Mr. Murder

mistake of glancing over the edge of the parapet at the phosphorescent mantle of snow on the ground six or seven stories below.
        The view prompted an attack of vertigo so strong that he almost passed out before averting his eyes from the long fall.
        When he reached his daughters, Marty was more nauseous than ever and shivering so badly that any attempt to speak would have resulted in shuddery chains of sounds only vaguely resembling words. As frigid as he was, perspiration nonetheless trickled the length of his spine.
        Wind howled, snow whirled, night descended, and the bell tower seemed to be turning like a carrousel.
        The pain from the wound in his shoulder had spread through his upper body, until the fiery point of injury was only the center of a more generalized ache that throbbed with every thud of his rapidly pounding heart. He felt helpless, ineffective, and cursed himself for being so useless at that very moment when his family needed him most.
        Paige hadn't joined Marty and the girls on the platform. She stood on the far side of the open door, on the enclosed landing, peering down the curved stairs.
        Flames spouted from the bore of the gun, making shadows dance. The boom of the shot-and echoes of it-tolled across the bell-tower platform, and from the stairwell came a shriek of pain and rage that was less than human, followed immediately by a second shot and an even more shrill and alien screech.
        Marty's hopes soared-and collapsed an instant later when the agonized cry of The Other was followed by Paige's scream.
        Along the curved wall, step by step, burning with hunger, filled with fire, the body's furnace stoked to a white-hot blaze, tortured by need, alert for a sound, higher, higher, higher in the darkness, churning within, seething, desperate and driven, driven by need, then the looming thing, the Paige-thing on the landing above, a silhouette wrapped in shadows but recognizably the Paige-thing, repulsive and deadly, an alien seed. He crosses his arms over his face, protecting his eyes, absorbing the first hard blast, a thousand spikes of pain, hammered deep, almost knocked backward down the stairs, rocking on his heels, arms paralyzed for an instant, bleeding and torn, afire with need, need, inner pain worse than the outer, move-move-confront challenge-grapple-and-prevail, lunging forward, upward, screaming involuntarily, the second blast a sledgehammer to the chest, heart stutters, stutters, blackness swoops, heart stutters, left lung pops like a balloon, no breath, blood in his mouth. Flesh rips, blood spurts, flesh knits, blood seeps. He inhales, inhales and is still moving up ward, upward into the woman, never having endured such agony, a world of pain, cauldron of fire, lava in his veins, a nightmare of all-consuming hunger, testing his miraculous body's limits, teetering on the edge of death, smashes into her, drives her backward, claws at the weapon, tears it away from her, pitches it aside, going for her throat, her face, snapping at her face, biting at her face, she's holding him back, but he needs her face, face, her smooth pale face, alien meat, sustenance to slake the need, the need, the terrible burning endless need.
        The Other tore the shotgun out of Paige's grasp, threw it aside, slammed into her, and knocked her backward through the doorway.
        The area under the belfry seemed to be illuminated more by the natural phosphorescence of the falling snow than by the fast-fading light of the dying day. Marty saw The Other had been gruesomely wounded and had undergone strange changes-was still undergoing them-although the ashen twilight shrouded details of its metamorphosis.
        Paige fell onto the bell-tower platform. The Other dropped atop her like a predator upon its prey, tearing at her ski jacket, issuing a dry hiss of excitement, gnashing its teeth with the ferocity of a wild creature from out of the mountain woods.
        It was a thing now. Not a man. Something dreadful if not quite identifiable was happening to it.
        Driven by desperation, Marty found within himself one last well of strength. He overcame dizziness bordering on total disorientation, and he took a running kick at the hateful thing that wanted his life.
        He caught it squarely in the head. Although he was wearing sneakers, the kick had tremendous impact, shattering all the ice that had formed on the shoe.
        The Other