The Jewels of Cyttorak (3 page)

“Most likely,” the old man said, ignoring the sarcasm in his son’s voice. “It sure spooked about half my crew. Over the years that we were in that godforsaken country, my crew and I had seen a lot of strange things. That statue in that old temple was one of the strangest.” “So, Father,” Gary said, “how’d you find the emerald?’ ’

“Not exactly sure,” he said, shaking his head from side to side. ‘ ‘All I remember is it being late at night and I found myself being drawn up to our construction area. The two guards I had posted on the place startled me awake, as if I’d been sleepwalking or something.”

“Not a good thing to be doing in Korea,” Robert said. “At least from what I have heard about the place.” The father choked out a half laugh. “You have that right.”

‘ ‘Go on,” Gary said, again touching the rotting flesh of the old man.

The old man looked for a long moment at the glowing emerald in its case on the medical stand, then went on with his story. “I decided that there must have been something drawing me there that night, so I went ahead and did a quick inspection of our bunker, just to see if anything was wrong. After the inspection, I found myself wandering back into the old temple and down near the statue. In the darkness, I spotted the green glow coming from one wall right across from the statue. When I dug at the glow with a shovel, the emerald dropped out.” “And you didn’t touch it?” Gary asked.

“I almost did,” the old man said. “I wanted to.” “Then you remembered the monk’s words, right?”

u

Robert said, managing not to laugh at the story.

“Actually, that’s right,” the old man said, glaring with those cold gray eyes at Robert.

Robert only returned the stare and after a moment his father looked away, glancing at the emerald before he continued.

“I picked up the emerald with a shovel, wrapped it in some cloth, and stuck it in a backpack. I never told a person about it until today.”

“All because of the words of a monk almost thirty years ago?” Robert asked.

The old man only nodded, his eyes going slightly vacant, as if telling the story had taken some of the last of his strength.

“And you didn’t use the gem as collateral to help build our business? You just kept it hidden?” Robert couldn’t believe that his father wouldn’t have used such a valuable gem to his best advantage, especially since he came back from Korea totally broke and built a million-dollar fortune since,

“That’s right,” the old man said. “No one has seen it until tonight. Not even your mother, God rest her soul.” “Well,” Robert said, “I don’t intend to let a stupid legend stop me from having this stone checked out.” With two quick steps through the thick smell of cancer-rotting flesh, he moved to where Gary had placed the box on the medicine table near the bed.

“No!” the old man said.

Gary moved to stop him, but far too late.

He reached into the box and picked up the green emerald of Cyttorak.

His first thought was that the old man must have wired the gem with an electrical current. His hand froze to the surface of the stone like a kid’s tongue to an ice-covered flagpole.

The energy charged his arm, filling his chest and head with a feeling of strength, like nothing he had never felt before.

Then the energy surged, as if the first jolt had only been a faint test.

He screamed and closed his eyes as the energy pushed and shoved its way into his body, filling him like a balloon, pushing out at his skin as if trying to make him explode.

And then, as if suddenly opening his eyes on a new day, he understood what was happening. He was becoming stronger, bigger, more powerful than ever before.

Yet there was something missing. As his strength and energy increased, he could sense that it was only a part of the full power he might have. He knew that the stone he’d touched was only part of what had once been a larger stone. And that now that he had touched the stone, he needed the other parts, more than he needed anything else. He would never be complete until he had them all together.

With a sudden snap the surging energy from the emerald let him go.

He slowly opened his eyes.

His father and brother both cowered together, staring up at him, their eyes wide, their mouths open.

The room around him seemed strange now to him, as if he were looking at it from another perspective. With a quick glance around, then down at his own tattered clothes, he realized what had happened.

He had physically gotten bigger.

Much bigger.

He squeezed his hands and stretched his arms.

Much stronger, too.

Where before he could have never reached the seven-foot ceiling of the room, now he touched it without a problem.

He glared down at his father and enjoyed the look of fear in those awful gray eyes. It was a look he’d never seen in them before and it pleased him.

“Are—are you all right?” Gary asked, his voice shaking with fear.

“Better than ever,” he said. His voice was so loud it shook the machines monitoring his father.

He held up the emerald and studied it. Now it didn’t seem to glow as it had moments before. Its energy had transferred to him. He knew that, as he knew that this was only a fragment of a much more powerful stone.

As he knew he would never rest until he had the remaining parts of the emerald.

He laughed and his laugh seemed to fill the room and shake the curtains pulled over the window. Now he would be stronger and more powerful than he had ever hoped. And that extra power fit right in with his plans to be the richest and most powerful man alive.    •

“I warned you—his father said.

“And like always, Father,” Robert said, bellowing down at the old man, “you were wrong. If you’d have touched your precious emerald, you wouldn’t be lying

there rotting away like a dead fish in the hot sun. But now there is nothing you can do, is there? I’m no longer a child to be beaten at your whim. Now, I’m the strong one. How does it feel,
Father
?”

The old man’s face was filled with intense fear as he stared up from his bed.

The beeping on the heart monitor intensified and suddenly shrill alarms sounded.

“Nurse!” Gary shouted as the old man clutched his chest and snapped his eyes closed in response to the pain.

Robert only laughed, then turned and headed for the door, the emerald in his hand. He had work to do, an empire to build. And two more parts of the emerald to find to complete his power.

At the door he had to duck to pass through. And that made him laugh all the way to his office.

There were longer and longer stretches of time in which Cain Marko’s greatest desire was to just be left alone.

As a kid growing up with a sadistic father, Cain was often left alone. And back then he didn’t want it that way. Then, all he wanted was a kind word from his father, a show of any sort of affection, any kind of positive attention. But what he got were cold looks, indifference, and physical abuse. So much coldness in fact that he grew up hating his family. He hated his father for his coldness, his stepmother for her weakness, and his stepbrother Charles for the favoritism his father showed because the little kid was smart.

But now, years later, as the Juggernaut, he more often than not just wanted to be left alone with his own thoughts and the peace of each day. It hadn’t been that way when he had first become the Juggernaut. Then all he had wanted to do was smash things. Anything that got in his way. Or even thought of getting in his way.

That had been years ago. Now, peace and quiet was sufficient.

But today, as with many other times over the years, peace and quiet wasn’t to be.

Around him the warm day and thick, humid air wrapped the Ohio countryside in a sense of serenity. He had found an old, abandoned farmhouse sitting in some ragged trees on a slight rise. From the looks of the well-tended fields around it, some larger farm had bought this

one and just left the family house to crumble with time. Now the paint was long since scoured from the wood, leaving it gray and cracked. The roof leaked and rats had built nests in the walls. Marko felt almost sorry for the place. At some time in the past the old place looked to have held a family. Maybe even a happy family. Marko could only hope.

Now, for Cain Marko, the Juggernaut, the old farmhouse was perfect. He had spent the last two days just hanging out around the old building, enjoying the quiet. In the mornings he wandered the fields and the nearby dirt roads, in the afternoon he sat on what remained of the back porch, just leaning against the building and staring out over the land. Two days now and it had been the longest stretch of peacefulness that he could remember. And if he got his way, he’d just stay right here for the summer.

He had just returned to the porch after a walk and was just sitting his huge frame gently down on the old, faded wood, when the pain hit.

Pain in his chest, almost like he would have imagined a heart attack might feel like.

But he was the Juggernaut. He didn’t feel pain.

And he would never have a heart attack, not as long as the Crimson Ruby of Cyttorak was attached to his chest.

He had felt impacts in fights in the past, but never pain, not since the day he’d picked up the ruby in that old temple. It had transformed him into the Juggernaut, an unstoppable force. And with his armor, including his helmet, nothing could hurt him.

Now suddenly, something was hurting him.

He grabbed his chest and roared, shaking the old building around him.

But the pain didn’t diminish.

Or increase.

He pounded on his chest as if he were playing King Kong climbing the Empire State Building, hoping to knock the pain out and away.

That didn’t change it.

It was just a solid aching pain around the ruby on his chest. And it was starting to make him mad.

Really mad.

He smashed a fist through the wood floor of the porch, then stopped.

He forced himself to take a deep breath.

Come on, pal,
he said to himself.
Get a grip. Breaking up this old place ain ’t gonna help.

Another big, deep breath and he could sense something. A direction? Was the pain coming from the outside?

“Weird,” he said aloud.

He stood and moved out into the open grassy area that had once been the farmhouse’s front yard. There he stopped, facing south, and took a third deep breath to calm his anger just a touch.

Nothing. The pain continued, just like he remembered feeling from a bad toothache he’d had when he was a kid. His father had ignored his requests to go to a dentist for three days. Three days of intense pain that Cain remembered very clearly.

Now he was feeling that same kind of pain again.

And he didn’t like it today anymore than he did then.

When the Juggernaut didn’t like something, he pounded on it until there was nothing left to pound on. Somehow, he’d find what was causing this pain and pound it like he’d never pounded anything before.

He took another deep breath and turned to face west.

He wasn’t sure, but it felt as if the pain might have increased slightly. It was as if the ruby was trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t understand. He had never really gained any increased intelligence from the ruby, only massive strength.

He quickly turned to the north and the pain went back to its original level. And now he could sense a little more. Something was interfering with the power into the ruby. Something was cutting at the bands of Cyttorak where his power came from. He knew that, but he didn’t know how he knew that.

For the first time in a very long time, he was worried. If the power of the ruby was cut, he’d just be a regular human being again. Someone who could be hurt and killed. He’d been the Juggernaut for so long he could no longer imagine just being a regular human. There was no way he was going to let that happen without a fight, that was for sure.

He faced east and the pain went down slightly. Inside his head he could sense that was the right direction, as if something through the stone was telling him so.

So east it was.

Without a look back at the abandoned farmhouse, he started off across the field, paying no attention to what was in his way ahead.

j*.

Nothing was going to stop him until he found out who or what was causing him this pain.

And then he would stop it. Hard.

Gary Service took a long, deep breath and stepped back away from his father’s death bed. The nurse had managed to calm the old man enough to stop the heart attack from being serious and give him some medication. Now he slept, his breath wheezing in and out, once in a while catching, making Gary wonder if that was the last breath for old man Service, or not.

Gary felt numb inside.

He forced himself to move out into the hall and down toward the darkened kitchen. What had happened to Robert was not something he could have even imagined. As always, Robert had been angry, defying their father at every turn. And Gary would have expected that if the old man said, “Don’t touch,” then Robert would touch.

Gary laughed aloud and the sound echoed off the polished wooden floor and high ceilings of the hallway. Maybe the old man had
wanted
Robert to touch the gem after all. Maybe the old man figured it would serve Robert right, but it was clear the result was not what the old man had expected. Not at all.