The Revenge of Kali-Ra

by K. K. Beck

  One of the medics now said, “We think he should spend a night in the hospital under observation. We don’t know what kind of drugs he’s been on. And we’ll have to file a report that there was an assault here.”

  Tom Thorndyke sagged visibly at this news, and Melanie knew that her suspicions had been right. “I want the cops here to flush this guy out!” she said. “Helicopters, dogs, heat-seeking missiles, whatever it takes. Meanwhile, I’m taking Nadia to a hotel.”

  * * *

  Outside the window of the Blue Room, there were noises of sirens and crackling walkie-talkies and people shouting in the dark. Glen wanted to go find out what was happening, but he remembered that his job was to stay here in this locked room, guarding Nadia until Tom Thorndyke gave the all clear.

  Despite the commotion from the grounds, it was strangely serene in here. It looked, he thought, like a boudoir in some old Ernst Lubitsch picture, high-ceilinged with a central chandelier, lots of satin and silk. The furniture was French provincial—a blue-and-white striped couch on dainty curved legs, a dressing table with a tall mirror and a collection of crystal bottles, chairs full of cushions in various shades of blue; and a massive canopy bed festooned with gauzy blue draperies.

  “The police seem to be here,” he said reassuringly to Nadia, who had curled up into a corner of the couch. She looked tiny in this big, dramatic setting, much smaller than she ever had on the screen, an adorable, vulnerable waif. “Everything should be all right soon. They’ll probably even let us out of here.”

  “I don’t want them to let us out,” she said. “I don’t want any more hassles. I’m completely maxed out, emotionally speaking.”

  “I know, I know,” he said, feeling that he could never convey enough sympathy to this poor, fragile creature.

  “Oh, Glen,” she said with a little sob, “I’m scared!” Her face fell into her hands and she began to produce the heaving motion of weeping.

  He rushed to her side and perched with one buttock on the sofa. “It’s all right. The police are here. And I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you!” Tentatively, he touched her shoulder and then gave it an avuncular series of pats.

  “Hold me!” she whimpered, opening her arms like a child.

  He flung himself on her and embraced her enthusiastically and she clung to him in return, her famous breasts squashed against his chest, her hair, scented like some tropical fruit, tickling his nose so that he had to smooth it down.

  “I hate it when the world gangs up on me like this,” she snuffled. “Everyone thinks I’m so strong and a real ball breaker and everything, but I’m just an ordinary woman.”

  “I know, I know,” he repeated. “Like everyone else, you need someone to look after you once in a while, don’t you?”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  She pulled away and placed her hands on his shoulders, staring into his face. “Oh, Glen, I feel so safe here with you. Ever since you came here, I’ve felt you were a special person. Intelligent and sensitive to my needs.”

  “I want to be there for you, Nadia,” he said earnestly. “In whatever capacity you need me.”

  “I need you to kiss me,” she said huskily.

  He obliged, putting his hand on the small of her back, thrilled by the feel of her arching spine as their lips met and their tongues mingled. She pulled her mouth wetly away from his just enough to murmur, “I need you to make love to me.”

  He plucked her from the sofa and carried her with manly strides across to the gauze-draped four-poster while continuing to gaze into her eyes. Now, he thought, I’m in my own movie.

  BOOK THREE

  In Which the Gong of Kali-Ra Summons the Faithful to the Temple of the Chosen

  CHAPTER XXVII

  COMES THE DAWN

  The first hint of light came through the curtains, and the birds had begun to sing. Melanie lay awake in one of the twin beds in her room, despite the fact that she was exhausted. After all of yesterday’s excitement, she had managed only a few hours of intermittent sleep.

  The police had come and searched the grounds. This was no mean feat, as there were huge overgrown areas of the garden that had been untouched since the time of Vera Nadi, who had lived here until the age of ninety-eight. By the end, the silent-era vamp had been impoverished and senile, and a jungle of rhododendrons and ivy had been allowed to engulf a hodgepodge of follies, gazebos, and fake ruins. Nadia had reclaimed and restored only about a quarter of the acre and a half.

  The police hadn’t found a trace of anyone. They had searched the carriage house, and taken fingerprints from the living quarters in hopes of identifying the Kevin impersonator. They had done the same thing on the balcony from which the huge jar had fallen, and even placed the peanut butter sandwich remains found there in a plastic bag and taken them away. They had also examined the message of doom left in the office.

  Meanwhile, Melanie had pounded on the door to the Blue Room and begged Nadia to come out and check into a hotel. Nadia had refused to unlock the door, giggled coyly and insisted she was safe in there with Glen Pendergast. “Go away!” she had said. “Leave us alone.”

  “The police may want to talk to you,” said Melanie.

  “Forget it,” Nadia had said.

  Glen, sounding strained and as if normal speech were an effort, had added, “Um, I think we’ve got everything well in hand here. Nadia really can’t take any more.”

  “Yes I can,” squealed Nadia merrily. There was an odd creak, as of bedsprings, and more giggling.

  At that point, Melanie had sighed and given up. Nadia would be safe enough busily occupied behind locked doors with the grounds crawling with cops and German shepherds. As for Professor Pendergast, well, he would just have to fend for himself with the demanding Nadia. It was a problem most men would kill for.

  * * *

  Nick was just waking up. He hadn’t noticed much about the place last night when he’d gratefully accepted a pillow in a flowered case and a crocheted afghan and crashed out on the lumpy sofa that his allergic nose told him was full of cat hair.

  He remembered thinking, right before passing out, that he had just had the most extraordinary day of his life. And then, he’d had a strange, vivid dream in which he and Callie were swimming and kissing in the water and then the cabaña around Nadia Wentworth’s pool had somehow morphed into the temple of Kali-Ra and he’d been separated from her, and found himself pursued through marble labyrinths by strange, menacing figures.

  For part of the dream he’d been trapped in a phone booth trying to call in sick to the movie theater in Minneapolis where he worked, but he couldn’t remember the number, or the name of Jerry Lundquist, his boss. Then Callie had reappeared and turned to him with an evil glint in her eye, and he’d said, as the awful knowledge dawned, “You are one of them,” and she had replied, “I am the goddess to whom they are enslaved, and will spare you if you pledge your will to the Queen of Doom,” and he realized she wasn’t Callie Cunningham at all, but Kali-Ra, and then suddenly he was back at the toga party his sophomore year in high school in that motel near Dayton after the Junior Classical League convention where they’d all got busted for drinking beer. Then Melanie Oakley appeared and said she was Pallas Athena and she was speaking Latin and he kept trying to understand it, and realized she was speaking the language of the Ancient Ones from Uncle Sid’s book, and suddenly it all made sense, but as soon as he woke up he couldn’t remember what she had told him, even though it seemed so profound and enlightening at the time.

  He sat up now, trying to shed the lingering imprint of the dream. He began to examine his surroundings by the clear light of day, for the California sun was streaming through Venetian blinds. He appeared to be sitting in a very ordinary living room, decorated in the style of some of his friends’ parents who hadn’t changed their taste for thirty years, and who bought their knickknacks at craft fairs—a mantelpiece with sand-cast candles and clunky pottery. A coffee table made from an old trunk, covered wit
h magazines. A sickly plant hanging in a macramé sling. A framed print featuring orca whales and dolphins disporting themselves.

  He got up, discovered he had shed everything but his underwear at some point, recovered his jeans and shirt from a nearby chair and put them on over his T-shirt and boxers, and went to examine the bookshelf. There were a lot of books about discovering the inner child, getting in sync with female deities, running with wolves, beating hot flashes without estrogen, learning to develop self-esteem and finding a decent man. To his surprise, there was also a long row of novels by Valerian Ricardo. It seemed to him that it must have taken years to assemble such a collection.

  He wandered over to the coffee table and examined the magazines. Prevention. Cosmo. Psychology Today. Money. Self. And there was also a pile of mail, which he glanced at perfunctorily, until he saw something that made his heart begin to race.

  It was one of those magazine sweepstakes envelopes that was sent to everyone in America. Through the little window it said in screaming, computer-generated letters: “Congratulations Kali-Ra Cunningham. You May Already Have Won A Million Dollars!” He grabbed the envelope and stared at it. No, it hadn’t been his imagination last night when he read her driver’s license. He sank down onto the sofa.

  Just then Callie came into the living room. She was wearing a pair of khaki shorts and a white T-shirt and looked more like a sorority girl than the goddess he had chased through the moonlight.

  “Hi!” she said. “Sleep okay?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  She tossed her hair over her shoulder and said in a whisper, “Listen, don’t tell my mom about last night, okay? She’s massively overprotective. If she heard I drank all that gin and smoked that pot last night, she’d have me in rehab in no time.” She glanced nervously over her shoulder.

  “No problem,” he said. “Is your mom here now?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah. I’ll be getting my own place pretty soon, but for now it’s okay to live at home.” She sat down heavily in a nearby chair and began massaging her temples. “God, I feel like shit.”

  He glanced down at the mail in his hand and then he held it up to her. “I thought your name was Caroline.”

  She waved at the envelope with a dismissive gesture. “I always tell people that,” she said. “Wouldn’t you be embarrassed to have a stupid hippie name like Kali-Ra?”

  “I see your point,” said Nick. He remembered a kid in his fifth-grade class named Pinecone, for whom he had always felt deep pity. “But how come—”

  She interrupted him. “I really freaked out last night. One minute I was running around feeling frisky and kind of crazy and happy because it was so cool up there at Nadia Wentworth’s house with the pool and the moonlight and everything, and then suddenly it was like I was in a very weird place.”

  “You looked pretty wrecked crawling out of the bushes,” he said. “What happened to you?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. For the first time since he’d met her, something akin to doubt flickered across her face. “I was tripping really intensely. I almost wondered if I hadn’t made myself crazy. You see, I’ve been trying to empower myself and—”

  Just then, a woman in her late forties with a soft face, a big curly perm, and a terry cloth bathrobe and large fuzzy slippers came into the room.

  “Hi, Mom,” said Callie in a cheerful little-girl voice, her fears of self-induced madness apparently forgotten. “I hope we didn’t wake you up coming in last night.” She turned to Nick. “This is my mom, Gail. Mom, this is Nick. He brought me home last night, from this party, and he needed a place to stay. He’s from Minneapolis and he slept on the couch.”

  “Oh,” said Gail, looking suspiciously at her daughter and then at Nick. “You didn’t go to one of those raves or anything, did you? Honey, the drugs they have today are much stronger than when I was a kid. You have to be so careful. Or a frat party? I read this thing about campus rape in the Times that said—”

  “Actually,” said Nick with dignity, “this was a fairly civilized little dinner party in Beverly Hills. At Nadia Wentworth’s.” At least it started out civilized, he thought to himself.

  That stopped Gail in her tracks. “Nadia Wentworth’s?”

  “I told you, Mom. I told you I could make it all happen,” said Callie. “It’s working.” She closed her eyes and said in her spooky Kali-Ra voice, “If I will it, so shall it be. The will of the Queen of Doom shall prevail.”

  Slightly embarrassed by Callie’s apparent ease at slipping into a trance state, Nick turned to Gail. “Your daughter has an unusual name,” he said. “How did you choose it?”

  “These are painful issues for me,” Gail said in a whiny voice. “There are trust issues and bonding issues and major identity issues.” She settled down on the sofa next to him with the air of someone in a therapist’s office, eager to get in a full hour’s worth of monologue.

  Callie bounced to her feet and jangled car keys. “Some other time, Mom, okay? I gotta go. I need to drive Nick back to his car.” She gestured at Nick with her eyebrows to indicate they’d better make a fast exit.

  He supposed he’d have to wait until later to find out precisely why the strange and beautiful creature he had pursued naked through the moonlight was named after his Uncle Sid’s trashy character. He rose to go, then rebelled. “Before we go,” he said to Gail, “tell me why your daughter is named Kali-Ra.”

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  THE DAGGER OF KALI-RA

  Melanie got up, showered, and dressed. There was something odd yet comforting in the fact that, despite the many sinister events of the day and night before, today seemed a day like any other. As was her habit, she made herself a cup of coffee and toasted an English muffin in the kitchen, then took them to her office. No one else seemed to be up, which suited her just fine. Perhaps she’d spend an invigorating hour or so with Virgil.

  But first, she should check the e-mail. Melanie hit the space bar, and was astonished to see the screen saver of a bust of Ovid vanish, replaced by the message of doom she had found in the printer last night. It looked less menacing by daylight, but it was still pretty creepy to realize that whoever had written this had sat in her chair and tapped it out on her keyboard.

  “Nadia Wentworth has invoked the wrath of Kali-Ra. We, her loyal slaves, will carry out the will of our mistress and smite the little bitch. To inflict pain in service of the will of Kali-Ra is a labor of love.”

  At a second reading it became clear that there was something not quite right about it. All the messages they’d received by mail had been written in the style of the Kali-Ra books. The phrase “the little bitch,” however, was very un-Valerian. “Foolish unbeliever” would have been more like it. Perhaps this represented a transition from the political to the personal in the lunatic mind behind the note. Tom had said that celebrity stalkers grew more and more agitated as their delusions persisted.

  Suddenly inspired, Melanie clicked on the undo button, which eliminated the last edit. An extra letter leaped into the phrase “labor of love,” and a squiggly red line, indicating a misspelling, appeared beneath it. Whoever had typed this had originally spelled “labor” the British way—“labour.”

  “Aha!” she said, then heard the bell ringing indicating that someone had arrived at the front gate. A check with the video monitor indicated that it was that jerk from Maurice Fender Associates, Quentin Smith. At least he hadn’t brought that horrible old singing mafioso with the overpowering cologne.

  Melanie pushed the speaker button and said crisply, “I thought we agreed that you would negotiate with our attorneys.”

  “Absolutely,” said an apologetic-sounding Quentin Smith. “I’ve sent a fax to Ms. Wentworth’s business manager that explains all about it. I’m only here because I left my briefcase here last night. What with all the excitement and all.”

  Melanie sighed and pushed the button that would open the gates, then began a search for the briefcase. She would hand it to him on the fr
ont porch and make sure he left immediately. She found it sitting in the front hall on the hardwood floor, visibly oozing damp. Melanie was irritated to discover it had left a white oblong mark in the varnish.

  Outside, she was startled to see a red Ford Fiesta parked in front, then realized it must be the car tipsy Nick Iversen and his drunken, sluttish girlfriend had left behind. No doubt she could expect a visit from them later too. All Melanie really wanted was a nice cup of coffee and an hour of Virgil.

  Quentin Smith drove up and leapt out. “Wow! Thanks,” he said as he accepted his briefcase. “I’m really sorry.”

  “No problem,” said Melanie.

  “Look, about last night,” he began.

  She was about to cut him off, but then it occurred to her that listening to him blather on might be smarter. Perhaps he’d say something damaging that she could pass on to the lawyers.

  “Yes?” she said amiably.

  “I’m really sorry about Vince Fontana. I mean he means well and everything, but I really want to make it clear that I have nothing to do with any threats or harm that might come to anyone in this house. What I mean is—Vince Fontana and I don’t even know each other. In fact,” blurted out Quentin, “totally off the record and in the name of human decency I feel compelled to tell you that the claim of Maurice Fender Associates—”

  Just then, a bloodcurdling scream came from inside the house.

  “Nadia!” said Melanie, rushing inside. Quentin followed her and stood at the bottom of the stairs, while she ran up. Rosemary was rushing down and the two women collided.

  “Murder!” screamed Rosemary, clutching Melanie.