Ashes and Bones (3 page)

He was coming toward me.

I’d stared just a second too long.

Strike three, and I hadn’t even made it out onto the floor yet. Hadn’t even shaken his hand.

I was done for.

“Look at that!” he boomed, and I realized that he was the one with the strong Australian accent. “Can’t take her eyes off me! Poor little thing—but no wonder! Ugly cuss she trains with back East makes the ass end of a dingo look good. And he’s a teeny, tiny, little man to boot.”

Now there were open smiles and a few chuckles from the floor. I smiled briefly, but I could feel my jaw tightening. He was talking about Nolan, my instructor and something of a hero to me. While Nolan was certainly…compact of stature, he wasn’t ugly. In fact, I’d come to realize that both he and his face were in remarkably good shape, considering the man made his living by doling out beatings and that he’d probably taken more than a few himself. So who did this big lug think he was talking about?

He stuck out a hand the size of a Thanksgiving turkey. “Name’s Derek Temple. Mr. Temple, to you.” Engulfing my hand with his own, he turned to his students. “The lucky thing is that she’s come to her senses and is going to train properly, now, with
me.
”

He was still smiling like he was selling toothpaste as he turned back to me, something calm and hard behind his eyes. “Lesson one: don’t tense up like that. Limits your options, darling,” he said near my ear.

He let my hand go and I barely kept from shaking it out. He hadn’t crushed the bones or anything, just made the point, paying me back for gaping at him before.

Now I felt a grizzly-bear paw land on my shoulder, and staggered a bit under it. “While her instructor is indeed small, ugly, and unable to get women without paying for them, he
is my brother, a fellow warrior with some serious skills. Once upon a time, when I was just a pup, scarcely off the teat, some accounted him even better than I. But as you all well know, there is no one fiercer or prettier than I, is there, class?”

“NO, SIR!” came the unified cry from the floor.

“No one with slyer shoots, no one with harder locks, and no one with slicker moves. But out of respect for my comrade’s advanced age and our fraternal bond, we will do our best to teach this poor girl the way it’s done. No one will try to take her out on a date she doesn’t want to go on, no one will mess with her, because we will have given her our skills. She will leave her mark on the silly bastard, and it will be because of us.”

“YES, SIR!”

“Now, we’ve got five minutes left, and Mr. Anderson and I are going to give you one more valuable lesson before you go back out to the cold and uncaring world.”

“THANK YOU, SIR!”

“Mr. Anderson!” Temple strode out onto the floor.

“Sir!” The man who’d been leading the class before snapped to.

“You’re wearing a cup, are you not?” Temple paused to look in the mirror, moved as if to make an adjustment to his hair, and then realized there was no improvement that could be made on perfection.

Anderson smelled a rat, but answered smartly. “Yes, si—”

He didn’t have time to finish the word before Temple spun around, dropped, and aimed a reverse round kick at his groin. Anderson hopped back sharply, blocked the kick, then closed the space between them, light on the balls of his feet and wary.

Temple was off the floor almost as soon as his kick missed, moving in on Anderson. He faked a round kick to the side, then whipped his foot up to the side of Anderson’s head; Anderson blocked it handily, and threw a nice sweep at him. He didn’t quite pull it off; Temple avoided it, then moved forward
with it and kicked, landing a hard blow to Anderson’s stomach. Anderson went over backward, and Temple followed him down to the ground.

They got into some grappling for a few seconds, but it was clear by now that they were just playing around, showing off for the class, and trying to impress the new kid. Finally, Temple got tired of the fooling and laid a nasty-looking armbar on Anderson, who was still fighting him.

I would have been smothered by being pinned under just one of his legs, but apparently Anderson was made of sterner stuff.

“Tell me you love me,” Temple bellowed good-naturedly as his second-in-command resisted him.

“Not on your life, sir,” Anderson gasped. He was still trying to work his way out of the hold, but he didn’t have much in the way of options open to him. He was half giggling with the futility of his task, half on the rack with the pain he was in.

“Tell me you want to go out with me,” Temple insisted. He arched his back, pulling on the arm just a bit more.

“Take a flying f—arrghh!” He tapped out and instantly Temple released him. Both men were on their feet before you could say “Boo!”

“Thank you, Mr. Anderson.” They slapped hands and exchanged bows. “Who can tell me what the lesson is?”

“Mr. Anderson should have taken you up on the date?” one of the guys said.

“Cheek and impudence, Watanabe, gets you thirty and thirty.” Temple sounded as cheery as before, but Watanabe dropped immediately and started banging out the crunches. “Anyone else care to try?”

“Mr. Anderson anticipated trouble, even though he was with friends in a safe place,” one of the women said, after a pause. “He could have been in much worse trouble, but he wasn’t. He made you work for it.”

“That’s my girl, Mindy, and that’s why you’ve been lucky enough to be my blushing bride, lo, these past six years. And
Mr. Anderson knows I could have handed him his ass, but we’re all good friends here, aren’t we? Pay attention, all the time, especially when you feel safe: The best way to deal with trouble is to avoid it.” He glanced over at the floor where Watanabe was now doing the other “thirty,” which were push-ups. “How are you doing, Ed?”

“Nearly…done…sir,” he got out between painful exhales. Sweat glistened on his face.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Oh…hell, yes…sir.”

“Good on ya. The rest of you, I’ll see you next time.”

They bowed out and everyone came off the floor. A few of the guys stopped to introduce themselves to me, but Temple’s stentorian voice rang out again. “Now, now, ladies, this isn’t a frigging tea party. I’ve got to knock some sense into Daniel-san over there, lucky, lucky girl.”

Oh my God, I thought. I hadn’t made my reference to
The Karate Kid
out loud, had I? Or was this giant freak of nature also psychic?

Mindy, once she’d bowed out from the floor, turned to Temple. “Derek, I’m going to pick up the kids from my mother before I come back here for you. What do you want from the market?”

“Mindy, my love, bring me several pounds of the finest sea scallops. We shall grill them, serve them over bitter greens with a soy-sesame sauce. After dinner, I shall tuck the young ones into their wee beds, and then proceed to make you glad you were born a woman.”

“Check. Scallops.” Mindy rolled her eyes so I could see as she turned to leave. “Have fun,” she said to me.

“Uh, thanks.” I almost wished her luck herself, but hey, it was her life and I was already in deep dookie with her mate.

I got my second wrap secured around my hand, and turned to face my doom. I stopped to bow before I hit the floor; Nolan never made me do that, but I wasn’t in Kansas any more, and when in Rome…

Pull yourself together, Em. Focus.

I reached the center of the floor and did some jumping jacks to warm up quickly, then stretched. When Mr. Temple turned back to me, I bowed to him.

He bowed back politely. To see the broad expanse of Temple’s back past his shoulders reminded me of a whale Brian and I had seen in Hawaii, its massive body arcing into the water.

“Where do you need work?” he said.

“Well, right now I’m training for my green belt.”

“That’s not what I asked you. Where do you need work?”

“Uh…”

Mr. Temple covered the distance between us with two gargantuan steps. Out of habit, Mr. Anderson’s example still fresh in my mind, I stepped back, needing four quick steps to maintain the distance between us.

“Okay, good. You know not to let me dictate the pace or the space. Now stay put.”

He moved in, and my nervousness must have shown on my face, because he stopped. “Don’t you trust me?”

Um, frankly, no. “Nolan must think you’re okay.”

He threw back his head and roared with laughter. I thought I could hear the windowpanes and mirrors vibrating with the noise. “Good answer. We’ll take it as read that you trust old Nolan. So stay put for a second.”

He circled around me, and I tensed, waiting for an attack, then relaxed again. He’d wait until I wasn’t ready and then—

I felt him stop behind me and to the right, then felt a forearm slip past my throat. Before he could get the choke hold on, I slipped down and backed out of his grasp. Stumbling a little, I regained my balance and threw a round kick at his gut. He got out of the way of course, but I kept my momentum going and threw the left leg at him, too.

“Okay, not bad, not bad. Not good, but not bad, either. Good instincts, even if the moves and commitment aren’t there. You need aggression, girl! Next time, tuck your chin more before you slither out of the hold; you might not escape and you don’t want to let me get my arm under your chin if
you can help it. Work on keeping your stance balanced as you move. And don’t ever, ever turn your back on me; I know you had momentum going from your kick, but save that fancy stuff for your Boston swor
rays.
If you feel like you have enough distance to run, then run, but this close, don’t give me your back. Instead, if you see you’re not going to land it, just put your foot down, square up, move in, and do a side kick.

I did the move as he described it.

He frowned. “For chrissakes, chamber that kick! I’ve seen harder sneezes. I want explosive action!”

“More than twenty-five years in the field, I’ve been moving as slowly and deliberately as I could,” I muttered. “Archaeologists aren’t supposed to explode.”

“Enough talk.”

Temple walked around me several more times, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. I fought hard to keep from tensing up while still paying attention to what I could feel and hear around me. Suddenly I felt a blow from behind catch me squarely in the back; there was nowhere for me to go but down. I broke my fall and managed to turn my head so I didn’t mash my nose and face against the mat. I rolled over and went for a kick, but Mr. Temple flicked my foot aside as if he was shooing a mosquito and, with scary speed, shot in on top of me, into the mount.

The breath left my lungs with a whoosh. Panic set in. I tried to buck my hips to throw him off me, but he was anticipating that. He simply outweighed, out-muscled me.

As he sat on my chest, he wrapped his hands around my throat—he could have used just one, it seemed—and I tried a pluck to remove them. Again, he out-muscled me. I tried to buck with the pluck again, and it still didn’t work. I simply couldn’t get him off me, couldn’t move his hands off my throat, which now felt like it was being crushed.

What the hell was this maniac doing? I tapped the mat, signaling that he had me.

The pressure remained, choking me. “There’s no tapping out on the street!” a voice said, as if from a distance.

Still I struggled. I couldn’t breathe.

“Well?” the voice boomed. “What do you do now? If you weren’t in the safest place on earth, you’d be halfway down a darkened alley with me by now.”

I slapped at the side of his head, shoved his chin away from me. All in vain. I was starting to see spots before my eyes.

“Do you really think you’re going to do anything by going at the hardest places on my skull? Go for the soft bits: ears, nose, eyes, throat.”

I grabbed at one of his ears, not sure what to do. I twisted, hard. He cursed—though not because of anything I’d done to him—and leapt up. Suddenly, air rushed into my lungs. I rolled over, coughed, struggled to my knees.

“Jesus wept! What has that dozey slacker Nolan been doing? If you tried those party tricks on someone who didn’t have your best interest at heart, you’d be in very, very bad shape indeed.”

He loomed over me, pointing a finger like the sawed-off end of a pool cue. “Yes, you got somewhere by twisting my ear, but only after I gave you a hint. Now I’m going to teach you, so pay attention.”

“Ears!” he bellowed, suddenly pretending to clap his huge paws over my ears. If he’d actually done it, he might have blown both my eardrums.

“Nose!” He hunkered down into a low base, and still holding my head, pantomimed slamming my face against the crown of his skull, above the forehead. “No sense in messing up your pretty face; bash the silly bastard’s nose against your skull, and see how he likes that.”

“Eyes!” Still not letting go of my head, he regained a tall posture and jabbed at my eyes with his thumbs. “Let’s see how sexy he’s feeling with his aqueous humor running down your thumbs.”

“Throat!” He pulled back his arm and aimed a pretend strike at my throat, which was still sore from his choke hold. “And if the bastard’s still walking and looking for trouble at that point, then I shall be very surprised indeed.”

He made me practice the moves several times over, faster and faster. The last time, I accidentally—I think—whacked his nose against me a little too hard.

“Sorry,” I said. “My hands are slip—”

A titanic roar caused traffic to slow in the street, the drivers expecting an earthquake. “Never, never say ‘sorry’ near me again!” My apology seemed to make Mr. Temple the angriest of anything I’d done—or not done—the whole rest of the session. “I am the instructor and am responsible for myself as well as you. Work on your control, yes, but don’t pause, don’t be nice, and for chrissakes, never, never apologize.”

“Sor—okay.”

“As if a little girly like you could mar my eternal beauty.” He did turn into the mirror, just in case I’d knocked a hair out of place, but once again was satisfied. “Once more.”

I performed satisfactorily this time.

“Better. Practice on your husband at home, it’ll be good for him. Show him who’s boss. Now, we get to the good stuff.”

Exhausted already, I glanced surreptitiously at the clock. Damn, still twenty minutes left. How could an hour last so long?