Before the men’s combined sexual assault could proceed in earnest, however, the door burst open, and there stood Tippawan, looking uncharacteristically nervous and apprehensive. He was accompanied by Hrothgar, who the girls had not seen since that fateful day upon which they had first been brought to this hell. The huge, tattooed warrior wore a strange expression on his long face, an look that rapidly morphed into one of tempestuous fury as he took in the scene before him.
‘What the fuck is going on here?!’ he roared, the vociferousness of his bellow shaking the walls. ‘Who the fuck said you could get a blowjob out of this bitch?! She’s off limits! And you, you ugly shitbag, get your hand out of the girl’s panties or you’ll have nothing but a fucking stump left on that arm!’
The obese man turned and glared at Hrothgar; he was not intimidated, not with his contingent of burly bodyguards with him. He tightened his grip on Adriana’s hair and pulled her face more forcefully into his crotch, and muttered an order in Japanese to his subordinates. In a flash blades appeared in each man’s hand; tantos, all three wickedly sharp. Hrothgar stared calmly at each blade for a second or two, acknowledging the razor-edged twelve-inch lengths of steel as if each was a living entity.
‘You just made a very, very big mistake,’ he growled at the men, his hard gaze engaging each of them in turn.
Without a word, the three of them attacked him simultaneously. Tippawan shrieked with fright and bolted the moment the fracas erupted, but Hrothgar simply howled like a wolf, a berserker’s madness blazing with abrupt ferocity in his eyes as the howl morphed into a maniacal, ear-splitting cackle.
The two men closest to him lunged for his torso, the one on his left aiming to slip his tanto through Hrothgar’s ribs, and the one on his right trying to stab his blade into the hulking Northman’s chest. The third assailant charged him head-on, his tanto raised above his head for a downward strike. Hrothgar’s lanky build and lumbering gait belied the speed and finesse with which he could move when necessary, and neither of his attackers expected him to react nearly as fast as he did. Indeed, his beastwalker powers enhanced his physical capabilities so effectively that his movements were a blur of barely perceptible speed. He jerked his left knee up, crashing it in a perfectly timed uppercut into his assailant’s wrist, sending the tanto flying before it made contact with his ribs, and in the same motion he swivelled his leg, turning the move into a question mark kick, and slugged his shin across the man’s face with the force of a heftily swung baseball bat, knocking him out cold. He simultaneously caught the other man’s wrist, twisting it sharply with elephantine strength. With a wet crack the man’s wrist broke, and the tanto clattered to the floor, but Hrothgar did not stop there; he yanked his unwitting foe right across his chest, dropping down to smash a headbutt into his face as the man careened into him. This also had the convenient effect of providing Hrothgar with a human shield, just as the third gangster plunged his dagger downward in a stab that would have penetrated the fleshy hollow between his throat and his collarbone. Instead, because of the giant’s rapidity of movement and expert positioning, the stabbing tanto slammed with a dull thud into the upper back of the man Hrothgar was gripping against his chest.
The man howled with pain, but Hrothgar showed neither restraint nor mercy. With his free hand he rocketed out a vicious right hook, decking the man who had just stabbed his own comrade, and then, as the stunned thug dropped to the ground, his jaw broken, Hrothgar spun the screaming man in front of him around, plucked the tanto out of his back, and then sliced one of his ears off – which he tossed into the air, giggling crazily like a possessed schoolgirl, and caught in his mouth as if it was a casually tossed peanut. Blood gushed in a crimson wash down the now-earless side of the howling gangster’s face, and Hrothgar chewed on the severed appendage, laughing as he crunched the cartilage and macerated the soft flesh between his teeth.
While the screaming man clutched at the gaping wound where his ear had just been, Hrothgar spat out the chewed-up ear and shoved the man away from him. As the unfortunate thug stumbled forward, Hrothgar spun around in a perfectly executed tornado kick – which he did more for effect and his own amusement than for its effectiveness – that caught the fellow on the side of his head and rocketed him into a wall, which he hit with a percussive thump. He, like his comrades, fell unconscious, and his limp body slithered down the wall towards the floor, leaving a fat vertical smear of blood on it as it did.
Only the Yakuza boss was still standing. The whites of his eyes glistened with fear, his gaze locked on the tanto that Hrothgar was twirling his hand with menacing skill. There was neither time for fear nor pleading, though: with a speedy lunge Hrothgar darted forward and slammed his fingers around the man’s flabby throat, and then lifted him inch by inch off the ground with one hand. He dangled the choking man in the air for a few moments, locking a stare of withering aggression into his eyes all the while, and then he slammed him up against a wall.
‘Listen, scum,’ he growled in English, not caring whether the man understood or not, ‘you and your stupid lackeys will get the fuck out of my club now, and you will never, ever show your
