Body Surfing

to me seeking care,” the doctor had cried, face red, fingers trembling. “I will not let you drag him to his death.”
    “Fine,” the huntress replied calmly. “But if Leo escapes as a consequence of the delay, I will hold you personally responsible.”
    They were a mismatched pair, the doctor in his dressing gown, the huntress in fatigues and tanktop. The Times lay next to the doctor’s plate (London, not New York), folded open to the crossword, along with a fountain pen the size of a fat cigar; the stone knife lay next to Lana, as well as a flint sharpener. A retoucheur . One more word Q. had no business knowing.
    “Are you going to skulk there all morning?”
    Q. started at the huntress’ voice, reminded himself that her senses were sharper than a dog’s. He shambled into the room, took a seat at the table.
    “So, uh, what’s the fuss?”
    “Dr. Thomas has persuaded me to provide you with some training for our confrontation with the Mogran.”
    “Training? Like The Matrix? Am I going to get a codename? Neo? Hellboy? Demon Killer?”
    “Your ability to kill demons remains hypothetical, and, at this point, extremely dubious. But if you want a nickname, perhaps we can call you—” she stabbed, chewed, swallowed. “Chum.”
    “Chum? Like friend?”
    “Like ‘bait.’ Of course, we could call you chump if you prefer.” Q. thought he saw a flicker of a smile. “I suggest you eat lightly, as I plan on hitting you in the stomach repeatedly.”
    During the course of the next three days, Lana had indeed hit Q. in the stomach. And in the face, the arms, the legs, the back, the ass, and, on no fewer than five occasions, the groin. She kicked him, kneed him, tripped him, flipped him, choked him, and, once, when he mouthed off, doused him with pepper spray. She also told him her real name.
    “Ileana. Why’d you give the doctor an alias?”
    “Because I don’t trust him. I don’t trust any gatherer. Their interestin the Mogran is tainted by curiosity. He doesn’t just want to kill the Mogran. He wants to know them. You saw his library: thousands of books on ancient and alternative religious traditions and the supernatural. Vampires and zombies and all the other hosts of undead, from will o’ the wisps to Inferi.”
    “Aren’t the Inferi from Harry Potter?”
    Ileana smirked. “The doctor is nothing if not thorough.”
    “You don’t think he would betray us, do you?”
    “I’m Roman Catholic. We believe in both sins of omission and sins of commission. Do I think the doctor will sell us out in exchange for a chance to capture and study a Mogran? No. But I fear his conflicted desires might lead to a failure to act at a crucial moment, and that could prove equally dangerous. We would not be the first hunters to—” Ileana’s voice caught, and she rubbed the man’s watch on her left wrist convulsively. “We would not be the first hunters to fall because of such errors of judgment on the part of our so-called aides.”
    “We, huh? Does that mean you’re finally starting to think of me as an equal? A peer?”
    “Don’t get cocky, Q.”
    “Who’s gettin’ cocky?” Q. proffered the grin that had charmed everyone from teachers to liquor store clerks to police officers in the act of writing him a ticket.
    Ileana, oblivious, or at any rate immune, kicked Q. in the nuts, and he went down like a 10-pin.
    “You are.”
     
    The doctor and Ileana believed Jasper would stick close to the people he’d known in life. If he didn’t jump into people he’d known while he was alive—some fledglings seemed drawn to them, whereas others were equally repelled by the prospect—then chances are he would watch over them in whatever body he did inhabit. Eventually he would move out into the wide world, but for now he would likely cling to his mortal existence—a habit that Leo was also likely to understand, and would make him easier to track as well.
    For the hunters, that meant Michaela, John Van Arsdale, and Q. Calls to the hospital confirmed that Michaela remained unconscious, while Jasper’s father seemed to be in a perpetual state of drunkenness, (it was the doctor who found this out: he had proven surprisingly adept at posing as a telemarketer, and had already convinced John Van Arsdale to upgrade his cable package and vote against a ballot initiative that would reindustrialize the Hudson River). That left Q. In the midst of his training sessions, the huntress would suddenly bark out Jasper’s