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The rubber guards may have been slow, but they still had their weapons, and these were pointed directly at Aimee, the nuns, and the angels. Aimee looked quickly at Mr. Thomas. “Can’t you call them off or something?”

Mr. Thomas shook his head. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t do that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Now that Semple’s no longer with us, the only person they respond to is Igor and he’s hiding somewhere.”

Aimee’s nuns were looking increasingly confused. “What does he mean, now that Semple’s gone?”

Aimee rounded on her angrily. “Shut up, you stupid bitch. This isn’t the time.”

Mr. Thomas laughed drunkenly. “You mean you haven’t told them what you did to your poor little sister?”

Aimee turned and snarled at the goat, “If I had a weapon . . .”

“But you don’t, do you, Aimee?”

Before Aimee could formulate a comeback, the rubber guard leader started with the second phase of his warning. “You-are-unauthorizedintruders. You-have-twenty-relative-seconds-to-remove-yourselvesfrom-this-environment-or-suffer-the-consequences.”

Aimee looked distraughtly from the rubber guard to Mr. Thomas and back again. “Can’t you get Igor and make him call them off?”

The goat shook his head. “Not unless Igor wants to be got. I fear it may be the pods for you, Holy Shepherdess.”

***

“Is the Dragon Ride what I think it is?”

The Virgil avoided Jim’s eyes. He, Jim, Semple, and Doc were hurrying along a dim, narrow, rarely used passageway, another thoroughfare in Hell where the stalactites had completely taken over the ceiling and moss and algae grew on the damp walls. The Virgil was clearly more concerned about Doc Holliday, who still had the Gun That Belonged to Elvis hidden at his side, than he was with Jim’s questions. “It is one of the oldest and least used ways out of here.”

“And it’ll supply the energy to move us?”

The Virgil nodded. “It will do that.”

“But there are problems?”

“There are certain . . . ” The Virgil glanced uneasily at Doc, as though worried he might shoot him should he deliver any bad news.

Doc attempted to allay the Virgil’s fear. “Certain what, altissimo poeta?”

“What you might call . . . side effects, good sir. I have never personally ridden the Dragon, so I cannot speak from experience, but I have it on good authority that one needs to concentrate very hard on one’s destination, and, even then, certain distracting illusions may present themselves.”

Jim didn’t like the sound of this. “Distracting illusions?”

“As I said, I have never taken the Dragon Ride, young sir. Indeed, it is only the Virgils and a few others who even know of its existence.”

Semple cut straight to the heart of the matter. “But it will get us out of Hell?”

“It will do that, madame.”

“Then that’s all we need to know for the moment.”

It wasn’t quite enough for Jim. “If we have to focus on a destination, it might be an idea to have some destination in mind. Simply wanting to get out of Hell covers a whole mess of territory, and I, for one, have been shuttling between fires and frying pans a bit too much recently.”

Semple wasn’t in the least fazed by the question. “The obvious answer would be for us to all go to my domain.”

Doc sniffed. “All back to your place?”

“You have a problem with that?”

Doc shook his head. “No problem. I was just wondering if you still had a place to go back to. How do you know it’s still intact, after your sister blew you off into Limbo?”

“It’s there. I built it and I can still sense it. It’s a bit battered around the edges, but it’s still there. You can trust me on that.”

Doc looked a trifle squint-eyed, as though trusting Semple’s feeling was hardly the guarantee he wanted. “I’m supposed to kick off on the Dragon Ride on the say-so of a woman I’ve only just met?”

Jim quickly intervened. “Give her a break, Doc. I’ll take her word for it. I think maybe I love this woman.”

Now Semple was looking squint-eyed. “You think maybe you love me? After spending days and days having every kind of sex known to man, woman, god, or beast, you think maybe you love me?”

Before Jim could come up with an answer, Virgil interrupted. “Sirs, madame, could we please move along? I know I have to accomplish this task, but I’d prefer to discharge it as quickly as possible.”

With the precision timing of extremely bad luck, Jim could hear running footsteps way down the tunnel, just as the Virgil finished speaking.

***

Three factors that Mr. Thomas would later consider dubiously serendipitous were all that saved Aimee and her angels from a summary dispatch to the Great Double Helix. The first was the slowdown in the rubber guards’ responses since Semple had departed. The guards’ twenty-second deadline extended itself to well over two minutes; then, just before even that ran out, the second factor staggered into the room in the form of Igor. Igor hadn’t been drinking his martinis from a bucket, but he was nonetheless just as far in the bag as Mr. Thomas, so drunk that he found it difficult to grasp what was happening.

“What the hell is going on here?”

“I think you turned up just in time to see the firing squad in action.”

Just then, Mr. Thomas didn’t particularly care what happened. He still had a major grudge against Aimee for what she had done to Semple, whom he considered not only a friend but also a drinking companion. If the rubber guards wanted to execute her and her ridiculous cohorts, so be it. At least he’d be left in peace. It was only as the rubber guards raised their guns and trained them on Aimee and her cowering followers that Igor blinked twice and finally made sense of the situation. “Wait a minute.”

The rubber guards ground to a stop without firing their weapons. Mr. Thomas looked blearily at Igor. “Why did you stop them?”

“I can’t have the guards shooting the mistress’s sister. That would never do.”

“But she’s the reason your precious mistress isn’t here anymore.”

Igor swayed. “Blood is thicker than water.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Igor shook his head as though trying to clear it. “I’m not quite sure.”

Mr. Thomas turned and faced Igor. “Listen to me, okay?”

Igor nodded, but looked exceedingly vacant. “Okay.”

“These people are only here because a bunch of armed rebel nuns is after them.”

Now that Igor was very drunk, his resemblance to Peter Lorre, in both appearance and voice, was quite uncanny. “Armed rebel nuns?”

“That’s right.”

The rubber guards stood poised, as though waiting for a fresh set of instructions. Mr. Thomas moved confidingly toward Igor. “I have much more experience in this sort of thing.”

Igor frowned. “What sort of thing?”

“Acting decisively when very drunk.”

“When I’m drunk, I can’t feel the noise inside other people’s minds. That’s why a lot of telepaths are alcoholics. They can’t take the constant noise.”

Mr. Thomas was being very patient with Igor. He could see that Aimee, the nuns, and the angels were rapidly getting over their fear of the rubber guards. Aimee even took a tentative step forward, but this was enough to set the guards in motion again. “Do-not-move. Remain-where-you-are-while-we-await-our-orders.”