Breathing hard, centering his rhythms, Remo concentrated. His face turned red with exertion, his chest heaved as he forced the blood from every extremity to his solar plexus and from there downward.
His manhood quivered and quaked, expanding until the gleam of copper fell into shadow.
And the copper wire slowly, agonizingly, reluctantly parted, falling away under the inexorable flow of blood.
It was then that Remo looked more closely at the moist red blot he thought was a drop of blood. He saw that it was unmistakably in the shape of a woman's lip print. Lipstick.
And then he remembered how it had been ....
Remo jumped from the bed, calling her.
"Kimberly! Kimberly!"
No answer.
Then, louder, anguished, "Kimberly!"
He plunged into the bathroom, flung open the closet door. The hallway was empty as well. He grabbed up the room phone and dialed the other room, the one he had ransacked.
"Come on, come on," Remo said as the ring repeated itself like a mantra of bells. Getting no answer he slammed down the receiver. He scooped it up again and got the front desk.
"The woman in Room 606. Has she checked out yet?"
"Two hours ago," he was told.
Remo resisted an urge to go from room to room in a blind, futile searching for her. She would not be there. Her last words came back to him, echoing in his ears. The words he had heard after sinking helpless and spent into a languorous postcoital slumber.
"We are mated once more, Lord Shiva. You are mine forever. Seek me in the Caldron of Blood, and in blood we shall together revel, dancing the Tandava that crushes the bones and souls of men as one under our remorseless feet. "
Putting his back to the hotel-room door, Remo looked down at himself. He was still erect. And it came to him why.
He wanted Kimberly. Yet he hated her, with her spidery arms that made his skin crawl. But those same hands had given him more pure pleasure in one night than all the women he had ever known combined.
He had been drugged by her sexual odor, manipulated by her cruel ways. And the very thought of her, the sight of her lipstick brand on him, made him harder, even as he felt his gorge rise in disgust.
Remo plunged into the shower and turned the water on full blast. He soaped himself clean, and when the smell seemed to have gone away, he switched to cold water.
When he stepped from the shower, he was nearly back to normal, his male tool swinging in normal repose.
He looked around the room. The bed was a mess. His clothes lay in a pile. He went to them, pulling on his pants, drawing his black T-shirt over his head. It was torn, as if by an animal. Remo remembered how they had fought to remove it in their fury of lovemaking, his hands and hers. All six plunging into passionate, unholy caresses.
When his shoes were back on his feet, Remo Williams started to leave. Something stopped him. He looked back at the bed. The urge to crawl into it, to wait for Kimberly's return, was growing. The urge to smell her horrible sexual scent was irresistible. He shut his eyes, trying to force the kaleidoscopic memories of their perfect orgy from his brain.
"Damn," Remo muttered. "What did she do to me?"
He returned to the bed and snatched up one of the yellow silk scarves. He pushed it under his nose and inhaled greedily.
The smell hit Remo's brain like a drug. He grabbed a wall for support.
And under his black pants, he could feel his erection return.
Remo stuffed his pockets full of yellow silk and stumbled from the room to the elevator. He walked with one hand hovering over his crotch to conceal the bulge.
Down in the lobby, a fortyish woman carrying a Scottish terrier under one arm was getting on as he was stepping off the elevator. She looked to his strategically placed hand and smiled.
"If you still have that problem around lunchtime, drop on by," she breathed. "Room 225."
"Screw you," Remo muttered.
Her laughing "Exactly what I had in mind" came through the closing steel door.
The cabby was very understanding of Remo's predicament. He asked if Remo had a destination in mind, or was he just planning to play with himself in the back seat?
"Because if you are, the fare's triple," he said. "I know this is Washington, but for that kinda consideration I gotta charge more."
"Airport," Remo said, pulling a length of silk from his pocket and holding it up to his nose.
"I know this place where they specialize in bondage," the cabby suggested as he pulled away from the curb, his eye on the rearview mirror and Remo.
Remo dug his fingers into the heavy mesh of the backseat partition. He squeezed all five fingers.
Grunk!
When he took his hand away, the mesh had a in it like a holed cobweb.
"Airport," he repeated.
"Which?"
"The nearest," Remo bit out. "Fast."
"You got it," the cabby promised. "Hope you don't lose your enthusiasm by the time I get you to her."
But Remo Williams wasn't listening. He was inhaling the sweet musky scent that to him meant pure sex, adoring the odor but hating himself with a deepening passion.
Chapter 15
Kimberly Baynes woke up on her own hotel bed on the sixth floor of the Watergate Hotel with a stiff neck.
Her eyes tried to focus. The events of the day had come back to her. She had awoken late. The previous day's newspaper lay before Kali, as it always did. But instead of a ripped and ragged clipping, one hand clutched a brochure offering limo service to Dulles Airport that had previously rested on the writing desk. Kimberly had gone to the airport, knowing that Kali would provide the victim. And the man in the black T-shirt had accosted her. And just in time, too. Her bra had been digging into her shoulders something fierce.
The last thing she could recall was that the man in the black T-shirt had been about to kill her. She knew intuitively that was his intent. The hand took her. And a silver light exploded within her frightened brain.
She remembered nothing after that. A warm breeze was coming in through the window, disturbing the maroon drapery. That was wrong. She never left the window open.
Kimberly sat up. First she noticed that all four hands were free. She remembered struggling to unleash the hidden pair with their tightly knotted yellow rumal when the silver light exploded.
So how had they gotten loose? And how had she gotten here?
"Kali will know," she whispered, turning to the nearby bureau.
But where her mistress had squatted, there was only emptiness. Only a moist spot on the polished dresser top and a single white elbow. Disconnected.
Kimberly jumped from the bed, her four arms reaching out. She stepped on an already mashed hand, recoiling with a flutter of many hands.
"Oh, no! Mistress Kali! No."
All over the floor, the vessel of Kali lay in segments-maimed, dismembered. conquered.
Had she been conquered too?
No.
The voice came from deep inside her head.
"Hello?" Kimberly said aloud. "Is that you?"
Yes. I live.
"But your vessel-"
My temporary vessel. You are my vessel, Kimberly Baynes, my intended vessel. I have been preparing you just as you have nurtured the clay that housed my spirit. I gave you the body of a woman years before your rightful time, and so you are a woman in fact. You are my avatar. I am your soul.
Kimberly sank to her knees on the rug. Four yellow-nailed hands assumed prayful shapes. Her eyes closed, her face tilted toward the white plaster sky of the ceiling.
"I know, I've known it ever since-"
Ever since your breasts grew and the nub of Kali's nether limbs sprouted from your sides. Clay is only clay. It served its purpose. I blessed you with two of my many arms, the better for you to work my will. You and I are destined to be one.