Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson #4)(17)

Sensei was beside Lee, checking him out almost before I landed. Adam put his hand on my abdomen and pulled my legs straight to facilitate breathing.

"Pretty," he said. "Too bad you pulled it; if anyone deserved to lose his head..." He didn't mean it as a joke. If he'd said it with a hair more heat, I'd have been worried.

"Is he all right?" I tried to ask - and he must have understood.

"Knocked out cold, but he'll be fine. Not even a sore neck for his trouble."

"I think you're right," Sensei said. "She pulled it, and angled her foot perfectly for a tournament hit." He held Lee still as the big man moaned and started to stir.

Sensei looked at me and frowned. "You were stupid, Mercy. What is the first rule of combat?"

By this time I could talk. "The best defense is fast tennis shoes," I said.

He nodded. "Right. When you noticed he was out of control - which I'm sure was about two full minutes at least before I did, because I was helping Gibbs with his axe kick - you should have called for help, then gotten away from him. There was no point in letting this continue until someone got hurt."

From the sidelines, Gibbs, the other brown belt, said, "She's sorry, Sensei. She just got her directions confused. She kept running the wrong way."

There was a general laugh as tension dispersed.

Sensei guided Lee though a general check to make sure nothing was permanently damaged. "Sit out for the rest of the lesson," he told Lee. "Then we'll have a little talk."

When Lee got up, he didn't look at me or anyone else, just took up a low-horse stance with a wall at his back.

Sensei stood up, and I followed suit. He looked at Adam.

Who bowed, fist to hand and eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses he hadn't been wearing when I'd first glimpsed him in the doorway. Most of the werewolves I know carry dark glasses or wear hats that can shadow their eyes.

"Adam Hauptman," he said. "A friend of Mercy's. Just here to observe unless you object."

Sensei was an accountant in real life. His day job was working for an insurance firm, but here he was king. His eyes were cool and confident as he looked at Adam.

"The werewolf," he said. Adam was one of five or six of his pack who had chosen to come out to the public.

"Hai,"agreed Adam.

"So why didn't you help Mercy?"

"It is your dojo, Sensei Johanson." Sensei raised an eyebrow, and Adam's sudden smile blazed out.

"Besides, I've seen her fight. She's tough, and she's smart. If she had thought she was in trouble, she'd have asked for help."

I glanced around as I rolled over and stood up, as good as new except for the pretty bruises I was going to have on my belly. Zee was gone. He wouldn't have lingered, with Adam to take over guard duty. His nose had wrinkled at the smell of sweaty bodies when we'd come in - he'd been lucky it was relatively cool this fall. In full summer, the dojo smelled from a block away, at least it did to my nose. To me the scent was strong but not unpleasant, but I knew from the comments of my fellow karate students that most humans disliked it almost as much as Zee did.

Drama over, Adam went back to the sidelines, loosening his tie and pulling his suit jacket off as a concession to the heat. Sensei had us do three hundred side kicks (Lee was called from his position of disgrace to participate) first to the left, then to the right. We all counted them off in Japanese - though I suspected if a native speaker had dropped in, they might've had difficulty understanding what we were saying.

The first hundred were easy, muscles warm and limber from earlier calisthenics; the second... not so much. Somewhere about 220, I lost myself in the burning ache until it was almost a shock when we stopped and switched sides. Wandering through the ranks of students (there were twelve of us tonight) Sensei adjusted people's form as he saw necessary.

You could tell those of us who were more serious because our two hundredth kicks looked just like our first. Students less diligent lost height and form as exhaustion took its toll. There were still some students in good form on the three hundredth kick - but not me.

AFTER CLASS, PEOPLE WERE TOO BUSY TRYING NOT TO stare at the werewolf - all the while getting in a good look - to pay any attention to me. I changed in the bathroom and took my time, out of courtesy, so that they would all have time to change in the anteroom in front of the dojo before I came out.

Sensei was waiting for me when I emerged.

"Good job, Mercy," he told me with an emphasis that told me he wasn't talking about Lee. It was odd that the words he had for me were the same ones, in a different language, that the woman in the taco wagon had used, meant the same way.

"If it hadn't been for this"  -  I tilted my head to indicate the dojo - "I would have died that night instead of my attacker." I gave him a formal bow, two fists down. "Thank you for your teaching, Sensei."

He returned my bow, and we both ignored the suspicious watering of eyes.

Adam was waiting near the front door carefully examining his fingernails. He had chosen to be amused by all the people staring at him, which was a good thing. He had a temper. Sweat darkened his Egyptian-cotton shirt, so it clung to the round lines of his shoulders and arms, announcing to anyone that he was a hard body.

I took a deep breath to cool my jets and introduced him around. Only Lee met his eyes for longer than a moment, and at first I thought Adam was going to lose it. He gave Lee a scary smile. I was afraid of what he - either he - was going to say, so I grabbed Adam's arm and tugged him out the door.