"Possible?" Remo growled, trying to snap out of his mental fog. "Smitty, it was pretty damn obvious that's what was going on."
"What?"
Remo suddenly sat bolt upright on the motel bed.
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He clutched the phone in his now sweating palm, making warm imprints in the plastic casing.
Something appeared before him. Remo wasn't sure if it was real or in his mind. It was a field of inky blackness spreading limitlessly in every direction.
"Sinanju is mine!" a voice that was not Remo's boomed from his throat.
"What was that?" Smith demanded over the line.
Smith could have saved his breath. The phone had slipped from Remo's fingers as he slumped, unconscious, to the bed.
Buffy Brand, who had remained in her chair across the room for Remo's entire conversation, jumped up to check his pulse. Satisfied that he was still alive, she lifted the receiver to her ear.
"Your man is hurt," she said.
There was a momentary pause on the line before a lemony voice spoke. "Who is this?" the voice demanded.
"It doesn't matter," Buffy said. "I'll give you instructions on where he is. You can have somebody come and collect him. I'm going back for the Cole girl."
This time the man on the other end of the line paused only a beat. "That is inadvisable," the lemony voice said. "If my man, as you call him, failed, it is unlikely that anyone else can succeed."
"It doesn't mean that no one else can try," Buffy Brand retorted.
But she spoke the words with more confidence than she felt. Buffy Brand had seen Remo in action. They didn't make them like Remo in the Bureau. Or anywhere else.
Chapter Eighteen
"What the hell were you thinking?" Esther Clear-Seer screamed. She had learned from CNN—which she picked up via satellite in her ranch house in spite of her strict ban on such devious outside influences—that the latest virgin she had harvested was none other than the only child of the state's senior senator.
Esther thought she had recognized the girl from somewhere. Now she realized that it was from the numerous campaign appearances she had made with her famous father, Senator Jackson Cole.
"You are distraught," Kaspar said indifferently. He had removed the tripod and the grate from above the rock fissure and was climbing down to retrieve the heavy rock urn. As she had since the previous night's events, Lori Cole sat rigidly on the top steps of the Pythia platform.
"Of course I'm frigging distraught!" Esther yelled. "You made me go out and collect one of the highest-profile kids in this backwater state! What, do you want me to go to jail?''
"I want you to stay in line," Kaspar said tersely. There appeared to be a crack in his usually unemotional facade. He hefted the heavy urn in his frail
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hands and was forcing it up to the top of the platform. He strained beneath the great burden.
"Stay in line?" Esther said. "What do you mean, stay in line? Didn't I go out and get you all the girls you wanted?"
"Didn't you resolve when you collected this one that it would be your last?" Kaspar said. Sliding the urn to the platform, he nodded toward the catatonic girl on the steps.
Esther's eyes grew wide in surprise. "How did you know that?" she demanded.
Kaspar shook his head. "You have no idea what we have unleashed here, have you?" he said, pushing himself back up to the platform.
"I haven't unleashed anything but a huge nightmare," Esther said. "Cole's daughter," she muttered bitterly to herself. "I never should have let you come in here."
"You were destined to be the one to help my master."
"I don't believe any of that hocus-pocus," Esther said. "Any deal I made with you was purely business."
"How fortunate for you, then, that your procurement of this vessel will allow you to continue our venture."
"You're going to hold this over my head, aren't you, Kaspar?"
"Only as much as it is necessary."
"And if I don't toe the line?"
"I would be distraught, as would you, if the authorities were to find out that your church was responsible for the abductions. Particularly the senator's
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daughter. As I understand it, he has many friends who are judges in this state. I'm sure they will be quite fan-when the time comes to pass judgment on you."
"You bastard," Esther snapped.
Kaspar smiled tightly. "Can I assume we have a firm understanding?"
Wearing a look of pure hatred, Esther nodded sharply. She then stormed over to the far side of the platform.
Satisfied, Kaspar knelt before the urn. With great care he tucked the sleeves of his priestly robes up inside the body of the garment and, without hesitation, shoved his pale arms into the yellowish powder up to the elbows.
Kaspar closed his eyes.
After a moment of intense concentration, his eyes reopened. A concerned expression creased his brow. With growing anxiety he began feeling around inside the stone urn like a child searching for the prize at the bottom of a box of cereal.
When he at last pulled his arms from the yellow powder—now a moist, sticky paste from the natural steam of the rock fissure—his face was a rock. He brushed the thick yellow clumps from his forearms.
Esther noticed Kaspar's worried look, and though she wished it wasn't so, she knew that her fate was now tied inexorably to his.
"What's wrong?" she asked from the other side of the platform. She tried to force indifference into her voice, but it came out as shrill as a mouse's squeak.
"It is as I feared," Kaspar said, still kneeling beside the urn. ' 'The essence of the Pythia has fled with the young Sinanju Master."
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