Shawna returned a smile, but hers was much warmer. “I’m glad they did decide to move back here.” She kissed him gently on the cheek, then suddenly gasped.
“What?” asked Jamie.
She was looking out the window. “I just saw a ninja outside. And it wasn’t Yoshi.”
Chapter Nineteen
Saturday, 3:32 PM
Yoshi grabbed the wrist of a ninja who was charging at Buster and pulled him around to face her. The warrior took a downward swipe at the kunoichi, who dodged to the side and held her opponent’s blade down with her left foot as she punched him in the face, the impact of her right fist reinforced by the hilt of her ninja-to. This ninja crumpled to the ground.
“Get Amy to safety!” ordered the kunoichi as she shoved her left blade into the foot of another attacker, causing him to drop his sword and hop up and down on his good foot, howling in agony. “I am the one that they want!”
Indeed, the ninja seemed to be moving toward Yoshi as their primary target. Buster hesitated, not wanting to leave his friends in danger.
The ninja were no longer attacking him, so he quickly looked around. George parried a sword with one end of his staff, then quickly smacked his attacker across the face with the other end, while Dave kicked a ninja in the stomach, drop-elbowing him in the back of the head after he doubled over. Yoshi, as always, was fighting superbly. Her twin blades, crafted by Deck Pendragon especially for her, worked in perfect harmony, creating a whirling cyclone that thwarted attack after attack.
Buster looked down at Amy, who still sat on the ground, clutching her shoulder. The fabric of her dress was plastered to the wound with blood and the star still protruded from between her fingertips. And she was still crying. That was the hardest part. Oh, Lord, he prayed, what should I do? Then he glanced back toward the school.
And the Spiritual Anvil hit.
Somehow, they had fought their way up the hill to a point where he could see the school . . . and the path was clear for him to get Amy to safety. But how had they moved? The injured girl was still on the ground surrounded by the four teens. It was obvious that she wasn’t going anywhere.
Deciding not to question God’s methods, Buster reached down and gently took Amy in his arms, lifting her thin frame easily. “Keep us all safe, Lord,” he whispered as he turned to leave. Then he called back to his friends, “May God guard you guys.”
* * *
Max lay on the carpeted floor of the English room next to the bookshelf. Ordinarily, he hated being in this classroom. It wasn’t really his favorite subject. But he was tired and, at this moment, the gray carpet felt as good as a feather bed.
The class wasn’t all bad. His teacher was okay, considering the fact that she had to teach six different grade levels.
Of course, the thing he did enjoy about sixth period English was Rena Black, who was also the teacher’s daughter. Every guy in the class longed to date the brown-haired, blue-eyed girl. But she had yet to choose her guy.
Also in the room lay Pete, snoring peacefully.
Wish I could sleep like he is, thought Max. Maybe being near a new person, even if he were as nice a guy as Jamie’s cousin, was making him uncomfortable enough to not be able to sleep.
The tae kwon do practitioner sighed in frustration and climbed to his feet, then made his way to the door. Maybe Steve and Jeremy would let him take a nap in their room. The young teen approached the door to the hall and grasped the knob, pushing it open. To his right, the hall stretched toward the gym and the junior high classrooms. Ahead of him, another hall led toward the soda machines and the high school science room.
Steve and Jeremy were sleeping in the history room, one door to the right. He took a step in that direction and halted.
Standing halfway down the hallway was a dark-clad figure. It stood perfectly still, regarding him calmly. Then, in less time than it took for Max to blink, two throwing stars were speeding toward him.
Max dropped into the splits as the two metal stars flew harmlessly overhead. A loud CLANG rang through the hall as they struck the concrete wall behind him and he lunged back into the English room, slamming the door behind him.
The resulting noise roused Pete. “Wh . . . What?” he stammered.
“There’s a ‘non-Jamie or Yoshi’ ninja in the hall!”
Pete leaped to his feet, just as the door opened and Max was just able to stop himself from kicking his brother in the face.
“Brotherly love,” smiled Jeremy as he watched Steve’s face go pale at the barely two inch space between his nose and Max’s foot.
“Wh . . . What . . .,” began Steve, but then he just yelled, “YEEAIIEEEHHH!!!”
Max lowered his foot to the ground. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“We heard your door slam and got a little worried,” replied Leslie. “We heard it in my room all the way down in the junior high area.”
“There was a ninja in the hall!” growled Steve’s brother as he pulled the three visitors inside and closed the door.
“We didn’t see one,” responded Steve.
“Well . . .,” countered his sibling, “I guess that’s why they call ninjutsu the Art of Invisibility.”
At this, the window behind the teacher’s desk shattered as a ninja leaped through it. Pete, closer to the window, covered his head with his arms to protect his face from flying glass. Four more ninja followed the first one into the room . . ..
* * *
“You’re not going out there, are you?” demanded Shawna.
“Yes,” replied Jamie simply. “Just stay here out of sight and lock the door. Don’t risk looking out the door’s window unless you hear three slow, knocks, followed by two quick ones.” As she narrowed her eyes in confusion, he explained, “That was our secret knock when Adventure was still a club. It was the first thing that came to mind.”
Shawna’s eyes began to overflow. Jamie leaned in, kissing her lips affectionately. “It’ll be okay.” He paused. “I’ll be okay.”
As he pulled reluctantly back and opened the door, she whispered, “Be careful.”
His lips parted into a smile that he hoped masked his fear. “I’m always careful.”
He stepped into the hall and watched as Shawna closed the door. After he heard the CLICK of the lock, he looked through the vertical, rectangular window above the doorknob to find her staring longingly at him. He smiled weakly and turned toward the side doors of the building.
Stepping into the chill autumn wind, he shivered. How had he started to sweat?
* * *
Buster stepped up to the side door of the building. He caught a glimpse of Jamie moving around to the back of the building in the darkness. He resisted the urge to call out to him. If there were any of the Warui ninja around, he didn’t want to alert them.
Amy had stopped crying, but still grunted in pain as he shifted her weight so that he could open the door. “Sorry,” he whispered.
“You’re forgiven,” she replied. He thought that he detected a hint of a smile on her lips.
“Does it still hurt?” he asked.
“I’m trying not to think about it,” was the response.
As they entered the building, the two teens heard glass shattering up the hallway to their right. “Please tell me that the nurse’s office isn’t in that direction,” he begged.
“It’s not,” replied the girl. “It’s in the Elementary building.”
“WHAT?!”
She looked affectionately at him and added, “There’s a first-aid kit in the high school principal’s office.”
Chapter Twenty
Saturday, 3:40 PM
Jamie moved silently up the hillside. The shadowy darkness created by the overcast sky and the looming shadows of the trees took on an almost tangible quality, as if he were in a sea of ink on the verge of drowning.
The young ninja fought hard to control his breathing. Keep a level hea
d, Raleigh, he told himself. You’ve never been this worked up before. He knew he was in danger, as he had followed a shadow-warrior behind the building and heard glass breaking back here, so he realized he was probably walking into a trap.
The slightest snap of a twig caught his attention. There was someone behind him, probably ten to fifteen feet, he figured. A light crackle of dead leaves alerted him to another presence in the shadows ahead.
A chill breeze stirred and swept over the hill, catching his light brown hair as it passed. The sound of the wind dimmed as the air mass flew onward, revealing a light whirring noise. His eyes widened with sudden realization as he dodged to the right, narrowly avoiding the two throwing stars that sailed by his head from behind. A groan and the sound of something hitting the ground ahead told him where the shaken had gone.
Pulling a throwing dagger from its sheath on his wrist, he threw it blindly in the direction from which the stars had come. A muffled grunt told him he had hit his target, though he was less than pleased when he heard that same object fall. He ran in his opponent’s direction and his heart sank as he found the ninja lying on the leave-strewn ground, his dagger having found its mark in the head, just above the right eye.
Jamie shook his head, tears beginning to run unchecked down his cheeks. “I didn’t want to kill you,” he murmured as another breeze rose up around him. “I never wanted to kill anybody.” He fell to his knees on the cold earth and wept bitterly. He was so caught up in his own emotions, that he didn’t even notice the broken window in the back of the building . . . or the conflict that was going on in the English room . . ..
* * *
Pete leaped over the sword that was slashing at his legs, punching his opponent in the face as he did so.
“Hey,” called Jeremy playfully as he loaded an arrow, “jumping punches are illegal!”
“If you’re talking about boxing, then so is this,” responded Pete, leaping off the ground, spinning in place and bringing his right heel across his attacker’s head.
“Honestly, Pete,” called Max as he jumped toward the wall and pushed off with his right foot, using that same foot to kick his own attacker in the chest and knocking him from his feet, “maybe we should go out for Tag Team Kick-boxing!"
An arrow whizzed by Max, taking out a charging ninja he had not seen. He whirled around to find Jeremy grinning at him.
A warrior spin-kicked Steve, knocking him over the teacher’s desk, spilling everything on the floor. The teen looked around frantically as the ninja pulled a dagger from his belt and lunged.
Steve’s right hand closed around a pair of scissors. He held them out and the attacker was unable to stop his momentum. A groan of agony escaped the cloth mask as the ninja impaled himself and died, pinning Steve to the floor.
Another warrior, apparently sensing an easy kill, drew his ninja-to and approached. Another of Jeremy’s well-placed arrows took this one down. The body landed across Steve’s first attacker, adding even more weight.
Jeremy prepared another arrow and aimed at one of the two unconscious ninja.
“What are you doing?!” demanded Max.
“Just what they were going to do to us,” responded Jeremy.
Max grasped the arrow. “No! They’re beaten! We don’t have to kill these two!”
Jeremy rolled his eyes and put the arrow back into his quiver.
Steve’s voice came muffled from the floor. “Can somebody get these guys off of me?”
* * *
Thankfully, the office was in the opposite direction of the breaking glass. Buster sat Amy gently on the secretary’s desk. He opened the first-aid kit, which was mounted on the wall over a waist-high bookshelf. After grabbing a roll of medical tape, a bandage, a piece of cloth and a bottle of alcohol, he moved back to stand in front of the girl.
He tried to examine the embedded star. The fabric of her top was glued to the skin around the wound with her blood. “I . . .,” he muttered nervously, “I need to get your dress away from the wound.”
She pulled a pair of scissors from the secretary’s drawer and handed them to him. He cautiously cut the sleeve from the neckline to the star, then up to the inner elbow. At this, the front of her dress fell forward, revealing her undergarment. With a silent prayer for a steady hand, he focused his eyes on only the shuriken and wound, which, he was relieved to note, had stopped bleeding.
Amy grabbed the front flap of her dress and pulled it up to cover herself. “How’s it look?”
“Well, the good news is threefold,” explained Buster. “The arm of the star, and the wound, aren’t very big.” He took a breath. “The wound clotted around the star, keeping you from losing as much blood as I’d thought you had.” He finally smiled. “Most importantly, the star doesn’t seem to be poisoned.”
“That’s good,” she chuckled. “And the bad news?”
His smile faded. “The removing of the star’s gonna hurt. And it’ll reopen the wound.”
She gave him a brave smile. “I can take it.”
He grasped the weapon with his thumb and index finger and looked up at her. He saw complete trust in her eyes. Still smiling, she nodded, then yelped as he yanked the star free.
He immediately put the cloth over the wound. “Apply direct pressure,” he instructed her.
She released the dress flap so she could hold the cloth to the wound. Buster ignored his base instinct to gape at her, occupying himself by opening the alcohol. “You know,” he commented, “despite what they show in the movies, these throwing stars are really not made to be killing weapons. Just distracting ones.” He smiled, still not daring to look at her. “We’re lucky for that.”
He gently took her hand and the cloth away from the wound and looked her in the eye. “This is going to hurt, too.”
Her sharp intake of breath as he poured the solution on her wound told him that he had been correct. After he’d emptied half the bottle, he set it on the desk and put the bandage over the wound, securing it with the medical tape.
He drew a breath and looked up at her. She was again holding the flap up to cover herself and looking at him gently. He smiled shyly and stood up. After pulling off his black and gold Jameston Camels windbreaker, he draped it around her shoulders. “There,” he said. “That should keep you warm enough with your top torn.”
Her smile grew as she took his hands in hers. “Handsome and a gentleman,” she whispered. “A winning combination.”
* * *
Dave threw two of the unconscious ninja over his massive shoulders as Yoshi and George finished binding those who were on the ground. They’d been stripped to their underwear and gagged.
George set the last of the three dead ninja into a pile with the others. He sighed as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
“The freezer’s gonna be packed,”’ commented Dave.
“That’s gross, man,” retorted George in disgust.
“Where’d ya think we were puttin’ the dead ones, dude?” asked the big teen.
George’s face paled. “I thought you were kidding!”
Yoshi, in an effort to get George’s mind off the fact that their food was sharing the cafeteria’s large, walk-in freezer with dead ninja, asked, “How did you learn to fight with a bo?”
Hearing Yoshi’s words immediately redirected his attention. “I . . . uh . . . I had a friend in Alaska . . . where I used to live . . . before I was in the ninth grade . . . before we moved here . . ..”
“Your friend taught you?” she interrupted with a smile, finding the fact that she made him tongue-tied charming.
“Uh . . . Yeah,” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.
“I would enjoy continuing that training,” she said. Then she added, “If you are interested.”
The thought of spending more time with the pretty kunoichi seemed to perk up his spirits. “Well . . . sure!”
* * *
John,
Freddy and some members of the senior varsity team were taking turns shooting hoops in the gym. The team joked about Freddy’s non-existent shooting ability, but he just smiled, seemingly content with being the target of this ridicule.
Their recreation was interrupted by a light voice. “John?”
The players all turned to see Laura, her hands fidgeting nervously, standing in front of the cart that held the sports equipment. One of the guys muttered, “John, you can’t let your woman interrupt our practice.”
John waved him off. “I’ll take care of it.” He headed toward Laura, irritation tangible in his gait. When he was standing in front of her, he declared, “I’ve told you not to interrupt me while I’m playing.” He made no attempt to keep his voice down.
“You’re not doing this to me anymore, John,” she said, pointing at her eye.
His own eyes narrowed dangerously. “Then don’t do anything wrong.”
She was shaking now, though the rage in her voice made it clear that this was not from fear. “I’m not supposed to do anything wrong?!” Her fists clenched reflexively at her sides. “Only my parents or the law have any right to discipline me. And you’re not wearing a badge, you’re not my father,” she yanked a ring bearing his birthstone from her finger, “and, as of right now, YOU’RE NOT MY BOYFRIEND!!!” She threw the ring at him. It bounced off his muscled chest and landed on the floor with a clink that could be heard throughout the now deathly quiet gym.
John’s face burned red with anger. “And you couldn’t have thrown your little fit when we were in private?” He took a menacing step toward her, causing her to step backward into the cart. “It’s not enough that you think you’re gonna break up with me. You also have to declare it in front of my friends?”
“I . . .,” she stammered, her fear returning, “I thought that you’d control your temper in front of them.”
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