"Kill me then-if you can."
And Remo found he could not strike. Instead, he desired her. It was against all his training, but his mind kept flashing back to their wild lovemaking of the night before. And his body yearned to join with hers.
"Mount me," Nalini whispered. "Take me. I will be your slave if I am allowed to live."
Remo started to laugh, but his manhood was stirring. He willed the engorging blood back, but his desire was stronger than his will.
Eyes dark with want, he got onto the bed and straddled her.
Nalini smiled wantonly. "I knew your blood would hear the call of my blood," she whispered.
Remo grasped her under the arms, squeezing the bushy hair hard as he could. The crunching of tiny insect bodies rewarded him.
Nalini's smile melted, her eyes widening with shock.
"You thought I didn't figure they'd be there," said Remo, reaching down to remove his pants.
Nalini closed her eyes in surrender. "You are wise for a man of the West. I want you, therefore I will not resist you."
Remo took her. She threw her head back and gave a tiny grunt that mixed pleasure and pain. Her features softened, and a slow cunning smile touched the dark corners of her lips.
And before he could begin the first return thrust, Remo felt tiny fangs puncture the tip of his swollen manhood.
Chapter 28
The Master of Sinanju employed his long nails to sever the cloth gag and bonds of Thrush Limburger.
"You are safe now," he intoned, stepping back, restoring his hands to his sleeves.
"Who the heck are you?" Limburger demanded, shedding his bonds.
"I regret that I cannot speak my name to you, but I am here to rescue you from a cruel fate."
Limburger blinked in the gloom. He looked around. "Where am I anyway?"
"The house of Clancy."
"Not the Black Hole of Hyannisport?"
Chiun nodded. "The very same."
"Unbelievable. I guess Clancy must be behind HELP, if they kidnapped me just to shut me up. I knew those California Highway Patrol guys were fakes the minute I laid eyes on them. But they had their guns out and snapped off my mike before I could say anything."
"Speak to me the truth. What did you discover?"
"There is no Human Environmental Liability Paradox. It's a scam. The bugs are harmless. What's killing people are poison spiders."
"Yes. We have learned that much."
Limburger looked quizzical. "We?"
"How did you come upon the truth?" Chiun asked.
"I happened to drop in on the Ukiah coroner when he was autopsying a local guy who died mysteriously. While we were talking, a red bug crawled out from under the dead guy's leg. We thought it was an ant, until its head split apart and two fangs popped out like switchblades. That was when I recognized the thing as a Ceylonese jumping spider, Myrmarachne plataleoides. I figured it got into the guy's clothes and bit him."
Chiun narrowed his eyes. "How do you know its name?"
Limburger grinned proudly. "I saw a picture of one once in a National Geographic. I just happen to have a photographic memory. That's how I knew those CHP guys were phonies. I recognized them as Clancy campaign aides. Just one of the varied talents of Thrush Limburger, Renaissance talk show genius."
"And how did you know this insect to be poison?"
"Simple. It up and bit the coroner. He keeled over, and his eyes turned blue." Limburger shook his head sadly. "Poor guy was dead in a New York minute."
"But you told no one?"
"Wasn't any time," Limburger protested. "I had to go on the air with it as soon as possible. The sooner I warned the world, the sooner people could avoid the damned spiders and lives would be saved. There was nothing I could do for Esterquest."
Chiun nodded. "This was wise, except that there are those who blamed you for the man's death."
"The media, right?"
"And certain others."
"That's what it is to be Thrush Limburger. If I cured cancer, they'd bitch that I overlooked the common cold. Well, let's get the heck out of this pest hole of permissiveness."
And from somewhere above, a voice emitted a startled cry of pain.
"What was that?" Limburger demanded.
"Remo!" cried Chiun. And because he could not have a human elephant stumbling after him, he felled Thrush Limburger with a short, chopping blow to the side of his head.
The man fell like an up-ended rain barrel.
Nalini Toshi laughed with musical mockery as Remo pulled himself free of her, a jumping spider clinging to the tip of his male organ.
He whacked it off, crushed it under a stamping heel.
And Nalini cried, "It is a she-spider! Your death is upon you, Western fool!"
Remo felt his manhood wilt, and knew the toxin-filled blood was returning to his body. His crotch was already growing numb. And a coldness crept into his upper thighs and solar plexus. He fought to keep the blood in check, but the coldness was already spreading toward his heart.
"Die! Die!" shrieked Nalini. "But be sure to fall where the moonlight will show me your eyes. I want to see them turn blue. I want to look into your dying eyes, Sinanju fool."
Remo sank to his knees. His arms went as limp as liver. As if they were only balloons, all the air seemed to leak out of his muscles. Closing his eyes, he bowed his head.
For a moment, he was still. For a moment, his heart stopped. And for a moment, the air in his lungs began to escape with a steady tired hissing. Then, a long silence fell.
Nalini laughed. She climbed off the bed and took his dark hair in her grasping fingers.
"Show me your dying eyes," she sneered, jerking his head backward on its unresisting neck. "So I will know that my ancestors have been avenged."
Remo's eyes snapped open. The whites were bright blue. But deep in the black core of his pupils a red spark flickered angrily.
And out of his mouth, mixed with a hot black spray of expelled venom, came a hollow roar of a voice.
"I am created Shiva, the Destroyer; Death, the shatterer of worlds!"
With a startled shriek, Nalini Toshi recoiled.
"What is this! What is this!" she said, shrinking against a wall.
And as she watched, the figure on its knees began jerking as if reviving electricity were jumping through every lean muscle and sinew.
"What are you doing?" Nalini moaned. "You should not die like that!"
And the figure came to its feet, tall, unbowed, erect in every way. The eyes were red coals and the surrounding whites where white again.
The mouth dropped open. "Who is this dog meat who stands before me?"
Nalini pressed her back to the wall in fear. "I-I am the last living Spider Diva, Nalini."
"No," said the voice of Shiva the Destroyer. "You are the dead Spider Diva, Nalini."
Nalini Toshi watched the hand lift to her eyeline as if it were in slow motion. She realized the hand was not moving in slow motion. These were the last moments of her life and her senses were doing this-trying to hold on to every precious moment the turning wheel of destiny had allotted her.
She saw the hand, like a weaving cobra's head, form a wedge and aim blunt fingers toward her face. The cruel face behind the hand went out of focus as her eyes were mesmerized by the fingertips she knew had the power to obliterate her, just as other empty hands had obliterated those of her kind who came before.
"I consign you to a place of no returning," said the hollow voice.
And the hand struck.
There was nothing more after that. No thought. No fear. There was not enough time for her brain to call up in kaleidoscope all the images it had recorded in life.
Nalini Toshi collapsed, her face an inverted mask of crushed bone and raw meat, onto the broken bodies of her children.
And in Remo's dark eyes, a red spark flared, then dwindled. He shook his head as if to clear it of cobwebs.
Chapter 29
Remo was putting his
pants on when the Master of Sinanju burst into the room. Chiun froze.
"What has happened here?" he demanded, his cold eyes switching between the calm figure of his pupil and the sprawled inert thing that was the last of the Spider Divas.
"Figure it out," said Remo, his voice stripped of all emotion.
"I see the Spider Diva, dead."
"That's all you need to know."
Chiun hovered over the dead woman, taking in her nakedness. "You could not resist her, could you?"
"That's between her and me," said Remo, avoiding his Master's searching eyes.
Chiun cocked his head to one side. "But you paid a price."
"How do you know?"
"I heard the mantra of Shiva."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Remo, buckling his belt.
"We will speak of it later. I have found Thrush Limburger, a prisoner in the basement. He has told me all he knows."
"Clancy's behind this," said Remo.
"She told you that?"
"Yeah. "
"And you believed her-a Hindu and a harlot?"
"Who else could it be?" said Remo, his voice returning to its normal timbre. "Come on, let's get out of here."
They stepped out into the corridor and a blue disk of a thing came wheeling toward them.
"What is that, Remo?" Chiun asked.
"A security robot. No big deal."
An orange light winked on and Remo stepped forward. His foot came up and down, and the robot broke like a china plate.
"See?" he said. "No big deal. They just came on the market. This is one of the cheaper models. All they do is beep out a warning."
"Ah. "
"So where's Limburger?" Remo asked.
"I left him sleeping below."
"It might help if Smith sent in the cavalry and they found Limburger here."
"That is for Smith to decide."
Remo peered about, his thick wrists rotating absently. "So what is the best way out of here?"
"Have you forgotten something, Remo?"
Remo frowned. "What?"
"You left an old woman helpless."
"Oh, yeah. Pearl Clancy. That won't take a minute."
The Master of Sinanju followed his pupil to the great parlor in the center of the rambling house.
"The whole thing was a scheme to get Ned Clancy into the White House next time around," Remo was saying. "Nalini was the Eldress. She set up all the dominoes at the start, and once HELP was a big deal, started knocking them down so Clancy could rehabilitate himself politically."
"You walk unsteadily," Chiun pointed out.
"I caught a dose."
"It does not appear to trouble you very much."
They came to the door.
"Did I mention I saw the same thing that Sambari saw in the forest?" said Remo.
"And?"
Remo threw open the door. "Sambari was a fraidy cat."
Thinning his dry lips, the Master of Sinanju followed his insolent pupil into the room.
Pearl Clancy crouched in her wheelchair like a mummy refusing to die. Her head jerked around, and her eyes widened. She began bouncing in place.
"This poor woman has been through much," Chiun said.
"She could've done a better job of raising her kids," Remo said, kneeling down to reconnect the battery cables.
The wheelchair motor whined back into life and Pearl Clancy grabbed for the control stick. Since it wasn't there anymore, she made a fist and beat the armrest futilely.
Chiun regarded her with compassion.
"She is a pitiful sight. There is almost nothing left of her but her mind."
"If that," Remo grunted, restoring the silver pen to the universal socket on the wheelchair armrest. "Let's go, Little Father."
And as they started from the room, Pearl Clancy grasped the pen and pushed it forward. The wheelchair whined after them, and Pearl Clancy tried to run them down.
They walked faster.
Then Pearl Clancy bugged out her eyes, bringing her outstretched forefingers to her slack mouth. They began wriggling up and down, in and out.
"She is still following us," Chiun told Remo.
"Big deal."
And from the gray disorder of Pearl Clancy's hair emerged red matchstick heads that split to reveal curving black fangs.
Walking along, Remo felt something in his hair, and brushed it off. He stomped the scuttling red thing into the floor.
"Musta missed one," he muttered.
"You smell of that harlot again," Chiun sniffed.
Then one landed on the bald top of his head.
The Master of Sinanju hissed, "What is this?" and shook his head once sharply.
A jumping spider landed in a corner and skittered out again. It lifted itself up on its rear set of legs and wriggled its fangs in their direction.
And behind them, Pearl Clancy wriggled her forefingers back.
As they watched, the jumping spider crouched and launched itself at her head. It crawled into her hair as two more heads poked out, separating.
"Chiun, do you see what I see?" Remo said.
"She is a Spider Diva too!" Chiun cried.
And Pearl Clancy leered at them, drool leaking from her slack mouth.
Two spiders jumped, one for Remo and one for Chiun.
They fended them off with quick blows, bringing their heels down on the dying things as soon as they hit the floor.
That seemed to be the end of the spiders.
"Remo, do not stand there. Dispatch that evil creature!"
"Hey, I don't snuff old ladies."
"I will not lower myself to kill an old woman."
"Well, I took care of Nalini."
"And you may take care of this one too," said Chiun.
"No way, Chiun. I'm not Dr. Doom."
Remo blinked. The Master of Sinanju looked up into his pupil's face.
"Maybe we'd better call Smith on this one," Remo muttered, keeping his distance from the agitated woman bouncing helplessly in her chair.
When Remo finished explaining himself, Harold Smith said, "Yes, I know."
"What do you mean, you know?" Remo said hotly.
"I deduced the truth-too late to communicate it to you. But it appears that you have neutralized the situation."
"Except for this old dingbat. I won't do her and neither will Chiun. Sorry."
"Have you secured the house?" Smith asked after a moment.
"There's a guard around somewhere, but that's all."
"Lock him up somewhere and keep Thrush Limburger out of sight," said Smith.
"And?"
"Wait."
"For who?"
Dr. Mordaunt Gregorian answered his beeper at a payphone outside San Francisco. Listening as his secretary informed him of the urgent need for his services in Massachusetts, his cracked dry lips quirked into a thin smile.
"Tell them I am on my way," he said, and drove his hearse to the airport. There was no business in California for him anyway.
He arrived at the walled compound as dawn was breaking. The electric gates opened automatically and he drove up the driveway past a guard in a box who seemed to be asleep, an empty liquor bottle in one hand.
The door opened before he could touch the pushbell.
"What kept you?" a man's voice said impatiently.
"Why is it so dark in here?" Dr. Gregorian wondered, looking around. There was a tall man standing in the gloomy vestibule. His face was indistinct. It was very dirty, as if smeared with coal dust.
"Power outage. It's straight ahead. Past the two doors. Here's a pillow."
"Pillow?"
"She specifically asked to be suffocated with her favorite pillow."
"But I have brought my medicide machine. Most people prefer to be eased across the River Styx chemically, I have found."
"Not this time. If you can't grant a dying woman's final wish, we'll get someone who can."
"That would be illegal. I offer physician-assi
sted suicide, not murder."
"I guess I had you wrong," the man said with a hint of flat amusement in his voice.
"I could do both, I suppose . . . ."
"Now you're talking."
"I will need to be alone with her," Dr. Gregorian said. "There must be no witnesses."
"Be gentle with her. She's as old as the hills."
"This should have been done long ago, you know. To allow a person to reach this state of debilitation, it's just criminal."
"Couldn't agree with you more," said the faceless man.
Dr. Gregorian stepped through the door and closed it behind him.
Thirty minutes later, he emerged, flushed of face, his eyes feverishly bright, his medicide machine tucked under one skinny arm.
"How'd it go?" asked the male voice.
"She struggled more than I expected."
"You look kinda funny. Hope you didn't catch anything."
"No, no," Dr. Gregorian said absently. "I always use a condom."
"What?"
"I mean, I always take precautions against infection."
"You dried-up old ghoul! No wonder you snuff only women!"
"You misunderstood me, I assure you." Dr. Gregorian suddenly passed a hand over his face. "I don't feel very well."
"Uh-oh."
"What is it?"
"The old bat had contracted HELP. Hope you didn't catch it."
Dr. Gregorian blinked. "HELP? But I have eaten no bugs."
"Not even one? Back at Nirvana West?"
"How did you know I have been to Nirvana West?"
"The same way I know you've killed your last little old lady. I was there and I saw a lot of HELP victims. You look just like one."
Dr. Gregorian took an involuntary step backward. "You-you mean I'm dying?"
"Your eyeballs are still white. That means you've got forty-eight hours."
"But I have so much work to do. So much suffering to end. My life's work will die with me." Dr. Gregorian looked back at the closed doors. "Should I-should I go back for seconds?"
"Not a good idea since the police are going to be here any minute now."
"What good will they do?"
"For you, not much. But when they find out you snuffed Senator Clancy's mother without family permission, they'll probably lock you up for Murder One."
"But I have your permission. You told me over the phone it was your mother."
"Not me. You must have talked to somebody else."
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