Body Surfing

quietly. The maid gasped, looked up, then cast her eyes to the floor. Ileana wondered if perhaps she’d been too generous in her assessment.
    “Excuse me, ma’am. I was only—”
    But Ileana didn’t care what the maid had been up to. Gesturing silently for her to pass, she stepped out of the way. She waited for the cart to round the corner before nudging the door open with her boot.
    The chamber was a mirror of anonymous hotel rooms around the world. A pair of double beds, a desk with a glass top protecting thewood, a small TV hanging from a ceiling bracket. A dim lamp on the table between the beds cast a sulfurous glow in the center of the room, but the corners were steeped in shadow. The near bed, she noticed, was crisply made up, but the other was wrinkled. Not unmade, but rumpled, as though someone had lain atop it. Odd, Ileana thought, given that the maid had just been there. But perhaps Soma had told her to leave it. And where was Soma anyway? If she’d waited too long—if she had let the demon get away yet again—she would never forgive herself.
    Soma’s bags were on the far side of the bed, unpacked. The clothes were in the dresser drawers, various documents stacked atop it, but as she sifted through them for signs of an itinerary she heard the faint lap of water and froze in her tracks.
    There was a louder splash, unmistakable this time. Someone was in the bathtub.
    She cursed under her breath, reminded herself she was on her own. No partner, no backup if she got in trouble. She headed straight for the bathroom, where Antonio Soma lay naked in the tub.
    “Remember me? From the bar?”
    Soma’s eyelids fluttered, as though he’d fallen asleep in the bath.
    “Qué?”
    Ileana took a step forward, exposed a generous portion of thigh. “I was able to persuade the clerk to tell me your room number.”
    A wondrous, slightly greedy smile smeared itself across the journalist’s face. His body, lean but muscular, was deeply tanned, and his elbows hung casually over either side of the tub. He didn’t bother trying to cover himself. Ileana wondered if this was the demon acting, or if Malachi was allowing a bit of Soma’s own personality to come through. Mogran loved to do that. Release—augment—certain urges already present in their host’s psyche, especially when they wanted him to remember what he’d done after the demon had vacated the premises.
    Ileana sat down on the edge of the tub. She felt Soma’s eyes devouring her body, settling for a second on the flower between her breasts, then flitting to her face, her eyes.
    “Well, hello .”
    Damn he’s good, Ileana thought. It’s good. It is not human, not anymore, and it wants me to like Soma.
    She reached down, trailed her fingers through the warm bath water. Soma’s stomach was firm beneath her touch. She let the fingers of her left hand walk south, never taking her eyes from his, even as her right slipped toward her boot, seeking the familiar feel of the bound leather strips of the knife’s handle.
    Soma closed his eyes. His hips swayed beneath her touch. “I feel as though I have been dreaming, and have awakened into an even better reality. Dios mio !” he hissed, as her palm glided over the tip of his cock. At least that part of him was showing signs of waking up.
    “I hate to disappoint you, Antonio, but this is your worst nightmare.”
    Ileana’s hand closed around Soma’s penis. She lifted him from the tub as though the swollen member she clutched were nothing more than the handle on a cumbersome suitcase. Soma’s head fell back, snapping against the rim of the tub.
    He screamed—squealed really—even as his eyes flew open, their dreamy expression replaced by one of concentrated horror.
    He saw the blade in her hand.
    “No! Por favor, no!”
    The basalt knife was six hundred years old. It was brittle and razor thin but sharper than steel. It would have snapped if she’d hit the pelvic plate, but Ileana knew exactly where to strike, what angle to turn it. With a deft motion, she plunged the blade into the groin and opened Soma’s femoral artery. The penis, half severed from the body, and a six-inch fountain of blood shot up between her fingers, spurting in time with her victim’s beating heart.
    She dropped Soma back in the tub. His head hit the rim again but he didn’t cry out. His skin had already gone ashen, his eyes cloudy, confused. In seconds his body was concealed beneath the crimson water. His mouth opened as if