A Coming Of Age

And without warning Weylin flew back from the door. "Someone coming!" he hissed, darting to the ceiling and teeking off the light. Lisa had just enough time to make a grab for the folder in the sudden darkness before the door swung open and a silhouetted figure stepped into the room. He was reaching for the light switch when his head was slammed violently against the door jamb.

Lisa gasped in sympathetic pain as the figure collapsed to the floor. "Weylin! You—?"

"Shut up!" the other snapped. The limp figure of the policeman floated into the room and the door again swung shut; and as the last bit of hallway light was cut off the room's lights came back on.

"Is he dead?" Lisa whispered in horror, her eyes glued to the crumpled body. Her stomach wanted badly to be sick.

"I don't think so," Weylin answered tightly, making no move to find out. "We've got to get out of here—if no one heard that thump, they'll still come looking for him soon. Hurry and finish up, will you?"

Lisa ignored him. Gingerly, she knelt by the policeman, wondering what to do. In the movies someone always felt the person's neck, but she had no idea what that was supposed to prove. The side of his head where he'd been hit was becoming matted with oozing blood; she wondered if she should try and stop the bleeding.

"Forget him, Lisa," Weylin growled. "He's all right. Can't you see he's breathing?"

He was right; she'd been so rattled she hadn't even noticed. "Thank heaven," she breathed.

"Never mind that—we're still in trouble. You'd better get out of here right now."

"But I haven't finished yet—"

"I can't help that. Get out of here and go tell the Prophet what happened." He looked over at the window and frowned in concentration.

"What about you?"

"I'll stay and cover for you. Don't worry; the Prophet told me how to handle something like this." There was a loud click and the window slid halfway open. "Go. And don't get caught."

Swallowing, Lisa nodded and slid out through the narrow gap. The night air was a quiet splash of reality, like the feel of her pillow when she woke up after a bad dream. But this nightmare wasn't going to go away. Dropping to just above streetlight level, she flew swiftly toward the building across the street, heading for its protective shadows. As she rounded the corner a sudden impulse made her glance behind her—

Just in time to see three righthands lift from the city building entrance and head in her direction.

Chapter 19

There was no time for thought, no time for Lisa to consider the possibly lethal consequences of her actions. The guilty fear exploding inside her mind drowned out everything else... and a second later she was shooting down the alleyway between buildings at top speed, the nearest wall barely thirty centimeters from her shoulder. Emerging, she flashed over the next street and dodged between two more buildings. A flicker of teekay brushed at her legs as she disappeared into the relative darkness, and with a surge of panic she pushed her speed even higher.

She very nearly piled herself into a streetlight two blocks later, and the shock of that finally jolted her conscious mind into realizing the incredible danger she was in. Gasping for breath, her eyes swimming with tears from the eighty-kilometer-per-hour wind in her face, she was avoiding obstacles by sheer luck. Blinking furiously, she managed to locate the darker shades of another alley ahead and to her right; ducking into it, she came to a stop, pressing herself against the darker of the two buildings. The air felt almost hot in her throat as she gulped it in. Rubbing her aching eyes with the heels of her hands, she looked back the way she had come, wondering if she had lost the righthands.

High overhead, three slowly moving figures caught her eye.

Pressing herself tighter against the wall, Lisa watched the drifting righthands with a crushing sense of defeat. Of course they hadn't been crazy enough to try and match her terrified flight; at three-to-one odds all they needed to do was get someplace where they could see her and then just teek her in. If she hadn't stopped to catch her breath they'd probably have picked up her movement and nailed her by now.

Strangely enough, the panic of a few minutes earlier was gone, leaving Lisa more clearheaded than she'd been since entering the city building. It's just like hide-and-search, she told herself, and you know how to play that game. Keeping the rest of her body motionless, she looked carefully around her. With streetlights blazing all over the city, there were no shadows really dark enough to hide in for long. All three righthands were still visible in front of her; if she could get to the building at the other side of her alleyway, she would be completely hidden from them, at least for the moment. But the movement might attract their attention... and hiding wasn't a real solution, anyway. For all she knew the rest of Barona's righthands might be flying in at any time to do a complete search of the area. No, her only chance was to get out of the city as fast as possible.

Or to get back to the hive.

She frowned suddenly. With Weylin's command echoing through her mind, the thought of going home hadn't occurred to her before. But Dayspring was a lot closer than the temple site and certainly easier to find in the middle of the night. If Sheelah was there to open a window for her—and if she hadn't reported her absence to Gavra—

Without warning, Lisa was yanked away from the wall and pulled upward.

She acted instinctively, not fighting the motion directly but teeking herself sideways to it. The pull wavered a bit as the darkness and her unexpected action apparently interfered with the righthands' view of her. Wavered just enough—and as she all but slammed into the building across the alley their teekay grip was abruptly cut off. An instant later Lisa had dropped nearly to the pavement and was skimming the wall as she shot back in the direction she'd come from.

One of the righthands managed to get overhead before she reached the corner, but it was instantly clear that he'd expected her to continue moving away from the city building and was thus in the wrong place, far to her rear. His tentative grip on her was again cut off as she swung around the edge of her building. Counting two seconds, she came to a sudden stop and reversed direction, flying alongside the building and ducking once more into the alley. The righthand, racing over the rooftops to intercept her, was again taken by surprise, and got even less of a hold on her this time before she was out of his sight. She reached the end of the alley without difficulty and shot across the next street at full speed. A cross street led off a few meters ahead and to her left; shifting direction, she headed down it, again hugging the buildings along one side. Several recessed doorways whipped by, and on sudden impulse she stopped short and ducked into one of them. Pressing back into the shadows, blinking away the latest flood of tears, she breathed deeply and wondered if her move had been seen.

If it had, the fact was not immediately apparent. Faintly, she could hear voices calling to one another overhead, and though she couldn't make out the words the tone sounded more frustrated than triumphant. They'd seen her head down the street, she guessed, but had then lost her. If they now split up, leaving one to search the block while the other two went on—

The conversation ended. Heart pounding, Lisa eased forward and risked a look upward. One of the tiny figures was disappearing over the rooftops in the direction she'd been going; the other two were dropping rapidly toward the ground, apparently heading for opposite ends of the block where she was hiding.