"Judith?"

Somebody was holding her. Somebody was shouting to her. Not the assassin but Marlin. She sagged in his arms, catching dizzied sight of the assailant running across the pavement, with another man in pursuit. Her eyes swung back to Marlin, who was asking her if she was all right, then back to the street as brakes shrieked and the failed assassin was struck squarely by a speeding car, which reeled around, wheels locked and sliding over the sleet-greased street, throwing the man's body off the hood and over a parked car. The pursuer threw himself aside as the vehicle mounted the pavement, slamming into a lamppost.

Jude put her arm out for some support other than Mar-fin, her fingers finding the wall. Ignoring his advice that she stay still, she started to stumble towards the place where her assassin had fallen. The driver was being helped from his smashed vehicle, unleashing a stream of obscenities as he emerged. Others were appearing on the scene to lend help in forming a crowd, but Jude ignored their stares and headed across the street, Marlin at her side. She was determined to reach the body before anybody else. She wanted to see it before it was touched; wanted to meet its open eyes and fix its dead expression; know it, for memory's sake.

She found his blood first, spattered in the gray slush underfoot, and then, a little way beyond, the assassin himself, reduced to a lumpen form in the gutter. As she came within a few yards of it, however, a shudder passed down its spine and it rolled over, showing its face to the sleet. Then, impossible though this seemed, given the blow it had been struck, the form started to haul itself to its feet. She saw how bloodied it was, but she saw also that it was still essentially whole. It's not human, she thought, as it stood upright; whatever it is, it's not human. Marlin groaned with revulsion behind her, and a woman on the pavement screamed. The man's gaze went to the screamer, wavered, then returned to Jude.