Even though Rettle had left the classroom seconds before I had, I didn’t run into him on the way to the basement. Apparently, this martial arts genius could move extremely fast or knew how to teleport. Once I had arrived, I could finally have a look around Rettle’s den without irritating strobe lights. It reminded me of a slaughterhouse in a horror movie – concrete floor, gray-painted walls and a number of identical square columns, some already smashed and sticking out of the floor and ceiling looking like rotten teeth. All that was missing was hooks with beef carcasses on them.
Rettle stood in the center of the basement in the pose of a nightclub bouncer – legs hip-width apart, arms crossed. This time he was shirtless. His torso looked like a metal cuirass of an ancient Greek warrior. This was just as I expected, but I wasn’t prepared to see the incredible number of scars on him. I had no idea what had happened in Rettle’s past, but he looked as if someone tried to hack him to pieces and nearly did.
One of his scars ran diagonally across the left side of his chest. If a blow that had left such a scar had been dealt a little lower, the coach’s heart would have been sliced exactly in two bloody halves. Another old wound went vertically down the middle of his right shoulder. I could probably find a twin scar on his back. A Jedi lightsaber, a cleaver or perhaps a huge chainsaw must have sunken four inches deep into his body, at least. Such a blow should have broken his clavicle and torn his lung. Had Rettle been human, this one injury would have done him in, let alone many others.
Altogether I counted twelve scars of various degrees of severity. This number of injuries could have killed at least seven humans.
The coach gave me an attentive look from head to toe.
“Hit me.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Hit me.”
Both times his tone was exactly the same, as if I rewound a tape and listened to it again. Rettle was definitely a robot!
“Where?” I asked, uncertain.
“Surprise me.”
Had it not been for the robotic, utterly neutral voice, I would have thought the coach was being ironic.
I decided to keep it simple and sent a jab toward Rettle’s head. He dodged, and so quickly that for a moment I wondered whether he had teleported ten inches to the right and back in a split second.
“Again,” he said.
I tried a left hook – to the same effect. This time it seemed that Rettle had started to duck even before I raised my arm. Was he reading my mind and foreseeing my next move?
“A combo,” he said in the same lifeless voice.
I punched directly with my right hand, followed by an uppercut with my left. Useless. When I used to train with Jack, she was also faster and dodged or blocked all my strikes, but this Rettle was dozens of times better. With Jack, my hits were just a small portion of a second late, but Rettle could practically drink a cup of coffee while my first arched through the air.
“You are too relaxed. You aren’t taking this seriously. Imagine that your life depends on it. Keep hitting.”
I tried to concentrate and kept up my attack. Nothing – I was dismally slow. I might as well have been fighting the air.
“Don’t stop,” he kept talking in the same calm voice while ducking my strikes.
I continued raining all sorts of blows, but nothing changed. Every time there was a gap at least a few inches wide between my fist or foot and Rettle’s body.
“You aren’t trying.”
To my great surprise, he punched me in the stomach and it happened so quickly that I didn’t even notice his fist flying in my direction. The force of the blow was perfectly measured to hurt me but leave my insides intact. It was a kind of slap in the face, only with a fist to the belly. A little insulted by this lunge, I put more zeal into swinging at Rettle. My strikes became faster and stronger, but the coach seemed to have become nimbler and faster by just as much. Damn robot!
I was starting to get out of breath, and the first sweat broke out on my forehead. But I didn’t stop and kept raining pointless blows upon Rettle.
“You aren’t taking this seriously. This is a real fight, not a game,” he repeated.
Right after those words there came a slap on my face, this time a real one, and then another one and another. If Rettle wanted to get me mad, he certainly achieved his purpose. The irritation at my inability to land a blow gave place to fury. I started moving even faster, but the coach also accelerated, and again by just as much. It was a sheer mockery! My fury turned into a frenzy. I felt my vampire instincts wake inside of me, just as during my last game with Lewis High. So Rettle wanted a real fight? Very well, he would get one.
I stopped, took a few steps back and put my hands on my knees, pretending to catch my breath. Let this turkey cock think I’m done. But this was just the beginning! I tensed all my muscles and surged forward. I had no idea what Rettle did, but as soon as the distance between us shortened to several inches, my feet left the ground. For a second I felt myself flying, but then my head went downward. I spun in the air and crashed, back first, into the opposite wall.
Lying on the floor, I tried to figure out what the hell had happened. How did he do it? There had been no push or a leg trip that I could feel. Was it some kind of secret energy blow of Tibetan monks?
“Get up. Let’s keep training,” Rettle ordered as if nothing had happened.
Still a little shocked, I reluctantly got back on my feet.
“You aren’t ready for martial arts. First, you should perfect your blows’ speed and strength. Take the fight gloves there on the bench.”
I picked up the gloves and put them on.
“So what should I practice on?”
Rettle motioned to the column next to him.
“A column? Seriously?”
The coach nodded.
“Why not a sandbag?” I asked, still hoping for an alternative.
“A vampire hits too hard. Even you will tear up a bag in a week or less. A column is just right.”
“Isn’t it dangerous, breaking up columns? Won’t the ceiling come down on our heads?”
“Only the ones around the perimeter support the structure, the others are just to make it easier to divide the room for storage.”
I was standing without moving as if expecting more of an exciting tale of the architectural and decorative peculiarities of this building.
“Hit,” commanded Rettle in his robotic voice.
I walked up to the column, thinking that smashing my fist into concrete would probably result in a vivid open fracture of my bones, but decided to trust the coach and punched it sharply with my right. My hand remained intact, but a visible dent with spider web cracks in the paint appeared on the column.
“Your basic physical training course will be complete when you break your column.”
My eyes widened in surprise.
“Break the column? You mean, smash twenty inches of concrete? Is that even possible?”
Rettle stood next to a nearby column, dotted with hit marks on all sides and already five or six inches thinner. There was a crash, and his leg, which just now had stood on the floor, was flying through the middle of the column, breaking it into fragments. Clouds of dust spread out in a foot-wide circle, making me cough. Rettle calmly brought his leg back with a ballerina’s grace. He hadn’t aimed or put his whole body weight into the kick, he had just raised his leg and smashed the column to bits. Uncle was right – that guy was super-tough.
“Anyone who wants to become a paladin of the Order must pass this trial in less than two months.” Rettle gestured to the other broken columns I had noticed earlier.
I was too amazed to even ask who paladins were.
“Did my uncle break columns?”
Rettle just nodded.
“And how long did it take him?”
“Thirty-seven days. Lumberjack did it in ten, but in his case, it was outstanding genetics, not diligence or skill. Lee succeeded in sixty-two days.”
“Lee?!”
The news that this petite woman had broken through twenty inches of concrete shocked me nearly more than Rettle’s impressive demonstration.
The coach nodded again. I expected to see something like a sneer or perhaps the opposite, pride for his student, but Rettle’s stone-like expression remained the same.
“Practice your strikes. Today hit as you can, try to combine fast and slow, strong and weak blows. You will need the entire range in a fight. Tomorrow I will start teaching you proper technique.”
Rettle turned around and headed for the far end of the basement, where there was another door. As he walked, I had time to examine his back and the tattoo on it. My initial assumption about the tattoo’s origin was correct. It was the colors and drawing style I saw on the bodies of Japanese yakuza thugs in movies. But the subject matter was not exactly traditional for the Land of the Rising Sun. Sure, there were two Japanese dragons with snake-like bodies, wingless but moustached, yet they were not fighting a giant octopus, Godzilla or at least a big-eyed school girl in a checked mini skirt.
They were up against a bear. It was not a panda either, but a regular big and shaggy bear of the grizzly type. I was not an expert, but I doubted this was a traditional Japanese symbol. On the other hand, uncle mentioned that Rettle was Russian, and some said that in Russia one could meet a bear even in the Red Square in broad daylight. Maybe my new instructor was the world’s first Russian yakuza?
I spent the next several hours knocking the crap out of my column. Once I even tried to headbutt it, but that turned out to be not such a good idea. Rettle checked up on me several times. He would stare at me in silence for a few minutes and disappear behind the door again. I was getting rather sick of this practice but was happy enough with the result. The column had already been looking quite beat-up, and I even managed to strike off several large bits of paint. “At such a pace I might finish this thing in a couple of months,” I thought.
Rettle didn’t tell me how long to practice, and I didn’t dare to ask, so I kept going and going. My uncle rescued me at last. He came down to the basement and told me to come along. Mike handed me my textbooks and an enormous list of homework assignments. He also brought all of my stuff from Jack’s place and an entire suitcase of things my mom forced upon him. There were twenty panties alone. To be honest, until then I hadn’t known I owned so many.
“And now, the pièce de résistance,” Mike gave me a sly smile, put a large square container on top of the suitcase and pulled off the lid. “A pie! Mom’s cooked a pie for you!”
It was not just any pie but mom’s signature apple charlotte – besides, twice the size of that she was usually cooking for the whole family. Mom must have decided to make up for all those days I was missing. The pie was shared among all Order members the same evening during the traditional dinner meal.
ns 15.158.61.4da2