Kimberly frowned. "Where are you, anyway?"
"Inside you. A seed. I am but a seed which germinates in the dark loam of your soul. In time, I will sprout. We will grow together, you and I, Kimberly Baynes. And at the foretold time, we shall flower as one. You must obey me until then."
"What do I do, my mistress?" Kimberly asked.
You must go to the Caldron of Blood.
"Where is that?"
The Caldron of Blood is not a place. It is a hell you and I will create together, in a land far from here. And when it begins to bubble, He shall come.
"He?"
Our enemy, my mate, your murderer and lover in one.
Kimberly's eyes went wide.
"I'm not a virgin anymore!"
He lusts for us both now. He will seek us out. And He will find us-but only after we have stirred the blood in the Caldron and the world careens toward the Red Abyss.
Kimberly Baynes fought back tears of shame. "I obey."
An insistent knocking came from outside the hotel door:
Kimberly climbed to her feet.
"Who is it?" she called, folding two pairs of hands over her exposed breasts.
"Hotel security. Are you all right in there?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Because there's some kinda clay head down on the sidewalk with pieces of your window in it. I'm going to have to come in."
"One minute," Kimberly said. "Let me get my scarf . . . I mean, my robe."
The door opened only long enough for the hotel security man to catch a good look at a pair of naked breasts, and more hands that he expected pulled him into the room and wrapped something tight around his throat.
"She loves it!" Kimberly cried exultantly. "Don't you?"
I love it. Don't forget his wallet.
Chapter 16
Mrs. Eileen Mikulka had been executive secretary to Dr. Harold W. Smith for a nearly a decade.
She had seen a great many unusual sights in that time. One had to expect the unusual when one worked in a private hospital that included warehousing the deranged. She had gotten used to the occasional escapee, the padded rooms, and the straitjacketed patients who sometimes howled their madness in voices so frightful they carried over to the administration wing of Folcroft Sanitarium.
There was nothing unusual about the man who abruptly appeared before her desk asking to see Dr. Smith in an urgent tone.
She looked up, one hand going to her modest decolletage.
"Oh! You surprised me, Mr ...."
"Call me Remo. Tell Smith I'm here."
"Please take a seat," Mrs. Mikulka said crisply, lifting her chain-hung glasses off her chest and placing them on her nose.
"I'll stand."
"Fine," Mrs. Mikulka said as she reached for the intercom. "But you needn't stand so close to the desk." She recognized the man now. He had once worked for Dr. Smith in some menial capacity. He was an infrequent visitor. Mrs. Mikulka was under the impression he had once been a patient. It would explain the urgent look on his face and the unnerving way he stood right up to the edge of the desk. He leaned over, both hands resting on her blotter.
Those eyes made Mrs. Mikulka shiver. They were the deadest, coldest eyes she had ever seen. Even if they did look a little haunted.
"Yes, Mrs. Mikulka?" came the crisp, reassuring voice of Dr. Smith through the tinny out-of-date intercom.
"I have a . . . gentleman named Remo here. He has no appointment. "
"Send him in," Dr. Smith said instantly.
Mrs. Mikulka looked up. "You may go in now."
"Thanks," the man said, edging around the desk to scuttle toward the door.
What on earth is that man's problem? she asked herself as he abruptly spun and sidled through the door with his back to her.
She shrugged, returned her glasses to her chest, and resumed her inventory work. It seemed the commissary was dangerously low on prune-whip yogurt, Dr. Smith's favorite. She would have to order more.
Dr. Smith watched Remo enter the office with owlish interest. The door snapped open. Remo slipped in quickly, dropping to the long leather divan that sat next to the door in a fluid, unbroken motion. He crossed his legs quickly. His face was crimson.
Smith adjusted his rimless glasses curiously. "Remo?"
"Who else?" Remo said, pushing the door closed with his hand from his seated position.
"Is something wrong?"
"We gotta find her!"
"Who?"
"Kimberly."
Smith blinked. "I thought she was . . ."
"She's not. And she got away."
"What happened?"
"I just told you!" Remo said hotly. "I went back. She wasn't dead. She got away from me. End of story. Now we gotta find her. And don't just sit there looking befuddled. Get those computers of yours going. This is an emergency."
"One moment," Smith said firmly, coming from behind his desk. He crossed the Spartan, slightly shabby office in less than a dozen long-legged strides.
Standing over Remo, Smith saw his flushed features, his harried expression, and the way he hugged his folded leg into his lap. The body language was wrong. This was not Remo's body language, he thought. Remo was casual, if not cocky.
"Remo, what you have just told me makes no sense whatsoever," Smith said in a level no-nonsense voice.
"It's what happened," Remo said tightly. "Now, are you going to do your job so I can do mine, or do I have to plant you back in that seat and hold your hands through the early steps?"
Remo's dark eyes locked on Smith's. Dr. Smith's gray orbs met them unflinchingly.
"You told me she was dead," Smith persisted.
"My mistake."
"Everyone makes mistakes," Smith said in a reasonable tone. "So you went back, found her alive, and she eluded you? Is that it?"
"That's as much as you need to know," Remo growled, averting his eyes.
"I need to know her identity. You were going back for her ID. Did you find it?"
"No," Remo said flatly. He adjusted his folded leg. Smith recalled that Remo usually folded his with one ankle resting on the opposite knee, his bent leg forming a triangle with the thigh in repose. An open-legged cross.
Today, however, Remo crossed his right leg over his left one. A more defensive cross. Not Remo's style. Not even in the early days before he had learned Sinanju.
"Remo," he began evenly, "for as long as I have known you, you've never struck a fatal blow that did not turn out to be fatal. As long as I have known you, you have never mistaken a live body for a dead one. What have you to say to that?"
Remo shrugged. "Hey. I was having a bad night, okay?"
"You are a professional," Smith went on with unrelenting logic. "You are the heir to the House of Sinanju. You do not make these kinds of mistakes. Now, tell me, what happened when you went back to Kimberly's hotel room?"
Remo's hard eyes held Smith's as a play of emotions raced across Remo's face-anxiety, anger, impatience, and hovering behind them all, something else. Something Smith had never seen on Remo's face.
When Remo looked down to the floor, Harold Smith realized what it was. Embarrassment.
"We had sex," Remo admitted in a dull voice. "After she died."
Smith swallowed. It was not the answer he had expected. He adjusted his tie.
"Yes?" he prompted.
"Maybe I should back up." Remo sighed. "I went back. She wasn't dead. I know I did her, but she wasn't dead. Not anymore. She attacked me."
"And?"
"She was too much for me."
"Are you serious? A call girl?"
"She wasn't a call girl anymore. She wasn't Kimberly anymore."
"What was she, then?" Smith asked.
'Kali. Or a puppet of Kali's. I know the spirit of Kali had been in the clay statue. I smelled her scent before I destroyed it. Then I smelled it from that . . . thing."
"Thing? What thing?"
"Kimberly," Remo said, still looking at the floor.
"Why do you call her that?"