"Take me," Holly said, her eyes glazed in a trance. "Take what Kali gives you." She pulled him down to the slimy bricks of the alley, littered with rotted cabbage leaves and coffee grounds and bird droppings. "Take me here, in the filth, for it is as She wishes." She opened her legs to Remo and then gasped as she felt his flesh burn inside her.
When it was over, Remo turned his face to the wall of the building. He felt ashamed and dirty. Holly took his hand, but he brushed it away as if it were a maggot. "I don't always do this on the first date," she said.
"Go away."
"It really wasn't my idea," Holly said. "It's something that came over me."
"Just get out of here, all right?"
"Look, I've heard of postcoital tristesse, but isn't this a bit much?"
Remo stumbled to his feet and staggered back from the young woman, who still lay on the ground amid the dirt of the alley. He barely had the strength to move. The smell of her was as a drug in his nostrils; his limbs felt leaden.
"You can try to leave," Holly said. Her voice broke into brittle sharp laughter. "You can try, but you will follow me all the same. Kali wants you. She will bring you to Her. You'll see. You will come to Kali."
Her voice grew small in the distance as he stumbled away. But even when Remo could no longer hear her, the scent of her still followed him like an invisible, teasing demon, and he knew that the girl was right. He would follow her, and somehow he knew the path would lead to death.
He had been wrong in trying to solve things alone. He needed help.
He needed Chiun.
Chapter Eleven
It was dark in the hotel room. The only illumination came from the stars that shone brightly in the clear Rocky Mountain night.
Remo lay on a mat on the floor in the middle of the room, his hands folded across his stomach as Chiun had placed them. The old Korean sat in a lotus position on the floor near Remo's head.
"And now you will speak," Chiun said.
"I don't know what's wrong with me, Little Father. I thought I could shake it, but I can't."
"Speak of it," Chiun said gently.
"I think it was a girl," Remo said.
"Just a girl?" Chiun said.
"No one special," Remo said. "Belonged to some crazy cult. I followed her when we took that just Folks flight into North Carolina and two of her friends tried to kill me."
"Did you kill them?"
"The friends. But not her," Remo said. He shivered from the memory, but then his body grew calm as Chiun, sensing Remo's pain even in the darkness, reached out a hand and touched his shoulder.
"I couldn't kill her. I wanted to. But she wanted to die. She wanted me to kill her. And she was chanting, they were all chanting, and it made me crazy and I had to get out of there. That's when I went to the mountains to think."
Chiun was silent.
"Anyway, I saw her again tonight and I thought I could kill her this time. She had something to do with the deaths on the planes, and I thought I could do my job and kill her. But I couldn't. It was her smell."
"What kind of smell?" Chiun said.
"It was a smell ... but not really a smell," Remo said into the darkness of the room. "More like a feeling."
"A feeling of what?"
Remo tried to find the words but could not. He just shook his head. "I don't know, Little Father. Something big. Frightening. More frightening than death. A terrible thing . . . God, I am going crazy." He rubbed his hands together nervously, but Chiun took them in his own hands and replaced them over Remo's solar plexus.
"You said they chanted," Chiun prompted. "What kind of chanting?" he asked softly.
"What? Oh. Crazy stuff. I don't know. 'Long live death. Long live pain. She loves it.' I tell you, they love death, even their own. And it was that way tonight too. She told me I would have to follow her, and I knew, Chiun, I knew that even if I had killed her, she would have been saying, 'Kill me, kill me, kill me, because it is right.' I couldn't kill her; I let her go."
"Why must you follow her?" Chiun asked.
"Because I'm supposed to be somebody's lover. Somebody wants me."
"Who is this person who wants you?" Chiun asked.
"A name. A funny name. I think it's a woman's name," Remo said. "The name was . . ." He paused, trying to remember.
"Kali?" Chiun asked. His voice was hardly more than a breath in the blackened room.
"That's it. Kali. How did you know?"
Remo heard Chiun sigh, and then the old Korean's voice was brisk again.
"Remo, I must arrange to meet Emperor Smith at once."
"What for?" Remo asked. "What's he got to do with it?"
"He must help me prepare for my journey," Chiun said.
Remo looked at him, puzzled. Even in the darkness of the room, his eyes were able to gather enough light to see clearly. The look on Chiun's face was one of pained resignation.
"I must go to Sinanju," Chiun said.
"What for? Why now?"
"To save your life," Chiun said. "If it is not already too late."
Chapter Twelve
Harold W. Smith walked briskly into the Denver motel room.
"What is it? What was so important that you couldn't tell me over the telephone?"
"Don't look at me," Remo said. He was leafing through a magazine and did not bother to look up from its pages.