Body Surfing

whoosh .
    No reaction showed on Leo’s face. His right foot touched the flames, his left, and then he was up in the air again, still aiming for Ileana. But the hems of his pants were alight, and even before he reached the huntress a cloak of fire had engulfed his alcohol-drenched body. In eighteen hundred years, he had never looked more like a demon.
    Even then he refused to scream, or stop, but continued barrelingtoward the woman slumped in the doorway. Ileana made no move to escape. One hand held her bleeding stomach, but her eyes were open and focused on the approaching demon.
    The flaming figure touched ground, then leapt one more time—not for Ileana, Q. suddenly realized, but over her. Though his entire body was covered in flame, he was still thinking of escape. The river was two hundred feet downhill, but if anyone could make it there before the fire killed him, Q. supposed it was a Mogran.
    Ileana wasn’t about to let him go. Using whatever strength was left to her, the huntress pushed herself up to intercept the demon. But before she could reach him something shot through the door and Leo’s forward motion came to as abrupt halt. For the first time he screamed. Not in pain but in pure rage. Q. could have sworn flames shot from his mouth along with his hatred.
    “NO!”
    He staggered backward into the flaming haybales, and only then did Q. see the dark pole wavering in front of him, the three tines disappearing into Jarhead West’s torso. A pitchfork. An appropriate tool to kill a demon. But who—?
    Q. looked at the door. Michaela stood over Ileana’s prone body. Michaela and—
    “Jasper?”
    The figure in the door nodded, even as a grunt sounded to Q.’s right. He turned back to Leo. He was struggling to stand but couldn’t. He looked down at the pitchfork sticking out of his host’s chest.
    “I… made …you!” he hissed.
    “No,” Jasper said. “He made me.” And he pointed to the corpse of John Van Arsdale hanging from the wall.
    There was a sudden bite of flame, and Leo’s head fell back. His mouth was still open, and his eyes, and as Q. watched they seemed to melt and flow like wax. Even then Leo’s fingers were twitching. Even then he was still struggling.
    There was a pop! as something exploded in a shower of sparks. With a start, Q. came back to himself, realized that a wall of fire separated him from the door.
    Jasper was pointing behind Q. “The wall! You have to kick it down!”
    By now the fire was snaking toward the loft, where a half-dozen more barrels of applejack sat like powderkegs.
    Q. turned and ran for the wall. Daylight glinted through the flimsy battens. He only hoped they were as weak as they looked.
    His shoulder smashed into the wall and he bounced backwards, almost fell into the fire. But two planks had cracked. He slammed into them again and they snapped outward, making a hole about two and a half feet wide. His launched himself through it, the jagged wood tearing at his clothes and skin, catching on his pant leg. He ripped the fabric free and ran.
    He felt the detonation before he heard it, a concussive wave that lifted him up and carried him through the air, then slammed him into the stony soil. A wave of heat surrounded his body like water, and he wasn’t sure if he was on fire or not. Wasn’t even sure if he was still alive.
    Then the boom came. Even as Q. was wondering if he had really survived the blast, he knew with a certainty that defied contradiction that Leo had not. Leo was dead. Leo and Jarhead both. But what about Jasper and Michaela? And Ileana? Q. figured Jasper could have gotten away, but what of the huntress?
    He pushed himself off the ground and turned back to the barn. The roof was gone, part of it blown out and flaming all over the yard, part of it collapsed into the building. The walls were solid sheets of flame shooting thirty feet into the air. Missing planks showed the interior of the barn, which was as full of fire as the inside of a volcano. There was no movement save for the dancing of the flames.
    He got to his feet unsteadily, swatted at a few sparks littering his clothes, coughed black goo from his mouth. Other than soot, he seemed to be unmarked. He wondered if that was because of what Leo had done to him, or if he was just lucky.
    He made his way around the barn slowly, not sure what he was hoping to see. The fire was a roar in his ears and its heat beat at himin palpable waves. Q. staggered as if he was drunk, realized the