The Lost Prince (44 page)

“We should probably call him Captain Aandor then,” said a third whisper behind them.

Allyn lunged between the boy and the intruder and grabbed the man by the shoulders. He cast a blessing for a powerful soothe, only to feel his energy turn back on him, searing him with a terrible black pain. He was stained … polluted by the effort.

“What kind of abomination are you?” Allyn asked, half stunned.

“Keep your voice, down. Jeez…,” said the man.

“It’s okay,” said Daniel, putting a hand on the reverend’s arm. “Colby tried to warn me about them back at the park. You’re in as much trouble as we are, aren’t you?” he said to the detective.

“You don’t know the half of it, kid. I really was looking out for you … tried to string them along. But they got my…” Colby lost the rest of his explanation to some far-off painful memory.

Allyn sensed the strain of an impossible quandary on the man. Daniel patted Colby’s arm.

“Buck up, Colby,” Daniel said. “It’s more than my best friend ever did for me.”

“Lucky for you, these guys couldn’t find a dinosaur in a flock of sheep,” the detective said. “There’s three of them—Krebe’s the stocky one, the giant’s Todgarten, Hommar’s the normal-looking one. We have to get you out of this build—”

The barn lights came on.

“Who’s there?” said someone with a deep southern drawl from the barn door. “Show yourself.”

The farmer moved slowly into the barn with a deer rifle. With the lights on, Daniel, Colby, and Allyn’s hiding niche had lost its advantage. They moved silently to a corner behind a tool shed.

“Mister, you okay?” they heard the farmer ask someone.

Through the cows’ legs, they spied the farmer approach Krebe, who lay motionless on his back. His bowler sat inverted beside his head.

“Oh, no, no…,” Colby whispered.

“What’s wrong?” said Daniel. “Maybe he got kicked in the head by a cow.”

“Why’d they have to switch now?” Colby said to himself, working into a near panic.

“Switch what?” Daniel asked.

“That guy in the butler suit is about to turn a whole lot more psychotic.”

The farmer tapped Krebe with his boot. Krebe’s arm shot up and grabbed the man’s belt. He hoisted himself to the man’s belly and shoved a blade in the farmer’s gut with the other hand. With his foot, Krebe deflected the rifle barrel as the farmer fired off his dying round into the dirt.

The look of sheer pleasure on Krebe as he sliced across the farmer’s abdomen sent a shiver through Allyn. Rapturous glee, normally reserved for welcoming a new child to the world or winning a gold medal, radiated from the killer’s face as he disemboweled the farmer. The thief in the forest a few days earlier was a pious soul by comparison. This was real evil.

The farmer fell face-first after his own blood and bowels into the hay. Krebe stood, unhurried, replacing his hat, like a man reborn savoring his first breaths of life. The cows, in distress, mooed and backed away from the scene, causing the group’s hiding place to shrink further. They were in danger of being crushed.

Krebe’s cohorts, alerted by the rifle shot, came to the center of the barn.

“We must hurry,” said Todgarten. “The farmer’s woman called the local patrol before I silenced her.”

“They’re in this barn?” asked Krebe.

He picked up the farmer’s rifle and aimed it at the nearest bovine’s head and blew its brains out. Then Krebe began firing randomly at the cows, blowing out brains like they were ducks at the county fair. The herd panicked, crushing each other as they struggled to get away. They broke their enclosure and stampeded from the barn. Allyn heard them smashing into objects outside as they escaped. He’d just finished paying off that station wagon, too. Once gone, Allyn and the prince were exposed. Colby was no longer with them.

Todgarten grabbed Allyn, Hommar took the prince, and they dragged them to the barn’s center before Krebe. Allyn tried to cast a conversion on his captor, but Todgarten remained unaffected. The hearts of frost giants were cold to the passion of godly devotion.

“Well, well, well…,” said Krebe, with the gleam of a starved man sitting before a savory pork chop. Up close he appeared in need of a shave and some grill work for his crooked yellowed teeth. All Krebe lacked was a fat smelly cigar between the thick gritty fingers of his partially gloved hand. “You’re what we’re all fussin’ ’bout ’round here, aye?” He pronounced “here,”
ear
. Krebe flipped open a cell phone and informed someone on the other side about their situation.

Krebe clicked the phone shut, beaming with exuberance.

“Thought for sure Dorn would want to cut you himself,” Krebe told Daniel. “But his lordship would rather the deed be done as soon as possible. Your head’s good ’nough for him.” Krebe wiped the blood and guts off his big knife onto his pant leg. “Ain’t never cut a prince before,” he said. “I’ll relish this.”

“You have the wrong kid,” Daniel said. “I grew up in foster care.”

Allyn’s heart broke in the face of Daniel’s dread. He was innocent, unaware of his importance or the reasons why anyone would want to end his life. Nothing would stay Krebe’s hand—asking this child of Satan for mercy would only egg him on. Allyn prayed silently for help. He asked forgiveness for his weakness and implored divine intervention for the sake of the boy.
Take me in his place, Lord. I give my life for the boy.

Krebe pointed the knife at Daniel’s throat with a most lustful smile. A shot put a bullet into the ground before Krebe’s next step. Heads snapped toward the barn entrance. Two men entered, a tall blond with a sword on his back and a gun aimed at Krebe, the other, a thin arty type with a staff.

Thank You, Lord,
prayed Allyn. Captain America had arrived.

CHAPTER 32

FLOWER POWER

Why Cal only shot a warning before the knife-wielding maniac was beyond Seth’s understanding. Perhaps some code of decency prevented him from shooting a man unawares. The two groups faced off with each other, each trying to figure out who had the upper hand. A blocky Nordic-looking man had the prince. His thick arms looked capable of snapping the boy’s neck in less time than it took to squeeze a trigger. And Cal would need his entire clip just to take down Todgarten.

Cal had rushed the barn stupidly like a one-man cavalry, and Seth felt pressured by Cal’s opinion of him as a coward to follow. They barely avoided the stampeded cows. Seth was scared out of his mind. He looked around for a place to hide should things go south, as they most assuredly will, and spied the long concrete pit of the milking station at the other end of the barn. Extraction hoses hung from racks on either side of the pit designed to accommodate several cows. Typical for Seth when under pressure, his mind wandered, and the farm’s operation gave him an idea for a porn set—amply endowed women fixed to the milking hoses:
Deflowered Rebel Milkmaids
.

Cut that out!
he admonished himself. His former self still lingered in the dark places, waiting for the chance to pop out.
At least die with clean thoughts.

“Let the prince go, and I’ll let you leave,” said Cal, snapping Seth back into the moment. “My word by the Twelve.”

“Not very sporting of you, me lordship. Is it?” said Krebe stolidly. He appeared unafraid of death—or more accurately, unbelieving that this was the moment of it. There was a scary cockiness about him. His voice was rusty nails and shards of glass scraped over sandpaper. “You know full well Dorn would ’av us kilt if we return empty-handed. No. I’m afraid we’re in a bit of a pickle. Me an’ the boys—we end up dead in most of the ways this little drama turns out—we ’ave nothing left to lose—but you … you got everything to lose.” Krebe looked at the boy. “The rightful prince of Aandor—grand duke of the kingdom, father of the future emperor, lord regent of the realm and all that whatnot—such a tragedy to die so young.”

“No one needs die,” implored Allyn. “Hunting innocent children is madness. This child has done you no wrong. Walk away…”

Krebe ignored the preacher and remained focused on Cal. “I’ll make you a deal, me lordship. I take the boy, and spare your wife. You have
my
word.”

“My wife?” Cal said.

Seth was as confused as Cal looked.

Suddenly, a group of young people stormed into the barn. Two men with guns and a fat goth girl holding a pitchfork surrounded Daniel, Allyn, and their captors. They were wet and their legs caked with mud. A fourth man snuck up behind Cal with his gun pointed at the cop’s head. Cal didn’t budge, keeping his gun squarely fixed on Krebe only a few feet in front of him.

“Ya’ll just hand Hauer right over,” said the man behind MacDonnell. He wore a mullet, so naturally Seth assumed he was their leader. “I got no quarrel with none of you,” added mullet head.

“Cody, you’re an idiot!” Daniel shouted.

“You think I’m gonna just let you go? After you screw my girl? Specially with sixty thousand dollars on your head?”

Krebe maintained his happy cool. “On second thought, I see a better arrangement,” he told MacDonnell.

Krebe addressed the newcomers. “Kill the captain,” he said pointing at MacDonnell, “and truly we will have no quarrel.”

“Is he a Fed? Shit!” Cody said.

The meth dealers must have been sampling their wares. They were jittery and bloodshot—shaking from more than the cold—too much energy with no clear release.

Another armed foursome of local boys rushed in behind the first group through the entrance, drenched to the bone and caked all over with mud. This was the crew from the SUV Cal had pushed off the road. They took positions around the barn, one with a pistol on Cody, another covering Cal, the third covering Krebe, and the fourth on Daniel, his captors and Cody’s people. They too had sampled their wares to give them a boost under stress and pressure. No one in this barn was in his or her right mind. The situation had deteriorated into a scene from a Tarantino movie; everyone shifted pistols nervously from target to target to target. Only Krebe and MacDonnell remained unfazed, with Cal’s gun locked squarely on the point between Krebe’s eyes. They were one jittery finger away from a melee not seen since bootlegging days.

“Everybody cool it,” said the large square pink guy with the big silver belt buckle.

“Hauer’s mine, McCoy!” shouted Cody. “This is personal! He—he fucked Luanne.”

“Everyone’s fucked Luanne,” McCoy said in a cruel tone. “Now, put your fuckin’ guns down.”

Krebe’s laugh rose slowly like the sound of a coming train—the intonation of a man who seldom uttered such a sound, who lacked mirth unless it involved the torture and death of another living thing. If fear was infectious, this man was its carrier, seeding the disease among the unwary. A shiver ran down Seth’s spine. Everyone was transfixed in the presence of this force, looking at him as though nails were running down a chalkboard.

“Wha’s so funny, Fauntleroy?” said McCoy nervously.

“Every one of you with your peasant schemes has failed to aim your weapon at the most dangerous man in the room,” Krebe answered, pointing his knife at Seth.

Seth had been happily under the radar until this point. Not a gun aimed at him, barely a notice for the skinny photographer in jeans with dark ruffled hair and a passing resemblance to John Lennon around the eyes. The staff was the least threatening item in a barn filled with meth dealers, cops, assassins, giants, firearms, pitchforks, and knives. Even the fat goth chick looked more dangerous. Now, in the midst of this jittery strung out assembly, Krebe turned the spotlight on him.

“He a ninja?” Cody asked sarcastically. The Carolinians laughed thinly, like graduates of the same school of comedy.

Then it came to Seth like the flicking of a switch … Cal was not the reason Krebe’s men were frozen in the standoff. Lelani once said,
Only a fool goes into battle undefended against a wizard.
The boys from Aandor thought they were compromised.

“Wizard,” Krebe answered McCoy seriously. “We could all be dead at a word. We should be, and yet…”

Every successful spell Seth had cast came with the aid of Lelani or the tree wizard Rosencrantz. Neither was present in the barn. Krebe was beginning to wonder why this whole situation wasn’t over already. That too much time had passed without a magical resolution. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of Seth’s neck, camouflaged by the dripping rain. His stress level, already at DEFCON 2, had crept up another notch. Cal never took his focus off Krebe’s glabella. Was the cop waiting for Seth’s move? Something to get the prince away from Hommar? That wasn’t fair. Seth agreed to do anything Cal asked of him on this trip, but strategies were the cop’s domain.

Cody and McCoy had positioned themselves to include Seth in their coverage. Their hands were shaking, their eyes confused. It was apparent that someone tonight was going to die, maybe a few someones … maybe everyone in this barn. The tension rose like a symphony playing toward its fourth movement.

“He’s the most dangerous man in the world,” Krebe said, throwing fuel on the fire.

“We got no beef with them, mister,” said McCoy. He wiped the sweat off his brow and fought to stay focused under the drugs. “We just want the reward money for the kid.”

“I AM the reward money!” Krebe bellowed, stressing the key points for his mentally deficient audience. “I AM the sixty thousand, and HE’S going to STEAL your money,” he said pointing at Seth. “He’ll take the boy, and the MONEY will be GONE, and the cop will arrest you and throw you in the dungeon WITHOUT your drugs … no more sweet rock to smoke.” Krebe turned to Cody. “And the boy will FUCK Luanne until his cock shoots dust and her belly swells with his spawn, and—your—life—will—be—SHIT!”

“I don’t wanna go to jail,” Cody cried.

Cal whispered to Seth, “You need to do something now.”

“Even now they plot to end your existence!” Krebe hammered away. “End them first!

Krebe’s motion was both the fastest and slowest move Seth had ever seen in his life. He dropped the farmer’s rifle at the same instant that a second smaller dagger dropped from his sleeve.