He fired in desperation, but the derisive whine of wild bullets mocked him. His rifle was now empty. The bandolier of cartridges was by the fire. As he turned to retreat, a dozen gaunt Kurds popped up from concealment to charge up the slope.
Reed bounded toward the baggage lying near the embers; but before he could seize the bandolier, he heard the red-haired girl’s voice. She was vainly struggling with the massive door that led to the turret.
“I can’t open it!”
Three long leaps brought him to her side. The massive iron grille-work screeched as Reed savagely wrenched it open. But the raiders were now in the court. A savage, triumphant yell; but, strangely enough, not a shot was fired.
It was a close race, but Reed won by a hair. He thrust the girl across the threshold, then jerked the gate shut and slammed the massive bars into place. The Kurds could not break in without siege engines.
They were safe, but unarmed and without food.
“You fools!” Reed ventured a bluff. “This ruin is haunted. The demons will tear you to pieces.”
“The peace upon you,” the leader respectfully countered. “But we know that you are a saint. Your holy presence will protect us. We do not intend to harm you. We only want the red-haired girl. Our chief ordered us to get her. We will wait until hunger and thirst drive you forth with the girl.”
The Kurd salaamed and turned his back.
As Reed followed his companion up the lordly staircase, he fully realized the irony of fate.
He had mocked Bint el Hareth in her own home, almost within arm’s reach of her. And the girl whose loveliness had made him waver was with him. But he could carry on by surrendering the red-haired girl. Even though Bint el Hareth blasted him for his weakness.
Surrender her now. In the end, they would be starved out anyway.
“I’ll go back,” his companion said. “That’ll give you your chance. They’ll get me anyway.”
But hearing it from her lips seemed to alter things.
“Stay here!” he snapped. “I’m going to the top story to think it out. There must be some way.”
But Reed knew that there was no escape. The turret overlooked a precipitous drop of hundreds of feet. The bandits guarded every exit.
* * * *
As he entered the upper chamber of the turret, the emptiness and desolation seemed vibrant with life. He glanced through the slits in the vaulted ceiling. The stars were rising to their appointed positions.
Reed frowned perplexedly. Some calculation had been in error. The stars that governed the return of Bint el Hareth would soon be at the marks sculptured by some forgotten astrologer.
Bitterness now corroded Reed’s heart. Bint el Hareth would appear, and her jealousy would destroy him.
He raised his arms, lifted his eyes to the slits in the ceiling, and cursed the stars as they relentlessly marched toward their culmination; but they did not hear.
Reed was not afraid; but the iron was biting deeply into his soul. He seated himself on a block of granite and for a long time stared at the vague, mitred and bearded gods whose faces loomed monstrously in the shimmering gloom. They were remorseless as fate, but less malignant.
Reed’s skin began to twitch. The gloom was becoming a live and vibrant creature. He wondered who would carry his body down to the nethermost vault to place him with those others who had been blasted by Bint el Hareth’s wrath. How could a man’s body become like the shell of a sun-dried insect?
Let her appear. Let it be over with. She might smile before she blasted him. He rose, and taking his position at the circle, he began reciting the ritual.
Scarcely a dozen syllables had thundered from his dry lips when he felt eyes probing the darkness behind him. He whirled.
The red-haired girl was at the threshold. Her body was a vague white glamor, and her face was a heart-shaped blot.
“Get out!” barked Reed. “I’m trying to think! Don’t disturb me.”
Instead of retreating, she advanced. Reed’s hand flashed out to detain her. She eluded him and stepped toward the circle at the center.
That was the ultimate sacrilege!
But before his wrath could find voice, the red-haired girl spoke.
“Your fate is still in your hands, Morton Reed. Your choice is still yours.”
How could she have called him by name?
But that was swallowed by a greater wonder: she went on to speak of his search for Bint el Hareth!
“But how—how can you know—” he finally gasped.
“Because—” She paused. He could just distinguish the whiteness of her hands against the waist band of what remained of her skirt. It slipped down in a heap about her ankles. “Because I am Bint el Hareth.”
Her words burned into his brain as his eyes saw what gleamed at her waist: a broad silver girdle, flashing with uncounted sapphires. This was some monstrous trickery! Down there in the court, by the dying embers of their fire—
“How—”
“Raise your eyes, Morton Reed,” she softly murmured, “I have other features as well…”
* * * *
Her voice had in some inexpressible way changed. It was low and vibrant and heart-stirring and strangely modulated. Despite the alluring vagueness of her body, he was certain that its contours had unaccountably altered. Some strange change was going on before his very eyes. And as Reed looked her in the face, he could no longer be sure that her hair was red, or that it was not the deceptive play of brightening starlight that seemed to make her cheekbones ever so slightly more prominent and give her features a faintly aquiline cast.
“I am indeed Bint el Hareth,” she continued. “It was written on the books of fate that that red-haired girl be killed in the raid. What difference if I borrowed her body, or shaped one for myself of moon glamor and star dust? I have already reshaped her to the form you desired.”
“Then—down there—in the court—”
Bint el Hareth smiled.
“That was still her body, and some of her lingering personality.”
“Then you’re not jealous?”
She shook her head. “Old Habeeb gave you a garbled tradition. Not my wrath, but my more than human kisses left my lovers as you saw them. They accepted their doom and were glad.
“The choice is yours, Morton Reed. Those bandits down there cannot touch what little is now left of that red-haired girl’s flesh.
“Deny and disown me, open the gateway, and go in peace. Your life will be long—but you will never forget the silver girdle that you could not remove.”
She paused and ran slender fingers through her hair and withdrew a small key.
“And this,” she continued, handing it to Reed, “is the key of doom. If you still have the courage and the will.”
The night had become a maze of wonders. Reed saw that Bint el Hareth had blossomed in the light of stars risen to their culmination. Then for a moment he pictured those desiccated bodies ranged in the crypts below.
“It would be worse to wander with only the memories of a girdle without a key,” he finally said.
Key in hand he stepped into the circle; and the splendor of her eyes foreshadowed the consuming fire of her uncounted strange kisses…
* * * *
And all the while, the leader of the Kurdish bandits watched his men heaping wood in front of the iron grille.
“That should be enough,” he at last decided. It had taken a long time to find enough fuel in that barren waste. It took almost as long again before the massive bars reached a red heat. Then sword-strokes bit into the glowing metal, and the bandits poured through the breach.
Sunlight was filtering through the slitted dome of the upper chamber when they reached its threshold.
“Wallah,” muttered the bandits, “where is that red-haired feringhi wench? Not even a cat could have
leaped through those small slits.”
Then they saw Reed lying in an alcove between a pair of winged bulls. They recoiled, then paused to wonder what dream could leave such ecstasy on any man’s face.
“The saint is sleeping,” whispered the leader. “But see the print of her lips on his forehead. Doubtless—though Allah is the knower—he utterly destroyed her for trying to seduce him.”
“Ay wallah,” echoed another in an awed whisper, “let us leave, before this pious man likewise destroys us for disturbing his sleep.”
THE DESTROYING DEMON
Originally published in Spicy Mystery Stories, August 1936.
The red glow of torches cast shifting shadows into the Malay jungle. A score of stocky brown men armed with spears and antiquated rifles fell back, leaving Davis Harley to face the man-eating tigress that terrorized the laborers of his plantation near the Siamese frontier.
The Daughter of Kali, they called her: the destroying demon.
She had dropped the child she had seized at the edge of the village, turned and faced her pursuers.
Sudden and unaccountable fear for an instant gripped Harley, though he had hunted over half of Asia. This was no Malay tigress, but a tawny slayer larger than any he had ever seen in Bengal. Her eyes flamed in the moonlight, and her tail swayed as she crouched to counterattack.
Harley’s rifle snapped into line. The gesture ended in a savage crackle and a gust of nitrous flame. The beast should have dropped, riddled; but a confusing haze and a glamour had made her outlines blend into the torch-glow. Before he could recover from the illusion, she wheeled and bounded into the jungle, leaving her prey.
Harley, reckless and wrathful, pursued the beast. To hell with the native hunters! If he did not bag the tigress, his laborers would mutiny.
She must be wounded, he told himself, as he plunged into the jungle, else he could not keep up. Pursuit was insane, but if he retreated, he would lose face before his laborers.
Presently, he emerged in a clearing. It was a shimmering sea of treacherous shadow and moon glamour. At its further edge an ancient ruin towered into the night; a temple erected by that mysterious race which had built prodigious cities in Siam a thousand years ago, then overnight abandoned them.
Harley shivered as he started across the clearing. At first he thought that it was the penetrating highland wind; then he knew that it was the warning of an instinct keener than his senses.
He pressed on, rifle ready. He had to go, lest retreat give native superstition a hold on him.
A low, savage snarling warned him. There was a stirring in the vegetation that blocked the approach to the temple, then a flash of tawny hide. He forced himself to steadiness, then fired twice.
The scream of bullets ricocheting from the pediment of the ruin mocked him. He had missed; and the slow, deliberate stirring in waist high growth told him that the beast now was stalking him, stealthily advancing to strike before he could again pick his target.
Flight would invite instant destruction. He had to stand. The silence became unbearable. He could neither hear nor see a trace of the demon tigress, but he could feel wrath smiting him like a tangible thing.
And then she appeared at his left, unaccountably close. He whirled, shifting his rifle. But as the blast of cordite rang in his ears, there was a long, fluent flash of blade and yellow and ivory—Whether he had hit or missed that nebulous, blurred shape would not change the outcome. His rifle was knocked aside, and he went down, empty-handed.
Harley was numbed by the momentary glimpse of those blazing eyes and white fangs. He scarcely felt the impact. He dimly remembered that the attack of those great cats is accompanied by a merciful anesthesia…but as blackness enveloped him, he heard a shrill cry…a woman screaming…and then he heard no more.
* * * *
When Harley’s consciousness returned, his being alone and unmangled was only a lesser wonder. The greater one was the woman who knelt beside him in the clearing. She had olive skin and the Aryan features of a high caste Hindu. She wore a scarlet sari, and near her lay a tattered shawl that had enveloped her blue black hair, and her throat and shoulders.
The beauty of her face, and the mellow curves of her pert young breasts dazzled Harley as he regained his feet. Her legs were shapely fascinations in old ivory, and when the embroidered silk for a moment drew close to her hips, the shapely contours were as fascinating as her dark eyes and crimson lips.
She was scratched and bruised, but despite the long, red streak that creased her shoulders, she was scarcely injured.
“I screamed and waved my scarf right into her face,” she explained. “And the Daughter of Kali fled without harming you.”
Such things had happened, but Harley incredulously regarded her.
“I’m Sita Deva,” she continued. “I live in the temple.”
“You live here?”
“I escaped from bandits, and found refuge there, with the gods.”
The night was becoming a madness. Harley, still marveling, followed her to the ruin. She moved with the lithe grace of a cat, making scarcely a sound as she picked her way.
In the temple, in one corner of the court, Harley saw smoldering embers. Near it were several bowls of ancient bronze and an earthen jar—things she had found in the ruins, she said. The forest supplied her food. Harley shivered at the thought of facing those inscrutable, mocking figures that stared down from the sculptured columns and walls.
“But you aren’t afraid?” he demanded, regarding her with amazement.
Sita Deva’s smile was slow and cryptic. No words were needed to mock that question. For a moment she reminded him of those inscrutable Khmer sculptures at the capitols of the towering columns.
Harley’s face still tingled from the rough tongue of the tigress. He marveled that he had not been torn to pieces, instead of having only a few superficial scratches; even more, that this slender, shapely girl with the amber-shadowed skin could have driven off the terrible Daughter of Kali.
Yet it seemed even more unreal, sitting by this strange woman who was so much at home in that ancient ruin. Her presence stirred him, at first vaguely, then to his very heart. The feline suppleness of her body, expressed in her slightest gestures, insinuated itself into Harley’s blood. She stirred strange fancies, and Harley’s pulse began pounding.
He scarcely knew what to do or say. Her unbelievable courage had saved him from a terrible doom. To make advances offended Harley’s sense of fitness; yet to live without having felt the warmth of her lips and that tantalizing sleekness that rippled beneath the scarlet sari was intolerable.
His brain was humming, whirling, and in his ears there was a somnolent buzzing as of uncounted insects murmuring. The ghost of a smile that lurked at the corners of her pensive mouth was an invitation…
The outward silence became unbearable. Yet something seemed to whisper to Harley in an inaudible, but insistent voice. Without knowing just what gave him the final impulsion, he caught her hand. The touch of her skin set uncounted thrills through him. He moved as in a haze, fiercely embracing her, muttering like a drunken man. The various languages that he spoke became a confusion that forbade coherent utterance.
She did not resist; and as he read the riddle in her dark, smoldering eyes, he knew that he had her unspoken invitation.
He felt the play of supple flesh beneath the sensuous silk which clung to her body. Without moving from the flagstones on which she sat, she seemed to move toward him, every fiber of her responding to his embrace, a multitude of questing, hungry entities that silently cried for caresses.
Harley was now dizzy and Sita Deva’s murmurings in his ear as he kissed the hollow of her throat and the enchanting curve of her shoulders, sent streaks of madness racing through his veins.
And in the shifting blue shadows of the colonnade, he felt the exquisite loveliness that silk gleaming i
n the full moon glow had hinted…
“Will you always love me truly, man from beyond the sea?” Sita Deva whispered as that agonizing ecstasy of their first kiss left them trembling at the thought of further caresses. “I am very jealous. The old gods will curse you if you are false to me. You are mine, for I bought you from the demon tigress.” Her smile was a warning; but he laughed at the moment’s qualm, and kissed the menace from her lips.
The night became a witch glamour that was neither sleep nor wakefulness. The drowsy languor between kisses was troubled and baffling. It seemed that Sita Deva’s skin was coated with fine fur, and her somnolent breathing became the contented murmurings of a great cat… At times it seemed that her tongue was strangely rough, as she licked his cheek instead of kissing him…”
* * * *
When the early sunlight gilded the mocking faces of the Khmer gods, Harley was alone. He told himself that it all had been jungle madness, but the print of tiny bare feet contradicted him.
A musty, feline odor tainted the still air. And there were other smells—He saw the whiteness of clean bones, and others to which clung flesh. They were human bones.
He crashed recklessly across the clearing, desperately trying to expel his unsavory suspicions.
As he approached the village, the dogs yelped and scurried for cover. The natives muttered, and Harley felt the stare of many eyes.
When he entered the compound of his bungalow, his own dog bristled, then fled. The odor of the tiger’s den clung to Harley’s garments like a blight, though he himself could not perceive it. And while his stocky Gurkha servant, grizzled, grey-haired Pratap Singh prepared breakfast, Harley scrubbed himself, then flung his garments into the grate.
“That’ll settle it, once for all!”
That day, instead of riding the rounds of his plantation, he sat in the bungalow; but long thoughts and longer gin pahits did not solve the riddle.
As the sun dipped down toward the crest of the forest, a vague unrest gripped Harley. He would bring Sita Deva to the village, and prove that there had been nothing uncanny about his night in the jungle.
The 11th Golden Age of Weird Fiction Page 24
