The bellhop had informed Merle Bettencourt's gorilla that the foursome Leon sought had occupied a third-floor suite that fronted Tchoupitoulas Street. He had the number-304-and took it as an omen that the digits added up to seven, which was always lucky. He ignored the small voice in his head that asked, Lucky for whom?
The true risk started when he parked the van. From that point on, he and the pack would be exposed, their every move a gamble. There was no one in the alley to oppose them at the moment, but there would be staff members and guests in the hotel, and precious time would pass as he led the pack upstairs, the ruckus starting when he crashed the door to 304 and tore into the people he had come to kill.
Four targets now, instead of one. The witness, he would recognize from photographs. The Gypsy woman and the Chinaman would both be obvious on sight. The only man remaining would be Leon's nemesis, the hunter who was seeking information on the loup-garou.
This night, that one would learn more about the wolf man's power than he ever cared to know.
He left the van unlocked, the youngest male detailed to guard it, brooding in resentment when he realized that he would miss out on the kill. It mollified the youngster slightly that there would be no real time for feeding, but they rarely got the chance to kill four humans at a time, and it was still a treat to savor, if you got the chance.
The bitch was on his heels as Leon stepped out of the vehicle, the other four beside him in a moment. They were silent shadows as they moved along the alley, Leon taking point. From somewhere to their left, the muffled sounds of revelry from Tchoupitoulas Street reminded him that there was still a party going on.
So much the better, then. His pack would join in the festivities and add a little flavor of their own. The taste of blood.
CHIUN'S MOOD HAD GONE from bad to worse since his arrival in New Orleans, but the Master of Sinanju knew he concealed it well, presenting a facade of perfect calm to the pathetic specimens around him.
It was bad enough that he was traveling with strangers, forced to stay in a hotel where noisy drunkards lurched about the halls and made commotion in the street around the clock. The desk clerk had insulted him by staring when they registered. The scrawny dwarf who led them to their so-called suite was more respectful, glancing only twice at Chiun, but he had prattled on incessantly about the "big, big party" that was going on outside.
The hotel was an older building, ill maintained, and while Chiun saw evidence of cleaning in their rooms, the maids were clearly not enthusiastic in their work.
But the television was the worst insult of all.
It was an ancient Motorola, ten years past its prime, with washed-out color and sporadic bursts of static that appeared to coincide with the flush of toilets in adjacent rooms. He could have tolerated poor reception, though, if there had been a reasonable choice of channels. As it was, despite the size and splendor of New Orleans, he could pick up only six. One broadcast constantly in French. French!
When it came dawn to it, New Orleans was far too French.
The holy man was on the television again, his face distorted as he waved a Bible at the camera, calling on his Christian brothers to get out and vote for God's anointed candidate. He spoke of Christian love, but with the sound turned low, his face became a twisted mask of hatred, spewing silent bile from narrow, bloodless lips.
Chiun wondered who would vote for such a man to lead them, and the answer came to him at once: Americans.
New Orleans, Chiun decided, was far too American.
Despite the revels that continued incessantly in the streets, Chiun heard the approaching pack long before they reach the room. He knew that they were not human.
"Get to cover!" he barked. Cuvier and the woman, wrapped in their own thoughts, looked at him bewildered.
"They come!" Chiun said sharply.
The pair of imbeciles scrambled for cover. Chiun heard the rush of flesh and positioned himself in the middle of the room when the door burst inward, dead bolt shattered, pieces of the locking mechanism hurled across the room to scar wallpaper.
A gray wolf lunged into the room, immediately followed by another and another. To Chiun's left, the Gypsy woman screamed again and took off running for the nearest bedroom, with a snarling canine in pursuit. The white man yelped, his wind pipe closing on him, hastily retreating to the balcony, where he would soon be trapped.
A manlike shadow loomed behind the wolf pack, filling up the doorway, but Chiun had no time to examine the intruder. A stocky canine rushed at him, leaping furiously toward his face.
REMO SMELLED TROUBLE, literally, when he walked into the lobby of Desire House. It was too subtle to have been noticed by the few jabbering guests or the night clerk nodding at his post, but Remo caught a whiff of it instantly. It was the smell of animals. Canine. A lot of them.
He took the stairs in lightning leaps and picked up the first sounds of combat when he tore through the landing for the second floor. A woman's scream, a crash of furniture, mixed up with snarling and the snapping of fangs.
Remo reached the third floor a second later. He was at the west end of the hall, perhaps one hundred feet from number 304. In the dim lighting he saw the door to his suite of rooms was open, spilling light into the corridor. The crashing continued but the snarling had turned to animal yelps and whines, and then a hulking man-shape cleared the threshold, followed rapidly by one, two, three sleek canine forms.
Remo never slowed, tearing after the fleeing attackers, but glanced through the open door of 304. The smallish parlor was totaled, furniture upended, stuffing ripped out of the sofa's lacerated cushions, coffee table halved as if by an ax-wielding lunatic. A large dog, charcoal gray, lay stretched out near the center of the room, unmoving, obviously dead.
Jean Cuvier was gaping at him from the balcony, crouched and peering through a small gap in the curtains like a Peeping Tom. Aurelia Boldiszar stood in the doorway to her sleeping room, with Chiun beside her. At their feet, another lifeless canine, this one with more brown than gray to his untidy coat.
The attackers had speed. Animal speed, goaded by blind panic. The man-thing in the lead was faster even than the others.
But not faster than Remo Williams.
The man-thing looked over his shoulder and barked an order. One of the beasts skidded to a haft at the bottom of the stairs and stood his ground, baring his teeth and growling menacingly. He started the growl, anyway, and then realized the human wasn't showing fear. Wasn't even slowing and was coming at him with the speed of an avalanche.
Then the avalanche hit him. The creature barely had time to think about snapping at the human before the human brought a fist down hard on his canine skull, reducing it to jelly.
Remo was back in the lobby. The wolf man got lucky. A couple was coming in at that moment, the doors open wide. If the wolf man and the pack had slowed enough to open a door or even to crash through the glass. Remo would have been upon them.
As it was, he was just inches behind them as they slithered between the entering couple and into the thick of Mardi Gras. Remo made a bounding leap and caught the last of the beasts by the tail. And pulled hard, pulled fast. Between the beast's forward momentum and the strength of the yank, something had to give.
Remo quickly came upon the yowling, wounded beast in a rapidly clearing space in the street. The thing turned to face him.
"Looking for this?" Remo held up the bloody tail. "I think I'll use it to make a hat."
The beast's growl became a leopard screech, and it came at him in a bound that was fast. Very fast. Remo knew in that instant that he was facing no ordinary dog.
That confirmed his suspicions. And it pissed him off.
The dog was airborne and homing in on his throat with fangs like saw blades, but the teeth never connected with living flesh. Remo grabbed and flung the creature, which found itself flying way beyond its planned trajectory.
Up over the soaring crowd and onto the balcony of a hotel room that faced the street. It took Remo less than one second to shot put the beastie, but for a moment he thought it had been too much. The pack was gone.
He continued moving fast, slithering through the masses like some impossibly quick serpent, and his senses fanned out. He struggled to identify the countless sounds around him. Hundreds of human beings with noisy heartbeats and thunderous breathing, not to mention the miasma of intoxicated chatter.
But through it all he heard one unique sound. Panting.
He concentrated in vain to pin down its precise location.
Time to use the old noggin. Not his. Everybody else's.
Remo took a step up, and the step carried him six feet off the ground, where he began running along the heads of the revelers. Without thinking about it, his feet found the correct pressure level of each head of hair they landed on and used it to support him momentarily before he moved to the next.
Nothing to it. As easy as walking on water. From his elevated vantage point it was easy to find the scattered bodies his adversaries left in their wake. The beasts and their werewolf leader were intent on getting away fast and muscling anyone and everyone out of their path. Remo stepped back onto solid earth-in his own wake he left several drunks scratching their heads and wondering what had just brushed over it.
Remo suddenly had the advantage, using the path through the crowd that the werewolf's pack was clearing, which slowed them. In a flash he came alongside the last dog in the pack and gave him an open-handed shove just between the shoulder blades. The beast was crushed into the pavement like a bug under a shoe, his spine a shambles.
The pack was veering into an alley. Remo snatched the next dog by the scruff of the neck and lifted it to shoulder level.
The dog flailed his powerful canine legs and craned this way and that, snapping his powerful jowls. It was all wasted energy. He couldn't reach far enough to sink his great canine fangs into his captor. He was helpless.
Remo didn't even notice his prisoner's struggles. He was too pissed off.