Chapter 1

I guess all of us do stupid things at one time or another, but this one almost cost me my life. I had moved to Boston from New Haven, more on a whim than anything else. My name is Helen Ashcroft of THE Ashcrofts of New Haven. That meant that I had access to more money than I could ever hope to spend and no interest in working for a living. I had just finished my Liberal Arts degree at UConn where I failed to catch a husband. At least, that's the way my mother felt about it. In fact, I guess that I had moved to Boston to escape her eternal matchmaking.

I'm no Lesbian, but I can't get interested on the insipid BOYS she insisted in bringing around for me to meet. I might have changed my mind if she had included one MAN in the bunch. Well, so much for that. I rented a large old home in one of the ritzier sections of town and looked around for something to do between parties. I wasn't going to do housework, so I hired an older, female live in housekeeper/manager, Mrs. Martha Hoskins, to look after things for me and to keep the place clean. I had a lot of fun decorating the old mansion, for that was what it was, but I kind of lost interest after that, except as a place to crash at night if nothing better was available.

Martha was often on my case to do something with my life, but I just frittered away my time. Finally, more to shut her up than anything else, I volunteered for one of the major charities, the "Boston Samaritans", in the city. I wasn't interested in being another one of the office girls, so I took a job delivering the food, clothing, and sometimes money, that the charity handed out to the deserving poor around the city. This was enough to shut Martha up, except that she kept after me to be careful. Of course, I paid no attention to her warnings.

Juan Hernandez, the leader of a local street gang, the Gatos (Tom Cats) was talking to a couple of his henchmen. "Compadres, we need to branch out. We have pretty well sewn up the sex and drug distribution rackets in our section of the metro area, so we need to look for a new source of income. What do you think of moving into the protection racket?"

Julio Garcia said, "That sounds like a good idea, hefe, but we may have trouble finding some gringo with enough money to make it worth our effort."

"You have hit the nail on the head, Julio. We could make a nice income from the local merchants, since there are so many of them, but there would be a lot of overhead just from the sheer number of people involved. No, I have a different target in mind. The Boston Samaritans is a big charitable operation that has a lot of exposure in our area. They have a lot of money, so they should pay well to have their delivery people 'protected' from the low-life scum that are so active around here." That brought a laugh and complete agreement from those present at the meeting.

I was making my last delivery of the day to an apartment complex that had seen much better days. I had an armload of food and a couple of blankets that I needed to deliver to the apartment on the fourth floor. Of course, the elevator was out, so I had to climb the stairs with my arms full of the items that I was delivering. I dropped off my load at the apartment and started back down the stairs where I was stopped by five men blocking my way.

"Please let me by, Gentlemen. I've had a long day and I would like to go home and rest."

"Si, Senorita, we will let you by, but we would like a few minutes of your time, first."

"I really am in a hurry. Please move aside so I can go punch out."

"Don't worry, Senorita, we will be happy to punch you out. TAKE HER, MUCHACHOS!"

Four of the men grabbed me and began pulling my clothes off. I screamed for help, but none came. The residents of the building knew well when to mind their own business. I was naked in only seconds and lying on the floor on my back. The leader dropped his pants and proceeded to rape me. The pain was terrible as the dry rubbing tore my skin until the blood finally provided some lubrication. Before they were through with me, each of the five had taken two turns with me.

I have no idea how long I was in their power, but they finally tired of torturing me and left me lying on the third-floor landing, naked and bleeding. Someone got up the courage to call 911 after those bastards had left. The EMTs showed up and carted me off to a hospital ER. They were polite, but they acted as if they had seen this sort of call too many times, already.

I was in the hospital for a week before I was sent home to the care of Martha. As a parting word, one of the doctors told me that I was so messed up internally that he doubted that I could ever carry a child. This was something that affected my mother more than it did me, since I was seething with hatred for the men who had raped me and had no interest in a child at the moment. I finally banished my mother back to New Haven because I was tired of hearing her saying "I told you so" a multitude of times every day.

Martha took very good care of me and was well aware of my desire for revenge against the rapists. In fact, she agreed with me. Unfortunately, I had no idea of how to go about getting the revenge I so yearned for. Then, one day, I figured it out.

While I was stuck in bed, there was not much to do but to read and watch TV. I kind of gravitated to the movie channels and spent most of my time watching one movie after another. One day, one of the channels, Cinemax I think it was, ran a superhero marathon. It was mostly devoted to the Batman series, both the first and second sets.

That's when it hit me: I could become a superhero like Batman, Batgirl, and Cat Woman. All I needed to do was to develop my strength and agility and to learn to use the appropriate weapons. I certainly had the money to indulge myself, and I now had no need to seek male companionship, since I considered that part of my body closed territory, at least for now.

Immediately, I began to search the web for ideas. The persona I came up with was Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night and the mother of Nemesis. The fact that Nemesis had no father really appealed to me!

Martha was initially shocked at my idea, but she gradually came around as I explained my plan to her. She even volunteered to help me get some of the things that I would need.

One of the first things I did was to hire a physical therapist and trainer to get me into the best physical condition that I could manage. I'm 5'-4" tall and weigh about 120 pounds. The problem was that none of that was muscle, metaphorically speaking. It took six months of damned hard work, but I converted that 120 pounds of mostly fat into 130 pounds of hard muscle. My trainer warned me that I had to keep working at it every day, or I would easily slip back to my previous condition. I thanked her and resolved to keep at it, at least until my revenge was satisfied.

As soon as I was able, I signed up for a martial arts course and for a shooting course. I had decided what kind of weapons I was going to use. For one thing, I was not going to pussyfoot around being careful not to kill any of my enemies. I decided to learn commando fighting methods with the knife and the Fairbairn stick-fighting techniques. The problem was in finding someone to teach me. Nobody advertised this sort of tutorship, so I had to resort to a private investigator to find a place for me to take classes. He found a place for me in Worcester, so I went out to that city to see what I could do to arrange lessons.

Sensei Douglas was not about to admit that he taught killing methods, but I finally wore him down, and he accepted me as a student. Sensei Douglas was ex special-ops, so I figured to get the training that I needed. He got a Fairbairn-Sykes knife for me, as well as a baton made of laminated oak and bamboo. The baton was one inch in diameter and 20 inches long. Don't kid yourself, that was a killing weapon when properly used.