Body Surfing

self-justifying rhetoric of an overconfident Mogran who thought your life was in his hands. But she was tired now. Alone. She had killed an innocent man. Maybe it was time for the hunt to end, or at least for someone else to take over.
    She wasn’t scared. Not of death. The idea that all life must come to an end was simply a fact of the universe. To remember it, to live with that knowledge, was what made you human. Forget it, and you became what this creature was. A cosmic leech. A demon. No, the only thing that twigged her conscience was the fact that she would leave the hunt unfinished. She didn’t believe in an afterlife, but if there was a heaven, if Alec was there waiting for her, she would be ashamed to tell him she had not managed to exterminate every last Mogran.
    The demon leaned closer. “I want you to hear this. I want you to go to your grave with the knowledge that you failed.”
    Ileana almost nodded. She had failed. This demon’s judgment couldn’t hurt her. Only Alec’s mattered.
    “Ileana, Ileana, Ileana,” the demon crooned in her ear. “The Alpha Wave is active again.”
    Ileana’s eyes snapped open. “What?”
    The demon’s smile was practically luminescent. “Have I got your attention?”
    Ileana shook her head angrily. “The Alpha Wave is something the gatherers dreamed up.”
    “I thought so too, but it’s very real. And now one of the nine has taken it upon himself to break the Covenant—”
    Ileana’s heart knocked against her ribs. “Another tall tale.”
    “—and tell me the secret.”
    “What secret?”
    The demon smiled smugly. “Oh no. That would be giving you too much.”
    Ileana tried to mask her desperation. If Malachi’s secret referred to what she thought it did, then everything really was doomed. Not just the work she and Alec had done over the past ten years, but the future—the future was almost unimaginable.
    “What’s the harm? You’re going to kill me anyway.”
    “Who says I’m going to kill you? Maybe I’m just going to possess you, reduce you to depths you can’t imagine.” He laughed as Ileana launched into a fresh bout of struggling. “Death doesn’t bother you,does it? But to be a host again— that would kill you. Especially knowing I could never leave, no matter how many, what kind of creatures I forced you to copulate with. Men, women, dogs. Corpses .” He shifted position now, so that he held both of Ileana’s wrists in one hand, used his free hand to stroke her crotch as though brushing the wrinkles from her skirt. “I know about the sigil, of course. So yes, I am going to kill you. But part of the torture of your death will be knowing that you failed, but not how you failed. Foras told me I talked too much. But this is one secret even I know better than to spill.”
    “Foras ? One of Solomon’s demons?”
    The demon winked. “Oops. There I go again.”
    He paused. For a moment Ileana thought she saw a glint of Dumas in the eyes, but then it was gone. But the demon had caught her reaction, and he turned it back on her with pinpoint accuracy.
    “Francois’s ideas were interesting, weren’t they? About the soul. Electricity. Some within your organization share his belief, don’t they? Of course, they’re the same ones who believe King Solomon had a jar in which he kept seventy-two demons he controlled through use of magical signs. I do wonder though.” With revolting nonchalance, Malachi stroked Ileana’s groin. “I wonder what our scientist would have done. If he’d actually managed to get in here. Do you think he would have been repulsed by your little alteration ? Or would it have turned him on?”
    Ileana turned her face away from the demon’s leer. The look of gloating he put on Dumas’s kind face was more than she could bear. The hand holding her wrists tightened, and she felt the links of Alec’s watch bite into her skin. She started struggling again, but Malachi didn’t budge.
    “Tell me more…about the Covenant.” She writhed in Malachi’s grasp. “The Alpha Wave.”
    The demon held Ileana as if she were nothing more than a struggling baby. “Ileana. Please. Go peacefully. It is so much more dignified.”
    Ileana squirmed that much harder. She was banking on the factthat Malachi didn’t realize she wasn’t trying to get away. All she wanted to do was—
    bend—
    her—
    wrist!
    Malachi’s eyes went wide. A second later, his grip slackened and he slumped over. An inarticulate moan warbled from his