Deadly Genes

It was like the others. The stomach cavity had been torn open, organs consumed. One of the ears was missing.

But unlike the other victims, this man appeared to have been slaughtered and eaten at a more languid pace. There wasn't as much blood on the floor as before. Most of it had pooled in the stomach husk.

Standing over the body, Chiun peered down at the hollowed stomach cavity. His face betrayed no emotion.

"This is the work of an animal," the Korean pronounced.

"That's what everyone's saying." Remo nodded. Chiun tipped his head, considering. It was clear something weighed on his mind.

"Care to let the rest of the Scooby Gang in on whatever's got your spider senses tingling?" Remo asked.

Chiun gave him a withering look. "Will there ever come a time when you shut your mouth and open your eyes?"

Remo frowned deeply. "That like one of those 'Do you plan to stop beating your wife?' questions?"

"Pah!" Chiun exclaimed. He spun on an impatient heel, heading back to the corridor.

Remo had to jog to catch up to the swirl of dancing silk. He found the Master of Sinanju standing before the two caged animals. Remo noted that the latches on the cage doors were secure.

"Do you still not see?" Chiun pressed.

"You mean how do they let themselves out, kill and then get back in?" he ventured.

"Are you so blind?" Chiun asked brusquely. "Where is the blood?"

Remo looked around. He looked down the corridor to where they'd found the body. Finally, he looked back to Chiun. His expression was sheepish. "What blood?" he asked.

The Master of Sinanju closed his eyes, as if too weary to display real anger.

"If these animals are responsible for this death, then why are they not flecked with blood?"

Remo looked more closely at the nearest BBQ. Its pale skin was as clean as a whistle. So was the other animal's skin. There were no darker patches on their black spots.

"Maybe they licked it off," Remo suggested.

"They could not clean away the scent of so fresh a kill from their breath," Chiun pointed out.

The Master of Sinanju squatted down before one of the BBQs, hazel eyes intent. The odd-looking animal stared blankly back at him.

"These things are genetically engineered," Remo offered. "Maybe they absorb smells like a box of baking soda in the fridge."

"I know of this 'genetical,'" Chiun said. "It is the name applied to inferior breakfast cereals that masquerade as a famous product. Beyond that, these creatures are guilty of nothing more than being completely adorable."

Remo blinked blandly. "Come again?" he asked.

When Chiun looked up at him, his face was beaming. "Surely you must agree they are as cute as buttons."

"Only if we're talking really ugly buttons."

"Hush, Remo," Chiun admonished. "It will hear you." Sticking his bony arms between the bars of the cage, he pressed his hands against the animal's triangular ears. "Pay him no heed," the Master of Sinanju cooed.

The BBQ moaned softly. Chiun squealed in delight.

"I hate to break up this Kodak moment, Marlin Perkins, but we've still got a hollowed-out scientist in the pantry."

Chiun's expression dismissed this as irrelevant. "Do you think Smith would allow me to take one of these marvelous creatures back to Sinanju?" he asked.

"Does the phrase 'no way in hell' mean anything to you?"

"I will assure him that I will feed it and walk it every day," the old man said, not listening. Chiun patted the BBQ on its long snout, his expression wistful. "Did you know, Remo, that Master Na-Kup is still heralded in the scrolls of Sinanju for bringing a camel back to my village? It was a gift from a lesser pharaoh. He called it a Mountain Beast for the shape of its hump. All the village gathered around to see it. The people were quite impressed."

"They were probably cranking its tail to see which way the money came out," Remo said. He didn't like where this was heading.

"Na-Kup did nothing more to distinguish himself as Master but lug one mangy camel back from Egypt. Yet here it is three thousand years later, and he is still known to all as Na-Kup the Discoverer. Surely I would be remembered even more fondly in years to come were I to return bearing something more exotic on my proud shoulders."

"I'll buy you a cockatoo," Remo said dryly.

"Master Cho-Lin already discovered those lice-ridden buzzards centuries ago." Chiun scowled. "Or do you not remember the fifteen hundred lines in the scrolls devoted to Cho-Lin and his Speaking Bird?"

"Sounds like a bad Vegas act," Remo commented.

When Chiun raised baleful eyes to Remo, they widened in surprise. He was looking beyond his pupil.

In the infinitely short space of time that Chiun noticed Dr. Judith White, Remo became aware of her, as well. Her step was so soft, her heartbeat so low, she was at the mouth of the corridor before either of them was aware of her.

Near the BBQ pen, the Master of Sinanju stood rapidly. The lines of his face bunched into knots of ominous tight wrinkles.

"Judith?" Remo queried, alarmed.

She was framed in the doorway to the main lab. Judith White was awash in blood. Her lab coat and the front of her form-hugging dress were streaked with crimson.

"Remo?" she asked, her throaty voice oddly hesitant and distant. She reached out a hand to him. All at once, Judith's eyes rolled back in her head. Legs buckled. Without another word, she collapsed to the cold lab floor. Fainted dead away.

Chapter 17

"Are you certain Judith White was not responsible?" the lemony voice of Harold W. Smith pressed. Remo was on one of the lab phones. The ambulance carrying the near comatose BostonBio geneticist had left for Boston's St. Eligius Hospital five minutes before.

"What kind of dippy question is that?" Remo asked.

"You just told me she was still on drugs," Smith stressed.

While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Remo and Chiun had done some snooping around. They'd found the black box with its vials and syringes in Judith's office.

"Drugs don't turn you cannibal, Smitty," Remo said.

"No, but perhaps she was acting in a drug-induced rage."

"Doesn't wash. This guy wasn't just killed. His insides were gone. My money's still on the BBQs." A harrumph sounded across the room.

The Master of Sinanju sat, cross-legged on the floor. Beside him one of the BBQs stood tethered to a desk leg. Chiun was nose to nose with the creature. "You did say she was covered with blood, yet did not appear physically injured in any way."

"Probably fell over the body and then stumbled around in shock afterward," Remo suggested.

"If Judith White were to blame, it would explain the artificial nail you found in the body in Concord."

Smith had mentioned the Smithsonian's conclusion.

"I'll check out her hands next time I see her," Remo promised. "If we ever see her alive again."

"Why? Is there a danger to Dr. White?"

"I don't know," Remo admitted. "Depends on what kind of junk she was pumping into herself. It seemed like she'd doubled the dose after finding the body. Her heart rate was down to next to nothing. Even Sinanju can't hear someone's heart when it's between beats. According to the guards around here, she wasn't skulking around the building anywhere, so she was probably in her office the whole time."

"And no one else was in the lab?" Smith questioned.

"Just her and the BBQs."

"BBQs? Remo, you told me yesterday BostonBio had only one of the creatures back in its possession."

"As of tonight, it's two. I'm guessing it's the one from HETA headquarters. These are homing monsters, Smitty."

"This is puzzling," Smith mused. "If you feel Dr. White is not responsible for the most recent death, then we are left with only the animals themselves as suspects."

"Don't forget HETA," Remo suggested. "But they couldn't have gotten in here without the guards seeing them."

The thought occurred to both men simultaneously. "The window," Remo said, remembering the avenue HETA had used to first gain entry to the lab. "See if it has been repaired," Smith instructed.

"I'm on it. Hold the phone, Smitty." Remo placed the receiver on the desk and hurried into the connecting hallway.

Chiun was off the floor the instant Remo slipped into the hall. Abandoning his BBQ, he hurried to the phone.

"Hail, Smith the Generous," Chiun intoned, pressing the receiver to a shell-like ear. He pitched his voice low.

"Master Chiun," Smith said, surprised. "Remo had not told me you had concluded your meditations."

"Remo has lived a lifetime of forgets, Emperor," Chiun replied. "Unlike your noble self. He was without my guidance for the duration of my philosophical pilgrimage, yet was there a single gift waiting for me upon my return? No. But his thoughtlessness no longer surprises me. And, anyway, I knew that you would not make the same error. And so I must rely on you, Smith the Dependable."

Warning lights had already flashed on in the CURE director's mind the minute a gift was mentioned. He'd dealt long enough with the wily Korean to know the beginning of a setup. Not daring to even breathe lest he unwittingly agree to some new demand, Smith prayed for Remo's rapid return.

"The boy is inconsiderate," Chiun continued. "Not at all like you. Many are the times I have told him, 'Learn from your emperor, Remo. Make a lesson of his renowned philanthropy.' Of course, if you ask him, he will doubtless say that I have never said this to him," Chiun added quickly. "The depth of his forgetfulness is unending. But know that a day does not go by wherein I do not shout the glories of your munificence down into the empty well that is Remo's skull."

Chiun paused. He frowned. A muffled gulp was all that issued from the earpiece.

"Is there something wrong with your breathing?" the Master of Sinanju queried.

Smith exhaled loudly, inhaling rapidly. "No," he panted, trying to catch his breath. "No, I am fine."

Chiun nodded. "Excellent. So tell me, Emperor. Where may I retrieve my gift? Or have you dispatched it by herald? I cannot wait to see what it is. Do not tell me," he said hastily. "It will ruin the surprise."

"Er...actually, Master Chiun..." Smith began hesitantly.

"Yes?" Chiun's eyes were already narrowing with cunning.

Smith forced the words out all at once. "I did not know it was traditional to give a gift at such a time." Chiun allowed the ensuing silence to bear the heavy burden of his great disappointment.

"You got me nothing?" he asked eventually, voice small.

"I am sorry," Smith apologized.

"Oh, no, that is fine," Chiun replied quietly, bleeding from every word.

The old Asian sounded genuinely despondent. The amount of gold Smith shipped yearly to the North Korean village of Sinanju as retainer for Chiun and Remo's services was so generous, the Master of Sinanju could have indulged any whim. Yet Smith could not help but feel a twinge of guilt.

"I could yet get you something," Smith suggested, rapidly adding, "something small."

Chiun sniffled. "That would be most kind, but not necessary," he moaned sadly.

"I insist," Smith said. Already he was wondering what there was around the sanitarium that could be packaged as a gift. Mentally, he had already dropped a few notebooks and pens from the supply room into a box when Chiun broke in.

"Since you insist, there is something that I would like," the Master of Sinanju volunteered, his voice strong once more. "A minor boon."

Smith felt the trap snap shut. "What is it?"

"A piffling thing," Chiun responded. "I would not abrade your tender ears with its name. Say but the word and I will take this trifle as my own, in your generous name."

"Master Chiun, if it is within my power to grant it to you, I will. But I need to know what it is you want."

Chiun frowned deeply. The fool wasn't making this easy.

"I am not sure what it is called," the old Korean said. "White nomenclature is still difficult at times. Remo called it an ABC, or letters equally inappropriate. It is an ugly name for a beautiful animal."

"Animal?" Smith asked. "Chiun, do you mean a BBQ?"

"Remo told me it was an ABC." Chiun's voice was puzzled.

"Those animals are not mine to give," Smith said.

The chill raced with blinding speed over the fiberoptic line. "You are going back on your word?" Chiun said coldly.

"I gave you no word," Smith replied firmly. "And given all that has happened, it is likely those animals are vicious. Furthermore, they are the property of BostonBio."

"One would not be missed." Chiun insisted.

"There are only eight altogether."

"A clerical error." Chiun waved angrily.

"Please understand," Smith said reasonably, "they might still be bred and distributed around the world someday. If they are indeed harmless, I will get you one then."

"But everyone will have one then," Chiun whined. "I will not be lauded as Na-Kup if I drag home any common American thing. Why not lug a telephone or television?"

Chiun's lament sparked a memory for Smith. "Now that you mention the telephone, Master Chiun, I could not help but notice the large number of calls you placed to California while sequestered."

Chiun's sulking tone instantly transformed to low menace. "You monitor my conversations?" he accused.

"Not the calls themselves," Smith explained hastily. "But the times and dates of all long-distance calls are recorded on the bills I pay. Are you involved in something I should know about?"

Chiun heard the gliding approach of Remo's loafers.

"My involvements are my own, Smith," Chiun said flatly.

Unfurling his hand, he let the phone clunk to the desk.

When Remo entered the room an instant later, Chiun was settling back down before the tied BBQ. The animal lowed. The old man scowled at it.

Remo scooped up the receiver. It was warm. He shot a glance at Chiun as he spoke. "Windows are all set, Smitty. Broken one's been replaced. Nobody came or went that way."

Smith seemed relieved to be speaking to Remo. "Still," he said. "Our prime suspects in all of this remain the animals and HETA. I will have tests performed on the creatures there. With so recent a kill, it should be a simple matter to determine whether or not they were responsible for the body you discovered tonight."

All at once, a thought occurred to him. Smith's chair squeaked as the CURE director sat up straighter.

"I don't know why I did not think of it before," Smith said excitedly.

"What?"

"One moment."

Remo heard Smith's fingers drumming rapidly at his special keyboard. After a few short minutes, Smith returned to the phone, voice flushed with success.

"I believe I might have something," he said. "I checked the HETA membership rolls in Boston and cross-referenced them with credit-card payments at area grain and feed stores. One store in Leominster keeps popping up."

"Where the hell is that?"

"It is not important," Smith said. "The credit card used there belongs to one Huey Janner. He and his wife own a farm in Medford."

"So?"

"They have ordered large quantities of diverse food items over the past three days. Hay, meatless dog food, bulk oats and so forth."

"They never ordered anything like that before?" Remo asked, picking up the thread.

"No," Smith replied "Theirs is a vegetable farm. They do not allow animals on the premises for either food or as beasts of burden. Understandable, given their membership in the HETA organization."

"How do you know that?"

"I accessed their Web page."

"So much for the pristine country life," Remo said dryly. "We'll check it out."

"If you do find the animals there," Smith instructed, "and they give you any indication that they might be dangerous, it would be in the best interest of all for you to destroy them." His instructions were clinically blunt.

Remo looked back to Chiun. The BBQ was in the process of licking the old man on the nose. Hearing Smith's words, the Master of Sinanju's face grew appalled.

"Find someone else," Remo said firmly.

"But if they are as vicious as they now seem to be, they cannot be allowed to survive," Smith argued.

Chiun wrapped his bony arms protectively around the BBQ's thick neck.

"No way, Smitty," Remo said emphatically. "The Old Yeller guilt-o-meter is already cranked up to high. I'll find them, but I'm not going to kill them."

"It may become necessary," Smith warned.

"Let somebody else do the honors. I'm not a butcher."

The emphatic manner with which he delivered the words sounded odd, even to Remo. Given his profession, it seemed hypocritical for him of all people to be so passionate in his refusal to euthanize the BBQs. The seeming contradiction merely acted to further firm his resolve.

Smith seemed displeased with his objection. "Very well," he relented. "But at least return them to BostonBio. Any difficulties with the creatures can be resolved then."

Stemming any further complaints from CURE's enforcement arm, Smith severed the connection. Across the room, Chiun continued to hug the BBQ close to him. The animal was oblivious to the protective arms.

Remo closed his eyes. So much death in what was supposed to be a simple, altruistic assignment.

And in his heart of hearts, Remo hoped fervently that the BBQs were not responsible for all the evil he had seen of late. There were already too many species of killer animals in the world.

Chapter 18

She was no longer Judith White. Yet, in so many vitally important ways, she still was.

It amazed her every time she thought about it. Thought. Rational, intelligent thought.

The thing that lay beneath the cool sheets in the hospital bed at St. Eligius Hospital understood that this was what made all the difference in the world. Thought. The ability to think, to reason. It distinguished her from all other animals on Earth, save one.

Thin gossamer streaks of white moonlight, mixed with the waxy yellow glow of parking-lot lights, spilled across her quietly resting form. The smells of the ward the humans had brought her to flooded her senses.

All the ointments and medications, the stale meals and bad perfumes, nervous sweat and soiled linens-she took them all in.

She smelled the humans. Each odor individual and distinct. To the creature that had been born Judith White, they were not fellow men. They were meals.

The humans had Meals on Wheels. Judith White had her own version of that. Meals in Shoes.

She snorted at the amusing thought.

"Meals in Shoes," she muttered softly, smiling. "Delivered warm right to your door."

"Excuse me?" whispered a voice from the hall. Judith had heard her coming, of course. But she was surprised the nurse heard her voice. Human hearing was just about the worst of any animal in the world. But occasionally one surpassed the rest. Not difficult to do, given the commonness of human limitations.

Judith remained still. Her eyes were open barely a slit. Only enough to see. In the 3:00 a.m. darkness of the room, her whites wouldn't be seen.

Predictably, the nurse attributed the soft voice to a dreaming patient. The woman tiptoed quietly into the room, her white sneakers virtually soundless on the linoleum. To Judith, she might just as well have stomped in wearing tap shoes and a suit of armor.

The nurse checked the patient in the next bed, an obese fifty-year-old woman with two ingrown toenails who had refused to be treated on an outpatient basis. The woman was deep in medicated sleep.

Stepping over to Judith, the nurse smoothed out some nonexistent wrinkles in her bedcovers.

She wore a name tag. Elizabeth O'Malley, R.N. Just beneath the silver tag, the woman's heart thudded audibly in her chest. The enticing sound rang like a dinner gong in Judith's ears. She repressed the urge to lunge.

To the nurse, everything seemed fine. As quietly as she had entered the room, she slipped back out into the hall.

Judith heard her step back up to the nurses' station. A moment later, the woman headed down another corridor.

The instant she was out of earshot, Judith's perfect legs slipped out from beneath the sheets. Her feet made no sound as she stalked across the room to the small closet.

Finding her clothes, Judith suppressed an unhappy cluck. Too much blood on the blouse and jacket. Skirt was dark. At night, the stains wouldn't be visible.

She stuffed the hospital johnny she was wearing inside her short skirt. It gathered in bunches around the waist.

There was a large coat in the closet. No doubt the property of the patient in the next bed.

Judith turned to the gently snoring woman. She watched the sheet rise and fall over her ample belly. A hungry purr rose from the throat of the geneticist.

Familiar footsteps suddenly registered in the hall outside. Judith spun rapidly back to the closet, throwing on the fat woman's coat.

She looked quickly around the room. The footsteps were too close.

The door was out of the question. There was only the window.

Judith made an instant decision. She spun on her heel and headed to the window. With one quick stop along the way.

WHEN NURSE O'MALLEY PASSED by the open door to Judith White's hospital room a few moments later, she glanced inside. She was startled to see both beds empty.

The nurse went into the dark room, not certain what to expect. A cursory examination revealed that neither patient was in the small bathroom.

The nylon curtains of the second-story room blew gently in the soft September breeze.

She looked out the window. Briefly, she thought she saw a dark figure moving quickly and stealthily beyond the lights of the parking lot two stories below. Whatever it was, it seemed to be carrying something large.

A practical woman, she dismissed the sighting as nothing more than her imagination giving in to all of the hysteria swirling around the wild animals that some local company had set loose on the streets of Boston.

Efficiently, Nurse O'Malley clamped the window shut. Leaving the empty room, she went off to search the floor for her two missing patients.

Chapter 19

Judith White's parents were young urban professionals before anyone had even heard the term yuppie.

Her father was a successful corporate lawyer, her mother an executive in the same company.

Back when daddies generally played ball with the kids after coming home from work and mommies usually stayed at home, mother and father White were so busy they had to pencil little Judith in for appointments.

At least, that was what Mr. and Ms. White liked to call them-appointments. In point of fact, the periods of time spent with their only offspring were less appointments than intense, brutal lessons in how not to rear a child.

The point behind these sessions was simple. They had succeeded. Judith would succeed. End of bedtime story.

Mr. White kept his daughter up late the first nine months of her life trying to teach her to talk.

Mrs. White "walked" infant Judith around the house until she was bowlegged and had to wear corrective leg braces.

Expensive tutors were hired to cram knowledge into a mind that-at the age of two-only wanted to play. Nannies were employed to take the place of a mother who, when home, acted more like a tyrant than a nurturer.

Little Judith was put on teams in order to round out her personality. Never mind the fact that she was much younger than the rest of the children and that the older kids taunted her. When she cried to stay home, her parents coldly told her that everything-good or bad-was a learning experience.

Judith's parents wanted her to have a life that neither of them had enjoyed. Mrs. White's father had been a minor city officer in a small town near Springfield, Massachusetts. Mr. White's father had been-to his son's eternal shame-a truck driver. According to the Whites, both of their mothers had never realized themselves as complete individuals, having stayed at home to raise their respective broods.

Judith would have the best. Just as they had not. For the first year or so of grammar school, young Judith had worked hard to fulfill their expectations. In her parents' eyes, of course, she never succeeded but she tried her best. And for almost two years it appeared, at least on the surface, as if things were going perfectly well.

That is, until the first incident.

As with most parents who pushed too hard, the Whites found that their daughter eventually pushed back even harder.

The first time was small. Someone had gathered up all the toilet paper in the girls' lavatory in their daughter's public school and set it ablaze. The bathroom had gone up in flames. The school had to be shut down for the day.

Judith denied she was the culprit. And in spite of the testimony of the two other girls who had been with her and a teacher who had witnessed her leaving the smoking bathroom, her parents had insisted that their daughter was innocent. No matter what the others thought they'd seen, their precious Judith would never do such a thing.

The school had suspended her for a week. Her father had threatened to sue. Eventually, the school had given in.

During the two short days she was forced to stay home-for the very first time in her life-her parents had doted on her. At least it seemed that way to Judith.

They had come running to her defense. They had stood up for her when no one else would. They had become, for one brief moment, real parents.

Forget the fact that their chief concern was how the whole affair reflected on them. Judith's by-now-twisted mind saw their behavior as an act of love. For the first time in her life, she almost felt good. And she wanted the feeling to continue. In her next plea for attention, Judith used a pencil to stab one of the girls who'd squealed on her.

Everyone in class saw it clearly, including her teacher.

Judith was thrown out of school.

This time, her parents reacted differently. In the face of overwhelming evidence, they'd screamed bloody murder. Within forty-eight hours, Judith was shipped off to the Excelsior Academy for Young Women, deep in the woods of New Hampshire. She was seven years old.

At the school, Judith's young intellect was nurtured by stern yet caring teachers. Without the negative influence of her self-absorbed parents, Judith excelled. She graduated at the top of her class, moving on to a prestigious prep school. Four years later, Judith was valedictorian.

Her parents were there for graduation. Aside from her annual Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, it was the only time she'd seen them since they'd shipped her off to Excelsior. Unlike those holiday visits, however, at graduation Judith didn't even try to be polite.

When Judith's father tried to hug her, she shoved him away. When her mother tried to kiss her, she spit in her face. It was the happiest day of her miserable life.

Judith could finally sever the tenuous ties with her unloving patents. She had gotten several scholarships to fine colleges. She no longer needed Mr. and Mrs. White.

College was a breeze. Judith had an exceptional intellect. She moved swiftly, achieving her B.A. in two years. After graduate school, her brilliance got Judith noticed by a bioengineering firm on the famed high-tech Route 128 north of Boston. It was a short jump from there to the Applied Genetic Research Department of BostonBio. Shorter still was the time it took Judith to develop the BBQ project.

As the guiding force behind the creation of the world's first fully genetically engineered animal, Judith White was unstoppable. She was also arrogant, single-minded, bossy and virtually impossible to get along with.

When some of the earliest prototypes of the creatures were developed-the ones with the equine DNA that would help name their successors-Judith wasn't averse to taking the weakest of the lot and strangling them in front of her team.

She would wrap her strong hands around their necks and squeeze in the cruelest, most giddily delighted way until the animals' tongues lolled from their mouths and they dropped over onto the floor.

When she was finished strangling one of the hapless creatures, Judith would always say the same thing.

"That felt great. Any coffee left?" The carcass was left for an underling. In this and in other matters, she gave off every sign of a woman who was mentally unbalanced. If she'd been a man, Judith probably wouldn't have lasted long at her job. But she had one remarkable asset. In a field of nerdy men and beefy women, Dr. Judith White was an absolute stunner. She merely had to flash her perfect teeth or bat her long eyelashes, and the board of BostonBio would drop an inquiry before it even started. Of course, if she didn't get results, this brand of manipulation would have lasted just so long. But the fact was, Judith did get results.

In another corporate entity, BostonBio had once been the Boston Graduate School of Biological Sciences. BGSBS had been at the vanguard of genetic manipulating in the late 1970s, but had fallen on hard times after a freak accident involving one of its top geneticists. Judith had spent much of her early time at BostonBio exhuming and digesting the records of the earlier BGSBS experiments.

Judith had to admit, the research was brilliant. Flawed, but brilliant. She would have enjoyed meeting the woman responsible for the earlier exploration into breaking down the genetic differences in mammals, but her predecessor had vanished years ago under a cloud of controversy. The woman was presumed dead.

Still, her research lived on. Powerfully so.

The technology in the seventies wasn't what it was by the time Judith took over at BostonBio. Though the work of an obvious genius, the original breakthroughs at BGSBS had been misdirected. Judith had taken what she could learn from the dusty files she found hidden away in a secure basement and augmented it. Refined the procedure.

One of the results of her tireless efforts was the BBQ. The awkward, pathetic-looking creature that was ostensibly the savior of the starving world. The other, more important result was Dr. Judith White herself.

She was like a woman possessed. First, she meticulously reconstructed the circumstances of the original experiment. The one that had-in the minds of many at the old BGSBS-gone completely wrong.

For many months, Judith had no luck. The substance had been taken orally the first time years ago. She had tried that the first day.

Nothing happened.

According to the eyewitness accounts of the original incident, the effect had been virtually instantaneous.

It should have worked, but didn't.

Judith had tried various alterations in the formula. Still with no success.

It was maddening. The work with the BBQs proved that what she was trying to do was possible on one level. But the laboratory animals-at the time still very young-presented a less complex problem. The manipulation of their DNA had taken place prior to their conception. Judith was attempting to alter the entire system of an adult living organism.

Judith was almost ready to give up when she found something she hadn't seen before while rereading one of the Boston Blade accounts of the time. The newspaper was from BostonBio's own archives. It had been preserved in thin plastic, yet had yellowed with age.

The reporter who had been on the scene described the thick brown substance that clung to the exterior of the test tubes. He told how it had slid like burned gelatinous fat down the woman's hand and into her mouth.

Into her mouth. That was it!

Although the formula for the chemical compound used to retard temperature changes in scientific containers had been altered and improved over the years, Judith White was able to have some specially manufactured from the old formula. It was the same stuff that had clung to the test tube in the old newspaper account.

She had determined by her earlier experiments that human saliva was likely a catalyst to the change. Alone in her lab, Judith had carefully mixed specific DNA-altered genes, saliva and some of the gelatinous packing compound. Rather than swallow the vile mixture, she injected it into her arm.

The results were obvious and immediate.

Icy cold. Intense disorientation. And the change.

After her recovery from that first injection, she had prescribed a strict regimen of shots.

The formula as it now existed would destabilize after a few weeks. The original scientist would have eventually changed back. Judith didn't want that. She altered the formula to ensure that the change would be permanent.

And Dr. Judith White had changed. As a result, the world around her had changed, too. It was a change for the better.

Her perspective, while always warped, had altered dramatically. The evidence was everywhere.

It was in her attitude. In the way she moved. In the contempt she felt for humans. But at the moment, it seemed mostly to be in her appetite.

JUDITH WHITE AWOKE above a cluttered alley amid the overflowing rubbish barrels behind a Chinese restaurant.

She yawned expansively, tasting the paste of food still on her tongue.

The body of the woman who had been her roommate during her brief stay at St. Eligius lay beside a large open trash bin. Only her bare feet jutted into the alley. They were pale and unmoving.

Judith was perched on a fire escape above the body. One hand hung languidly down over the rusted metal side of the escape. The other scratched contentedly behind her ear as she considered the body.

It had been too fatty. She preferred leaner meat. Next time.

For now, she knew what she must do. A thinking animal, Judith found it difficult to focus when the cravings began. She knew that she shouldn't allow irrational desire to supersede rational thought. But with each subsequent injection, it had grown increasingly difficult to quell the urge to feed.

Judith yawned again, arching her back. She pushed her hands out before her, fingers splaying as she stretched.

She had almost been caught the night before. That nosy Department of Agriculture agent had shown up just as she was finishing her meal at the lab. She had barely enough time to get back to her office and clean up her face and hands before he came in.

Remo had fallen for her ruse. In his limited mind, he thought the blood on her clothes had been an accident. Humans were so eager to accept what they perceived as the obvious conclusion.

But that might not always be true. She finished stretching.

They would probably come for her. It was only a matter of time before they connected her to all the deaths. She hated to admit it, but she had been careless.

She never should have taken her roommate. Judith got up on all fours on the fire-escape landing. With a graceful leap, she hopped down to the alley floor. Landing, she barely made a sound.

Quickly, she padded over to the body.

The woman looked like the rest. Thick blood remnants coagulated in the hollow of her ripped-open abdomen.

Judith worked swiftly. Taking each of the woman's hands in turn, she chewed off all ten fingertips. The flesh was tough and cold.

"Blech," Judith complained. "I hate leftovers." She swallowed the pudgy balls of skin.

With her fingernails, she shredded the woman's fleshy face until it was unrecognizable.

It would probably do no good. The missing organs would be a dead giveaway. Still, it might buy her some time.

Dawn had nearly begun to break over Boston. Judith's underlings would be showing up to work within the next three hours. Before they did, she had to get back into BostonBio and destroy all evidence of what she had done. Perhaps there was a way to yet salvage the situation.

Judith spun away from the body. With catlike grace, she glided out of the desolate alley and onto the dark, silent street.

Chapter 20

"Why are we here?" the Master of Sinanju complained.

They were driving along the desolate road where Mona and Huey Janner owned their farm. It was still several hours before dawn.

The wizened Asian's attitude had soured back at BostonBio. Whatever Chiun had discussed with Smith, it had turned the old Korean sullen and silent. Until this moment, he had remained thus for the entire ride to Medford.

"Smith thinks the rest of the missing BBQs might be here," Remo said, careful that by inflection he didn't appear to agree with the CURE director. His diplomatic tone didn't work.

"If your precious Smith directed you to leap from Yongjong Bridge with stones in the pockets of your kimono, would you?" Chiun challenged.

"How deep's the water?" Remo asked.

The old man's scowl could have cracked bedrock. "Okay, okay," Remo relented. "Sheesh, Chiun, I don't know what he did to kick-start bile production, but I wasn't in on it, so could you cut me some slack?"

"And why should I?" Chiun demanded. "You are his lackey, are you not? He dispatches you hither and thither on his mad errands and you obey. You are the Divine Wind of America's pinchpenny emperor, Remo Williams. Do not pretend that you have a will of your own."

"Divine Wind?" Remo frowned. "Isn't that what kamikaze means?"

"If the Mitsubishi fits," Chiun sniffed.

"Should I even bother to argue?"

"No."

"Fine," Remo said. "If it'll keep peace, you're right. I don't have a will of my own."

The appalled expression that blossomed on the old Korean's face told Remo that he had answered wrong.

"I cannot believe what I am hearing," Chiun gasped. "Has a Master of Sinanju just admitted that he is little more than a puppet on a string?"

"I thought that's what you wanted me to say," Remo griped.

"What I wanted was for you to speak your mind, thus demonstrating your independence from Smith the Domineering. But I find that I must speak your mind for you. Repeat after me-I have a mind of my own."

"Fine, dammit," Remo snapped. "I've got a mind of my own. There. Is that okay? Or did I get that wrong, too?"

"No," Chiun said.

"Good," Remo replied, fingers tightening on the wheel.

"Prove it," Chiun challenged.

Remo pulled his eyes from the road. "Huh? How?"

Chiun's hands slithered up opposing kimono sleeves. In the green wash of the dashboard's lights, the old man's self-satisfied mien was one of the most fear-inducing sights Remo had seen in all of his professional life.

"I will let you know."

Remo absolutely did not like the sound of that. "Wait a minute..." he began, stomach sinking.

"Too late," Chiun interrupted, raising a silencing finger. His gaze was fixed on the dark woods beside the moving car. "We are being watched."

Remo had sensed the eyes upon them, as well. He found the Janner mailbox and turned onto the long dirt driveway that wound through the clump of dark trees.

They hadn't driven more than a few yards when the first figures appeared before them.

The two men were clad in body-hugging black leotards, faces obscured by black ski masks. In the pervasive gloom of the deep New England night, they stood like somber sentries before the gates of Hell. Automatic weapons were aimed at Remo's car. They were a terrifying sight.

"How do you think they pee in those getups?" Remo asked.

"Who cares? Drive over them," Chiun replied.

"You want to hose blood off the grille?"

"I am an assassin, not a washer of cars," Chiun sniffed.

"Didn't think so," Remo said. He slowed to a stop.

As soon as the car stopped moving, a guard raced to either door. One grabbed Remo's door handle, wrenching it open.

"Get out," a muffled voice commanded.

Remo obliged. Even as he was stepping from the car, a similar command was being issued to the Master of Sinanju.

There was a grunt as the other commando pulled on the opposite door handle. It wouldn't budge. Inside the car, Chiun's pinkie pressed lightly on the inner handle. The commando cursed and yanked on the unmoving door.

"What do you want?" the man near Remo menaced.

"I want not to be manipulated all the time. I want to not be lonely when he's not around and then irritated when he is. But mostly, I want to know where you keep your car keys in that shrink-wrapped Union suit."

By now, the other man had dropped his gun. Both hands and one foot were heavily involved in his game of tug-of-war with Chiun's door.

"Don't get smart with me," Remo's commando threatened. His gun jabbed at Remo's ribs.

"How about if I get fatal?" Remo suggested. There came a blur of movement impossible for the HETA commando to follow.

He was stunned to find that his target had vanished. So, too, he realized with growing concern, had his gun. Frightened fingers gripped empty air.

A sudden coolness to his head and face. His mask gone, too. Whirling, the commando tried to shout a warning, but something blocked his throat. Something itchy.

And in a moment of horrifying realization, the HETA man didn't know which was worse: the fact that he was being force-fed his own hat, or the fact that the stranger was using the barrel of his own gun to tamp it down his throat.

"Junior eat up all him din-din," Remo enthused, stuffing the metal barrel deep into the man's esophagus.

"Blrff," the HETA commando gasped.

"Yum-yum. Eat 'em up," Remo agreed.

The man's eyes bugged. He couldn't breathe. The hat was wedged in a tight ball inside his throat. Remo pulled the barrel free, tossing the gun into the bushes.

The man immediately shoved his fingers into his mouth, probing for fabric. It was too far in. Clawing at his throat, the red-faced commando toppled over onto the road.

"Bon appetit, " Remo declared, turning his attention back to the Master of Sinanju.

The other BETA man was still yanking on the door, his face red as that of his suffocating colleague.

"Perhaps it is rusted shut," Chiun was suggesting through his open car window.

"Chiun, quit clowning around," Remo complained.

The old Korean exhaled, bored. "Very well. But only because I grow weary of this buffoon."

As the commando gave the door one last mighty wrench, the Master of Sinanju lifted his pinkie, at the same time slapping a flat palm against the interior door panel. The crunch of bone on door was wince-inspiring.

The last Remo saw of the second HETA man, he was five feet off the ground and flying backward into a thick stand of midnight-shaded maples. Remo never heard him land.

Chiun joined his pupil outside the car.

"More up ahead," Remo informed him. The dark shapes of barn and farmhouse loomed up the road. Chiun nodded.

"Together or separate?" he asked.

"Together," Remo replied. "You haven't given us much of a chance to bond lately."

"I long for the day you finally get the hint," Chiun whispered, swirling from his pupil.

Side by side, the only two true living Masters of Sinanju began moving swiftly up the pitch-black road.

HUEY JANNER WAS DEEP in tofu-fueled REM sleep when he felt a firm hand clamp over his mouth. "They're here," a voice whispered from the murky shadows.

Mona.

Huey pulled himself out of bed. In the dark, he fumbled off his pair of sweat pants. His unitard was underneath.

"How far?" he asked, sleep clogging his throat.

"Driveway," she replied tersely.

He could hardly see her. She was dressed in her black, form-fitting leotard.

"Did you get them ready yet?"

"No," Mona insisted. "I came for you first. Why, I'll never know. Move it!"

She hurried from the bedroom, slinking stealthily along the silent upstairs hallway. He heard one of the top steps creak as she crept to the ground floor.

Stumbling in the darkness, Huey chased after his wife.

THE SECOND WAVE of HETA commandos hid in a cluster of sickly elms that slouched up from the middle of the Janners' sprawling front lawn.

Not one of the three men saw even a flicker of movement from the long driveway. Night skulked, dark and menacing.

"Are you sure somebody's here?" one commando whispered nervously as he studied the shadows.

"Sam yelled there was a car coming," the second replied.

"I heard a car," offered the third tense voice.

"Me, too," agreed the first man.

"Me, three," announced Remo Williams.

Panic. Gun barrels clattered loudly together as the men tripped and swirled around, looking for the owner of the strange voice in their midst. They found two men.

"Are you now the town crier, announcing our arrival to every lurking simpleton?" Chiun asked, brow creased in annoyance. He stood at Remo's elbow.

"I barely opened my mouth," Remo replied, equally annoyed.

"Silence is golden," Chiun retorted. "Especially coming from you."

Three sets of frightened eyes bounced from one intruder to the next. Finally, the jaw of one HETA man dropped open.

"Fire!" he screamed.

Two HETA commandos were accidentally slaughtered in the ensuing panicked shooting match. The roar of automatic-weapons fire was rattling off into the night as the third man checked the bodies at his ankles. Neither Remo nor Chiun was among the dead.

A finger tapped his shoulder. The remaining HETA man looked up dumbly. He found that he was staring into the deadest black eyes he had ever seen. "Missed me," Remo said thinly.

A thick-wristed hand fluttered before the commando's face. The colors that danced across his field of vision in the next instant were more brilliant than anything the man had ever seen. First red, then blinding white, then black. Afterward, he saw nothing at all.

Remo let the body slip from his fingers.

"House or barn?" he asked the Master of Sinanju.

"Where does this kind belong?" Chiun asked dryly.

"Barn it is." Remo nodded.

Turning from the trio of bodies, the two men made their stealthy way toward the menacing dark structure.

HUEY JANNER NEARLY JUMPED out of his skin when he heard the gunfire.

"They're close," he whispered anxiously.

"Get a grip," Mona insisted. She kept her breathing level as they crept through the dark interior of the barn.

Huey had a difficult time following her. Though he tripped frequently, Mona didn't slow her stride. She had exceptional night vision.

With Mona at point, they approached the old dairy stalls where the BBQs slept. Mona pulled two dark bundles from a wooden shelf. She tossed one to Huey.

"They're in for one hell of a surprise," Mona Janner whispered with certainty. Huey smiled weak agreement.

Wishing he shared his wife's confidence, Huey ducked inside a stall. Nearly purring in pleasure, Mona disappeared inside another.

"DINGBAT, twelve o'clock high," Remo commented as they slid up to the big barn door. His eyes were on the hayloft.

Chiun's narrowed eyes were fixed on the crouching figure. "I will deal with this one," the old man said.

Wordlessly, he melted into the shadows beside the barn. Remo continued on alone.

The barn door was open a hair. Remo slipped inside.

The big interior was drafty and dank. The thick smell of wet, molding hay clung to the air. Remo's finely honed senses detected faint life signs coming from the long west wing of the barn. He slid across the packed earthen floor to the rear of the main building.

As he came upon the closed door that led to the old dairy stalls, he heard a new sound. A shout. "Giddap!"

A woman's voice.

"Move, move, move!" a man yelled almost simultaneously.

Pushing open the door, Remo turned the oldfashioned crank light switch. Bulbs clicked on along the angled wood ceiling, flooding the old cow stalls with washed-out light.

"Giddap! Giddap, dammit!" the woman's voice shrieked.

Remo followed the shouting down to the third stall.

He found one of the missing BBQs. And, straddling its sagging back, perched on an animal-friendly faux-leather saddle, was a screaming Mona Janner.

"Hurry up and move, you stupid lummox!" the animal-rights activist yelled at the hapless BBQ. "They're coming!"

She tried to kick it in the sides to make it move. Her legs were too long, and the BBQ's were too short. She succeeded only in scuffing dirt.

"I'm trying to save your worthless hide," she snapped.

"Maybe it doesn't want to save yours," Remo suggested.

Mona's head snapped around. Her face hit one of her own knees. The creature was so low to the ground they were up by her ears.

When she saw Remo, her eyes bugged in her ski mask. Wheeling, she shook the reins violently. "Hyah!" she urged.

The BBQ had had enough. Moaning, it settled to its ample belly. When its legs tucked up beneath its oblong body, Mona had no choice but to roll off. She shook a stirrup from one foot as she clambered to her feet.

"Please tell me this was a spontaneous getaway," Remo said from the door. "I'd hate to think it was planned."

Mona spun on him, hands held before her in a menacing posture. "Stay back!" she warned. "I know karate."

She demonstrated by attacking the air before her with her hands. Neither air nor Remo appeared very impressed.

As Mona attempted to bisect oxygen molecules, Remo heard a startled yelp from the adjacent stall. He'd become aware of the man and the second BBQ at the same time he'd found Mona. When the yelp was followed by a furious hiss, Remo suppressed a smile.

A few yards before him, Mona was still slashing away.

"I'm warning you, meat eater," she snarled.

"I always wondered something," Remo said, one eye trained on the wall of the stall. "If animals aren't supposed to be eaten, why are they made out of meat?"

His question had the precise desired effect. Eyes widening in horror, Mona froze in her tracks.

The HETA woman's mouth was in the earliest twitching stages of forming a furious, self-righteous O when there came a thunderous crash from her left. Mona twisted just in time to see the thin, unfinished pine that separated her stall from the next explode into a thousand shards of thorny kindling. And sweeping through the air amid the hail of wood fragments came a familiar shape.

Rocketing through the air, Huey Janner swept his wife off her feet in a way she hadn't allowed him to during their courtship. He slammed roughly into Mona, scooping her up and flinging her against the far wall. They hit with a crash, arms and legs tangling together as they collapsed, inert, to the haystrewn floor.

As the dust was settling on the HETA activists across the stall, a familiar bald head jutted through the jagged hole made by Huey Janner's thrown body.

"Remo!" the Master of Sinanju wailed. "That savage was abusing one of these poor beasts!" When he spied the saddle on Mona's BBQ, Chiun's eyes pinched to slits of fury. Flying through the hole, he bounded to the animal's side. Hands slashed with blinding fury, long nails severing the straps of the saddle. Chiun pulled the piece of molded plastic loose, flinging it across the stall. It landed on Huey's moaning, upturned face. Squatting, the old Korean began stroking the long snout of the BBQ. "There, there," he said soothingly.

The BBQ seemed oblivious to Chiun's presence. The Janners had landed near Remo. With one loafer, he toed the saddle off Huey's head. He frowned as he peered down at the unconscious HETA man.

"I know him." Remo nodded. "He was on TV a couple hours ago." He tugged off Mona's mask. "Her, too."

"Doubtless they were featured on America's Most Hunted," Chiun said. "Do you think they will double the ten-thousand-dollar prize for apprehending two notorious animal abusers?"

"I think you're mixing up shows, Little Father," Remo said. "And these two were on the dais at a HETA press conference. It was on the news."

At his feet, Mona was groaning herself awake. Cradling her head in one hand, she pulled herself up on unsteady legs.

"What happened?" Mona muttered. When she dragged her lids open and saw Remo standing before her, her eyes sparked with sudden memory.

Mona lashed out at Remo. He plucked her hand from the air and patiently placed it back at her side. She tried to kick him. He caught her leg and returned it to the floor. As he did so, she again tried to punch him. Remo snatched her hand once more, pushing it calmly away.

Mona tried to bite him. Remo finally lost his patience and knocked most of her front teeth to the back of her mouth.

This got Mona's attention.

"Chritht! Do you know what thith dental work cotht me?" Mona whistled angrily, sounding like the front man for an Ozarks jug band.

"Not caring," Remo said. "Annoyed. When it becomes 'angry,' I start collecting tongues. Where are the rest of the BBQs?"

It was more than a threat. It was a promise. Mona Janner suddenly became interested in the preservation of only one very specific animal.

"Right here," she enunciated carefully. Her tongue stuck uncomfortably through the hole in her bridgework. She was quick to close her lips over it.

"Stay put," Remo commanded, spinning on his heel.

He found the remaining BBQs in the last stall. All four were curled on a blanket of hay. They snored contentedly.

When he returned to the stall, Huey Janner was dragging himself to his knees. Mona glared at her husband.

"We've got 'em all, Little Father," Remo announced as he stepped back into the stall.

"Thanks to the demons of BostonBio," Mona snarled. She spit a mouthful of bloody saliva at the floor. "When we tried to release them, they wouldn't go. We left the barn wide open for two nights. Those Frankensteins at BostonBio robbed them of their natural urge to flee personkind."

"Did you consider that they might never have had it to begin with?" Remo said, irked.

"BostonBio again," Mona insisted. "They probably fed them, cared for them. Made them feel they had nothing to fear. Then bam! Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce."

Remo only shook his head. "Where's your truck?"

"What truck?" Mona sneered.

"The one you brought them here in," Remo said. "We don't have a truck," Mona spit, a superior grin splitting her jack-o'-lantern mouth. "We only rent them when it's absolutely necessary."

"Mona doesn't believe in internal-combustion vehicles," Huey explained. "We don't believe in them," he amended, shrinking from his wife's dirty look.

"You're Mona?" Remo asked. "Now I know why Curt Tulle was more worried about you than getting mauled by a BBQ."

"Tulle?" she snapped. "You mean that little jerk gave us away? I gave him one of these monsters to take the heat off us. Why didn't I hire a skywriter to point a big, fat, greenhouse-gas-filled arrow straight to the barn?"

"Actually, we traced your husband's credit card." Remo smiled. "Start your engines."

As Mona twisted, face a mask of pure rage, to her cowering husband, Remo turned his attention to the Master of Sinanju and the resting Bos camelus-whitus.

"Any ideas how to get these things back, Little Father?"

Chiun was stroking the long nose of the BBQ. "A vexing problem." The old Asian nodded thoughtfully. "I recommend we give them safe harbor at Castle Sinanju until we work out a solution. There is room in the fish cellar."

"No, there isn't," Remo said. "And if we can get them that far, we can get them to the lab."

"I will remove a tank or two," Chiun continued, as if he hadn't heard. "I have not had pickerel in ages. That one can go."

"I just had pickerel two days ago."

"As I said, I have not had pickerel in ages. We can eliminate that and your silly shark tank, thus opening up space near the furnace. They will enjoy the warmth."

"Okay, let's get on the same page here, shall we? We're not taking out any tanks, we're not bringing home any stray mutants, and we still don't have anything to carry them in even if we wanted to." He frowned as he looked down at the animal. It was well over a hundred pounds. "I can't squeeze six of them and us in that rental car," he complained.

"Please, Mona!"

The pleading voice behind Remo distracted him from his dilemma. He glanced back.

Huey Janner was lying in a fetal position on the earthen floor. Mona loomed above him, bruised face enraged.

"I...told...you...to...use...cash." Each word was punctuated by a fresh kick to the ribs. "Okay, that's it, Punch and Judy," Remo announced. Stepping over, he coaxed Mona out of the way with one hand, lifting a grateful Huey to his feet with the other. "I need to think without distractions."

Over the objections of both animal-rights activists, he shooed the Janners out of the stall. He propelled them into the main barn.

A sturdy toolshed was set into one wall. He tossed Huey inside, where he landed on a pile of pitchforks and hoes.

"Serves you right," Mona snapped at her husband. But when Remo reached for her as well, she balked. Desperate to avoid confinement, she struck up a seductive pose. "Hey, baby," Mona said, using her best sexy voice. "I'm in HETA." Her tooth gap whistled.

"Take a cold shower," Remo suggested. He tossed her in atop her husband.

Slamming the door shut, Remo piled a few hundred-pound sacks of organic gardening compost in front of it. The sounds of Mona Janner pounding on her husband anew were issuing from the shed as he returned to the stalls.

In his absence, Chiun had led the BBQ from its stall. The creature looked exhausted. It wasn't the effort of walking that made the animal seem bone tired. It was the wearying burden of life itself. Its fat tongue lolled.

"Damn, these things are hideous," Remo commented. He pulled his eyes away from the sullen BBQ. "I'm gonna call Smith. He can figure out how to get these eyesores back."

But as he turned, the Master of Sinanju rose from his post next to the sad animal. "Hold," he commanded.

Remo turned. "What?"

"It is time," China. intoned. His expression was somber.

Remo's face scrunched. "Time for what?"

"Time to prove that you are not Smith's lapdog. You may demonstrate your independence and give the gift you failed to give me on my return." He cast a knowing eye down on the dismal form of the BBQ.

Remo followed Chiun's gaze. The BBQ stared at him with guileless brown eyes. When he looked back up to Chiun, the old man's hazel orbs were filled with sly hopefulness.

"Oh, no," Remo said with quiet dread.

"Prove to me, Remo, that you are better than a Japanese zealot," Chiun encouraged.

"Chiun, you already talked to Smith about this back at the lab, didn't you?" Remo said slowly.

"Smith," Chiun spit. "Do not invoke the name of the American Hirohito. Especially not at this time of your great liberation." He held aloft a fist of bone. "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

"You can't take one, Little Father," Remo stressed.

Chiun's face hardened to stone. "And why not?" His tone was ice.

"For one thing, what would we do with it?"

"We would bring it back to Sinanju, of course. My triumph of discovery would forever eclipse that of Na-Kup the Fraud and his diseased camel." There was passion in his singsong voice.

Remo raised an eyebrow. There was something more to this than just the BBQs.

"What's with you and Na-Kup?" he asked.

The old man's jaw tightened. His thread of beard quivered. "You never met him?" he asked tightly.

"Since he died about three thousand years before I was born, no," Remo replied.

"Consider yourself blessed. He is an arrogant braggart, even in death. He and that anthrax-laden beast of his."

"But you couldn't have met-" Remo stopped dead, the light finally dawning. "The Sinanju Rite of Attainment," he said. "The last rite of passage before full masterhood. You went through that mess when you were visited by the spirits of past Masters, just like me. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you met Na-Kup."

The dark storm cloud that passed over Chiun's silent face spoke volumes.

"History remembers the camel, but it doesn't remember the Master." Remo nodded, understanding at last. "Someone had something up someone's kimono sleeve that someone else didn't expect, huh?"

"Someone is an idiot," Chiun snapped. "And wipe that smug expression off your stupid, fat face. My reasons are my own. Besides, I only want one of these animals. Perhaps two. Five at most."

"I'm sorry, Chiun," Remo said, shaking his head.

"You would not do this simple thing for me?" Chiun demanded hotly.

"You know I'd do anything for you. But there's only a limited number of these. They'd miss one."

"It could have escaped," Chiun suggested.

"Chiun," Remo said, reasonable of tone, "Smith has been to Sinanju before, remember? We don't know that he'll never come back. What's he going to say when he sees that moaning lump of DNA schlepping down Main Street?" He nodded to the BBQ. It burped.

"He would say 'What joy and pride you must have felt, O great Master of Sinanju, that your son did honor you by granting you the single boon you desired during the five hundred years in which he abused you.'"

"First off, Smith doesn't say 'boon.' Second, I doubt he'd take the theft of a phenomenally expensive animal that we're supposed to be returning to its rightful owners so lightly. Third, I don't know where you've been, but you've asked for a lot since I've known you. Fourth, it has not been five hundred years."

"You have a facility for compressing much abuse into a short amount of time," Chiun said coldly. "You will not help me?"

"I can't, Chiun," Remo said helplessly. "I wish you could see that."

"I see nothing but ingratitude," Chiun retorted, delivering his final word on the subject. Spinning, he offered his back to Remo. He squatted down beside his BBQ.

Remo stared for a long moment at the back of Chiun's ornate silk kimono. The old man's mood had soured so rapidly in the past four hours it would be a miracle if he didn't lock himself back in his bedroom for the next fifty years.

It made Remo feel terrible to deny his father in spirit one of the pathetic animals. But he had a job to do. If Chiun didn't understand that, it was his problem.

But as he looked down on the tiny Korean, Remo felt as if the problem were his own. Chiun had that knack. And it made Remo feel miserable.

Turning away from the wizened form of the man who had given him so much in life, Remo quietly left the Janner barn.

Chapter 21

"Smith." The CURE director's voice was anxious.

"We got them all, Smitty," Remo announced.

"At the Janner farm, presumably," Smith said, relieved.

"They are-I'm not," Remo explained. "Those dopes don't believe in phones or lights or motorcars. They're like the Amish without the crack. I'm on a pay phone at a gas station down the street."

He glanced around the grimy black yard of the all-night station. Half-built cars-some with their hoods open-littered the area around the pay phone.

Smith's tone became concerned once more. "Where is Chiun?" he asked.

"Back at the farm," Remo answered, quickly adding, "and don't worry, I know he wants one of them and I told him no dice."

"Good," Smith said, exhaling.

"For you, maybe," Remo griped. "He made me feel like mountain-beast droppings."

"Neither your feelings nor Chiun's desires are important now."

"What else is new?" Remo replied caustically.

"I meant no offense," Smith said quickly. "But there has been another death in Boston."

Remo's back straightened. "Like the others?"

"Yes," Smith said. "An unidentified woman. The stomach cavity was consumed as in the previous attacks."

"Unless they were cross-pollinated with Houdini, it wasn't any of the BBQs," Remo said. "The two at the lab aren't going anywhere, and the six here were too far away."

"That's just the point," Smith said excitedly. "This last body is different than the rest. The woman's fingerprints and features were mutilated to complicate identification."

"So?"

"Remo, the mere act of the killer trying to cover his tracks proves conscious thought. Animals kill to survive. Only human beings worry about fingerprinting and police investigations."

Remo's brow fiurowed. "I see your point," he admitted.

"That is not all," Smith said. "The latest body was found almost in the same location as the first."

"That was near BostonBio, wasn't it?" Remo queried.

"Within walking distance," Smith answered, his lemony tone betraying intrigue.

"So we're right back to square one," Remo said.

"We have narrowed our focus," Smith disagreed. "When I learned of the latest body, I checked with St. Eligius. Judith White has not checked herself out of the hospital. Therefore, we can eliminate her as a suspect. That leaves someone else at the company. Possibly someone on her team."

"Or someone with HETA."

"That remains a possibility, as well," Smith admitted.

"Okay," Remo sighed. "I'll go back to BostonBio and see what's shaking there."

"Stay there until something turns up," Smith instructed.

"Great," Remo said, with not a hint of enthusiasm. "I can pass the time between corpses hearing about how big an ingrate creep I am."

He hung up the phone and trotted back to his parked car.

Chiun was sitting stoically in the passenger's seat. "What are you doing here?" Remo asked.

"Why?" Chiun sniffed. "Was your intention to abandon me, as well? Forgive me, Remo, I did not know. If you but give me one moment, I will lie beneath the wheels of this carriage so that in your departure you might crumple my worthless shell." He stretched a bony hand to the door handle.

"Okay, okay," Remo muttered. "Sorry I asked." He started the car. Angling the vehicle out of the driveway, Remo headed into the brightening dawn. After they'd left, a tiny moan rose from the back of the ill-lit office of the service station.

Chapter 22

Terror Toll Mounting! screamed the headline in the Boston Messenger's early edition. Beside the banner print, a picture of the latest victim stared out from every newspaper box in town. The worst of the mutilated body had been covered by strategically placed black bars. Small type below the headline read, "Killer creatures still stalk Hub."

For years, the Messenger sat alone on the sensationalistic limb. Of late, however, the local television stations had been clambering up the trunk. On the morning following the latest death, every syndicated or network program ordinarily broadcast on Boston's network affiliates was preempted for continuous coverage of the "Killer creatures."

Most of this coverage involved reporters marching around street corners and storming straight up to cameras in order to create a sense of frenetic excitement.

Boston's highly paid evening anchors had been awakened early, rapidly moussed, blushed and rolled out in front of the cameras. Eyes puffy with sleep and wardrobe consisting of flannel shirts with rolled-up sleeves to show that they were "down and dirty," the empty-skulled anchors spent most of the morning interviewing one another. On occasion, the zany weathermen would be hauled out to fill up dead time. During these painful-to-watch moments, everyone's brains would shift into overdrive as they tried desperately to remember that wacky quips and joking bon mots were probably not appropriate to coverage of a multiple-murder story.

Although there were now eleven confirmed deaths, the constant hyperbolic media coverage had dulled public concern. Many Boston residents had taken to the streets once more.

They found they were not alone.

Drawn in by the crisis, hunters from all over New England had converged on Boston. So far, local authorities were looking the other way. The police quietly defended this position of noninterference. After all, the killer here was an animal. And as yet, there was no law against shooting a Bos camelus-whitus.

On TV, HETA's newest spokesman claimed that the animals were being hunted out of season. When an NRA spokesman pointed out that there was no such thing as a Bos camelus-whitus season, the HETA man had responded by throwing red paint on the NRA man and tearing up a picture of the pope before storming off the set.

While the debate raged on Boston's airwaves and in its civic buildings, trucks filled with hunters patrolled the streets. As the pinkish predawn sky warmed to deeper shades of red, the light of the new day washed over many an ATV. Remo saw hundreds of them on his drive into the city.

The drivers wore garish orange hats adorned with laminated hunting licenses. Orange vests wrapped khaki or flannel shirts.

Remo found the outfits redundant. If the doublebarreled shotguns jutting from open windows and over tailgates weren't enough to warn people that there were hunters in the area, the powerful aroma of beer-soaked fatigues should have been a dead giveaway.

"Has a brewery exploded?" the Master of Sinanju complained. His wizened face puckered in displeasure as they drove along Tremont Street.

"Beer." Remo nodded. A truck of rowdy men nearly sideswiped them as it flew past in the opposite direction. "The lifeblood of hunters. They must have declared open season on the BBQs. Good thing the animals are all locked up."

"Yes," Chiun said. His voice was vague as he stared out the window. "Why are these drunken fools adorned thusly?" he asked, nodding to a pair of men who were crouching down behind a mailbox. They sipped from a shared hip flask.

"You mean in orange?" Remo asked. Chiun nodded. "I think it makes it easier to shoot each other when they're drunk in the woods."

He was relieved the Master of Sinanju was talking to him. The old man had remained silent since they'd left Medford.

On the street, one hunter was piddling on a lamp post. He staggered where he stood, getting as much on his trousers as on the ground.

"This is unpardonable," Chiun gasped. "A gamesman needs his wits about him at all times. These boomstick-carrying inebriates do not even know when they are soiling themselves. How do they expect to dispatch their prey?"

"And therein lies a riddle greater than that of the Sphinx," Remo intoned. "Does a hunter get drunk because he never catches anything, or does a hunter never catch anything because he's always drunk?"

The old Asian's lids pinched to razor slits. "If this is your feeble attempt to distract me from your ungratefulness..." he warned.

"You brought it up," Remo countered. Chiun turned his attention back to the street. The latest hunter they were passing was sprawled unconscious on the sidewalk. A stray dog was lapping at the puddle of beer that had spilled from the can still clasped in his hand.

"I will study the enigma further before rendering judgment," Chiun announced. And settling back into silence, the Master of Sinanju set his studious gaze on the men they passed.

It was still early morning by the time they reached the BostonBio parking lot. A few cars were already there, but at 6:30 a.m., most of the lot was empty.

Remo parked near a car that looked vaguely familiar. Early-morning sunlight gleamed off its windshield as he stepped into the adjacent empty space. Chiun didn't follow.

"You coming?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju, leaning down to the open door.

Chiun shook his head. "Observe," he whispered. He nodded toward the chain-link fence that marked the edge of BostonBio's property.

Remo saw a strange wooden kiosk on the street corner across from the lot. It took him a moment to realize that it had once been a newspaper stand. Branches broken from BostonBio's meticulously landscaped trees had been lashed to the exterior of the booth. Weeds and straw were thrown up on the roof. A pair of orange hats and attendant shotgun barrels bobbed up from behind the counter of the booth. Every once in a while, a pair of liquor-bleary eyes rose into view.

"Oh, brother," Remo said. "It's a duck blind." The Master of Sinanju kept his voice low.

"I will use this as an opportunity to solve your riddle," he said.

Remo heard the distant sound of two beer cans popping open. The gun barrels behind the counter began to weave with greater purpose.

"The only riddle you're apt to solve watching those booze-bags is the 'tastes great, less filling' mystery," he said.

"Whatever I learn will be of greater interest to me than any of the interminable, pitiful excuses for your ingratitude you are likely to babble."

Remo closed his eyes. "Suit yourself," he sighed. He left Chiun in the car and headed for the side door of the main research building.

The same guard was on duty as had been the first day Remo arrived at BostonBio. He didn't even look at Remo's bogus Department of Agriculture ID, passing Remo through with a bored wave.

Remo took the elevator to the third floor, crossing the hall to the closed and unmarked door to the genetics labs.

The sound of rapid typing issued from inside the otherwise silent lab. With all that had gone on, Remo wasn't eager to give some poor lab assistant a heart attack by breaking down the door. He rapped sharply.

No answer. At least not directly.

The speed of the typing increased, as keyboard keys rattled furiously.

Frowning, Remo pressed two fingers on the door's surface. The lock popped and the door sprang open into the room.

Startled eyes jumped in his direction. A mane of raven-black hair whipped wildly around.

Remo was as surprised to see Judith White sitting behind her office desk as she was to see him. "Judith?" Remo called, stepping across the lab to her open office door.

She pointedly ignored him. Her fingers continued flying furiously across her keyboard.

At her door, Remo noted the faint smell of stale blood in the air. He glanced back to the corridor where the BBQs were caged. A yellow band of police tape hung across the closed door.

The blood smell didn't seem to be coming from that direction. He stepped around Judith's desk. "Shouldn't you be terrorizing the hospital staff right now?" Remo pressed.

The hand came out of nowhere. It thumped against his chest with shocking ferocity. Remo was thrown back against the office wall, crashing into an overflowing bookcase. Books and papers rained down on him.

It took his reeling mind a moment to register what had happened. Judith White had assaulted him. More incredible than anything, her blow had landed.

In Sinanju, breathing was everything. It was the thing from which all else flowed. And that single, awkward punch had forced the breath from him.

Lying on the floor, stunned, Remo pulled air deep into the pit of his stomach. It coursed through his body. Feeling some strength return, he rose to his feet, shaking off the bookshelf debris.

"You don't know when to stay down, brown eyes," Judith growled as he came toward her.

She was still typing madly away, confident that Remo posed no real threat. When he was within striking range, her hand lashed out again. It was the same move as before.

But this time, Remo was ready for it. He blocked the swinging hand with his wrist, deflecting it harmlessly. Pivoting on the ball of one foot, he launched a chopping hand at her temple. He intended only to knock her out. With Judith unconscious, he could take a step back. Figure out just what the hell was going on here.

All hope of a calm appraisal was shattered in the next instant.

A sharp-as-light pain in his shoulder. His hand still inches from her temple.

His own fault. He'd chalked up her first attack to blind luck. His overconfidence had allowed her to land another, more lethal blow. She had feinted with the right hand and attacked with the left.

Flesh ripped down to bone as fingernails tore from shoulder to chest. It was powerful, but not fatal. Almost too much force behind the blow. While her nails did lacerate the skin, the curled fist that followed the downward stroke pounded solidly into Remo's chest.

The force flung him back once more. Fortunately, Remo had centered himself this time. He didn't land as awkwardly as before, but his lungs still struggled for air as he struck the wall near the upended bookcase. Uncertain feet toppled a pile of medical texts.

Judith leaped into the breach left by Remo's moment of awkward hesitation. She flew to her feet, twisting in place. Grabbing at the base of her heavy leather office chair, she hauled the seat high above her head. With a deep, primordial scream that resounded off the pressboard office walls, Judith hurled the chair through the air.

It struck the blinds of her office window, rattling and bending them into knots of twisted tin. The blinds buckled out, and the chair crashed through the big window behind. Huge triangular shards of glass exploded out into the cool morning air. Judith followed immediately in the chair's wake. Bounding up into a squatting position on the office radiator, she flung herself through the rattling metal blinds. From his vantage point on the opposite side of the small office, Remo saw her dive out into open space. The twisted blinds clattered loudly back into place, obscuring his last view of the free-falling geneticist.

They were three stories up. Judith White had just committed certain suicide.

He forced her from his mind. At the moment, he had his own problems. He collapsed against the wall.

The raking blow had opened gouges several inches long across his shoulder and chest. His T-shirt was torn in four perfect parallel lines.

Although his body was already working to repair the damage, blood still oozed from the open gashes. Remo glanced around for something to staunch the flow.

He found a lump of cloth bunched up in the small office wastebasket. When Remo pulled it out, he found that it was already soaked in blood. Although the sticky liquid was mostly dry, some blood had pooled and clotted. It remained largely wet in the creases.

The source of the distinct blood odor he'd noticed when he first stuck his head in the office.

He recognized the articles of clothing as some of the blood-soaked outfit Judith had worn to the hospital last night. There was even a blue-speckled gray johnny thrown in the trash. The hospital gown-like the rest of the clothing-was smeared with blood.

She had been wearing a new outfit just now. Judith must have kept a change of clothes in her office. Remo dropped the clothes back in the barrel. Everything was becoming clearer to him. He was angry at himself for dismissing her as a drug-besotted academic. It was obvious now who was behind the slayings.

One hand held tightly over his wounds, Remo went out into the lab. He found a few sheets of sterilized cotton in a cabinet. Remo pushed one of these up underneath his shirt, pressing it into the injured area. Something jabbed painfully into his shoulder at two distinct points.

Reaching inside the first of the bloody gashes, Remo was surprised to find something embedded there. He pulled the object loose.

Between his fingers was the thin sliver of an artificial fingernail, identical to the one he'd pulled out of Billy Pierce's body. He found one more in one of the other wounds.

And like a flash, Remo suddenly remembered the violence and speed of the murders of Pierce and the other HETA members back in the Concord field. If Judith had strength and speed, it was possible...

Alarm. Hand holding gauze, Remo raced back to the office window, shoving the blinds roughly aside. The sight below turned his stomach to water. The office chair had survived the fall. It lay on its side on the damp green lawn. Around it, hundreds of shards of shattered glass were spread wide across the grass. That was it. There was no sign of Judith White.

"Damn!" Remo growled.

He couldn't risk scaling the wall. Not with a halfshredded shoulder. Cursing at himself for assuming the three-story drop would have killed her, Remo flew back through the lab, racing downstairs.

He exploded out into the parking lot.

The car he'd parked next to was gone. In a wave of self-recrimination, he realized why it had looked familiar to him. It was the same vehicle he had seen parked near his own on the lonely road near the cornfield.

The same car he had seen driving slowly away after the attack against the HETA people.

The same one in which Judith White had carted the first BBQ back to BostonBio.

As he ran over to his own vehicle, Remo realized why the second set of tracks he'd discovered had ended so abruptly in the alley behind HETA headquarters. After killing Curt Tulle and Sadie Mayer, Judith had hauled the BBQ out to her waiting car, loaded it in and then climbed behind the wheel.

End of tracks.

The only mystery now was why her footprints weren't those of an ordinary human. He was thinking of this when he ran-still struggling for breath-to the Master of Sinanju.

"Did you see her?" Remo demanded, panting near Chiun's open car window. As he spoke, he glanced anxiously around the lot.

"See who?" Chiun asked blandly.

The old Korean was still peering at the pair of hunters crouching in their makeshift duck blind. After two more breakfast beers, one of the shotguns had sunk below counter level. Wobbling, the second seemed destined to follow.

When the Master of Sinanju turned a distracted eye on Remo, all thoughts of inebriated hunters evaporated. His eyes grew wide.

"You are injured!" Chiun cried out. The old man burst from the car, flouncing to Remo's side.

"It's nothing," Remo insisted, pushing away Chiun's ministering hands. "Did you see Judith White?"

"A woman did this to you?" Chiun asked, voice flirting with heretofore unknown octaves of shame. His eyes filled with sick horror. "Quickly, Remo, we must get you inside lest someone learn of your great disgrace."

"Chiun!" Remo snapped, his face severe.

"Yes, yes!" Chiun retorted harshly. A leather hand waved angrily. "I saw the woman. She bounced through the parking area like a crazed grasshopper."

As the realization that he had failed began to sink in, helpless fatigue took hold of Remo. Before him, Chiun widened the T-shirt tears. The old man's mouth thinned when he saw the raking wounds beneath the cotton gauze.

"She took the car?" Remo asked, voice growing weaker.

"She is well gone." Chiun nodded. His tone grew somber. Affected shame gave way to concern. "Remo, we must tend to your wounds. Come."

Remo's shoulders sagged in defeat. The movement caused him fresh pain. He tore his eyes from the street. Jaw flexing hard, he nodded assent.

Injured shoulder sensitive to every step, Remo allowed the Master of Sinanju to guide him back toward the BostonBio building.

Chapter 23

Back in the lab, Remo sat up awkwardly on one of the desks. The Master of Sinanju instructed his pupil to strip off his shredded T-shirt.

The pain in his shoulder should have been far greater than it was, but Remo had long ago learned to control pain. He willed his body to numb the sharp stabs down to a dull ache. Still, the pain was such that he winced as Chiun probed the area with his fingers.

"You are fortunate," Chiun informed him. Tapered fingertips pressed the flesh between gouges.

"Yeah. I think I'll run out and buy a lottery ticket," Remo groused.

Chiun's gaze was level. "Another two inches and she would have severed the artery. Then you would have stumbled and blundered around, decorating these walls with your spurting blood. And when the woman-who-is-not-a-woman grew tired of the sport, she would have slaughtered you and consumed you. Tell me again, Remo, how you are not the beneficiary of dumb white luck."

Remo gave him a lopsided frown. "Since you put it that way," he grumbled. "So I guess we kind of both decided she's behind the killings."

Chiun nodded tightly. "Had I not been distracted by the handsome creatures which her wicked animal mind did create, I would have realized it last night."

"Animal mind?" Remo asked.

Chiun's reply was matter-of-fact. "Could anything but a beast in human form lay a finger on a full Master of Sinanju?" the old man said simply.

Remo considered. "I guess it would explain the weird tracks," he admitted slowly.

Before him, the tiny Asian clucked unhappily. He was using Remo's sheet of cotton gauze to clean the wound.

"You know better than to bind an injury," Chiun remonstrated, face pinched.

"I know," Remo sighed, "but I was bleeding like a stuck pig." He winced as the blood-soaked cotton traced the deepest furrow. "How is it?" he asked.

Chiun dropped the soiled bandage to the floor. "You will live," he pronounced. "In spite of your best efforts to the contrary. Where did you find these dressings?"

Remo blinked, surprised. He pointed to the cabinet where he'd found the gauze. Going over to it, Chiun collected a fresh sheet of sterilized cotton. He placed it over the worst of Remo's wounds, holding it in place with a few strips of expertly positioned tape.

That Chiun would wrap the injured area told Remo all he needed to know about the seriousness of the damage. Neither man said a word as the Master of Sinanju applied the last pieces of tape.

"These wounds run deep in several places," Chiun said softly once he was done. "We must return home at once so that I might apply the proper balms."

Remo nodded, climbing obediently down from the desk. "Just let me check one thing," he said.

"Let others check." The aged Korean waved. He took Remo by the arm.

"Chiun, I want to see what was so important to her. It'll only take a minute." There was urgency to his tone.

The Master of Sinanju's grip was firm. With a troubled scowl, he released Remo's arm.

"And I will get a mop to clean up behind you. Be quick about it," he pressed unhappily.

They went back to Judith White's office.

The computer was still on. Remo saw several floppy disks on the floor near her chair mat. They'd been dropped haphazardly to the rug.

Remo glanced at the text on the monitor. There wasn't much there he recognized. There were some chemical formulations, only two of which he remembered from high-school chemistry. The rest was gibberish.

Endless lines of letters on a pop-up window were separated by endless lines of dashes. He couldn't make head nor tail of that part of the screen.

Remo was about to turn away when something at the top of one of the files caught his eye.

It was a name. It had been used to label the last file that Judith White had pulled up from her hard drive.

Remo was already light-headed from loss of blood. For a moment, he wasn't sure whether he was in worse shape than he thought. He might have become delusional without even realizing it.

"Chiun," he called, voice hollow. "Take a look at this." He was staring at the screen.

Face tight, the Master of Sinanju joined him behind Judith's desk. "What is it?" he asked impatiently.

Remo's good arm reached out to the screen. His index finger extended to the glass.

"What does that say?" he asked.

Chiun's eyes narrowed as he scanned the line. No sooner had the words registered along his optic nerve than his eyes grew wide once more. And in their hazel depths was something almost bordering on fear.

"How can this be?" he hissed. His face looked as if the lab computer were home to some manner of electronic ghost.

Remo was lost for an explanation. He shook his head woodenly as he looked down at the screen. He read the words again, hoping they had changed. They had not.

The name on the top of the computer file read simply, "Sheila Feinberg, BGSBS78."

And a terror that he had thought long buried resurfaced in the cold, barren center of Remo Williams's soul.

THEY WOULD BE FOLLOWING HER. If not Remo, others of his species.

She'd been careless. In spite of her best efforts to quell her base urges, she had given herself away. Judith White tried not to make the same mistake as she zipped quickly along Beacon Street. She forced herself to drive the speed limit. Although every animal instinct within her screamed "Run," she resisted the impulse to pound the gas pedal to the floor. She didn't want to attract the attention of the local police.

There were hunters everywhere.

It was funny. She had seen them many times over the years-in real life, on TV-yet they'd never caused her such visceral dread before. Trucks drove rapidly past her, offering fleeting flashes of bright orange.

At the moment, the men in khaki thought they were searching for her BBQs. She would be safe. Safe until word got out that it had been her all along.

They would come after her then. She'd have no problem dealing with a few. She had done that before. But she couldn't possibly handle so many. Humanity would not take kindly to a new, superior species rising up in its midst.

Drive slowly. Not too fast.

She'd been like this for months. Her first meals had been indigents and whores. People decent society wouldn't miss. Their bodies were buried in the soft dirt floor basement of a warehouse off Eastern Avenue in Chelsea.

So many bodies. So many she didn't really know how many there were. Nor did she care. They were only humans after all. Inferior to her in nearly every way. The only concern she'd ever felt as far as that other species was concerned was the fear of being discovered.

Had it been this way for the first in her species? Judith White had mulled that question many times over the past few months. For though she was the first in many years, she was not the first ever.

Dr. Sheila Feinberg, late of the Boston Graduate School of Biological Sciences, had actually been the first. It was the Feinberg Method that Judith had employed to achieve the state of perfection she now enjoyed.

Dr. Feinberg's case had been accidental. She had been a mousy little scientist, a Goody Two-shoes who had never been involved in anything vile or depraved. When she had ingested tiger DNA as proof that it was not harmful to a doubting audience, she'd never anticipated that the chemical reaction between her saliva, the DNA itself and the packing gel around the test tube would cause a change. Judith knew. She had gone into her experiments with both eyes wide open. She wanted the result she had gotten. Craved it.

But although she wanted the result of the experiments, she had not necessarily counted on this particular outcome.

A car came straight toward her. Judith snapped from her reverie, cutting her wheel sharply, swerving back into her own lane.

The driver of the other car leaned on his horn as he sped past her, flinging out his middle finger as the vehicles nearly collided.

Concentrate, concentrate.

She drove out of the city. Out toward I-90. Although technically the first of mankind to change, Sheila Feinberg shouldn't have really counted as the first. She couldn't anticipate nor could she control what she had become. And she would have changed back eventually.

An accident. All just a stupid accident. Accident!

On the highway now, Judith swerved again. She pulled away from the rear bumper of the car ahead of her at the last possible moment.

Think! Think! She fought to stay in the right lane. The effects were temporary in the first experiment. An instability on the microcellular level. Unlike her hapless predecessor, Judith had found a way to stabilize the receptor strands of DNA to eliminate rejection. Using a simple form of bacteria-which was perhaps the first form of life ever to evolve on Earth Judith had piggybacked the new genetic programming onto the old. In this way, the new DNA-bacteria hybrid was able to rewrite the original codes. And unlike Sheila Feinberg, Judith White hadn't settled for mere tiger genes. Although she did largely use them in the earliest stages of her experimentation, she was more than that now.

Much more.

Lights flashing behind her. A state police cruiser. For a moment, she wrestled with the notion of trying to outrun it.

Rational thought fought back irrational desire. To flee would invite more cruisers. They would empty the nearest state police barracks for the high-speed chase. They would catch her eventually. Too many of them then. Better to stop now. Only one officer to deal with. Two at most.

Judith steered the car into the breakdown lane. The cruiser tucked in neatly behind her.

Traffic whizzed by, seemingly at lightning speed. Taillights glowed as the speeding Massachusetts drivers continued the three-mile-long slowdown that began whenever a state police cruiser was spotted.

For a moment, Judith wrestled with the idea of trying to charm her way through, accept the ticket and go on.

The cop stayed in his car. It seemed to take forever.

Did he know? Had Remo alerted them already? Judith licked her lips in nervous anticipation. The officer was talking on his car radio. She could see him clearly in her rearview mirror.

Was he receiving instructions? Waiting for backup?

Judith glanced to her right. A brush-covered hill rose beyond the passenger's-side window. At the top was a thick growth of trees.

Safety. The trees were a haven. The cruiser, the trooper, his fellow officers-if they came-they were a danger. They would do her harm.

A steady hand reached for the keys dangling from the steering column. Judith switched off the idling engine.

The officer seemed to take this as a signal. He got slowly out of his own car. Lights flashed around him as he made his way up to Judith's car. As he walked, he hitched up his belt with practiced arrogance.

His beefy red face was unreadable as he stepped up beside her window.

"Good morning, ma'am," the state policeman said.

They were his last words.

A hand lashed out through the open window, clamping roughly around the lower part of the man's thick neck. Eyes bulged at the sudden, intense pressure.

The officer scrabbled for his gun. Too late.

The other hand was out, grabbing at his jaw, forcing it upward. The wide area from Adam's apple to chin was exposed. Into this opening lunged Judith White, fangs bared.

Growling low, she latched on to a huge portion of flesh. With a jerk of her head, she wrenched it loose. Most of his throat was pulled free of his neck. Part of his tongue was dragged down from his mouth.

Judith forced her hands into both sides of the opening, ripping outward as if tearing at a giftwrapped package. The trooper's neck burst apart. Blood dripped inside the opening like a trickling waterfall at the back of a damp cave.

The officer staggered back, gun long forgotten. He fumbled at his throat, feeling only an enormous wet hollow where it had once been.

As he dropped, Judith sprang from the car. Strong hands wrapped around the remains of the man's neck. Judith twisted savagely. Through the opening, she could see the white spine crack. The man grew limp.

Finishing him off was not a bow to compassion. If the man was alive when backup came, he could in his dying moments point out the direction she'd gone.

She only realized how far her rational mind had gone when she glanced up. The faces of passing motorists were utterly horrified.

They saw her. Clearly.

Think, think! It was as if she had to force her mind to do what had always come naturally to her. She was now making the same demands of herself her parents had made so many years before.

Judith quickly pulled the keys from the ignition. There was no fumbling. Just rapid, concise movements.

Racing to the rear of the vehicle, she popped the trunk. She gathered several large black cases into her arms.

They might not be enough. But they were all she had.

Leaving the dead state trooper and sickened passersby behind her, Judith loped up the grassy roadside hill.

A moment later, she vanished into the dense woods.

"SHEILA FEINBERG?" Smith asked, his lemony voice bordering on squeezed incredulity. "Are you certain?"

"Smitty, I can read," Remo replied aridly.

"Tell me what it says precisely on the computer screen," Smith instructed. "But please do not touch anything."

They both knew that Remo was not particularly skilled when it came to dealing with machines. Although Smith knew it was logically impossible to destroy all information on a computer by pressing a single button, he would never put it past Remo to find such a doomsday switch.

"The top one of those little separate box things-you know, the ones with the little box in the upper left corner?"

"The window," Smith explained.

"Yeah, that," Remo said. "It's just full of letters and dashes. G dash C G dash G T dash A. C dash G. It looks like it goes on like that forever."

"It has," Smith said somberly. "At least since life began on Earth. That sounds like a base pairing sequence in a double helix."

"That's DNA, right?" Remo asked.

"Yes," Smith said, concerned. "Two polynucleotide chains are twisted into a coil to form the helix. A common representation would be a spiral staircase, with each rung holding the genetic information for a single base pair."

"The letters and the dashes," Remo offered.

"Precisely," Smith said. "Remo, this is not unusual in and of itself. Any genetics laboratory would have this sort of information on hand."

"Top flap of the file," Remo said, reading off the screen. "Sheila Feinberg, BGSBS78. I'll bet you a duck dinner not everyone has that on hand."

"Seventy-eight," Smith repeated slowly. "Obviously that indicates the year of the accident concerning Dr. Feinberg."

"Accident?" Remo mocked. "Smitty, in case you forgot, Sheila Feinberg turned herself and a dozen other people into half-human-half-tiger mutants, she and her pride ran through Boston chewing up half the town and she capped off kitty's night out by kidnapping me and trying to turn me into her personal stud in order to create some new generation of ueber-mutant. Accident is to Sheila Feinberg what sobriety was to Dean Martin."

Remo's voice rose in intensity as he ran through the litany of offenses Sheila Feinberg had committed against both the natural order and against him personally. For Smith, noticeably absent from Remo's list was the fact that Dr. Feinberg had nearly killed him in her initial attack.

Remo hadn't suspected a thing when she cornered him in a car in Boston. His stomach had been ripped open and its contents nearly removed. Only Chiun's expert ministrations had saved his life. But even with the Master of Sinanju's aid, Remo's body had gone into shock after the incident. He had completely lost his Sinanju skills. They had resurfaced barely in time to save his life.

Afterward, it had taken Remo many long months to fully recover from his physical wounds. Smith hoped that the psychological ones were healed, as well.

"Remo," the CURE director said evenly. "It was not my intention to diminish the significance of those events. We all went through a lot back then."

"Yeah, I know," Remo sighed, his voice softening. "This whole thing's put me on edge."

"That is not surprising," Smith said. "Given the fact that Dr. Feinberg's name has turned up after all this time." Smith allowed a thoughtful hum. "Let me check something," he announced all at once.

There followed several minutes of rapid typing. Remo stood behind Judith White's desk the entire time. At the office door, the Master of Sinanju stood at attention, a watchful sentry.

Chiun was guarding Remo against attack. The thought that this tiny figure-charged with frail determination-would place himself in the path of a perceived danger swelled Remo's heart.

In spite of the dull ache in his shoulder, Remo felt a little better by the time Smith returned to the phone.

"There is a link," Smith exhaled. It was obvious from his tone that he hoped he wouldn't find one. "After the incident with Sheila Feinberg, the Boston Graduate School of Biological Sciences was sold at auction. Thanks to Feinberg, for much less than it was worth. It became a teaching institution for a time until it was bought up by a fledgling genetics firm in the mid-1980s. It has followed a circuitous path since then, but suffice it to say that the current company of BostonBio is the owner of all that once was BGSBS."

"That would include the Feinberg info?" Remo said.

"Assuming it was not destroyed, yes," Smith replied.

"I guarantee you it wasn't destroyed."

Smith was never one to shrink from cold facts. Although he had wished it weren't so, it appeared as if the experiments of years before had resurfaced once again.

"It all begins to make sense now," Smith admitted.

"You're casting a pretty broad definitional net to say that any of this makes sense, Smitty," Remo replied.

"Remo, where did you last see Dr. White?" Smith pressed.

"Jumping out a three-story window," he answered dryly. "But Chiun saw her driving out of the lot here about twenty minutes ago. I assume it was her own car."

"I will put out an APB to the local and state police," Smith said.

"Tell them to arm themselves with bear traps and elephant guns," Remo warned him. "She's strong as an ox and quick as a cobra."

"I will alert them to use extreme caution," Smith said. "In the meantime, I will dispatch an FBI team to BostonBio to see if anything can be learned from the remaining files. There is nothing more you can do there. If she turns up anywhere, I will call you at home."

"Yeah, we'd better get going. Chiun's itching to whip up some ancient Korean poultice for me. Probably bat dung mixed with mouse spit."

"Why?" Smith said. The light dawned even as he asked the question. "You weren't injured?"

"It's nothing, Smitty," Remo assured him wearily. "Flesh wound. She took me by surprise. I just need a little time to mend, that's all. Call me if you hear anything."

Before Smith could press further, Remo hung up the phone. As he did so, Chiun turned around, face impassive.

"You are not as well as you have led Smith to believe," he said seriously.

"I feel fine," Remo dismissed. "And I don't need two Henny Pennys getting all worked up over nothing."

Chiun didn't argue. At the moment, he was more concerned with getting Remo back home.

As if leading a lost child, he took Remo by the wrist. Walking carefully, he escorted his pupil to the lab door.

The proof to both men that Remo was not as well as he boasted was that he allowed Chiun to guide him.

Chapter 24

Two more bodies turned up over the next two days. One in Waltham, west of Boston, the other in Lexington.

By this point, it was no longer a mystery who was really to blame for the previous victims. The BBQs were exonerated. The police were now searching for Dr. Judith White.

BostonBio's history was exhumed and dissected by a slavering press. BGSBS might have been a different corporate entity, but the genetics firm was up to the same horrid business as its predecessor.

State, federal and local agencies, along with families of Judith White's victims, filed lawsuits against BostonBio. The company's stock plummeted. Because of the dreadful events swirling around the now discredited BBQ project, BostonBio had taken a giant leap toward bankruptcy.

And through all of the tumult and acrimonious public debate, Judith White continued to elude authorities.

Day had bled into night once more, and in his office at Folcroft Sanitarium, a weary Harold Smith fruitlessly scanned the latest news digests as they came in.

The CURE director was bone tired. The only sleep he'd gotten in the past forty-eight hours came during unplanned catnaps. The only real relief from the tedium had been a single trip home earlier that day for a shower and a change of clothes.

His suit jacket was draped over the back of his chair. Bleary eyes studied his submerged monitor. Smith was helpless to act. All of the sophisticated technology at his fingertips could not be employed to track something that operated on instinct. If Judith White continued on her current course of behavior, he had as much of a chance of finding her as he had of tracking a wild bird in flight.

That Dr. White had carried through on Sheila Feinberg's original experiments was no longer in question. After he had hung up from Remo, Smith had surreptitiously ordered agents from Boston's FBI office into BostonBio. Computer experts for the federal agency had collected all available evidence from Judith White's office.

There hadn't been much left.

She had magnetized the floppy disks Remo had found on the floor. It would take weeks to piece together the small scraps of information that had not been destroyed utterly. But it turned out the disks offered a painstaking piece of electronic detective work that, in the end, was unnecessary. Unbeknownst to Dr. White, they had gotten most of what they needed without the floppies.

Although the files in her computer itself had been largely erased, she had failed to destroy her hard drive. The genius of BostonBio's top scientist apparently didn't extend to computers. All she would have had to do to wreck the internal system of the device would have been to engage the drive and then-while it was running--drop the whole machine on the floor. Her failure to do so had given Smith the information he needed. And did not want to hear. Many of the files she had tried to erase had already been undeleted. The story as it unfolded was horrific.

Judith White had made a deliberate effort to discover the old BGSBS files that dealt with the Feinberg Method. She had taken the original formula and had improved greatly on it. According to one of the nation's leading geneticists, who had been called in as a consultant by the FBI, Judith White had piled layers of genetic material from more than a dozen species onto her own DNA.

If her notes were any indication, she had started primarily with tiger genes, so they held the most powerful influence on this new creature. But she hadn't been satisfied to stop there. Other genetic material was thrown into the DNA cocktail at later dates. And this abomination was skulking with impunity around the streets and backyards of Massachusetts.

The thought chilled Smith.

There had been nothing new since the last body, which had been discovered more than fourteen hours ago.

According to the earlier body count, the creature that Judith White had become fed frequently. But that number had dwindled. The seemingly low death toll of the past two days likely meant that she was somehow disposing of the newest bodies in order to avoid capture.

Waltham and Lexington. One body in each town. There was nothing to go on from there. Smith couldn't hope to establish any kind of pattern with only two corpses.

Smith felt ghoulish thinking that more bodies would help the search. But it was a gruesome fact. More would steer a course directly to her. An arrow painted in blood across a map of eastern Massachusetts would point the way.

It was a horrible thought. Even so, it wasn't one the CURE director could easily dismiss.

Judith White represented a threat to mankind. Perhaps one more dangerous than the species Homo sapiens had ever before encountered.

A thinking animal. A threat in and of itself. But if Dr. White had only the physical characteristics of an ordinary animal, she could still be avoided or captured.

She did not. Unlike the rest of the lesser creatures in the animal kingdom, she possessed the perfect camouflage. A vicious remorseless killer wrapped in a human face.

Judith White could blend in with humanity. Disappear.

Until it was time to feed.

And if the Feinberg incident was anything by which to judge this new case, Judith White would want more than mere survival. Like all animals, she would want her species to thrive. She would want to create more of her own kind.

Weary from lack of sleep, Smith pulled up a file on his computer. It was a file that he had read and reread many times over the past twenty-four hours.

He had used the available time since Judith White's disappearance to order an autopsy on one of the two BBQs that had been returned to BostonBio. Smith had found the preliminary results disturbing, to say the least.

It was a matter of fact; Judith White would want more than mere survival. Much more. She wouldn't rest until her species dominated the world. And one of the two men who represented the last, best hope for humanity had already fallen victim to her.

In a phone conversation earlier in the evening, Chiun had assured the CURE director that Remo's physical wounds were healing. But there were deeper cuts than these. The topic of Remo's potential psychological wounds was left undiscussed by both Smith and the Master of Sinanju.

Smith turned abruptly away from his desk-away from the technology that had failed him. He spun to the picture window. As he stared out across the endless black waters of Long Island Sound, he saw no lights above the waves. Only the blackness of eternity-Mankind was alone.

And in the claustrophobic darkness of his lonely, spartan office, Harold W. Smith prayed that Remo was up to the challenge that lay ahead. For humanity's sake.

Chapter 25

"I feel fine," Remo groused, for what seemed like the millionth time in the past forty-eight hours. "You look pale," Chiun told him.

"I'm not sick," Remo insisted.

"I was commenting on the ghostly pigmentation natural to white skin, and not on your state of health," the Master of Sinanju droned. "Honestly, Remo, I did not notice until the last two days how amazingly white you are. Is it possible you are the whitest white man on Earth?"

"Last I checked, it was still Pat Boone," Remo grumbled.

The insults had started dribbling out slowly that morning. By noon, they were a flood.

At first, he had welcomed the normalcy. For Chiun to stop doting and start insulting proved that Remo was well on the road to full recovery. But that was hours ago. Right around now, the Master of Sinanju's abuse was beginning to grate on him.

As they drove slowly through the streets of Lexington, Remo tried to ignore the tenderness in his shoulder. His Sinanju-trained body healed much faster than that of a normal man, but the wounds Judith White inflicted had been deep.

When they returned home after leaving BostonBio two days before, Chiun had stripped the cotton gauze away from Remo's lacerations. For the first time, Remo noticed the white bone of his clavicle peeking out through the deepest center gouges. The bone was coated with a watery pink film.

The dressing Chiun had applied to the brutal gashes smelled worse than a used diaper, but had obviously done the trick.

Flexing the muscle, Remo felt a tightness to his skin around the area where Judith's claws had raked. The tightness became more noticeable every time he turned the steering wheel on their aimless ride through the dark streets of Lexington.

Beside Remo, the Master of Sinanju gazed into the dull yellow glow cast by a streetlamp. Insects that did not yet know summer was over fluttered lazily around the light.

"What are we doing?" Chiun queried abruptly. Remo was staring at the shadows beyond the windshield. "Twenty, twenty-five," he replied absently.

Chiun turned from the window, allowing the streetlight to slip into their wake. "I was not asking our speed," he said with bland irritation.

His tone shook Remo from his thoughts. He glanced at Chiun. "You know what we're doing," he said tightly.

"Pretend I do not."

Remo allowed a perturbed exhale to escape his thin lips. "We're looking for her."

"Ah." Chiun nodded. The ensuing silence lasted but a moment. "Her who?"

"Judith White, " Remo snapped. "We're looking for Judith White, okay? Jeez." The tension made his shoulder ache.

"I see," Chiun said, as if finally realizing the point of their quest. "Forgive me for pressing, Remo, but I thought briefly that you might be on yet another futile search for your dream female. You can understand why I would not want to be in this vehicle while you violate local harlotry ordinances." Alert eyes locked on empty shadows. "What makes you believe this creature is nearby?"

"Smith said the last body turned up here. Some college kid going to work this morning."

"But did not Smith also say the previous victim of this iniquitous thing was found miles from here?" "Waltham." Remo nodded. "It's the next town over."

"Then why are we looking here and not there? Or for that matter, in another hamlet altogether?"

"I don't know," Remo replied, gripping the wheel in frustration. "But it beats sitting around doing nothing."

"You are sitting now," Chiun pointed out. When he turned to the Master of Sinanju, the shadows cast on Remo's cruel face were ominous.

"If you want to go home, I can flag down the next cab," he warned.

In his kimono sleeves, Chiun's hands sought opposing wrists. His tone softened. "You know as well as I, my son, that this creature will not spring from the night to chase after your automobile like an angry dog. It is clever. It will bide its time until it thinks that it is safe."

"And in the meantime, more people die. No way," Remo said firmly. "I'm not going to have that on my conscience."

Chiun examined Remo's dimly lit profile. The younger Master of Sinanju's face was resolute. "If there is ever a prize for self-flagellation, you will surely win it, Remo Williams," the old man muttered.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You feel that because of your encounter with the other tiger creature years ago that you alone should have seen what others did not."

"Shouldn't I have?" Remo demanded, frown lines deepening around his tense jaw. "I got more up close and personal with Sheila Feinberg than anyone. Of all people in the world, I should have seen what Judith White was."

They drove down Bedford Street, taking a left onto Burlington.

Chiun's parchment face was serious. "Do not let the memory of another dark time cloud your present judgment, Remo," he said quietly. "You are not what you were back then. Then you were but a child in Sinanju. Now you are Apprentice Reigning Master, destined to succeed Chiun the Great Teacher." Hazel eyes sparked with a father's pride.

Remo smiled wanly. "She ripped me up pretty good, Little Father," he said softly. "Just like the last time."

Chiun shook his head. Wisps of cotton-candy hair became angry thunderclouds. "For this thing we seek, there was no last time," he spit. "It is a new mongrel creation."

Remo couldn't let it go. He flexed his shoulder. "Sure feels like old times," he mumbled.

Chiun's folded arms dug deeper into his sleeves. "I do not know why I waste my breath," the old man hissed. "If you cannot snap out of this for your own sake, do it for me. I am far too old to train another pupil. Our village will suffer if you waltz off to an encounter with this thing and get yourself killed."

"You're all heart."

"And stomach and liver and kidneys. And I intend to keep them all where they are. Take care that you do the same." He settled into perturbed silence.

Across the front seat from the Master of Sinanju, Remo bit the inside of his cheek in concentration. Logically, he knew Chiun was right. But logic had no place in what he was now feeling. A small, tweaking pang of unaccustomed fear tugged at his belly. And in that fear, Remo knew, there nestled the possibility of failure. Even for an Apprentice Reigning Master of Sinanju.

They spent the rest of that night wordlessly prowling the empty streets.

Chapter 26

Ted Holstein was a hunter who had never once fired his shotgun at a living thing.

"Unless you count trees," he'd once complained to his next-door neighbor. "Or shrubs. Wind takes hold of a-what's that one called?"

"A rhododendron," his neighbor replied tightly.

"Yeah, rotordentine. Anyway, wind grabs one of those suckers and you look at it the wrong way? Man, you'd swear those branch things were antlers. Know what I mean?"

"You shot my shrub," his irate neighbor pressed. He held two large branches in his hands, severed by a blast from Ted's bedroom window. The rest of the plant was scattered across his neighbor's front yard.

"Yeah. Gee. I did, didn't I?" Ted was standing in his pajamas near the fence that separated their properties. Weaving, he glanced down at the smoking shotgun in his hand. He glanced back up, suddenly inspired. "Hey, you want a beer?"

If hunting was Ted's avocation, drinking was his vocation. He was one of the lucky few people for whom work and hobby melded seamlessly.

Ted had been drinking since he was sixteen and hunting since his seventeenth birthday. Since the drinking had come first, he had worked it so that he couldn't clearly remember a single hunting trip.

As a result of his excessive tippling, aside from some unfortunate flora, Ted had never shot anything living.

Birds could have landed on his shotgun barrel without fear. Bunnies and squirrels pranced through his backyard and dreams with impunity.

He had bagged a deer once. Driving home drunk from an annual family Fourth of July party, he'd inadvertently taken the scenic route. Weaving through the woods, Ted managed to plow smack into an eight-point buck.

Unfortunately, since it was the off season, Ted couldn't mount his prize to the crumpled hood and drive back and forth through town. Instead, he rolled the huge animal down a nearby ravine, covered it with pine needles and took off in his smoking Chevy pickup before some nosy game warden slapped him with a fine.

That was ten years ago and it was beginning to look like the last chance he'd ever have of bagging something big. At least, until two nights ago.

Alone in his dingy living room, Ted flipped on the TV. He'd hoped to see the sports segment on the late news. Instead, he was dropped smack into the midst of the hysterical, wall-to-wall local coverage of the rampaging BostonBio killer BBQs.

From what he could glean from the news, there was some kind of vicious monster loose in Boston. Police were looking the other way as thousands of hunters descended on the city, hoping to bag the trophy of a lifetime.

In his boozy haze, Ted Holstein had decided right then and there that this prize and all its attendant glory would be his.

Pawing through his mountain of empty beer cans, he'd found his phone. He and his two closest drinking buddies soon settled on a simple plan. The three of them loaded up on beer and shotgun shells. As fast as Ted's battered truck would take them, they set off for Boston.

It was only a day into their expedition and the rules of the game had already changed. Their target was no longer the BBQs, but a female scientist named Dr. Judith White. The grainy black-and-white Boston Blade BBQ photograph that Ted had fastened to the dashboard with masking tape had been replaced by an equally grainy picture of Dr. White. The stunning good looks of the BostonBio geneticist stared out at him as he drove up Route 117 in Concord.

"What are we doing here?" asked Evan Cleaver, one of the other two men crammed in the cab of Ted's truck.

"We're looking for her, stupid," Ted said, tapping a finger against Judith White's reproduced face. The man between them belched. His bleary eyes were at half-mast as he looked out at the cornfields that lined the road.

"This Boston?" he grumbled. Ted had known Bob for fifteen years and only had a vague memory of his surname. The ability to remember such trivialities as the last names of good friends had been lost a decade's worth of Coors ago.

"Bob's up," Evan commented.

"Not for long," Bob slurred. He rummaged around in the cooler wedged at their feet. The ice had long since melted. The can he extracted was dripping wet. Bob popped the top on his warm beer and began sucking greedily at the can.

"Get me one of those," Ted ordered.

"Get it yourself," Bob replied.

"I'm driving," Ted complained.

Mumbling, Bob reached for another drenched can. He handed it over to Ted.

Ted tried to pop the top but couldn't. He was already at least a sheet and a half to the wind and had a difficult time manipulating both steering wheel and can. After a moment of awkward fumbling, he turned to the others.

"Open it for me, will you?" he asked.

"Screw you," Bob said, slurping at his beer.

"Give it here," Evan offered.

Ted passed the can over.

Apparently, while attempting to open it, Ted had shaken the can more than he thought. When Evan pulled the tab, beer began spraying up through the opening.

"Shit!" Evan yelled, holding the can away from his khaki hide-in-the-woods shirt.

"Shit!" Bob echoed, spitting out his own beer. "You're dumping it all over me!" Beer dribbled down his chin. He mopped at it with his sleeve.

"Gimme that," Ted insisted urgently. He hadn't had a beer in twenty minutes and, as a result, his driving skills were suffering.

Evan dutifully handed the can over, still overflowing.

"Get that frigging thing away from me!" Bob screamed as more beer fizzed out onto his lap.

"Calm down," Ted told Bob as he took the offered can.

"You calm down," Bob griped. He sniffed the tail of his untucked shirt. "Great. Now I stink like beer."

"No more than always," Evan commented.

Ted spit beer out his nose. Choking on his drink, he began laughing hysterically. He laughed so hard Evan joined in. They howled and guffawed in delight as they turned off 117 onto a long side road.

"That wasn't funny," Bob said morosely.

Evan wiped tears from his eyes. Behind the wheel, Ted sniffled happily.

"Guess you had to be there," Ted said.

"It wasn't funny," Bob insisted, angrier. A furious hand wiped the damp spot on his lap.

While Bob continued to groom himself, Ted stopped the truck. He took a few rapid gulps on his beer, emptying the can. Belching loudly, he tossed it through the sliding window at the rear of the cab. It joined the growing pile of empties.

The three men climbed out. As they were collecting their shotguns from behind the seat, Evan glanced around. Cornfields rose high on either side of the road. There was evidence that some of the fields had been trampled by trucks. Evan looked at the ruined sections of field through boozy eyes, wondering why someone would drive over perfectly good corn.

"Why are we here, Ted?" Evan asked as his shotgun was passed to him.

"This is where she killed a bunch of guys," Ted informed them. He handed a sullen Bob his shotgun.

"That tiger broad?" Bob asked. He balanced his beer on the roof of the cab as he fumbled with the safety switch. It took three tries to flip it off.

"Duh," Evan commented.

"Why are we looking here?" Bob pressed, squinting at the cornfield. "Everyone else is in Boston."

"Exactly," Ted said proudly. "If you were a tiger lady everyone was looking for, would you go where everyone was, or where everyone wasn't?"

"Wasn't," answered Bob with only a moment's hesitation.

"And where's the last place you'd think people would be looking for you?"

"Bob's bed," Evan offered, giggling.

"Shut up," Bob barked.

Ted was looking at the wide expanse of field crushed by police and rescue vehicles that had gone in after the HETA bodies.

"You think she'd come back here?" Bob asked.

"Let's find out," Ted replied. He had a tingling sensation below his belly that for once had nothing to do with his bladder.

They took the path of least resistance into the field, following the tracks made by authorities. The toppled corn stalks were still fresh enough that they didn't crackle underfoot. Deep tire treads had torn into rich earth, creating muddy pools. Several hundred feet in, the men took a left into the more dense field. Several even rows lined this vast section. A lot of ground for only three of them to cover.

They split up. Bob went alone down a long path. Evan took another. Ted struck off in the same direction as the others but several rows down.

As he walked along, he idly felt the safety latch on his shotgun with his thumb. Forward. The safety was off.

Ted pulled the switch back, just to make certain. It slid with a tiny click.

The metallic noise was answered by a rustle of movement somewhere up ahead.

He glanced to his right. The others were far away. Neither Evan nor Bob could have made the noise. Carefully, Ted slid the safety off once more. With cautious steps, he closed slowly in on the spot from which the sound had originated.

The green stalks were dense and high. While bright sunlight streamed down from above, not much reached the ground. But beyond the stalks of corn to his left, the light seemed brighter.

It was the same impression Ted got standing at the last line of trees before a wooded lake. A sense of emptiness not present in the rest of the field. From this area, there issued a persistent humming.

Peering carefully, Ted noted an expanse of brightness beyond the nearest stalks. Like the area trampled by vehicles farther back in the field, someone had knocked over the corn here, as well.

Cautiously, slowly-adrenaline pounding in his ears-Ted eased apart the two nearest corn stalks. The source of the humming noise became instantly apparent. A mass of black flies swarmed around the open area. Their collective buzzing was akin to the drone of a persistent, tiny motor.

The corn had been trampled flat in a circular area about the size of Ted's truck. As he stepped into the bowl-shaped zone, flies swarmed up around him.

Ted recoiled, stumbling backward. As he did so, his foot snagged in something.

For a moment, he thought he'd stepped in a hole. He soon realized that it couldn't be. Few holes in the ground could be lifted into the air along with one's foot.

He looked down, squinting through the fluttering haze of a thousand swirling insects. What he found made his alcohol-soaked stomach clench in a terrified knot.

His boot had caught in an open chest cavity. His toe was snagged up just under the sternum.

Ted saw the rest of the body then. The head had been concealed behind a mask of flies. It looked up at him now, eye sockets teeming with maggots.

Another body lay near the first. As stripped of life as an ear of shucked corn.

Ted was too horrified to scream. He exhaled puff after puff of frantic breath, never pulling in fresh air.

Shaking, he collapsed back into the corn. Crackling stalks snapped loudly beneath his deadweight. Frantically, he shook his foot. Trying to knock loose the body that still clung furiously to him in some morbid final act of desperation.

His crazed, terrified blundering appeared to stir the very earth. As Ted watched in growing horror, the ground began to rise up before him.

No, not the ground. Something beneath the trampled corn. Something that had been lying in wait. The thing that had been hiding in the corn stalks before him turned rapidly, fangs bared.

Even in his panic, Ted recognized the face from his dashboard. The woman he was after. Judith White.

Sleep clung to her eyes as she dropped to her hands. Blood dripped from her open mouth as she shoved off on tightly coiled legs.

As she sprang toward him, she screamed loudly. Ted screamed, as well. As he did so, there came a terrible explosion nearby. The sound rang in his ears.

Another explosion. This one close, too. Like the first, it came from somewhere near the end of his arm. A gunshot.

In his panic, he'd fired his shotgun.

Judith's expression changed from savage fury to cautious rage in midleap.

Ted was still lying on his back on the ground. She dropped beside him. Pummeled stalks were further crushed beneath her weight. A heavy paw clamped on his chest. She snarled menacingly, flashing blood-smeared teeth.

Footsteps. Running. Shouted voices.

Judith raised her nose in the air, wiggling her ears alertly. Her paw stayed pressed to Ted's unmoving chest. He held his breath.

A decision. Instinctive.

She turned. Bounding on all fours, Judith dived into the field in the direction opposite that of the voices. In a second, she was gone. The most brilliant geneticist of her generation had been forced to abandon her makeshift nest to hunters.

And flat on his back in her corpse-strewn lair, Ted Holstein could take no pride in successfully fending off the creature that had terrified so many.

He had passed out cold.

Chapter 27

After a futile night of searching, Remo had finally given up hope of finding Judith White on his own. Defeated, he had returned home. Morning found Remo sitting morosely in his living room watching the back of Chiun's head.

The Master of Sinanju had brought a quill, an ink bottle and a few sheets of parchment down from his bedchambers. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, the old Korean was writing furiously. Every time Remo tried to steal a peek at what he was writing, Chiun hunched forward, blocking the papers with his frail body.

Remo finally gave up trying to see and instead turned his attention to the wide-screen TV, hoping for some fresh news concerning Judith White. If the latest reports were to be believed, there was nothing.

"I should have stapled one of those radio tags to her ear like they do on Wild Kingdom," Remo grumbled.

"Shush," the Master of Sinanju admonished. The great plume of his quill swooped gracefully. Remo couldn't take it anymore.

He was sitting on the floor a few feet behind Chiun. He leaned forward as he had before in order to get a glimpse of the parchment. Mirroring his pupil's movements, the old man tipped farther over. As soon as he'd lowered himself enough, Remo slapped both palms to the floor and unscissored his legs. He executed a flawless somersault, twisting in midair. Briefly, both men were back-to-back as Remo slipped over his teacher. He dropped back, cross-legged to the floor.

"Ow." Remo cringed, now face-to-horrified-face with the wizened Korean. He clapped a hand to his injured shoulder even as he read some of the upsidedown words on Chiun's parchment. "How are you eclipsing Na-Kup?" he asked.

The Master of Sinanju's shocked expression flashed to anger. "None of your business," he retorted. He snatched the parchments to him. Flipping them over, he hugged the papers to his narrow chest. "Instead of irritating me with acts of childish acrobatics, why not do something useful? The rain gutters need cleaning."

"Gonna hire someone," Remo informed him.

"Why? It is a job for a street arab or other common vulgarian. I will buy you a ladder."

"I think I liked you better when you were writing screenplays," Remo said as he pushed himself to his feet. A fresh ache ran from shoulder to chest along his healed scars. He headed for the livingroom door.

As he passed the phone, it rang. When Remo scooped it up, Chiun was already spreading his parchments out once more.

"Judith White has been seen," Smith announced without preamble.

"Where?" Remo demanded.

"In Concord," Smith explained rapidly. "She had made a nest for herself in the same field where the BETA Bos camelus-whitus exchange was supposed to take place."

"I'm on my way."

"Wait," Smith called quickly. "She escaped on foot."

"Dammit," Remo complained, jamming the phone back to his ear.

"It is not as dire as it sounds," Smith explained. "She apparently feeds at night. I suspected as much before. That is why most of the murders took place after dark. She is no longer accustomed to daylight hours, as is a normal human."

"She's not a freaking vampire, Smitty."

"She might just as well be," Smith replied. "For in daylight, she is exposed. People will see her. More so now that she has been identified as the killer."

"But we still don't know where she is," Remo argued.

"We cannot pinpoint a precise location," Smith agreed, "but there have been three sightings since the incident this morning. One in Minute Man National Historic Park, one in Winchester and the third in the woods near Middlesex Fells Reservoir. She appears to be heading back to Boston."

"I thought she was the thinking man's animal." Remo frowned. "Doesn't she know there are hunters everywhere around here? What's she doing coming back?"

"I could not begin to speculate," Smith said. "But that appears to be the pattern. Do you still have your Department of Agriculture identification?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I am sending an unmarked state police car for you and Chiun. It would be simpler if the officers believe you to be agriculture agents."

"I've got a car, Smitty," Remo stressed.

"Yes, but no radio. I want you on the ground in case she makes an appearance." He hesitated for a moment. "Remo, if you are not up to the challenge, I can send Chiun in alone," Smith suggested.

"If I'm healed enough to clean rain gutters, I'm healed enough to pull one measly cat out of a tree," Remo muttered.

But as he replaced the phone, he felt the unaccustomed tightness of the still healing scars on his shoulder.

Remo hoped his words to Smith were not simply idle boasting.

MASSACHUSETTS STATE TROOPER Dan MacGuire didn't know why he was being pulled away from his stakeout post outside the BostonBio complex. His was one of a number of unmarked vehicles that had been assigned to the area.

The FBI and Boston police had been having a pissing contest over who was in charge of the whole Judith White mess. No one seemed to be able to get the jurisdiction straight. While the agency infighting raged over the past two days, MacGuire had been waiting patiently in an empty lot across the street from the genetics firm.

He had heard several hours before that White had been spotted, seemingly en route to Boston. There were only two places she seemed likely to go. Her apartment which was under around-the-clock surveillance-and BostonBio itself.

Dan was betting on BostonBio.

Laurels awaited the man who finally managed to bag the psycho doctor. Dan was already counting on the promotion that would come from being the one to take down the Beast of BostonBio.

He was understandably upset therefore when, after two days of sitting alone drinking stale coffee, the nasal voice of his shift supervisor informed him over his car radio that he was to go and pick up some Department of Agriculture agent. The man would be bringing along an assistant. Both had high security clearance.

Dan had objected strenuously, to no avail. He had his orders. Muttering something about being a "god-damn taxi service," he abandoned his BostonBio post to collect his charges.

The Department of Agriculture agent wound up being some faggy-looking guy in a maroon T-shirt and tan chinos. Dan was a good half foot taller than him and had at least a hundred pounds of beefy muscle on the wimp.

The Agriculture guy's assistant was worse. The hundred-year-old man looked as frail as a wicker chair at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. On top of that, he was dressed like Fu Manchu's grandmother.

Both men were waiting on the sidewalk in front of the address MacGuire had been given. As he pulled up to the curb, he noted that it was a hardware store.

"You Agent Post?" Trooper MacGuire asked across the front seat, clearly hoping that he had the wrong man.

"Gimme a sec," Remo said seriously. He examined the last name on his own ID. It was hard to keep track of all his aliases. "Guess that's me today." He nodded as he climbed in the front seat beside MacGuire.

"Great. A comedian," MacGuire muttered.

"What is this?"

The squeaky voice was so loud and so close MacGuire almost jumped out of his skin. He spun around.

The trooper was startled to see the old Asian sitting in the back seat. MacGuire hadn't heard the door open or close. The old man was aiming a slender finger at the bullet-proof shield that separated the rear seat from the front. It was a standard safety precaution. MacGuire told him this.

"Remove it," Chiun commanded.

"I can't," MacGuire replied, irked, as he turned back to the wheel. "It's permanently affixed."

"Why not just leave it, Chiun?" the skinny guy said over his shoulder, as if the old geezer could actually do something about the thick sheet of Plexiglas. By the looks of it, he was lucky just to haul himself out of bed in the morning.

"It annoys me," Chiun sniffed.

"So what?" Remo said.

"So, I already have to put up with you. One annoyance is quite enough."

As the two of them prattled on, Trooper MacGuire checked the traffic situation. He was about to pull out into the street when he was shocked by a horrible tearing sound over his right shoulder.

Spinning around, MacGuire was stunned to see that the protective shield-which could stop a .357 round fired point-blank-had been wrenched free from its casing.

The old man's hands were stretched out as wide as they could go. A set of bony fingers curled around each end of the shield.

As the state trooper watched in shock, the Asian brought his hands together. The sheet of thick plastic bent into a bowed U, straining until it could no longer take the pressure. All at once, it snapped with the report of a gunshot. MacGuire ducked behind the seat, hoping to avoid the inevitable spray of plastic shards he was sure would be launched forward.

There were none. Just another louder, quicker snap.

When he picked his head up over the seat, Trooper MacGuire found that the old man had placed the panes together, forming an inch-thick sheet of glass. These he had snapped, too. The four smaller sections he'd stacked atop one another. As MacGuire watched in amazement, he broke these, as well.

"Can we hurry up and go already?" the Department of Agriculture man complained from the seat next to MacGuire. "There aren't any doughnuts back there." He seemed oblivious to the action in the back seat.

Nodding dully, the trooper turned back around. He swallowed hard, forcing his Adam's apple back down his neck. It seemed suddenly to want to escape his throat.

As he pulled out into traffic, MacGuire heard the snap-snap-snap of increasingly-smaller sheets of Plexiglas coming from the rear seat.

TED HOLSTEIN HAD BEEN flown by helicopter to College Hospital in Boston. As the first known survivor of an attack by Dr. Judith White, it was feared by some authorities that the young hunter might begin to manifest some of the same man-eating characteristics as his assailant.

"She's not a freaking werewolf," Ted complained as blood was drawn from his arm for the umpteenth time.

"Yes, sir," replied the nurse. She appeared to not even be listening to him.

They held him for hours, testing and retesting, finally proclaiming that in spite of having the liver of an eighty-year-old-he was perfectly normal. Ted was clearly not a threat to society at large.

The hospital released him. Directly into the grasping claws of the Boston press corps.

He granted dozens of impromptu interviews in the College Hospital emergency room.

"What was it like to be attacked by Judith White?"

"Did she say anything to you during the attack?"

"Are you afraid she might come back for you?" Fortunately for Ted, five o'clock was approaching and most of the reporters had to get back to their respective stations to edit their miles of tape into the three seconds of material that would actually make it on the air.

Some of the stations tried to get him to come on the air live for their 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. news, but he'd firmly refused. Even so, a few cameras still lingered on him as he sat alone in the blue molded-plastic chair near the automatic doors of the emergency room.

Ted tried to ignore the glaring lights. His eyes and head hurt from not drinking. He hadn't had a beer since morning. All he wanted to do was to get away from here. Out of the public eye.

As he checked his watch for the hundredth time in the past half hour, the doors next to him slid open. "Hey, hey, hey! There he is!" yelled a happy voice.

Bob came bounding through the doors, grinning broadly. The powerful stench of stale beer clung to his clothes and breath. Evan Cleaver trailed Bob into the hospital.

"It's about time," Ted said, annoyed. He got to his feet, stretching uncomfortably.

"Hey, the Feds were asking us all kinds of questions," Bob said defensively. "You ain't the only celebrity here."

"At least they weren't jabbing you with needles," Ted replied. He rubbed his pin-cushioned arm.

"Needles schmeedles," Bob dismissed. "You ready to go, or what? Guns are in the truck." This he said loudly, jerking a too casual thumb over his shoulder. He smiled at the remaining cameras. The few reporters in the emergency room began to circle around the trio.

"Are you going after Judith White again?" a reporter asked, shoving a microphone in Ted's face.

"Damn straight," announced Bob, belching loudly as he spoke. "Hi, Mom." He waved at the camera.

"No," Ted stated firmly.

"We've got to, man," Bob insisted.

"They've tracked her as far as Malden, last I heard," Evan said excitedly. "She's looping around this way."

"Maybe she wants you." Bob leered, elbowing Ted.

"Aren't you afraid of what might happen?" a reporter questioned Ted.

The answer was written on his face. Even the question seemed to terrify Ted.

Bob answered for him. "No way," Bob insisted.

"He's not afraid of anything," Evan agreed.

"Well..." Ted began timidly.

But Bob and Evan were already bullying him to the emergency-room doors. The glass panes slid silently open.

"What makes you think you can survive another round with the Beast of BostonBio?" the reporter asked, employing his profession's tired and tested technique of turning something serious into a frivolous sports metaphor.

"Hey, we've got the most famous hunter in New England on our side," Bob boasted loudly. "How can we lose?"

"Actually..." Ted started.

"Shut up," Bob and Evan instructed.

And as the hospital doors slid efficiently shut, fear rang like a desperate clanging gong in the ears of New England's most famous hunter.

"WHAT ARE WE DOING?" the Master of Sinanju asked.

He was perched in the back seat of Trooper MacGuire's unmarked car. A pile of inch-wide, twofoot-long strips of plastic sat on the seat beside him. "Don't you start again," Remo cautioned.

"I was asking the constable, O Nosy One," Chiun sniffed.

"We're waiting for that lady scientist," the state trooper offered.

Chiun leaned over into the front seat until his head was between the two men. He looked out the windshield at the high-tech glass exterior of the BostonBio building.

The Master of Sinanju frowned. "Is she inside?"

"No," Trooper MacGuire admitted.

Chiun paused, allowing the trooper's answer to hang in the air. He turned to Remo.

"What are we doing?" he repeated.

"She might come back," the trooper replied. "When she does, we'll be waiting for her."

Chiun sank back into his seat. "She has gotten all that she requires from this place. The creature will not return."

A horn suddenly honked loudly down the block. For what seemed like the millionth time that day, a truck loaded with rowdy hunters drove past the parked cruiser. It disappeared around the next corner.

"Looks like you're alone in that opinion," Trooper MacGuire mumbled.

"I think so, too," Remo offered, uninterested.

MacGuire frowned. "What makes you think that?"

"Because he thinks that," Remo said, nodding back to the Master of Sinanju.

The trooper raised an eyebrow. "I suppose he's an expert on human behavior?"

Remo nodded. "He knows more about behavior than a library full of psychology textbooks. Human or otherwise."

In the back, Chiun had grown bored. He began snapping apart the thick strips of bulletproof shielding.

"You'll forgive me if I reserve judgment?" MacGuire asked doubtfully.

Remo only shrugged. The movement reminded him of the tenderness in his shoulder.

MacGuire watched obliquely as the agriculture man probed at his left shoulder once more. It appeared to be causing him some kind of discomfort. He'd been poking absently at the same spot all afternoon.

The trooper was about to ask him what was wrong when the car radio squawked to life.

It was MacGuire's supervisor. The trooper was surprised it wasn't a dispatcher calling him.

"Special orders," the state police supervisor announced after reading off the car's ID number in a bored monotone. "Proceed to Eastern Ave, Chelsea. Over."

"Chelsea?" Dan asked, glancing at Remo. He picked up his microphone. "What-?"

He was instantly cut off.

"I have been instructed to say no more. Over." The radio went dead.

"Must be something too hot to broadcast," MacGuire mused. He glanced at Remo for agreement as he hooked the mike back in place.

Remo wasn't paying attention. He was still rubbing at his shoulder. As he did so, Chiun continued to work away in the back seat, snapping his plastic Plexiglas strips into credit-card-size fragments. The old man yawned.

"So much for that promotion," MacGuire grumbled, turning the key in the ignition.

He had to wait for another truckload of hunters to pass before he could pull out onto the street.

Chapter 28

They would be impossible to avoid forever. She had tried for days, even succeeded for a time, but she knew it couldn't last. Their single-mindedness was unmatched in the animal kingdom.

Humans.

It disgusted Judith White to know that she had once been one of them.

They were weak. Any strength they had came from sheer numbers. As a species, it was a miracle they had survived. And they hadn't merely survived-they had thrived.

No more.

Judith bounded through a few square yards of woods that had reclaimed a section of abandoned parking lot. She ran on two legs, keeping her back nearly parallel to the ground. Her head was upface forward-as she reached the edge of the tightly packed trees.

She sniffed the air. Not sensing any humans, she broke her cover, racing across the cracked asphalt toward another, thicker strip of woods.

Judith ducked between the low branches, feeling the instinctive safety of the forest swallow her up. She moved on.

The scientist in her was still lucid enough to see what was going on. It was a classic internal struggle. She was rational when calm. But in anything remotely resembling a pressure situation, her instinctual self reared its head.

That was why she had fled the hunters in Concord. If her rational mind had been in control at that moment, she would have stayed and fought.

There were only three of them. None of them had ever met anything like her before. Even when the first one had started shooting in panic, the element of surprise would have remained on her side.

The problem was, even as the hunter had panicked, and begun blindly shooting, Judith had panicked, as well.

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

If she had killed them and buried them somewhere, they never would have gotten word out about her.

Judith had broken into the house of an elderly shut-in in Melrose earlier that afternoon. While she was munching on her lunch of stringy retiree, she had seen video of Ted Holstein on the local news.

She recognized him right away. He was the one who had stumbled into her nest.

If she had only killed him!

It was her own fault. When Holstein showed up she had been groggy from her previous night's meal. In her lazy sleeping stage, she thought she had heard a noise. Her animal self had been alarmed, but her vestigial human side had convinced her that there was probably nothing to worry about. After all, she had been in the same nest for two days without incident. She went back to sleep, only to be awakened by the human's stumbling and screaming.

Afterward, she had run, propelled by pure instinct and adrenaline.

She had been seen. Several times. The last no more than ten minutes ago. All because she could not yet control the unreasoning animal within her. Now she was on the run. On their terms.

That wouldn't last. Judith White would not allow it. She was still more clever by far than almost any human alive. She would win. Her species would thrive. But she had work to do first. And now they knew roughly where she was. It made her work all the more imperative.

Running still, Judith came to the edge of this latest strip of woods. She poked her face through the brush.

There was a street beyond. Tired brick warehouses slouched along the sides of the road. Some were used for storage, but most were in various states of disrepair.

The wind brought the scent of water. Mildly polluted.

As she watched the road, few cars drove past. It was as she remembered it. The lack of traffic was the reason she'd chosen this area originally.

She waited for a lone car to pass and was about to make a break across the street when she heard a loud noise coming from around the corner.

Constantly suspicious now, Judith sank back into the undergrowth. She trained a single wary eye through the tangle of bushes.

A truck drove into view. Judith felt the short hairs rise on the back of her neck as she saw who was in it.

Hunters. Five, six...eight of them in all. They screamed and hooted and waved their guns as they sped madly along. A cloud of asphalt-flecked dust rose in the truck's wake as the vehicle skidded to a stop at the side of the road near the old parking lot. The men piled out into the street.

No sooner had this truck arrived than another pulled around the corner. It stopped near the first. Two more followed, one trying to pass the other. The men inside shouted curses at one another as they flew past the other vehicles.

Although they disappeared beyond the nearest warehouse, Judith heard these two vehicles stop, as well.

More were coming. She could sense the rumble of trucks through the sensitive pads of her bare feet. Raucous shouts rolled toward her, vibrations in the air.

The humans who had seen her ten minutes before must have already contacted the authorities. And the human police-incompetent as usual-must have announced their findings to the world.

The hunters were here now. Reporters would follow in their wake. Eventually, the authorities would also arrive on the scene.

Judith had no desire to meet up with any of them. Not yet, anyway. Not until she could work this to her advantage. And the thinking part of her was certain that she still could. After all, they didn't know that she had an ace up her sleeve.

Judith felt at the black case under her arm. It was one of the plastic boxes she'd brought with her from BostonBio. One of the ones she'd rescued from her trunk after her attack on the state trooper.

She would save herself. Her species would survive.

And multiply.

She pushed deep into her belly the alarm she felt at seeing so many hunters, all looking for her. Judith White melted back into the woods. Ducking east, she headed in through the crumbling pile of bricks that lay at the rear of the closest warehouse.

Chapter 29

Remo knew word had gotten out the moment he saw so many Coors and Budweiser cans lining the road. The alcoholic's equivalent of Hansel and Gretel's bread crumbs.

"Uh-oh," he said in the front seat of the state police car.

"What?" Trooper MacGuire asked. They were cruising down Eastern Avenue in Chelsea.

"Party crashers," Remo informed him. "Take a left."

They hadn't gone much farther before the Master of Sinanju chimed in.

"Must these swill-pots pollute the air everywhere we go?" Chiun complained from the back seat. He was surrounded by tiny plastic fragments. Nose upturned, he sniffed through a tiny space in the window.

"BYOB, Little Father. The hunter's credo."

A turn onto a side street led them between two rows of crumbling warehouses. The roadway was lined on both sides with trucks.

Bright orange caps moved furtively all around the area. A pointless effort since they were, after all, bright orange. The shade of orange was so vivid it would have been visible from space.

"How did they find out?" Trooper MacGuire griped.

"Everyone and his brother has a scanner," Remo commented. "That goes double for these Billy Beer types."

They parked behind the last truck in line. Remo climbed out onto the curb. Road sand that hadn't yet been swept up from the past ten winters filled the gutter.

"I'll let you out in a minute, sir," Trooper MacGuire called back to Chiun as he unlatched his seat belt.

"You are polite," a squeaky voice said from outside the car. "The Magyars of Kocs were such reinsmen. Remo, give this young man a generous tip."

When he looked, MacGuire saw that the Asian had somehow let himself out of the rear of the car. Impossible, since the door locked from the outside and there was no latch inside.

Chiun was standing on the curb next to Remo. "Not too generous," Chiun said to Remo, sotto voce. "He is only a taxi driver, after all."

"We don't have to tip him," Remo said. Hands on hips, he was surveying the area.

"We must give him something," Chiun cautioned. "Without retainer, these mercenary hacks would strand their own mothers."

"It's all right, sir," the trooper called from inside the car. "You don't have to give me anything." Since his bulletproof shield now lay in fragments on the back seat, he'd decided against asking Chiun how he'd gotten out of the car without ripping the door off. The trooper's main worry at the moment was backup. He appeared to be the only police officer in the area. MacGuire gathered up his radio microphone.

"Did you hear that, Remo?" Chiun enthused. "Our driver is better than the greedy Magyars. They always had one hand on the reins and the other in a traveler's purse. Hail to you, stout coachman!" In Korean, he said to Remo, "Give the fool a nickel. I do not feel like walking home."

"He's all set, Chiun," Remo insisted. He was still looking around the area, concern creasing his face. The hunters everywhere weren't going to make things easy. Brow furrowed, he turned to Chiun. "Where do you want to start?" he asked.

The Master of Sinanju sensed Remo's inner disharmony. Though he tried to mask the feeling, it was there. Lurking just beneath the surface. Although it would be easier to dismiss his pupil's concern as unwarranted, the fact of the matter was, Chiun felt it, too. The old man masked his own unease.

"One direction is the same as the next," Chiun said, an indifferent shrug raising his bony shoulders.

"Okay." Remo considered. "Uh...that way?" He pointed over toward a pair of warehouses.

Chiun nodded his agreement.

Inner thoughts of worry left unspoken, the two men struck off together toward the dilapidated buildings. And in spite of their training, neither felt the pair of narrowed eyes focused on their retreating backs.

JUDITH WHITE PERCHED easily atop the creosote-soaked rafter in the old warehouse nearest the parked police car.

She watched Remo and Chiun cross the street. They were four stories below and heading off in the opposite direction.

Good. That meant that they hadn't sensed her. Frankly, Judith was surprised Remo was here. She had given him what she thought was a disabling, possibly fatal injury back at the lab. A normal man would have been in the hospital for days following such an attack. But Remo wasn't normal.

Judith had known it the moment she first met him. She sensed things on a different level than normal humans. She could tell that he was something special. And dangerous.

The old one accompanying Remo gave her the same impression. There was a complete stillness, an all-pervasive confidence about the ancient Asian that defied explanation.

These two were the best mankind had to offer: Her reasoning mind told her that if she could defeat them, she could ultimately defeat Man.

The two men stepped through a break in a rusted, half-torn chain-link fence and into an old parking lot. They disappeared around the side of a building.

After they'd gone, Judith crept back along the beam.

The attic floor was more than eight feet below her. Neither the narrowness of the beam nor the distance she would fall if she took a single misstep was a factor in her thinking. The skill to perch atop a high rafter and to keep perfect balance while doing so was innate.

Judith moved easily to the spot where she knew the rotting attic floor was strongest. Leaning to one side, she let her body fall from the beam.

One hand continued to grip the softened wood as she swung around like the pendulum on a clock. When her toes were dangling a foot above the floor, she simply let go, dropping lightly to the soles of her bare feet.

Remo and Chiun weren't her only concerns, she knew. There were many men around her now. Closing in for the kill.

There was a strong impulse within her to panic. The same instinct that would grip any trapped animal. She would have to use reason to get out of this situation alive.

She heard a noise. Scuffling feet in the parking lot far below. Afterward, the sound of humans arguing.

Hunters.

Remo was still across the street. He was far enough away. Her plan had a good chance of succeeding.

Judith gathered up the box she'd carried with her all the way from its hiding place near her Concord nest. She tucked it tightly under her arm.

Moving through the late-afternoon shadows that stretched across her large attic room, she slipped stealthily toward the rotted wooden door.

TED HOLSTEIN FELT like he was going to throw up. All he wanted to do was go home. But Bob and Evan refused to hear it.

"Are you kidding?" Evan said in disbelief. "After the great day we've had so far?"

"He's kidding." Bob nodded with certainty.

"Maybe if I laid down for a little while," Ted said weakly. They'd just driven into the crumbling area of Chelsea, pulling in behind the line of parked trucks. Out of Ted's truck now, they were loading up on shells.

Ted was like a prisoner walking the last mile. "You heard the guys on the radio," Evan said to Ted, his tone reasonable. "They tracked her here. You don't want someone else to snag her, do you?"

"They took a lot of blood at the hospital," Ted offered.

"Stop being a faggot," Bob barked, annoyed.

It was the "faggot" comment that did it. Ted was terrified at the prospect of meeting up with Judith White again, but he was more fearful that his masculinity might be brought into question. Stuffing his hands into the ammo box, he filled his pockets with shells. Gun in hand, Ted followed the others toward the cluster of warehouses.

"You look a little green," Bob commented as they walked through the bombed-out parking lot. "Wanna beer?"

He reached a hand around to the emergency sixpack he'd slung from the back of his belt.

"Hell, no," Ted insisted.

"Don't tell me you got religion on us," Bob said. His tone was vaguely disgusted.

"No way," Ted declared. "It's just I don't feel like it. Not after this morning."

"I've been drinking more because of this morning," Evan boasted. In fact, he hadn't had a drop, either.

"That's 'cause you're not a faggot like Ted," Bob said with a smirk.

"Shut up," Ted complained.

"Yeah, Bob," Evan echoed. "Why don't you shut up?"

They'd nearly reached the first warehouse. The big brick building was four stories tall and looked as if it had been built somewhere in the earliest days of the twentieth century. The facade was crumbling. Chunks of mortar and redbrick fragments were spread all around the lot before it.

Bob stopped near the closed warehouse door.

"Are you two queer for each other?" Bob asked, turning on the others. "You sound like you're married or something."

"Just lighten up," Evan insisted.

"You lighten up," Bob snapped back.

"Maybe we should keep it down," Ted offered warily. The morning's events had begun playing anew in his frightened mind. He felt woozy. His stomach fluttered in fear as added adrenaline pumped frantically through his system.

"I'm sick of you two always ganging up on me," Bob groused. "You think you're so much better than me. Well, I got news for you. At least I got a real live deer once, Teddy boy. And it wasn't with the front of my car." He glanced over his shoulder. Woods crept out around the side of the building. "I'm going to see what's going on back there," he announced, a sneer stretching his lip. "If I find her this time, maybe I can keep from pissing my pants and actually shoot her."

Grumbling to himself, Bob stormed off. After he'd disappeared around the side of the building, Evan shrugged.

"He'll be okay," Evan assured Ted. "It's just the beer talking."

"Yeah," Ted nodded. Getting yelled at by Bob had only increased his apprehension level. He felt the powerful tingling of pure terror in his groin. He wanted to pee, but dared not suggest it. Not after what Bob had just said.

Evan crept to the front of the building. With the flat of his hand, he tested the door. It was unlocked. He turned back around. "You want to flip for who goes in first?" he asked, lips twisted into a devilish smile.

"Hurry up," Ted urged.

And before his faked courage fled him completely, Ted used the broad side of his shotgun to bully his friend into the warehouse. He followed close behind.

The door creaked shut with eerie finality.

WHEN REMO AND CHIUN ROUNDED the corner, they found the rear parking lot of the old warehouse teeming with hunters. Men with shotguns scurried all around them, like ants fleeing a dropped shoe. The hunters paid the two Masters of Sinanju little heed, so busy were they stalking sand and stones.

"I will never understand this nation," the Master of Sinanju commented as they waded through the armed throng. His wrinkled face was puckered in disgust. "There has never been a land as rich in food as America. Your markets are even given the boasting prefix super." His voice dropped. "It is amazing to me, Remo, that the American ego extends even to something as trivial as your grocery stores."

Remo's eyes were trained ahead, his senses strained to their maximum. "And?" he asked, distracted.

"Why do these simpletons dress up like clowns and clomp around in the woods with their boomsticks when they need only stop at the nearest supermarket?"

Chiun indicated some hunters who were trying to hide in the thin brush at the edge of the parking lot. The woods might have been enough to conceal two or three. There were eighteen of them.

"Gives them something to do," Remo explained. "You know, l went hunting a couple of times years ago."

"That does not surprise me," Chiun said, nodding sadly. "After all, you were a barbarian when I met you. However, I had hoped that you had not sunk so low into depravity that you would shoot Bambi's mother."

"I never actually shot anything," Remo pointed out.

"Not only did you use firearms-you were untalented with them. The pride I feel at this moment is underwhelming."

It was as if Remo didn't hear. The two of them traced a path around the perimeter of the parking lot. Remo had already described to Chiun the tracks he'd seen in the Concord field and in the alley behind the HETA office. So far, there was no sign of Judith White's distinctive paw prints in the film of dirt and sand.

"I see nothing here," Chiun announced once they'd completed their circuit around the parking lot's edge.

"Me, neither," Remo said, disappointed. "These boot marks all over the place don't help."

He waved a hand at the kicks and scuffs that dozens of hunters' heels had made in the soft sand. The fence along the side of the lot nearest them had collapsed. It opened into another, larger parking area.

"Guess we move on," Remo said glumly. Chiun nodded agreement.

The two men clambered across the toppled chain link and into the adjacent lot. Moving ever farther away from their quarry.

"DO YOU HEAR THAT?" Evan whispered urgently.

"Hear what?" Ted asked.

Evan's voice was a hoarse rasp. "Sounded like digging."

The air was thick with dust. Tiny particles danced in the few beams of light that penetrated the spaces in the boarded-up first-floor windows. The smell of decay hung heavy in the wooden interior of the big brick building.

As they stepped gingerly through the large rooms of the old warehouse, both men found it difficult to breathe. They pulled air into their lungs in shallow, nervous spurts, exhaling almost as soon as they had inhaled.

Ted was an anxious wreck. The cavernous warehouse was spooky, like something out of a Saturday-afternoon horror movie. His head swirled as much from blood loss as from fear. They'd drained too much at the hospital. What little was left thundered in his ears.

Evan had taken point. A few yards ahead, he stepped cautiously over a rotted beam that had fallen to the floor. Years of settling dust and cobwebs formed a thick coat on its decayed surface.

As Evan's toes brushed the floor on the far side of the beam, there came a gentle creak beneath him. Evan froze. Behind him, Ted stopped, too. "What?" Ted whispered anxiously.

"Shh," Evan stressed. He started to pick his foot up. The floorboards creaked greater protest. Worried, Evan stood stock-still.

"Go," Ted insisted, pressing the length of his gun barrel against Evan's tense shoulder blades. Hesitantly, Evan brought his foot down flat on the old warehouse floor. The creak from the wood came sharp and quick, stopping abruptly. Hoping the noise hadn't been loud enough to scare off their prey, Evan dropped his other foot next to the first.

A muted sound came from beneath. Not a creak this time. More like a tired groan. It flashed to a roar.

The creaky old floor vanished from beneath them. Helpless as the world collapsed around them, Evan and Ted felt an instant of weightlessness followed by the remorseless tug of gravity.

The blackness of eternity swallowed them. Boards bounced around and off them as they plunged into the basement. Guns were dropped; frightened hands grabbed instinctively for faces and heads.

A jarring stop. Crashing all around.

They hit the dirt floor hard. Rotting wood rained down, bouncing off their heads and shoulders. Ted did a belly flop onto the musty earthen floor. Striking ground, Evan tried to scramble to his knees. Heavy timber smashed his back, knocking him face first into the dirt.

It was over as quickly as it had begun.

Dust settled around them as the two men lay groaning on the basement floor. A lone nail clattered loudly down the length of a long, angled board, smacking lightly into the soft dirt floor.

After a long moment, Evan pushed himself up through the pile of debris. Dust fell as thick as flour from his hair.

"Ted?" he panted, voice small. He felt around his back where the beam had struck. Wincing, he hoped he hadn't broken anything.

Evan stumbled to his feet. Floorboards clattered away, settling on other sections of rotting wood. He looked up at the hole through which they'd fallen. It seemed a mile away.

"Man, we're lucky ...we're lucky we weren't killed," he breathed.

Evan glanced around for his gun. He didn't see it anywhere. Probably buried under the avalanche of junk.

"You lose your gun, too, Ted?" he asked. No answer.

"Ted?" he called again, the first hint of concern creeping into his voice. He suddenly felt very alone. It was dark in the basement. There was no sign of a door anywhere nearby. The only light spilled down from the hole through which they'd fallen.

As he tripped anxiously through the awkward piles of wood, Evan spied Ted. He was kneeling a few feet from the pile of rubble.

Ted's back was to Evan. Unmoving, he appeared to be engrossed in a spot on the floor.

"You scared the shit out of me, Ted," Evan exhaled, relieved. "Hey, have you seen my gun anywhere?"

One floorboard was jammed into the soft dirt floor, angled up over another. When Evan tried to climb over it, he tripped, slamming down onto the angled wood. The far end rose out of the dirt, dragging something into the air behind it.

Sprawled over one end of the long board, Evan glanced up at the thing that had risen from the soil... And felt his heart freeze.

The board had impaled the corpse in its hollowed stomach cavity. The body hung from the rotten board-a gruesome playmate on the far end of a macabre teeter-totter.

And as the first brush of shock and horror pummeled Evan's reeling mind, he realized he knew the man.

Bob. His friend's head hung slack over his dirt-smeared chest.

In panic, Evan scurried off the board. The bloodied body collapsed with a horrible, meaty sigh to the dusty floor.

"Ted!" Evan gasped, backing away on palms and feet. His hand sank into something slimy.

With sick eyes, he looked down. A face stared up at him through the earth. Rictus-tight lips curled away from yellowed teeth. Mottled hair dragged across gray flesh.

There were more. Hands here. Legs there. All exposed by the collapsed ceiling.

They had fallen into a graveyard.

Fear overpowering horror, Evan stumbled over to Ted. He found his friend still kneeling in the same spot. Ted's gun rested on the floor near his boots.

Beside him now, Evan finally saw the thing that had turned Ted into a terrified statue.

A tiny hand poked up from the floor. The face and torso of a young child had been exposed by a falling rafter. The stomach had been ripped open. Dirt filled the hollow cavity.

Ted was clearly in shock. Frightened, Evan was trying to figure out how to get him out of there when he heard a soft footfall behind them.

On his knees, Evan wheeled. And felt the world drop out from beneath him again.

Judith White had crept stealthily from the shadows at the periphery of the basement. She stood a breath away from both hunters, teeth bared. In the wan light, her green eyes glowed red.

"Nice of you boys to drop in," she growled softly.

Evan dove for Ted's shotgun.

Clawing hands were snatching for the stock when he felt a blinding pressure at the side of his head. He was too slow. She'd clubbed him over his left ear. And as the blackness of eternity collapsed around him, Evan Cleaver prayed for swift death. He did not wish to awaken on Judith White's buffet table.

The hunter crumpled to the wood-strewn cellar floor without so much as a sigh.

Abandoning the unconscious Evan, Judith padded up to the kneeling shape of Ted Holstein. "Remember me?" she taunted, stealing around from behind.

His glazed eyes gained focus. Something seemed to spark far back in their shocked depths. He blinked, as if awakening from a long sleep. It was as if he were seeing Judith White for the first time.

Ted's expression instantly switched from one of shock to one of horrid fear. His next reaction was instinctive.

Ted screamed. His voice was loud and piercing, carrying out beyond the confines of the basement mausoleum.

Judith leaped forward. Unfolding fingers revealed something in her hand. A test tube. Thin light from upstairs reflected yellow off its glass surface. While Ted continued screaming, Judith dumped the thick brown liquid from the test tube down the hunter's throat.

Quickly, she clapped her hands over his nose and mouth, forcing him to swallow the sick-tasting fluid. "You've sobered up since this morning," she hissed approvingly in his ear. Her breath was hot and vile. "That'll make this that much easier."

Ted heard the words as if they were coming at him down a long tunnel. The liquid had hit his stomach. The reaction was instantaneous. His rapidly beating heart spread the brackish fluid throughout his body.

He shivered uncontrollably. His head felt as if it were being whipped around the confines of the cellar-a lead weight swung on a long rope. It spun away, coiled, then whipped back in. In all, it took no more than ten seconds.

When it was over, a menacing calmness overtook Ted. A low rumble rose from the primitive depths of his empty belly. A growl.

Judith released her grip. She smiled a gleaming row of white teeth. Human flesh filled the spaces between.

"Doesn't that feel a whole lot better?" she purred.

Ted nodded, arching his back. He began sniffing the air experimentally. A tantalizing smell filled the musty basement. It was human blood.

As Ted padded over to the corpse of Bob, Judith hopped on all fours over to the unconscious form of Evan Cleaver. While Ted began gnawing at the belly of his dead friend, she pulled another test tube from the pocket of her tight slacks.

"Don't get too settled over there," she warned Ted. He looked up, a sheet of dirt-smeared flesh hanging from his mouth. "You have work to do," Judith directed.

Picking Evan's head off the floor, Judith dumped some of the brown liquid into his mouth. She massaged his throat as he slept, forcing the syrupy fluid down into his stomach.

As she worked, Judith raised her nose, sniffing carefully. The hunters were getting far too close. Including Remo and Chiun.

"High time I evened these odds," she purred. With an open paw, she slapped awake the creature that had been Evan Cleaver.

THE GROUND around the muddy pothole yielded nothing but hunters' boot marks. Near Remo and Chiun, water seeped up into a fresh Survivor sole imprint. A crushed Budweiser can lay next to it.

"Dammit, why don't these rummies take their clog-dancing chorus line to the nearest bar?" Remo complained.

He had grown more irritated as their search wore on.

"These lummoxes do not drop their clumsy hooves everywhere," Chiun said. "I see no evidence of the tracks you describe."

"Me, either," Remo relented. "But it'd sure as hell be easier to look if Bob and Doug McKenzie weren't here."

As they turned from the puddle, Remo rubbed his shoulder absently. It was a habit he'd developed after the attack and one that caused him irritation whenever he caught himself doing it. When he suddenly realized he was rubbing his shoulder yet again, he pulled his hand away, dropping it abruptly to his side.

A few yards away, four hunters sloshed through a puddle. They ducked inside an old boiler room that was attached to one of the bigger buildings.

Remo stopped dead. "This is ridiculous," he announced angrily. "Where are the cops? They should be rounding these rum hounds into paddy wagons."

Beside him, the Master of Sinanju cocked a sudden ear.

"Silence!" the old man hissed. A raised hand halted all objections.

The Master of Sinanju's head was tipped to one side. He seemed to be listening intently.

Remo trained an ear in the same direction. It took him a moment to filter out all the extraneous sounds, but once he'd cleared everything else away, he heard it, too.

A scream.

The glance they exchanged was swift and knowing.

Their feet did not disturb a single particle of dirt, so swiftly did they move. Without a word, the two men flew off in the direction of the terrified sound.

Chapter 30

Trooper Dan MacGuire couldn't believe what he'd just been told. There was no backup coming. Eyewitnesses had confirmed the initial reports. Killer scientist Dr. Judith White-who had murdered a fellow Massachusetts state trooper no less-was suspected to be at large in this very area. And there were no other police units being sent in.

The place should have been swarming with cops by now. But the only people here were civilians. Even news people were being kept out of the area. Although some police had been deployed to Chelsea, it had been to cordon off the area. They were sitting this one out.

This lunacy was all because of some crazy, mysterious order out of Washington. No one even seemed to know where the command had originated.

And while the brass tried to figure out what the hell was going on up the chain of command, Dan MacGuire was left hanging. A lone sitting duck for the deranged, gene-sucking tiger woman of BostonBio.

Well, not entirely alone. There was always the skinny guy from the Department of Agriculture and his two-thousand-year-old assistant. If push came to shove, they'd be a big help, Dan thought sarcastically.

His negative opinion of the two agriculture men wasn't altered by their sudden appearance around the side of the warehouse across the street from MacGuire's unmarked car.

The trooper had been sitting in his sedan, door open, black-booted feet planted on the road. He rose from the vehicle when he saw the two men appear.

They came at him much faster than men should have been able to travel on foot. They were both flying along as if Dr. White were hot on their heels.

MacGuire quickly pulled his side arm as they approached, half-expecting to see a loping Judith White racing in for the kill behind them.

Remo and Chiun flew out of the parking lot and across the street, racing up to the parked state police car.

MacGuire had his gun leveled at a point behind them. But there was nothing there.

"Where is she?" the trooper shouted, crouched and alert as they soared across the street. His gun swept left, then right. Still nothing visible.

"Where'd that scream come from?" Remo demanded, skidding to an abrupt stop next to the trooper. Alert eyes raked the immediate area.

"Scream?" the trooper asked, confused. "What scream?"

Remo ignored MacGuire. "It was over here somewhere," he said to Chiun.

"What scream?" MacGuire repeated. He lowered his gun as he glanced from Remo to Chiun. "There," Chiun decided, pointing to a large warehouse.

"Could be that one," Remo replied, indicating the next building over.

"Yes," Chiun agreed, "but this one is closer." Dan MacGuire's head bounced back and forth between each man as they spoke.

"Somebody screamed?" the trooper asked.

"Okay." Remo nodded. "Big one first. You take the front-I'll take the back."

Chiun hesitated a fraction of a second. Given what had happened during his pupil's first encounter with Judith White, he didn't want to abandon Remo now.

Remo sensed his teacher's unease. "Look, I'll be fine, Chiun. Really."

The hesitation passed. Nodding, the Master of Sinanju set his frail shoulders firmly. "Remember, my son," he intoned. "Man holds dominion over all beasts. And you are far greater than any mere man. You are Sinanju."

Remo smiled tightly. "I'll do you proud, Little Father," he assured his teacher,

"Aim for an attainable goal," Chiun retorted. "I will be satisfied if you do not get yourself killed."

With a sharp nod they separated, each tearing off to an opposite end of the warehouse.

Trooper MacGuire could only stand by his car and watch as the two men flew away from him at impossible speed. Not a single puff of dust rose in their wake.

"Who screamed?" MacGuire yelled helplessly after them.

SHE HAD TO WORK QUICKLY.

Judith White gathered up a few more test tubes from the one case she'd carried to the warehouse. She slipped them into the front pockets of her slacks, careful to keep the old-fashioned corks in place.

There wasn't a lot of the formula to go around. And what she had was inferior to the solution she'd used on herself. This was only the original mixture. A poor substitute for her refined blend. But while it didn't have the same long-lasting effects as the formula she'd taken, it would be good enough.

She had almost dumped the older stuff out after her breakthrough with the newer formula. Lucky for her, she hadn't. Right now, she was glad to have it.

Bent low at the waist, she ran through the empty rooms at the back of the warehouse. Light streamed in through the dust-smeared windows, filtering down through the thick canopy of green-turning-to-orange autumn leaves.

The woods that grew up around the small tributary that fed into the larger Chelsea Creek had been her refuge for much of the time during her change. It was through them that she'd carried the many bodies buried in the basement.

As with all animals, the jungle had a powerful draw on Judith White. It was a haven. The thick cover meant safety.

But there were things to do first.

She needed to create more like her. Needed to give herself more of an edge.

Though her heart pounded madly, it was no longer from fear. It was the thrill of action that impelled her.

Judith leaped over a few old crates, landing softly in the interior of an old office. She paused, sniffing the air.

She was about to move on when she heard a noise. A footfall sounded through the thin wall to her left. A branch cracked beneath the tread. Someone was coming through the woods.

Another victim.

The window in the office was partially open. Judith White hopped lightly to the sill. Careful to not break the glass tubes in her pockets, she eased herself to the moist ground outside.

The figure she saw creeping through the woods surprised her. He was familiar. She'd watched him arrive from her rafter in the attic.

He was oblivious to her presence. Too easy. Slipping one of the vials from her pocket, she palmed it. On confident, gliding paws, she stole quickly up on the newest unsuspecting member of her superior species.

THE MASTER OF SINANJU HAD waited long enough for Remo to reach the rear of the building. He was stretching one hand to the door of the warehouse when he saw a flash of movement in the woods at the back of the neighboring building.

It was a fleeting glimpse. But it was enough. Whoever it was moved much faster than a normal human being. So quickly, in fact, Chiun's well-trained eyes almost didn't detect the motion.

The figure had darted out of sight in an instant. He paused, considering for a moment if he should not go back and collect Remo.

This whole affair had been a strain on his pupil. The attack by Judith White would not ordinarily have been enough in isolation to cause Remo concern. But Chiun knew that he had dredged up long buried memories of his last encounter with one of these tiger creatures. Remo's old fears could blind him to the current problem. A single distraction at the wrong moment could prove fatal.

And something else had apparently not occurred to Remo during this time of crisis. For years, Chiun had tried to convince Remo that he was the fulfillment of a prophesy that asserted that a Master of Sinanju would one day train the avatar of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. This dead night tiger would be brought to fullness in Sinanju.

To Chiun, Remo was fulfillment of the legend. However, for most of their association, Remo-in his typical white, Western, lunkheaded way-had deemed the legend "a big, fat, smelly load of doohickey." Nonetheless, Chiun persisted. Certain factors in recent years had caused Remo to argue less strenuously against the prophesy. In a very small way, he had allowed the glimmer of a possibility that the legend might actually be true. It was a step in the right direction, as well as a step to fulfilling the legend.

But there was another aspect to the ancient story. As the dead night tiger trained in Sinanju, it was said that Shiva could only be sent to death again by his own kind.

"Shiva must walk with care when he passes the jungle where lurk the other night tigers," were the words Chiun had intoned to Remo years before when first they had encountered the tiger creatures. Hand in hand with the Shiva prophesy, it was one of the most ancient legends of the House of Sinanju.

Perhaps Remo had thought of this and hadn't mentioned it for fear of worrying Chiun. However, given Remo's monkeylike attention span, it was more likely he hadn't been paying attention when the Master of Sinanju was relating the tale. To someone who knew the truth of the legends, Chiun alone appreciated the danger his pupil now faced.

Poised to enter the dusty old warehouse, Chiun thought of all these things in a fraction of a millisecond.

The decision was made in an instant. Remo's life was too important to risk. The legend did not affect Chiun. And the Master of Sinanju didn't carry the same emotional baggage as his pupil. Chiun would deal with Judith White on his own.

Spinning abruptly, the old Asian left the front of the first warehouse. Kimono skirts billowing, he raced across the barren space to the next building.

REMO CREPT STEALTHILY through the thick underbrush at the rear of the first warehouse.

As he stepped carefully over the moss-slick stones that lined the trickling brook behind the building, he scanned the high wall, looking for the best route of entry.

There were high windows all along the back. A lot had been broken, but not as many as at the front. Vandals didn't have as easy a time getting back here and so left the rear largely untouched.

Graffiti artists had decorated the brick foundation, as well as the clapboards that encased what appeared to be the old office wing.

Remo wasn't surprised to find that the sprayed words were illegible. In a state where most teachers spent half the year filing phony grievances and the other half complaining about the latest basic-competency test they'd all just failed, simple things like teaching spelling and penmanship had a tendency to get lost in the classroom shuffle.

A few yards along the rear wall, Remo found an open door set into the foundation. It was coated with moss and propped against a jagged rock. As he approached the doorway, Remo's heart skipped a beat. Tracks in the mud. Hundreds of them.

They were identical to those he'd seen in the cornfield back in Concord. Judith White had apparently been using the rear warehouse door to come and go unseen. For months, if the dried prints at the edge of the muddy path were any indication.

The path she regularly took carried her out into the center of the stream. Judith was evidently trying to mask her scent in the water. A distinctly human act.

Remo glanced into the dark interior of the warehouse.

The ground angled down along the rear of the structure. This was the basement. Chiun would be entering on the first-floor level.

For a moment, Remo contemplated going back for Chiun. The Master of Sinanju expected to meet up with Remo on the ground floor, not the basement. And Remo had no great desire to stumble on Judith on his own.

And in that instant of hesitation, Remo was ashamed of his own apprehension.

No. To go back for Chiun now would be a surrender to fear. Not only that, but he would also be abandoning Judith White's probable escape route. Remo steeled himself.

"I am not cleaning out her litter box," he muttered under his breath.

Without a backward glance, he plunged into the darkness...

And the figure that had been trailing him stealthily along the rear of the building followed swiftly behind.

CHIUN DIDN'T SEE Judith White anywhere.

The woods near the small stream were overgrown, making visibility poor. In the distance, he heard the sound of lumbering hunters. Closer still was the sound of the roaring river into which the small tributary fed.

Surely his eyes had not deceived him. She was here. Somewhere.

The figure he had seen moved with the grace and speed of a big cat. It had slipped into the late-afternoon shadows somewhere nearby.

A filthy mattress lay on the ground in a small clearing near the brook. Around it, shattered beer bottles mixed with rotting leaves from years gone by. Chiun stepped past these, glancing first to woods then to building.

And in that sliver of time when his eyes were trained on the warehouse, a figure emerged from out of the thicket.

So soft were his footfalls, Chiun hadn't heard him moving in the woods. He wheeled on the sudden sound.

When he spied Trooper Dan MacGuire, the old man's alert features relaxed to annoyance.

"Why are you not at your carriage?" Chiun demanded.

"You said someone screamed," MacGuire replied, his voice a harsh whisper. He was slipping quietly and confidently away from the tree cover, gun clutched in his hand. "I can't let that psycho doctor escape, with or without backup."

"Put that noisemaker away," Chiun commanded, nodding to the trooper's gun.

"Sorry, Pops," MacGuire said, shaking his head. "You do what you want, but I'm not getting killed."

Chiun's brow creased. "The Magyars were grasping, but at least they had sense to guard their coaches from bands of roving drunkards."

"Hey, cruiser gets trashed, they give me another one." MacGuire smiled tightly.

Chiun had no time to deal with foolish taxi drivers. Frowning, the Master of Sinanju turned away from the trooper.

Judith White could only have come this way, Chiun reasoned. But a rapid scan revealed no doors on the rear of the building. The only windows were too high for her to reach. That left the woods. But as he listened, he heard no sounds coming from the nearby copse of trees.

As he contemplated this riddle, Chiun was distracted by the soft sound of the Massachusetts state trooper gliding in behind him.

MacGuire moved gracefully. Almost as effortlessly as Chiun himself. It was strange for a man as beefy as MacGuire to be so light on his feet. It was almost as if...

And in a flash, Chiun finally understood.

He wheeled in place. Just in time to see MacGuire make his final animal lunge. His gun had been dropped. The trooper's teeth were bared, head ripped as it thrust forward at Chiun's exposed throat.

And a single powerful hand-curled like a tiger's paw-swept down in a furious killing blow at the shocked upturned face of the Master of Sinanju.

THE REAR DOOR LED into a dank corridor. The wet concrete walls were covered with moss. The floor was earthen, packed firmly into a level path. Even so, the paw prints of Judith White were clear to Remo as he walked carefully into the bowels of the warehouse.

His eyes pulled in ambient light. Enough so that the dark corridor appeared as bright as midday. The corridor broke into a vast interior chamber, so wide it seemed to encompass most of the area beneath the main warehouse. Wooden columns spaced evenly throughout the cellar kept the ceiling from collapsing.

Most of the ceiling. As he stepped inside, Remo saw that a good-sized chunk of the first floor had crashed into the basement. Recently, judging by the level of disturbed dust that was swirling through the fetid air.

He caught the stench of rotting human flesh the moment he walked into the large cellar room.

A body was impaled on a board near the debris. Even from this distance, sharp eyes saw evidence of more corpses.