Jeremiah's first victim was a bum off the streets of Chicago. A gibbering indigent whom no one would miss. When Nuihc dragged the terrified man before Jeremiah, the Asian did everything but wrap him in a presentation gift bow.
Jeremiah didn't want to do it. In training he had shattered wood and stone with his hands and feet. But a living target was something altogether different.
The vagrant's hands were tied together and hung on a big rusted hook suspended from the ceiling. He wept in fear. Jerenuah Purcell wept, too.
"You weak infant," Nuihc spit as the boy shook and the old drunk blubbered. "You will do this thing or I swear I will tear your limbs from your worthless carcass."
Nuihc had taunted and threatened until Jeremiah could take it no more. Squeezing back the tears, he launched a pulverizing foot into the hanging man.
It wasn't a death blow. Jeremiah had gone for the hurt, not the kill. In his mind he still hoped that there would be some way to spare the pathetic bum's life.
The bone was more brittle than he had expected. The man's hip shattered like a dropped teacup. And then he howled.
An awful, nightmarish cry of animal pain the likes of which Jeremiah Purcell had never before heard.
"You did not kill it," Nuihc complained, unmindful of the feral cries of the pathetic man.
The vagrant twisted in agony, one leg hanging loose.
"Finish the task," Nuihc ordered.
Jeremiah didn't know what to do. He was shaking so badly by now that when he tried to deliver a killing blow of mercy into the chest, he only succeeded in shattering the man's sternum. There was another cry of pain. The bum's head slumped over his frail chest. Blood mixed with water streamed from his mouth. But he continued to breathe.
Jeremiah couldn't take the moaning. Still shaking, he pressed his hands to his ears trying to blot out the sound.
With a spark of fury, Nuihc grabbed the boy by the shoulders. He sent a hard palm across Jeremiah's face.
"Finish the task, dog!" he snapped.
There would be no argument. There never was with his teacher. This time when Jeremiah tried, the mercy was not for the old man but for himself. Steadying himself, he sent his palm into the old man's chest.
All he wanted to do was stop the bum's whimpering and protect himself from Nuihc's wrath. He had intended to send the already shattered bones into the man's vital organs. But his will was greater than he knew.
His hand went straight through the chest. He felt the warmth of the man's insides. Held the struggling heart in the palm of his hand. Felt the muscle contract once.
Then it stopped.
The man grew still in death.
Jeremiah was horrified. His blood-soaked hand made a horrid sucking sound as he pulled it free. When he looked to his teacher, he saw for the first time a new look on Nuihc's face. There was a glint of savage satisfaction in the Korean's hazel eyes. And Jeremiah understood. Only in delivering death could he hope to satisfy this man who meant so much to him.
The next death was easier. The next easier still. Each death caused another little piece of Jeremiah's soul to die. But that didn't matter. Murder was the only way he seemed able to touch his Master's cold heart.
The boy who was slowly growing into a man thought that he could feel the bond growing between himself and his teacher. He was wrong.
Jeremiah had called Nuihc "father" once. It was a slip of the tongue, spoken in haste. When he realized what he'd said, Jeremiah was relieved. It was a word that he had longed to speak to this man who had given so much to him. After he spoke it, he looked up at Nuihc with hope.
Nuihc had slapped him across the face. It was the last time Jeremiah ever spoke the word to him. But in his heart Nuihc was the only real father he had ever known.
For a little while Jeremiah was sent to a boarding school in Europe. Out of sight of his teacher for too long, the beast of his mind got loose. There was an incident with a member of the faculty. She didn't die, but his secret was out. Jeremiah the freak, Jeremiah the monster was locked in a room with special doctors. Nuihc rescued him yet again.
After that Nuihc kept the boy on a short leash. They traveled the world. When Jeremiah was thirteen, Nuihc had found steady work in New York. The Korean was playing a balancing act between two rival organized crime figures, getting payment from both sides while working for only one. By this point in his life-five years after his first chance meeting with his Master-Jeremiah Purcell's soul was nearly dead. Over time as the years peeled away, Jeremiah grew colder, more distant. The boy became an automaton. He trained in New York for almost a year. He killed Mafia men and government agents. It didn't matter. He didn't care. The only thing that mattered to him was the approval of the man who would not allow Jeremiah to call him father.
It was while they were staying in New York that something strange happened. At the time Jeremiah didn't quite know what it was. Only that it was frightening.
Nuihc had gone to Washington on business. When he came back, there was fear in his eyes.
It was a subtle thing. But Jeremiah was trained to watch for small things. He could see the fear just below the surface. In Nuihc's facial muscles, at his mouth. It was the same as the fear Jeremiah lived with daily.
In the five years that Jeremiah had known him, Nuihc was always in control. But when he returned from Washington, that control seemed on the verge of shattering.
For hours Nuihc paced the living room of the apartment they were sharing. He didn't say a word to the boy. Jeremiah stayed in a corner, quietly performing his exercises. All at once something in the Master snapped.
"He is here!" Nuihc snarled, suddenly enraged. A rage made all the more terrifying because it was sparked by his own fear. "Here! Now! He will not die! That decrepit old fool has emerged from his cave to vex me yet again!"
The Korean seemed about to lose control. Someone had scared him in Washington. For the teenaged killer it was a frightening thing to even contemplate anything that could scare the teacher he worshiped.
"Who is here, Master?" Jeremiah asked. "What's wrong?"
Nuihc's words hadn't been directed at Jeremiah. He wheeled at the timid voice.
The Korean was an animal. Terrified and cornered, ready to lash out at anything. For an instant it seemed he would take out his impotent frustration on the alarmed young boy.
But by supreme effort, Nuihc managed not to kill the instrument he had trained. He vented his anger on their apartment, smashing feet through floorboards and launching sofas through walls. When he was done, he turned to the boy.
"We are leaving," Nuihc announced. They fled America.
Nuihc brought Jeremiah to a safe place. A castle on the Caribbean island of St. Martin.
There was a legend of a Dutch trader who had built the castle centuries before. When the natives saw the blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who had come to live among them, they assumed the spirit of the long-dead merchant had returned to reclaim his home. They called Jeremiah the Dutchman.
It was at this island hideaway that Jeremiah Purcell completed his training.
Nuihc went away from time to time. Sometimes his business kept him away from the island for months. One time when he left he never came back.
Word came that his Master was dead.
Older now, Jeremiah knew that there were only two men on Earth who could have killed the Fallen Master of Sinanju.
After that, the Dutchman's path was clear. He took up the yoke of his dead Master and set out to complete the task his teacher had failed to finish. The death of the Reigning Master of Sinanju and his American pupil.
As was preordained, he met the men in combat. The Dutchman assumed the powers of his mind would give him an edge in any conflict. But every time he met those two, he failed. There was a special bond between them. The ties of family. Of father and son. Their strength came from their love for each other and their deep respect for the traditions of their art.
After their last encounter, they sealed the Dutchman awa
y in the worst prison imaginable. The prison of his own mind. Heavily sedated for ten years in a mental facility in New York, Jeremiah Purcell only managed to escape thanks to a special mind that came into his sphere of influence.
The Dutchman had never encountered a mind quite like it. It was powerful in a way he hadn't understood. Different from his own. Thankfully, it did not yet understand its own power. That was a weakness that could be exploited.
In slumber the Dutchmen forced his will upon this untrained mind. And he succeeded. It sapped nearly all of his remaining strength to do so, but he escaped. After that, the Dutchman went into hiding.
There were places he could go. Safe havens where the world would not find him. At first the old Caribbean castle was out of the question. His enemies had found him there twice in the past. After his escape, that would be the first place they would look for him.
The Dutchman spent months regaining his strength. Only when he could once more move with stealth did he sneak back to the old island hideaway that had been his secret refuge so many years before.
It was safe. It had been so long since his escape that his enemies would no longer be looking.
He found the castle in ruins. As his plane flew low over the place that had been his home for almost a decade, he saw that the old walls were collapsing onto Devil's Mountain, the ugly chunk of black rock on which the castle had been built. After landing, he was careful to avoid the natives. He didn't want word of his return to get back to the wrong sets of ears.
As he approached Devil's Mountain through the jungle, he could see high above that some of the structure on the fortified side of the castle remained more or less intact.
There was one room where a great deal of his training had taken place. For some reason he felt drawn to this place. It seemed to call to him over the squawks of the fluttering birds overhead.
The Dutchman had climbed the mountain, picking through the overgrown garden and up to the terrace. Much time had been spent on that balcony as a youth. The surrounding jungle had long begun to reclaim the wide terrace.
The French doors that led into the training room were shattered. Old scattered glass had been rubbed smooth from years of tropical downpours. As the Dutchman stepped across the glass, not one piece made a noise under his feet.
He pushed through the doors and silently entered the castle ruins.
The smell inside was rank. The old furniture had gone to rot. Rats and other small animals had made their home inside. Thanks to the curse that hovered over Devil's Mountain, the locals hadn't looted the old furnishings.
The Dutchman walked amid the shadows and the memories.
There was a big stone fireplace on one wall. A set of rusted metal chains hung before it.
At the fireplace the Dutchman stopped. He curled one hand through the thick manacles at the end of a chain. With vacant eyes he stared into the dead fireplace, blackened inside from ancient blazes.
He stared at the past. At the life he had lived. Of the life that had been denied him.
The thick metal in his hand creaked. His life as a freak.
The chain twisted.
He had been saved from that life.
The manacle elongated, exposing shiny, curled silver.
His Master had made him something more than a freak, more than an outcast.
The chain snapped. The links broke, pop-pop-pop. They fell, scattering, around the hearth.
The Dutchman didn't notice. The single ring of the manacle clasped tight in his hand, he fell to his knees. He didn't know how long he wept. It seemed like hours. The metal in his hand was warm and melted into the shape of his gripping palm as he climbed to his feet.
Only when he stood did he finally notice the dark figure that waited in the shadows near the cold fireplace.
"Who's there?" the Dutchman demanded. His tears had dried instantly. He was ready to pounce: He needed a fresh kill. Something to distract him from the horror of life.
"You are as pitiful as ever," said the figure. The voice was thin and reedy.
That voice. The Dutchman took a step back.
It couldn't be. He opened his hand. The warm manacle slipped from his fingers, clanking to the floor. "Who are you?" he asked. His throat was hoarse, scarcely able to ask the question.
"Miserable wretch. Have your skills so deteriorated that you cannot see who it is that stands before you?"
The figure glided into the light.
And when the man stepped out to where he could fully see him, Jeremiah Purcell's pale skin blanched. The Dutchman couldn't believe his eyes. His mouth opened and closed with incredulity. When words finally came to him, he spoke in a choked gasp. "Master?" he managed.
And when the dead Master Nuihc spoke, it was as if he was speaking from within the Dutchman's mind. "I have returned," the Fallen Master intoned on that wonderful, terrible day. "The world has turned to the Hour of Darkness. The age has come. At last has it come. And the very ground where the chosen one walks will bleed."
And in that moment for Jeremiah Purcell, the terrifying Dutchman who had quailed hearts around the world, the fear of long-dead childhood was born anew.
"DO YOU FEEL fear now?" Nuihc asked his pupil. All around, the hum of the jet engines shook the plane with soft vibrations.
The Dutchman liked when his teacher spoke with him. Most of the time these days Nuihc was busy talking to others.
Nuihc spoke with Benson Dilkes. Explained to the killer what needed to be done. Outlined his plan to exterminate his two great rivals and lay claim to the House of Sinanju. But he rarely found time for his protege, the worthless boy who had grown into a halfmad failure.
"No, Master," the Dutchman replied.
"Lying wretch," Nuihc growled. "First you insult me with your incompetence. Now you attempt to lie to me. Your weaknesses are obvious. You have lived every day of your pathetic life in fear. Do you not know that I know your thoughts before they are formed? I live because of you. It is your failure that has brought me back."
The Dutchman felt the blood color his cheeks. He hung his head in shame. "I'm sorry, Master," he said.
"You are worse than sorry," Nuihc insisted. "You are a contemptible insect."
He might have said more, but a shadow fell across the empty seat.
"Excuse me, is everything all right?" a questioning voice politely interrupted.
Purcell looked up. The stewardess stood in the narrow aisle of the plane, a curious expression on her pretty face.
"Everything is fine," the Dutchman said hastily. He spoke in Korean. All of the flight attendants on this South Korean plane were Korean. Her smile broadened at his easy use of her native language.
"I heard you talking," she said in the same language, warming to the attractive American with the long, blond hair. "I thought you might be having a bad dream."
The Dutchman almost laughed. Every day of his life had been a waking nightmare. He didn't dare show any emotion. Not with his Master staring disapproval at him.
"I was talking to my fath-to my companion," Purcell said. He pointed toward the window seat. When the woman looked past the thin young man sitting on the aisle, her eyes opened in surprise. The woman didn't know how she could have missed the Korean gentleman. He lounged in the seat near the window. He didn't speak, didn't acknowledge her. There was an empty seat between the two men.
"Oh, I am sorry, sir," she apologized. "I did not see you there."
For some reason the Korean gentleman made her uneasy. It was as if he was there but not there. To look at him was like looking at a ghost. Her discomfort was apparent as she stepped away. Apologizing once more, she hurried up the aisle, leaving the two men to their private conversation.
The Dutchman was used to her reaction. He had been seeing it ever since the castle on St. Martin. Ever since fate had reunited him with his Master.
The Dutchman glanced at Nuihc. He was a waking dream. Face cast in perpetual disapproval. The image of his dark Master was the same as the on
e that he had seen in his mind for so many years.
Yes, the Dutchman had lied. He did feel fear. And yet with the rebirth of his teacher also came a welcome relief. He had been forced into the position of leadership after the death of his mentor.
But Nuihc was alive again. By some miracle, he was alive. The Dutchman could sink easily back into the role of subservient wretch. He deserved no more.
The pilot's voice came on the speakers to announce that the plane would soon begin its descent over South Korea.
The Dutchman settled back in his seat.
Nuihc was back. Nuihc would lead him to ultimate victory. It was time for history's end. Time for death.
Chapter 23
And in this time will be reborn one of the dead, but beyond death; of the Void and not of the Void; of Sinanju, yet not of Sinanju. And he will summon the Armies of Death and the war they wage will be the War of Sinanju, the outcome of which will decide forever the fate of the line of the Great Master Wang and all who have followed him.
-Book of Sinanju, Wang Prophesies, Volume 1
Chiun gathered the people of Sinanju in the main square.
From the frightened villagers, the Master of Sinanju heard the events of the night before his faithful caretaker had disappeared. He heard about the wails that haunted the night and put many a terrified man off sleep for days. Those who heard it agreed that the otherworldly noise sounded almost like a woman in the pain of childbirth. But it was not a natural sound. It was the sound of demon birth.
When he asked which direction it came from, they all said everywhere and nowhere. Some pointed to the bay.
As he had done with his dead caretaker's daughter, the Master of Sinanju instructed the people to go to their homes. Once they were locked safely away, he went to the source of the sound, to the West Korean Bay.
In ages past when there was no food to eat, this was the place where the babies of Sinanju would be brought. The infants were drowned in the bay, "sent home to the sea," the people would say, to be born in a better time.
The bay was home to death.
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