The Lost Prince Page 25

  Malcolm waited alone at the base of Belvedere Castle. Even the body of Dorn’s henchman was gone; it looked like nothing had happened.

  “Lady MacDonnell?” Mal asked.

  Lelani shook her head. She thought about whether Malcolm could be trusted with a conclusion she’d arrived at on her trek back. “They knew,” she said anyway.

  “I’m sorry … Knew what?” he asked.

  “That we’d be in the park.”

  “Not possible,” he said. “Just bad timing. They use the same watering hole you do.”

  “I had not told anyone of this lay line’s location, not even Catherine. Dorn’s people likely discovered it shortly after I left the Ramble in search of Seth Raincrest. I don’t deny we share this source of power in New York. But they knew exactly what time we’d be here. I do not believe in coincidences.”

  Lelani remembered Symian’s pack and opened it. She shook her head in frustration.

  “What now?” asked Malcolm.

  “This is Symian’s satchel. Their mana batteries are not here. And I cannot figure out what spells he is collecting for based on these components. They had stolen irradiated material from Indian Point when we battled them in the woods. The only spells that accelerate magic using radiation are forbidden ones. Can Dorn really mean to use such magic? Radiation affects magical energy the way catnip affects cats—makes it erratic, wild … unpredictable. The spells react at volatile speeds. Once activated, it’s hard to shut down and the spell could expand exponentially and move beyond the caster’s control. Something bad is coming.”

  “You can’t know for sure.”

  “I feel it in my bones,” she said, shaking. She shook Symian’s bag before Malcolm. “Nothing good can come of radiation-fueled spells.”

  Malcolm looked doubly troubled. “There’s another problem—a less epic one,” he said softly. “We haven’t been able to locate the little girl.”

  “Gods!” Lelani said, exasperated. “And you wait until now to tell me?”

  Lelani’s failure to protect Brianna’s mother would not extend to the girl. She walked to spot where Bree skinned her knee running away and carefully scraped blood and skin off the blacktop with her pocketknife. She pulled out a tube and a small wooden kit from her bag, put the scrapings into the tube and poured in liquids and powders from the kit after it. She cut some plants and weeds growing in the area and grinded bits of them into the tube and then put a drop of pond water in as well. She plugged the tube with a stopper and shook until the solution fizzed white. She chanted a finder spell, imbuing the liquid with magic and purpose—the solution fizzed even more and became a luminescent yellow. There were a few people left in the darkening park, but it was Lelani’s experience that New Yorkers were use to oddities in their city and mostly minded their own business.

  “Watch out,” she told Malcolm. Lelani uncorked the tube. A radiant white mist shot out in an arc over the pond, heading west. A faint white trail, like a white monochromatic rainbow, shined in the air. A few of the park patrons pointed out the effect to their children, possibly attributing it to some type of firework.

  Malcolm whistled approvingly. “Can Dorn do that?”

  “Yes—and worse,” she said. “But he needs something of the prince. Let’s pray he does not find it. Head back to the hotel. I am much quicker alone and will join you shortly.”

  “Wait,” he said, grabbing her arm. “One last thing. Do not tell MacDonnell his wife’s been captured.”

  She yanked her arm from his grip defiantly and challenged him with a glare. “You would have me lie to him after I’ve failed Lord MacDonnell so miserably? I bear this shame … I swore to protect his family!”

  Malcolm looked at her with the serenity of a professor lecturing an errant student. “One: Lady MacDonnell is not in immediate danger,” he pointed out. “She’s Dorn’s bargaining chip—insurance. Two: MacDonnell has enough on his plate just trying to reach the prince before they do. What do you think will happen to his concentration once he learns his wife is a prisoner? Bad judgment’s liable to get him killed. Three: If he abandons his quest to search for Catherine, they find the prince first, cut the boy’s throat, and kill Catherine anyway because she’ll be of little value at that point.”

  Malcolm’s rationale was sound, even if lying to the captain ran against Lelani’s instincts. Was there no honor left? This mission poisoned the soul. Were Malcolm, Seth, Balzac, and Timian always this way, even in Aandor? Lelani was greatly nostalgic for her home in the Blue Forest at this moment. The centaurs did not favor guile—did not reward the craftiest liars or the best game players. They exulted the best hunters, the most artful musicians and poets. It was a simpler life.

  “We’ll tell him when he returns with the prince,” Malcolm continued. “I’ll take responsibility.”

  “Yes, you will,” Lelani said. She walked away, following the wispy trail, which had begun to dissolve like fairy dust into the lake. The trail took her over the castle and onto Vista Rock overlooking the pond and Great Lawn. The castle and vista made the centaur long for home. The luminescent arc descended into a nearby amphitheater on the other side of the lake.

  The Delacorte Theater was closed for winter, but that proved no obstacle for the sorceress. Lelani entered, surveying the grandstand seating. She found Brianna huddled under a seat, the only one in the amphitheater not in the upright position.

  “Bree…,” Lelani said.

  Bree came out from under the seat, her knee skinned with lines of blood dripping down to her shoe. When she realized it was Lelani, her face lit up. She jumped into Lelani’s arms and gave the centaur a tight hug. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she shook from crying. “I thought the bad men made you dead like Maggie.”

  “Almost,” said the centaur, and Lelani realized she relished the love emanating from this little girl. MacDonnell’s family was becoming her own.

  “Where’s Mommy?”

  “Your mother…” Lelani bit her lip and thought carefully about what to say. Lelani wondered if Bree would be safer at her grandmother’s. But then, the old woman was likely to call Callum and inquire after Catherine, thus revealing that his wife was gone.

  “… is on a mission, like your daddy,” Lelani finished. “She has entrusted you to my care.”

  “I don’t know what ‘in-trust-en’ means,” Bree said.

  “You will stay with me—in Uncle Malcolm’s hotel room.” It was the best plan for Bree. Lelani would defend the girl as though she were her own daughter.

  Bree sniffled and wiped her cheeks. Lelani threw Bree on her back. The illusion spell made it look like Bree was riding piggy-style, but she sat quite comfortably on Lelani’s equestrian half. They took the path along the Great Lawn heading east. The Metropolitan Museum and Cleopatra’s Needle could be seen through the trees on their left.

  Lelani contemplated the evening’s events. It was hard to tell what she did right and what she did wrong. This lay line had been Lelani’s only source of magical energy when she first arrived in New York. But with Dorn’s discovery of it, it had become a dangerous watering hole—a place where deer and lions shared their drink. And Dorn had the fissionable material he’d stolen from the nuclear plant. With enough mana, he could power frightening spells—arts that the collective wisdom of all the wizards in Aandor had forbidden from being practiced. She looked at the skyline and guessed where the other lay lines flowed into this reality. She doubted Dorn was aware of the connection between universal and local architecture. Dorn was a man of action not a scholar—more sorcerer than wizard by the academy’s standards. What if he didn’t understand magic’s effect on the material world?

  As they went past the monolith known as Cleopatra’s Needle, an idea hit Lelani. This was the one known stable spot of magical energy on the island of Manhattan that they knew of. Without the anchor, the rivers of energy would not pool into this area of the park. They would resume their natural courses through this reality. She retrieved a leather-bound
book from her satchel, older than she was, older than her great-grandmother. It was a gift from Magnus Proust. She could not make heads or tails of some of the spells, but Rosencrantz had helped her decipher a few during her time upstate. She wished she could have spent more time with the tree wizard—he was soothing to the soul and remarkably knowledgeable. The spell was at the end of the book—an intensification of her phosphorous balls. Her phosphorous spell was a root by which several other sorceries could be created. The concept of root spells was not alien to her—it said there were essentially thirteen spells upon which all other spells were built. Rosencrantz had shown her how to intensify the heat of her phosphorous balls, replicate the balls smaller, rapidly, and continuously, and move them through the air. Practicing, she was able to focus it into a white hot line that stretched several feet beyond her; another first.

  “Bree, I’m going to do something pretty stupid, and it’s going to be loud and scary.” Bree smiled as only a five-year-old could at such a statement.

  Lelani raised her arms. She chanted, channeling the power of the lay line around her, underneath her, and focused her will into her hands, converting the power into heat and light. Her hands turned iridescent. An undulating white-hot line of energy traveled between her palms. She drew more and more power into them, building them beyond anything she’d ever handled before. Her hands went beyond white and became translucent. The surrounding park lit up in stark contrast around them. And when she could barely handle one more photon, Lelani released the power at the foot of the needle where it met the granite base, slicing through with a white-hot arc. She scooped out the top of the base like ice cream from a newly opened carton. The obelisk teetered. She called upon powerful gusts to push it along, a close relation to the sentient wind spell, which Rosencrantz also helped her decipher. The tower fell like a great stone tree. Lelani shifted her motions and called up powerful jets of air beneath the monolith to slow the needle’s decent. It touched softly upon the grass with a low boom, knocking up dirt and dust around it.

  “Whoa!” said Bree.

  With that accomplished, the lay line was unhinged. Whatever Dorn was planning with the radioactive material he’d stolen would probably require more mana than he had stored. Let’s see how he manages in a drought, she thought. Lelani was certain she’d just bought them some precious time. But now she needed to ration her mana—once again, austerity.

  Police sirens blared. Some headed their way. All this activity was too much, even for this greatest of cities. She took off at a leisurely trot toward the woods and improvised an exit over the retaining wall onto Fifth Avenue. In no time, they’d lost themselves within the bustle of the Manhattan streets, two other residents of the Upper East Side.

  CHAPTER 23

  A ROCK AND A HEART PLACE

  Colby pulled into the motor lodge parking lot late that evening. It was a short trip from the motel he’d parked his car at while he pretended to be a vagrant steering Daniel safely toward his sister’s home. He turned off the engine and sat for a while to compose his thoughts. He rolled a cup of hot coffee in his hands, absorbing its heat thinking of the two tigers he held by their tails—each ready to maul the other, with him in the middle.

  On the bright side, the meeting with MacDonnell had gone better than he’d hoped. Years in the NYPD taught him how to spot an honest cop. MacDonnell was a law-and-order type, true to his word. If there was any chance of getting his life back, it lay with MacDonnell’s team. How to pull it off, though, without raising Dorn’s suspicions?

  Dorn probably suspected something was up, if only because he was perpetually paranoid. You can’t be the type of person who turns people into living-dead servants without fostering a great deal of ill will toward you. Dorn wasn’t exactly the most mentally balanced person either. Even his henchmen couldn’t predict what would set him off, and those migraines didn’t help the situation. Based on how Dorn’s people fretted when he came down with the seizures, it must be a recent development. They tiptoed around him like he was a sleeping grizzly between them and the cave entrance. Although Colby couldn’t die by normal means, Dorn possessed his heart and could kill him for good, at a whim, from anywhere in the world. Colby’s biggest fear was that at any moment, without warning, he would simply drop dead. And that was no way to live.

  MacDonnell was his one hope—not just for him, but also for Daniel. When Colby first took on this assignment, he had expected to find a spoiled suburban brat whining for videogames and skateboard gear to keep up with his friends. Instead, he found a young man, tougher than nails, who took a bigger pounding than anyone his age should ever have had to—and the kid still came out of it a decent human being. He was smart, loyal, and didn’t expect anything to come easily. Daniel had a part-time job and a plan to get away from his miserable adoptive parents. As much as Colby hated to admit it, he liked the prince—heck, he even admired him. Who doesn’t look back on their life and wish they’d had the wherewithal Daniel had at that age?

  Colby wondered if that was why he was leaning toward MacDonnell’s side … for what it would mean for Daniel’s future. Daniel was also about the same age as his son. Colby couldn’t help think of Tory when he was around Daniel … the vitality his son would still have if not for the freak diving accident that severed Tory’s spinal cord. Just some kids horsing around a pool like millions of kids do around the world. He banged a fist on the steering wheel, angry at himself for not being there to protect his son—for seeing Daniel as Tory’s surrogate—angry at his own emotional weakness. That kind of sloppy thinking and sentimentality could finish him. He had to be selfish, ruthless if he expected to come out of this sorcerers’ war alive.

  There was still some heat left in the cup. He rolled it greedily, pulling out every last joule of heat. Colby had Tory on the mind now. He had not been the best of dads—virtually absent from his son’s life the past three years. He wished he could blame the accident, but he had been pulling away long before that. The accident was an impetus for severing contact. It was too hard to face Tory while entrenched in blackmail schemes, protecting pedophiles, and profiting from all his other illicit activities. Better to have the boy think he couldn’t face him because of the injury than because he was a dirty, lying crook. Colby convinced himself he did it all for Tory, but the piles of money he sent for doctors, tests, and special chairs did little to alleviate the guilt. Only now, since becoming subhuman, did he realize the value of each precious moment. Somewhere in another dimensional plane, Daniel had parents who loved him. Maybe they’d spoil him, like all monarchs did, but if anyone deserved to be pampered, it was Daniel Hauer. After the life he’d been forced to put up with, he’d earned it. And maybe, just maybe, Colby could get his own ass out of the fire and back to his own family to make up for lost time.

  What to tell Dorn?

  His cohorts were in Room 209. The shades were drawn—perfect for shady business. In and out as quickly as possible was the plan. MacDonnell would be waiting for him at a nearby Starbucks for the trip back to North Carolina.

  Risky business.

  The minute MacDonnell had the boy, Colby would lose all leverage with both sides. But what choice did he have? He knew nothing about sorcery. He doubted any of the gypsies and frauds in this universe could come close to what Dorn could do. He worried at times about hitting a magic dead zone (no pun intended)—like a mobile phone too far from cell towers, he’d lose his bars and shut down, cut off from whatever it was that kept him animated.

  If everything went to plan, Daniel was in for a harsh awakening about his true identity. Years spent in error with a drunken abusive dad when he was actually royalty, slated for a life of opulence and ass kissing. The irony was not lost on Dretch. Colby laughed silently. The kid wouldn’t believe them—not until Colby asked him to find his heartbeat. Nothing says all this shit’s real like a room-temperature zombie gumshoe. Colby went to a payphone outside the motel’s office and dialed his sister’s number. His niece answered.

 
; “It’s Uncle Cole,” he said. “How’s the kid?”

  “Well I’m fine. How are you, Uncle Cole?”

  Colby let the snarky remark wash over him; too many irons in the fire to let Luanne push his buttons. He still needed her. This might well be the one good contribution the girl ever makes in her life, and she didn’t even realize it.

  “Uncle Cole?”

  “I’m here. Been a long day, sweetie. Is Daniel still with you?”

  “’Course.”

  Colby let out a long breath of relief. Last thing he needed was Daniel on the run.

  “He ain’t going anywhere. In fact, after last night, he may never leave,” she said, giggling.

  The comment hit Colby like a brick. “Jeezus, Luanne. Don’t tell me you…” Colby couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Don’t what, Uncle Cole? You said to hog-tie him. You said do anything.”

  “To … flirt—make out—let him get to third base.”

  Silence.

  “No one expects heavy petting for seven thousand dollars,” she said, in low tones. “Now you acting all innocent…”

  Colby rubbed his face with his free hand in disbelief. Was his instruction to her that ambiguous? Or was he just fooling himself? Was he so desperate and out of control of his life that he left it to Luanne’s judgment in the hopes that she would do anything it took to keep that kid from flying off? Colby could equivocate all he wanted about not saying the actual words, but he offered her more cash than she’d ever make in her life and strongly implied she use her feminine wiles to earn it. I pimped my niece.

  The horror of it slapped Colby like an ornery Catholic school nun.

  Desperation. Everyone in this mess of an assignment was up to their neck in desperation. He was glad he didn’t have a heart at the moment because the stress would surely kill it. Colby had put himself in this position with the career choices he had made. He’d brought these monsters into his life and given them power over him. If he’d been an honest man, spent time with his wife and son instead of extorting big bucks from pedophiles and cheats, he never would have been indicted, driven from his profession, a lonely has-been vulnerable to predators like Dorn.