Prince of Gulbrania

by Lauren M. Flauding

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kayla

  I wanted to tell myself I was freaking out because world cultures class was in 5 minutes and I’d have to present alone, but I knew the real reason I was stressed was because I still hadn’t heard from Frog. I had the video for our presentation and I could manage on my own, but I desperately wanted to know what was going on with him. At first I had figured that kissing him had been a mistake, but the more I thought about him, the more I liked him. I couldn’t shake the incredible feeling I had experienced that evening, and the fact that he hadn’t responded to any of my texts or calls was driving me crazy. Either he was so sick that he was incapacitated, or he hated me, and I felt bad for hoping that it was the first reason. I never thought I’d find myself desperate for attention from Frog, and yet, there I was, standing in the hallway, constantly checking my phone or praying that he would suddenly show up.

  As I was scanning the faces of everyone that passed, I was surprised to spot a guy I’d never seen before at the other end of the hallway. I didn’t know everyone in the school, but this guy was the type you’d never forget. He was impossibly good looking, easily the most attractive male I’d ever seen. Perfect dark hair, strong facial features, and muscles like a Greek god. Compared to this guy, Wyatt seemed downright scrawny.

  Everyone was staring at him as he passed. I think I even saw a couple girls drooling, but he didn’t pay attention to any of them. He was headed straight for me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. He stopped in front of me and smiled, and I hate to admit that I felt my knees go a little weak.

  “Hey,” he said in a low, husky, nearly irresistible voice. For one moment, I was smitten. Standing there, looking into eyes that were eerily familiar, I was willing to be completely swept off my feet. I managed a half smile before I came to my senses. What was I thinking? Sure, this guy was one wink away from being the most tantalizing human on earth, but he was a complete stranger. And who cared that he was good looking? I had fallen for Wyatt for that very reason, and look where that had gotten me. I wasn’t about to go down that road again. Who did this guy think he was, waltzing right up to me while I was so unguarded? And he was wearing clothes that were way too tight, probably to show off every rippling muscle. His clear overconfidence and vanity was decidedly off-putting.

  When he started stepping closer, I sprang to action. I grabbed him under his arms, stepped behind him and flipped him over my back and on to the ground. He looked shocked and everyone around me gasped, but I didn’t care.

  “Nicely done,” he groaned.

  Just then, the bell rang. I glared at the guy on the floor and then turned and walked off to go to class, glad that Frog had taught me how to defend myself against attractive strangers.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Frog

  “That went a lot differently than I imagined it would,” I mumbled as I sat up. There had been those glorious seconds when Kayla was looking at me like I was a tall drink of water in the desert, but then the situation had flipped. Literally. I couldn’t blame her for reacting that way, especially so soon after her incident with Wyatt, and I cursed myself for just standing there and smiling at her instead of trying to explain the situation.

  The hallways cleared and I was wondering if I should wait around until the end of class and try with Kayla again when suddenly a man emerged from a classroom nearby. He walked toward me with a hungry look in his eye and a smile that was far more threatening than it was friendly. I heard footsteps approaching from behind, but before I could turn around, something sharp hit me in the neck and I started to feel dizzy. As the man came closer, I realized I recognized him.

  “Mack?”

  The man laughed. “Sure, kid.”

  It seemed like the laughter was echoing all around me. I made an effort to stand up, but instead I collapsed on the floor and lost consciousness.

  *****

  When I came to, the first thing I felt was the cold. My entire body was shivering from freezing, damp air that seemed to permeate my skin. I took in my surroundings. I was in some sort of small, dimly lit cave, and I could smell the ocean and hear the crash of waves nearby. The chamber had several openings, almost as if it was part of a system of tunnels. I looked down. I was strapped to a metal chair and I was still as ripped as a superhero, but all that muscle was useless against the strong cords that held me. I made a few more valiant attempts to free myself before I noticed someone come through one of the openings. The man I knew as Mack approached me and crouched down so that we were face to face.

  “Exciting day, huh?”

  “You could say that,” I answered warily. In all honesty, I was starting to wonder if I was the subject of some weird experiment. I had woken up looking like Clark Kent, and then I had been kidnapped and was being held in a sea cave by the scary guy who had measured my windows.

  He smiled ominously. “Frederick, I have been watching you for a very long time.”

  I gulped. “That explains the tingling feeling I always got on the back of my neck. Has that ever happened to you?”

  He looked annoyed, but continued. “At first, I was trying to kill you.”

  I tried to suppress a shudder. “So, I’m guessing you don’t actually work for a window company, because if you do, I’m going to give you guys a really awful review.”

  He rolled his eyes and kicked my chair. I didn’t know if it was fatigue or nerves that was making me so chatty, but my instinct told me to stall for as long as possible.

  “No,” he spat. “My name is Boris Haugen-”

  “I liked Mack better.”

  “-and I belong to the Jumerum, one of the most prestigious inurement organizations in Northern Europe.”

  “Let me guess. What you guys do is illegal.”

  “It depends on the country,” he snarled. “Our ideals transcend the legalities of common governments.”

  Part of me was scared, but the other part of me was actually getting kind of bored with this self-righteous dude. “So, what does all this have to do with me? What did I do to upset you guys?”

  “You were born,” Boris growled.

  I frowned. “Technically, I couldn’t help that.”

  Boris waved his hand dismissively. “The Jumerum has been working to eliminate your family for the last decade.”

  “And by eliminate, you mean...?”

  “Kill.”

  “That’s what I thought. I just wanted to clarify.”

  “My efforts with you were exploratory at first, as we weren’t certain of your identity, but even then, you were exceptionally hard to terminate. Things kept getting in the way, and your deductive powers and reflexes were beyond what I had expected.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Deductive powers?”

  “Yes,” Boris replied bitterly. “Not many young men would have recognized the explosive potential of the chemicals I exchanged in your chemistry lab.”

  I opened my mouth, and then shut it. Things were starting to fall into place. The dart that came out of nowhere in the weight room and the pillar falling at the homecoming game must have been from this psycho guy, but I was still completely bewildered. Why was he trying to kill me and my family?

  “But your preservation proved to be serendipitous,” he continued. “We were under the impression that your father was dead until just recently, when we received information that convinced us otherwise. At that point, I shifted my efforts from trying to kill you to attempting to take you alive.”

  “Thanks, I really appreciate that.”

  “And now we come to the task at hand.” He crouched down again and breathed in my face, which smelled strangely like syrup. “Where is your father?”

  I looked him straight in the eye. “I haven’t seen him for 10 years.”

  He backhanded me across my jaw, and I nearly blacked out. “Hey!” I yelled, feeling oddly defensive. “What’s your problem? I have no idea where he is! He abandoned us 10 years ago and never showed his face again. Why is he so i
mportant to you?”

  Boris sneered. “Please, Frederick. Don’t play innocent. You know very well the magnitude of you and your father’s position in your country.”

  My head what beginning to hurt. All of this was absurd. “No, I don’t know,” I said with growing frustration. “I don’t know what you want with me, I don’t know why I look this way, and I don’t know where my dad is!”

  Boris narrowed his eyes at me for a moment, but then he threw his head back and laughed.

  “They have trained you very well,” he commented, looking amused. He pulled a large knife from his belt. “But we’ll see if you can keep this act up once I start cutting off your toes.”

  He walked slowly toward me with a maniacal gleam in his eyes. I desperately did not want to scream, but as he began to remove my shoes, the thought of that knife slicing into my feet became too much to bear. At the moment that I was opening my mouth to let loose a definitively unmanly squeal, there was a crashing sound and two people ran through one of the openings. The first one was a man and was dressed all in black with a mask covering his face, but the second one I recognized.

  “Mom! Mom?”

  I watched in awe as my mother, in her fancy business suit and heels, kicked the knife out of Boris’s hand and proceeded to give him what appeared to be the fight of his life. She punched him in the face, then somersaulted over his back and jabbed him in the ribs on the other side. He kept swinging wildly at her, but she was too quick. Meanwhile, the masked guy quietly approached me, paused for a moment, and then began to cut away at my cords.

  “What’s going on? Who are you?”

  All I got in response was a soft chuckle from under his mask. Finally, my mother knocked Boris out with a well placed kick to his head, and the mystery man finished freeing me from the chair. I stood up slowly, weak from being strapped to a chair for hours and overwhelmed at seeing my mother become some kind of kung fu master.

  She straightened her jacket and headed toward me. “There will be more coming. We need to leave now.” She took my hand and started walking, but I stayed planted. I had had enough.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Before we go anywhere, I need an explanation,” I demanded.

  My mom turned back, her eyes softening. “Frederick, we’ll talk about it in a few minutes,” then she lowered her voice, “but right now, we need to get out of here.”

  She headed out of the cave, and this time, I dutifully followed her. As agitated as I was about everything, when she used that tone of voice, I knew better than to defy her. The three of us emerged onto rocky cliffs where somehow, it was even colder. Giant ocean waves splashed against the rocks and sprayed us with frigid water. We came to a ledge and I saw a helicopter concealed in a large crevice. I didn’t ask any questions. I just followed them in. At this point, I had stopped being shocked at every new development. The man in black operated the helicopter and lifted us into the air. I didn’t know how he could see through that mask.

  The helicopter was so loud that talking was impossible anyway, so I just contented myself with looking out the window. Mostly what I saw was sheer cliffs and ocean, but every once in a while I would see a small house or a narrow road. We headed inland and were flying towards a small, rocky mountain. As we got closer, I began to get nervous that we were going to run right into it, but then a large door opened near the top of it. The man landed us expertly inside of the opening, and the door closed behind us.

  We got out of the helicopter and my mother led me into a tunnel and down a few flights of stairs until we finally got to a small chamber that almost looked like it could be a cozy apartment, except for the fact that it was housed deep within a mountain.

  My mom turned on some additional lights and punched in a code on a keypad on the wall. Then she rushed toward me and hugged me tightly.

  “I’m so glad we found you before it was too late,” she exclaimed, her voice shaking with emotion.

  “Yeah, me too. I was about to lose all my toes.”

  She pulled back and set her hands on my shoulders. “Let me look at you,” she said, her eyes roving over my face and body. “There’s a whole lot more of this than I expected,” she said, squeezing my shoulders and arms, “but other than that, you look just like him.”

  “Him?” If this was her idea of an explanation, she was doing a really bad job.

  “Me.”

  I turned to face the masked man. I had almost forgotten he was with us. He stepped up to me and removed his mask, and suddenly I was staring at my dad.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Frog

  “Where have you been?” I asked, trembling with anger.

  My father didn’t answer my question. Instead, he smiled. “It’s so good to finally see you, son. You can’t know how much I’ve missed you.”

  “Where have you been?” I repeated, louder this time.

  His smiled faltered. “I’ve been here.”

  “Here?”

  “In Gulbrania.”

  I glanced over at my mom and she gave a slight nod. I looked back at my dad.

  “What have you been doing here?”

  He chuckled and spread his hands in front of him. “Running a country.”

  I guess that was probably supposed to impress me, but I just felt myself getting more angry at how casual he was acting in this crazy situation.

  “So I guess that justifies leaving your wife and son for over ten years, does it?” I spat.

  He took a step toward me. “Frederick, you need to calm down.”

  “Calm down? Are you kidding? Sure, let’s all go out for a burger and talk about how miserable it’s been for us since you left. We’ll just laugh about the fact that we haven’t seen you for all these years.”

  My mother cleared her throat. “Actually, Frederick, I’ve been visiting your father regularly.”

  This was too much. I lost it. “What?!” I yelled. “So it’s just me that’s been left in the dark? What is going on?”

  My mother placed her hand on my back. “Frederick, this was necessary to keep you safe.”

  I stepped back from both of them. “Necessary? Necessary?” I shouted the word over and over. I was on the verge of a break down.

  My father grabbed me by the shoulders. “Son! You need to understand that there are things that are bigger than you! Bigger than our family!”

  My mother came between us. “Gerard, he’s been through a lot and he’s just a teenager. He can’t grasp things like that yet.”

  “Well, he’ll have to soon. The Jumerum is becoming more aggressive and he might have to take charge any day now.”

  My mother closed her eyes and shivered. “Gerard, let me talk to him alone.”

  “Evelyn, I-”

  “Please.” It was more a command than a request.

  My father nodded and started to leave, but then he turned back and came straight up to me until we were face to face.

  “Frederick, I have had to answer to greater responsibilities, but I want you to know that leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Know that I love you more than life, son.” He embraced me for a second, then walked briskly out of the room.

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, stunned at his unexpected show of affection. I felt my mother take me by the hand.

  “Come sit down, Frederick.” She lead me to a small table and chairs situated in the corner of the room. We sat down across from each other and I looked at her expectantly.

  She took a deep breath. “Frederick, I asked you not to leave the house.”

  I threw up my hands. “You keep all these secrets from me for years and now you’re going to scold me for breaking one promise?”

  She sighed. “Thank goodness Zane alerted me as soon as he saw you leave.”

  “Zane? What does the neighbor kid have to do with anything?”

  “He’s your bodyguard.”

  “My... what? An eleven year old is my bodyguard? Are you serious?”

  “He t
urned twelve in July, Frederick,” she replied in a patronizing tone, as if this was supposed to make me feel like having a child protecting me was completely normal and not at all emasculating.

  “What does he do? Annoy all the bad guys away?”

  “He’s a technological genius, Frederick. His surveillance and his devices have saved you more times than you know.”

  I rubbed my temples. “Fine, I have a juvenile bodyguard,” I grumbled. “But why do I even need to be protected?”

  My mother spread her hands on the table, as if bracing herself for something unpleasant. “First of all, Frederick, you should know that I’m not a business consultant.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, I gathered that. I haven’t seen many consultants grapple with a guy twice their size and knock him unconscious.”

  She gave me a warning look and I shut up. Now was not the time to be cheeky.

  “Every time I was out of town, I was actually here helping your father.”

  “Helping him with what?”

  She closed her eyes. “Honey, it’ll be easier if you just let me finish and then ask questions afterwards.”

  “Okay.” The only reason I agreed so readily was because she was finally giving me answers.

  “We left Gulbrania twelve years ago when your grandfather died.”

  I nodded. This was all familiar.

  “He was killed by the Jumerum.”

  I gulped. This was new information.

  “At the time, we were unfamiliar with the Jumerum and their power, but we understood that all of our family was in danger, so we decided to move to the United States while we gathered information about how to defeat them. We learned that they wanted complete control of the Gulbranak.”

  My mom must have seen the confusion on my face.

  “Alright, let me back up. Frederick, do you remember what Gulbrania specializes in?”

  I frowned. “Um, underwater technology?”

  She squinted at me. “Something along those lines. Gulbrania is the only country in the world with the resources to extract and refine Gulbranak, which is a rare metal found on the ocean floor, and which has the potential to generate extraordinary amounts of energy.