Kiai! & Mistress of Death Read online

  Now Makato approached. He made a formal bow to Fu Antos, who merely inclined his head in response, those fingers still weaving their intricate tapestry in air. Diago might have been poisoned, but Makato remained strong. He stood over the seated man, setting his stance as he might for a difficult karate exhibition. Then Makato cried "Saa!" and brought his terrible fist down in the punch that smashed ten concrete tiles simultaneously—and struck the O-Sensei's head.

  I blinked. Makato was falling, his head bloody. Fu Antos sat unharmed.

  "It's supernatural!" Pedro exclaimed, unconsciously crossing himself.

  Now the thin finger gestured to me, and I felt something. "No!" I cried to Pedro. "It is the ki!"

  For the old man had ki like Hiroshi's, but much more powerful. Now I knew: poison had not killed Diago; God had not fractured Makato's skull. Fu Antos' appalling power of ki had done it all. Now that compulsion was directed at me, and I had to set my torch in a niche and respond.

  I walked up to the mystic and bowed. This man had been the greatest warrior of his age, when he was young, and he remained so today. No man proficient only in the physical martial arts could ever overcome him. The little touch of ki Hiroshi had loaned me once had made my flesh invulnerable; Fu Antos had a hundred times that power.

  Why hadn't he used that phenomenal ki to control his own illness? The answer had to be that he had. He could be much older than we had guessed, salvaged from the grave decades ago by that force of personality. Now his body was rotting about him, but that same ki would not permit his vitality to abate. So he had to be helped to die—though all of us might perish attempting to implement that need.

  Those hands spoke again. "As you do to me, so I to you," they said. "Grant me freedom from my bondage."

  "But I came here to save a life, not take it!"

  The hands shrugged. The inscrutable ninja.

  "He uses ki to change!" Pedro cried, openly terrified. "Diago strangled himself! Makato stove in his own skull! We can't touch him any more than the ninjas could."

  "Ki and hypnotism," I agreed, contemplating the O-Sensei. To attack him was to die, yet he insisted on being killed. He had set us an impossible task!

  I turned to peer through the doorway at the waiting ninjas. Some held drawn swords; others had more exotic devices of murder. One had several caltrops: spiked objects to pierce the feet of the unwary. No hope there.

  How would Fu Antos' death help us? I did not know, but perhaps he was wiser than we. Was it possible to kill him? With a new shock of horror, I realized that there was one incredible technique, that no one had ever tried before. Did I have the courage?

  What choice did I have? Anything I visited on the O-Sensei would react against me. To leave this room with the job undone would be suicidal, because of the ninjas. Even if Pedro and I fought our way to freedom, the delayed action death-blow would still bring me down at its own convenience. So three of my four choices meant death.

  The fourth... was also fatal

  "Pedro," I said. "I will need your help."

  He was standing nervously near the door. The lordly confidence he had affected as master of his estate in Nicaragua was gone now, and he was a pitiful figure of a man, more crippled than he had been in the wheelchair. "It won't work," he whined. "If we attack him together, we'll both die!"

  I concealed my disgust at his cowardice. He had done well until Fu Antos had unnerved him. To cover my own fear I demanded brusquely "Are you familiar with the ritual of seppuku?"

  "Hara-kiri. Japanese suicide. Yes, I know it. But—"

  "Good. You have the katana. When the time comes, strike off my head."

  He stared. "Dios mio, Striker, at least die fighting the ninja! Are you such a coward?"

  He accused me of what he felt himself. "Seppuku is hardly cowardice," I said, though there was a tight cold knot in the pit of my stomach. "It is an honorable procedure, if the ritual is properly executed. But you must witness, and perform, the todome, the coup de grace."

  "Striker, you are crazy!"

  I found a small, ragged tatami, a Japanese straw mat, in the corner and hauled it to the center of the room. "What direction would you say the Imperial Palace is from here?"

  "South." He saw I was serious. "Striker, don't do it! You're not even Japanese! Don't leave me like this! I am weak from the poison, I must get to a hospital, I could never do it by myself."

  I set up the mat before Fu Antos, who was facing north. I knelt, my eyes meeting the blind orbs of the O-Sensei. From his open mouth came a stench like that of a sewer. I brought out my dirk. It was a wakizashi, or Japanese short sword, with razorsharp edge and point and a blade nine and a half inches long. The ninjas carried good weapons.

  "Striker," Pedro started again. "Amalita must have someone to take care of her. Florecita, tender flower that she is. If I don't get back—"

  "Please don't interrupt my concentration," I said, annoyed. "Just be ready with that sword, because I sure don't want this botched at the end! You don't get a second chance on this sort of thing."

  Pedro stuttered into silence. I saw the suggestion of a smile on Fu Antos' brittle lips. Did he comprehend my strategy?

  The Japanese ritual of seppuku, disembowelment, was a special form of suicide, difficult to perform correctly. The lowbrow term for it was hara-kiri, "belly-slitting"—an unkind but accurate description. The person who successfully performed seppuku established his innocence of the charges against him, or his rightness of cause. If I succeeded, would I win my suit?

  I had forgotten one important detail. I stood up, set down the knife, and stripped away my jacket, sweater and undershirt until I was barechested. I loosened my belt and slid my trousers down somewhat, exposing my abdomen. The air was cold, perhaps forty degrees, but I was sweating.

  I took up my white shirt and wrapped it about my middle. It was not a proper band for this purpose, but like the dagger and mat it would have to do. The spirit of Seppuku was far more important than the trappings. Then I kneeled again and took up the wakizashi, holding the point toward me with both hands. Now it was time. If my blood stained the tatami, I was vindicated. Perhaps. I bowed my head, staring at the small sword poised before my tensed belly. My arms quivered.

  I thrust the blade deep into the left side of my abdomen, sidewise. Pain exploded in my body, yet somehow stopped short of my brain. I was aware of it intellectually, but my thoughts and perceptions were clear. An excellent beginning.

  I drew it slowly across my stomach to the right. Then, before I could faint, I turned the blade in the wound and jerked the point up. This was the motion of kappuko, and very few could complete it, even among the pure Japanese. I was rather proud of my performance.

  I drew out the knife and my blood poured out, soaking over my trousers and overflowing across my thighs, red and pure. With dazed gratification I saw it drip onto the tatami. Now the pain was up to my brain, but I reached in with one hand and drew my entrails out from the gaping wound, and I was falling over.

  But it was not finished. I fought to recover my posture, to sit erect. Where was Pedro? You wanted to kill me, I thought fiercely at him. Now strike, strike! But all that came from my mouth was the agonized rasp of air. I stretched out my neck.

  Then I saw it coming: that bright, beautiful sword. It flashed toward my neck, true and sharp, with Pedro's terrified face behind it. Contact!

  Pain abated abruptly. I was lying on the stone floor, my eye near a thin spattering of blood. I stood up slowly and saw the severed head lying where it had rolled to the corner. Clumsy; the decapitation should have been incomplete, so that the head remained fastened to the body by a strip of flesh and did not roll away. Pedro was sobbing like a woman, the gore-encrusted katana behind him on the floor.

  The corpse of Fu Antos sprawled across the mat, headless. His belly had been slit open gruesomely by some hand stronger than his own, and he had been truly disemboweled. I was physically untouched.

  "You have succeeded, and you shall h
ave your reward," a voice said. It was high-pitched but resonant: the voice of one born to command.

  I turned to face the source. The small boy stood there, no longer immobile or blank of gaze. His fingers worked in the kuji-kiri technique, and there was now a dominating quality about him, a nobility.

  "O-Sensei Fu Antos," I said, inclining my head.

  He nodded with the bare acquiescence of high rank. "Released from the bondage of age," the child said with that astonishing timbre of maturity. "Restored to youth and sight and hearing and mobility, given lease on another century of improvement and meditation. A few more months, and this body would have grown too old and set for the transfer, and the ninjas would have prevented me from acquiring another. But you came. Give me your hand."

  Amazed, I held out my hand. His small fingers took it, and I felt that same vibrant force of ki that Hiroshi had shown me. "There is nothing I can do for you," he said.

  "I—but my"

  "You have cured yourself," the child sensei continued. "Your act of seppuku expunged the curse visited upon your heart, and you shall live. In two weeks you will feel a momentary pain and your heart will skip, making you faint for a few seconds only. By that token will you know that the threat is over; the embolism broken up." He paused, and when he resumed his voice was more compassionate. "The American jury will rule you killed in self-defense. Yet might you better have died."

  He turned to Pedro. "You have not lived an exemplary life, and you may not return to it. But that which you craved has been granted."

  Pedro lifted a streaked face to him. "Does that mean I'll die? I have to take care of—"

  "She will bear your child," the boy said.

  And I saw that Vicente Pedro had, indeed, been granted his ultimate desire. Not life, but an heir.

  "Diago, Makato" I mumbled. "They did not deserve—"

  The boy stooped to touch Diago. "This man remains with me." He moved on to Makato, stepping with uncommon grace, and laid his hands on the fractured skull. "You abused your power when you conspired to kill for money," the sensei said to the karateka. He withdrew his hands and resumed the finger-motions of kuji-kiri. "Ki is denied you. Return to your world, your accounts balanced."

  Makato rose, his head miraculously clean again. No language could portray the mixed relief and hopelessness of his countenance. I knew he had heard Fu Autos' message in Japanese. He had sought absolution from his crime, so that be might master ki. Now he had that absolution, at the price of losing any hope of achieving ki. "Leave me to my meditations," the boy said. He sat on the mat I had used, crossing his legs in the posture of Zen meditation, oblivious to the gore of his former housing.

  Makato and Pedro and I departed. There was nothing else to do. I could not even tell whether Diago was sleeping or dead; either way, he would remain here, and perhaps this was the place he had subconsciously searched for all his life.

  We walked the cold hall as I redonned my shirt and jacket, and the ninjas let us pass unmolested. They had lost their valiant bid to prevent Fu Autos' transfer to a fresh body, and now were subject to his restored power for the next century or so. He would reform them at his convenience.

  As the swirling snow outside struck my face, I saw that it was dawn. How much of what I had witnessed and done inside the Black Castle had been real? Had I really killed the O-Sensei by taking advantage of his ki to transfer my own suicide to his body? Had he really killed two men through similar transfers, then resuscitated one or both? Or had he merely hypnotized us all to believe such magic, and trained the dead-eyed boy to assume his authority after we killed him? There should be a natural explanation for all of this, if I could only work it out. Even that sensation of ki when the boy's hand touched mine could have been subjective. I suspected my doubt would never be completely resolved. Meanwhile, I had the burden of informing Thera that her lover was dead, when theoretically I did not know about the relation between them. I did not look forward to it. Perhaps it would have been better if Jim had survived in my stead.

  Yet might you better have died...

  We started the difficult climb to civilization, Makato leading the way. Pedro took a few steps after him, then keeled over. "The poison!" he muttered as I rushed up. But he was smiling. "I will everything to my child... bear witness, Striker, as I did for your hara-kiri. Take care of them, and name the child Vicente. You owe me that much."

  "Yes," I agreed.

  BOOK II:

  MISTRESS OF DEATH

  CHAPTER 1

  RAID

  The door crashed open and they poured in: hell's own collection of deadly freaks. I knew in a moment they were doped, high on "Kill-13"; their eyes blazed orange.

  "Class dismissed!" I bawled. "You kids get out of here—fast!" But this was my karate class. It was a wilder bunch than my judo group, and less disciplined. A number of them had the notion that one kiai yell and a swift punch would overcome all threats. They had never had first-hand experience with hardcore martial-drug addicts. Startled but unalarmed, my boys halted their practice and stared at the intruders.

  There were eight, demons with wild long hair and bright orange cloaks. The color of their clothing chillingly augmented the pigmentation of their eyeballs. They spread out from the door, forming a glowering line.

  "Don't try to fight!" I yelled to my students. "Move out the side doors. Avoid contact!"

  The leader of the demons took one step forward. "Do as the coward teacher says," he cried. "There isn't one of you sniveling bastards who could stand up to a real man!"

  That stung. I saw half a dozen of my students stiffen. I felt like going up and pasting the insolent demon myself. But that would have been playing into their hands. They had come to disrupt my class and turn it into a brawl, at the very least. What might happen in such a free-for-all I dreaded to contemplate.

  "You there, with the chicken-yellow hair!" the demon said, gesturing to my blackbelt assistant Tom Sellers. "You must be color blind! Where's your white belt?"

  Tom bristled. Conventions vary, but a white belt normally indicates the lowest level of competence, while the black belt is the highest. Ordinarily Tom had good control over his temper, but he was being challenged in front of the class. That made him sensitive. "Why don't you druggies go home and sleep off your fit?" he asked pointedly.

  I started forward, ready to haul my students individually out of the hail. Avoidance of a fight in these circumstances was not cowardice, it was excellent sense. A man doped on Kill-13 is dangerous to himself and others. Safer to go after a rabid dog.

  Then I saw, the other demons: two more for each door. There was no way out without a fight. And my students hardly knew what they were in for.

  "The Kung Fu Temple would reject this child," the demon said. And spat at Tom.

  Tom glanced at me. Now we knew where this bunch had come from. The Kung Fu Temple was a new establishment that had wasted no time in establishing a singularly bad reputation in the neighborhood. Little but the name connected it to any genuine kung fu school. I had suspected it of traffic in the violent new drugs, but had not had proof—until now.

  I began to hope that the intruders would move on, once they saw how little effect their insults had on us. Any student of the martial arts knows that the best self-defense is to avoid a fight. Especially in a situation like this. The demon leader had tried to bait Tom and failed.

  "All right: reject me," Tom said abruptly.

  I barely refrained from gnashing my teeth. If only Tom had controlled himself just a little longer.

  The demon grinned and rolled his eyes, making the orange flash. Kill-13, so named because it supposedly has thirteen fatal ingredients, somehow impregnates the eyeballs so that the person under its influence cannot be mistaken. It is a horrendous effect, but is deemed a badge of distinction among the addicts. It normally fades as the high wears off.

  The demon squared off in the horse stance. He made a frightful scream, his face twisting into a grotesque contortion. The purpos
e was theoretically to scare his opponent, but I knew it was really to rev up his own energies. People, like car batteries, often need to be charged for the major effort.

  The cloaked figure aimed a punch at Tom. The voluminous clothing served to obscure the thrust of the blow, but Tom blocked it easily. Tom countered almost simultaneously with a knuckle punch to the solar plexus. This looked like an effective blow, but Tom, used to harmless ritual sparring, pulled his punch up short as it landed, so that there was no force at all.

  The demon made a flurry of knifehand shots, and again Tom parried easily. Tom countered to the shoulder and the side of the head, and it was apparent that he could score at will, but each time he pulled his punches harmlessly.

  Even the demon audience was beginning to realize that their man was no match for ours in sport combat. They began to move restlessly. The drug gave them a feeling of power and invincibility, but they were not stupid. This stimulated the demon to extra effort.

  Tom scored again with a punch that could have crushed a cheekbone, had the effort been real. The demon countered with a terrible dragon stomp. He kicked out with the flat of his foot—and it was booted!—to Tom's stomach. This blow was not pulled; it landed heavily, making Tom grunt and stagger back. But he managed to catch the foot and twist it, making the demon fall ignominiously to the mat.

  I knew that the demon had been out to hurt Tom, while Tom was obeying sport rules. But this could go on only so long. Tom bent down to give the other a friendly hand up. It was a mistake. The demon pulled a dagger and, sliced across Tom's stomach. It was a savage swing, partly concealed by the man's cloak and Tom's position.

  For a moment Tom stood there, not seeming to be aware of the injury. Then, too late, his hands grabbed for his abdomen. He pitched forward, and as he rolled his intestines spilled out onto the tatami.

  Still, he was conscious. "Why? Why?" he cried.

  For an answer the demon lifted his foot and stomped on Tom's face, again and again, making a gory ruin of it.