Bamboo Bloodbath and Ninja's Revenge Read online

  At any rate, there would be no news from the Hyena hoods; I knew they were nondescript hirelings who would know nothing of the Hyena's real nature or whereabouts. Besides, they would be killed soon if they talked; underworld contracts on informers were easy to come by and hard to prevent.

  The police cleared out the bodies just before the caterers arrived. Nice timing, that. We adjourned into another room, lit a new fire in its fireplace, and ate a romantic, candlelight, fire-bright meal, the three of us. I declined the cocktails in favor of milk, to Drummond's evident amusement. I am not a conscious Spartan, apart from financial necessity, but I tend to stay away from alcohol in all its forms, along with cigarettes, coffee, speed, and other civilized vices. It is because I take pride in my mind and body, and do not like to damage either, even marginally.

  This moderation also applies to food. I don't like too much sugar, fat, starch, cholesterol, or artificially treated delicacies. But there are limits to my resolve. I was tired, hungry, bandaged from head to foot (several unconnected bandages, fortunately), emotionally tense—and Drummond had ordered one hell of a meal.

  It started with a plate of cold cuts—cheeses, ham, salami, olives (black, green, and stuffed), small pieces of bread with anchovies and salmon—and proceeded to clear turtle soup cooked with sherry (ah, well, that little bit couldn't hurt me) and Alaskan king crab cocktails: big pieces of juicy crab with spicy tomato sauce. Then the main entree of filet mignon cooked rare and very tender. I lost control and gorged myself on four of them. Next came a salad of palm hearts, and good old-fashioned American apple pie for dessert.

  The discomfort of my injuries faded. God—if the Hyena appeared now, I'd simply burp him to death!

  Drummond and Thera ate less of the food, no novelty to them, but drank more of the liquor. They put down champagne, Bloody Mary vodka, Barcardi yellow rum with Coca-Cola, light Italian wine; and God knows what else. Ah, decadence!

  I finally sampled a little sweet liqueur myself, because my milk and water did not seem sufficient to slack the thirst brought on by my huge meal. It had been a rough evening, and we were in no hurry. I felt better and better as time passed.

  "Will you stay the night?" Drummond inquired.

  "I should get back," I started, loath to get out of my chair because of my gorging. Then I realized that it was not a hint, and not an idle question. He had said the menace was over, but he didn't quite believe it himself. "I'll stay," I said, relieved for the pretext.

  "You can use my room," Thera said, sipping some green absinthe.

  "Why make you move? Don't you have a spare?"

  "Who said I was going to move?"

  The problem was, she was not exactly joking, and I was not exactly indifferent. She had wrought well, when she showed me her leg and panties in the car; it had put a notion into my baser mind. That sort of notion does not readily leave a man, unless satisfied in the obvious fashion. Now she was waxing suggestive right in her father's presence, and he wasn't saying a word. All of which spelled M-A-R-R-I-A-G-E—and I didn't want it.

  "Do you have an encyclopedia here?" I asked, changing the subject.

  "If you have to look it up, you're hardly ready to do it," Thera said. "But nature will guide you, and I'll help, if you'll just let me."

  "I want to look up the word hyena," I said. "He may not be back for you, Mr. Drummond, but I know he and I will meet again. I want to be prepared."

  "There are several books on zoology in my library," Drummond said, "My daughter will show you."

  Undoubtedly. She had been showing me things all evening. I sighed inwardly. "Let's take a look."

  We took two candles and made our way to the library. Thera also carried a glass of something, another yellow liqueur. We had to dismantle the barricade of furniture we had made before that door.

  Inside was a spacious, pleasant, carpeted room with an impressive array of books, all arranged by subject much as in a real library. Sure enough, there were numerous books on all aspects of biology, ranging from popular essays on human sexuality to technical texts on zoology. Many of them were worn. Drummond evidently read his books (or maybe it was Thera), and he didn't stop with the illustrated sexual manuals; this library was not just for show. But of course the rich had time to educate themselves, if they wished.

  I located a book on mammals. "'HYAENIDS—four species,'" I read aloud, holding the candle as close to the page as I dared. We didn't need another fire. "'Order CARNIVORA, Superfamily FELOIDEA. Family HYAENIDAE. Sub-family PROTELINAE. Proteles cristatus. Aardwolf.'" I looked up. "Aardwolf? That's not it!"

  "I'll say!" Thera agreed. "Any man who has a beautiful and willing girl alone with the lights out, and reads about aardwolves—"

  "'Subfamily HYAENINAE. Crocuta crocuta. Spotted Hyaena.' That's it!"

  "Bookworm!" she complained, sipping from her glass. It smelled more like perfume than wine.

  "'Superficially resembles a big dog, but more closely related to the cats,'" I said as my eyes squinted at the fine text in the flickering light. "I didn't know that. I thought it was related to the jackal—a cowardly dog."

  "I don't know about the animal hyena," Thera said, "but the human one's no coward. I guess you could call him a dog, though."

  "No, it's not a dog," I said. "Not related to the canines."

  "A son of a bitch," she said, holding the candle up to her face so that I could see her smile.

  Oh, a pun. I wasn't in the mood. "Why don't you go wash a dish?" I suggested, knowing that this rich girl never sullied her hands on such menial tasks.

  "I am a dish. You can wash me."

  "What the hell are you drinking?"

  "Fuji plum wine. Smell it?" She held it under my nose. The aroma was delicious. I wrenched my face away.

  "'Shoulder height of thirty-one inches, weight 120 pounds, rounded ear tips... '"

  "You're right on the mark about my weight and ears, but a bit short on my height," Thera said. "I'm twice as tall as—oh, you mean that position! We call it 'doggie fashion'—or maybe 'hyena fashion' tonight. Well, since that's the way you want it, we'll put the shoulders at thirty-one inches." She got down on her hands and knees and wiggled her posterior suggestively.

  It was pointless to react to her come-ons; it only led to more of the same. I did want to learn about the animal hyena, getting clues to the philosophy of the human one. "'Keen sense of smell... lives twenty years or more...'"

  "You mean I have only two years left?"

  I resisted the temptation to goose her hard with my foot. "'Distinguished by an eerie, chattering call, like a cackling human laugh.'"

  "Ha ha!"

  "'Unpopular in some areas because it raids graves and digs up and consumes recently buried bodies.'" I waited for her comment on that, but it seemed I had finally shut her up.

  "'Powerful jaws... able to crack virtually any marrow bones.'" I looked up. "That explains the chewed-up bodies! He let the live animal go at them."

  "The one that was watching me..." she said, suddenly sober.

  "'Feeds mainly on carrion, but is also a formidable night hunter. No coward—has backed off and even killed old lions.'" I looked up again. "That's some animal."

  Then I discovered that Thera had risen from the floor, set glass and candle on a bookshelf, and was undressing herself. Apparently she had given up dialogue as unproductive, so now was turning to a more basic strategy. She certainly had the figure for it. The flickering candlelight made traveling highlights along her breasts and torso, bringing first one rondure into prominence and then another. Even the shadows were stimulating as hell.

  I put my eyes firmly back on the page. However sweetly baited it might be, I was not going to fall into that trap. "'Prodigious appetite... Leopard forced to protect its kill by dragging it into fork of a tree, out of reach of hyena...'" I shook my head. "That's some fighter, if it backs off leopards too." But it was dangerous to take my eyes off the page.

  "'Powerful forequarters, but weak hindquarters,
so incapable of running at high speed... peculiar skulking movement... intelligent... formidable organized hunter.'"

  I stopped then, for Thera had blown out my candle and hers. "Enough of this dawdling, Jason," she said, putting her warm nude body into my arms. "I let you talk me out of it when you taught me judo, but times have changed." Her hungry, wine-perfumed lips sought mine.

  "Thera, I don't want to marry you!" I said desperately. "It's not my kind of life."

  She laughed, a bit like the hyena, and I felt her breasts rippling against me. "And I don't want to marry you, idiot! When I was a child last year, I spoke as a child, but now I have put aside childish things. You'd be dull as hell for more than a month, with your prudish ways and your dismal karate-class routine. But I promised myself I'd have you, and now is the time."

  That put me in my place, all right. I had had quite another impression. But it also released my inhibitions. If all she wanted was a passing affair...

  Possibly this was just another artifice, an attempt to compromise me into marrying her. But that objection was only a small, distant thing, easily brushed aside. I grabbed her in the dark and applied a kote waza wrist-lock. With my right hand I took her left hand, my thumb on her palm, my fingers on the back of it. I bent her hand inward at the wrist, forcing her lower body against mine. She was amenable; she yielded to the pressure, though it was token, and thrust her pelvis forward against mine.

  Somehow my neck/shoulder bandage covering the hyena's bite got tangled in our embrace and ripped loose. I tore it the rest of the way off and threw it aside, only spurred on by the momentary pain. Yes, it was time.

  "I hear something," Thera whispered in my ear as I loosened my belt.

  "Oh, so now we're being coy!" My pants dropped, and I ran my left hand over her right breast and squeezed. What sensation! "No-someone's in the hall!" she breathed urgently.

  Then I heard it: a slight noise, as of a hand sliding along a wall. I let Thera go and dropped into combat-ready stance, somewhat hampered by the hobbling trousers around my ankles. Of all times! It wouldn't be Drummond; was it the Hyena again?

  Light flooded the room blindingly. My eyes hurt; they had been adapted to the dim candle and then the complete dark. Evidently, the power had been restored in the past few minutes, and we had never thought to try the switch. And here I stood, the Compleat Dunce in underpants. My shirt was hanging open, with the raw wound in my neck exposed.

  Through the pain of light I saw a figure, black like a silhouette, framed in the doorway. Not Drummond.

  I kicked aside my trousers and charged that figure. And got an expert foot in my midriff that shoved me back but did not cripple me. An intentional miss.

  "Take it easy, honky," a low female voice said. "I have no fight with you, unless you want it that way."

  "Ilunga!" I exclaimed, my vision clearing as I caught my balance. She stood with hands on hips: tall, voluptuous, self-assured. She wore a tight-fitting black knitted outfit, somewhat like a body stocking extending to her neck, wrists and ankles, with a wide leather belt, and she was barefooted. Because her skin was black, it was hard to tell exactly where the clothing left off, and she appeared hazily nude. She seemed to have nothing on underneath; her breasts were clearly formed, including the nipples, and the rest of her anatomy was as specific. She would have been stunning, except for three things: her broken nose, her fierce orange eyeballs, and her knowing sneer.

  Thera stood behind me, gloriously naked, shading her eyes with one hand. The contrast between the two women was striking: the one statuesquely white, the other statuesquely black. "You know this person, Jason?" she asked.

  "What are you doing here?" I demanded of Ilunga.

  "I had to talk to you, Bwana," she said, her tone mocking me. This was one black woman who catered to no white man.

  "Look at her eyes!" Thera exclaimed. "What is she, a drug addict?"

  "Yes," I said shortly. "Look, Ilunga—"

  Thera strode forward, breasts and buttocks jiggling brightly under her platinum tresses. "So this is Black Beauty! Your unfinished business!"

  "Stay clear of her!" I warned. "She's dangerous!"

  "She's a horse of a different color, dangerous to our privacy!" Thera snapped. "Get your tail out of here, Ebony!"

  "White trash, I got no business with you," Ilunga said contemptuously. "I'd as soon cut off your honky ass as look at it, and feed all that pork to my dog. But all I want is to talk to him. Now."

  "Well, come and get a piece of my ass, because you aren't talking to Jason right now."

  Ilunga glanced at me, the orange flashing as her eyeballs moved. "Who is this peroxide floozy?"

  And of course Thera had used peroxide. I saw that trouble could not be avoided. "Ilunga, meet Thera Drummond, judo black belt, millionaire heiress. Thera, meet Ilunga, karate expert, black militant. I wash my hands of what follows, only keep it clean, will you, girls?" Actually, I'd have to see that neither of them got killed or maimed, and I might have to take some more wounds myself doing that. Human females are worse than real bitches, when they get bitchy.

  "So glad to meet you, heiress."

  "Likewise, militant."

  They made a formal half-bow to each other. Good—it was going to be clean. Maybe.

  Ilunga aimed a punch at Thera, but Thera batted it aside and grabbed the hand, trying to turn the wrist inward, much as I had just done to her. But it was ineffective against an expert karateka. Ilunga somersaulted forward, escaping the hold. Then she aimed a roundhouse kick at Thera. Thera stepped in and behind the leg, and swept Ilunga's other foot forward in a judo o-soto-gari, the big outside reap. Ilunga crashed to the floor on her butt.

  Thera looked pleased—but her smile was premature. Ilunga's leg shot out and caught her in the stomach. Now Thera fell to the floor. Ilunga jumped on top of her as she was trying to get up, landing on her back. Black figure and white figure fused in the struggle. One black hand reached around to catch hold of a white breast, while the other caught at Thera's shaved crotch. I could not identify that particular grip, but evidently it was a pain hold, because suddenly Thera's eyes went wide open and she screamed.

  "Mate!" Thera cried, meaning "I yield!"

  Ilunga let go immediately and stood back, breathing hard.

  Thera got up without apparent discomfort. The two made another formal little bow to each other.

  "All right—you talk to him," Thera said. "You earned it." I could see that she had had a good lesson; probably no woman had mastered her before. She picked up her clothes and left the room.

  "She fought clean, so I did," Ilunga said to me, as though an explanation were required. "You must've trained her."

  "I did. Thanks. But let's not make small talk." I climbed back into my trousers as I spoke. "You went to a lot of trouble to find me here, and it must be serious."

  She told me, mincing no words. It was serious. But to oblige her, I would have had to give up my position as a U.S. world judo trainer, and I simply wasn't ready to make that sacrifice. No point in telling her that, however; it would sound ungracious, and sport judo was not a thing she understood or respected.

  On the other hand, I did not want this woman for an enemy, not when I already had the Hyena to contend with. So I compromised. I gave her a referral. Someone who might be able to help her as well as I could have. With that she had to be satisfied.

  Ilunga was gone by the time Thera returned, dressed in a clinging negligee. "Who is she?" Thera asked, almost as though disappointed to find me alone. "I mean, to you?"

  "She's the last addict on Kill-13, a devastating martial-arts drug. It gives superior reflexes and power."

  "So I discovered! That woman can fight!"

  "And virtual immunity to pain. But it's hell on the body; the eyes are first to suffer, and in time the debilitation extends everywhere. I destroyed the Kill-13 Demon cult, and she helped me. She saved my life. So I owe her something."

  "So she came to collect?"

  "Yes. But
this time I couldn't help her." I shrugged. "So let's drop the subject."

  Thera looked thoughtful. "She's some woman."

  "Yes. Now where's my room?"

  "You know, when I was grappling with her..." She trailed off, shaking her head. "Maybe we'll meet again, sometime."

  "I doubt it," I said. "She hates all whites."

  "All white men."

  I glanced at her uneasily. What was she getting at?

  "What was that grip she used on you?" I asked curiously. "I don't believe I've seen that one before." Which was odd, because I have made quite a study of judo, kung fu and aikido grips.

  "You are not in a position to experience it," she said with a funny look.

  Not much of an answer, but I didn't push it. Probably Thera didn't like being reminded of her abrupt loss. "Where's my room?" I repeated.

  She shook her head as if clearing it of some intriguing thought, and I had the distinct impression that I was not the subject of that thought. "This way."

  She led me upstairs and into an obviously feminine room. "Here?" I asked somewhat forlornly. Furnishings are not important, but flowered curtains, perfumed sheets, and an ornate vanity are simply not my style.

  She twirled about so that her negligee spread out, showing her attributes in turning silhouette. "I told you: my room."

  "But I presumed—after your fight—"

  "You presume too much," she said. "First things first. I'm twice as ready now as I was in the library."

  So her priorities remained unchanged. I had other things to worry about. I would have to plan how to deal with the Hyena, and I still had a team to train for the world championship competition. This year it was going to be held in Cuba, and this didn't make me feel any easier.

  But this was not three weeks from now; this was now. Tired, wounded, and overstuffed on gourmet food I might be, but she was right. First things first.