Body Surfing

been one hundred and four minutes,” he said, with the kind of accuracy only a Mogran could have. “Don’t you think he’d’ve come by now, if he was really coming?”
    “How many times do I have to tell you?” Ileana said. “There’s no such thing as a good demon. Let him come. It will make my task that much easier.”
    “Ileana—”
    For the first time the huntress took her eyes from the demon. “Unless you’re prepared to kill me, Q., shut up .”
    “Allow me,” Leo said. With unbelievable speed, he grabbed the only thing handy—Alec’s watch—and hurled it at the huntress. At the same time, he rolled backwards, putting the barrel of applejack between himself and the huntress’s gun.
    The watch struck Ileana in the face, but she didn’t flinch. Nor did she panic. She squeezed the trigger once. The side of the barrel exploded, and apple brandy spewed over the barn’s concrete floor.
    Q. didn’t wait to see if the demon had been hit as well. He rolled to his left, grabbing for anything he could use as a weapon. The cellphone bounced around on his chest and his head throbbed within its metal circlet, but he forced himself to think past the pain. He grabbed the phone and yanked it free.
    When he turned back to Leo, he saw that the demon had managed to put another barrel between him and the huntress. Q. glanced at Ileana. Her stitches must have ripped open, because a red stain was rapidly spreading across her abdomen. She didn’t seem to have the strength to raise the shotgun to her shoulder, but held it braced against her hip. Gritting her teeth, she fired again, and the second barrel erupted in a flood of dark brown liquor. Her mouth opened in a cry of pain, but Q. could hear nothing over the gun’s report echoing through the barn.
    “That’s two shots, Ileana. Three left, assuming the gun is fully loaded.”
    Q. turned back to Leo. The demon had made his way behind a stack of hay bales. Three feet of densely packed straw protected him from the huntress’s gun, but he was still fully exposed to Q.
    Q. looked down at the phone in his hand. He shrugged.
    He put everything he had into the throw. Leo didn’t even bother to look in Q.’s direction. He just stuck out his hand and caught the phone and hurled it over the bales at Ileana. The huntress shot it out of the air and it exploded like a clay pigeon.
    “Very nice,” Leo said, wiping bits of plastic from his hair. “You can thank me for those reflexes.”
    The huntress ignored him. “You’re not helping, Q. Get the fuck out of here. Now .”
    Q. didn’t see how he could have left if he wanted to. The demon was between him and the door. All he could do was ease backward, look for something else to use as a weapon. He glimpsed a long saw hanging from the far wall on the other side of the barn, an axe, a pair of posthole diggers, hammers, shovels, drills, but the demon was between him and the tools as well. There were small tractor parts all around him, but throwing something else seemed like a bad idea.
    “Two shots left, Ileana. Use them well.”
    The huntress was also looking around the barn. Left, right, down, up. Her eyes remained fixed on the loft for a moment, and then she nodded.
    “I intend to.”
    With a grunt, the huntress raised the gun to her shoulder and pointed it toward the loft and fired. A barrel burst, and thirty gallons of applejack spilled down on the demon and the hay bales he hid behind.
    “Are you trying to drown—”
    “Death is in my sight today!” the huntress shouted over him, and fired her final shell. Another barrel erupted, another flood of liquor rained down on Leo. In the moment of stillness after the shot, the sound of Ileana’s gun dropping to the concrete floor echoed through the barn.
    The overpowering odor of apple brandy made Q.’s eyes water. Why in the hell had Ileana wasted her last two shots? And then, as a quiet shtk reached both his and the demon’s ears, he understood just what Ileana was up to.
    He whipped his head back toward her even as Leo stood up from behind his cover. The huntress had fallen to her knees, and blood ran freely from her stomach. One of her trembling hands held Alec’s watch, but the other, more to the point, held a lighter, from which glowed the tiniest flame.
    She tossed Q. the watch even as the demon launched himself over the hay bales, then dropped her lighter to the pool of alcohol on the floor. A sheet of flame ripped across the barn with a low rumbling