Nora was screaming when Eph came flying from the stairwell door, throwing his weight into Redfern’s torso, sending him sprawling, off her. Eph righted himself and held out a cautionary hand toward his patient, dragging himself up from the floor now. “Hold on—”

Redfern emitted a hissing sound. Not snakelike, but throaty. His black eyes were flat and vacant as he started to smile. Or seemed to smile, using those same facial muscles—only, when his mouth opened, it kept on opening.

His lower jaw descended and out wriggled something pink and fleshy that was not his tongue. It was longer, more muscular and complex…and squirming. As though he had swallowed a live squid, and one of its tentacles was still thrashing about desperately inside his mouth.

Eph jumped back. He grabbed the IV tree to keep from falling, and then upended it, using it like a prod to keep Redfern and that thing in his mouth at bay. Redfern grabbed the steel stand and then the thing in his mouth lashed out. It extended the six-foot distance of the IV tree, Eph spinning out of the way just in time. He heard the flap of the end of the appendage—narrowed, like a fleshy stinger—strike the wall. Redfern flung the stand to the side, cracking it in half, Eph tumbling with it backward into a room.

Redfern entered after him, still with that hungry look in his black-and-red eyes. Eph searched around wildly for anything that would help him keep this guy away from him, finding only a trephine in a charger on a shelf. A trephine is a surgical instrument with a spinning cylindrical blade generally used for cutting open the human skull during autopsy. The helicopter-type blade whirred to life, and Redfern advanced, his stinger mostly retracted yet still lolling, with flanking sacs of flesh pulsing at its sides. Before Redfern could attack again, Eph tried to cut it.

He missed, slicing a chunk out of the pilot’s neck. White blood kicked out, just as he had seen in the morgue, not spraying out arterially but spilling down his front. Eph dropped the trephine before its whirring blades could spit the substance at him. Redfern grabbed at his neck, and Eph picked up the nearest heavy object he could find, a fire extinguisher. He used the butt end of it to batter Redfern in the face—his hideous stinger Eph’s prime target. Eph smashed him twice more, Redfern’s head snapping back with the last blow, his spine emitting an audible crack.

Redfern collapsed, his body giving out. Eph dropped the tank and stumbled back, looking in horror at what he had done.

Nora came rushing in wielding a broken piece of the IV tree, then saw Redfern lying in a heap. She dropped the shaft and rushed to Eph, who caught her in his arms.

“Are you okay?” he said.