'Later,' Aahz commanded, touching down at last. 'Right now we've got to get out of here.'
Guido was beside him in a second. I had to drop a ways, as with the extra weight removed from the rope, we had ceased to sink.
'C'mon, Massha!' I called. 'Cut the power in that thing. It's not that far to fall.'
'I'm trying!' she snapped back, fiddling with the belt buckle once more. 'The flaming thing's malfunctioning again!'
The belt setting had changed. Holding the rope, I could feel that there was no longer an upward pull. Unfortunately, Massha wasn't sinking, either. Instead, she hovered in mid-air about fifteen feet up.
'Hey, Boss! We got company!'
I followed my bodyguard's gaze. There was a mob forming down the street to our left, and it didn't look happy. Of course, it was hard to tell for sure, but I had the definite impression that their eyes were glowing redder than normal, which I was unable to convince myself was a good sign.
'Maasshhhha!' I nagged, my voice rising uncontrollably as I tugged on the rope.
'It's jammed!' she whimpered. 'Go on, take off, Hot Stuff. No sense in all of us getting caught.'
'We can't just leave you here,' I argued.
'We don't have time for a debate,' Aahz snarled. 'Guido! Get up there ahead of us and keep the street open. We can't afford to get cut off. Okay, let's go!'
With that, he snatched the rope out of my hand and took off running down the street away from the crowd with Guido out front in point position and Massha floating over his head like a gaudy balloon. For once, I didn't object to him giving orders to my bodyguard. I was too busy sprinting to keep up with the rest of my group.
If the watching mob was having any trouble deciding what to do, the sight of us fleeing settled it. With a howl, they swarmed down the street in pursuit.
When I say 'with a howl,' I'm not speaking figuratively. As they ran, some of the vampires transformed into large, fierce-looking dogs, others into bats, presumably to gain more speed in the chase. While Aahz and I had been chased by mobs before, this was the first pack of pursuers who literally bayed at our heels. I must say I didn't care much for the experience.
'Where are we going, Aahz?' I panted.
'Away from them!' he called back.
'I mean, eventually,' I pressed. 'We're heading the wrong way to get back to our hideout.'
'We can't hole up until we've shaken our fan club,' my partner insisted. 'Now shut up and run.'
I had certain doubts about our ability to elude our pursuers while towing Massha overhead to mark our position, but I followed Aahz's instructions and pumped the pavement for all I was worth. For one thing, if I pointed out this obvious fact to my partner, he might simply let go of the rope and leave my apprentice to fend for herself. Then again, the option to running was to stand firm and face the mob. All in all, running seemed like a real good idea.
Guido was surprisingly good at clearing a path for us. I had never really seen my bodyguard in action, but with his constant carping and allergy problems throughout this venture, I was tending to discount his usefulness. Not so. The vampires we encountered in our flight had not heard the alarm and were unprepared for the whirlwind that burst into their midst. Guido never seemed to break stride as he barreled into victim after victim, but whatever he did to them was effective. None of the fallen bodies which marked his progress attempted to interfere with Aahz or I… heck, they didn't even move.
'River ahead. Boss!' he called over his shoulder.
'What's that?' I puffed, realizing for the first time how out of shape I had grown during my prosperous stay at the Bazaar.
'A river!' he repeated. 'The street we're on is going to dead-end into a river in a few blocks. I can see it from here. We're going to have to change direction or we'll get pinned against the water.'
I wondered whether it wouldn't be a good idea for us to just plunge into the river and put some moving water between us and the vampires, as I seemed to recall a legend that that was one of the things that could stop them. Then it occurred to me that my bodyguard probably couldn't swim.
'Head right!' Aahz shouted. 'There! Up that alley.'
Guido darted off on the indicated course with my partner and I pounding along about fifteen paces behind him. We had built up a bit of a lead on our pursuers, though we could still hear their cries and yelps a block or so back, and for the first time I started to have the hope that we might actually elude them. Now that we were out of their line of sight…
'Lookout…'
There was a sudden cry from above, and Massha came crashing to the ground, gaming the dubious distinction of being the first person I've ever witnessed doing a belly-flop on dry land. I'm sure the ground didn't actually shake, but the impact was enough to leave that impression. I experienced a quick flash of guilt, realizing that my first thought was not for the well-being of my apprentice, but rather unbridled relief that she hadn't landed on one of us.
'I think the controls just came unstuck,' Aahz said, rather unnecessarily to my thinking.
'Are you all right, Massha?' I said, crouching over her.
'Wha-ha…' came the forced reply.
'Of course, she's not all right,' Aahz snapped, assuming translator duties. 'At the very least she's got the wind knocked out of her.'
Whatever the exact extent of the damages suffered from her fall, my apprentice wasn't even trying to rise. I would have liked to give her a few minutes recovery time, but already the sounds of our pursuers were drawing closer.
'Can you carry her, Aahz?'
'Not on my best day,' my partner admitted, eyeing Massha's sizable bulk. 'How about you? Have you got enough juice left to levitate her?'
I shook my head violently.
'Used it all supervising our aerial maneuvers back at the jail.'
'Hey. Boss!' Guido hissed, emerging from the shadows behind us. 'The alley's blocked. This is the only way out!'
And that was that. Even if we got Massha up and moving, all it meant was that we'd have to retrace our steps right back into the teeth of the mob. We had run our race… and were about to lose it rather spectacularly.
The others knew it, too.
'Well, it's been nice working with you, Guido,' Aahz said with a sigh. 'I know I've gotten on your case a couple of times, but you're a good man to have around in a pinch. You did some really nice crowd work getting us this far. Sorry about that last turn call.'
'No hard feelings,' my bodyguard shrugged. 'You gave it your best shot. This alley would have been my choice, too, if I'd been workin' alone. Boss, I warned you I was a jinx when it came to jailbreaks. I gotta admit, though, for a while there I really thought we were goin' to pull this one off.'
'It was a long shot at best.' I grinned. 'At least you can't say that this one suffered from over- planning.'
Aahz clapped a hand on my shoulder.
'Well, partner?' he said. 'Any thoughts on how to play this one? Do we try to surrender peacefully, or go down swinging?'
I wasn't sure the crowd would give us a choice. They were almost at our alley, and they didn't sound like they cared much for talking.
'NOT THIS WAY! THEY'RE DOUBLING BACK TOWARD THE JAIL!'
This unexpected cry came from the street near the mouth of our alley.
I couldn't believe it, but apparently the mob did. There were curses and shouted orders, but from their fast- fading manner it was plain that the crowd had turned and was now heading back the way they had come.
'What was that?' Massha managed, her voice returning at last.
I motioned her to be silent and cocked an eyebrow at Aahz, silently asking the same question.
He answered with an equally silent shake of the head. Neither of us knew for sure what was going on, but
