Body Surfing

endorphin drain was making him woozy. Twice he almost fell.
    “Jasper,” he called weakly. “Michaela? Ileana?”
    Only the flames answered him at first. But then, through the greedy, devouring roar, he heard a single loud crack.
    A gunshot.

16
    Q . broke into a run.
    “Ileana! Don’t!”
    He rounded the corner of the flaming barn, immediately saw Ileana and Michaela—Jasper— Michaela —God, it was hard to keep it all straight—thirty feet uphill. The huntress held a pistol in both hands. The very gun Q. had left in the glove compartment of his car. You had to hand it to her. She thought on her feet.
    Ileana’s hands shook so badly she could barely hold the gun up. But Jasper was only a dozen feet from her, and Q. knew the pistol’s clip held fourteen bullets. He had put them in himself. It seemed likely that at least one or two would find their target.
    “Ileana!” he yelled again. “Don’t shoot! He’s different!”
    As he ran up the hill, he saw the drag marks. Realized immediately that Jasper must have pulled Ileana from the barn.
    “Jesus Christ, Ileana, he saved you!”
    “Stay back, Q.,” Ileana said as he got closer. “I will shoot you too, if you attempt to stop me.” If anything, the weakness of her voice made her sound that much more dangerous. She didn’t have the time or strength to fuck around.
    “Stay back, Q.,” Jasper repeated. “No sense in both of us dying.” He blinked. “The three of us, I mean.”
    He poised on Michaela’s toes, knees bent, eyes peeled, like atennis player waiting for a serve. In his case, however, he wasn’t trying to intercept Ileana’s shot, but dodge it.
    “Don’t think you can save yourself by reminding me of the girl, demon. I have long since made my peace with that aspect of my job.”
    “I don’t believe you,” Q. said. He had slowed to a walk but still made his way toward the huntress. “You talk about how hard you are, but I know you still care. You wouldn’t be hunting if you didn’t care. If you weren’t trying to save people.”
    “The girl is lost, Q. Between Leo and Jasper’s possessions, there is nothing left of her.”
    “That’s not true!” Jasper said. Or at least Q. thought it was Jasper. It sounded so much like Michaela. Not just the tone but the indignation. “I’m right here!”
    “Michaela?” Q. squinted. “Can he let you out like that?”
    Michaela didn’t take her eyes from the woman with the gun.
    “Listen to me,” she said to Ileana. “You don’t want to kill me.”
    Ileana peered at the girl in front of her, as if trying to decide if this was a trick on the demon’s part.
    “No? Will you take responsibility for all the lives the demon destroys after he abandons you?”
    “I know you want to kill Jasper,” Michaela said desperately. “Believe me, he wants to get this dying thing over too. But you don’t have to kill me to do it .”
    “Then who will I kill? This one?” She jerked her head sideways, toward Q. “Or perhaps Jasper will be so kind as to jump into me, and let me take my own life. Someone has to die , Michaela. I’m sorry it has to be you, but there is no other way.”
    “There is another way!”
    “Q.’s Solomon jar? I’m starting to think you really are trying to play me.”
    “It could work, Ileana,” Q. said. “We’ll never know unless we try.”
    “Then we’ll never know,” Ileana said, and she fired the gun.
    It seemed to Q. that Michaela moved even before the huntresssqueezed the trigger. She rolled left, then again, then again, as the huntress fired two more shots. The hill was wide open here, nothing more substantial than the recently turned furrows of garden soil to hide behind. The gun bucked wildly in Ileana’s hands, but Q. knew it was a matter of time before she hit her target. He didn’t wait. He leapt at her.
    All of her training tips filled his mind. The calm. The focus. He squeezed the chemicals into his bloodstream, felt strength and speed flood his limbs, forced himself to zero in on Ileana to the exclusion of everything else. He knew he would only get one shot.
    Ileana continued firing even as she jerked an elbow backwards, but Q. was ready. He dropped and grabbed her ankle and pulled as hard as he could. The huntress refused to go down. She grunted in some combination of pain and rage and swung her gun around, looked straight in Q.’s eyes.
    “I’m sorry,” Q. said.
    “Wha—”
    He twisted the clasp on the watch and, with a tiny phht ,