Remo jumped from his perch.
Landing on the solitary shark's back, he dropped to one knee, grabbing the stabilizing fin in his hand.
Twisting, he steered it away from the carcass just as the feeding frenzy began.
"Get along, little doggie," Remo muttered as he fought the shark, steering it with its own fin.
In the beginning the shark wasn't exactly cooperative. But it was only a fish. Remo was a man. Remo stood on top of the food chain. No shark was going to disobey him.
He lined up the shark's fin with the western horizon and established a course.
The shark fought naturally. But to live it had to keep swimming forward. Sharks do not sleep. Sharks cannot rest. To keep breathing, they have to continue forward. Or they die.
And since the shark had to keep swimming, it was just a matter of controlling the direction.
Remo kept the shark on course. Sometimes with the fin, other times with a hard slap to its sensitive snout. When it tried to dive, Remo wrenched it back, and the shark would forget all about diving and try to bite the annoying thing on its back.
After a while the shark grew too tired to resist. But it wasn't too tired to swim. It had to keep swimming.
So it swam toward land, with its gills submerged just enough to scoop oxygen.
An hour passed, two, then three. During that time Remo digested the food in his stomach and started to hunger for more. His body was burning calories at a fierce rate. Sustaining his elevated body temperature in the cold North Atlantic was taxing his Sinanju powers.
When he felt strong enough, Remo broke the shark's spine with a single chopping bow. It coughed, an explosion of air. When it slowed to a glide, by using only his index fingernails Remo scored the dorsal hide, carving out a fresh shark steak. He ate two. Then he stood up.
Somewhere in the offshore breeze, Remo smelled land. He had no idea how near it was, but he was ready to make a run for it, especially because the heavy swells were calmer here.
Stepping back, he set himself, charged his lungs and, with tiny steps to create maximum forward momentum, Remo ran the length of the shark and stepped onto the water.
His toes touched, skipped, touched again and kept on skipping.
The art was in not letting his full weight break the surface tension of the water. Cold water was denser and better suited than warm. Otherwise water running might have been impossible in Remo's weakened condition.
But he wanted to live. And so he ran, step after step, sucking the cold, reviving air into his lungs, fighting the fatigue that threatened to engulf him.
He ran because, like a shark, if he stopped, he would die. He could not die, so he ran. And ran and ran and ran, his toes making tiny pattering slaps on the choppy gray-green surface of the Atlantic.
Remo smelled land before he saw it. Remo had no idea how much time had passed. But the smell of cooked food and burning fossil fuels and car exhaust pulled him on.
He saw rocks first. Cold, rockweed-covered New England granite half-eroded by relentless waves.
Remo ran for them. But somewhere in the last mile, his strength gave out. He misstepped, lost his footing and sank into the cold, unforgiving waters-within sight of land and life and safety ....
Chapter 8
She didn't know who she was.
Sometimes in the mirror, she thought she recognized her own eyes. Green eyes. Emerald green. Sometimes they were sapphires. Other times a dull gray. They looked familiar. Her hair did not, but she colored it so often she'd forgotten its true color.
She had been told she was Mistress Kali, but the name didn't fit. Somehow it didn't fit.
When she lay all alone in her great circular bed looking up at the mirrors on the ceiling, she knew she was not Mistress Kali. It was a persona she assumed when she donned the tight black leather that sheathed her supple form. She was Mistress Kali when the silver chains clinked and tinkled. She felt like Mistress Kali when she selected a suitable whip from her stock and donned the yellow silk domino mask.
When she stepped out of her private chambers with its implements of pain and discipline, she knew she was Mistress Kali. There was no doubt. Who else could she be?
But when the silken domino mask came off, the doubts returned. They crept into her mind unbidden.
"Who am I?" She wondered.
Once, she asked. "Who am I?"
"You are Mistress Kali," the sweet but distant voice replied.
"Before that?"
"Before that you were nothing."
"What am I when I am not Mistress Kali?" she pressed.
"Asleep," came the absent reply, dotted by the plasticky clicking of keys. The keys that were never still. The keys that were as much a constant in her life as the clink and rattle of chain. As familiar as the crack of the whip that brought a thrill of power control and sexual release whenever she laid it along a pale white spine and flicked an ass cheek into quivering spasm.
"What will I be when I am no longer Mistress Kali?" she wondered aloud.
"Of no use to me, Mother."
The slip had been strange. She put it out of her mind because the next words chilled her so.
"Do not forget this. Ever."
And the clicking of keys continued. Mistress Kali-she was Mistress Kali again-slid the watery blue-green glass panel back into place.
On the other side, the stunted figure at the computer terminal continued to type without rest. She never slept.
And so long as she never slept, the long, vague nightmare seemed to have no ending.
Chapter 9
The cold water rose up to claim Remo Williams. His mind went blank. He had not the strength to process what was happening to him.
Water touched his lips, splashed into his nostrils, stung his eyeballs.
He held his breath-and his bare feet touched cold, silty sediment. And under it, hard, seaweedslimy granite. Reflexively his legs straightened.
It took a few seconds for the truth to sink in.
The water didn't even cover his head.
Then Remo laughed. It was a laugh of sheer relief. Of pure joy. Within sight of land, he was standing in chin-deep water.
So he began walking, shivering once or twice when the natural protective defenses of the human body overcame his Sinanju training, which had taught that shivering wasted precious energy, even if the body's reflexes forced a person to shiver in order to stay warm.
The last few yards were rocky, and the rocks scummy under his feet. Remo didn't care. He had survived. Chiun would be proud. He had survived an ordeal that might have beaten some of the greater Masters of Sinanju.
But not Remo Williams. He was a survivor. He had survived.
Reaching shore, Remo clambered over the rocks and found a patch of dry, cold sand. His knees felt hollow.
There he lay down and slept until the rays of the morning sun touched his face and a voice asked, "Where the hell have you been?"
Remo blinked, lifted his head and saw a face that wasn't at first familiar, though the Red Sox ball cap was.
"Who are you?" he muttered weakly.
"Ethel. Don't you remember me? I gave you a lift. We had a deal."
"Oh, that. Sure."
Her lined face hovered over him, filling his field of vision.
"What kept you?" she asked.
"I was fighting off sharks."
"Where's the stuff?"
"Something went wrong."
"I kinda figured that." She stood up, eyed Remo critically and asked, "You know what?"
"What?" said Remo, not really caring at the moment.
"Last night I thought you were kinda cute."
"Thanks," Remo murmured tiredly.
"But now you look like something the cat dragged in, and I wouldn't have you on a stick."
"That's nice," said Remo, closing his tired eyes.
"So I guess I don't feel so bad about what I did."
"That's nice, too," said Remo, tuning her voice out.