Body Surfing

you can be of any…assistance.” The doctor offered Jasper a slight but genuine-looking smile. “Who knows, if you’ve managed to make one or two or a hundred new Mogran by then, I’ll have no need of you. You are a kind of first, after all. There is a certain rightness to your survival.”
    “You mean one or two or a hundred people murdered, just so you can experiment on their ghosts, rather than me? Yeah, I don’t think so.”
    The doctor turned slightly, looked at the glow of the rising sun, pinkening the sky behind the distant Berkshire Mountains. The light gave his skin an orange tint, but it seemed to Jasper that the fire came from within the man’s ancient body, as if his Mogran essence were attempting to burn its way out.
    “It has been a long night, Jasper, but now the sun is coming up. It is time we both got on with our lives.”
    Jasper turned painfully, looked at the sunrise. “That’s it? You’re walking away?”
    “Fighting is Leo’s style, not mine. I have learned to be patient. Learned that there is more to being a Mogran than amusing oneself. But I would like one thing from you.”
    Michaela screamed inside him again, a cry of fear rather than pain. Run!
    The doctor chuckled at Jasper’s wince.
    “I practically heard that. You should learn to keep her under control. But tell your lovely host that she has nothing to worry about. All I want is my sigil.”
    It hurt to reach into Michaela’s pocket to retrieve the necklace. The rough metal glinted in the morning light like a single glowing eye. The eye of a Mogran. He studied its curves, compared them to the images he’d seen on Q.’s computer.
    “Beleth?” he said. “That’s your real name?”
    Thomas shook his head. “I am Foras. Beleth was a…friend to me. In the same way that Leo attempted to be a friend to you.”
    Jasper shuddered. “Yeah, I don’t need friends like that.”
    “I heartily concur.”
    The Mogran’s hands closed over the sigil, and his skin touched Michaela’s. Despite the fact that it was seventeen hundred years old, it felt just like normal skin. A moment later both hand and sigil disappeared into his pocket.
    “It will be very hard for you to tell friend from enemy in the coming years, Jasper. But right now you have at least one real friend. I suggest you go to him, before Leo gets there first.”

15
    T he demon held the huntress’s gaze for a long moment. His face was slightly proud, almost paternal.
    “Iljana. Zdravo sestra.”
    Ileana said something in what Q. presumed was Croatian. “That means ‘fuck you’,” she translated helpfully. “Get out of here, Q.”
    The demon held his hand up. “You’re injured.”
    “I have a gun,” the huntress replied.
    “Your hands are shaking.”
    “It’s a shotgun.”
    “Ileana, wait,” Q. cut in. “There’s another way.”
    Ileana didn’t take her eyes from Leo. “I don’t have the energy for scruples, Q.”
    “You don’t have to kill him, Ileana.”
    “Oh, but I do, Q. I have waited to kill this monster for more than a decade. Only my hatred for him has kept me going all these years.”
    “Not Leo. Jarhead .”
    “Who?” Ileana blinked. “The host?”
    In a voice still completely unperturbed, Leo said, “The boy has made a Solomon jar, huntress.”
    For one moment Ileana’s face softened, and her whole body sagged. A far-off light filled her eyes as she contemplated what Leohad said. Then all at once she straightened, and her voice came harder than ever.
    “A Solomon jar? Between the boy and the gatherer, I don’t know who is more deluded. If he’s made anything, it’s a mousetrap in which he will be caught.”
    “I think you are wrong, huntress. I think it will work.”
    Ileana opened her mouth, closed it. She took a hand from the barrel of the gun to wipe sweat from her eyes, replaced it. Then:
    “Perhaps someone who still believed there was a moral order in the universe would act differently. But a decade of hunting has taught me there is no such thing as justice. Only crime and vengeance. Often they occur at the same time. I have no doubt that each life I took in order to kill a demon was a murder. Unavoidable perhaps, in the absence of Solomon jars and exorcisms, but a murder nonetheless. Killing Mason West, though perhaps more callous, more expedient, will just be one more.”
    “Ileana, please,” Q. begged. “Jasper will be here soon. He’ll help us.”
    This time it was the demon who shot Q. down. “It’s