Body Surfing

name to see how her charge reacted. All that usually happened was that Q. would say, “Huh?” and Ileana would take the opportunity to sucker-punch him. It was obvious that the waiting game didn’t suit her. Her mood grew more foul, her instructions more terse, her punches harder and harder. Q. was hardly eager to confront Leo, but he was so tired of hitting the doctor’s floor face-first that he thought anything would be preferable. He had tatami weave permanently imprinted on his lips.
    Just then the doctor entered the room, bearing a darkly lacquered tray on which sat a teapot and a plate stacked with sandwiches.
    “There are cracks in the ceiling fresco downstairs. I’m going to have a devil of a time explaining it to my contractor. I do hope all this jumping about is helpful.”
    Ileana glared at the doctor before taking her foot off Q.’s throat. “The boy has the reflexes of a tortoise.”
    “Hey! I was All-State fencing. You’re, like, crazy fast.”
    “You’re failing to understand, Q. I am ‘crazy fast,’ as you so eloquently put it, because of what a demon did to me, not because of any innate athletic ability of my own. Your fencing accomplishments will be as helpful in our task as the doctor’s saucer of sandwiches. What’s more useful is the fact that, though my last punch would have broken anyone else’s nose, you didn’t even pop a blood vessel.”
    The huntress’s voice softened, and Q. suddenly remembered that Ileana had been possessed as well. Been taken against her will, made to do unspeakable things.
    “The taint of the Mogran is something all of us wish we couldwipe away. But it doesn’t go away. The best we can do is take what they have done to us and use it against them.” She pointed to Q.’s reflection in a mirror on the wall. “You have skin like armor. Beneath that skin lie other augmentations. Learn to harness them, and you will have your revenge.”
    “You don’t get it! I killed my girlfriend and my best friend. I don’t want to ‘harness’ that ever again.”
    Ileana blew the air from her nostrils, and it was clear she was fighting more than anger. “I pulled tongues from men’s mouths.” The words fell from her like clumps of mud, splattering on the floor. “I bit their throats open and drank their blood. Reached under their ribs and squeezed the life from their hearts. Forty-six people, Q. I killed forty-six people in a single evening, with my bare hands. Don’t play the guilt game with me.”
    “I want him dead ,” Q. said. “I want to kill him for doing this to me.”
    “Then you must push through your revulsion and tap into the deepest places in your psyche. Find the traces of the Mogran. The lights he left on in the corners of your body. Access what you see there, allow it to make you stronger and faster. Make him pay for what he’s done.”
    The venom in the huntress’s voice scared Q. Scared him, and excited him too. Her hatred was so pure that you believed she could defeat anything. Even a Mogran. Even Leo. If the demon had been in front of him, Q. would have thrown himself on him in an instant. But that was the problem. They had no idea where he was.
    “I hate waiting. Isn’t there some other way to track them?”
    “The truth is, I thought he would find us . The fact that he has made no effort to kill you in the past three days is unusual. And anything unusual in a demon’s behavior is always a bad sign.”
    Dr. Thomas cleared his throat quietly, reminding them that he was still in the room. The huntress looked balefully at the foppish man and his tray of sandwiches.
    “Before he died,” the huntress continued, “Malachi told me one of the Alpha Wave has broken the Covenant. Apparently Foras is seeking out the last of the Mogran.”
    Dr. Thomas gasped.
    “Malachi refused to tell me what Foras divulged to him. But it seems obvious, especially in light of what’s happened with Leo and Jasper. The question is, who else is out there? Who else do we have to worry about?”
    “Malachi? Foras?” Q. looked between Ileana and the doctor. “The ‘Alpha Wave’?” Q. gave the words air quotes, but there was a nervous edge to his voice. Up to now the idea that there were other demons besides Leo had been theoretical. Now they had names. Goofy names, but that made them no less real.
    “It’s simple, Q.,” Ileana answered. “Simple and terrifying. Apparently one of the original nine Mogran—the Alpha Wave, as they’re called—is