairs. Again he asked himself if the Mogran could possess animals as well as people. It had never come up in his conversations with Ileana and Dr. Thomas, but that didn’tmean it couldn’t happen. Could he—had he just killed Leo? Was it already over?
    He looked at his arm, but it was covered in too much blood to assess the damage. He stumbled weakly to his feet and made his way to the kitchen sink. The cold water stung at first, but after a while it began to feel good. Q. let it pour over his arm until it ran clear, then shut it off. It was only after his arm was completely clean that he saw the watch.
    “Fuck,” he said, and laughed bitterly. “I let that dog chew my arm off for nothing.”
    “Well, I enjoyed it anyway.”
    Q. whirled around.
    Jarhead West stood in the door to the hall. He held Q.’s clay pot in the palm of one hand like a bowler at the top of a lane. He wore a pair of John Van Arsdale’s overalls, and his bare chest was leaner and more muscled than Jasper remembered it, his gut all but gone. But none of these changes was as significant as the malevolent light that swam in his eyes.
    “Jarhead,” Leo said, pointing a finger at his host. “Jar of Solomon.” And he pointed at the pot in his hand. “I’m impressed you figured this out so quickly. But really, Q.? Did you think you could stuff me in here like a genie in a bottle?”
    “Maybe if I rubbed you the right way.” In one smooth motion Q. lifted his arms and pointed them at Leo. His right wrist bent, his left hand twisted the watch’s clasp. The dart shot out of the knob with a click like a ballpoint pen.
    Leo pursed Jarhead’s lips, watching the tiny missile fly toward him and fall harmlessly to the floor.
    “Huh. That was anticlimactic, wasn’t it? Let’s see if I can do better.”
    The demon lifted his host’s muscular arm. He tossed the jar in the air once, twice, a third time. Somewhere between the second and third tosses Q. realized he needed to rewind and reload the watch, but by then it was too late. He only managed to give the knob two or three turns before Leo hurled the jar at him. It shot through the airand exploded against his forehead. Q. didn’t even have time to cry out. With a splat, he fell face first onto the kitchen floor.
    The demon shuffled over and turned the boy over. A mess of blood and bile and milk and flour covered the boy’s face.
    “Ah, Q.,” he said, “who’d want to kiss you now?” And, holding him by his hair, he dragged him from the room.

12
    Q .?” J.D. Thomas’s voice echoed through the empty old house. “Mohammed? Are you here?”
    Where the fuck is Q.? Jasper hissed mentally.
    You don’t have to whisper , Michaela said. I can hear you just fine. And Q.’s gonna have to take care of himself. We got problems of our own .
    The picture on the back of The City of Frozen Souls flashed in Jasper’s mind.
    Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it’s not him .
    Jasper! Now is not the time to get