Warren Murphy: The Ultimate Death

He smiled thinly-a corpse's grimace. "Taking me where?" he asked.

"I don't know," Mary Melissa answered. "I guess it must be your grandson's doing."

"Grandson?" he asked. His purple head still moved from side to side, like that of a cobra weaving to unseen music.

Mary Melissa had never mentioned the ungrateful youth to Mr. Nichols before. She had hoped to spare him the grief.

"Yes," she admitted. "He brought you here years ago. He has paid for you to stay here all these years," she added brightly, as if to sugarcoat the familial ingratitude.

The smile vanished. "Missy," he said coldly, "the grandson of whom you speak is no grandson of mine."

Mary Melissa Mercy shrugged-a wasted gesture. "I know, but what are you going to do with family?" She tried to joke, but her heart was breaking. In truth, she felt closer to the old Chinese man lying in that hospital bed than she did to her own kin. They all ate meat and drank the blood, which they called "juice."

"This 'grandson' is Sinanju," he spat. It was the first time she had heard him use that word since regaining full consciousness.

"He's from Korea?" Mary Melissa had asked. She was puzzled. A doctor had once told her that the man who dropped the old Chinese gentleman off had been Caucasian.

The old man beckoned Mary Melissa Mercy closer. His breathing was labored. She had grown used to his rank breath more than a year before. "He is not what he appears, this gweilo," he said. "He is servant to an ancient evil, as is his master. Both must be stopped."

Mary Melissa Mercy felt a strange tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach. There was something otherworldly about this elderly Chinese as he stared blankly up at her. There was something in those eyes that held the key to her destiny. She just knew it.

"It is this gweilo who rendered me immobile," he said, "condemning me to a living death. You will help me to stop him. You will help me to end the line of Sinanju."

"I don't understand. I thought Sinanju was a place."

"Sinanju is a cult of assassins. I am only one of their many victims. They have warred with my people for hundreds of years."

"Do they eat meat?" Mary Melissa asked slowly.

"They are duck-eaters."

"Then I hate them. I had baby ducks when I was eight."

Mr. Nichols nodded weakly. "You will help me to achieve the Final Death longed for by my Creed."

This was it! This was why he had pulled himself back from the brink of death. A mission! Mary Melissa could tell the old man was about to impart some great wisdom to her. This was why she had stayed so long. This was why she had found him so endlessly fascinating.

He brought his gnarled index finger into the air. Sunlight reflected off of the tip of the razorsharp nail. It remained poised there, as if to assist the old man in making some great oratorical point. But no more words came.

The finger dropped, slicing into the side of Mary Melissa Mercy's exposed neck in a delicate, almost loving gesture.

And her mind was opened to the universe.

Mary Melissa Mercy, gyonshi, obediently arranged the patient switch. She found another old Chinese man to take her benefactor's place. He was in the surgical wing for a gall bladder operation. It was easy enough to do. Practically no one but Mary had been in Room 334 for almost three years. They would not recognize the difference.

She had wheeled Mr. Nichols-whom she now addressed as "the Leader"-to an access elevator in the surgical wing and out of the hospital.

She had stayed on at Houston General only long enough to shape and strengthen the nail of the imposter to match that of the Leader by applying a varnish made from an ancient recipe.

And then they had simply vanished.

It had taken several years for the Leader to regain his strength. Mary Melissa Mercy knew that he had recovered as much as his aged body would allow.

Several years to recreate the ancient poison. Several years for the Leader to perfect his scheme. Several years to engineer the downfall of Sinanju, a scheme which was approaching fruition at last.

And now, the evil Master of Sinanju had been defeated. They had been warned that his protege, the gweilo, was en route. He would be defeated as well.

Mary Melissa Mercy didn't know who it was who had called her to tell her that Remo was on his way, and she didn't care. She suspected it was whomever employed Sinanju in America. There was no other person who could have had knowledge of Remo's next move. And that person had become gyonshi now, as well.

The afternoon wind blew a fragrant lilac aroma through the huge broken window of Mary Melissa's Three-G office. She hadn't bothered to have maintenance fix the window. Right now they were too interested in eviscerating rats in the boiler room to install a new pane anyway.

She stepped through the window and out into the lush garden.

The smell was stronger here, and she lifted her slender nose to the air and inhaled greedily. They were here. All around her. The sacrifices.

From every tree in the thick garden there hung a skeletal corpse. Strips of flesh still clung to ribs. Blood still dripped slowly and deliberately from dangling toes.

The ground had been freshly turned in splotchy patches throughout the garden. The buried internal organs spread widening stains of darkness around the earthy mounds.

This was the smell that Mary Melissa Mercy so loved. The smell of the unclean meat-eaters. The smell of death. It reminded her of her first hospital visit.

She was even getting used to the taste of blood finally. But only because she had been assured drinking blood was central to the practice of the gyonshi religion-which it was.

The Leader sat in a wheelchair in the middle of the main path. A plaid afghan was tucked neatly around his knees and his hands were cradled carefully in his lap. But for the array of corpses that swayed and rattled like bony wind chimes in the breeze around him, he would not have looked out of place on the porch of any rest home in America.

"The gweilo will be here soon, Leader," Mary Melissa Mercy said.

He looked up at her, his white eyes unblinking. He smiled evilly.

"We will be ready, Missy," he said softly. "The Shanghai Web demands one last victim. Vengeance shall be ours. The Final Death will achieve dominion over this tired world." He paused, as if to drink in a vision only his sightless eyes could perceive.

"And for our eternal enemies, the Ultimate Death . . ."

Chapter 22

Night was falling on the longest day of Remo Williams' life.

He steered his rented car through the dying light, his face a mask of single-minded concentration.

Remo racked his brain, trying to remember all that Chiun had told him years before about the Chinese vampires, but the images were intertwined with flashes of other, more personal, memories.

He pushed these away.

The vampires cannot enter a residence unless invited, Remo recalled. He was pretty sure of that one. A lot of good that did him now. They were all over Three-G like glassy-eyed cockroaches. And they were as fast as Sinanju, but not as strong.

The first time Sinanju had encountered the gyonshi Creed had been in a forest near what would later become Shanghai, and they had asked the Master of the time if he would invite them in. Did that mean all Remo had to say was "no" and they'd leave him alone long enough to kill them? Who knew? It didn't seem reasonable, but neither did the idea of vegetarian vampires who drank blood.

They were shape-changers as well. Remo remembered that much of the legend. Would he find himself facing a gyonshi vampire one minute and a spitting cobra the next?

And they hid in mist, he recalled. Or maybe they became the mist itself. Remo wasn't certain which. The legends were vague.