The Lost Prince Read online

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” Cal said in the calmest tone he could muster. It came off creepy. Cal was too wound up, too serious to come off nonthreatening even with an effort.

  “Take anything you want,” Gloria begged.

  Cat put her hand gently on Gloria’s arm. “Gloria, we need your help. People are in danger—you are in danger. A boy’s life is at stake.”

  “It’s that couple, isn’t it … from that night long ago,” Gloria said. “I knew there was something off about them. Why didn’t I just mind my own bee’s wax?” she sobbed.

  “There was an infant with them,” Cal cut in.

  “He was in the car,” Gloria admitted. She looked defeated, like a woman confessing her greatest sin.

  “There was no death certificate, no mention of him in the article,” Cat said.

  Gloria bordered on despondent—a bad day turning worse. Catherine wanted to comfort her, but could see the answers they needed behind the woman’s misery. The secrets spanned more than a decade and no doubt touched lives beyond this room. Gloria could upturn the life of an unsuspecting family, a young boy who may not know he was not his parents’ natural child. Worse, Gloria could go to jail as an accessory. Cal was eerily silent, trying not to spook the lady—Cat was concerned about the lengths Cal would go to pry this information from her. She put her hands on Gloria’s.

  “Please, we’re not interested in prosecuting you,” Cat said. “We may owe you a debt of gratitude.”

  “As you owe us for rescuing your family,” Lelani said brusquely.

  Gloria looked toward the living room where her husband rested.

  “He’s just asleep,” Cal said. “He’ll wake up in an hour or so, and we’ll be gone.”

  Gloria told her daughters to tend to their father. As soon as they left the dining room, she began to cry.

  “I did it for a friend—for love,” she said, in low tones. “It’s the only illegal thing I’ve ever done.”

  No one said a word while Gloria stared off, collecting her thoughts from over a decade ago. She took a deep breath and plunged in.

  “Rita was one of my best friends. She was married to my husband’s cousin, John Hauer. Bill and I had just gotten engaged at that time. We had all been friends in high school along with Nathan Dumont and John’s younger brother Steve. John had some health issues—testicular cancer—and as a result, he couldn’t have children. They tried to adopt, but it was taking forever, lots of snags and bureaucracy. They were a wonderful couple, John the sweetest, most patient man you’d ever meet. We all felt for them. The night of that storm … well, I believed at the time that fate had put me there for a reason.

  “Bill, Nathan, and I were driving back from a concert in the city. A harsh nor’easter poured down on us, visibility was terrible. Even through the wind and rain, though, we saw the flash of the impact a mile ahead. By the time we arrived, the truck driver had put out the car’s engine fire with an extinguisher. No one else was out there; the weather kept people at home that night. The driver of the semi sat on the step of his cab in shock over the Ashes’ deaths. It was clear their car veered into his lane and hit the truck head-on. Mr. Ashe’s face was crushed by the steering wheel. The woman, however, clung to life by a nail. ‘Daniel, Daniel,’ she kept saying while choking on her own blood. Somehow, over the thunder and driving rain, I heard the baby cry in the backseat. He was wrapped tight in swaddling and lay in a pillow basket on the floor. He had a bruise on his forehead, but was otherwise okay. I told the woman her son was alive. She said ‘Find his guardians,’ but her voice got weaker until finally she stopped breathing. She seemed foreign, somehow; I had the impression they had come from far away—that they were refugees. It was just a feeling—you know?

  “I put the baby in our car. I don’t know why, I just did. It just seemed the thing to do … to get it out of that wreck … that metal coffin. Bill and Nathan began going through the deceased’s effects to find out who they were. In a sack in the trunk, they found a sword, a crossbow, daggers, robes, and other strange items. Nathan guessed that they must have been going to the Renaissance fair in the Catskills; that is until he came across the gold. Nathan was a serious collector, and he could tell real gold from fake. And again, I had my suspicion that these strangers were in trouble and had come from very far away. We used the truck’s two-way to call the sheriff, who was Bill’s uncle. The truck driver was still in shock—he didn’t even realize there was a baby. I told Bill and Nathan that I was taking the child to my place to get it out of the weather. They were hesitant to let me go, but I was hearing nothing of it, and left with our car and the boy.

  “Bill’s uncle was mad as hell that I didn’t take that baby to the hospital. I should have, but I didn’t. When the Ashes turned out to have no history, that’s when I knew I could get away with it. I worked in the clerk’s office and forged some papers, allowing John and Rita to become the child’s foster parents. Bill, Nathan, and the sheriff were worried about the game I was playing. That little pink baby would’ve been put in foster care anyway and eventually adopted by strangers on the state list. But we had our very own family who needed a child. Where was the sin in giving an orphan a good home with a loving couple? They accepted the responsibility, and John even said he’d keep the name Daniel out of respect for the parents who’d lost him. Nathan thought it was risky, but John insisted. At least the boy would have one thing his real parents gave him. Slowly I won Bill and his uncle over to my thinking. Nathan asked for some of the things we found in the Ashes’ car. He said if he was going to risk going to prison, he was entitled to some compensation. My reward was seeing John and Rita as parents.”

  Gloria began to cry. Cal handed her some tissues. Cat could sense the weight on her husband’s shoulders lighten a little. The prince was alive, and living in a good home.

  “Gloria,” Cat started gently, “we’re the boy’s family. We’re the guardians.”

  “Daniel is my fourth cousin,” Cal interjected.

  This came as a surprise to Cat. She filed it away for another conversation. “Please, where do the Hauers live?” she asked. “It’s important. Their family is in danger.”

  Gloria descended into a deeper sadness. Her head slumped and she stared at the table. “Well … John had a relapse of his cancer and moved back to his childhood home in Baltimore. An old friend of his worked in an aggressive cancer program at Johns Hopkins medical. But it didn’t do any good. He passed away several years ago. He was a great father. Rita didn’t handle John’s death very well. She and I had a falling out. She started taking prescription pills. That led to the drinking, and then she met Clyde.”

  “Who’s Clyde?” Cal asked.

  “Rita remarried,” Gloria continued. “I think his last name is Kniffer or Knoppler, or something like that; spelled with a K but starts with an N sound. We didn’t like him. He was insecure, controlling, and a bit angry. Nathan would have nothing at all to do with them—he never spoke to Rita again.

  “You have to understand … Rita was vulnerable after John’s passing. Clyde moved in and insulated her from the family. I haven’t spoken to her in years. I have her number and address in my book, though. If your interests are that boy’s health and well-being, getting him away from Clyde couldn’t hurt.”

  Gloria Hauer broke down again. It was clear she had been carrying that secret for many years. “There was nothing I could do once John died,” she said. “I was culpable. I couldn’t save Rita or Daniel from that horrible drunk of a man. I had to keep the secret … for my family’s sake.”

  “Thank you,” Cat said, getting up. She gestured to Seth to do the same.

  “We’re not the only ones looking for him,” Cal said. “The others … they killed your friends. They sent these thugs tonight. We’ll keep your part in this a secret, Mrs. Hauer, but you have to do the same for us. No cops. I think we’re all working for the same benefit.”

  “Is my family safe?” Gloria asked.

  “I d
on’t know,” Cal said. “The reason they tried to eliminate you was to keep the truth from us. But now that we know, there’s no point. I advise getting out of town for a few days just to be safe. Canada, or relatives in another part of the country if you have them.”

  Lelani wrapped the felidae in a bedsheet and carried it and a shovel out into the woods.

  “May we call you if we have any further questions?” Cat asked Gloria.

  Gloria nodded politely, but she was clearly glad to be getting rid of intruders.

  Cat hooked her arm in Cal’s as they walked back to the car. His tension dissipated, but only a little. There was only so much a wife could do with a touch. They had learned much this day.

  “These assassins are not the ones that did in Sweeny and Dumont,” Cal said. “The MOs are different. Someone more skillful, someone who enjoys killing, did them in.”

  “The detective?” Cat asked.

  “Perhaps. Maybe he followed another lead and left the rest of the clean up for the B team.”

  Cat shuddered, thinking what would happen if Dorn’s people got their hands on that young prince first.

  CHAPTER 10

  INNER PEACE

  1

  Theo drove toward Uwharrie National Forest; Allyn sat next to him with the fetish bowl, holding a Tupperware cover against the top to minimize splashing. They had taken Theo’s SUV in case it became necessary to drive off road. The finder spell was not specific enough to tell them how far the children were. But the spells worked! Even in this universe, which had never heard of the Quorum—the pantheon of gods that ushered in life and dealt death—who gave the praetors, prelates, druids, and clerics of Aandor their license to do divine work in their names. Jesus, Yahweh, Mithras, Jehovah, Odin, Zeus, Allah, Buddha, Earth Mother, Brahma … Pelitos—the universes were brimming with deities. Were they all collectively wrong? Did this world have its own dysfunctional pantheon? Allyn wondered. Or did the wizards with their secular lust for power and knowledge have the right of it? Was the universe just a conglomeration of physical laws with no intelligence behind it?

  Allyn had been sure of his convictions for most of his life—faith was his gift, concrete and unwavering, like car racing was to the Earnhardts. He was a pagan with little more than a decade in this Christian world. Despite recalling his true identity, he found that his Christian beliefs had not diminished. For the most part, he preferred them. Even if one doubted the divinity of Christ, his philosophies were revolutionary. He was the cornerstone to one-quarter of the world’s believers. The standards of living in the Christian world were not a coincidence, nor were they accidental. They sprang from the ideals of men like Thomas Aquinas, who wrote of natural law, which was the basis of moral and ethical advances in government and society—utilized by men such as Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr. How could Allyn abandon his beliefs of brotherhood, forgiveness, and charity? What world couldn’t benefit from more of this?

  Allyn was happy serving the Lord in a way that had never satisfied him in Aandor. With Michelle and Rosemarie by his side, he was complete. North Carolina was more of a home than Aandor had been. Only a brother and sister remained for him back there. They could never replace his wife and child, and Michelle would never agree to leave this reality to live in a place that was a version of fourteenth-century Europe, teeming with strange gods. And it all came down to family, didn’t it?

  Darnell Taylor, the missing children’s father, was family; he was Allyn’s close friend and an asset to the community. Darnell owned the town barbershop where he guided many young clients onto the righteous path of work, God, and education. And if a young man resisted all three, he guided them toward the army, where he was certain six weeks of boot camp would drive all foolishness from their brains. Darnell was the reason gangs never got a foothold in the county. He was a sensible sounding board when Allyn was unsure about a course of action. As much a leader in the community as Allyn was its spiritual center. Darnell was Allyn’s rock—he would not let his brother down, even in the midst of his own personal crisis.

  “We’re here,” Theo said. The forest lined the side of the road they traveled.

  “Pull off by that opening,” instructed Allyn.

  “But the meeting place is a mile ahead.”

  “How would I explain the bowl and fetish to the others?” Allyn explained.

  “Moses done parted the Red Sea with his staff,” Theo said. “Magic’s in the Bible. I love five loaves for the five thousand.”

  Allyn smiled and said, “I think a low-key approach would be wiser.”

  He recalled Prelate Soohn’s gift for such blessings back in Aandor. Soohn had a knack for feeding hundreds out of a handful of loaves, sardines, and berries he’d carry in his sack. He was proficient at many types of blessings, but Soohn never cared for the heights to which his abilities could bring him within the order. He wore the same worn-out sandals day after day and was happy in his oldest, faded, moth-eaten robe. A jolly man with a shiny tanned head, round belly, and perpetual smile framed by a purple goatee that came to a point under the tip of his chin, Soohn was completely apolitical and never happier than when among the children in the Aavanteen slums of Aandor City. His humor was infectious. Allyn became nostalgic for his friend.

  They entered the forest in hiking gear with backpacks full of food, water, and medical kits. Each man carried a hunting knife and Theo carried a Louisville slugger. One of the robbers had eluded police and was most likely still in the forest as well. Allyn hoped there was enough decency in the man to have kept the children safe overnight if they were in his custody. These were hard economic times that sometimes drove good men to do bad things.

  The thinning brown and orange canopy of the forest swayed and rustled with the wind. Leaves came off the trees easily and swirled in the air. Allyn enjoyed nature as much as the next man, but never developed a passion for it. Early in his vocation, a friend of his father tried to convince him to join the druid order because he’d shown some natural affinity for druid blessings. It was not for him; one needed fervor for trees and nature to become a druid, and Allyn enjoyed the comforts and pace of city life too much. Magic, however, flowed strongly through forests, and druids were known for the power and purity of their blessings. Allyn sensed the lay line running through the Uwharrie. He wondered if that magic protected the forest from the developing world around it. Some forests seemed to have a knack for self-preservation. Did the Uwharrie influence people to protect itself?

  Allyn knew a few things about druid blessings, just as a Christian theologian might know tenets of Judaism or Buddhism. He carefully handed Theo the bowl. “Do not drop this—do not disturb me for the next few minutes,” he said.

  Allyn crouched, and laid his palms flat on the ground, listening for the forest’s song. He closed his eyes and concentrated. It was faint, and he was not fluent in the green’s language. Perhaps forests on earth sang in a different dialect. The forest, aware of his attempt to commune with it, sought him out; the song grew stronger with each second. His heartbeat slowed to the rhythm of the forest’s life pulse. He was suddenly aware of the warm-blooded creatures within a hundred-yard radius of his position. A family of birds in the tree to the north of him, raccoons under a bush just south, and a deer at the periphery of his senses to his east.

  Unlike temple dwellers, druids were finely attuned with the green. They could sense even the smallest glimmer of life … insects, flora, and some could even discern the single-celled creatures in ponds and streams. Allyn was not that sensitive. Fortunately, his targets were large and warm blooded enough to fit within the range of his abilities. He pushed his radius out to two hundred yards, then five hundred. Foxes, beavers, mice, badgers—he knew where every warm-blooded creature was—an ethereal map formed in his mind, as though all living creatures were tagged by a spiritual global positioning system. At the tip of his range, he sensed the men of the search parties penetrating the forest from their starting point. Allyn pushed his radi
us out farther but hit a figurative wall at about two thousand yards. Try as he might, he could not push farther; he hadn’t the training. He withdrew himself from the forest and stood up.

  “Well?” asked Theo.

  “Well … they aren’t within two thousand yards of us.”

  “That’s amazing,” Theo said.

  “It really isn’t, Theo. I knew a druid who had successfully learned to communicate with deer and moose. He could have reached into the entire forest and simply asked the animals if they had seen the children.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Theo asked.

  “The compass points toward Zachary,” he said, referring to the bowl. “We walk until we find them.”

  2

  The search had taken Allyn and Theo into a densely overgrown section of the woods, far from any established trails. They would never have gotten the SUV through here. They’d been walking uphill, away from the other search parties, with Allyn checking their surroundings every few thousand yards. About an hour into the search, he picked up two small warm-blooded creatures—about the size of a six-year-old and a four-year-old.

  “Got you,” Allyn said. His heart thumped triumphantly. “This way.”

  They found the children huddled together for warmth in a dry brook beneath a tangle of thick roots belonging to a very old tree. Allyn praised God that it did not rain last night; the children may have been swept away. Zach mostly covered his sister, Ruth, beneath him, with his Sunday jacket over them like a blanket. Wind-blown autumn leaves covered the children, blending them into the forest.

  “Zachary?” the reverend said. The boy was asleep and cold to the touch. His lips were cracked and colored an unhealthy shade of deep purple. “Zach, wake up.”

  Ruth woke up first. She let out a high-pitched scream and began crying.