Like moonglow.

With deep dark spaces between each isolated, recessed, barely perceptible light.

Savage felt overwhelmed, awestruck, as if he entered a temple. The dojo, though in semidarkness, exuded an aura. Of sanctity. Of solemnity.

It was redolent of the sweat and pain… the discipline and humility… the mysticism of the Oriental martial arts. Mind and body, soul and sinew, combined as one. A sacred place. And as Savage inhaled its holy fragrance, stepping forward, metal slid against polished metal.

Not a scrape, not a grating sound, not a rasp, but a smooth, oiled, slippery hiss that made Savage's scalp prickle.

Not one hiss, but many. All around him. The dark walls seem to come alive, to swell and give birth. Gleaming objects appeared, reflecting the dim, widely separated bulbs that rimmed the ceiling. Long, curved, glinting blades apparently hung in midair. Then the walls gave birth again, shadows emerging, assuming the shapes of men dressed totally in black, with hoods and masks that covered their faces. They'd been perfectly camouflaged against the walls, and each gripped a sword he'd drawn from a scabbard.

Where Savage stood a third of the way into the dojo, he pivoted and saw that he was flanked on every side. His spine froze. He drew his Beretta.

Rachel moaned.

Glancing toward the open door, Savage frantically wondered how he could concentrate on fighting to get Rachel out and at the same time not be distracted by the need to keep Rachel from getting hurt. The Beretta held fifteen rounds. But there were certainly more than fifteen opponents. The shots would be deafening, however, the muzzle flashes a distraction. The swordsmen might hesitate for a couple of seconds, enough time for us to get through the door and start scrambling down the stairs! he thought.

But while he thought, the door was slammed shut. Swordsmen stepped in front of it. Savage's stomach sank. In desperation, he aimed toward the men who blocked the door.

Lights blazed, searing, blinding, the murky dojo suddenly as bright as the sun. Savage jerked a hand toward his eyes, frantic to shield them from the stabbing rays. In that instant, his only warning was a swift, subtle brush of air, an unseen swordsman lunging toward him. The Beretta was yanked from Savage's grasp. Powerful fingers paralyzed nerves in his hand, preventing him from firing. Distraught, Savage blinked, fighting to focus his eyes, to erase the white-hot image of multiple suns temporarily imprinted on his vision.

At last his pupils adjusted to the glare. He lowered his hand, his chest cramping, cold despite the heat of the lights, and studied his captors. He understood now that their masks had not only helped to camouflage them in the shadows but that the eyeslits in the masks had guarded the swordsmen's vision from the sudden disorienting glare.

Rachel moaned again, but Savage was forced to ignore her distress, to focus his attention, every instinct, on his captors. Without a weapon, he couldn't hope to fight them with any chance of escaping. He and Rachel would be sliced to pieces!

But the man who yanked the pistol away could have cut me in half while I was Blinded, Savage thought. Instead he stepped back to the wall, his sword raised like the others. Does that mean they're not sure what to do with us, whether to kill us or-?

As if on command-but without any perceptible signal passing among them-they abruptly stepped forward. The dojo seemed to shrink. Then they lowered their swords, tips aimed toward Savage and Rachel, and the dojo shrank even more.

Another step forward, each of the numerous footfalls almost silent on the tatami mats, just a faint sibilance as if the woven reeds exhaled from the weight upon them.

Savage pivoted slowly, tensely, judging the room, searching for exits, for the slightest sign of weakness on any flank. But even if I do see a possible exit, a corridor, anything, he thought, there's no way I can get Rachel past those swords without a weapon!

The masked, hooded figures stepped forward yet again, blades pointing, gleaming, their presence more constricting, and as Savage kept pivoting, his eyes narrowed fiercely toward the wall opposite the one through which he and Rachel had entered. At the same time, another undetectable signal seemed to pass eerily around the room, and the swordsmen stopped their relentless advance. The dojo-virtually silent to begin with-became as silent as the dead.

Except for Rachel's repeated moans.

The swordsmen who'd proceeded from the wall at the far end of the dojo shifted to the right and left, leaving a gap through which a man who'd been hidden behind them stepped forward. He too gripped a sword and was dressed in black, complete with a hood and mask. Unlike the others, he was short, gaunt as opposed to lithe, his tentative footsteps suggesting fragility. He pulled off his hood and removed his mask, revealing the almost bald skull and wrinkled features of an elderly Japanese, his gray mustache and dark-yet-glowing eyes the only features that prevented his face from looking mummified.

But Savage had the nerve-tingling impression that the tentative footsteps were actually the product of stealth, that his fragility was deceptive, that this old man could be more adept and dangerous than any of the others.

Scowling at Savage and Rachel, the old man gestured with his sword as if he intended to slash.

He suddenly darted, each stride as fast as an eyeblink.

But he didn't slash toward Savage.

Rachel!

Savage lunged in front of her, prepared to sweep with his arms, hoping to deflect the blade, to duck under it, and chop the brittle-looking bones of the old man's throat. He didn't stop to consider what the blade would do to him if he failed. He didn't matter. Rachel did!

Savage's gesture was reflexive, his instincts making it impossible for him to do anything else but fulfill his profession's mandate-to protect.

In a blur he braced himself, straining to prepare for the greater blur of the old man's lunge, the flashing edge of the speeding blade so fast that Savage could barely see it. He parried with his arm, though he knew before he began, knew in his soul, his attempt was futile.

But I can't just give up!

I can't let the sword hit Rachel!

He imagined the blade flicking through his forearm, the stub of his hand and wrist flipping through the air, his arteries pulsing crimson. But he didn't flinch as he misjudged the old man's timing and parried too soon, his arm exposed as his soul had predicted.

He stared defiantly, and the blade stopped with startling abruptness, as if an invisible force had blocked it. The sword's polished, gleaming edge hovered rigidly against the sleeve of Savage's jacket. With fear-intensified vision, everything magnified before him, and he saw severed threads on his sleeve.

Jesus.

Savage exhaled, adrenaline flooding through him, volcanic heat erupting upward toward his chest.

The old man squinted at him, jerked his chin down, a curt nod, and barked an incomprehensible question.

But not to Savage, instead to someone behind him, though how Savage knew this he wasn't sure-because the old man's searing eyes, as searing as the spotlights, never wavered from Savage's defiant gaze.

“Hai,” someone answered in the background, and Savage's heart swelled, for he recognized the voice.

“Akira?” Savage had never spoken anyone's name more intensely or with greater confusion.

“Hai,” Akira answered again and appeared through the gap in the swordsmen. Like them he wore black clothing, almost like pajamas but the material rugged. un like them, he had no hood and mask. His handsome rectangular face, seeming all the more rectangular because his short black hair was combed straight from left to right, the part in his hair severe, had a somberness that made Savage frown. The melancholy in Akira's eyes had become more deep, more brooding, more profound.