Leah and Will both nodded, and Jin walked over to the nearby closet to retrieve their sleeping bags, provided that Dorigan’s men had put them back in their proper place.
Yet when Jin opened the closet door, a large, meaty something collapsed on top of him. Jin fell onto his back with a curse and gave an even louder curse when he realized it was a body. With a violent shove, he threw the body off him and jumped back to his feet, swearing.
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
His shout attracted the attention of Leah and Will, who both rushed forward to see what had caused it.
“Jin, what’s…?” Leah started to ask, only to give a frightened exclamation of her own upon seeing the body.
“Oh shit…” Will breathed, stumbling back into the couch.
Putting aside his shock, Jin moved closer and knelt to examine the body and noticed almost at once that its head was missing. What truly disturbed and unsettled Jin, however (for he’d seen many headless corpses), was what the body was dressed in.
These are Mark’s clothes, he thought, even his mental voice wavering slightly.
For some reason, inexplicable even to him, Jin looked back over to the closet.
Just there, by the body’s feet, was Mark Donovan’s head.
“Ah no,” Jin groaned weakly. “Oh no, no.”
He let himself fall back onto his legs, and only half-heard the sounds of distress that indicated both Leah and Will had seen Mark’s head.
“Damn you, Dorigan,” Jin said, voice tight with suppressed grief. “Goddamn you!”
For a whole minute, Jin was dead to the world. For all the nightmare scenarios he’d played out in his mind, he’d never once thought that Mark would die. He’d always thought Mark would be able to survive. To have the exact opposite not only become reality, but have it thrown in his face in such a blatant, inescapable manner…
A deep, guttural growl emanated from within Jin’s throat, and he rose slowly to his feet.
“The two of you stay here,” he half-growled at Leah and Will.
Without another word, Jin turned on his heel and left the room, marching down the stairs and back out to his car.
“Will, stay here,” Leah said to her son.
Will nodded, and Leah took off after Jin. She caught up to him outside just as he lifted open his trunk and revealed a large black duffle bag.
“Jin,” she asked. “What are you doing?”
“Too many,” Jin mumbled, not paying attention to her.
“What did you say?”
“He’s killed too many people, this has gone on for far too long.”
Jin unzipped the duffle bag and revealed to Leah the host of firearms and ammunition that was stored inside. One by one, without speaking, Jin grabbed, loaded and cocked each firearm.
“What are you going to do?” Leah asked.
“I’m gonna find him,” Jin said as he loaded his Mossberg 590, “and then, I’m gonna kill him.”
Jin cocked the shotgun, and then tossed it back in the trunk. Satisfied now that all of his guns had been loaded, Jin slammed the trunk closed and walked over to the driver’s side. He opened the door, but before he could sit down and close it, Leah ran over to his side.
“Jin, wait!” she pleaded.
Slowly, begrudgingly, Jin stopped.
Leah came up to him and placed her hands on his arms.
“I…I don’t want you to go,” she said.
The soft purity of her voice disarmed Jin’s driving rage, and he sighed as he felt himself calm down against his will.
“Leah,” he said, equally softly. “I have to go. I cannot let him live, I…I can’t!”
“But…Jin…” Leah began.
This time it was Jin who cut her off. He placed his hands on her shoulders and looked her in the eye. Though his eyes were haunted by the darkness of his life, the small, honest smile he wore beneath them gave a measure of warmth to his expression.
“Leah, listen,” he said. “Regardless of what you’ve been through, you’ve found your peace in life, and that’s great but…it’s not the same for me. I will not have peace, my soul will not have peace, until that man lies dead at my feet, by my hand.”
With every word he spoke, more and more emotions worked their way into Jin’s system. Hatred, rage, pain, sorrow, and love all mixed together in both his heart and voice, which shook more and more as he went on.
“I…I love you, Leah,” he continued, the words spilling forth before he could stop them. “I honestly do. You’re unlike anyone else I’ve ever met, and you have given me so much hope that my life can get better after this is all over.”
Leah’s breath caught at Jin’s admission, but he continued on before she could say anything.
“But none of that matters now because I can’t move on. Not yet. Dorigan has done too much to too many people and I…”
But here Jin’s words failed him. His emotions, all of them, had grabbed on to his vocal chords and held them in an unrelenting chokehold.
But Leah was not encumbered by such feelings, and though she felt pain herself, she knew that it was nothing at all compared to Jin’s. Even though he’d never said it, she knew that Jin held himself responsible for the deaths of all the people Dorigan had killed in the last five years, as well as the pain inflicted on the survivors. Mark, Mordechai, Jin’s own children, each of these deaths haunted Jin like ghosts, and she knew he would never be free of them until he brought their murderer to justice.
“Shh,” she said, laying a gentle hand on the side of Jin’s face. “Shh, it’s alright. I understand.”
Jin looked at Leah, his eyes moist with tears he strove to hold back.
“You’re going to do what you need to do,” she said gently. “And I’ll be here when you finish.”
Those words, spoken with purity and honesty, unclenched Jin’s vocal chords and allowed him to climb out of the whirlpool of his own emotions. Without a word, Jin reached into his pocket and withdrew a large silver and black signet ring. On the face of the ring was a silver dragon curled around a sword.
“My master gave me this ring,” Jin explained. “When he appointed me as the Elder Black Dragon, leader of the Black Dragon Clan.”
“Why are you giving it to me?” Leah asked.
Jin looked away.
“All my life,” he said, “I’ve viewed everything as a question of when, not if. I knew that if I was strong enough, if I was fast enough, if I was skilled enough, if I was smart enough…if I was the best, everything was only a matter of time.”
With a resigned sigh, Jin looked back at Leah.
“I give you this ring because I’m not sure anymore. I’m not sure if I’m fast enough, I’m not sure if I’m strong enough. I’m not sure if I’m the best anymore.”
Leah looked up at Jin, and she could see that he meant everything he was saying, and how much it hurt his pride.
“I give you this ring,” he said finally, “because I finally think that the question of when…has become a question of if.”
With that, Jin slid into the driver’s seat of his car and turned the ignition. He idled there for a moment, and then he turned to Leah one last time.
“If I’m not back by dawn,” he said, “call Carlos. Mark should have his number in his cell phone. He’ll be able to erase you, get you and your son brand-new lives. Dorigan will never be able to find you.”
Without sparing another word, Jin closed the door and pushed on the accelerator, driving off toward his final fight, at Dorigan’s mansion.
Chronicles of the Apocalypse
--<(0)>--
Part 1: Revenge, Everything is Nothing
Chapter 22: Hate vs. Hate
As he left Pine Lake behind him, so to did Jin abandon his emotional restraint. The hatred and rage he felt toward Dorigan, previously shackled to the bottom of his heart, he unchained. Memories of his children’s smiling faces came to him, followed swiftly by the knowledge that Dorigan had murdered them. That knowledge
served as the ignition spark, setting off a blazing firestorm to which Jin gave himself freely.
Immersed in his rage, and single-mindedly focused on his objective, it was no time at all before Jin crashed his Mustang through the gates of Dorigan’s estate. There were no guards stationed to shout at him, no snipers on the grounds to shoot at him, all indications were that Dorigan wanted to fight him – personally.
It would be his funeral.
Jin brought his Mustang before the large stone staircase that led to the oak doors of the castle-mansion and got out. Yet as he walked up the stairs, the overwhelming silence of the night started to unnerve him. There was something wrong in the air; Jin could feel it. At the top of the staircase, Jin slowly pushed his way through the double oak doors, and in a mirror of the grounds outside, he found the entrance hall completely deserted. The only thing before him was another series of staircases that led up to the meeting hall, with doors and hallways spaced evenly along the sides leading to other areas of the castle-mansion.
The lack of guards unsettled Jin, for it was a clear sign that Dorigan was no longer afraid of him. Given what Dorigan was trying to do with Project Hellbound, the possible reasons for Dorigan’s lack of fear were very disturbing. Nevertheless, as Jin climbed the stairs to the meeting hall, his rage and hatred toward Dorigan flared back up and burned his fears to ash.
Reasons, doubts, and fears were irrelevant.
All that mattered was Dorigan’s death.
Everything after that could wait.
Upon entering the meeting hall, Jin found it just as deserted as the rest of the castle-mansion. This now angered Jin. Did Dorigan really think so little of him?
Well, Jin thought with a sneer. If he does, he’s going to be in for a very nasty surprise.
With his twin Desert Eagles held steadily in his hands, Jin moved to the door at the back of the hall. When he reached it, a sudden chill slid down his spine. Mordechai had done the exact same thing in the very same place, and he had died, had given his life, so that Jin could successfully do the same. He had left a wife and child behind to do so, and that thought intensified Jin’s already burning rage.
Dorigan was a destroyer of families, and Jin would make him suffer for it.
A flicker of this rage lashed through Jin’s right leg and shot it forward, kicking the door wide open. When no one attacked him, Jin began to descend the long spiral staircase that led down to Dorigan’s dungeon, his guns held ready. The farther down the staircase he went, the heavier and more ominous the air seemed to become. Eventually, Jin came to the bottom of the staircase and found himself standing before a thick steel door. Without hesitation, Jin pushed himself through it and found himself standing on the near balcony of Dorigan’s dungeon.
“Ah, welcome, Jin.”
Jin snapped his gaze and guns up at the voice and found Martin James Dorigan staring at him from the balcony on the far side of the room. In front of him stood the freshly reconstructed hulk of his hell machine.
“You’re just in time,” Dorigan called to him again. “I was about to begin this without you.”
“Well then,” Jin called back, walking down the staircase to his left and into the middle of the chamber. “I’m glad I didn’t disappoint you.”
“As am I,” Dorigan replied. “Now, be a good little dragon and stay where you are. I’ve got something I want to show you.”
At that, Dorigan walked to a computer console to his right and punched a few keys. In response, the massive machine before him hummed to life. The two halves of the machine began to rotate in opposite directions, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. Red arcs of energy crackled to life between the whirling halves of the machine, first as flashes, but as the two halves spun faster, they became undulating beams of red light. Finally, as the two halves of the machine reached their maximum speed, the bars of red light sucked themselves into a basketball-sized orb and released a tremendous wave of energy.
When this wave of energy slammed into Jin, he was slowly lifted off the ground, and he could feel a strange sensation running throughout his entire body. It was as though tendrils of some strange, hot, something wormed its way through Jin’s muscles. Before Jin could really do anything, the small red orb hovering between the two halves of the machine suddenly exploded outward in an exponentially more powerful blast of energy than the first. The tendrils of heat suddenly shot clear through Jin’s body, and he was blasted backward through the chamber, dropping his guns.
Dazed and somewhat confused, Jin pushed himself back to his feet and looked up at the hell-machine. Where once there had been a smallish red orb, there was now a large, blue rimmed, black hole that filled the entirety of the gap between both halves of the machine. Though he’d never seen it before, Jin knew exactly what he was looking at.
Dorigan had succeeded.
He’d opened a portal to Hell.
Suddenly, an unearthly roar echoed throughout the room, and Jin snapped his sword up to guard. Then a clawed, three-fingered hand covered in scaly red skin burst from the center of the portal and grabbed onto the edge as though it were a handhold. A second, identical hand followed it, and together both of these hands pulled through a massive, saurian head with large, black, backwards curved horns protruding from the sides.
Oh, Jin thought. Oh, this is bad.
Rearing back, the demon then spread its massive jaws wide and let loose a terrifying roar. Back on the balcony, Dorigan was laughing madly.
“This is the end for you, Jin Sakai!” he roared victoriously, “All those years of training, all those years of striving to be the best and still you survive only to be devoured by the first of the legions of demons I will bring into this world!”
Dorigan’s laughter continued, and Jin finally understood the true depth of his old friend’s insanity. The demon roared once again and began to pull its shoulders through the portal, and Jin then caught sight of the dozens of power cables that snaked across the floor to a battery of massive generators that powered the machine. Without thinking, without knowing if it would work, Jin dove forward to his dropped Desert Eagles, snatched them up, and emptied both clips into the generators.
As eighteen .357 Magnum rounds punched through the battery of generators, Dorigan’s victorious glee turned into pure terror and rage.
“No. No, no, NO!!!”
The generators began to buzz and spark and Dorigan glared with terrible fury at the man who had destroyed his ambition.
As the portal lost the power to sustain itself, it slowly began to shrink back into nothing. The demon, which was now halfway through the portal, gave another deafening roar before being sucked backwards into the pit of Hell that it had come from.
Enraged beyond all control, Dorigan drew his own sword and leapt at Jin from the balcony. At that same instant, the generators finally overloaded, and the explosion sent both Jin and Dorigan flying. Jin’s back crashed against the stone wall, driving the breath from his lungs, while Dorigan twisted in the air in an attempt to land on his feet that ended with him landing on his back in the center of the chamber.
Both men got to their feet slowly, battered and bruised. Dorigan used his sword as a cane, and when he finally resumed his full height and looked up to assess the damage, an anguished cry escaped him as he saw that all that remained of his machine was a charred, twisted heap of half-melted metal, glowing orange and red from the heat of the explosion. Dorigan took a handful of slow, pained steps forward before his rage overcame his grief, and he turned around to glare murderously at Jin, his once blue eyes glowing a bright, angry red.
“You destroyed it,” he growled dangerously. “You destroyed it all!”
“Big deal,” Jin said, pushing himself up from his knees. “I destroyed a machine. It can be rebuilt, replaced.”
Jin locked eyes with Dorigan then, and the flames of his rage and hatred for the man surged back into life and once again flared into a white-hot firestorm that Jin gave himself utterly over to. When he spoke
next, that firestorm spilled forth into his words.
“But what you destroyed…what you destroyed can NEVER be replaced!”
Jin threw his guns aside, drew his sword, and charged Dorigan head on. Dorigan curled his lips into a vicious snarl and swung his own sword directly at Jin’s neck. Jin suddenly dropped, going as limp as a string of spaghetti, and slid right beneath Dorigan’s attack while using his momentum to carry himself past the man. Jin then snapped back to his feet and turned around just in time to block an unexpected follow-up slash from Dorigan. Their blades skittered off each other with an ear-splitting peal, and the two vicious enemies sprang apart.
A heartbeat passed, and the two men seized upon their blazing desires to savagely kill the other.
The next heartbeat, the air shattered. The two men charged each other, their blades crashed together, and the battle between Jin Sakai and Martin Dorigan had begun.
Blow by blow, step by step, parry by parry, Jin and Dorigan strove to kill each other. Their blades flashed and crashed, each delivering three or four attacks per second. Their strength and ferocity was unmatched, save by the other. Their movements blurred in and out of vision, yet neither could score a hit on his adversary. Even so, Jin gave Dorigan a taunting smirk.
“Come on, Dorigan,” he challenged. “This is sloppy, even for you!”
Roaring with hate, Dorigan thrust his sword at Jin’s stomach. Jin deflected it, and then thrust his own blade at Dorigan’s chest. Dorigan parried, and then returned with a cut at Jin’s legs. Jin blocked and swung both blades over his head and down to the ground. Before Dorigan could react, Jin punched him across the face. Dorigan stumbled around, exposing his back to Jin, and Jin kicked him as hard as he could right between the shoulder blades. Dorigan fell forward, caught himself, and then leapt away as he looked back to see Jin’s sword flash out of the corner of his eye. Dorigan rolled back to his feet and readied his sword, vaguely aware that Jin had pushed him back to the staircase. His left arm burned suddenly, and Dorigan quickly looked down to find that Jin had still managed to cut a bleeding line down his upper arm.
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