Warren Murphy: Arabian Nightmare

Though no reply came from her mate's blackened lips, she danced on, her limbs shaking and quivering in death throes that would never end.

Tears flowed from Kali's blood-red eyes. The tears were a poisonous whitish-yellow, like pus. She was thinking of all the hot fluids she would drink from the Caldron of Blood, if only Shiva would lead.

Chapter 44

Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, ascended to the roof of the Palace of Sorrows to watch the fall of Abominadad by starlight.

He found instead a macabre dance, and the body of his dead pupil clasped in the scorpion's grip of the demoness that, as much as the Arab tyrant Maddas, had brought him to the end of all happiness.

As she went through her impotent motions, Kali's scarlet eyes stared blindly through him. She might have been oblivious of all the universe.

Yet she spoke. "Begone, old one. There is nothing for you here." Her voice was akin to a death rattle.

"This is the body of my son, whom I now claim," said the Master of Sinanju in an austere voice.

Kali expelled a rude laugh. "If he will not dance, then I shall split his bones, lick of his marrow, and depart this body to await the next avatar of Shiva."

The Master of Sinanju noticed the palsied twitching of her black features, the shivering of her limbs. She almost dropped her limp consort, whose head lolled so pitifully. Her anchorless head, too, whipped from side to side in her mad gyrations. They were two corpses dancing in a mockery of life.

The sight filled Chiun with the ice of bitterness.

Twenty years of love and discipline, and it had come to this sick end. He lifted his voice.

"Though you are Kali the Terrible, and I but an old man," Chiun warned, "I will expend the last of my essence before I allow you to despoil my son's body further. "

Kali laughed mockingly. "You are but a mortal husk, bereft of virility, devoid of power. I will gnaw the living flesh from your old bones if you do not begone."

"Bare your teeth, then, harlot," said the Master of Sinanju, advancing, the great sword of Sinanju before him. "For you face a fury more implacable than the hell from which you sprang."

Kali swept to a stop, Remo's head bobbing ghoulishly. Her blind scarlet eyes fixed upon the old Korean. A corpse grin twitched her lips into a death rictus.

"I hunger for blood, but living flesh may suffice, " she said, dropping Remo into a pitiful pile. Her quivering arms lifted in unison, like an optical illusion.

"And I yearn for vengeance," said Chiun, sweeping in.

The Master of Sinanju shook his pipestem arms free from billowing kimono sleeves, the better to wield his mighty blade.

Kali's outspread arms closed like a Venus's-flytrap.

The sword's spade-shaped point clicked against a dead black forearm. The Master of Sinanju thought this would be the final blow he was destined to land in life.

But it was not. A black hand, like a spider descending a strand of silk, simply dropped off the attacking wrist.

Recovering his balance, Chiun slashed defensively.

An elbow splintered like a dried tree branch, causing the lower left arm of the demon Kali to suddenly hang down at a crazy, useless angle, as if hinged.

"Aiee!" cried the demon. And her bloodless stump descended for the Master of Sinanju's bald head.

Chiun planted a foot with a hard stamp, pivoted, and using the centrifugal force of the moving blade, flicked away from the blow. He felt its breeze. But there was no force behind it.

Withdrawing several paces, he turned to face anew his opponent. A wan smile brought grim humor to his cold hazel eyes.

"You are mighty, O Kali. But your host is not. The girl's sinews are poisoned from the Arab's death gas. She is dying. Just as my Remo has perished. You will join him in death."

And he laid aside his great weapon. It was weighing him down. He was still not recovered from his long ordeal of water and undeath.

"I will kill you first!" screamed Kali. Yellowed teeth bare, she sprang at him like a dog.

Chiun darted from the lunge, hurling a taunt over his shoulder.

"You will kill me never, carrion thing," he spat. "You were born dead and you will die forever."

"I will eat you!"

Sweeping around, the Master of Sinanju paused only to take up Kali's severed hand. It was cold to the touch. Still, it twisted with tarantula animation.

"Eat you this!" called Chiun, hurling the member in the face of his attacker.

Kali screamed anew. Blood oozed from the corners of her mouth, as if the lungs had ruptured from the very violence of her cry. She caught the hand and began to gnaw upon it like a bone.

"I will consume your hands," she said through a mouthful of her own fingers. "Just as I consume my own."

"Only a cannibal speaks empty words through a full mouth," Chiun jeered.

At that, Kali the Terrible threw away the fingerless hand and came at him screaming.

Chiun stood his ground, his eyes resolute, his thoughts cold.

Yes. Come, Kali. Come to your doom, he told himself. And he set himself to flick from her path so that Kali would hurl herself to her own death.

Kali undoubtedly would have done exactly that, except for one obstacle-the cold corpse of Remo Williams. He lay in her path. One of her naked feet stubbed Remo's unresponsive head. Kali stumbled.

And like a bear trap that had been sprung, Remo's arms lifted, digging deep into the cold dead flesh of her legs.

"You tricked me!" Kali howled. "You live!"

"And you die," a remorseless voice returned, beginning to drag her down to him.

As Chiun watched, his wrinkled features twisting in horror, the lolling head of his pupil strained upward on its unstable neck. Three eyes burned in his face. They were as black as balls of polished ebony. They locked with those of Kali, and the mouth, roaring, snapped and snarled at Kali's astonished face with the fury of a wild dog. The third eye began to glow, emitting a pulsing purplish beam of light.

Inexorably, Kali was wrestled to the ground. Shiva-for that was the true name of the entity that animated the remains of Remo Williams, Chiun understood-assumed a superior position, straddling the kicking, screaming corpse-thing. The purple beam bathed it like hard radiation.

"What are you doing?" Kali screamed, averting her face from the awful light. "I only wanted to dance! This is our shared destiny!"

"My hour has not yet come," Shiva said in metallic tones. "The day of the Tandava has not yet dawned. You desire blood? I give you bile. "

And with that, Shiva's mouth yawned to its fullest and began extruding a black bile that was like cold tar streaked with blood.

The viscous matter poured over Kali's unprotected face. She kicked, she fought, howling like a cur. But in the end her nerve-damaged limbs lacked the power to resist.

Quivering and twitching, she subsided.

As Chiun watched, true fear a cold stone in his belly, Shiva dismounted his consort. He turned slowly. The three black eyes seemed to regard the Master of Sinanju like a doom.

"I do not fear you, Supreme Lord," Chiun said in a quavering voice.

"Then you are not worthy to call yourself a Master of Sinanju," Shiva intoned.

Chiun swallowed. "What is your will?"

Shiva raised both hands to his forehead. They swept down to his thighs like a benediction. "That this fleshly throne remain whole until I claim the right to sit upon it, " he said.

Chiun's facial hair quivered. "Remo is not dead?" he gasped. His eyes went round and unbelieving.

"The gas of death is strong, but my will is stronger."

Chiun indicated the prostrate form of Kali. "What of her?"

"She has tasted the excretions that, now purged, allow my avatar to breathe the air of this realm anew. "

The Master of Sinanju trembled, and fought back welling tears.