"Hello?" Kimberly said aloud. "Is that you?"
Yes. I live.
"But your vessel-"
My temporary vessel. You are my vessel, Kimberly Baynes, my intended vessel. I have been preparing you just as you have nurtured the clay that housed my spirit. I gave you the body of a woman years before your rightful time, and so you are a woman in fact. You are my avatar. I am your soul.
Kimberly sank to her knees on the rug. Four yellow-nailed hands assumed prayful shapes. Her eyes closed, her face tilted toward the white plaster sky of the ceiling.
"I know, I've known it ever since-"
Ever since your breasts grew and the nub of Kali's nether limbs sprouted from your sides. Clay is only clay. It served its purpose. I blessed you with two of my many arms, the better for you to work my will. You and I are destined to be one.
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?"