They rushed down the stairs, sprinting past stacked aquaria where idling fish watched curiously as they raced past. Someone was screaming, a high and hideous sound that brought Kit's hair on end. Garbled shouts echoed and floated down the long, twisting corridors, then Kit burst around a curve and skidded to a halt. Two down-timers lay twisted on the floor, one man's neck obviously broken, another gutted and lying with sightless eyes. A third, the young Greek hoplite, Corydon, clutched at a gash across his arm, which had been laid open to the bone.

"He ran... that way..." Corydon gasped, nodding with his head. His radio lay on the floor, sputtering with static. "I called... security..."

Bergitta dropped to her knees beside him, ripping her own skirt and using a comb from her pocket to form a tourniquet band just above the massive wound. "Go!" she snapped. "I will watch Corydon until medical comes!"

Kit keyed his radio even as he pelted in the direction Lachley had taken. "Medical emergency, Zone Thirteen. Two dead, one serious casualty. Tell medical to shag butt, Corydon's nearly lost an arm!"

"Roger that. Medical's on the way."

Kit slowed when the corridor branched off in three directions. "We don't dare split up, Lachley'd just gut us one by one," he muttered, listening for any sound of footfalls. All he heard was echoing silence and an occasional, distant mutter and weird cry from the immense pteranodon's cage. "We'll take the left-hand fork," he decided, "and come back if we run into a blind alley without finding him."

They did not run into a blind alley. In fact, they ran into a deep maze of tunnels twisting through the bowels of the mountain, past doors where machinery chugged and hummed and rumbled and a distant rush and tumble of water could be heard through pipes and fittings. Kit marked the corridors they'd searched by scrawling on the walls with an ink pen, trying to sort out the tangle of passageways. Storage rooms were locked tight, but the heating and cooling plants, the sewage works, the generator pile all had to be searched painstakingly. Which they did, as time piled up in their wake.

The gigantic pteranodon was asleep when they eased past its cage, wicked red eyes shut inside their whorls of brightly colored, leathery skin. Bloodstains still marked the concrete floor from the pitched battle fought with the Ripper cultists, but they found no trace of John Lachley.

"He can't have vanished into thin air," Kit muttered as they pressed on past the pterosaur's cage. He'd begun to feel a superstititous prickle of sympathy with those befuddled London constables.

Kit glanced at his wristwatch and scowled. Upstairs in Commons, security would be preparing to turn back the incoming tour from Denver as the Wild West gate dilated open. If they could just find Lachley before the gate opened, they could end this monstrous blockade and get the station back to normal.

"Molly," he frowned thoughtfully. "You told me Lachley grew up in the East End. Is there something we could use to drive him into the open, maybe goad him into attacking?"

Molly's eyes began to glitter. "I can't flush 'im out, nuffink ever will." Molly drew a deep breath and let go a flood of Cockney gibberish. "C'mon, then, let's 'ave yer 'ideous Cambridge an' Oxford out where we can 'ave a butcher's, eh? I grassed on you, so I did, Johnny Anubis! You an' your disgustin' Kyber, 'ope you like it in a flowery, corse yer lemons 'as done caught up wiv you, so they 'ave!"

Sven cast a dubious glance at Molly. "Do you really think any of that's going to flush him out? Somehow I don't think he cares about the crimes he's committed."

Molly's eyes flashed with irritation, but she changed her approach. "Eh, Johnnie, you got no cobbler's t'show yer ugly boat to a frog-chalkin' fanny like meself? Shouldn't wonder, you weren't born wiv none, was you, Johnny Anubis? An' you ain't pinched none from them fancy friends of yours, neither, 'ave you? I shouldn't wonder you don't show yer Kingdom Come! Corse you bloody well can't chalk, wiv as bad a case of Chalfont St. Giles as ever you saw, wot you got off lettin' a toff like yer lovin' Collars an' Cuffs run 'is great Hampton up yer bottle."

"This isn't working," Sven muttered.

"You got any better ideas?" Kit shot back.

Molly was still trying to goad Lachley into the open. "I don't give an 'orse an' trap, so I don't, Johnny Boleslaus, not for you nor your tea-leafin' ways, takin' a starvin' woman's last 'apenny an' tellin' 'er t'bend over again so's you can tell 'er she's fore an' aft, wivout a brain in 'er loaf. Gypsy's kiss on you, an' you'd better Adam an' Eve that, so you better. An' yer bubble an' squeak friends, 'ere, says the same to you!"

"Kit, Molly's just wasting her breath—"

He came in low and fast, lunging from a dark alcove where the corridor snaked around in a tight twist. Molly screamed and went down. Lachley's blade flashed in the dim light even as Kit whirled, trying to bring his pistol to bear on the struggling figures. Sven's gun shattered the silence. The bullet whined off the concrete wall. Molly was in Kit's line of fire, kicking and screaming at Lachley. Eigil waded in as Lachley rolled to the top, knife slashing again at Molly's unprotected throat. The Viking barsark snatched him up by the neck. Lachley rammed his knife into Eigil's gut and the Viking went down with a sharp grunt of pain. Kit fired, but Lachley was already moving again, slamming the point of the knife toward Sven. The blade just grazed the weapons instructor as Sven flung himself down and back, away from the knife's arcing path. Sven's pistol went clattering and slid into the pteranodon's cage. Kynan was dragging Molly away, sliding her across the floor on her back. Kit might have gotten another shot off, but Eigil was in his line of fire, clutching at his belly while blood poured out between his fingers. Kit lunged past, trained his pistol on the maniac—

And Lachley was away and running, knife in hand, twisting around a corner and vanishing even as Kit fired. The bullet shattered a door at an oblique angle, driving splinters outward. Kit swore and shouted into his radio, "Code Seven Red! Zone Seventeen! Converge on my signal! And get a Medical team down here, we've got casualties, bad ones!" Kynan was already stripping off his own shirt and shoving it as a compress against Eigil's gut wound. Molly was bending over Sven, saved from worse injuries, herself, by the chain mail under her dress. That steel-ringed undershirt had done exactly what ring-mail armor was designed to do: deflect the slashes of a bladed weapon. Connie Logan, I'm gonna buy you a whole case of champagne, maybe even a keg of Falernian through the Porta Romae... The boom and rumble of the station's public address system came echoing eerily down the open stairwells to the tunnels.

"Code Seven Red, Zone Seventeen, repeat, Code Seven Red, Zone Seventeen! Station medical personnel, report to Zone Seventeen, stat, for transport and emergency triage. Please be advised, Gate Three cycles in seven minutes. All tour passes are hereby revoked until the station emergency has ended. Repeat, all visitors are required to stay in their hotel rooms until further notice. Shangri-La Station is operating under martial law. Code Seven Red, Zone Seventeen..."

Sven was muttering under his breath and brushing Molly's hands away. "It's just a scratch, dammit! I can't believe I let him get that close to me in the first place!"

"You were a little distracted," Kit grunted, wiping his brow with a sweating arm. "We've got to trail him. Sven, can you move?"

"Hell, yes," the weapons instructor growled, coming to his feet to prove it. Kynan, shirtless and holding compresses against Eigil's gut, handed up his borrowed gladius. "Kill that son of a bitch, please."