"Out of the way!" shouted the blond and blue-green form shimmering past me. She almost shoved me over the side of the escalator to charge up the stairs straight at the wraiths.

She screamed like bad opera and swung her arm.

The little beasts behind us gained a few more levels. I pulled Isadora in front of me, lifting her up from the steps with my free arm.

Ann's blade passed through the first shadow. It drew away from her, seeming to fold in on itself. The others pulled away toward the walls. She jabbed at each one. They vanished at the touch of her knife.

"Let's go!" she yelled, pointing to the padlocks on the doors. The screaming, pleading things behind me jumped up to my step a heartbeat after I'd started to run to the top of the stairs. It was a very quick heartbeat.

"Get behind me!" I shouted, handing the kid to Ann. I didn't know what good being behind me would do in the event of a ricochet, but it seemed the courteous thing to say.

The door's rusted hasps looked far weaker than the locks. I leaned the muzzle against the lower one, shielded my eyes, and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet tore through the hasp and ricocheted twice. Fragments of mirror exploded from the opposite wall to cascade down the escalator steps.

Loud animal cries rose up from below. They were even closer.

I reached up to shoot off the other hasp. The round went straight through the ceiling into the lobby. I hoped that no one was sitting right above us.

Blondie and I pulled at the door and managed to open it a crack. A sheet of light trickled in, along with a dozen or so years of accumulated trash.

Into that light swarmed the squealing terrors. Little rat heads and little rat paws. Attached to little human bodies.

I jammed my legs on one side of the opening and my back alongside the other. Old bones popped in surprise with the strain. The doors creaked and parted another foot or so. I shoved the kid through. My muscles felt like old rags stretching beyond their limit. I pushed Ann through just as she was getting ready to go at the little horrors with her knife. Enough is enough.

I squeezed past the opening. Debris clogged the fire-door channel, jamming the doors.

The three of us stood in a recess in the lobby at the base of another escalator. People rimmed the edge and stood at the top of the stairs, peering at us. They were the same old lowlifes I'd seen in the tower for years. I didn't even feel like warning them. I turned to take Ann's hand.

She held the flame dagger she'd pulled from the dead man. With her other hand, she struck her own blade against the bloodstained steel. After a half-dozen tries, an actinic spark flashed between the two weapons.

She'd have been a hit in Scouting.

A powerful toss of her arm flung the flame dagger through the doorway.

"Close it!" she cried, shoving at one side of the door.

I leaned against the other to push while the kid scooped paper and beer cans and cigarette butts out of the guiderails.

The rats began to howl and hiss in agony and release. The doors edged closer together. Through the shrinking crack sighed the tired sound of death.

The doors ground shut. I sat down in the rubble and felt my age.

Ann slipped her knife into its sheath and returned it to her purse. The things a woman hangs on to.

"Let's go," she said. "We can't stay around here."

I dabbed at the rips in my neck and scalp. The others didn't look too healthy either.

"There's a doctor on the fourth floor," I said wearily. "He can clean us up a bit."

Ann nodded and climbed up the escalator. I took off my jacket and offered it to the kid. She shook her head.

"No thanks. I'm used to it. I'm no traffic stopper, anyway."

We followed Ann up the moribund escalator to reach lobby level. Old drunken and drugged eyes watched us head toward the elevator. The excitement was too much for some of them-eyes began to unglaze and return to life. Luckily, the elevator waited for us at lobby level. We stepped inside before anyone had a stroke.

La Vecque's office door opened. A young, muscular man in a white tunic stepped out carrying a portable cryogenic container that hummed quietly. His gaze flicked toward us-suspiciously at first. Then his look grew mystified. He probably wondered why anyone would come to La Vecque with a medical problem.

I knew why he dealt with La Vecque.

"Just back from Disneyland," I said merrily.

He frowned and lugged the freeze unit quickly toward the stairs.

I pounded on the office door. Behind it clattered the sounds of frantic tidying. After a few moments, La Vecque piped frantically, "Who's there? I've got a shotgun!"

"Relax, Doc. It's me. Ammo."

The door creaked open, hesitated for an instant, then swung wider.

"Who're they?" the old bird asked, letting us in.

"Casualties, Doc. That's as deep as the inquiries get. I was hoping you'd fix us up."

"Sure, Dell, sure."

He had us shower one by one in the broom closet he had for a washroom. We put on paper gowns, and he checked each of us in turn.

The kid passed with not much more than a few questions and a quick glance-over. Ann had a nasty-looking rip on her arm plus scratches on her face and shoulders as if she'd been thrown head first through a plate glass window. He tinkered with her while I rested.

By the time he got to me, I'd stopped bleeding. The first thing he did was to clean the wounds, which started the blood oozing again. He examined my scalp with an irritating lassitude.

"I'm going to have to shave some hair off."

"Go ahead," I said. "I was getting tired of the two-tone effect anyway. Take it all off."

"I'm not a barber." He rummaged in a drawer to find a razor. "Your preacher friend was looking for you a while ago. Moreno. He looked awful."

"Awful drunk?"

"Worse," he said. "Sober as a judge on election day."

I snorted. He'd copped that line from me.

"I told him you might be around somewhere, so he went up to wait for you."

That gave me a little bit of the chill I've been feeling only too often lately. Joey had been worried enough on the phone when he said he'd wait for me at the church. Could all this psychic pyrotechnics have reached him, too? Why else would he walk all the way over to my office at night? Something must have him scared.

I waited patiently for La Vecque to disinfect the wounds and lay down a bunch of tape sutures. He reached for a roll of gauze.

"That's good enough," I said, standing up. "I'm going to check in on the padre." I turned to Ann. "I'll rustle up something for the kid to wear. Wait for me here."

I picked up my gun and-paper robe fluttering-rushed out of the good doctor's office and hit the stairs like an aging greyhound after the iron rabbit. The concrete steps stung my bare feet with each bound. A few gasping strides brought me to my floor. I had energy that seemed to come strictly from panic. Events were closing in around me. Too much was happening at once.

I eased the stairway door open to listen.

Silence. As complete as snowflakes on cotton.

I held the automatic up and crept toward the office. My feet appreciated the carpeting.

The door stood slightly ajar, permitting a wedge of light to spread across the hall and climb up the side of the far wall.

I stood beside the doorway to hear the kind of total silence that an inhabited room cannot maintain. The room smelled of burnt gunpowder.

I kicked the door inward and dropped to one knee, scanning the room with eye and gat. Nothing moved.

Not even the body on my waiting-room couch.