“Yeah, well, I was thinking we could do some not resting again tonight if you felt up to it.”
The warm rumble of his voice sent a charge running through me. For once, it wasn’t unwelcome. Oh, Lord help me, I liked this guy. I was pretty sure that way lay insanity for me. “Ted, where are you right now?”
He paused. “Outside your apartment.”
“You’re sure you’re not stalking me?”
Another pause. “I’m not as sure about that anymore. How long ’til you get here?”
“Five minutes. Ten at the most.” I was practically at River City now.
Our last class at River City ends at nine o’clock. It’s a sparring class for the adult students. Occasionally, some of them end up staying a little late and gabbing, but Mae usually sends everyone packing by ten thirty at the latest. After all, she has to be there to open the doors for the six A.M. advanced adult class. Granted, she doesn’t need as much sleep as most people, but she still likes some time away from the dojo.
All that is to explain why there shouldn’t have been cars in the parking lot. None of the other businesses in our strip mall stayed open that late. Not the nail salon. Not the sushi joint. Not the consignment shop. I pulled into the lot, just to make sure everything was okay.
“I’m going to stop and see if Mae is still at the dojo. I, uh, haven’t been around as much as I usually am and want to check on my schedule.”
“How about I meet you there and we can neck in the parking lot?”
“Making me an offer I can’t refuse, are you?”
“You come to me on the day of my daughter’s wedding,” he mumbled.
“That is probably the worst Marlon Brando imitation I have ever heard.”
“Wait until you hear my Jimmy Cagney.”
He was an old movie buff. Everything new I learned about him felt like a major revelation. I’d heard about this part of a relationship before. I’d heard Norah talk about how fun and exciting it was to discover everything about a new lover. I’d never experienced it before. I felt like Columbus discovering America, except without the unpleasant racial-dominance overtones. “Geez, Goodnight, have you seen any movies made in this century? Have you heard there are these things called talkies now?”
He chuckled. The sound of it made me smile. What had I gone and done? I wasn’t positive, but it seemed like I might have fallen in love. “My dad was a major insomniac. The TV was on all night long constantly. I think I picked up half the movies in my sleep.”
Wow. Another tidbit. An insomniac dad. “What about your mom? Was she an insomniac, too?”
There was a hesitation now. “She wasn’t really in the picture. At least, not after I was about seven. I can’t really tell you about her sleep habits.”
Uh-oh. I’d blundered into something deep, at least deeper than I’d intended. “I’m sorry.”
“No worries. It was what it was, and it was a long time ago.”
“Still want to make out in the parking lot on your break?”
“Absolutely. I’ll see you in ten.”
Everything was most definitely not okay. The three cars in the parking lot were shiny black Lincoln Navigators.
“Can you make it five? Something is not right here.”
I screeched into the parking lot, ripping off my seat belt and leaping out of the car. I felt the buzz then. They were here. The
kiang shi
were here.
I ran to the door of the dojo.
I SLIPPED UP TO THE BIG PLATE GLASS WINDOW AT THE FRONT of the dojo. Every instinct told me to rush in, proverbial guns blazing, but I knew that was wrong. I needed to be smart. I needed to assess the scene before I burst in.
What I saw sickened me. Two
kiang shi
had Mae cornered on the far side of the dojo. It wasn’t a bad place to be. It was the corner where we keep most of our sparring weapons. In fact, she was using one of the kendo sticks to fend them off. She swept it around, coming in hard at the sides of their faces, forcing them to move back, and then sweeping up to smack them over their nasty heads. They couldn’t sneak up behind her because she had the wall at her back. Still, they kept swiping at her with their long clawlike fingers, barely daunted by the hard cracks they were taking to their heads and shoulders.
My heart clenched. She didn’t know what I’d learned on the Internet. She didn’t know they were after her chi or that she needed to hold her breath. I had to get to her.
The other four
kiang shi
stood still as statues not far from George Zhang, who cowered by the door to the dojo office, ringing his bell with tears streaming down his face. Henry and four of his henchmen hovered next to George. I’d have to get past them somehow.
I sidled closer to the door.
One of the henchmen, a bald-headed guy with a neck as thick as one of my thighs, said, “She’s lasting longer than I expected. Twenty dollars says she doesn’t make it another five minutes, though.”
“I’ll take a piece of that action,” said a younger man with a broad nose and a low ponytail. “I say she makes it seven.”
They were laying bets on how long Mae would live. I wanted to break their necks with my bare hands.
Henry said, “One hundred dollars says that she makes it ten.”
Mae’s kendo stick snapped; without taking her eyes off the constantly advancing
kiang shi
, she grabbed another from the wall behind her.
The third of the henchmen, this one taller with a trendier haircut that swooped over his forehead, said, “I give her less than two.”
As they dug for their wallets, I made my move.
There are ways for a woman my size to take down someone bigger than she is. It’s a little tough when there’s a group. What I wanted to do—what I needed to do—was to get to Mae. If I could tip her off on how to evade the
kiang shi
and we could somehow get to the changing room, we could escape out the back. There was a heavy bench against the wall in the back room. With two of us, we could drag it to the door and hope it was high enough to at least slow the
kiang shi
down.
I crashed open the door and Henry’s henchmen whirled around at the noise. As I’d hoped, two of them—Baldy and Ponytail—rushed me. I dropped low and took them both out together with a leg sweep. As they sprawled to their faces, I leaped over them and somersaulted into the middle of the mat, landing on my feet.
The other two henchmen were already advancing. I ducked behind the row of Wavemasters—essentially freestanding heavy bags on water-filled pedestals—we keep against the wall opposite from where Mae was still holding off the
kiang shi
. Over and over, they lunged for her abdomen, giving her the opportunity to smack them both over their heads and under their chins. Of course, they fed on chi and they were going for the center of hers.
“Mae,” I yelled. “Hold your breath. They locate you by your breath.”
“Got it,” she answered.
I didn’t have time to say anymore or even see what she would do with the information. The henchmen were on me and one had pulled a knife.
He was fast, but I was faster. He lunged. I grabbed the Wavemaster and tipped it on its water-filled pedestal. He ended up stabbing the Wavemaster with enough force that the knife stuck.
The second man was coming from the other direction. I let go of the Wavemaster, allowing it to right itself, and ducked behind the one next to it. The man feinted left, then right, then right again. I stayed behind the Wavemaster. Without a weapon of some sort, he wasn’t going to be able to reach me behind the bag. I waited until he was directly in front of the bag and then rammed into it as hard as I could with my shoulder.
The bag, with my weight behind it, struck him full force in the forehead; he went down, the Wavemaster landing squarely on his chest, knocking the wind out of him.
By that time, Knife Boy had gotten unstuck from the first Wavemaster. He was coming at me again, leaving me no time to duck behind anything. I crouched low, leapt up with my right leg tucked against my chest, then straightened the leg and came down on his knife arm with an ax kick. The knife skittered away. The man howled and clutched his arm to his chest. I hoped I’d broken it.
I turned toward Mae. Sweat beaded her upper lip, and her shoulders had begun to tremble. She wasn’t going to be able to keep fighting for much longer.
As one of the
kiang shi
lunged for her center again, I ducked beneath his arm. I blocked his lunge with both my forearms, grabbed hold of his arm, ducked beneath him again and pirouetted behind him, locking the elbow as I went. I wrenched the arm up behind him.
Instead of forcing the
kiang shi
to the floor as I’d intended, it was like taking the wing off an overcooked turkey. I felt the joint snap. The decomposing flesh on his arm wasn’t enough to keep it attached to his body. The arm snapped free in my hand.
I took my impromptu club and swung it like a baseball bat at the head of the other
kiang shi
as he lunged toward Mae. I caught him in the side of the head, spinning him around. As the jagged edge of the bone scraped across his face, it caught the edge of the talisman and pulled it free.
Baldy and Ponytail were now up off the ground and heading toward Mae and me in the corner. The
kiang shi
who’d lost his talisman advanced on Baldy and Ponytail.
“Stop it,” Henry screamed at George.
“I can’t. Not without the talisman.” George stopped ringing his bell. The
kiang shi
threatening Mae froze, but the one advancing on the henchmen kept moving. It grabbed Ponytail by the arm. Ponytail screamed as the
kiang shi
pulled him toward it.
“Then get the talisman,” Henry yelled. “Now.”
Taking advantage of my inattention, Baldy got in a palm strike to my jaw that spun my head back toward Mae. If I know I’m going to be in a fight, I never wear a ponytail high on the back of my head. I’ll braid it low. It’s better to have it loose than to have it in high ponytail. Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought about my hair when I’d charged into the dojo. As my head spun, my ponytail practically leapt into Baldy’s hand. He yanked it downward. Hard. I went down. All the air left my lungs and for a moment, I could do nothing but lie there, gasping. I could not have been more vulnerable, on my back unable to move.
I heard George’s bell start to ring again. He must have managed to put the talisman back on the marauding
kiang shi
’s forehead. I saw Baldy gathering himself for a strike. If I were him, I’d come down on my throat and collarbone and crush my windpipe. It looked as though that was precisely what he was going to do.
In the second before he made his strike, Mae came crashing from the side. She leaped in the air and spun, thrust out her foot and caught him in the chin. He crumpled to the ground, but then the
kiang shi
were on her. Out of her protective corner, they could go at her from both sides. She didn’t stand a chance.
I struggled to my feet. I had to get to Mae. I had to stop the
kiang shi
from tearing her to bits, but there were four men between her and me. There’s a point in a fight when adrenaline takes over. The red haze envelops my brain and all I see are targets and I strike them as hard and fast as I can. I spun and kicked one man in the gut and used the momentum from the strike to snap another’s head back with a palm strike under the jaw. They got in a few licks of their own, but I barely felt the kick to my ribs or the blow to my shoulder.
Then over the ringing bells and shouts and screams, I heard the whoop of a single police car siren. The bells stopped. The
kiang shi
froze.
“Get them,” shrieked George. “Get them to the cars. Get all of them.”
They retreated and fast.
TED WAS THROUGH THE DOOR ALMOST THE SECOND THEY LEFT. He checked me first. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine. Mae. Check Mae.” When I could finally get to my feet, I ran to where Mae lay on the mat in a pool of blood.
Ted knelt down next to her. “Get some towels or something. Anything we can use to stop the bleeding,” he barked at me.
I ran to the back room where we kept a stack of towels in a cupboard. I raced out with them. Ted had ripped away much of Mae’s
gi
, at least what was left of it. My stomach rolled when I saw the wounds. Huge chunks of her flesh had been torn away. It hung in shreds from her arms and her rib cage.
Ted grabbed some towels and began pressing them against the wounds. “Move, Melina, now,” he barked again. “Direct pressure against any wounds you can find. We have to stop the bleeding or she won’t last until the ambulance gets here.”
I grabbed towels, too. She was bleeding in too many places. I couldn’t figure out where to press to try and staunch the flow. She’d been bitten and slashed.
I looked up to find Ted staring at me. “What the hell were those things?”
There was no time to explain. “Call for help. Get an ambulance.”
“It’s already done. A bus and backup are on the way.” He brushed the blood-matted hair off Mae’s face. “Hold on, Mae. They’re on their way,” he told her. “We’ll hear the sirens any second now.”
“Stay with me, Mae. Stay with me,” I whispered to her. “Do not leave me. Stay here.”
“Trying,” she said, her voice so low I almost couldn’t hear it.
“Melina,” Ted turned to me, hands still busy trying to make makeshift bandages out of cheap Costco towels. “I need to know. What were those things? How did you do some of those things you did? Did I really see what I thought I saw? They’re going to be here any minute. I need to know what to say.”
