The Jewels of Cyttorak Read online

  Remy only nodded and York looked relieved.

  “Good luck,” York said and turned in the direction he’d been heading.

  Remy stepped silently back into the shadows of a doorway and a moment later when York glanced around it was clear from his surprise that he couldn’t see Remy. LeBeau knew that, to York, he had simply disappeared off the street, an old thief’s trick.

  But a harder trick was going to be disappearing from the person who had watched their conversation. The person standing in the shadows half a block up the street.

  Remy had known he was there the entire time. Now to find out who he was.

  The rotting-flesh stench of the dying man seemed to fill every comer of the sterile, white room. The smell was thick, choking, and almost sweet. It covered the hospital bed, the nightstand, and the four high-tech monitoring machines against the wall like a thick film in a drank’s mouth after a long night’s binge. During the day, the smell was almost bearable, with the air conditioners going and the windows open, but now, late at night, the room was closed up and the smell seemed to be even thicker than normal.

  A rail-thin nurse with pale skin sat in a chair in front of the bank of machines and Gary Service, the younger son of the dying man, sat in a chair beside the bed.

  Robert Service, the older son, stood in the door, the smell keeping him out of the room like a wall. Somehow he hoped that a slight breeze of fresh air would cover him from the hall. He couldn’t imagine how his brother stood the smell that close to the old man for as long as he did. It seemed the kid was always at the old man’s side, helping the nurses, talking with the doctors.

  Robert, on the other hand, stayed in his office most of the time, on the far side of the huge Service mansion. He ignored the fact that his father was being eaten slowly by a nasty form of skin cancer. Someone had to watch after the family businesses, and with the old man dying, and Gary worthless when it came to such things, he was the one.

  And it suited him.

  Business in America was a ruthless place, where only the strong survived. And Robert considered himself ruthless. He planned on being one of the strong the day the old man passed into the next life. If Robert had his way, the Service millions would soon become the Service billions.

  The old man moaned and Gary looked up. Robert had to admit that the kid looked tired. His green eyes were circled with dark rings and his hair was uncombed. He had some sort of orange food on his shirt from helping dear old dad eat. The kid had a heart and he cared about the old man for some reason. And that was Gary’s biggest problem. He had a heart. He would never make a good businessman.

  “He’s coming around again,” Gary said, standing up so that he stood beside the old man, almost hovering. Beside the bed a faint beep-beep-beep signaled a slight increase in the old man’s heart rate. For some reason the old man had asked them both to be here, at this late hour of the night. Robert had no idea why, but that was true of many things his father did.

  “Good,” Robert said. He managed to choke back his disgust at the rotting smell of human flesh and moved a step into the room and closer to the bed. The old man had given him instructions to bring a large sealed package from the old man’s personal safe. It now rested on the stand near the bed.

  For two years, Robert had wondered what was in the heavy package, and had been looking forward to opening it the day his father died. Now it seemed he was going to

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  get the chance to see the contents just a little sooner than expected.

  The old man opened his eyes and slowly let them focus on the ceiling. There was still a hardness to those gray eyes. In his nightmares, Robert would see those eyes glaring at him as the old man took his belt and hit him over and over. Twice a week for years, Robert had survived the old man’s beatings, while Gary never seemed to be touched by the belt. Never hit by the old man. It would be a joyous day, as far as Robert was concerned, when his father never opened those vicious, gray eyes again.

  “Good,” the old man said, his voice hoarse. “You’re both here. Send the nurse away.”

  With a wave of his hand, Robert chased the woman in white out of the room and closed the door behind her, trapping himself with the rotting smell, his dying father, and his weak brother.

  “You brought the package?” his father asked, his voice gaining strength at the same time as the beeping from the machine increased in speed.

  “On the nightstand beside you,” Robert said.

  “Open it, please, Gary,” the old man said, his voice now firm and in control.

  Robert watched as Gary pulled open the tape and the brown paper wrapping from the package. Inside was an ornate wooden box, about the size of a woman’s travel jewelry case. A wax seal covered the edge of the box, molded over a thin clasp. From what Robert could tell, the box hadn’t been opened in years.

  “The jewel of the temple of Cyttorak,” the old man

  said, staring at the still unopened box. ‘ ‘It must never be touched.”

  “What?” Robert asked, stepping closer to the bed and the box, even though the smell pushed at him.

  “Father,” Gary said, putting a hand gently on the decaying skin of the old man’s arm. “I think you should start from the beginning.”

  The old man nodded. “Open the box first. And be careful to not touch the jewel.”

  Gary nodded and used his fingernail to slice open the wax seal covering a small brass latch. Then he slowly raised the lid.

  Robert gasped.

  Gary said, “Oh, my.”

  Inside the box, on a soft bed of white silk, was the largest emerald Robert had ever seen. At least half the size of his fist. It seemed to fill the area around the box with a green glow, as if it had an energy all its own.

  Robert stepped over closer to his brother and stared at the emerald. The thing had to be worth millions, at least. He wanted more than anything to reach down and pick up the wonderful-looking stone.

  “Be very careful,” the old man said. “You must never touch the emerald. Ever.”

  Robert glanced at the old man who kept repeating the same craziness. The cancer must finally be getting to his brain, he thought. Robert moved back away from the choking smell of the dying man. “I think it’s time for that story, now.”

  The old man nodded.

  “It happened back when I was stationed in Korea

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  with the Army Corps of Engineers. My unit was working on building a bunker in what looked to be the remains of an old temple built into a rock cliff. One hot morning, out of the blue, an old monk approached us and told us a story of the former god of the temple, a monstrous being named Cyttorak.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a Korean name to me,” Robert

  said.

  “It’s not,” the old man said. “The monk told us the god was before time, and not from our world. He said the temple was not a place for man.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Of course not,” the old man said, snorting, then coughing at the effort. After a moment he went on. ‘ ‘When it became clear we would not leave, the old monk warned us that if we should find any gems, to never touch them, for fear of setting Cyttorak free on the earth again.” “Setting him free, huh?” Robert laughed.

  His father ignored the interruption and continued. ‘ ‘Then the monk left. We got a good laugh from the story and went back to work.”

  Robert nodded. From his memory of his hard-nosed father, that sounded right. More likely they ran the old monk off into the trees at gunpoint, but there was no reason to suggest that now.

  “Three days later, while exploring a caved-in area under the temple, we found an old statue. It was a huge chunk of carved rock that showed an ugly beast of a creature sitting on a throne. His hands were extended outward, as if at one time he’d been holding something in each.” “Let me guess,” Robert said. “Cyttorak.”

  “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?”

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  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?