"There," Holly shouted. "He has come. Kali's lover. He has come."
"Oh, him," said Ban Sar Din, but he looked to the back of the ashram, even as he filled his other pocket with more jewels and cash.
In the doorway stood a tall thin young man wearing a black T-shirt. His wrists were large. His face was haggard and his eyes held a look of helpless despair. If someone had asked him who he was, he would have answered that his name used to be Remo Williams.
"Hail, Lover of Kali," the Thuggees chanted, falling to their knees before him.
Woodenly Remo walked forward.
"He is carrying the rumal," people shouted, for Remo was nervously twisting the thin yellow hand towel he had taken from the motel bathroom.
In the crowd, leaning against a pillar, was A. H. Baynes. It was a face that Remo remembered, but it meant nothing to him now. He passed on.
The pull on him was irresistible. It felt as if the statue had him by a rope and was pulling him toward her. He saw the statue on the raised platform. It was hideous, a different creature from a different world, but still he walked toward it. The stone face was impassive, but behind it, suddenly another face seemed to stir to life. It was a beautiful face, full of sorrow. Remo blinked, but the face lingered for a moment, then disappeared, again replaced by the pitted graven image of the statue.
"Who is he?" someone whispered.
Remo heard the answer. "He is Kali's lover. The one for whom She has waited."
A lover? He was not even a man, Remo thought. He was a puppet and his time was short. With each step, he felt something inside him weaken. By the time he reached the dais and stood face to face with the statue of Kali, he could barely move. The yellow towel slipped from his fingers and dropped onto the floor.
The scent pierced him, ancient and malevolent. It coursed through him like an evil, burning serpent, twisting its way through his bloodstream.
It is too late, he thought. Too late.
And even as the thought formed, he saw the lips of Kali curl into a smile.
Chapter Nineteen
"Bring me death."
The words echoed inside his head, and Remo jolted awake. He was in a small room on a narrow cot. Two large cubes of incense burned in a porcelain plate at the foot of his bed.
His skin was prickly white gooseflesh. He looked around, and his first reaction was one of relief that the ghoulish vision of the many-armed statue smiling slyly at him had been only a nightmare. But the faint smell of the goddess still hung in his nostrils, and he knew that the real nightmare was only beginning.
"Baynes," he said shortly. A. H. Baynes had been the face he recognized in the crowd. And Baynes, for better or for worse, was real. He had to concentrate on Baynes.
The smell was stronger now, and again he heard the words inside his mind: "Bring me death."
Quickly, noiselessly, still feeling a jittery fear at the base of his spine, Remo slid out of bed and moved toward the door to the room. It opened silently and he looked out at the ashram, where the mindless, chanting cultists slept on the hard wooden floor. He moved like a cat among them, but Baynes was not there. He turned and saw the statue of Kali. Its eight arms seemed to be waving to him, and the sight sickened him and filled him with fear. He ran toward the door in the back of the room.
He was in an alley. A large black Porsche was parked there, and beyond it, Remo heard humming coming from a garage. He went toward it.
Ban Sar Din ceased his tuneless rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In" when he saw the haggard stranger in the doorway. He rose from his water bed where he had been busying himself, jotting down the telephone numbers of dating services that promised, in magazine advertisements, that Beautiful Scandinavian Blondes Want to Meet You.
"Shoo," he said to Remo. "Shoo, shoo, shoo. You are not allowed in the Holy One's quarters."
"I'm looking for Baynes," Remo said thickly. The smell was less strong here. He felt as if his head were starting to clear.
"Now I recognize you," Ban Sar Din said. "You are the lover."
"Lover?" Remo repeated.
"The one Kali has chosen to be Her husband."
"Scratch that," Remo said. "I'm a confirmed bachelor. I want to know what Baynes has to do with this place."
Ban Sar Din snorted. "Why don't you ask him?"
"I couldn't find him," Remo said. "And I wasn't feeling too good in there."
"Maybe you're not eating well enough," Ban Sar Din said. "You're too thin. I know this great French restaurant - "
"It's not the food. It's the statue," Remo said.
"It is only a harmless stone figure," Ban Sar Din said.
Remo shook his head.
Ban Sar Din pinched his nose. "All right. Maybe there is something unusual about it. I don't like it, but they do." He jerked his head toward the ashram.
"What is it, anyway?" Remo said. "What does it do?"
"It grows arms."
"Come on," Remo said in disgust.
"It's true. I don't know how. I just know some mornings I go in there and it's got more arms than it did when I went to sleep. It makes them crazy in the ashram."
"Crazy enough to kill people?" Remo asked.
Ban Sar Din swallowed as a long shadow hovered over Remo. "Whoa, there, pard," A. H. Baynes said, grinning his most sincere toothy smile. "Did I hear my name?" He reached out his hand to shake Remo's. "Let's press the flesh."
Remo kept his hand stubbornly at his side. "Keep your flesh to yourself," he said. He looked Baynes over. The airline president was wearing a checkered cowboy shirt and white pants tucked into intricately worked white cowboy boots. Around his bare throat hung a knit black string tie.
"That your concession to your wife's death?" Remo asked, touching the tie.
"I'd say that's my business, mister."
"How about the yellow handkerchiefs all over the floor of this place? Is that your business too?"
Baynes moved to the side so that Remo's body shielded him from the view of Ban Sar Din, and he pursed his lips and squinted, motioning Remo to be silent.
"Come on in the office and we'll talk," he said. Loudly, over Remo's shoulder, he said, "You can go back to sleep, Sardine. I'll take care of our guest."
"Good," the Indian said. "I was just in the middle of some very important paperwork."