Hans Mueller stood framed in the splintered ruins of the doorway, his muscles taut beneath his T-shirt and jeans, his eyes smouldering and flashing like a cat's. His breath heaved in and out of his chest – not with the exertion of kicking a solid wood door off its hinges, but with rage that steamed from his nostrils.
He pointed a poker-stiff finger at Philip Castler, who had leapt from his seat and now stood in a position of arrested flight, twitching like a panicked rabbit.
"You," Mueller said with a meaty growl. It was a single syllable carrying hate and inhuman loathing and accusation.
For a half-second that seemed much longer, the scene was frozen, like a figure teetering on the edge of a wall, forestalling the irrepressible demands of gravity. I imagined I could smell the ozone presaging a lightning strike.
Then Mueller launched himself into the room.
Like a movie character finally released from a freeze-frame, I grabbed for my gun as I stepped into his path.
Without even focusing on me, Mueller swung his arm and backhanded me just below the sternum. His forearm hit like a telephone pole, and I was lifted off my feet by the impact. I crashed into the nearest bookcase and fell to the floor, my chest spasming as it tried to draw in oxygen, my vision swimming with tears. I felt the bookcase tip slightly, then totter back onto its wide base.
Vielstich didn't try to match my heroics. He stepped back out of Mueller's path, and Mueller charged for Castler like a steam train. Castler pivoted and ran into the narrow space that ran around the room between the wall and the bookshelves that stood parallel lines in the center of the floorspace. Mueller followed him, out of my field of vision.
My lungs finally rebooted and remembered how to draw in air, and I gasped wetly, moisture running from my eyes and nose. I reached up and grasped a shelf and pulled myself up as quickly as I could without retching. My ribs felt like I had run full-tilt into a cattle gate or a Buick.
I heard Castler's footsteps as he reached the far corner of the room and turned, his path taking the outside perimeter of the room around the parallel bookshelves.
I pulled out my gun and clicked off the safety. Vielstich... Where was he? I had lost sight of him as my head turned to track the unseen pursuit, and now he was gone.
Castler came around again, having made a half-lap of the room, his shoulders brushing against the shelving. Mueller's hand caught up to him and grabbed his shirt collar. The workshirt ripped beside the seam, but the tug pulled Castler off-balance, and he stumbled almost on top of me.
I leveled my gun at Mueller.
"Freeze," I said, with only half of the volume and intensity that I intended.
Mueller focused his eyes on me for the first time, and I found myself looking into the blank murderous evil of a shark's stare, the implacable relentlessness of an organism or entity whose singular purpose is the destruction of others. The eyes were human, but what looked out through them was not.
I didn't know if a bullet would stop him.
Castler hung from Mueller's fist, trying to tear the rest of his shirt away and scramble across the floor. Mueller's other hand swooped down and wrapped itself around Castler's neck, lifting him bodily off the floor.
Mueller's eyes left mine and turned to Castler's straining face. The arm holding Castler in the air was rock steady.
Suddenly, a fire alarm's harsh clamor filled the apartment. Mueller's grip didn't relax, but his eyes flicked around in a cold attempt to find the source of the noise.
I pulled the trigger.
The bullet tore through the front of his right thigh, the impact making his leg jerk. Castler's feet hit the floor, though the grip on his neck didn't release or relax. I could hear the wheezing squeak of Castler's breath as he tried desperately to suck in air through a windpipe constricted almost shut.
Mueller turned his glassy eyes on me again, and it was like a physical blow. My hands shuddered as with some vibratory impact, and my finger refused to find the trigger again.
Castler, his face and eyes red like raw meat, managed to steady himself on one foot, and with the last strength of his oxygen-deprived body, lashed out with the other foot. The heavy-toed leather workboot connected squarely with the one area that, apparently is still a weak spot for the demon-possessed:
His crotch.
Mueller's vise-like grip released as his body folded itself inward, too late to protect him. Castler flopped to the floor, air filling the vacuum of his chest.
My finger finally settled on the trigger again, and I held the muzzle pointed at Mueller's bowed head.
"Stay right where you are," I said in a loud whisper to keep my voice from trembling.
Ernst Vielstich appeared in the doorway to the corridor, and I realized who had pulled the fire alarm.
"I believe I hear sirens," he said calmly.
Mueller gave no warnings. He simply launched himself off the floor like a spring – not at Castler, or Vielstich, or me, but at the window above Vielstich's desk. The glass exploded outward and tumbled downward with him.
I ran and leaned over the desk to see out. We were on the eighth floor, and there was no fire escape under the window.
I climbed up on the desk and stuck my head out through the jagged window frame.
The flat roof of the closest building was two stories lower, separated by at least twenty feet. The alley between was so far down, it gave me vertigo.
There was no sign of Mueller either on the roof or in the alley.
"Where the hell is he?" I said.
Vielstich slowly came over and stood behind me, not trying to look out. Castler sat where he was on the floor, massaging his neck and trying to bring his breathing back to a normal cadence.
Vielstich said, "He is still alive."
I didn't want to believe it. The paved alley was eight stories down. He should have splattered like a watermelon.
Then I realized something from the last minute that had escaped my notice: The gunshot wound in his leg had not bled. The hole itself had been red and moist, but blood hadn't soaked the front of his denims.
He was possessed. He was supernaturally empowered. And wherever he was, he was still alive.
I climbed down off the desk and sat in the chair beside it. My rib cage burned. My pulse pounded in my ears, and I felt a peculiar cold tingle sweep down my face. I could feel the post-adrenal tremors in my hands, and hear it in my voice as I said, "Mr. Vielstich, please find me a bucket. I'm about to throw up."
